Do You Trust the Bible?

Pastor Scott Smith- February 2, 2026

This message explains what the Bible is and why it matters, emphasizing that everyone builds their life on some source of truth, whether they realize it or not. The Bible is presented not as a single book, but as an anthology of 66 writings authored by about 40 people over 1,500 years, across three continents and languages, yet unified around God’s revelation of Himself. Unlike culture—which constantly shifts—the Bible provides a stable foundation for truth, guidance, and meaning. This message teaches that Scripture is “God-breathed,” meaning God revealed Himself to people and inspired them to record His message so others could know Him, making the Bible both deeply human in its writing and divine in its origin.

This message then puts the Bible to the test, asking whether it can truly be trusted. It highlights the Bible’s unmatched ability to predict future events, the extraordinary volume and accuracy of its manuscript evidence, and the unusually short time between historical events and their written accounts—far surpassing other ancient texts that are widely accepted as reliable. Using legal reasoning and historical examples, including the work of skeptic-turned-believer Simon Greenleaf, the message argues that the Bible has endured more scrutiny than any other piece of literature and has consistently proven trustworthy. The message concludes by calling believers to do something with that truth: to build their lives on Scripture, learn God’s Word to know God’s way, and allow the Bible to shape identity, purpose, and daily living as God’s authoritative revelation to humanity.

Transcript

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All right, 30-minute theology. We have been looking at uh kind of primary pillars of the Christian faith, and I've felt more like professor than pastor sometimes in this series. It's a lot of teaching. In fact, I have more notes for today's message than I probably used for all messages in 2025. I mean, it is remarkable. Thank you to my wife for purchasing me this iPad last year, or else I would not have enough space on my table to use all the notes. It's one of those types of series, and we are diving into Christian theology. What are these major tenants? This week we are looking at the Bible. What is the Bible? Because you may not know this, but the Bible is the best-selling, number one book of all time. It's not even close. It is the number one best-selling and most disseminated, distributed piece of literature in human history. But what is it? Sometimes we're not even sure what the Bible is, maybe. We think we know, but do we really know? And disclaimer, half hour is not enough time for me to say everything I need to say about the Bible. So here's what we've done. We have produced some resources for you. We've accumulated some, and they are on our website. If you go to sunrise.net slash Bible, sunrise.net slash Bible. There are resources there. Bible reading plans, ways to dig deeper. Because, spoiler, at the end of our time together, I'm going to encourage all of us to guess what? Read our Bibles. And so we want to provide resources. There's resources there on the website. You can have the Bible audibly read to you. You can even pick the accent you want to listen to it in. It's great. Sunrise.net slash Bible. But today we're going to primarily answer three questions. One, what is the Bible? Two, can we trust the Bible? We're actually going to put the Bible to the test. And then three, if we know what the Bible is and we know we can trust it, all right, what do we do with it, right? And here's why it's important. It is important because you're thinking maybe, all right, we're in church, you're supposed to talk about the Bible, but let's let's take a step back for a moment and understand why we should know what the Bible is. Why is it important to know what the Bible is for you as a person? Here's why. Because everyone has a worldview, a lens through which they see life. And everyone is building their life on something. All of us build our lives on something. There is some form of belief system that we find as an authority in our lives. We all have it. It's a place we go to to answer questions. Even those the everyday and the existential questions. Why am I here? What is truth? You know, what's the meaning of all this? Those existential out there questions that maybe sometimes you come up against in life, or maybe it's those practical everyday questions. Okay, when this situation happens, what should I do? Or when this person treats me like this, what should I do? You know, the place we go to find answers. What do you believe about God? What do you believe about uh relationships? What do you believe about money? What do you believe about sex? What do you believe about uh life after death? There are there are uh places we go to to find answers to those questions because all of us are building our lives on some type of belief system and worldview that we look to to find truth. And for a lot of people, we look to culture to give us those answers. And that's a dangerous thing, but it's something that many people do. We do it, even maybe as a Christian, we will still go to culture sometimes to get validation or answers to questions that we're wrestling with, and we kind of bypass the Bible and look to what culture says about A, B, C, and D, because it's just kind of ingrained in our human uh uh condition to do that. But looking to culture as the authority of your life, looking to culture as that belief system on which you can search for answers and through which you can find truth, that is a dangerous thing to do. And I'll tell you why. Culture changes. If you're looking for truth in culture, if you're looking for a firm foundation to build your life on and you're looking at culture to do that, you're running a risk because culture changes. The opinions of culture change. What is absolutely true today might be absolutely foolish tomorrow. What is popular today might be unpopular tomorrow. The shifting sands of culture are not a safe place to build your life upon. I'll give you an example. Doctors in the 1940s and 50s used to put out advertisements like this. More doctors smoke camel cigarettes than any other. You read that right. This is a real advertisement found in a newspaper. There's celebrities down there in the bottom right. These are doctors, and you're thinking, hold on a minute. Everybody knows that smoking cigarettes is not healthy for you. It's dangerous for you. In fact, what's that little label on a pack of cigarettes nowadays? It's a what? Warning label. Why? Because we have found that smoking leads to uh many adverse health conditions and effects. But in 1949, when this advertisement came out, not only was it possible for you to have a doctor smoke in your face while checking your blood pressure at your appointment, but those doctors then would sell advertisements and they would tell people, they would say, hey, that tingle on your tongue and then the back of the throat, that's a part of the experience. Not that's something bad happening to your body. No, and so doctors were like, all right, let me get a little scratch on the side and I'll promote camel doctors promoting camel cigarettes. If you're new to sunrise, you're like, what kind of church is this? But that was real. Because culture in 1949 said, Oh no, no, this is fine. And we support this. That's why it's dangerous to build your life on what culture says. Why is it important to know what the Bible is? Because for the Christian, the Bible is that authority in our lives. The Bible is that place where we go to to find truth. It's the place we go to to find answers. It's the place we go to for guidance. In fact, the Bible actually is called uh inspired by God. I'll show you in 2 Timothy 3.16. There's a man named Paul. He's writing a letter to his protege, a man named Timothy. And in 2 Timothy 3.16, Paul actually tells Timothy this he says, All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. We're going to use that today to put the Bible to the test and understand what it is. Because for the Christian, the Bible is that authority in our lives. It is the place we go to for correction, for training, for reproof, for instruction in how to live a life that honors God. And so as we head in that direction, let's answer question one, which is this what is the Bible? The Bible, as it's written in multiple languages, one of them being Greek, is there's a word there called biblia. Ta biblia might be a way you may have seen it if you Google that or do some research. And it means books, plural, books. We call the Bible the best-selling book in history, but in reality, that word biblia means an anthology of ancient writings. Did you ever go back in the day you used to be able to buy uh CDs to listen to music? People remember CDs, or maybe we'll go even further back and buy vinyl records, and uh you would be able to buy like the best of albums, or maybe you would collect your favorite band or artist's anthology. You know what I'm talking about? An anthology means a collection, right? And so Biblia means books, which unpacked means a collection of ancient writings. The Bible is an anthology of those writings. And I put a little graphic together for you so you can look at it and understand what the Bible is and maybe kind of see it a little differently. The Bible is actually 66 books, 66 different pieces of literature, um, prophecies, there's uh books of law, there's historical narratives, uh, there are what you call uh gospels, which are those biographical accounts of the story of Jesus. There's letters to early churches and early Christians in the first century. Uh the seminary word for that is epistle. It is 66 books written by about 40 different authors over the span of time of 1,500 years. And it was written in three different languages on three different continents, yet still somehow lands on the same theme. But it's important to know what the Bible is because it'll help you approach it from an educated perspective so you actually get the most out of it. Because you may not realize this, but the Bible was not written to you. But the Bible was written for you. The Bible wasn't written to us in 21st century San Diego, California. Why? Because we the Bible wasn't even written on the North American continent. It was written in the African, Asian, and European continents in three languages, none of which anybody speaks. If you think you speak those fluently, don't lie. You're in church. You can't do that. But that's what the Bible is. It's this anthology of books on three different continents, three different languages, 1,500 years of writing collected by 40 different authors, compiling 66 books, written to specific groups of people in different places over this timeline. That's what the Bible is in a literary sense. But the Bible goes beyond that. And we know that. Because as Christians, what do we call the Bible? We say this every week, probably, and you've probably said it yourself if you claim to follow Christ. The Bible is God's Word. Right. Why do we call it that? Because that's a pretty bold claim. The Bible is the only piece of literature that claims the title of God's Word. That's the strongest title ever given to any piece of literature in human history. So why is the Bible God's word? The short answer is because it claims to be. But if you're like me and you like to ask the question why, that argument, the Bible is God's word because it says it's God's word, that's not good enough for you. And it's okay. We're gonna put the Bible to the test. Because that claim is not sufficient enough on its own to prove that the Bible is God's word because it's a circular argument. It is because it is. So if God's word is God's word, alright. How? Why? Prove it to me. Because we just said the Bible's written by who? Men. People. Which seems to contradict the claim that the Bible is God's word if people wrote it. So then how would we understand the Bible to be God's word if indeed it was written by people? That's where we're gonna interact with two specific words that are important for us in approaching scripture, the word of God, the Holy Bible. Those two words are inspired and revelation. Inspired and revelation. And we're gonna understand some things logically that maybe we don't consider when approaching scripture. Inspired, we actually just read that word in 2 Timothy 3. In the scripture that we had for everyone, it said breathed out. In the Greek, that means to be inspired. Maybe for some of us, we watch a sporting event and we get inspired to get up and go to the gym and we see them run the fastest mile in the world at the Olympics, and we're like, I'm putting on my running shoes and I'm going for a run. Or maybe for others of us, we're scrolling through Instagram and we see that recipe of cinnamon rolls, and we get inspired to go eat cinnamon rolls. Maybe you're on different sides of what inspires you, but what does inspiration do? It brings energy, it brings life to something. And so the Bible's claim to be God's word is because the Bible claims to have been inspired by God to have been written. And it actually makes sense when you consider the medium that God would inspire men to record certain pieces of literature, these books that we have in the Bible, and through them would reveal himself to mankind. As he was revealing himself to mankind in the moment, the writers were inspired to record those revelations. And it makes sense. Because if God wants to reveal himself to people, he would do that through people. Why? Because people communicate with people. The chair you're sitting in is not just going to start talking to you. And if it does, go get some more coffee, wake up, and stop hallucinating. People communicate with people. So it makes sense that God would reveal Himself to people so then in turn they could record those revelations, those messages, and distribute them to people. That he would inspire them to share that with others. And that's what we have in the Bible. We have God's revelation to people, inspiring them to record those revelations, those messages, and disseminate, distribute those to others. In speaking through real people in a variety of circumstances over this 1500-year period, God's word was expressed in the vocabulary and thought patterns of those persons in the context of where they were and the culture at that time. What that means is that we have access to God's revelation. We have access to God's word by the way he revealed himself through his word to those who recorded the ancient writings that have been compiled into what we know is the Bible. The Bible is God's word because God inspired those to record his word, his messages, his revelation, and distribute those. That is why we claim the Bible is God's word, and we claim that because it proves itself to be that. On a functional level, we understand the human instrument here in God's word. People recording events, messages, experiences, and instructions for other people to read. So if we understand the relationship here between the words inspired and revelation and how we how we kind of make that conclusion to see the Bible as God's word, let's dig in and let's put it to the test because if the Bible claims to be God's word, which it does over 3,000 times, the authors in the Bible over 3,000 times claim that the message that they're writing is from God. That is substantial. You have to put that to the test. So if we believe that it is God revealing himself, and it makes sense to us, right? That if God wants to reveal himself to people, he's going to do that and then do that through people, because that is the most logical A-to-B progression to get a message to the world. But how do we trust those people? I don't know if you know this. If you've been married for 20 minutes, you know this, but you make mistakes sometimes. Just give it time if you haven't yet. There's hope for you. How do we trust those people? I mean, think about it. If people wrote it down, how can we? I mean, okay, then what evidence is there for us to trust the Bible is God's word? Can we even trust the Bible at all? And there are many, many pieces of evidence, and we're going to look at some big ones today that you can root your feet into. But perhaps one of the biggest ones, specifically in the Old Testament scriptures that Paul mentions in 2 Timothy 3, one of the greatest evidences of this claim that we can trust the Bible as God's word, is this thick root of reliability in the Bible's ability to predict the future. The Bible is full of what you would call prophecies in the Old Testament or predictions of things that came true. The Bible's ability to predict the future is unmatched. And we understand sometimes I think we look at the Bible, okay, great, it's a prophecy. We're told prophecies. I've watched movies, there's prophecies and stuff like that, but let's get real for a minute. You and I cannot predict the future. Good luck. You might think you can, and you try to, and you get lucky sometimes. Oh, yeah, rock, paper, scissors. Oh, I knew you were gonna do that. That's not predicting the future. And you can't predict the future because you try it every year. We try it every year. Let's take sports for an example. My favorite team this year, we're gonna win it all at the beginning of the season. We're taking home the championship. You get to the end of the season, what happens? Your team hadn't even won a coin toss all year. We can't predict the future. The Bible's ability to predict the future is unmatched. And within the Bible, we find empirical evidence of these predictions. You'd hear prophecies. You'll find evidence of the person of Jesus, names, people, places, and events, and all of those predictions can be traced and followed to evidence of fruition, meaning we can trace through history them coming true. It is historical fact that these predictions came true. And it's not a coincidental amount. So much of the Bible's ability to predict the future has been just widely accepted. I mean, there is worldwide agreement that the Bible, in more ways than one, is the most remarkable piece of writing in the history of the human race. Nothing has been put to the test like the Bible. No other piece of literature, ancient or contemporary, has produced the amount of accurate, specific predictions about the future places, future people, future events, none as much as the Bible. It's not even close. It's unheard of outside of the Bible. This is irrefutable empirical evidence to support that the Bible must be divine in its design and its delivery because its trustworthiness has been tested and proven over and over and over again. I'll give you the southern way of saying this. The proof is in the puddin. It's right there. Do your historic. There are extra-biblical, meaning literature outside of the Bible that supports the historical claims and predictions made inside of the Bible. That is how trustworthy it is. That's even just Old Testament. Let's look at the New Testament, for example. Specifically, let's look at the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, these biographical accounts of the life of Jesus and these letters written to early churches. Earliest manuscripts of the New Testament have been noted to have been recorded within 25 to 35 years post the death and resurrection of Jesus, meaning Jesus crucified on the cross, raised to life, at that point, at about 25 to 35 years, and then people started writing it down and copying it and distributing it. Now, for some of us, that's a long time. You're thinking, man, I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, much less 25 to 35 years. Don't you think people would forget, but people's minds didn't work the way our minds work. We live in Instagram mind and we live stream stuff, and everything is on Twitter and in real time. But the way the human brain was conditioned back then was it would be it would be remembered, recorded mentally, and then written down. And 25 to 35 years is a staggeringly short amount of time to have gone by from event to recording of the event and distribution of the event. You could liken it to live streaming it. That's how quickly it went. And I'll I'll give you an example in in just a moment because I want to use this graph. I have a fancy graph for all of us, so get excited. All of my school teaching friends are really excited about it. Look at this graph. Now, there are pieces. Of ancient literature here that are used in universities across the entire world as history books. Some of the earliest known compilations of literature. Homer's the Iliad. You've got writings from Caesar, Plato, Aristotle. You can see when it was written, and you can see when the earliest copies were made, and then you can see the amount of time that went by from event written, recorded, and copies. What are you noticing here? Look at the amount of time. 400 years, 13, 14, 1,000 years, 900, 600 years. That's the amount of time that went by from it being recorded and then being copied. Then you can look at the amount of copies. Homer's the Iliad, around 1,800 copies, 210, 40, 251, 31, 190. These are historical books that no one disputes. No one disputes the validity of these historical books. And they've been copied that many times. Now the New Testament, earliest manuscripts, within 25 to 35 years. Look at the amount of time that goes by. Only around 29 years before it started being copied. And if you can see behind this guitar, there are 42,000 copies of Old Testament, 18,524 early Greek translations. Do you notice a difference between the numbers on the top and the numbers from the Bible? It's not even close. Here's why that matters. One of the primary tests of ancient literature to prove its legitimacy or its validity is the amount of times that manuscript was copied. And the Bible has been copied more times than any other piece of literature in human history. It's not even close. And before you say, okay, well, they were just making copies because they wanted to get the word out, here's how copies had to be made. If you've read your Bible in the New Testament, you've maybe heard of Jesus interacting with some people before called Pharisees and Scribes. Do you know what a scribe's job was? Before you could just click extra copies on your computer and print something, a scribe had to write down a copy of the original. It took a lot of time and there was a lot of investment. And accuracy was priority. So what you would have is a religious official would basically stand there over the shoulder of a scribe while the scribe would be recording from the original manuscript. And if they got anything wrong, they would say, nope, toss it out and start over. It took so much time. There was so much effort to make sure that it was so accurate that people's entire vocations were devoted to this. So when we look at this measure of legitimacy being the amount of times a manuscript was copied, it's not even, I mean, it is, it's not, they're not even in the same galaxy as the Bible. How often it would pass the test. You would have to continue and continue and continue to produce these copies and distribute them. And here's why that's so important that that happened starting 25 to 35 years. I mean, you saw some of the other ones. You're talking 900 years of time, 400 years of time. If something happens today and 400 years later somebody records it, no one's around to dispute whether or not it happened. Think about it like this. The earliest New Testament manuscripts, specifically these four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when those were originally recorded and started to be copied and distributed, you're talking roughly 25 years of time. The generation who was alive at the time of the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, they would have still been alive. Meaning any one of them could have raised their hand and said, nope, that didn't happen. We were there. No, that's not how it went down. I'll bring it to light because I think for some of us we will get it if we can see it in a way that maybe we'll be able to grapple with. Because I'm going to use a I'm going to use an event of worldwide proportion because that's what the gospel's recorded, right? The life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, this is world-changing. And it would go on to indeed change the world. So I want to bring it into modern terms so you and I can understand what this would be like today. If 25 years after the resurrection of Jesus, people are recording it and making copies, everyone alive would have been able to step up and say, No, that's not true. We disagree, we were there, and they would have been able to dispute it or disprove it. Now consider this. Do you know what happened 25 years ago in America? That was an event that shaped the world 25 years ago this year? In September. It'll be 25 years since what? 9-11. Now, if you were born pre-2000, you may not be as familiar with this, but the majority of people know exactly what happened on 9-11. Even if you're uh a student and you're in school, you've probably learned about it in a history book. Now, we all know what happened on 9-11 just 25 years ago. Can you imagine if this September I wrote a blog and I put it out on the internet and I said, a tribute to 9-11. On September 11th, 2001, a major storm hit New York City and it blew over these twin towers. Would that story get any traction whatsoever? No. Why? Because all of you could step up and say, Nope, we were alive for that. We remember that. That's not what happened. We were there. In fact, most of us probably remember where we were in the moment. That is an event of world-wide proportion. A claim like that would never see the light of day. It would be canceled, it would be disproven, it would stand zero chance of passing a trustworthiness test. Why? Because all of us were alive and we could all say, nope, this is what happened. Nope, this is what happened. And we could correct that. How then on earth would these gospel claims found in the New Testament have passed that test? If people were alive for those moments, how would it have made its way, being distributed more times than any other piece unless it was real? Let's put it to the test. Let's go even further because let's dig in. Don't be afraid to test the Bible. It will hold up to the test. Okay, it's God's word. He inspired men to write it. We can see that. Its ability to predict the future. We can trace that historically. When these early manuscripts were written, we can find that. There is historical evidence of that. There is historical evidence of its uh mass amount of distribution and its mass amount of manuscripts being copied that holds up to the legitimacy test. We get it. Let's keep digging even further. Everybody was alive. They could have said, no, Jesus did not rise from the dead. No, Jesus wasn't crucified. No, Jesus wasn't a real person. Anyone alive could have said that. They could have also then just done what we do, and they could have just started attacking the authors. What do we do in society? Somebody says something on the internet or on a podcast that we really like, and we're like, this person is awesome. They're the best, man. We should follow this person. See, I've been saying this all along. Let's listen to this person. But then the next time they say something you don't agree with, what do we do? We dig up dirt on that person from 15 years ago and we're like, see, that person's an idiot. And we attack their character. And we say, no, they said this now, but they said this then. They don't know what they're talking about. Let's use some examples from these New Testament manuscripts. Paul, we just read his letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3. He wrote a third of the New Testament of your Bible. In case you don't know much about Paul, he was not always a fan of Christianity. In fact, it was kind of on the other side of that. He persecuted and prosecuted Christians, was literally there for the deaths of people in Scripture. And then Paul has an encounter with Jesus. And now all of a sudden goes from being there for when Christians are killed to now giving his own life, telling people that this Jesus, who he spent his whole career trying to disprove and discredit him and his people, now Paul has spent his entire life telling people that Jesus is the way, Jesus is the truth, that Jesus is God's Son. You don't think people could have looked at Paul? He was a polarizing figure. He said some stuff. You don't think they could have looked at Paul and been like, nah, man, no, this guy don't even know what he's talking about. Because, dude, two seconds ago he hated Christians, and now he's talking about Jesus being the best. You don't think they would have come after him? You don't think they would have gone after Matthew? It's the very first book in the New Testament of your Bible. Matthew, an early follower of Jesus, a disciple, wrote the gospel of Matthew, and people still took him seriously. But do you know what Matthew's job was? Matthew was a tax collector. Matthew worked for the man. Matthew, a Jewish man, worked for a different government where he would tax his fellow people. When's the last time any of you woke up and said, I am so excited to pay taxes today? No offense. If you work for the IRS, praise the Lord for you for what you do. But I don't know that many of us are clamoring to get our hands on a book written by an IRS agent. They could have easily said, This guy, no, he don't even take care of his own people. Don't listen to this guy. Then look at Peter. My goodness, don't even get me started on Peter. Peter's writing stuff, and they're like, This man, y'all know this dude just cut a dude's ear off. Like not a few years ago. I mean, he's, and then he yelled at a girl. He yelled at a girl for even asking them if he knew who Jesus was. And now he's telling us that Jesus is God's son. Do you see where I'm going here? They could have poked holes. Why on earth would the message of the Bible be carried from people to people to people when it really on paper stood zero shot of making its way? No other piece of ancient literature, no other piece of modern literature has predicted the future the way the Bible has. And it's Old Testament scriptures that we saw coming through. No other piece of literature has produced the amount of copies that have undergone the amount of scrutiny that the Bible has. Yet it has stood the test of time. No other authors who have compiled literature have been put to the test and scrutinized, have given so much just to get the word out as we find in the Bible. No other piece of literature was written in such a way that the entire generation of people could have disputed it and disproved it, yet it still made its way through. This group of Christians had zero political pull, zero clout, zero influence. The Romans themselves could have squashed this like that. And I'm sure they tried. Why on earth would it have made its way through history if it weren't real? There's only one rational conclusion to get to. Can we trust the Bible? Yes. Why? Because the Bible has been put to the test more than any piece of literature in the history of the world. And it has proven itself over and over again to be trustworthy. Harvard University, you've heard of it. And in the 1800s, there was a royal law professor. His name was Simon Greenleaf. Simon Greenleaf is actually celebrated as the most, I guess, accomplished, a lot of people consider him the greatest legal mind in American history. One of his works, it's called A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure. Meaning, Simon Greenleaf, in the world of law, is the Michael Jordan. Are you tracking? That's who this man was. And in the early 1800s to mid-1800s, as he was a practicing royal law professor at Harvard University, Simon Greenleaf decided to take his most brilliant legal mind and do something that he thought would bless the world. See, Simon Greenleaf was not a Christian. In fact, he was a skeptic. He did not believe that Jesus was who we believe he is as a Christian. And so Simon Greenleaf said, okay, look, I'm going to take my position, my place, and my beautiful mind, and I am going to set out as a law professor to expose the, as he called it, myth of the resurrection of Christ once and for all. But in his thorough examination, he was forced to come to the conclusion instead that Jesus did rise from the dead. And in 1846, he actually published this work. It's called An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. Here's what that means. Simon Greenleaf, most brilliant legal mind in American law history, as many ascribe to, looked at the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he said this. He would take his celebrated legal mind in the legal profession and take within the past two centuries this resurrection of Christ as it is claimed to have been recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he would take it to trial. He would put it to the test. He would diligently examine the evidence and judge what could be an established fact of history or not. And here's what happens. As Simon Greenleaf put the gospels to the test, one of the most celebrated minds in the legal profession of the past two centuries took the resurrection of Christ to style to trial. He examined the evidence and he judged it to be, in fact, an established, real event in history. And this was in spite of him starting this investigation as a skeptic. One of Greenleaf's points that we're going to read an excerpt from in just a moment is that nothing but the resurrection itself could explain the dramatic change in Christ's disciples and their willingness to suffer and die for their testimony. Not only do we see functionally what God's word holds up to, but even on a personal level, what people would give up to claim that message is true. Simon Greenleaf wrote this in his excerpt as he took the gospels to trial. He said, Their master had recently perished as a malefactor by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of his disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, revilings, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate, and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unblinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith and the evidence of the great facts and truths which they asserted, and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication. Simon Greenleaf says, the Bible is trustworthy, these gospel accounts are trustworthy because the people who were narrating them and distributing them had no reason to do it if it wasn't true. And if it was true, they gave everything to see that people would know that truth. Why is the Bible trustworthy? Because it stands the tests over time. Why does this message carry? Why was it copied so many times? Why was it not squashed? Why was it not canceled? Because it was real. It's true. It's tested, it's trustworthy, it's legit. So if we can trust the Bible, what do we do with it? What do we do with it? I'll tell you at Sunrise Church, we embrace the Bible as a value. In fact, you can read it with me. It's one of our values, the Bible. We learn God's word because it is the source of truth. We said earlier, everybody is building their lives on something. So what do we do with the Bible? We build our life on it. We learn God's word to know God's way. It provides for us truth from the author of truth, and it gives us a clear picture of why we exist and what we are to do with our existence. Basically, it teaches us how to live. It's the truth of God's word that gives life to life. It gives meaning to life, it gives purpose and answers for life. It tells us who we are, why we're here, what we should care about, how we should think. It's this truth that protects us from ourselves and gives purpose to the reason we exist. It teaches us who God is and who we are and how much God loves us. The Bible is God's word, his love, his character, his purpose revealed to us so that we would know him for his glory and for our good. Your identity, your purpose, your compass for life is found in God's word, a word he lovingly gave to mankind in this anthology of books we call the Bible. What do we do with the Bible? We trust that it is God's word and we build our life on it. We learn God's word to know God's way. It says it is profitable, it is useful. The word for discipline and training there is actually a word used in child rearing. It was actually a useful word there when raising a kid. And that that discipline training word, useful, profitable. It's discussed in how to teach kids with intentional instruction for their development and their preparation for life. Build your life on God's word. Look to the word of God and apply what you learned to your life. The Bible is God's word to us, showing us God's way for us. So build your life on it. Let's pray. And then the band will come back. We'll sing and we'll celebrate life change together. And then after that, I hope you'll linger in the lobby and connect with somebody before we see you next week. God, thank you again for another day and another opportunity we get to worship you. God, there's nothing normal about this. There's nothing normal about this time. There's nothing normal about this people, nothing normal about this place. It might seem normal to us sometimes because the weekend happens every weekend, but it is special every time we gather and worship. Every time. God, we look to what you would have to. Teach us so that we can take it with us and apply it to our lives. Specifically this morning, God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for revealing yourself to us through your word. So that when we need answers for life, we know where to go. When we need direction in life, we know where to go. When everything tries to redefine truth, we know where to find it. When we need that reminder that we're not alone, even when we feel like we're alone, we know to go to your word because it tells us we never are. When maybe we feel unloved, we need to go to your word to tell us how much we are loved, God, for guidance, for hope, for truth. So, God, we thank you for that. God, I pray that you are honored in everything that we have done in this place, everything that we have been singing, everything that we've been learning. And I pray that what we have done here, we don't leave here, but we take it with us. So that we would grow in our faith together, and many more would know and follow your Son Jesus Christ. So in your name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church. We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you. If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online, there's a link right here that you can follow and it'll take you to that payment portal. Everything that you donate helps not only go towards reaching people in the greater San Diego area, but also all around the world through our ministry partner. If you want to get further connected, whether in person or online, you can email this email right here, and either myself or some one of our team members will be there to answer it and help you get connected in any way that you need. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next week.