Last Wednesday evening I had the awesome privilege of teaching about 10 fifth and sixth graders as I do once a month. The purpose is to take one of their memory verses and expound upon it so that they understand it at a deeper level. The topic I chose for that evening was Joshua 1:8. Below is the content of the Power Point I used to present along with the comments that I made:
Today, we’ll be looking at one of the verses that you are memorizing. It is from book 2 challenge 4:2, Joshua 1:8
Would someone like to read this verse? “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1:8)
First of all, who is speaking in this verse? I’ll give you a hint – it is not Joshua or Moses. Look at the context… (click) Verse 1 of this same chapter says “After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, (click) the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide” So, when we read verse 8, these are the direct words of the Lord spoken to Joshua.
“Book of the Law”. The Bible. Do not let it “depart from your mouth” and “meditate on it day and night”. Read/memorize Bible daily.
the reasons why we are to meditate on God’s Word day and night – “so that you may be careful to do everything written in it”. That’s obedience. That’s action.
Result : “Then you will be prosperous and successful”. Do you think that God is saying to Joshua that he will get a lot of money and no longer have any problems in life? No, He’s not telling Joshua that. We can be prosperous and successful in God’s sight by reading, memorizing and obeying His word. This may include riches and it may not.
In summary, Joshua 1:8 is the LORD telling Joshua (and us) that
1.the Bible is His word
2.We are to be
- reading it
- memorizing it
- Talking about it
- Thinking about it
- Obeying it
- Result will be blessing by God.
Now, I’ve been telling you that the Bible is God’s Word, but, so far, I haven’t given you any evidence for that belief. Why should we believe the Bible is God’s Word? What makes it more special than any other book? How do we know it is not just a book of fairy tales and fables?
(hold up the Bible)
1.great privilege to have the Bible.
2. Many died to get this message to you (could’ve saved their lives by denying Jesus)
3.We don’t really appreciate what we have.
4.This is the Word of God He inspired men to write.
What we mean by inspiration of Scripture:
1.Men wrote the Bible
2.Not inspired like music or artwork
3.But the wrote what God wanted them to write
Americans becoming more skeptical lately – each generation…
Will give several lines of evidence that Bible not man’s word, but God’s word. Hope you walk away convinced, not become “statistic”.
1.The Bible is indestructible
2.Many attempts to destroy the Bible in history
1.Before Christ, Jewish people under Antiochus Epiphanes.
2.Known as “the madman”
3.Persecuted Hebrew people.
4.Attempt to destroy copies of the Old Testament.
1.Maccabees says Antiochus Epiphanes attempted to destroy Scriptures by fire.
2.Wasn’t successful
We know we possess same Scriptures today because of the Dead Sea Scrolls – contain every book of the Old Testament except Esther.
1.Roman emperor Diocletian, known for persecution of Christians.
2.No tolerance for Christianity,
3.Called it a “cult”.
Diocletian’s initiated the most terrible of all the persecutions of the early Church.
1.302 A.D. he (Diocletian) told his government “to tear down the churches to the foundations and to destroy the Sacred Scriptures by fire”.
2.Massacred town because they where Christians.
3.Didn’t wipe out Christianity because of faith, perseverance and courage of the early Christians.
As the Word of God says: There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD.
And “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever”
1700’s in France, Voltaire hated Bible.
Within 100 years Christianity would be gone
50 years after his death, his house used by Geneva Bible Society for printing Bibles
Now, 91% of American homes have at least 1 Bible, and 47% of Americans read the Bible at least once a week
The Bible best selling book of all time. “the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year.”
The Bible most stolen book as well. In the United States alone, 50 Bibles are stolen every minute.
The Bible most read book of all time and remains the most important book of all time.
The Bible is amazing and could not have survived all these years without God’s direct involvement
1.Bible has consistent message.
2.Its human authors:
1.Lived in different places,
2.Spoke different languages,
3.The message of the Bible in one sentence is “Through Jesus, God is restoring everything that sin destroyed”.
4.Couldn’t be true without God directing things
1.The Bible is not a single book, but actually 66 individual books
2.written
1.on 3 continents,
2.in 3 different languages,
3.over a period of approximately 1500 years,
4.by 40 authors
5.who came from many walks of life (shepherds, kings, scholars, fishermen, prophets, a doctor, a military general, and a Pharisee)
3.One unified book from beginning to end without contradiction.
4.This is evidence of Bible being God’s Word.
2,500 prophecies in Bible, 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors.
This document (show document) contains 60 of the prophecies fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth (there are actually over 300 in total). This chart shows 8 of them. As you can see, many of these prophecies are not something a human being could have caused to happen. For example:
1.Place of birth (Micah 5:2)
2.Date of birth (Daniel 9:25)
3.Manner of birth (Isaiah 7:14)
4.Manner of death (Zechariah 12:10; Psalm 22:16 prophesied before the invention of crucifixion)
5.Burial (Isaiah 53:9)
The odds of 1 man fulfilling just 8 of these prophecies are 1 in 1000000…. (lot of zeros) – essentially impossible, which shows that God had to be involved…
1.Take 10^17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep.
2.“Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state.
3.Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one.
4.What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man.”
Question:
Who, in all the history of the world,
1.Born of a virgin;
2.A descendant of Abraham;
3.from the tribe of Judah;
4.from the line of David;
5.was both God and man;
6.was born in Bethlehem;
7.was preceded by a messenger, and visited the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed in A.D. 70;
8.died in A.D. 33;
9.rose from the dead (Isa. 53:11)?
Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the only possible candidate. Only he hits the bull’s-eye.
There are many other prophecies that I could tell you about. Please be sure that you can trust in the Bible, which is the Word of God. He proves that He is the Author of it by fulfilled prophecies contained in the Bible
The 4th reason we know that the Bible is the Word of God is it’s reliability as a historical document.
A reliability of a historical document is judged by a few things:
1. Does it contain eyewitness testimony? The New Testament consists of 27 books that were written by 27 authors who were either eyewitnesses to Jesus or interviewed eyewitnesses of Him
2. How early are the copies we have? Any writing of history is judged by how close the writing is to the events it records. The New Testament events all occurred in the first century (0 – 100 A.D.) and all of the writings were written in the first century.
3. How many copies do we have? Historical documents are viewed as more reliable if they have more copies of them. The reason for this is that mass printing wasn’t invented until 1440 A.D., by Johannes Gutenberg. By the way, the first book printed on the printing press was: The Bible. But before that, people (called scribes) had to copy the writings by hand so that they could be distributed to other areas.
27 New Testament books by 9 authors (eyewitnesses or interviewed eyewitnesses)
1.Why don’t we have more written about Jesus?
2. 10 non-Christian writers who mention Jesus within 150 years of his life.
3.By contrast, over the same 150 years, there are 9 non-Christian sources who mention Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus.
4.Jesus is actually mentioned by one more source than the Roman emperor at the time.
5.If you include the Christian sources, authors mentioning Jesus outnumber those mentioning Tiberius 43 to 10!
the number of manuscripts compared to other ancient documents and the time gap from the events.
1.Wrap-up / Summary / Purpose:
1.understand Joshua 1:8
2.Overview of the reasons why we believe that the Bible is the Word of God.
3.Increase your confidence and faith in the Bible
4.Give you information to respond to challenges you hear
We talked about 4 lines of evidence that the Bible is God’s Word. They are:
1. Indestructibility – we reviewed the examples of Antiochus Epiphanes, a few of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, as well as Voltaire
2. The Consistent Message of the Bible – Even though it is really sixty-six individual books, written on three continents, in three different languages, over a period of approximately 1500 years, by more than 40 authors who came from many walks of life, the Bible remains one unified book from beginning to end without contradiction. The consistent message of the Bible throughout is “Through Jesus, God is restoring everything that sin destroyed”
3. Fulfilled Prophecy –Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled over 300 prophecies from the Old Testament. Many of those could’ve been fulfilled only by Jesus and many are not things that a mere human could arrange. The fact that men wrote down hundreds of years ahead of time what was going to happen in the future, this shows God’s intervention.
4. Historical Reliability – the Bible is historically reliable. We can be sure that we have the text of the Bible that was written down in the first century.
I hope that your faith has been made more sure by this information and that you’ll now be able to contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints! Are there any questions that you have on this material?
1 Peter 4:12-16 