The Da Vinci Code Pt. 1

April 23, 2006

Ephesians 1:7-10; Luke 1:1-4

( 8:30 Show The Da Vinci Code movie trailer)

Books.  The Internet.  Commercials.  Movies.  Television.  Radio.  Newspapers.  Ads.  Magazines. 

Everywhere we look, every time we turn around, we are being fed information.

With so much information available to us today, it’s difficult to tell the difference between truth and fiction.  To quote Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”

We are seekers of the truth, especially when it comes to spiritual matters.  Many books about spirituality are being published out there and people are hungry for them. I think as followers of Christ you need to be prepared to enter in discussions with people who are seeking after spiritual matters and you must be prepared to answer their questions.

Three years ago, author Dan Brown wrote a novel that debuted at the top of the NY Times bestseller list. And it has been at or near the top of that list every week since.

The Da Vinci Code has sold over 40 million copies, it’s been translated into over 40 languages. USA Today had a two page spread about how every church, museum and chateau mentioned in the book have now become major tourist attractions throughout Europe .

It’s a book that has become a catalyst for all kinds of questions:
Questions about the church.  Questions about Jesus Christ.  Questions about God.
All of a sudden, lots of Americans are asking questions that I haven’t heard since seminary. Questions about the Bible, about the ancient church councils, about the Gnostics, questions about books like the Gospel of Thomas.

Dan Brown’s book makes some serious claims about Jesus that strike at the heart of what we believe. If you haven’t read the book, you might be interested in knowing that it will come out in movie form next month. Ron Howard and Columbia Pictures are producing it, and it stars Tom Hanks. So when the movie comes out, you will hear about it. Some are predicting that it will have a wider influence than The Passion of the Christ.

Because of the enormous popularity of this book and the likely blockbuster status of the movie, it’s essential that we address whether the claims made by the book and film are true. While the characters are obviously fictitious, Brown claims the information in the book to be true.

(Read from book) At the beginning of his book, it reads: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

So as this movie comes out, it provides an open door to talk about spiritual things. People who normally wouldn’t want to talk about Jesus will have the questions of the movie on their mind. People who aren’t normally interested in discussing the Bible will likely want to talk about what the movie claimed. This is an opportunity that we need to seize. Therefore, this sermon series is not just to help you to understand the issues yourself, but it’s to equip you to be able to share the truth with the people you come in contact with. 1 Peter 3:15 says that we should always be ready with an answer as to why we believe in Jesus. I hope to prepare you to give those answers as they relate to The Da Vinci Code.

I have collected information and research from many different sources, from history books to theology books, to writers who have written in direct response to The Da Vinci Code.

So let’s dig in.  First of all, The Da Vinci Code is a well-written mystery, based on a conspiracy. And though fascinating to read about the unsuspecting Harvard professor, the energetic French policeman, the Royal British Knight, and the Albino Monk-turned-assassin, and of course the heroine of the book, “Sophie,” as you read the book and hear all of the press that it’s getting, you recognize that this is something that is changing the way people think about the Bible.

The Bible makes claims about who Jesus is, and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code basically asserts that those claims are fiction. Brown asserts that there are these secret orders that have the real truth and therefore that the Bible is not an accurate portrayal of who Jesus really was.
So our starting point in our “quest” for the truth is the question, “Can the Bible be trusted?”

This is obviously of huge importance. If the Bible is God’s Word, then it is something we need to pay close attention to. If the Bible is merely a collection of partially made-up stories, then we need to file it under “Fiction” and quit giving it the attention and status that we as Christians usually do.

In order to answer those questions, let us answer a few accusations against the Bible. One of the claims against the Bible is, “Sure, some of the stories have a nice moral point - just like most works of fiction. But that doesn’t mean those events actually occurred.”

This is an important question: are the details in the Bible actually facts? When the Bible says that this person did this thing at this place, is that literally true or was it written as a product of someone’s imagination?  The best way to answer this concern is simple: dig in.

As archeologists dig into the ground around the places where the Bible says things happened, do they find that what the Bible says is true or do they find evidence that disproves the Bible? The answer, in fact, is that the more they dig, the more they prove the Bible’s accuracy.

Let me give you a couple of examples to make my point:
In Judges 6, we read one of the more “unbelievable” stories in the Bible. It claims that Israel marched around Jericho and then with a shout God knocked the walls down. Granted, that is an unusual story. Yet: “During the excavations of Jericho (1930-1936) Garstang found something so startling that a statement of what was found was prepared and signed by himself and two other members of the team. In reference to these findings Garstang says: ‘As to the main fact, then, there remains no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely that the attackers would be able to clamber up and over their ruins into the city.’ Why so unusual? Because the walls of cities do not fall outwards, they fall inwards. And yet in Joshua 6:20 we read ‘. . . The wall fell flat, so that the people went up into the city every man straight ahead, and they took the city.’ The walls were made to fall outward.” (Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Vol. 1), p. 69)

Or how about this: In Genesis 1, we have the claim that God spoke and the universe came into existence. Yet, the dominant scientific theory of our day (the one that all the scientific data seems to point to) is called “The Big Bang.” Its basic idea is: “All the matter in the universe was compacted into a space the size of the head of a pin, then it exploded ferociously and the universe has been expanding since.” When you boil it down, that sounds suspiciously like what Genesis is saying, “It wasn’t and then BOOM, there is was”. The Big Bang sounds to me like an attempt to explain the scientific data of God’s creative moment while trying to find a way to leave God out of it.

I could cite hundreds of other specific examples. The point is: the more they dig, the more they research, the more they prove that the facts of the Bible are facts. The Bible can be trusted.

A second charge is, “Perhaps the Bible puts forward some good moral ideas, but lots of books do that. There’s no way to prove that the Bible is God’s teaching.” The point is, again, an important one. Is there any way to prove that the Bible is not merely “a good book,” but “the God book”?

There is one way in particular that would give us indication that there is something unusual going on here. If there were things written in the Bible that looked ahead into time and could be shown to have accurately predicted the future, then that would give us indication of God’s involvement. No human has the ability to accurately predict the future 100% of the time, so if the Bible could be shown to regularly and accurately predict the future, that would push us toward knowing that there is something unusual about the Bible.

Let’s just look at one small part of the predictions the Bible makes: the predictions about the Messiah. Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah and there are at least 61 separate predictions about what the Messiah would be like. (For list, McDowell, pp. 144-166.)

Let’s just look at three predictions:
a. In Micah 5:2, it is prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem . That is fulfilled in Matthew 2:1 when Jesus, although his parents have Narareth for their hometown, are in Bethlehem for the census when Jesus is born.

b. In Zechariah 11:12, it speaks of him being sold for 30 shekels of silver. In Matthew 26:15, Judas betrays Jesus and the price he’s offered is 30 shekels of silver.

c. In Psalm 22:16, it speaks of him having his hands and feet pierced. Of course, Jesus is crucified. The particularly amazing thing about this prophecy is that crucifixion had not even been invented at the time of the writing of Psalm 22.

Couldn’t these have happened by accident? Peter Stoner estimated the likelihood of only eight of these prophecies being fulfilled in one person merely by chance. His conclusion was that the odds were 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (a 1 with 17 zeroes after it). Stoner says that would be the same as covering the state of TX with silver dollars two feet deep and then asking someone to travel as far as they wanted in any direction and pull the right silver dollar out, simply by chance.

Stoner goes on to evaluate the chance of 48 of the prophecies concerning the messiah being fulfilled by chance, the odds there had a 1 with 157 zeroes after it.

All in all, it’s clear that the Bible has an amazing record in predicting the future. And we have only considered the prophecies surrounding the Messiah. There are many others on other issues that could be noted.  Bottom line: The Bible can be trusted.

Another objection that folks with throw at the Bible is that it has changed down through the years and so therefore we don’t know what the Bible originally said.

Brown writes in The Da Vinci Code: “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).

That’s a wonderful theory, but far from the truth.

( 8:30 Show “The Book” video)

Well talk about the “Constantine Conspiracy” later in the series.  But for now you need to realize that the Bible can be trusted.

One final question:  “Why are people so interested in being able to deny the accuracy of the Bible?”  The Answer: “Because the Bible makes claims on you.”
Most books (including The Da Vinci Code) can be an enjoyable read, but in the end they make no request of you. They don’t ask you to change your life.

The Bible, on other hand, makes some huge claims. It makes claims on who God really is. It makes claims on the only way someone can find God. It makes claims on how you should live your life. It makes claims on what you should believe. It makes claims on how you should spend your money. It makes claims on what your goals in life should be.

And not only does it make claims, but many of its claims require a radical reevaluation and readjustment of our lives. Those are not things that everyone wants to do.
Therefore, it is in the interest of many people to find reasons to disbelieve the Bible. If it’s not accurate, then its claims are invalid.

Leith Anderson makes a valid and interesting point in saying that almost everyone he’s known who claimed “intellectual objections” to believing in Jesus or the Bible actually had other issues when you dug a little deeper into their heart. They didn’t want to give up that habit. They didn’t want to change that behavior. (For specifics, see pp. 234-236 in Lee Strobel’s The Case For Faith.)
I’ll say this for them: they’re right that the Bible makes radical claims on your life.

If the Bible, as we’ve shown clearly today, is accurate, then the question for you this morning is, “Will you be open to believing the Bible and allow its claims into your life?”

There’s no code, no conspiracy—just the truth.  And the truth will set you free.