This week at
Riverview we began a new sermon series in the gospel of Luke (listen to the
first sermon in this series here). We looked at the first four verses of Luke’s
gospel in which Luke guarantees his readers that the content of his gospel is
trustworthy and reliable to the extent that a person can feel confident
entrusting his or her eternity to it.
This claim is well-founded, as Luke describes that he has done the
necessary research to be able to make such a guarantee. He’s looked into written sources and talked
to eyewitnesses in order to give the most reliable account possible of Jesus’
life and ministry. There is no reason to
doubt the veracity of his research and the finished product of the gospel that
bears his name that is included in the New Testament. This is an account of the life of Christ that
you can trust and bank your eternity on.
The same is
true for each of the gospel accounts that exist in the Bible. Luke is the only author who gives a written
guarantee about his information, but Matthew, Mark, and John are all
trustworthy as well. In fact, from a
strictly analytical perspective, they would probably be considered even more
reliable than Luke’s account, as Matthew, Mark, and John were all eyewitness of
Jesus’ life and ministry. In other
words, they don’t need to add a guarantee about doing the proper research and
interviewing the relevant eyewitnesses, because it’s understood that they were
there – they were the eyewitnesses. They
are a first-hand account, whereas Luke’s is a second-hand account (albeit it
was constructed with the most vigorous of research methods, which should not
cause us to doubt Luke’s account at all).
In spite of
the reliability and historical accuracy of the gospels, there are some who
doubt that the gospels got it right, or that they are even close to the actual
historical truth. For instance, Richard
Dawkins has said “Nobody knows who the four evangelists were, but they almost
certainly never met Jesus personally.
Much of what they wrote was in no sense an honest attempt at history….
The gospels are ancient fiction.” Aside
from all of the presuppositions and undocumented claims that are loaded into
Dawkins’ assertion, certainly Luke would disagree that what he wrote about
Jesus was not an “honest attempt at history.”
In fact, Luke claims that his account of Jesus’ life is not only
accurate history, but history that was vigilantly studied, researched, and
fact-checked. I wonder how Dawkins deals
with Luke’s own claim that his gospel is reliable history. What makes Dawkins more authoritative than
the author himself? Nothing that I can
see.
If Richard
Dawkins is correct and the four gospel writers were all wrong about their
account of Jesus’ life and their accounts of him are ahistorical, then Dawkins
and his ilk have some serious questions to answer. For instance, how did each of the gospels
come to be so similar? (And not just regarding historical events, names, and
places, but in the character and nature of Jesus and the central theme(s) of
his teaching?) What about all of the
people who were purported to witness his miracles and even his resurrected
body? Was it a conspiracy? If so, it would have been the most successful
conspiracy in the history of the world.
What about the apostles, 11 of whom died for the things that they either
made up or believed as unsubstantiated rumors or hearsay? How do we explain that if this story isn’t
true? Maybe one of them would be crazy
enough to die for rumors and hearsay, but 11?
In order to accentuate the problems with Dawkins’ disbelief that the
gospels are not historical accounts of actual people and events, a writer at
the Gospel Coalition wrote this poignant yet humorous hypothetical conversation
between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as they sat down one day over drinks to
cook up the Jesus story. Take
a look.
As I write
this post, it’s the beginning of the first full week of 2016. Many people make resolutions for the new
year, and many Christians specifically make resolutions related to Bible
reading. These are noble and admirable
goals to set for ourselves, and it is a good practice to make these kinds of
commitments. But it’s important to note
that the only reason resolutions to read the Bible are worthwhile is because of
the kind of book the Bible is – namely,
the word of God. If the Bible
were just a bunch of fairy tales or collection of rumors and hearsay, there
would be no value in reading it. But
because it is an historical book that accurately gives the account of the
interaction between God and his people, chiefly through his Son Jesus Christ,
it becomes the most precious thing we could ever read.
In summary,
Luke believed the accuracy of what he was writing, so much so that he encouraged
his readers to stake their eternal destinies on it. And so far there has not been one reason to
doubt the accuracy of his writing, in spite of what Richard Dawkins would like
to think. So then, can you be certain
about what’s written in the gospels in particular, and in the Bible in
general? Luke thought you could. Is he wrong?
No one has been able to convincingly show that yet. So look to the Bible, see what you find, and
believe it.
