Why We Can Trust the Bible
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What Do You Believe and Why?
Building a Faith That Can Stand on Its Own
There is a question that has the power to stop a conversation cold, expose the foundations of everything we think we know, and ultimately lead us to something far more solid than we ever expected. The question is simple: What do you believe, and why?
Most people, when pressed, fall back on one of two answers. The first is tradition. "I believe because I was raised this way." The second is personal experience. "I believe because it changed my life." Both answers feel satisfying in the moment. But neither one, when examined honestly, holds up as a foundation sturdy enough to build a life on.
Consider the first answer. If believing because you were raised in a Christian home is sufficient reason to hold your faith, then a person raised in a Muslim home has an equally sufficient reason to hold theirs. Faith inherited from family is not the same as faith owned personally. It is borrowed conviction, and borrowed conviction has a way of slipping away when life gets difficult or when someone asks a hard question in a jail cell, a college classroom, or a hospital waiting room.
The second answer carries its own complications. Personal experience is powerful, but it is not exclusive to Christianity. History offers no shortage of people who had vivid, life-altering encounters with something they believed to be divine, who went on to build entire movements around that encounter, only to discover later that they had been wrong. A transformed life is evidence that something happened. It is not, by itself, evidence of what happened or why.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a question worth taking seriously, and a faith worth defending with something more than sentiment.
The Apostle Peter, writing in 2 Peter 1:16-21, offers a striking starting point. He draws a sharp distinction between cleverly devised stories and what he and the other disciples actually witnessed. He describes being present at the Transfiguration, hearing a voice from heaven, standing on a sacred mountain with Jesus. His point is not simply emotional. He is making a claim about evidence. He is saying: we were there. And beyond what we saw, he points to something even more reliable, the prophetic word, which he describes as something that did not originate in human imagination but came through people carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Peter is not asking anyone to take a blind leap. He is inviting careful examination.
That invitation is worth accepting.
The Bible is not a single book handed down from one author in one era. It is a collection of documents written by more than forty authors, in three languages, on three continents, over a span of fifteen hundred years. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Asia, Africa, and Europe. Centuries separating the earliest writers from the latest. And yet the central story holds together with a coherence that defies accident.
More than twenty-five thousand archaeological excavations have examined the world described in these documents. Time and again, places, people, and events once dismissed as legendary or mistaken have been confirmed by physical evidence pulled from the ground.
One striking example involves the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 3:1-2, the author goes out of his way to anchor the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry to a precise historical moment. He names the ruling emperor, the regional governor, and several local officials, including a man named Licinius, identified as the ruler of a region called Abilene. For years, critics pointed to this reference as an error. They argued that Luke had confused this Licinius with an older figure who had died decades earlier, long before the time period Luke was describing.
Then, approximately eighteen years ago, an ancient Greek manuscript was discovered near the site of ancient Abilene. The inscription referenced a free man of a ruler named Licinius who had constructed a road during the reign of Tiberius, placing him squarely within the historical window Luke described. The supposed error was not an error at all. Luke knew exactly what he was writing.
Luke himself explains his method at the outset of his Gospel, in Luke 1:1-4.
He was not an eyewitness. He says so plainly. But he carefully investigated everything from the beginning, drawing on the accounts of those who were eyewitnesses, in order to write an orderly account so that his reader could know with certainty what had been taught. This is the language of a historian. Luke is not writing legend. He is writing with the deliberate care of someone who understands that accuracy matters.
The eyewitness testimony itself is equally striking. In 1 John 1:3, the Apostle John describes what he and others experienced in terms that are almost stubbornly physical. They heard. They saw with their own eyes. They looked at. Their hands touched. John is not describing a mystical impression or a spiritual feeling. He is describing contact with something real, something that existed in the same world he did, something that left marks on the senses.
This matters because it shifts the nature of the Christian claim.
The Gospel is not primarily an invitation to adopt a philosophy or embrace a tradition. It is a claim about events that happened in history, witnessed by real people, recorded by writers who understood they would be held accountable to the truth.
The Bereans, described in Acts 17:11, offer a model worth imitating. When the Apostle Paul taught in their synagogue, they did not simply accept what he said because of who he was. They examined the scriptures daily to see whether what he was teaching was true. They fact-checked an apostle. And the text calls them noble for doing it.
That is an invitation extended to every reader.
Do not accept faith on the basis of who handed it to you. Do not rest it entirely on the warmth of a personal experience. Examine the documents. Look at the history. Ask the hard questions.
What you may find, at the end of that honest examination, is that the foundation was solid all along. It was simply waiting for you to test it.
There is a question that has the power to stop a conversation cold, expose the foundations of everything we think we know, and ultimately lead us to something far more solid than we ever expected. The question is simple: What do you believe, and why?
Most people, when pressed, fall back on one of two answers. The first is tradition. "I believe because I was raised this way." The second is personal experience. "I believe because it changed my life." Both answers feel satisfying in the moment. But neither one, when examined honestly, holds up as a foundation sturdy enough to build a life on.
Consider the first answer. If believing because you were raised in a Christian home is sufficient reason to hold your faith, then a person raised in a Muslim home has an equally sufficient reason to hold theirs. Faith inherited from family is not the same as faith owned personally. It is borrowed conviction, and borrowed conviction has a way of slipping away when life gets difficult or when someone asks a hard question in a jail cell, a college classroom, or a hospital waiting room.
The second answer carries its own complications. Personal experience is powerful, but it is not exclusive to Christianity. History offers no shortage of people who had vivid, life-altering encounters with something they believed to be divine, who went on to build entire movements around that encounter, only to discover later that they had been wrong. A transformed life is evidence that something happened. It is not, by itself, evidence of what happened or why.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a question worth taking seriously, and a faith worth defending with something more than sentiment.
The Apostle Peter, writing in 2 Peter 1:16-21, offers a striking starting point. He draws a sharp distinction between cleverly devised stories and what he and the other disciples actually witnessed. He describes being present at the Transfiguration, hearing a voice from heaven, standing on a sacred mountain with Jesus. His point is not simply emotional. He is making a claim about evidence. He is saying: we were there. And beyond what we saw, he points to something even more reliable, the prophetic word, which he describes as something that did not originate in human imagination but came through people carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Peter is not asking anyone to take a blind leap. He is inviting careful examination.
That invitation is worth accepting.
The Bible is not a single book handed down from one author in one era. It is a collection of documents written by more than forty authors, in three languages, on three continents, over a span of fifteen hundred years. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Asia, Africa, and Europe. Centuries separating the earliest writers from the latest. And yet the central story holds together with a coherence that defies accident.
More than twenty-five thousand archaeological excavations have examined the world described in these documents. Time and again, places, people, and events once dismissed as legendary or mistaken have been confirmed by physical evidence pulled from the ground.
One striking example involves the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 3:1-2, the author goes out of his way to anchor the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry to a precise historical moment. He names the ruling emperor, the regional governor, and several local officials, including a man named Licinius, identified as the ruler of a region called Abilene. For years, critics pointed to this reference as an error. They argued that Luke had confused this Licinius with an older figure who had died decades earlier, long before the time period Luke was describing.
Then, approximately eighteen years ago, an ancient Greek manuscript was discovered near the site of ancient Abilene. The inscription referenced a free man of a ruler named Licinius who had constructed a road during the reign of Tiberius, placing him squarely within the historical window Luke described. The supposed error was not an error at all. Luke knew exactly what he was writing.
Luke himself explains his method at the outset of his Gospel, in Luke 1:1-4.
He was not an eyewitness. He says so plainly. But he carefully investigated everything from the beginning, drawing on the accounts of those who were eyewitnesses, in order to write an orderly account so that his reader could know with certainty what had been taught. This is the language of a historian. Luke is not writing legend. He is writing with the deliberate care of someone who understands that accuracy matters.
The eyewitness testimony itself is equally striking. In 1 John 1:3, the Apostle John describes what he and others experienced in terms that are almost stubbornly physical. They heard. They saw with their own eyes. They looked at. Their hands touched. John is not describing a mystical impression or a spiritual feeling. He is describing contact with something real, something that existed in the same world he did, something that left marks on the senses.
This matters because it shifts the nature of the Christian claim.
The Gospel is not primarily an invitation to adopt a philosophy or embrace a tradition. It is a claim about events that happened in history, witnessed by real people, recorded by writers who understood they would be held accountable to the truth.
The Bereans, described in Acts 17:11, offer a model worth imitating. When the Apostle Paul taught in their synagogue, they did not simply accept what he said because of who he was. They examined the scriptures daily to see whether what he was teaching was true. They fact-checked an apostle. And the text calls them noble for doing it.
That is an invitation extended to every reader.
Do not accept faith on the basis of who handed it to you. Do not rest it entirely on the warmth of a personal experience. Examine the documents. Look at the history. Ask the hard questions.
What you may find, at the end of that honest examination, is that the foundation was solid all along. It was simply waiting for you to test it.
Kids Dinner Conversation Starter Parents
1. Why do we believe the Bible is true?
2. Who can we ask when we have big questions about God?
3. Why is it good to check if something we hear is true?
4. What does it mean that people saw Jesus and told others about Him?
5. How can we tell a friend why we love and follow Jesus?
2. Who can we ask when we have big questions about God?
3. Why is it good to check if something we hear is true?
4. What does it mean that people saw Jesus and told others about Him?
5. How can we tell a friend why we love and follow Jesus?
Small Group Guide
Overview
This sermon challenges believers to move beyond inherited faith and personal experience as the sole foundations for what they believe. Drawing on 2 Peter 1:16-21, Luke 1:1-4, and 1 John 1:3, Bim Nathaniel presents the Bible as a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses, supported by archaeological evidence and fulfilled prophecy. The central question driving the message is simple but penetrating: What do I believe, and why?
Opening
If someone asked you right now, "What do you believe and why?", how would you answer? How confident do you feel in that answer?
Have you ever been challenged about your faith by someone who does not share it? What was that experience like, and how did you respond?
Going Deeper
Bim pointed out that "I was raised this way" is a response that someone from any religion could give. How does that realization change the way you think about the foundation of your own faith?
The story of Malcolm X illustrated that a life-changing personal experience is not unique to Christianity. What does that tell us about the limits of using personal experience alone as the basis for our beliefs? Does this mean personal experience has no value in faith? Why or why not?
In 2 Peter 1:16-21, the apostle Peter draws a clear distinction between cleverly invented stories and eyewitness testimony. Why do you think that distinction matters, both in Peter's time and in ours?
Luke goes out of his way in Luke 1:1-4 to describe his careful investigation and his intention to write an orderly account. What does it tell you about the nature of the Gospel that its author took such care to ground it in verifiable history?
The discovery of an ancient inscription confirmed the existence of Licinius, the tetrarch of Abilene, resolving a long-standing criticism of Luke 3:1. How does evidence like this affect your confidence in the reliability of Scripture? How might you use it in a conversation with a skeptic?
In Acts 17:11, the Bereans are described as noble because they examined the Scriptures daily to verify what Paul was teaching. What would it look like for your group, or for you personally, to adopt a Berean posture toward the Bible?
Personal Reflection
Bim said his original goal was to find a 30-second answer his sons could carry with them for the rest of their lives. What is the version of that answer that you would want to pass on to the next generation in your own family or community?
Are there areas of your faith where you are still relying primarily on tradition or experience rather than a studied, examined conviction? What is one step you could take to strengthen that foundation?
Practical Applications
Write your answer. Take time this week to write out your personal response to the question, "What do I believe and why?" Aim for clarity and brevity. Share it with someone in your group next week.
Practice the Berean habit. Choose one claim made in a recent sermon or Bible study and spend 15 minutes this week examining the Scripture behind it for yourself.
Start a faith conversation. Identify one person in your life who does not share your faith. Begin praying for an opportunity to have an honest, respectful conversation with them about what you believe and why.
Explore the evidence. Look into one piece of archaeological or historical evidence that supports the reliability of the Bible. Come back to your group prepared to share what you found.
Pass it on. If you have children, younger family members, or people you mentor, find a moment this week to ask them what they believe and why. Listen to their answer, and then share yours.
Closing Prayer
Ask God to move your faith from assumption to conviction, from inheritance to ownership. Pray for the courage to examine what you believe, the humility to keep learning, and the clarity to explain your faith to others in a way that is honest, grounded, and compelling.
This sermon challenges believers to move beyond inherited faith and personal experience as the sole foundations for what they believe. Drawing on 2 Peter 1:16-21, Luke 1:1-4, and 1 John 1:3, Bim Nathaniel presents the Bible as a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses, supported by archaeological evidence and fulfilled prophecy. The central question driving the message is simple but penetrating: What do I believe, and why?
Opening
If someone asked you right now, "What do you believe and why?", how would you answer? How confident do you feel in that answer?
Have you ever been challenged about your faith by someone who does not share it? What was that experience like, and how did you respond?
Going Deeper
Bim pointed out that "I was raised this way" is a response that someone from any religion could give. How does that realization change the way you think about the foundation of your own faith?
The story of Malcolm X illustrated that a life-changing personal experience is not unique to Christianity. What does that tell us about the limits of using personal experience alone as the basis for our beliefs? Does this mean personal experience has no value in faith? Why or why not?
In 2 Peter 1:16-21, the apostle Peter draws a clear distinction between cleverly invented stories and eyewitness testimony. Why do you think that distinction matters, both in Peter's time and in ours?
Luke goes out of his way in Luke 1:1-4 to describe his careful investigation and his intention to write an orderly account. What does it tell you about the nature of the Gospel that its author took such care to ground it in verifiable history?
The discovery of an ancient inscription confirmed the existence of Licinius, the tetrarch of Abilene, resolving a long-standing criticism of Luke 3:1. How does evidence like this affect your confidence in the reliability of Scripture? How might you use it in a conversation with a skeptic?
In Acts 17:11, the Bereans are described as noble because they examined the Scriptures daily to verify what Paul was teaching. What would it look like for your group, or for you personally, to adopt a Berean posture toward the Bible?
Personal Reflection
Bim said his original goal was to find a 30-second answer his sons could carry with them for the rest of their lives. What is the version of that answer that you would want to pass on to the next generation in your own family or community?
Are there areas of your faith where you are still relying primarily on tradition or experience rather than a studied, examined conviction? What is one step you could take to strengthen that foundation?
Practical Applications
Write your answer. Take time this week to write out your personal response to the question, "What do I believe and why?" Aim for clarity and brevity. Share it with someone in your group next week.
Practice the Berean habit. Choose one claim made in a recent sermon or Bible study and spend 15 minutes this week examining the Scripture behind it for yourself.
Start a faith conversation. Identify one person in your life who does not share your faith. Begin praying for an opportunity to have an honest, respectful conversation with them about what you believe and why.
Explore the evidence. Look into one piece of archaeological or historical evidence that supports the reliability of the Bible. Come back to your group prepared to share what you found.
Pass it on. If you have children, younger family members, or people you mentor, find a moment this week to ask them what they believe and why. Listen to their answer, and then share yours.
Closing Prayer
Ask God to move your faith from assumption to conviction, from inheritance to ownership. Pray for the courage to examine what you believe, the humility to keep learning, and the clarity to explain your faith to others in a way that is honest, grounded, and compelling.
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