Why is the Bible truth? Because its author is truth. Dr. Tony Evans says truth isn't just what the Bible declares, it's who it comes from. Scripture is truth.
It will never adjust to you, but it will do wonders when you adjust to it. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. In a world where truth can feel like it's up for debate, Dr. Evans takes us back to the source. In today's lesson, he explains why truth isn't something we create or feel, it's something revealed. And according to Jesus in John 17, 17, that truth is found in God's Word.
Let's join Dr. Evans as he reveals why Scripture must be the ultimate standard by which everything else is measured. We live in a day when there's a major question, it's Pilate's question, when he looked at Jesus and asked, what is truth? The concept of truth is challenged on many fronts. It's been said that there's hardly a college or university that you go to anymore that believes in such a thing as absolute truth. To the question, what is truth?
There are a multiplicity, a myriad of responses. The agnostic says, we can't know truth. So the agnostic simply says, I don't know. I just don't know.
I'm not sure. So he becomes the perpetual questioner about the reality of this thing called truth. The rationalist says, truth is limited to what you can logically conceive of.
Rationalism focuses on the mind and simply says, what the mind can conceive of as being reality is in fact truth. Therefore, if the mind cannot conceive of it, you cannot declare it to be truth. The positivist says that truth is that which the scientific method validates. If science authenticates it and concludes it, then we can perhaps regard it as truth. And then there is theism, which says that truth is subjective.
It's personal. It's what you feel at the moment. Therefore, what's true for me may not be true for you, because I don't feel you.
And it's not where I am. The pragmatist says that truth is what works. If it works, it's true. If it doesn't work, it's not true.
So they're just practical. They simply want to know, does it work? The Bible talks about people ever learning and never coming into the knowledge of the truth. Going to schools, going to conferences, going to events, reading books, reading magazines, watching television shows, looking at newscasts, and are constantly gathering more data without gathering more truth. What do we mean by truth? What's the nature or the definition of truth? When we say truth, we are referring to that which corresponds to what really is.
To speak of truth, we're dealing with a final standard by which reality is measured and to which all things must conform. Jesus says in John 8, verse 32, these famous words, and you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free. Please notice, he didn't say you will know a truth, you will know the truth.
By putting the article the in front of it, he depicts truth not as one thing among many things, but as a definitive body of reality. You shall know the truth. Not only does truth exist, but the truth that exists can be known. Now the question is, what will be our standard for knowing the truth?
How will we determine it? You have your truth, I have my truth, we have our truth. Whose truth is the truth? Now we could appeal to a number of things to say this is how we will determine the truth. We could appeal to our feelings and say, I feel this is the truth. The only problem with feeling truth is that you might feel it one way today and another way tomorrow, because feelings change and look at how many times we have changed our minds based on how we feel. I don't feel it today. So while feelings are genuine, they are not definitive because they are not reliable.
They shift regularly. We could determine truth or we could argue that we could determine truth by our intellect. We could reason our way to it. The only problem with reasoning your way to truth is that our knowledge is finite.
It's not unlimited, it's limited. Therefore, what we know today may change by information we learn tomorrow. Well, there is another way. Perhaps we might go about determining truth. Perhaps we should look at the opinion polls. What do the majority say?
I remember watching one show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And one of the options they give you is to let the audience help you. And you're always tempted to choose the majority. If two thirds of the audience declare that this is the answer, well then it's best to go that way.
And on this particular show, this man banks his million dollars on the audience. The audience was wrong, but it was the majority. Now you can't base truth on opinions because polls change quickly. Yet truth is critical for a straight line. You've got to have a rule, a ruler, something that measures whether something is true or whether something is false, whether something is right or whether something is wrong.
Those who would argue from the scientific method, which fundamentally functions on probabilities, possibilities, and potentialities, truth deals with a final standard, a fixed standard that's non-negotiable by the other factors. Perhaps you've heard me say before, one and one equals two. That has been established as a mathematical fact that one and one equals two. Now what happens today if I don't feel like one and one equals two?
I'm not feeling you today. I feel like today one and one ought to equal three. And I feel very strongly about it. Truth says that your feelings have to adjust to this mathematical truth. Suppose you say, well, I went to college, too, and my intellect says that that ought to be questioned. Well, you can question it all you want, but it's been established as a mathematical fact, and therefore your intellect will have to adjust. Let's say you argued from your moral instincts. Well, let's say the majority of the people around you said no.
It would not change that reality because that has been established as a mathematical fact. In other words, we assume truth exists, except in the areas where we don't want it to exist. So that raises the question, what's the source of truth? John chapter 17. Jesus, again, is speaking. Let me read a couple of verses. Verse 3, and this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hath sent.
So he refers to the only true God, referring to his father, and then he says in verse 17, sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. Jesus Christ makes the astounding statement that the Bible is the truth, an astounding statement. Now, for Jesus to make this, he's either right or wrong. If he's wrong, then maybe we ought to question everything else he says. If he's right, the implications are staggering as to how we view and look at the Bible. When Dr. Evans continues in a moment, he'll point out the deeper knowledge and relationship that truth makes possible in our lives.
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Now let's get back to Dr. Evans with more of today's message. Look at 1 John 5, verse 20. It says that we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding in order that we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true.
In His Son, Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. Second epistle of John, just a page over, he says at the end of verse 1, but also all who know the truth. Verse 2, for the sake of the truth. End of verse 3, truth and love. Beginning of verse 4, I was glad to find some of your children walking in truth. Verse 1 of 3 John, whom I love in truth. Verse 3, I was glad when brethren came and bore witness to your truth. That is how you're walking in truth.
I have no greater joy than this to hear that my children are walking in truth. Verse 8, therefore we ought to support such men that we may be fellow workers with the truth. Verse 12, Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself. We also bear witness and you know that our witness is true. You get the impression the Bible believes in truth.
That there is a fixed standard by which reality is measured. Why is there this unapologetic, non-compromising, definitive statement about truth because of the nature of God? He said in chapter 5, verse 20, God is true. That's not saying simply that God tells the truth. So John wants you to know that God not only tells the truth, but he is truth. In other words, he defines it. He is the embodiment of it.
It is one of his attributes. So therefore, everything about God is true because God himself is true. It is truth by nature, not simply truth by practice.
So what's the point? If God is the author of the Bible and he is responsible for what's in it, then his word must be as true as his nature. It is amazing that people will believe what the Bible says about other things, but not believe what the Bible says about itself. They'll go to the Bible to prove a point that they want to prove using the Bible and believe that that verse ought to be used to make that point without believing what the Bible says about itself. And so when we talk about the Bible, we're talking about God's word being truth because its author is absolutely perfect in every detail and it is his word. So why is the Bible truth?
Because its author is truth. Big Ben in England is the standard. If you want to know what time it is, you can ask anybody you want to, but if their watch doesn't agree with Big Ben's clock, they're wrong. Big Ben is the standard.
Radio stations, TV stations, and individuals all set their watch at Big Ben. What God is saying about his word is, I am the standard. Now that leads us to a final question. How truthful is the Bible?
Well, I've implied it, but now I want to be more specific about it. The Bible is, here's a word that you need to be familiar with, inerrant. Inerrant.
The word inerrant means without error. In other words, it is the perfect truth of God. See, some people will say the Bible contains truth, but that doesn't equal the Bible being true everywhere. The Bible is true on whatever it speaks. Now, most of what it speaks is about life, but in speaking about life, sometimes it throws in some history, sometimes it throws in some science, sometimes it throws in some geography, but when it puts it in there, it's right about that too.
Of course, it would be. If God made the universe, he would know what he's talking about. So while it's not a science book, when it speaks scientifically, it's accurate. While it's not a secular history book, when it brings in secular historical material, it is totally accurate because it is truth.
It is inerrant. Inerrancy says that the original autographs are true in everything upon which the Bible speaks, that when God gave the Bible to those who wrote it, they wrote it perfectly. And that gets us into inspiration, which we'll talk about later, but they wrote down the Bible perfectly. If there are errors in the Bible, as some suggest, then as far as we are concerned, once you show me one, now I got to raise the question about how many more are there.
Because if I can't trust one part of it, why should I trust any part of it? Some people, when they go to buy Bibles, want the red letter edition. How many red letter editions do we have out there? Okay. Oh, that's fine. That's fine. The red letter edition, that basically are the words of Jesus are printed in red. All right?
Well, let me help you with that. The whole book is red letter. And that's fine if you want to highlight the words of Jesus, but it's all the word of his daddy, the word of God. Therefore, it all must be truth. Jesus one day was being tempted by the devil and the devil told him what? He told him to turn these stones into bread. You know what Jesus said?
He said, it is written. Now watch the situation. The situation is Jesus is hungry. He's fasting for 40 days and 40 nights.
So eating food right now is a pretty good idea. He's hungry. Guess what the devil says? The devil says, let me meet your need. Guess what Jesus said? Jesus said, it is written. He appealed to scripture, but listen to what he says. Man does not live by bread alone, but by what? By how many? I didn't hear you.
How many? By every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. But notice the correlation. The every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord, he says connects to it is written. So the words that proceed out of the mouth of the Lord have been recorded. That's scripture. That's why Paul can say in 2 Timothy 3 16, all scripture is inspired by God. The word God breathed, all scripture, every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. If there's error anywhere, there could be error everywhere. You can't pick and choose and say the Bible is right here and wrong there if it's part of the scriptural text.
Now, true. The Bible has been translated, copied over and over over centuries. God did not let us keep the original manuscripts. The original manuscripts are extinct.
He let it be copied. Probably the main reason is to not allow the Bible to become a worshiped artifacts. We have a common day reality of that because you go over to Israel now and over in Israel, they have encased. It's one of the great tourist attractions and it's called the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest find of the 20th century. It's the greatest biblical find of the 20th century because what the Dead Sea Scrolls let us know is that the Old Testament that we use today was the same Old Testament that they used in Jesus's day and that it has been copied correctly. But my point is when they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls validating the Old Testament's accuracy to what we have today and that that thing was transcribed, particularly the book of Isaiah, which was totally intact. That's a whole story within itself about how the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden and how they were found by a shepherd boy who mistakenly whose lamb fell into this hole and he was looking for his lamb and ran into these things.
So when they discovered the treasure that they had, they built a monument around it. And these are copies. So you know if it was the original text, people would be worshiping it. But while the Bible is to be honored, the goal of the Bible is its author. And even to turn the Bible into an image would be sin.
To treat the Bible as an idol, that is to worship a book in place of its author. But what we then have, based on all the manuscripts we have accumulated, are trustworthy translations of the original that are infallible in their truth. Dr. Tony Evans on the truth and purpose of Scripture. Now don't forget to take advantage of our special double offer, all ten full-length messages in Tony's current collection, The Glory of God's Word, along with his insightful book The Transforming Word.
As I mentioned earlier, they're both yours with our thanks for your donation to help keep this listener-supported program coming your way. But this offer will only be available for a limited time, so visit tonyevans.org to make the arrangements. Or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222 any time of the day or night. That's 1-800-800-3222. There's a difference between inspiring words and authoritative ones. On Monday, Dr. Evans shows how Scripture offers both hope and encouragement backed by the full authority of God. Be sure to join us for that.
