Seeing the Bible as Jesus Saw It - Life of Christ Part 76

I had a young couple in my office not too long ago and they were going to get married and they'd come in to ask for some advice. And both of them said, yeah, we're Christians, we've trusted Christ, we've checked that out, we're all okay on that. And I said, well, that's good. And then the guy said to me, he said, yeah, well, he said, we still have a few differences on some points when it comes to our Christian faith, but we feel sure we're going to be able to work through them. Now, as somebody who's been on the other side of marriage for almost 21 years, and remembering that raw and beautiful sense before we got married that we can beat any problem, I've learned the hard way not just to say, oh, sure, God bless you, I'm sure you're going to handle it fine. So I said to him, well, just for my information, what are some of these problems that you're so sure you're going to be able to work through? Would you let me in on it?

Be specific. He said, well, for example, my wife to be here, my fiance, she really isn't sure that Jonah got swallowed by a fish. She really has a hard time with the fact that Noah had a worldwide flood. She really doesn't believe Adam and Eve existed the way the Bible said. She really has a problem with God opening the Red Sea and this stuff. But the stuff about Jesus she all believes is fine.

So we're pretty well locked in on that. But he said, I take the Bible at face value. I believe all those things happen the way the Bible said, but I'm sure we're going to work through it. I said, hey, you know, I think you got a problem. I think what happens when your boy or girl comes home from Sunday school and they've been taught that Jonah got swallowed by a fish, what are you going to do? Is one of you going to say, well, that's exactly right, and the other one going to say, well, you know, it's a nice story, but I'm not sure it really happened. I mean, how are you going to handle this? Well, you know, I don't think this is a problem just that young lovers have, huh? I think there's lots of church-going professing Christians who have the very same problem.

Gee, maybe some of you here have the problem. I don't know. And that is, to what degree is the Bible inspired and errant and absolutely reliable in everything that it says?

To what degree is that true? Now, the passage this morning is in Matthew 22, begins in verse 23. And here's what it says. We're in the last week of Jesus's earthly life. And it says, that same day, probably a Tuesday, the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. Now, what do we know about these folks, this religious party called the Sadducees? Well, we know they began about 300 BC. We know that they were the patricians of ancient Israel. They were the muckamucks. They were the priests and the aristocrats and the nobility of Israel. And their name was probably related to Zadok in the Old Testament, who was the high priest of Israel under King Solomon.

And you can hear the sound of like Zadok and the Zadokies or the Sadducees. Well, anyway, they come to Jesus with a theological question about a theological issue. And the issue is the afterlife. The issue is life after the resurrection.

And the Bible tells us that they had a position on this. Their position was there is no afterlife. There's no other world. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There's no eternal settling up of account. When you're done in this world, it's just fade to black. And that's it.

You're out of here. So these guys come and they ask Jesus a question. We know from the New Testament that the Sadducees were always arguing with the other rabbis about lots of different issues. And I'm sure they had argued about this issue. And I'm sure this question had been used by them before. As a matter of fact, I'll bet you they had used it as a real stumper against the other rabbis they'd argued with. And they figured, hey, we got one.

Nobody can answer. They'll stump him with this one. So here comes the question. Verse 24. Teacher, they said, Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him.

Say, what in the world? Yeah, in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter 25, Moses said that if you had a brother who died and your brother didn't have any kids, that you had to take his wife, have sexual relations with his wife and give her children in your dead brother's name so that his name would not die out on the face of the earth. You understand the deal here? Okay, now watch. Now, they said, there were seven brothers among us, and the first one married and died. And since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. Well, the same thing happened to the second guy. He died. And the third brother died, all the way down to the seventh brother. They all died and gave this woman no children. Finally, a woman died. You see any humor in that?

Well, probably that it's too sensitive a world. Okay, well, now then they say, verse 28, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven? In the afterlife, which one of these seven brothers is she married to since all of them here on the earth were married to her?

That's the stumper that they give Jesus. Maybe my mind just works in weird ways. I don't know. But I got to thinking, you know, here's the deal. The woman goes through seven brothers. What if you were brother number six, or if you were brother number seven, and you saw this deal heading your way? I mean, what would you feel like, huh? I mean, she's already done in four, she's married to five, he's sick, and you're next.

Hmm. Would you marry this woman? Talk about bad karma.

Good grief. Frankly, I wouldn't even marry this woman in afterlife. I know you live forever in afterlife. But with this woman, I'm not sure I'd take the risk.

You understand? Well, anyway, that's the deal. So the question is, what about marriage? What about romantic relationships in the afterlife?

Now, here's the question. Guys and gals, if you've ever wondered about what it's going to be like in heaven, if you know you're going to heaven and you're married now, you're so happy together. What's it going to be like in the afterlife if you're married now, and you're not so happy together? What's it going to be like in the afterlife if you're not married? But you think, well, if I don't get one here, I'll get one in heaven.

What's it going to be like? Jesus is about to tell you. So here we go. Look what he says, verse 29. He says, you are in error, because you don't know the scriptures, and you don't understand the power of God.

Can you imagine telling these guys this? It's like telling Mother Teresa she doesn't understand missionary work. You guys don't know anything, Jesus said. At the resurrection, people will neither marry in the afterlife, nor will they be given in marriage.

They will be like the angels in heaven. In fact, Jesus says in Luke's gospel that in heaven, people no longer die, but we become like the angels are. Now, what's Jesus mean by that? What he means is that down here on earth, we're living in a world that's cursed by sin.

Read about it, Genesis chapter 3. And part of the curse means that people die. Well, because of that, there has to be a way to replenish the human race, because people die out.

And so God created sex and romance and marriage, among other things, as a way of replenishing the human race, because we live in a world that's tainted by sin and death. However, heaven's going to be completely different. In heaven, nobody dies. The angels don't die.

The angels don't have to replenish because the angels never die in the first place. And so what that means is in heaven, there's no need to procreate. In heaven, there's no sex, there's no romance, there's no marriage, there's no dating, there's no nothing like that.

Angels have no sexuality. And Jesus says when God takes these earthly bodies of ours, when he resurrects them from the ground and makes them like the glorified body that Jesus had after the resurrection, and when we're living in heaven permanently, we're not going to have any sexuality either. Ooh, man, won't that be different? No testosterone in heaven?

No estrogen in heaven? Just think what that's going to be like. I got to think in this week, what would it be like to have in heaven no men from Mars and no women from Venus? What would that be like?

How will that change the way everyday people live? Well, here's some thoughts I have. See if you agree. No testosterone, no estrogen in heaven, that'll mean that he'll agree to go shopping with you ladies, and men, when you go, she'll buy something. That's how I see it. It means that he'll stand still ladies and look at you right in the eyes when you talk to him and give you his undivided attention in heaven. You say, that will be heaven. All right. And men, that means she'll stop asking you about how you feel about everything when you don't know how you feel about nothing. You understand?

All right. It means that when he gets a little cold in heaven, ladies, he won't walk around acting like he's on his death bed. Oh, I'm so sick. I'm so sick.

And all he's got's a cold. And guys, just think, when we get to heaven, all the women in your life will stop telling you to grow up and act your age. Won't that be nice?

At least they tell me that. So it'll be nice for me not to have to deal with that. Just think what no sex means. They'll all be careful. All right. I'm going to be real careful. But just think, ladies, if there's no sex, no sexuality, it'll mean that when he's treating you extra nice, you won't have to really wonder what his motive is.

Won't that be nice? And guys, it means that in heaven, when a gal tells you she's got a headache, she probably really does. All right. The point is, heaven's going to be a different place. There is no marriage. There is no dating. There is no sexuality.

There's none of all this stuff that complicates the world. So the answer to the question is, whose wife will she be in heaven? Answer, she won't be anybody's wife. And nobody will be anybody's husband. Heaven doesn't work that way.

If you're married down here and you're having fun, enjoy it down here, because it's not going to be that way in heaven. Now, Jesus said, okay, I answered the question you guys asked me. But now I want to go on and answer a question you didn't ask me. But really, it's the question you should have asked me, which is you should have asked me, Sadducees, whether your view of the afterlife was correct. What you should have asked me is, are we right?

Is it just fade to black? Or is there something else on the other side of this life that we ought to be making provision for that we ought to be concerned about? So look what Jesus does, verse 31. Jesus says, but about the resurrection from the dead, about the afterlife, which you didn't ask me about, but which I'm going to answer anyway. Have you not read what God said to you? I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching. You say, well, how does that prove anything? You say, Jesus pulls us out and this is the best proof that he can give about the afterlife? You say, well, now listen, I want to explain to you what he was trying to say, because Jesus is, by doing this, is proving that there is an afterlife. And to do this, I want you to turn back with me into the Old Testament to Exodus chapter 3. If you're using our copy of the Bible, it's page 41. Now in Exodus chapter 3, we've got a very famous story from the Old Testament. It's about Moses and the burning bush. Most of us know the story. If you never read it, you saw it in the movie.

Remember the movie? So anyway, here we are, and this is the story. Now, Exodus chapter 3, let's look at verse 2. And it says, Moses saw that there was a bush that even though the bush was on fire, I'm at the end of verse 2, it didn't burn up. So Moses thought, I'm going to go over and see this strange sight why the bush isn't burning up. And when the Lord saw that Moses had gone over to look, God said to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses, Moses said, here I am. And God said, don't come any closer.

Take your sandals off because the place where you're standing is holy ground. And then God said, now watch, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And at this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. This is God who said what Jesus quotes in Exodus chapter 3 to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, where's Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at this point? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are dead. In fact, they have been dead for a long, long time. Jacob's been dead over 400 years. Isaac and Abraham been dead longer. They're in the cave of Machpelah and they've turned to dust.

Their bodies have. They are long, long gone. But yet to Moses, over 400 years after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died, God says to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The point is that God didn't say, I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob been dead and they are no more, and I was their God. He didn't say, I have been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they're not around anymore. He said, 400 years after they were gone, I still am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Now, what that means is that he was not the God of dust. Their bodies had turned to dust. But the point is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still alive. They're alive somewhere else. They're not alive here on earth, but they're still alive so that God could say 400 years later, I still am their God today. I'm as much their God today as I was 400 years ago because they're still alive.

They're just alive in a different place. There must be an afterlife, therefore, Jesus said, or God could never have used the present tense. He'd have used the past tense. The reason he used the present tense is because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still living. God is not the God of the dead.

He's the God of the living. And the people went, wow, wow, that's incredible. And the Sadducees said, oh boy, and they were gone for another day. Now, that's the end of the passage. Understand the point Jesus made. That's the end of the passage, but it leaves us with the really important question, what's the really important question? So what?

That's right. Now, we could talk about heaven here, and I really appreciated Tim singing about heaven, and heaven's going to be a wonderful place. And all the things that Tim sang about, you know, not dying and our friends not leaving and all the pain gone, heaven's going to be a wonderful place. And we could talk about that this morning, but what I really want to talk about this morning is about the way Jesus saw the Bible. You see, he went to the Bible to justify a huge theological position about the afterlife, and included in that is a perspective on the Bible, the way Jesus saw it. And I want us to look at that for a moment because I'd like to suggest to you the way Jesus saw the Bible is the way you and I need to see the Bible. Now, Jesus regarded the Bible as the inspired, inerrant Word of God to mankind. Jesus saw the Bible as being God's Word to mankind, and this is the Bible's claim for itself. I want you to turn back in the New Testament to page 843 in our copy of the Bible and 2 Timothy chapter 3 in your copy, 2 Timothy chapter 3 or page 843 in our copy of the Bible.

And I want you to see what the Bible claims for itself. 2 Timothy chapter 3, very familiar verse of Scripture, but nonetheless, we ought to look at it. 2 Timothy chapter 3, and I want you to look with me at verse 16. Here's what it says, all Scripture, verse 16, 2 Timothy 3, is God-breathed. Other translations will translate it, is inspired by God. But the actual translation is the Scripture is God-breathed.

Now what exactly does this mean? What exactly is God saying? What God is saying here is that God took men and God breathed out the Word of God. He breathed out the exact words that he wanted written through these men and they wrote it down on paper. So that what we have on paper is the exact words, not the general idea, not the basic format, but the exact words that God wanted written. In other words, if we could define inspiration a different way, if Jesus Christ had sat down at a desk in Nazareth, taken a pen and some paper, and written the entire Bible while he was sitting there, what Jesus would have written as God in the flesh himself would be exactly word for word what we have in the Bible. It would be the same exact wording because God did give the Bible. God did write the Bible.

He didn't write it personally like Jesus sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper, but he wrote it through men like Moses, men like the apostle Paul. Lon, how exactly did this happen? What was the process? Did the men go into a trance? Did the men get hypnotized? Did their hand just suddenly start moving out of their control like doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo? And they're like, oh boy, what is happening? How did this work?

What was the process? Well, 2 Peter chapter 1 tells us about it. It says, 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 20, above all you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture, none of the Word of God came about because of the prophets or the writer's own interpretation or own origination. For the prophecy of the Scripture never had its origin in the will of man. Man didn't sit down and say, oh, I think I'm just going to write something for God today. No, but men, here it comes, spoke from God as they were carried along, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit picked up these men and as they were writing the Scripture, he carried them along. You say, Lon, what exactly does that mean? I don't have a clue.

We don't have a clue. Nowhere in the Bibles that ever described how that process worked, we don't know. But what we do know is that the Bible claims for itself that men of God were filled and picked up and carried along in a special way by God and so that what they actually wrote down that we call the Bible today was exactly the words that God wanted written. In the same vein, the Bible claims to be inerrant, meaning that there's no mistakes in it. The Bible is without error, period.

That's the claim of the Bible. Now, folks, the Bible is not a science book. The Bible is not a history book. It's not a geology book. It's not a geography book. It's not an anthropology book. It's a salvation book.

It's a book about how to deal with sin, how to get rid of sin, and how to get eternal life as sinners. That's what the Bible is all about. However, there are places where the Bible will comment to science, where it will comment to cosmology or astronomy or anthropology or history, and inerrancy means when the Bible comments to those areas, it's right. How did the world come into being? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

No big bang, no whatever. That's what the Bible says. Now, the Bible may not be a science book, but the Bible certainly commented to science right there, and inerrancy means the Bible's right. How did man come into being? The Bible says that God took the dust of the ground and formed it into a man, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

It had nothing to do with worms, amoebas, or monkeys, but God created man and breathed into him the breath of life. Now there's a comment on anthropology, and the Bible's right. That's what the Bible says. We're right, and everybody who says whether or not, I don't care what degree they got behind their name, that they know better how man came into being, they're not right.

And as you move through the Bible, inerrancy says whenever the Bible comments to anything, it's right. You say, Lon, why is this all that important? Is that really all that important? I mean, what's really important is that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, and so that he was the son of God. What's really important is that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins. What's really important is that Jesus rose from the dead to prove that he was the son of God. What's really important is what the Bible says, that if we trust Christ personally as our savior, we'll have eternal life and go to heaven. That's the really important stuff. Whether God made the world in seven days, whether Adam and Eve existed, whether Jonah got swallowed by a fish, Lon, that stuff doesn't matter.

It doesn't make any difference. But wait a minute, wait a minute, it does. Because friends, if Jonah and the fish story is untrue, then how do we know that the resurrection of Jesus Christ isn't untrue? If what the Bible says about Adam and Eve is wrong, then how do we know that what Jesus said about heaven and hell isn't wrong?

I mean, I like what John Wesley said. He said, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth and it is completely unreliable.

So, this is pretty important stuff. You say, all right, Lon, how can you prove the Bible, huh? Can you prove the Bible's claim that it's reliable?

Yes, I can. In the old days, when I could preach for an hour, off to the old days. In the old days, when I could preach an hour, I did a tape called the reliability of the Bible. And it's up in the bookstore. It's the first tape in our spiritual boot camp series. And if you're a young Christian or a new Christian, you need the whole series of spiritual boot camp. I don't make a dime on it.

I'm not pushing it because of that. But if you only want the first tape, the first tape is called the reliability of the Bible. I go through history, archaeology, fulfilled prophecy, and lots of other ways that God has given us to verify that the Bible can be relied upon as accurate information.

If you've got any doubt about that, we've got some extra copies available for you up there. Go up in the bookstore, get a copy of that tape, the reliability of the Bible, and I'll give you 60 minutes of argument why you can believe and trust the reliability of the Bible. But what I want to do in the little bit of time that I've got left here this morning is show you that Jesus had the exact same view of the Scripture that I'm telling you that it is the inerrant Word of God to be taken at face value. Now let's go back for the last passage of the morning, right back to Matthew 22, right where we started, page 699, and let me show you this. How did God, how did Jesus Christ regard the Bible?

Look at this. Number one, Jesus believed that you could take the Bible at face value. Would you notice in verse 24 that the Sadducees said to him, Moses told us in Deuteronomy that da-da-da-da-da. I think many of you are smart enough to know that the consensus of scholarly opinion is that Moses didn't have a thing to do with writing Deuteronomy, that it was written hundreds of years later and Moses didn't have any piece to play in it whatsoever. If you go to any scholarly seminary, college, or university, that's what they'll tell you.

You know what? Isn't it interesting that Jesus corrected them on their view of the afterlife? He corrected them on their view of marriage. Doesn't it stand to reason that if they had Moses wrong and Moses didn't have anything to do with it, he would have corrected them on that too? But Jesus didn't.

He let them say, Moses said this and Jesus accepted that as fact. Also, would you notice that the passage that he uses has to do with God speaking out of the burning bush? You really believe God talks out of bushes? Have you ever seen God talk out of your shrubbery? You ever been outside and suddenly your shrubbery starts moving and talking to you? You say, no, not recently, not since I was a kid and smoking stuff.

Well, okay, whatever. I've never seen shrubbery talk to me and yet Jesus said there was a piece of shrubbery that talked to Moses and he believed that. See, I believe Jesus here tells us he took the Bible at face value.

He accepted it just the way it was. He didn't need some gobbledygook-speaking theologian to reinterpret the plain statements of the Bible for him. He said you can trust the Bible as a straightforward record and just read it and what it means is what it says and what it says is what it means. That's how Jesus looked at the Bible. Number two, the second way Jesus looked at the Bible is that Jesus accepted the miraculous events that the Bible talked about. He went right to one of the most amazing ones of all, that this bush was on fire and this bush didn't burn up and Jesus accepted that as fact and then that God talked out of this bush. A lot of us have heard people say, well, you know the miracles of the Bible aren't really that important. Yes, they are because if the Bible is lying about miracles, it's lying about who knows what else.

And hey, something being on fire and not burning up, that's a miracle. Not too long ago I went and got some steaks. How do you like your steaks cooked?

How many people like rare steaks? Oh, really? Golly, how do you eat that stuff?

It's still moving with the blood and all this stuff. I had a roommate in college. He put it on one side until it just turned brown, flipped it over until it turned brown. It was still cold in the middle and he ate those things. And I said, man, you're going to die young, man. You're going to die young eating that stuff.

How many of you kind of like a medium? Alright. How many of you, it's got to be dead, dead and deadest before you can eat it?

Alright, I'm with you guys, man. I mean, it's got to be, I mean, like just dead, totally brown. And when I go to restaurants, I'm the guy the chefs get mad at because I'll keep sending it back, you know, and then going, it's not well done enough, it's not well done enough. I've had waiters say to me, we just want you to know we take no responsibility for this piece of meat anymore.

Okay, just burn it. I don't want your responsibility, just burn my piece of meat. Anyway, I went to the store and I got some steaks just a couple weeks ago and I went out to cook them on the grill, you know, and most of my family likes their stuff kind of medium. So I brought all their steaks in and we sat down and we had prayer for the meal and we got to talking, whatever. Anyway, I left my steak on and I forgot about it out there on the gas grill. And then about five or eight, ten minutes later, suddenly I went, ah, my steak. I went running out there and as soon as I ran outside, I could see the flames inside the grill. The top was down but I could see the flames and I went, oh no.

Before I opened it, I kind of said, be like the burning bush, be on fire and don't burn up. You ever tried that on a steak? Well, I did and then I opened it up and guess what? It didn't work.

It didn't look like a little link sausage, you know what I'm saying? Now why didn't that work? That should have worked.

I'm walking with God, I'm a Christian, I know how to pray. That should have worked. You say, no, Lon, what is wrong with you? That shouldn't have worked. That's a miracle. That breaks every law of nature. Stuff can't be on fire and not burn up.

That can't happen. Ah, Jesus believed it happened. Jesus believed it happened because the Bible said it happened. Jesus believed the miraculous statements of the Bible.

Do you know Jesus believed Adam and Eve existed? You say, no, he didn't. Yeah, he did.

Read Matthew 19. Jesus believed the account of Noah's flood. No, he didn't. Yes, he did. Read Matthew 24. Jesus believed that Sodom and Gomorrah got destroyed by fire from heaven and that Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. He did.

Sure did. Read Luke 17. Jesus believed Jonah got swallowed by a fish.

No, he did. He said in Matthew chapter 12, as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, I will be in the belly of the earth three days and three nights. Jesus believed that the Word of God was telling us the truth. Third and finally, not only did Jesus believe you could take the Bible straightforwardly and that the miraculous events of the Bible happened just the way they said, but third and finally, Jesus believed that the Bible was inspired right down to the deepest level. Do we understand here that Jesus based his entire theological position on the afterlife, not even on a word, but on the tense of a word? If that word wasn't present tense, if it was past tense, if God had said, I was the God instead of I am the God, then Jesus' whole theological position falls apart. Jesus not only believed that God breathed every word of the Bible, watch now, Jesus believed that God breathed every tense of every word of the Bible to the point that you could build an entire theological position around the tense of a verb. Now, you want some inspiration.

You want some inerrancy. You want somebody who believed the Bible down to the nth level. You look at Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he took it not just to the words, but to the tenses of the verbs. Jesus takes his entire credibility as the Son of God and the Messiah and the Savior of the world on the fact that the Bible is true just the way it stands, friends. And the reason that's so important is because if you and I, if we say we're Christians, if we say Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, that he's omniscient, that he knows everything, that he's just God wrapped in human flesh, and if he regarded the Bible as straightforward truth, as absolutely accurate even when it talked about miracles, and as inspired down to the tenses of the verbs, if that's how he saw the Bible, then I'd like to suggest if you call yourself a Christian, there is no room for you to see the Bible any other way unless you think you know more than Jesus knew. I'm not prepared to say that.

I don't care what some gobbledygook-speaking theologian says in some university, I'm not prepared to say I knew more than the Son of God knew about the Bible. And if that's how he regarded it, then there's no room for me to regard it any other way. Does the idea of somebody being swallowed by a fish seem a little bit outrageous?

Yeah. But hey, if God made the world, and God made fish, and God made people, and God made atoms, and God made the natural laws, and God wants to suspend them and have somebody swallowed by a fish, I'm just glad it's not me. You understand what I'm saying? He can do it.

Just don't make it me, and I'm fine. Now let me conclude by saying this. Some of us here I think have been holding back for years in terms of an all-out commitment to Jesus Christ because we really struggle with this idea about whether the Bible's telling us the total truth. You know, there's a verse that says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, John 14.6.

Nobody comes to the Father, Jesus said, unless you come through me. Well, some of us have a real problem with that. We say, well, what about the Pygmy in Africa?

What about the Buddhist in India? I don't know. I got a real problem.

Wait a minute. If the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God, then Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except if they come through Jesus.

It's either true or it isn't, huh? What about even as Christians? Jesus said, John 15.5, you can do nothing apart from me.

You can do nothing in your own energy and strength. Well, I find a lot of us as Christians really don't, we're not sure that's really true. We think we're pretty capable, and the only time you call out for God's help is when you're absolutely at your wit's end. Jesus said, you want to accomplish anything for me apart from my feeling and my working through your life, you're not going to accomplish anything for me.

Now, if the Word of God is the inspired truth, then that's right. And we can't just go out and tackle life on our own every day. We need to be surrendered and under the control of the Spirit of God.

Folks, what I'm trying to say to you is this. If you want to get hit by the train, you got to stand on the tracks. If you want the train of the blessing of God to run over you, you got to get on the tracks. And a lot of us have been standing off the tracks for years going, well, I'm not so sure that I can believe the Bible 100% and get up there on those tracks. I'm not so sure that the Bible's really telling me the total truth about salvation or the total truth about Christian living.

And hey, if you're not on the tracks, the train can't run over you. If you're here and you've never trusted Jesus Christ in a real and personal way as your Savior, let me tell you what Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody will ever see heaven or God the Father unless they come by way of salvation by me. That's what Jesus said. Now, get on the tracks so God's salvation can run over you. Believe what God's telling you. And if you're a Christian, Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing.

You frustrated with your life? Hey, start your day by confessing that God's telling you the truth and letting him fill your life and walking in his power. Get on the tracks so he can run over you with the blessing of God. The Word of God is telling us the truth. Jesus staked his whole reputation on the fact the Word of God is telling us truth. If you're here and you've had any doubts about it, the greatest assurance I can give you the Word of God's telling you the truth is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was resurrected from the dead to prove he was the Son of God, saw the Word of God exactly that way. You want the blessing of God in your life?

I've got a simple solution. You see the Bible that way. You conform your life to the Bible, and God will bless you in ways beyond what you can believe.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, as we reflect on the Bible today, we know that the Bible is under attack from every corner, every direction, and every scholar in the world that doesn't believe it is out to destroy it because it forces us to confront our sinfulness, our humanity, and our need for Jesus Christ, forces us to humble ourselves in front of a holy God, and people don't want to do that. Father, I pray that in spite of all of this fancy-sounding academic language, that you would take us back to the basics this morning and remind us how Jesus himself saw the Word of God. Help us, Lord Jesus, to be able to see it the way you saw it. Give us that faith, that simple childlike faith to simply say, God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me. Help us put ourselves on the track, Lord, so that the blessing of God can run over us by believing your Word and taking it at face value. Lord, change our lives by what we've heard here today. Move us closer to that position if we're not already there, I pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.