James Merritt - Taking God at His Word
Well, again, I wanna say good morning to those who are watching online and those here in the building. And let's just kind of get right into it today. There's an evangelistic organization known as Cru, and they ask college students all over the country, what were the top questions that you would ask about God?
So you can imagine the first question they asked was, well, how do you know there is a God? In other words, does God even exist? And by the way, we're gonna be dealing with that next week. Then the second question is, well, how can there be a good God when there's so much evil and suffering in the world? That's the number one question I get from people who don't want anything to do with God, don't wanna have anything to do with the church. They don't wanna even hear the name Jesus. Look, don't tell me about how good God is when I see babies die and I see earthquakes killing 10 scores of thousands of people, I don't want to hear it. We'll talk about that. And then the third question was, well, how can belief in God be reconciled with science, especially evolution?
And we'll touch on that just a little bit today, but I wanna stop right there because I want to throw something out for you to think about. Those are all excellent questions and they deserve excellent answers, but I don't believe they hit on the single most important question anybody ought to ask about God. Lemme tell you what, this hit me back when I was a college student and I had a reason why it hit me. I believe the most important question about God is not, is there a God? Or if there's a God, is he a good God? Or if there is a God, how you deal with science and all that stuff? I mean, those are important, but I think if you give it a little thought, you're gonna believe what I think is the most important question.
And here's the question, I think, is the big one. If there is a God has that God spoken to us? I mean, that's the question to me. In fact, almost 3,000 years ago, a king named Hezekiah was facing a tremendous crisis. The nation of Judah was about to be taken captive by the Babylonians, and frankly, things looked very dire. He didn't know what to do, his advisors didn't know what to do. His military commanders didn't know what to do. It looked like everything was lost, the cause was gone. Well, he knew a prophet named Jeremiah and he called him to the palace and he asked him this simple question, "Is there any word from the Lord? Is there any word from the Lord"?
I'll be honest, I wish our political leaders would ask question. I wish our educational leaders would ask that question. I wish a lot of people were asking that question. "Is there any word from the Lord"? Because whether or not God has spoken is important because here's why. If the answer is yes, if he has spoken, now that opens up a treasure chest of other big time questions we ought to be asking. And that is, for example, well, who are you? Can you be trusted? Do you know me and can I know you? Do you care about me, should I care about you? Do you have a plan for my life? Have I gotta figure it out all by myself? And frankly, we believe as Christians that God has spoken through this book called the Bible.
Now, here's an interesting fact I bet you didn't know. Did you know we call this book the Bible? That's the term we use almost 98% of the time, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. Here's what's interesting. Did you know the Bible never calls itself the Bible? That word's never found in the Bible. The Bible never calls itself the Bible. But you know what the Bible does call itself a lot, and it's my favorite title? My favorite title for the Bible is, the Word of God. Now, before I talk about the Bible as the word of God, whether you believe it or not, if you're watching right now, you're in this room and you'd be honest enough to say, Hey, I don't believe the Bible's the word of God. I got doubts the Bible's the word of God.
Let's all agree that we have to concede something about this book. And that is, just the statistics tell us, there's just no other book quite like this book. Why do you say that? It is the bestselling book of all time. In all of history, no book has sold more copies of itself than this book. Not only is the bestselling book of all time, guess what? The world, all around the world, it is the bestselling book every single year, by a large margin. Matter of fact, take any other bestselling book in any given year, anywhere in the world, the Bible will at least double the number of sales of that book. The average American household has four Bibles, and every year a minimum, it's never dipped below this figure.
Every year, 25 million Bibles are bought just in this country alone. So on the other hand, this is what's strange. You'd say, well, that must be a very popular book. Well, it's not with everybody because throughout history, this book, believe it or not, has been considered by many people from Russia's Joseph Stalin, to North Korea's Kim Jong-Un as the world's scariest and most dangerous book. I mean, even here in America, there's a growing fear of the Bible. Just a few years ago, you ready for this? One of the American libraries association's top 10 challenge books was the Bible. In other words, every year, this is one of the top 10 books that people are saying, we don't need that in our library. It's a dangerous book, people shouldn't be reading it, people should not be exposed to it. You may not know this, but as of this message, this book is illegal, and you can be killed in some of them, but this book is illegal in 52 countries.
Now you say, well, why is that? Why would a powerful dictator with nuclear weapons at his disposal be so afraid of this book? Why would people here in America be afraid of people being exposed to this book? Why is it this book can get you thrown in jail or even get you killed? Why are people so anxious about the book? Well, I'm gonna give you my theory, I believe it's because this book has in it life changing words from God himself. And when it comes to God, people check out. Now tell you something else, very interesting. There was a recent history channel documentary, you may have seen it entitled, "101 Objects That Changed the World".
The History Channel said of 101 objects that changed the world, the History Channel, not me, history Channel, said the number one thing that has changed this world is this book, number one. So nothing's changed this world like the Bible, and yet it's been blasted, banned, buried, and burned. And it's still the single most published book in history. It's been translated in at least 1,200 languages by an army of translators. And what I love about this book, every time they kill it and bury it, it beats the hearse back to the funeral home. It just keeps going, it just keeps ticking. You know, it's like the guy on Friday the 13th, Freddy, you just can't kill him. You just can't get rid of him, he's still there. And yet, when you look at how people view the Bible, you find various opinions.
So of course there are those, we're gonna deal with this in a moment. There's those that say this Bible is not the word of God. So they deny the Bible. Then more and more, and this is in the church a lot, there are people who say, well, it contains the word of God, but not all of it is a part of the word of God. Not all of it is divinely inspired. So they distort the Bible. And then you got people like me who say, I just believe the Bible is the word of God and they declare the word of God. But it doesn't matter, for whatever the reason, the majority of the world, here's what they say about this book, the majority of the world, they say, you know, it's the good book, but it's not God's book.
Well, I wanna make a very strong statement. If this book is not God's book, it's not even a good book because the central theme of the Bible is a lie. And the central theme of of the Bible is deceptive. And the central theme of the Bible is destructive. So we're in a series, if you're a guest of ours today, we're in a series that we're calling, "I doubt it". And I wanna remind you, as I said last week, there's nothing wrong with doubt. I told you, if there's no room for doubt, there's no place for faith. On the other hand, I'm gonna make the case. We ought to doubt our doubts if the evidence is really supporting our faith.
So here's what we're gonna do week, after week, after week, beginning today, we're gonna take a doubt that people have today, the people that doubt the Bible's the word of God. We're gonna take that doubt, and what we're gonna do, we're gonna present the case for faith against the case for doubt, and let the best man win. So if you're one of those people that say, well, I just doubt the Bible's the word of God. I don't think, it may not be a bad book. I just don't believe the Bible's the word of God. This message is for you. And if that is you, you should at least consider one thing. Then why is it that there are 2 billion people around the world that believe what I believe? Well, why is it that 2 billion people have been so fooled and say, yep, I believe the Bible is the word of God.
And my point of the message today is very simple. My dad used to tell me, son, you're only as good as your word, I believe that. Well, lemme just give you this thought. The word of God is as good as God's word. The word of God is as good as God's word. Well, why do you believe that? Why are you so strong about it? I'll tell you why Jesus believed it, it's not just what I believe, Jesus believed it. He said, you can not only take this book as God's word, but God is as good as His word. Because Jesus made a statement about, by the way, he was talking about the Old Testament, but Jesus made a statement about the Old Testament and now the Bible that was really amazing when you think about it. He said in John 17:17, "Your word is truth".
If you've been given a word association, if you've been playing word association with Jesus, and you said, all right, what is the first thing that would come to your mind Jesus? Bible, He'd have said, truth, Bible truth. "Your word is truth". So if what Jesus said is true, that His word is truth, then I would like to ask those of you who doubt the Bible is the word of God to look at the evidence that would make Jesus say that. And I would be the first one to tell you, if this Bible is the word of God, there ought be certain marks that is the word of God. Well, you would expect certain things about this book to be true if it truly is the word of God.
So today, I'm gonna give you, we're gonna go fast. I'm gonna give you five reasons why I believe the Bible is the word of God. So why do I believe the Bible? Number one, I believe the Bible is historically reliable, it's historically reliable. And whatever else this book purports to be, nobody can deny this. Everybody would claim, it does claim to be a history book. In fact, it is so historically extremely specific. That's one thing I love about the Bible. Just think about the geographical detail just in the gospels. When you read the gospels, you're not reading some Chronicle of Narnia, you're not reading some mythical location that takes place out there in the Neverlands way before the ages of recorded history. It's not talking about fairytale places.
The Bible tells us Jesus was born in a specific place. He grew up in a specific town, and you can still go to that town today, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem. We're told he goes to a wedding feast, but we're not just told that he went to one, we're told he went to one in Cana. You can go there, it's still there. He travels everywhere from Capernaum to the Sea of Galilee, to the Jordan River, to the Mount of Olives, to the Garden of Gethsemane. You ever go with me to Israel, you'll go to all of those places. And so, the gospel gives that kind of real word specifics you don't find in a book of mythology. But now somebody says, well, now wait a minute, time out. You can name places that exist today and you might get your geography right, but that doesn't mean you're getting your history right.
You know what? You're right, so I want you to understand that nobody, and lemme just make this plain, nobody can definitively prove or disprove what's taken place in the ancient past, nobody. You've got to examine the evidence. Now, as we examine the evidence, you gotta keep two things in mind when you're determining, did something really happen a long time ago, can it be verified or not? Keep two things in mind. Number one, the trustworthiness of any historical account is based on the evidence for that account, okay? I mean, that makes sense. You gotta have proof something happened. Did Washington really cross to Delaware? I wasn't there, you weren't either. There's no pictures, there's no video, not on the internet, but we believe it, why? The evidence.
Number two, the evidence must come from ancient documents and manuscripts. All ancient history is based on documentary evidence. You believe there was a Julius Caesar? I do, all we've got is documentary evidence. Do you believe, I mean, we could go to all kinds of ancient events that happened thousands. Well, how do we know they happened? It's the documentary evidence. So lemme give you a good example. I pick up the history book and I'm wondering, now, can I really trust this history book? And if it says that Custer's last stand took place at a Cracker Barrel while he was eating pancakes in 1998 in Beaufort, Georgia, I'm not gonna read that history book. I'm gonna say no, they don't know what they're talking about.
What does the evidence show? I just wouldn't put a stalk in that book, well, guess what? We've gone, and it's great we live in this time of life because one of the best friends of the Bible has proven to be the shovel of the archeologist. So I just wanna give you a few examples. I was reading about this the other day. I was reading in the book of Joshua and the book of Deuteronomy, that's where I'm reading right now in my Bible. And I was reading about the Hittites, okay? There's all, you know, you've got Canaanites, you've got Jebusites, you've got Hittites, you've got termites, you've got all these ites in the Bible, right? So I'm reading about the Hittites, well guess what? Up until the 20th century entire civilizations as Hittites, there was no documented evidence of the civilization, of a group of people called the Hittites outside of the Bible, for centuries, nobody could find it.
So guess what? You had these liberal scholars that said, see, I told you the Bible's a bunch of myths. The Bible's all made up. There's no proof that these people existed. So scholars said, nope, historically unreliable. Well, guess what happened? The capital city of the Hittite empire was discovered as well as 40 other cities that made up the empire that's not even in the Bible. So check, lemme give another example. King David, we all grew up listening to David and Goliath, and David and Bathsheba, and all these stories about David. Well, yeah, he's mentioned more than 1,000 times in the Bible. And yet for many, many years outside the Bible, nobody could find a record of David, nobody. And everybody thought you, Jews are nuts, Christians are nuts.
This guy, he's no more real than Mickey Mouse. We cannot find any evidence of David in the Bible at all. And then in 1993, in 1994 at the Northern Israelite site of Tel Dan, I've been there, a 3,000 year old basalt stone was found with this inscription, "King of the house of David". And once again, these scholars said, oops, I guess we were wrong. Let's take the entire book of Acts. Y'all read the book of Acts. I mean, if you like history, go read the book of Acts. In fact, Luke said, "I'm a historian". Luke said, "I'm doing historical research". Well guess what? One of the greatest archeologists in history, sir William Ramsey, was an atheist.
Listen to this, he got his doctorate in archeology from Oxford University. He committed his entire life to archeology. He basically spent his entire life in the holy land. And he said it plain, when he left England to go to the holy land, he said, "I've got one goal I'm going to accomplish". He said, "I'm going to prove you cannot historically rely on the Bible". And he said, "My number one target is the book of Acts. This Luke says he's a historian. Well, I'm gonna make Luke put up or shut up. Let's just see how historically accurate he is". So he goes to Israel, he spends week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. He has a Bible in one hand, he has a shovel in the other hand. He says, "Man, this is gonna be so easy". And after 30 years of vigorous study and digging up dirt, here's what he said. "Luke is a historian of the first ranks".
Bless his heart, I could have saved him 30 years. "Luke is a historian of the first ranks. Not merely are his statements, his facts trustworthy. This author should be placed along with the greatest of historians. Luke's history is unsurpassed in respect to his trustworthiness," and he became a Christian. Now, I could give you a lot more quotes, a lot more examples. Lemme just leave you with this one more. There was a man named Dr. Nelson Glueck. He is still today considered the greatest modern authority on Israeli archeology ever. Here's what he said, listen to this. "No archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Archeology continues to confirm a clear outline or an exact detail of historical statements in the Bible".
You go with me to Israel, we'll go to a place called, Caesarea, by the Sea. There's an inscription there that talks about Pontius Pilate. Up until that was found, nobody believed there was ever a Pontius Pilate over, and over, and over. And you say, does that shock you? No, you know why it doesn't shock me? Because of what Jesus said, "Your word is truth". I believe the Bible is historically reliable. Now, buckle your seatbelt. I believe the Bible is scientifically compatible. I believe the Bible is scientifically compatible. And I'm not afraid to make that statement. You say, wait a minute, the Bible's not a scientific book, granted. But logic itself tells you if it's God's word. And if it is truth, then the God of history is also the God of science.
So when I read this book, I would expect it not just to be historically reliable. I would expect it to be scientifically compatible. Now, lemme just say, there are a lot of people that jump to the conclusion. No, no, no, no the Bible has scientific errors. You just cannot reconcile the Bible and science. So the next time you meet somebody that say, no, no, no, you cannot reconcile the Bible and science, you better tell them this. Before you say that, number one, you better know your Bible. Number two, you better know your science. Because you either don't know one or you do not know the other. The Bible's not written to teach us science, but the God of salvation is the God of science.
Lemme just show you some things you don't know. There are many principles of modern science that were recorded as facts of nature in the Bible long before science ever confirmed them experimentally. As a matter of fact, there's a tremendous overlap between science and the Bible before you get out of the first four words. I know you know them because now we know both the Bible and science, including Stephen Hawking, both the Bible and science now say, you know what? The universe had a beginning, do tell. Because the first four words you read, in the beginning, God. So that means this world, these worlds, our world had a beginning.
Now here's what's striking. Even though the Bible claimed that for thousands of years, only recently have scientists really began to entertain the possibility, well, you know what, I think there was a beginning. Because for years they thought the universe was eternal and that dominated scientific thinking for 100s and 1,000s of years until recently. And now because of research, they go, you know, wait a minute, I think maybe we're wrong. Yeah, there was a quote unquote big bang back in the day. And so, and they don't like to admit it, but then you gotta go, well, who caused the big bang? Big bangs don't just happen, so who caused it? Well, that's what the Bible says.
Lemme tell you another one. For 1,000s of years, the world for the most part believed the earth was flat. They believed that until the fifth century BC. And that's when the Greeks began to call the world a sphere. Well, three centuries before they did it, the prophet Isaiah wrote this. "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and his people are like grasshoppers". Would you care to guess what the Hebrew word for circle literally means? It says sphere. We know the Bibles a sphere, well, Isaiah wrote that 750 BC. Here's another one, this is good for the weatherman. For thousands of years, educated people thought wind's always blowing in a straight direction. Wind always blowing in a straight, they blow north, they blow south, they blow east, they blow west.
Well, guess what? Meteorologists now know wind travels within circuits. Matter of fact, we have a word for that, jet streams. Pilots know about jet streams. Well, guess what you find in the word of God? "The wind blows to the south and turns to the north, round and round it goes". Really? Please tell the people at WSB that maybe they forget it sometime. Yeah, the wind goes in jet streams. Now, I could give you so many more examples of how the Bible has impacted everything from medicine to astronomy, to geology, to cosmology. But the Bible, here's what I want you to understand. The Bible properly understood.
Now look, your interpretation of the Bible may not go with science, that's not what I'm saying. If the Bible properly interpreted will go with science. On the other hand, not everything people say is scientifically true. We now know scientifically true, you do know that, right? You know what was good science 100 years ago is really egg sucking science today, right? Well, science properly empirically accurate. They are not friends, they are enemies. And who would expect something else? If this is the word of God? He never has to say, oops, I blew it. Third reason I believe the Bible's the word of God. I believe the Bible is prophetically fulfilled.
This is an amazing thing. This is why I wish people read the Bible. There's no other book anywhere on this planet, no other book, no other book that can match the staggering accuracy of foretelling future events like the Bible. By the way, 30% of the Bible consists of prophecy, 30%. And to this point, fixed prophecies have never proven to be false. Now some are yet to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, some of these prophecies are so specific, they're so detailed, they have to be exactly fulfilled. And many of these prophecy think of things of which there's just no likelihood, really that that could ever come to pass.
As a matter of fact, many times prophets would predict the very opposite of what you would normally expect. And oftentimes the prophecy did not take place until the prophet who fulfilled it had already died. So when you open up your Bible, guess what? There are over 2000 prophecies in the Bible that has already come to pass. You say, is that a big deal? I'll just put it this way. You don't find anything like that in any other religious book that's ever been written. You don't find it in the Quran, you don't find that in Bhagavad Gita. You don't find that in all kinds of scriptures. So-called religious books that have been written before. As a matter of fact, 26 volumes of books claimed to be divine scripture just like the Bible. But not one of those 26 have any specific predictive prophecies.
Lemme just give you one easy example. Let's take the central character of the Bible, the name we just talked about, the name we raised our hands to a moment ago. Let's just talk about Jesus. You ready? Jesus, there are 300 fulfilled prophecies about the life of Jesus, 300. And they were all written at least 400 years before he was even born. How did Micah know He'd come out of Bethlehem? How'd he know that? How did he know He would be from the tribe of Judah? There were 12 tribes. He had one chance in 12 to get it right. I mean, I could go on, and on, and on. And like, so lemme put this in perspective.
What if a book had been written in the year 1900 and it predicted that in the 20th century there would be two world wars, a great depression, an atomic bomb, and that a president and a civil rights leader would be assassinated. Now you'd wanna put your trust in that book and in that author. Now I wanna give you one other example that's up to date right now and you don't even know it. Next year, this year, I think this year, we're going to Egypt, I'm taking a group of people to Egypt. Looking forward to it, I've been to Egypt several times. We're gonna take a cruise down the Nile River. It's gonna be kind of a cool trip, we're gonna go to Sinai, some different places like that. But lemme tell you something about Egypt you didn't know. At one time Egypt was probably the greatest nation in the world, it was the king of nation. It was the richest country in the world.
And yet Ezekiel in his book said something about Egypt that I read 1,000 times didn't pay that much attention to it. You never paid that much attention to it. But Ezekiel said this, "No longer will there be a prince in Egypt". Now let's be honest, you'd read that you wouldn't paying attention to that. I don't know, I didn't know what it meant. I didn't really care. There's to be no prince in Egypt. Well, amazing, a few decades ago before Egypt went through a war and became now what they would call a democratic form of government. Guess what? Egypt was always ruled by a prince.
As a matter of fact, from the time that Ezekiel wrote that, from the time that he wrote that 2,500 years went between that prophecy and Egypt's changed to their present form government, 2,500 years, you ready for this? He said they had princes, but he said there will be no prints in Egypt. But if you read the Hebrew language, what he said was, "There'll be no Egyptian princes in Egypt". This will blow your mind. Yeah, for 2,500 years, Egypt had a prince, but not one prince was ever Egyptian. How did he know that? Bad Mexican food? I mean, how did he figure that out? It would be like prophesying today that an American would never again be president of the United States. And then 25 years, 100 years later, there was no American president. You'd say, how in the world did that guy know that? It's real simple, "Your word is truth".
I believe the Bible is prophetically fulfilled. Fourth reason I believe the Bible is because it's thematically unified. I mean, lemme ask you a question. I want you to imagine you chose 10 different people, 10 people from the same city, with the same culture, with the same educational level, speaking the same language apart from each other, never talking into each other, never consulted with each other. And I want you to imagine, okay, I want you to think about, and I want you to write about one controversial topic, the meaning of life. Question, what do you think the odds are? They'd all say exactly the same thing. What do you think the odds would be? I mean, you guys copy from each other. I mean, you know what the number of that happening, right? It's zero right.
All right, now imagine this. Here's a book that is actually 66 books in one book. It was written over a period of 1,500 years by 40 different authors living in three different continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, writing in three different languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. But they weren't all from the same background. They were from different backgrounds. Some were educated, some not so much. Some were written by shepherds, Kings, soldiers, princes, priests, fishermen, historians, professors, professionals, and minimum wage workers. They wrote on many controversial topics, on every moral and ethical issue you could imagine. And yet they all keep writing almost one thing and basically saying the exact same thing. Because here's what amazed me.
The first time I read my Bible through as a boy, when I got through reading the Bible, I didn't need anybody to tell me this, it just hit me. It wasn't like I read 66 books. It was like I read one book, lemme give you an example. So the first book of the Bible begins in a garden in paradise. In that garden is a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then you go to the last book of the Bible in the book of Revelation written 1,500 years later, guess what? You end up in another paradise, the paradise of God. And there's another tree in that paradise. The tree for the healing of the nations. You go back to Genesis, A man's driven out of the garden because of his sin and forbid to eat of the tree.
In Revelation, he's invited to come in and partake of the tree that he might live forever. In Genesis, there's a river that flows from the garden. In Revelation there's a river that flows to the throne of God. And then you've got this golden thread that runs through Genesis to Revelation that is all about the redemption of a sinful human race by the grace of God through faith in a redeemer named Jesus. And then you go back to Genesis, you say, well, the first Adam was separated from God in the Garden of Eden. And then you go to the gospels in the second Adam because the process of reuniting with God in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is incredible how this book is really one book.
You say, how do you explain that? How do you explain the unity of this Bible? How do you explain it when you read the Bible? It all fits together. It's not like a bunch of pieces in a puzzle. It's like one big puzzle with one big piece. Pastor, how do you explain that? The only way I can explain it is this, "Your word is truth". Here's the last reason I believe the Bible's the word of God. I believe the Bible is personally transforming. It's personally transforming. See, when I say the Bible is true, what do I mean? I mean it's historically reliable, scientifically compatible, prophetically fulfilled, thematically unified.
Now lemme just say this. Let's say that you say, okay, I believe everything you said is true about that book. Well, could I be honest? You could write a book like that. Let's just say you could. You could write a book that fulfilled all of those things and it still wouldn't transform anybody's life. And yet you come to this book and doubt are all these things true? But it has lasting eternal significance. As a matter of fact, lemme tell why of all the books in the world I know this book has to be the word of God. Because it is still to this day, to this year, the only book that answers the three biggest questions of life. Everybody's gotta answer, who am I? Why am I here, where am I going? You're not ready to live till you got those answers, you're not ready to live until you've got that figured out.
Who are you? I don't mean what you're name, who are you? Why are you here? And when you draw your last breath, where are you going? So guess what? I go to the first two chapters in the Bible and I see where humans were created in the image of God that tells me who I am. I'm a creature that bears the image of God created by a God that loves me. So that's who I am, that's who you are. Then I get past the second chapter. And from that point on the Bible then answers the second question, well, why am I here? We find that out, to know the God who created me, to have a relationship with him, to know his purpose for my life, to carry out his plan for my life, which can only happen through knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord and my savior. And then I get to the last book of the Bible, and what does it tell me? Where I'm going, where I'm headed.
It tells me, as much as I love Athens, Georgia, it's not my home, this world is not my home. You know, Teresa and I did a marriage retreat this past weekend up in Chattanooga, great church in Chattanooga. And a guy came up to me and he told me, he said, "You know, I grew up in Georgia in the fifth grade I moved to Colorado". And he said, "I lived there for a long time. I moved back to Tennessee". And I said, "But you're still a Georgia fan". He is a big Georgia fan. He said, "Yeah". I said, "You know why"? And it's true, you can take the boy outta Georgia, you can't take Georgia outta the boy. I know I've been to Kentucky and Mississippi.
You know, Paul said, "I've learned whatever state I'm in to be content". He'd never been to Mississippi. But my point is, you can take the boy outta Georgia you can't take Georgia outta the boy. Lemme tell you something, I love this state. I'll die in this state. I'll be buried in this state. This state's not my home, I know where I'm going. And the Bible tells me exactly where I'm going. I'm going to a place called heaven where I'm gonna spend eternity with a God that loved me, and created me, and sent his son to die for me. Or some are gonna go to a place of complete separation from God because we rejected that very son.
Now here's where we are, I'm gonna wrap this up. You can either believe everything that I have said or take it with a grain of salt. But now, this is where some of you're watching right now. Some of you professors, some of you PhDs, some of scholars, some of you pseudo-intellectual, some of you philosophers, some of you thinkers, this is where you gotta make a decision. There are a lot of religious books out there, and they all say different things about God, and about heaven, and about hell, and about creation, and about salvation, and about death. But the Bible, of all these books, the Bible's got one hero and his name is Jesus.
Now you gotta make a decision, you got two options. The Bible is right and all of the religious books are wrong. Some other book is right and the Bible is wrong. Gotta make it option, gotta make a choice, gotta make a call. So I'll close with a story from a president we all love and revere. His name was Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln kept a copy of the Bible in his personal library. One day a treasury department official happened to walk in and there was Abraham Lincoln reading his Bible. And he said, "Mr. President, what do you really think about the Bible"?
Here's what Abraham Lincoln said, "If we had a witness on the stand whose general story we knew was true, we would believe him when he asserted facts of which we had no other evidence. I decided a long time ago that it was less difficult to believe that the Bible was what it claimed to be than it was to disbelieve it". Amen, Mr. President, I don't believe this Bible is the word of God in spite of the evidence. I believe this book is the word of God because of the overwhelming evidence. And there's a little song, first song I ever learned as a kid in church, and some of you say the same thing, you know what it is. Jesus loves me, this I know. Say the rest of it with me, for the Bible tells me so. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. So let me just get something straight and we'll say amen.
Now, I don't think there's a God in heaven who loves me. I don't think there's a God in heaven that loves me so much He sent His son to die for me. And I don't think that this son not only died for me, and I really don't think this son came back from the grave. And I don't think all this happened that I might have eternal life and salvation. I just don't think that at all. I know in my heart of hearts, everything I told you is true. I know it, 100% sure. Never ever, ever convince me otherwise, why? Because his word tells me so. And I have learned both in my head and in my heart, Jesus was exactly right. Lord, your word is truth and the truth will set you free.
Let's pray together with heads bowed and with eyes closed. Lemme tell you what this book says to all of us. We're sinners, we're not born good, we're born bad. We can't get to God on our own. We must go through Jesus Christ, His son who died on the cross, who came back from the grave, who's alive right now, who will save you, forgive you, and give you eternal life. If believing this book is truth and believing He is truth, you give your life to the truth.
If you're watching online right now and God convicted you, and God's spoken to you, and you now say, you know what? I get it, I do believe the Bible's the word of God. And I believe Jesus is the son of God, and I believe he died for me, and I want him to control my life. Just tell him that right now. Do the same thing in this room. If you know deep down you're not a Christian, you know deep down you're not a believer, you know deep down you've never trusted in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, do it right now. It's so easy it's so quick.
Lord, I'm a sinner I need a savior, you are that savior. Please, Lord Jesus come into my heart. Save me, forgive me of all of my sins. I trust you as my savior, I surrender to you as my Lord. And I know, I know I'm saved because the Bible tells me so.