SPEAKER_00: Many of you have met me before.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you probably know my family, you know my kids.
SPEAKER_00: My daughter's name is Layton.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is a picture of her.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, unfortunately, she is not that small anymore, but that is one of my favorite pictures of her in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so my daughter, Layton, is currently in the why phase, meaning pretty much anything I tell her, uh, the response is why.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So we'll be outside and it'll start looking like it's gonna rain.
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Daddy, daddy, is it gonna rain?
SPEAKER_00: I was like, Yeah, baby, it's it's probably gonna rain.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, Well, why?
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I uh, you know, the clouds, there's there's a lot of water in the clouds and it's gonna rain.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Daddy, why?
SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, uh, there's this thing called the water cycle, baby.
SPEAKER_00: And like there's there's condensation and then precipitation, and it's you'll you'll learn about it later.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, daddy, but but why?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I Layton God made it that way.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I I have really, I'm at the end.
SPEAKER_00: Well, why?
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I have no clue.
SPEAKER_00: And that's an innocent example, but there's other times when I'm trying to tell her to do something, right?
SPEAKER_00: So so one thing my daughter does is jujitsu, and uh, she loves jujitsu and she loves to jujitsu her brother, Michael, who is much smaller than her.
SPEAKER_00: And so she will go up and she will ask, Hey Michael, can I jujitsu you, please?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and Michael, of course, responds by saying, no, and like walking the other direction as fast as possible.
SPEAKER_00: And then she'll come to me, like, I'm gonna give her a different answer.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, Daddy, can I please jujitsu Michael?
SPEAKER_00: Michael's not letting me jujitsu him.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, baby, I don't think he wants you to jujitsu him.
SPEAKER_00: But why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, baby, people don't like getting choked out.
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's just not what people enjoy, especially small people when you're like twice their size.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, but daddy, why?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, baby, I just know.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't don't tackle, baptize, uh, jujitsu your brother in any way, shape, or form.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I there is a time and a place when uh she'll ask a question and my response in that moment just has to be, baby, because I told you so.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and we can, yeah, perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh my answer is sorry, not that one.
SPEAKER_00: You go back to the title slide.
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
SPEAKER_00: There's a time when she'll ask a question and I need to just respond, hey, because I told you so, and uh she needs to respond, yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: But overall, I want Leighton to ask questions.
SPEAKER_00: I I want her to gain understanding.
SPEAKER_00: I want her to know that uh I'm not just telling her what to do and she can actually think and understand things, and that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: See, questions themselves aren't bad.
SPEAKER_00: What's the make or break thing is how you ask them and how you go about finding answers.
SPEAKER_00: Well, why am I telling you that story tonight?
SPEAKER_00: Because we're starting our Asking for a Friend series.
SPEAKER_00: So you might have seen we've put a QR code up on the screen and asked for your questions, thanks to the like two of you who submitted questions.
SPEAKER_00: It's been great.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we have more, so that QR code will be up and we want to know.
SPEAKER_00: But we've also asked your small group leaders, I've asked students, like, what are some of the big questions you have about God, about the world around you?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Questions like, how could a loving God send someone to hell?
SPEAKER_00: Questions like, uh, what are the end times about?
SPEAKER_00: When is Jesus coming back?
SPEAKER_00: Is there a rapture?
SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00: Questions about what is spiritual warfare, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, all these sorts of questions that we're gonna be getting into.
SPEAKER_00: And we're actually gonna end with a panel where a few of your leaders will answer those questions.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm very excited.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and this first week, we're gonna tackle one of the biggest and most foundational questions of all of them.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the question: why should I believe in God?
SPEAKER_00: Because many of us grew up in a Christian home.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you've been here, been to church since you were a kid.
SPEAKER_00: If I were to go over to that kid's building right over there, I would find your handprint on the wall.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: But there comes a time in each of our life when we have to make our faith our own and we have to answer that question.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I believe in God?
SPEAKER_00: Or for some of you, you're here because you were invited here by a friend who enjoyed D now, or maybe you saw D now on Instagram, you're like, well, that looks fun.
SPEAKER_00: My friend's been inviting me to manage to go.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you don't know if you believe in a God, much less the Christian God.
SPEAKER_00: And my goal for you tonight uh is to see that the answer to that question of why should I believe in God is not just because God told you so.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there is real evidence, and we're gonna look at three of just many pieces of evidence tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I'll I'll go ahead and tell you this is gonna be a weird sermon for me.
SPEAKER_00: Normally uh we'll walk through a text, we're gonna kind of be all over the place here, but I hope this will be helpful and we'll land the plane at the end.
SPEAKER_00: But the three we reasons, if you take notes, and we'll flash these up on the screen when we get to them, uh, the three reasons that I want to look at tonight about why you should believe in God is order and design, meaning and morality, and the Bible and history.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, Garrett, that sounds like six.
SPEAKER_00: I know, but if I put six, nobody would pay attention.
SPEAKER_00: So it's three, you get it.
SPEAKER_00: So the first point is order and design.
SPEAKER_00: And this answer is in plain sight.
SPEAKER_00: If you just look at the world around you, you'll see that the world that we live in has been created with incredible order and complexity.
SPEAKER_00: But like, think about it this way: look at gravity.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't have the knowledge or the time to go into all the different numbers and things, uh, but you can do a quick Google search and find out that if gravity were just a little bit stronger, the entire universe would completely collapse in on itself.
SPEAKER_00: Or if gravity were just a little bit weaker, we would fly off of this rock that we're on that's spinning at thousands of miles an hour, and galaxies would never form and everything would be chaos.
SPEAKER_00: Even the most atheistic, like hates God physicist in the world will tell you that the universe we live in exists in this tiny little window where life can actually exist.
SPEAKER_00: Or look at math.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you love math?
SPEAKER_00: Three of you, how many hate math?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely hate it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, more.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I thought.
SPEAKER_00: Uh here's the thing about math: math is like the rule that the entire universe exists and lives on.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to New Mexico or a galaxy a million light years away, the same mathematical equations tell us about gravity.
SPEAKER_00: They tell us about how light travels.
SPEAKER_00: How in the world can it be consistent across billions of miles?
SPEAKER_00: The whole universe has an order to it.
SPEAKER_00: It can be understood, it can be predicted by what we know about it.
SPEAKER_00: Or you look at DNA, right?
SPEAKER_00: Our our bodies are made up of DNA.
SPEAKER_00: It's a code.
SPEAKER_00: And I won't bore you with all the biology, but there's these different letters that are symbols of these different chemicals, uh, A, T, C, and G, and how those orders of chemicals line up tells your body how to repair itself, how to heal, what color your hair is gonna be, what color your eyes are gonna be.
SPEAKER_00: Uh or look at your cells, right?
SPEAKER_00: Each of each one of us is made up of 30 trillion cells.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how much 30 trillion really is?
SPEAKER_00: Think about it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one million seconds.
SPEAKER_00: Guess how many days one million seconds is?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody shout it out.
SPEAKER_00: More.
SPEAKER_00: Less.
SPEAKER_00: It's 11 days.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So a million seconds is 11 days.
SPEAKER_00: Now, guess one billion seconds.
SPEAKER_00: How how much time is one billion seconds?
SPEAKER_00: Who said 24?
SPEAKER_00: That's close.
SPEAKER_00: A billion seconds is 31 years.
SPEAKER_00: A trillion seconds then jumps to 31,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: 30 trillion seconds is almost a million years.
SPEAKER_00: So I I wish I I wish I could find a visual or something to just wrap your head around how big of a number 30 trillion is.
SPEAKER_00: But that's how many cells each and every single one of you is made up of.
SPEAKER_00: And every single one of those cells works like a little factory.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, right?
SPEAKER_00: The mitochondria is the powerhouse cells.
SPEAKER_00: Max power.
SPEAKER_00: Good job, buddy.
SPEAKER_00: Pass that biology test today.
SPEAKER_00: But but seriously, think about just the complexity in just one of these cells, right?
SPEAKER_00: I promise the science lesson is almost over.
SPEAKER_00: The complexity in just one of these cells, and you're made up of 30 trillion of them.
SPEAKER_00: Everything in this world is incredibly complex and designed and has to work exactly the way that it has to work, or else all of this just goes up in flames.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth that I want you to see here is that order and design point to an intelligent creator.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it this way, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is my phone.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this phone is made up of all sorts of electronic components.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's this magic little picture box, right, that I can doom scroll on.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I can listen to Spotify, I can uh use it as a GPS.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it cool that just a guy in a factory somewhere in, I don't know, like China, just took a bucket of like electrical components and like dumped it on the ground and it all fell into this iPhone?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_00: That's ridiculous, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because this phone is very complexly designed and meant to work exactly the way that it should be.
SPEAKER_00: And when you look at the complexity of this phone, you say someone had to create that.
SPEAKER_00: And here's my point: when you look at the universe that we live in, you say all of this had to have a creator.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at a mountain, if you look at the ocean, if you look at the workings of an eyeball to take a light and turn it into a picture that I can see, and you tell me that that's just a product of chance over time, I don't buy it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It takes more faith to believe that than it does to believe in an intelligent creator God.
SPEAKER_00: And you might just say, well, it's just the laws of physics and the laws of nature.
SPEAKER_00: Sure, you can find like patterns that come from like nature and things.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you uh, you know, throw water in in an ocean or in a tank, you'll see waves form and it's like, oh, well, there's order.
SPEAKER_00: But the difference is when we see DNA in actual information, that doesn't come from non-intelligence.
SPEAKER_00: You don't see intelligent information just poof out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has to create it, somebody has to come up with it.
SPEAKER_00: If you see a computer code, it's there because somebody wrote it.
SPEAKER_00: And so what I want you to see is that the design and the complexity of the universe points to a creator.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says this, Romans 1, 19 through 20, it'll be on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
SPEAKER_00: For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in things that have been made.
SPEAKER_00: Or Psalm 19, verses 1 through 2.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
SPEAKER_00: Day after day they pour forth speech, and night after night they reveal knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: Intelligent design points to an intelligent creator.
SPEAKER_00: This didn't all happen by chance.
SPEAKER_00: That there was someone who knit it together, who made it work the way that it did.
SPEAKER_00: And you may say, sure, there might be an intelligent creator, but how do we know it's not like aliens or we live in some simulation or something?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's where we look at other pieces of evidence.
SPEAKER_00: And the second piece of evidence, uh, if the first one is order and design, the second is meaning and morality.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with meaning.
SPEAKER_00: If there is no God, your birth was a total accident.
SPEAKER_00: Your death one day will be a total accident.
SPEAKER_00: And as Cliff Connectly said at Passion, if you were there, you know, everything in between was an accident.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: If there is no God, this is all pointless.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing means anything.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you will experience in your 80 years here on Earth is just a blip on the radar of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: None of it matters.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing nobody can actually live that way.
SPEAKER_00: No atheist, no matter how passionately they'll argue you, no matter how much they say they believe what they say they believe, nobody can live without some purpose of meaning to life.
SPEAKER_00: We're hardwired for the things in our life and our world to mean something.
SPEAKER_00: And science and psychology actually back there back this up.
SPEAKER_00: There's a guy named Victor Frankel, uh, and he was a Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist.
SPEAKER_00: And he survived Auschwitz and uh three other concentration camps during World War II.
SPEAKER_00: And he he wrote this book afterwards when he got out and he started to process all the things he experienced, and it's called Man's Search for Meaning.
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote about how when he was in these concentration camps, he started to realize there was a pattern on the people who would actually survive, the people who would make it through.
SPEAKER_00: And the funny thing was, it wasn't the strongest ones, it wasn't the ones who came from a certain pedigree or certain background, it wasn't even the smartest ones.
SPEAKER_00: The people who managed to survive were the ones who believed that even in their suffering, there was some meaning.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe it was God, God's gonna bring something good of this, or maybe it was a loved one to live for, or some unfinished work, right?
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't a Christian, but he saw that these people who had some sense of meaning could make it through what was probably one of the most horrific things any human being in the history of ever has experienced.
SPEAKER_00: And he described the other prisoners, they would lose hope, they would say life no longer has purpose, and then as soon as they did that, it was like clockwork, they would deteriorate and they would they would ultimately die.
SPEAKER_00: And since him, research consistently shows that if you have a strong sense of meaning, you're more likely to have lower depression, greater resilience under stress, lower suicide risk, higher life satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, Frankel wasn't a Christian, uh, and just having a sense of meaning doesn't make you a Christian, but he was on to this universal truth.
SPEAKER_00: He he he saw that human beings, we need our life to mean something, or else we just collapse.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me ask you this question.
SPEAKER_00: If the world that we live in is here by chance, none of it really matters, we're just on a floating rock, a big cosmic accident, then how in the world do we get hardwired for meaning?
SPEAKER_00: Something that's not even supposed to exist in a world that's just a product of chance.
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy it.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning shows that that there was a creator to this universe, and not only did he create it, but he created meaning that there is beauty, that there is love, that there's a purpose to life, there's a reason for you being here.
SPEAKER_00: And then the second part of this is morality.
SPEAKER_00: If there is no God, then morality is a myth.
SPEAKER_00: And morality means like right and wrong, good and bad, and and if there's no such thing as right and wrong, then everybody can do whatever they please.
SPEAKER_00: However, that's not the case, right?
SPEAKER_00: Imagine this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Say that that I am hungry, right, and I need food.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and Wyatt Singh, where's Wyatt at?
SPEAKER_00: Wyatt Singh over there, he has food.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine I go over to Wyatt and I beat him up and I kick him, I put him in a trash can, right, and then I throw him off the hub.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I got so extreme there at the end, but you get it, right?
SPEAKER_00: So I beat up Wyatt and I take his food.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me ask you, is that wrong?
SPEAKER_00: Why why is it wrong, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it wrong?
SPEAKER_00: Because if if we're in a world that's by chance, right, and and we're just mammals, right, and that everything that exists in the universe is a product of natural selection, then it would logically conclude that that it's good for me, the stronger animal, to beat up on a weaker animal and take the resources so that I can reproduce and make the gene pool stronger.
SPEAKER_00: But we all hear that and we say, no, that that's horrible.
SPEAKER_00: That's evil.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's not right.
SPEAKER_00: We have this innate sense of morality that there is such thing as things that are wrong or evil.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: If you turn on the news and hear about what goes on on the other side of the world, or recently you see with the Iran protest that people are out in the streets protesting things and the military just turns machine guns on them and mows them down.
SPEAKER_00: Men, women, children.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You hear about what uh as the Russians go into these towns years ago and they invade Ukraine, what they do to women and children, you hear that and you say, that is evil.
SPEAKER_00: But where do you get the idea of evil from?
SPEAKER_00: If there is no God, then man, the strong should always pray on the weak.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't actually believe that.
SPEAKER_00: We have morals because God is moral and he placed those in the universe he made.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you can say, well, he just, you know, we just got taught those things, right?
SPEAKER_00: We live in a society where we go to school and they teach us right from wrong.
SPEAKER_00: That's all it is.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_00: Were you taught gravity?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Just because you taught gravity, does that mean gravity is not real?
SPEAKER_00: No, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just because someone teaches you something doesn't mean that it is not the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, just because we're taught right and wrong doesn't mean that right and wrong don't exist or that it was imposed upon you.
SPEAKER_00: It just means that you were taught it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you might say, well, what about the wicked people in the societies who they don't have these sense of morals?
SPEAKER_00: You have these tribes in the middle of nowhere that are cannibals, or you have these societies that used to do terrible things to people.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Bible doesn't shy away from that.
SPEAKER_00: There's this thing called sin, and it's a part of every single one of us, and we're broken, even though we're made in God's image and have value, we're bent towards evil and wickedness because we all want to be our own gods.
SPEAKER_00: And when I want to be God and uh Luke Burleson wants to be God, what happens when we run into each other?
SPEAKER_00: We butt heads and somebody gets hurt, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's the birth of all sin.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, even in those societies, even as wicked and jacked up as they are, even in let's say Nazi Germany, even though their sense of right and wrong were completely flipped, there was still a sense of right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They still had a set of morals, even though their morals were completely wicked and twisted and jacked up.
SPEAKER_00: And still I still stay, where do you even get a framework or an idea of right and wrong if not placed there by God?
SPEAKER_00: And we as humans can sure jack that up, but it doesn't mean that it's not there.
SPEAKER_00: We all have a conscience.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to anybody on the face of the planet uh for the most part and ask, hey, have you ever done anything wrong?
SPEAKER_00: And they're an adult who's free of mental illness or anything like that, like they're gonna tell you yes.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we've all sinned against our conscience.
SPEAKER_00: We've all known that, hey, I should do this, yet I didn't.
SPEAKER_00: We feel guilt and we feel shame.
SPEAKER_00: Where does that come from if we're just a bunch of mammals?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not a bunch of mammals.
SPEAKER_00: We're made in God's image.
SPEAKER_00: We're created to be holy like he is holy.
SPEAKER_00: We're created to show him to the world around us, and that's why we have morals, that's why we have minds that can think.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says it's from God.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 2, 14 through 16 says, For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
SPEAKER_00: They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's Paul writing in Romans, and what he's saying is, hey, uh, even the Gentiles who don't have the law, they don't have the book of God's word, they still have sinned against their own conscience.
SPEAKER_00: They knew what they should do, and they didn't do it, and therefore they are of no excuse.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so even inside of all of us, we have a conscience, and we've all broken that conscience before.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way that happens is if an intelligent moral God put it there.
SPEAKER_00: So order and design point to God, and meaning and morality point to God.
SPEAKER_00: But you still may say, that's all great, but why should I believe in the Christian God?
SPEAKER_00: Why can't I believe in Allah or Buddha or Zeus?
SPEAKER_00: Why does the Christian God have to be the right one?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a great question.
SPEAKER_00: And it brings me to my third point that the Bible and history are another piece of evidence for why you should believe in the Christian God, the reliability of the Bible, that we believe the Bible is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you know?
SPEAKER_00: How can you prove it to me?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I cannot show you a spreadsheet that scientifically proves to you that the Bible is God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: But what I can do is I can prove to you that the Bible is a historically reliable document.
SPEAKER_00: And as you read it as history, uh, I can almost promise you that with the power of the Holy Spirit, you will realize that this is the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a few different ways that you can know that it's a historical book.
SPEAKER_00: One is what we would call internal consistency.
SPEAKER_00: I know that's a big word, but what it means is that there's no contradiction in the Bible, which is crazy when you understand that the Bible was not just a book that was written by one guy in a cave 300 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is actually a collection of 66 different books with 40 different authors written over 1,500 years over three continents, three languages, dozens of cultural and political contexts, and it all tells one story, no contradictions.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how hard it is to get like three people in a room to agree on something?
SPEAKER_00: My sophomores who go out to eat after this, how long is it gonna take you to pick a place to eat tonight?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, 30 minutes, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take you a long time just to pick a place to eat, right?
SPEAKER_00: Think about the gauntlet fun night we did at D Now.
SPEAKER_00: The first 30 minutes of that, absolute chaos, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're going here, we start here, we're gonna move over here.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody's throwing up from hot sauce, we're gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00: Chaos.
SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you, how in the world, over 1,500 years, do 66 people get it all straight if it's not the word of God?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but couldn't somebody have just come along and changed it later?
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't they have scrubbed all of the original writings to pick the one that they wanted?
SPEAKER_00: Uh there are different, um, there are different, what's what's the word, textual variants, and we'll get into that, but the Bible actually has not been significantly changed in any other way.
SPEAKER_00: While there's multiple other instances of other holy books uh not only being changed, but those changes being suppressed, being hidden.
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, we're gonna get rid of all the other versions of this, and this one version is gonna be the one, right?
SPEAKER_00: We have what we call manuscript reliability.
SPEAKER_00: We have over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, which are uh copies that we have then translated into other languages of the Bible, which 5,800 is thousands more than anything else you've read in school and anything that the school system treats as history.
SPEAKER_00: It is by far the most reliable historical document that has ever existed.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, there are textual variants, but one, they're not hidden.
SPEAKER_00: You can go to the Bible right now, especially if you have a study Bible, and if you flip open to it, at the bottom you'll see little numbers occasionally.
SPEAKER_00: And it'll say, hey, some versions say this, other versions say this.
SPEAKER_00: And that transparency is so helpful because why would you do that if you're trying to hide something?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The authors and the transcribers of the Bible over history have never been trying to hide anything.
SPEAKER_00: And then when you start to look at what the variants actually are, the vast majority of them are like spelling differences.
SPEAKER_00: Like one put it this way, one put it this way.
SPEAKER_00: And then the other vast majority is word order changes, which doesn't actually matter in Greek because you have one Greek word that's Turns into like five English words.
SPEAKER_00: I know because I had to take two years of Greek.
SPEAKER_00: It's rough.
SPEAKER_00: And some are just like little scribal grammar slips, but 99% of the text is textually certain.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like is 100% sure.
SPEAKER_00: That 1% is minor stuff, and no major Christian belief is founded off of some disputed passage.
SPEAKER_00: And then you can also look at the literary style of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's written as history.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have like read a fairy tale before?
SPEAKER_00: Probably all of you at some point as a kid.
SPEAKER_00: When you read a story like that, do they include a lot of details like this happened on the 24th of September at 7.05 p.m.?
SPEAKER_00: Not usually, right?
SPEAKER_00: When you're telling a false story, uh, you don't include details, you don't include real places, especially in that time that the Bible was being written over that ancient uh time period.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible, if you compare it to other historical documents that were written around that same time, it's written as fact, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's why you see when when Jesus is in a boat and the storm is raging and he's about to comment, they say he was sleeping on a cushion.
SPEAKER_00: Or that's when when it says that, hey, this resurrection happened and over 400 people saw Jesus at once, and all these people witnessed him, uh, and some of them are still alive.
SPEAKER_00: You can go ask them.
SPEAKER_00: That's not written about make-belief, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's written as history.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's archaeological evidence.
SPEAKER_00: Time and time again, archaeology has caught up to the Bible, where something's been in the Bible, and for maybe thousands of years uh we haven't found any historical, archaeological evidence of it.
SPEAKER_00: And then guess what?
SPEAKER_00: One day, oh, here it is, exactly like the Bible said, exactly where the Bible said, right?
SPEAKER_00: And now all these people who are like, see, your Bible's fake.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, we got to find something else to pick on.
SPEAKER_00: Because science, archaeology has always caught up to scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And then you can even look outside of the Bible at other historical evidences, and Jesus is referenced in many Jewish writings, which uh the Jewish people would have had every reason to try and get rid of his existence, uh, seeing as they thought he was this false teacher.
SPEAKER_00: Yet you see Jewish historians like Josephus reference them in their histories.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so I could go on and on and on, and I've only scratched the surface, but all of that being considered, you can read the Bible as history.
SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus is a real person.
SPEAKER_00: Any intellectual, honest, you know, halfway smart person is going to agree that Jesus was at least a real person.
SPEAKER_00: And I would argue that you can treat the Bible as real history, and so you read it and you start to look at Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you start to look at the things he said, to love your neighbor as yourself, to not harbor lust or hatred or anger in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You see how he went and he healed the sick, how he reached out a hand to the poor and the broken and the leased in society.
SPEAKER_00: You see how he calmed the storm.
SPEAKER_00: You see how he walked on water, you see how he raised the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You see how at the end of his thirty-three perfect years here on earth he walked into Jerusalem and did nothing but heal, teach, and preach.
SPEAKER_00: Yet under the cover of night he was betrayed by one of his followers, and they took him away to a sham trial.
SPEAKER_00: They lied about him, they made up stories, they beat him, and then they finally managed to push it through.
SPEAKER_00: And after they pushed it through, they tortured him.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't use that word lightly, it's torture.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we soften that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like he was beaten, he was spit on.
SPEAKER_00: No, like he was, he could have died from the torture, it was that bad.
SPEAKER_00: Though he had done nothing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They they flogged him with leather straps, with bone and glass on the end.
SPEAKER_00: They beat him with rods, uh, they stuck a crown of thorns, and I'm not talking like stickers, I'm talking like thorns into his scalp to the point where he was almost unrecognizable as human by the time they stuck a massive wooden beam on his back and said, carry it.
SPEAKER_00: And he carried it to a place called the skull.
SPEAKER_00: And at that place, they laid him down on this wood beam and they nailed nails into his wrists and to his feet and they hung him up.
SPEAKER_00: And the thing about crucifixion is you didn't die quick.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you didn't even die from blood loss, you died from suffocation because eventually your joints would dislocate and you couldn't pick yourself up to breathe anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually he he says, It is finished, I commit my hand, my spirit into your hands, Lord, and he gives up his spirit and he dies.
SPEAKER_00: And then they put him in a borrowed grave.
SPEAKER_00: But then the Bible says, and this is history, that he didn't stay in that grave.
SPEAKER_00: That on that third day that stone rolled away, he got right up and he walked out.
SPEAKER_00: And he appeared to people and people that could be referenced, people that could be asked, and this group of disciples who up to that point had been complete cowards, had betrayed Jesus, had run away from him, all of a sudden were so bold that they were willing to die for their faith in horrible, awful ways.
SPEAKER_00: And then you read the Bible, which is history, and you ask, well, why would he do that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would this perfect man who had the power of heaven humble himself to death on a cross?
SPEAKER_00: And Scripture later says, For it was the joy set before him.
SPEAKER_00: And you start to realize what's that joy set before him?
SPEAKER_00: What did he not have on one side of the cross that he could have on the other?
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't anything except for you and me.
SPEAKER_00: That he did that out of love.
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is that the Bible says we have turned away from God, that we were made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: We were made with value, we were made to follow him, to show what he's like to the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: Yet at some point we've all said, Hey, God, I want to be my own God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I know you're the source of life, I know you created me, I know you gave me everything I have.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care, I'm gonna do it my way.
SPEAKER_00: And we choose death.
SPEAKER_00: And death has reigned over every person ever since until Jesus got up on that cross, went down into that grave, punched death in the mouth, and walked out on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: And now Scripture says, if we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord, we will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And so you read that as history, that changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: If that's true, then man, there's a lot of stuff that I've I've acted like matters in my life that doesn't really matter that much.
SPEAKER_00: If the gospel is true, then your life belongs to him.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll close with this.
SPEAKER_00: I remember in high school, I read a book called The Reason for God, and Timothy Keller wrote it, it's great, you should go out and get it.
SPEAKER_00: And it walked through a lot of what I shared with you tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember this change, just like this light switch flipped in my head.
SPEAKER_00: Where I think for a long time, I have been in church, I've been, you know, believing that God exists in like a what my parents do, and I I think, and you know, I'm gonna check this box.
SPEAKER_00: But in that moment, a lot of the questions that I had not asked, because me having those questions gave me an excuse to live how I wanted, they got answered.
SPEAKER_00: And I was forced to face with the fact that, hey, like this thing's legit.
SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus is who he said he was.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's true, my whole life has to change.
SPEAKER_00: How I talk has to change, how I date has to change, how I play sports has to change, how I treat my parents has to change, what I do with the rest of my life has to change.
SPEAKER_00: Baylor, doctor, no more.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm doing ministry DBU.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell everybody I can about this guy named Jesus because he changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's my invitation to you tonight.
SPEAKER_00: This whole series is not about you being able to win arguments with your friends or with the people you can't stand or on Facebook or on Twitter or on Instagram.
SPEAKER_00: This whole series is that you would understand that there is a reason for faith.
SPEAKER_00: When I ask you to place your faith in Jesus, I'm not asking for this shot in the dark, blind faith.
SPEAKER_00: Like that there is a real evidence to the God that we say we worship.
SPEAKER_00: And faith is a right response to that evidence.
SPEAKER_00: And that response is to bow the knee and say, God, it's like Nate said at Dee Now.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't have much, but everything I have is yours.
SPEAKER_00: My life is yours, my school is yours, my sports are yours, my body is yours, my relationship is yours, my speech is yours, my mind, my heart, my ears, everything belongs to you.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have loved me first and you made a way for me to come home.
SPEAKER_00: God's not asking you to climb to the top of the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: He put on fashion, climbed down so that you can be with him.
SPEAKER_00: You have a peace that goes beyond all understanding.
SPEAKER_00: You can have that sense of meaning in your life, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to school, punching the nine to five, doing another test, doing another quiz just to make some money, just so you can get a good job, just so you can retire, and then sit in some beach home and collect seashells for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: No, what you do here matters for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You get that this idea that, man, I can take people to heaven with me, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like God's made a way, and so now I want to tell everybody I can.
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's a deep sense of meaning in your life that can get you up out of bed in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: You can understand right and wrong in a world where everything is so confused, you can have a foundation to say, no, this is what my life should be about, and I don't care what anybody else says, this is what it is.
SPEAKER_00: That's the invitation tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Will you respond?