Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

Every so often there’s a big fad that comes along in our culture. It hits big, it seems like everyone dives into the fad with both feet, and then it’s gone. Did anybody here ever have a pet rock or wear a mood ring? Ladies, how many of you teased your bangs really high back in the ‘80s? Did any of you girls wear jelly shoes in the ‘80s? How many of you played with a Rubik’s Cube? Did any of you put a “Baby on Board” sign in your car window? Honestly, how many of you have done The Macarena? And the Christian world is not immune to fads. Who doesn’t remember the WWJD fad from a few years back?

We live in a fad-ridden culture. Something hits like gangbusters, has it’s 15 minutes of fame, and is then forgotten as people move on to something else. But then there are those things that come along that go beyond a fad. They are actually shifts in our culture. In reality, these things actually become part of our culture.

For the next two weeks, we’re going to talk about one of those cultural phenomena. Over the next two weeks, we’re going to be Cracking the Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a novel by Dan Brown. It has owned the New York Times best seller list. It has made millions upon millions of dollars. It’s been translated into 44 languages. And it is scheduled to be released as a motion picture on May 19. It will undoubtedly rule at the box office for the foreseeable future.

We’re not talking about a fad here. The success of The Da Vinci Code is unprecedented, except for one book. Any guesses as to what that book is? The Bible. This is not a fad. This is a cultural shift. We will see evidence of this shift for the next 20 years and beyond. That’s why we need to understand the issues that this book raises.

This sermon series will be different from any I’ve done. We’re going to be getting into some pretty deep, heady stuff. I wish I had one of those easy buttons from Staples where I could just hit it and Bam! Everything is crystal clear. But some of this stuff is not easy. I’m going to do my best not to lose anybody as we move through this stuff. And if you just hate this series, it’s only two weeks long so you’ll make it. My hope is that, even though this is way different than our normal messages, we’ll all leave here with a better understanding of some critically important things.

By a show of hands, how many of you read The Da Vinci Code? Just so we’re all on the same page, we’re going to run through a lightning quick synopsis of the book so we all have some grip on what’s happening. And if you’re planning on reading the book or seeing the movie, I’m going to ruin the ending for you. But actually, the ending is really goofy anyway, so don’t worry about it.

The book begins with a murder at the Louvre in Paris. This murder leads the two main characters, Robert Langdon and Sophie Nouveau, to a trail of clues that are cryptic messages intentionally hidden in the artwork of Leonardo Da Vinci. There is a discovery of this centuries old secret society who’s mission is to protect the secret of the Holy Grail.

We all know the Holy Grail as the cup or chalice that Jesus used at the last supper. Also, there are some who suppose that this cup was also used at the crucifixion to catch Jesus’ blood. However, our understanding has been skewed by a grand cover-up by the early church. The Holy Grail is not the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper, nor was it used to catch some of Jesus’ blood at the cross. The real Holy Grail the bloodline of Jesus Christ. The New Testament that we have today does not paint an accurate picture of Jesus. According to The Da Vinci Code, Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had kids. Their kin still survives today. They’re now living in France. They’re in the phonebook. The Holy Grail did hold the blood of Jesus, but it wasn’t a cup. It was Mary Magdalene, who carried Jesus’ bloodline in her womb.

This secret was covered up by the church because they wanted to withhold the truth about Jesus. They had to cover up the fact that Jesus was trying to start this radical feminist goddess worshiping movement. This kind of Gnostic new age movement. The church had to hide the fact that he was married, and that he was not divine. In fact, the church didn’t even think of him as divine until the 4th century. At the Council of Nicaea, the church got together and decided to make Jesus divine, and while they were at it, they cobbled together a new Bible to back up their claim. The new Bible they concocted is the Bible that many of you carried in here today.

Now, some of you may be wondering, “Ok, I see all of that. But the book is just fiction. It’s fantasy. It’s a novel. It says that on the cover.”

The book fits into the genre of historical fiction. There are real names, real dates, and real places in the book. But most of the facts connected to these names, dates, and places are not true. Dan Brown makes some claims of fact in the book. So you have this strange mixture of fact and fiction. Kind of a faction. But here’s what’s happening. People see these real dates, real places, real descriptions of artwork. And because of these facts, they begin to believe the whole thing. It sounds true, so it must be true. But the important thing isn’t that Dan Brown says that it’s fact; the important thing is that many people are claiming it as fact. That’s where we run into problems.

Ben Cacharias is a preaching minister in New England. He said that his niece saw that he was reading The Da Vinci Code and her face went white. She said, “You’re reading that?” And he said, “Yeah. What do you know about it?” She said that she was asked about it at school by a friend. Her friend said that, if she read the book, she would then understand that the Bible isn’t true and Jesus isn’t from God. Some of you have had similar experiences.

We are facing in our time a revolution of views about Jesus, early Christianity, and the Bible. The Da Vinci Code simply popularizes these views. The views in this story used to be fringe academic ideas. Now, these ideas that were once fringe are now mainstream. They’re on the shelves of Barnes & Noble.

We need to understand Dan Brown who authored The Da Vinci Code. We’re not here to just blast Dan Brown. But we are here to better understand his book, and in his book, Dan Brown has an agenda. It poses as fiction, as a novel, but his agenda is a direct assault on Christianity and a Biblical worldview. He has said in interviews that, although the book is fiction, the ideas expressed in the book are true. Dan Brown is more than an author. He is a teacher, and he has millions of students.

In this two-part series, we’re going to look at the book and the man behind the book. This morning we’re talking about the book. But the book is not The Da Vinci Code. The book is the Bible. There are some serious claims about the authority and integrity of the Bible that are leveled in The Da Vinci Code. And people are buying it. And this is serious stuff, because if you can undermine the authority of the Bible, everything else falls apart and we might as well pack it up, close our doors, and never open up again because everything we’re doing is a farce and a joke.

The Da Vinci Code charges that the Bible you own is not the one that the early church used. It was doctored up in a massive conspiracy. In 325 AD, Emperor Constantine changed everything. At the Council of Nicaea, the church leaders came together to launch the greatest cover up in human history. According to Dan Brown, no one believed that Jesus was the divine Son of God up that point. But at the Council of Nicaea, they voted to exclude the books that proved that Jesus was merely a man who had a wife and kids. The books that were excluded were known as the Gnostic Gospels. They include books like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Judas. That one’s been getting a lot of press lately. The Da Vinci Code alleges that those were the true gospel books but the church outlawed them, gathered them up, and burned them. Thankfully, a few copies survived so we can find out the real truth.

It’s not surprising that people are having a hard time deciphering what’s true here because, like we said earlier, Dan Brown does include some real dates, names, people, and places in his book. But the line between fact and fiction in the story is blurry and confusing. Like we said, the melding of fact and fiction gives us this muddy sort of faction.

But if we do some simple historical research, Dan Brown’s theory begins to unravel. The code begins to crack. Even secular, non –Christian scholars see the shoddy historical accuracy of Dan Brown’s claims. Was there a Council of Nicaea? Yes, but nothing that Dan Brown says actually happened there. Did they vote? Yes, but not what Dan Brown says they were voting on. Dan Brown also says that the vote was very close, but it was actually 298 to 2. That’s not even a recount in Florida. It’s faction, some fact, some fiction.

So let’s tackle some of the questions that you may hear around the water cooler or at your school locker. How did we get this New Testament that you hold in your hand? Can we trust it? What are the other books Dan Brown talks about? How do we know who Jesus really was?

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books. How did it come to be? During Jesus lifetime, he went about preaching and teaching. As he did so, it struck a chord with people everywhere he went. People remembered him. He changed countless lives, and there were eyewitnesses that took note of this. They began to tell and retell the stories. That’s how the stories were retained. The first Scriptures were oral, not written. That doesn’t jive with us. We immediately think of the old telephone game where you whisper something in a person’s ear and then it’s passed all around the circle. By the time it makes it to the end, it’s something totally different than it was at the beginning. But we have to understand that our Bible came from a pre-literate culture. Information was passed on by word of mouth. These people grew to be very good and very accurate with passing on information orally. Today we live in a literate culture. If we don’t write it down, we don’t remember it. We use low-tech post-it-notes and high-tech blackberries, but both do the same thing for us. We write it down so we don’t forget it.

Now, at some point, the early believers knew that the story of Jesus had to be written down. Even though this was a largely pre-literate culture, there were some scribes who could read and write. And these scribes were also very accurate at recording information. The truth of Jesus had to be written down because the eyewitnesses were going to die. They also needed to write it down to spread the message. It was easier to send a letter than to go in person as the church grew, which explains why the bulk of our New Testament is letters written to different people and churches. They also had to fight against false teachers, so if they wrote it down the message would be safe. The false teachers couldn’t twist it. So, like biographies that would outlive them, the gospel was written down.

The Gospel of Luke begins this way: “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you…so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” (Luke 1:1-4, NIV)

Key point: Without exception, the New Testament books were written during the lifetime of those who were there. It was written by eyewitnesses. Look how the book of 1 John begins.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which 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…” (1 John 1:1-3, NIV)

The New Testament writers wrote about what they had seen and heard and touched and experienced. Scholars agree that the New Testament was written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, so that if they included falsehoods, other eyewitnesses would have called them on it.

Think about it this way. Let’s say that you wanted to propose the theory that JFK was never shot. It was a grand conspiracy. He’s actually living in France next door to Jesus’ kids. You should wait 20-30 more years before you propose this so that the eyewitnesses are dead. If you brought it up now, someone would say, “I was there. I saw the motorcade. I heard the gunshots. I saw the bullets hit the president’s head. I saw the blood spattered dress that Jackie was wearing.”

This is a point we all need to understand. The New Testament was written during the lifetime of eyewitnesses. If something incorrect was included, someone would have stood up and said, “No, that’s wrong. It didn’t happen that way.”

Now, if you get into a Da Vinci Code type discussion, prepare to hear this question. How do we know that the four gospels in the New Testament are right and the 80 other gospels Dan Brown claims aren’t true? First of all, there’s not 80. More like 10. And these gospels spring out of Gnosticism. The word Gnosticism comes from the word gnosis which means knowledge.

The Gnostic Gospels that Dan Brown believes were written in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. In other words, these Gnostic Gospels were written 100, 200, 300 years after the eyewitnesses of Christ were all dead. Are you with me? That is a critically important point.

The church knew there had to be criteria to weed out the real and the fabricated gospels. They came up with the canon. Not the kind of cannon that you shoot. That’s cannon with two “N’s” This is canon with one “N.” The word canon means standard or measuring stick. What were the standards and tests that a book had to meet to be included in the Bible that you hold today?

Key point: When the church formally named the canon, they didn’t vote on it. All they did is acknowledge and recognize the books that were already accepted and used and spread to tell the truth of Christ. We can also be assured that God’s inspiration was as much at work at the canonization as the writing of the Scriptures.

There were at least three criteria that had to be met if a book was to be included in the canon of Scripture.

Criteria 1 – Is this connected to one of the apostles? This is the test of apostolicity. If not, it wasn’t included.

Criteria 2 – Are the contents consistent with what Jesus really said and taught? Did it sync up with what the eyewitnesses said?

For example, the Gospel of Thomas says that women are bad and need to become men to be saved. Now I know that some of you are going to hang that verse on your refrigerators, but do you see how it doesn’t sync up with the truth of Christ. We need to understand that the Gnostic Gospels weren’t excluded. They were never taken seriously in the first place.

Criteria 3 – Does this book already have a widespread acceptance? Is it used in the church all over the known world? This is the test of universality.

This idea that the church got together and voted all the true gospels out of the Bible is just plain nonsense. One scholar wrote, “The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us gravity.” (J.I. Packer)

The evidence for the reliability of our New Testament far outweighs any other ancient writing. We have almost 25,000 ancient copies or portions of our New Testament. By comparison, the next most common writing of antiquity is the Iliad by Homer. We have 643 ancient copies of this writing.

The New Agey kind of Gnosticism found in The Da Vinci Code is taking our country by storm. It’s being pushed by celebrities. Look at Madonna. Madonna used to be material girl, now she’s a spiritual girl. The whole idea of Gnosticism is that truth is inside of you. This is all over the pages of The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown says that we’ve left the age of Pisces or fish. He says that fish is the sign of Jesus. That age is over. With the arrival of the new millennium, we entered into the age of Aquarius.

Aquarius says that the individual is the measure of truth. You are the captain of your fate. You are the god of your universe. You don’t have to answer to anybody. You can define truth however you want.

Jesus completely contradicts this idea. He says, “Don’t look within. Look to me. You cannot get there on your own. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the father except through me.”

Objective truth is available. And it’s not the spiritual snobbery of Gnosticism. It’s not secret. It’s not exclusive. It’s not only available to a chosen few who are enlightened. It’s wide open. There’s no code to be cracked. The only thing to crack is the hardness of our heart.

If you’re with us this morning checking this out, I hope you have seen how solid our foundation is. The foundation of our faith is the Word of God, and it has proven itself to be reliable time and again. It has survived every attack it has come up against, and it will survive this one. The question is will you accept the truth found within this Word of God? Jesus came to earth, fully God and fully human. He died an unimaginable death to pay the price for our sin because, contrary to Dan Brown’s thinking, we can’t do it ourselves. We needed someone to pay a price that we could not pay. And that’s why Jesus came. That’s why Jesus died. And if you don’t have a relationship with him, we’d love to invite you to meet him today.

Mike Edmisten