The Truth of the Bible (KT 12)

Is the Bible true? What would you say if someone asked you that? Most Christians instinctively answer, “Yes!”—because it is through the Bible that we learn about God, his plan, and how we are to live. But there are certain challenges that give us pause.

We know there are numerical inconsistencies—Genesis 15:13 says the Israelites were in Egypt 400 years, while Exodus 12:40–41 says 430. Still, that’s likely just rounding. Ecclesiastes 1:5 declares, “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” Technically, that’s not what happens—the earth turns, making it only seem that way. Does that make the Bible untrue?

To defend the Bible, we often rush to explain away such tensions or add qualifiers. The debate tends to narrow down to whether the Bible is true in all it teaches about doctrinal and moral matters. But even there, we run into difficulty.

Take Psalm 137—a fascinating case. This short psalm of only nine verses comes from a Jew taken captive by the Babylonians. It begins with sorrowful longing:

“By the rivers of Babylon—we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our lyres,
for our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy:
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?”

His anguish is real. He longs for home and worship. But sorrow turns to bitterness:

“Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell:
‘Tear it down!’ they cried, ‘tear it down to its foundations!’
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us—
happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

Let that final line sink in.

The psalmist says it would be a happy thing to kill the infants of his enemies. And this is in the Bible—our morally accurate Bible? Is that true? Is it right? There's no divine footnote clarifying the ethical nature of this outburst. So how do we decide?

We begin by asking: What kind of truth does the Bible aim to tell? Is it just a collection of doctrinal and moral axioms? Or does it tell a greater truth—the story of how God faithfully leads a stumbling, often mistaken people into deeper revelation and restored relationship?

The Bible is not a reference manual like an encyclopedia or dictionary. In those, each entry is expected to be factually correct. But the Bible is a story—one that moves from ignorance to understanding, from vengeance to love, from confusion to clarity.

And the clarity is found in Jesus.

After reading Psalm 137, we can turn to the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:5–6:

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble,
it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck
and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

That’s a far cry from finding joy in killing children. Jesus makes clear: harming the innocent is never a cause for happiness. The Bible reveals a journey—a movement from the psalmist’s anguished vengeance to the perfect compassion of Christ.

God patiently leads his people forward. In 1 Samuel 8, when Israel demanded a king, it displeased the prophet Samuel. But God told him:

“It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”

Their desire was wrong. And God said so.

In Luke 9, Jesus and his disciples were turned away by a Samaritan village. James and John—echoing Elijah—asked if they should call down fire from heaven to destroy them. Jesus rebuked them. He hadn’t come to destroy, even when insulted or rejected.

Sometimes Scripture makes it clear what’s right or wrong—God or Jesus explicitly tells us. But what about passages where no such clarification is given, like Psalm 137 or 2 Kings 1?

In 2 Kings 1, King Ahaziah sends three captains with fifty men each to summon Elijah. The first two demand Elijah come; he responds by calling down fire from heaven, killing them all. Only when the third captain pleads for mercy does Elijah go.

Was Elijah right to kill those men?

James and John thought so—until Jesus rebuked them. That incident in Luke 9 took place in the same region where Elijah had called down fire. Jesus’s response not only corrected James and John—it reinterpreted Elijah. Elijah had been wrong.

Violence is never God’s way. Jesus said to love not just your neighbor (Matthew 22:39), but even your enemy (Matthew 5:44–45). Why? “That you may be children of your Father in heaven.” To act in love is to act like God.

If that’s so, why is there so much violence in the Old Testament? Because the people did not yet know God’s full way. They acted in ignorance, thinking violence was necessary to fulfill God’s plan.

Yet the Bible does give glimpses of the right path. In 2 Kings 6, the king of Aram sends an army to capture Elisha. When the army arrives, Elisha’s servant panics. But Elisha prays, and God shows the servant the fiery army of heaven surrounding them. Yet that army never attacks. Instead, Elisha prays the enemy be blinded, leads them into Samaria, and then, when their sight is restored, commands that they be fed—not killed. The soldiers eat, drink, and return home. And Scripture notes, “the bands from Aram stopped raiding Israel’s territory.”

That is God’s way—not retribution, but restoration.

So what do we do with passages where God supposedly tells Joshua to kill everyone—men, women, and children? We interpret them through Jesus. Jesus reveals the heart of God, and he never killed, never commanded murder, and never condoned vengeance. Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the exact expression of his nature (Hebrews 1:3), and in him all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9).

Therefore, those commands in Joshua reflect the assumptions of fallen humans trying to enact God's plan by their own logic. But the Bible shows again and again that God does not need a sword to accomplish his will.

So—is the Bible true?

Yes. But not because every statement within it is, on its own, doctrinally or morally true. Rather, the Bible is true because all Scripture is God-breathed—given to guide, correct, and train us (2 Timothy 3:16). It tells the truth of a God who faithfully pursues relationship with a cursed and confused people. It reveals not just what people believed, but how God worked patiently through their misunderstanding to bring them to the truth found in Jesus.

When we read the Bible through the lens of Christ, we discover the truth of the journey—and we can rest in the faithful, restoring love of the God who leads it.