Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2006 : June 11, 2006

Theme: Truth You Can Trust

Church year occasion: Special sermon on The DaVinci Code

Everyone likes a good mystery. Even if you'd rather watch a baseball game on TV or read a romance novel, ingrained in all of us to some extent is the love of finding clues, putting them in order and deciphering them, and finally figuring out the mystery. It's like following a treasure map to the buried treasure.

Here's a mystery for you. If you heard this one before, don't give it away until people have had a little time to think about it. The mystery is this: A man leaves home; he turns left; he turns left again; he turns left a third time and comes back home where he finds two men wearing masks. So here's the question: Who are the two masked men? And I'll give you a hint: They aren't the Lone Ranger and Batman. I'll give you a hint now that will give it away. Think baseball. If a man leaves home plate, turns left around first base, turns left again around second base, turns left again around third base and come back home to home plate, the two masked men he sees are the catcher and the umpire. The great thing about mysteries is that once you've figured them out, they seem pretty easy. The problem is when you don't have enough hints and you're left in the dark. Then, more often than not, you'll never figure out the mystery.

The reason I bring this up is that for the last two and a half years a certain murder mystery has gotten international attention first as a book and now as a movie. The DaVinci Code as a book has been #1 on the New Your Times bestseller list, or close to it, since it was released a few years ago and has sold over 40 million copies in over 40 different languages. You can't find it in libraries unless you go on the waiting list. The movie has been in theaters for three weeks and has garnered almost $200 million in sales, even though it has gotten less than flattering reviews. It is a cultural phenomenon.

But that's not the reason I mention it today. It's the controversial issues that it raises that we need to be aware of and have an answer for. I know that not all of you, perhaps not even most of you, have read the book or seen the movie and have no intention of doing either. But I waited a few weeks after the movie was out so people would have the opportunity to see the movie, because now I'm going to tell you all about it -- at least the main plot.

A curator at the Louvre Museum in Paris is murdered, but he leaves clues behind that only a world-renowned Harvard professor can decipher because he's an expert in religious symbolism. His name is Robert Langdon. When he gets to the crime scene, he finds out he's a suspect in the murder, but is helped by a young French police officer, Sophie Neveau, who helps him escape. In doing so, they discover clues that the murdered curator left behind. So as they are running from the French police, they are also trying to figure out the mystery of why the man was murdered. They eventually find out, with the help of a friend, that the man was the Grand Master of an ancient, secret order, founded by the Knights Templar during the crusades. He was holding knowledge that would bring the Christian Church to its knees...

...That Christians don't have the real story of Jesus but that real truth can't be found in the Bible because the Bible we have has been put together by a pagan Roman emperor, Constantine

...That priceless works of classical art reveal these hidden messages for those who have the special knowledge to decipher them

...That Jesus isn't really God and was married to Mary Magdalene, who was actually the holy grail herself and should be worshiped as a goddess, and

...That for two thousand years the church has conspired to suppress this truth and has murdered any who got in their way.

All of these points bring up two major concerns for us that The DaVinci Code throws in your mind as if you were drenched by ice-cold water. The first: The Bible is full of lies is not reliable at all. The second: Jesus isn't who he claimed to be, God in the flesh and the Savior of the World.

When we hear such statements that are so diametrically opposed to our faith, we'd like to just say they're wrong and we're right. We can just go to the old standby: "I believe what I believe because the Bible says so." But there are some things we're dealing with that aren't in the Bible. The Bible tells us about verbal inspiration -- that the Holy Spirit was actually guiding the men who wrote the Bible so that what they wrote was the Word of God, not the word of men. But the Bible doesn't tell us everything about how the Bible came down to us -- how each book was accepted into the 66 books that now make up the Bible we have today.

And that's the key. Many of the assertions in The Da Vinci Code are about things we don't know much about. They're about art, history, ancient mystery religions, details of how the Bible developed. And into that black hole of what we and most in this world don't know, Dan Brown has stepped with his book of knowledge called The DaVinci Code. Now many are questioning as never before whether the Scriptures really are true and whether Jesus really is God and the Savior of the world. Even if it doesn't make us lose sleep because we see it as just another attack on Jesus and the Bible, yet many are taking this very seriously, and many have doubts about what they've heard about Jesus and the Bible.

Can you see why this is so dangerous and why we need to talk about it? Maybe we don't have any questions about all this, but many do, many that we are reaching out to, many young Christians who are wondering about it all. And when they ask us about it, we can tell them some things about the truth. First, the Bible wasn't put together at the Council of Nicea, and there wasn't a close vote to say that Jesus was divine. Actually, the early Christians had always believed Jesus was divine, and there is historical evidence from early Christian writings already in the second century that Jesus was God. And there are writings from non-Christians that also say early Christians believed Jesus was divine. What the council of Nicea voted on was how Jesus was divine, and the council eventually decided to describe it in the words of the Nicene Creed -- that he was not just like the Father, but that he was of the same substance as the Father -- truly God in every way.

The DaVinci Code claims that the books about Jesus' life we have in the Bible, called the Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- were only a few out of almost 80 that were chosen. The truth is, there were only a few other ones that existed, and the early Christians rejected them because they were obviously not true, whereas these Gospels we have today were agreed upon by AD 150, over a century before Constantine was even born. And besides all that, the Bible itself says that the Scriptures we have are true in their every part because "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." The other so-called "Gospels" were actually written over 100 years after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by pagans called Gnostics, who tried to fit their pagan ideas into the world of Christianity -- and failed miserably. But the point is that the Bible is true in every respect, and we can trust it wholeheartedly, including who Jesus is and what he did.

The Apostle John actually had to deal with an early form of Gnosticism already as he was writing the last books of the Bible around AD 90, and he wrote what he did to combat this false teaching, which has now reared its ugly head again because of this book and movie which are based on Gnostic belief. So let's look at our text.

Look at what John is saying and how often he says it: "...we have heard, ...we have seen with our eyes, ...we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard." In other words, John and the other apostles were eye-witnesses of the things Jesus did and taught, just like the Bible describes. They are reliable witnesses because they were there. Any Gnostic writings that come hundreds of years later would have no idea what Jesus did or taught, so they are not credible. That would be like someone today describing in detail what happened in the Civil War without consulting any history books which record what eye-witnesses observed.

The next section talks about the central message that the apostles heard from Jesus: "If we claim to have fellowship with [God] yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." There is no secret knowledge that someone has to know in order to have life. No, God is a God of light and has revealed his light to the world. He has exposed our sinful hearts with his message of truth that says he expects us to be just as perfect as he is. Because we aren't perfect, we deserve his condemnation for all eternity. But when we confess our sinfulness and turn in faith to Jesus, God's Son, Jesus' blood cleanses all our sins. We now have been brought together with God through the blood Jesus shed for the whole world, including you and me. And as a result, we have fellowship with each other as well. The secret of salvation, which used to be hidden in God from eternity, has been revealed through Jesus, who is God in the flesh.

That final point is beautifully summed up by John in the last verse of our text: "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." There will be many who continue to throw doubt into your minds about Jesus and his work, as well as the reliability of the Bible that speaks about Jesus. But let the Scriptures speak for themselves. You will find out exactly who God is and who Jesus is and what he has done for you to give you eternal life. Mysteries are fun if you can figure them out, but they are frustrating if you can't. This greatest of all mysteries has been revealed to you in the Bible. It tells you how Jesus has saved you from your sins and that salvation and fellowship with God is yours simply by believing in Jesus as your Savior from sin. Now that is truth you can trust. Amen.