Is it important that we pass on our faith in Jesus Christ to our children? How about our values and morals and mores? If it is, how well are we doing? As parents and as a church? Are our adult kids living for Jesus and attending and active in a local church somewhere? There is no greater task, no richer investment, and no greater blessing than to have your children walking with Jesus. It is worth every dollar, every minute, every sacrifice.

The Bible is very clear that the primary responsibility for teaching children about the things of God and Jesus rests squarely on the shoulders of dad and mom. The Bible also, guys, lays the responsibility of making sure this happens at your feet as the head of the home! The reality is that most of us guys pawn that off to the women. It does take a village to raise our children and many of us grew up in a kind of village that supported the values and mores of our parents. Unfortunately we live in a village today that most often espouses totally different values and mores that we as Christians have, and therefore the church is vitally important in being that ‘village’ who will reinforce parental teachings.

On this Father’s Day we are going to connect the dots between parents and teaching truth by launching into a series on the very popular and controversial book/movie, The DaVinci Code. I have not read the book, nor seen the movie and I have no plans to do either. My purpose in this series is not so much as to convince you, but to give you a better handle on the major issues that Dan Brown raises in his novel. Yes, it is a novel but at the beginning, he writes, “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” Brown makes some fantastic claims that we need to examine so we have some answers when our kids ask us, or when our co-workers are discussing it.

We begin with the question: Is the Bible true? Dan Brown claims that the Bible’s assertions about Jesus are patently false. This strikes at the heart of God’s written revelation. If the Bible is the Word of God then we need to pay very close attention to what it says. But if the Bible no more than a collection of man-made stories, then we need to file it under ‘fiction’ and close up shop and do something better with our time and money each Sunday.

There are 4 assertions that Dan Brown makes about the Bible’s veracity that we are going to look at this morning. Not one of them, by the way, is original with Dan Brown.

1. “The Bible has some nice stories, but it’s not like all those events really happened.” The irony is that many in the church—pastors, theologians, scholars—ascribe to this statement. So here’s the question: are the Bible stories really true? Did the people really live? Were the places real?

The best way to answer this question is to look at archeological facts, ala Indiana Jones. The amazing this is that the more archeologists dig in the dirt the more the historical accuracy of the Bible is proved, ie these are real people living in real places. Here are 3 examples.

In Judges 6 we read one of the most unbelievable of Bible stories-- the walls of Jericho falling down. No sane person would ever believe that! Yet in the 1930s an archeologist by the name of Garstang discovered something quite amazing. Here is a portion of their statement: “As to the main fact, then, there appears no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely that the attackers would be able to clamber up and over the ruins into the city.” Why so amazing? Because city walls under the onslaught of attackers always fall inward not outward!

In Genesis 7 we read the incredible claim that a massive flood covered the earth when a man named Noah walked this earth. Truly a preposterous claim! Yet, Gregg Easterbrook writes, “The flood legends of Mesopotamia and the Bible is how the New York Times recently described beliefs about a huge, ancient inundation that once covered much of the earth. Oddly this choice of words occurred in a new report about a study, just published in the American Journal of Archeology, giving evidence that a huge, ancient inundation once covered much of the Earth. Researchers studying the Black Sea off Sinop, a city in Turkey, found indications that a catastrophic flood struck the area approximately 7,000 years ago, flooding inhabited land and turning the Black Sea from fresh to saline. Sinop is approximately 500 miles from the ancient Holy Land. Oceanographers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute for Exploration, a science organization in Connecticut, reported evidence suggesting the deluge hit rapidly, was extremely wide in scope, and killed many. The work was sponsored by the nonpartisan National Geographic Society. A fast-hitting, catastrophic deluge is, of course, what Genesis describes.” How interesting!

Genesis 1 describes creation. Absolutely nobody believes this anymore! In fact the dominant THEORY of how our universe came to be is the Big Bang Theory which states that eons ago all matter in the universe was compressed into the size of a pinhead, then it exploded ferociously and the universe has been expanding since. Sounds kinda like Genesis to me: It wasn’t and then, it was. And where did all that original matter of the universe come from anyway?

2. The second issue is this: “The Bible has some good teaching, but there’s no way to prove that God was involved in writing it.” This boils down to this: is the Bible a good book or God’s Book? Let’s go back to the future. The Bible has an uncanny way of foretelling the future, called prophecies. Let’s look at just a few about Jesus.

In Micah 5:2 we are told that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem in Judea. Matthew 2:1 tells us that Jesus, hailed as the Messiah, was born in Bethlehem even though his parents lived up north in Nazareth.

In Zechariah 11:12 we read that the Messiah would be betrayed for 30 shekels of silver. Matthew 26:15 tells us how Judas betrayed Jesus and was given 30 shekels of silver.

Psalm 22:16 speaks of the Messiah being pierced in hands and feet. Jesus is crucified with nails driven into his hands and feet. Even more amazing is that crucifixion wasn’t invented until the Roman time centuries after King David lived.

But, wasn’t all this simply coincidence? Peter Stoner estimated the likelihood of only 8 prophecies being fulfilled in one person’s life by chance. His conclusion was that the odds were 1 with 17 zeroes after it that this could happen. That is similar to covering the entire state of Texas with layers of silver dollars 2 feet deep, and then asking someone to travel in any direction, starting at any point, and finding the correct silver dollar.

Compare the Bible’s amazing record of predicting the future to Jeanne Dixon of a few decades ago and other psychics who were correct only 6% of the time.

3. The 3rd issue Dan Brown confronts us in The DaVinci Code is this: “The Bible that we have today is not the same as what the original authors wrote.” Brown writes, “Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke….Constantine commissioned and financed a new bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike.” (p 234)

Has the Bible been embellished and changed? Of course there were no copy machines in those days and each copy was hand copied so the possibility of error is certainly present. The best way to answer this is to look at the ancient manuscripts. For comparison Homer’s Iliad is ranked second in having the most ancient manuscripts with 643 copies. The time span between the original writing and the earliest known copies of the Iliad is 500 years.

For the New Testament there are 24,000 copies of manuscripts and the time span between the original writing and the earliest known copies is 25 years.

In 1947 a Palestinian shepherd boy discovered clay jars filled with ancient writings. We know them as the Dead Sea Scrolls written during the days of Jesus. Experts in translating these scrolls discovered that the entire book of Isaiah reads the same as the book of Isaiah in your Bible today.

There is much more evidence concerning the Bible’s accuracy and consistency than there is for any other piece of ancient literature.

4. “There are other secret writings about Jesus that have been silenced.” Dan Brown’s exuberance cites that other ancient writings about Jesus have been covered up and silenced because they have been embarrassing to the Christian establishment. There were many other gospel’s about Jesus purported to be written by a disciple. Paul himself spoke of false writings circulating among the churches that were supposedly signed by him but were not written by him. These writings are called pseudo-pigrapha—or “false writings.” Brown cloaks this in a “dark mystery,” but these false writing aren’t any big secret and are a well-known fact. So there is no intrigue here at all, except to sell books and make millions of dollars.

These writings were not included in the Bible because they were not accurate. The Gospel of Thomas was not accepted by the early church because it did not reflect accurately the life of Jesus. For example when Jesus was a boy he made a clay pigeon and then throwing it in the air made it fly away. As a child Jesus was in an argument with 2 other little boys and he used his godly powers in ending the argument by causing their deaths. These kinds of ‘miracles’ stand in stark contrast to the authentic gospels when Jesus used his godly powers to heal and redeem, not frivolously nor in harmful ways.

These are not ‘secret writings’ as Dan Brown advocates that the church conspired to keep hidden. They were widely read writings that were rejected by early Christians as inaccurate and false.

Let me ask a final question. Why is it that many people are so interested in decrying and denouncing the veracity of the Bible? It seems to me because there is no other book, religious or otherwise, like the Bible. It stands head and shoulders above everything else. In so doing, the Bible is not just history, nor is it just God’s Word. The Bible actually makes a claim on you and your life. It calls you to be accountable to the God of this universe. It lays before us a code of conduct and ethics.

The Bible makes huge claims as to the person and character of God, and as to the person and purpose of Jesus. It makes claims on how you should live your life and how you should treat one another. It makes claims on what you should believe and what your goals and priorities in this should be.

And most important, the Bible makes these claims that require us and calls us to radically reevaluate our lives and readjust ourselves not to ‘me’ but to the Living God whose name is Yahweh, perfectly revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

So, if I deny the Bible as God’s Word then I don’t have to believe it nor do I have any responsibility to its claims because they are invalid. I can then continue to live my life as I choose. Intellectual objections to God’s Word, the Bible, are almost always rooted in moral objections. It’s all about me. I want to live my life how I want to and nobody and no book is going to tell me how to live my life!!!!

If the Bible is not God’s truth, then we are all wasting our time and money. But if the Bible is God’s truth, then it calls us to seriously consider its radical claims on our lives. It’s your choice!

Thank You for Taking The Time to Read This Message.
May God Use These Words to Help You and Strengthen You.