Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Certain Can We Be About Jesus? | The Gospels | John 8:1-20

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Can we ever be 100% certain about anything? What evidence do we have that Jesus wasn't a fraud? And who ultimately gets to define reality? In today's episode, Patrick shares how John 8:1-20 points us to the testimony of the Father and the reasonableness of believing Jesus is who he said he was. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 8:1-20

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. I may be a cynic, but I'd like to think I'm at least honest, because the truth is that I don't believe anyone can be 100% certain about anything. Of course, your mind lights up with all sorts of disagreements, with one million things that you think you can be certain about. They must be true. You know your name. You know your parents. Where you grew up, where you lived, where you live right now. Don't you know those things with 100% certainty that they're true realities? Well, no, you don't. Maybe that's why I love movies like The Truman Show and The Matrix. I mean, what if I'm

living in a computer simulation or what if I'm living in a highly choreographed reality TV show where everybody knows the truth but me? Yes, I know those are absurd thoughts, but can you be 100% certain that they're impossible? Of course not. Or perhaps you take recourse to math. Two plus two equals four. But you have to remember, math is an abstraction of reality. If you use alternative base numbers or redefined operators, two plus two can equal 11 cubed. Okay, but you might be thinking if I have two candy bars and add two more, don't I have four? Well, again, this is a matter of definition. For example, if you take two quarts of water and you mix it with two quarts of pure ethanol,

the resulting mixture will actually be less than four quarts in total volume, because the molecules slide into the gaps between each other. So can we really be certain that even our mathematical abstractions correspond to physical reality? Well, no, not 100%. The rules can change. The circumstances can rupture no-knowns and create unknowns. I know, I know. I probably sound like a corky philosopher. And in fact, this is precisely the sort of things philosophers noodle on because the question of how we know things is itself uncertain. After all, if the human brain was just a consequence of natural selection, and by its very nature restricts confines what we can know and understand, then we have a profound problem. Just ask yourself this.

Why would nature select for mathematical precision or historical or biographical precision? Nature doesn't select for the academy or self-care. It selects for survival. Thus, if an inaccurate mind was better for survival, which is entirely plausible, then the very endeavor of thinking itself is in question. All logic, all thinking, is circular logic, confined by the evolutionary brain box. Now, if you're wondering what this has to do with the Bible, I'll finally let you in on a secret. We all make do with imperfect certainty. We have to live our lives not based on absolute certainty, but on reasonable certainty. Given what I know and what I've seen about the world, the simplest explanation for my experience is that I am a creature, not an algorithm in a matrix.

The simplest explanation for my sense of self and biographical history is that I live in time and I have a true past. The simplest explanation for mathematics is that, while numbers are absolutely, distractions, they do generally correspond to reality. And of course, the simplest explanation for a mind that can know, see, and understand the truth is that the mind didn't evolve by random chance or by survival of the fittest, but by the design of a greater mind who imbued us with the ability to see the world as it really is. So I have to endeavor to live in this world not with absolute certainty, but with reasonable certainty. And that's the very challenge Jesus presented, both to us and to his original peers. They couldn't be certain about him, but they had to make a choice. Was it more

reasonable to believe he was speaking the truth or to deny him? This question is at the heart of a conversation Jesus had with the Pharisees. Let's pick up in John 812. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. The Pharisees challenged him. Here you are, appearing as your own witness, your testimony is not valid. Jesus answered, even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards. I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are true because I am not alone. I stand with the father who sent me. And your own law, it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true.

I am the one who testifies for myself. My other witness is the father who sent me. They asked him, where is your father? You do not know me or my father, Jesus replied. If you knew me, you would know my father also. He spoke these words while teaching in the temple court near the place where the offerings were put, yet no one seized him because his hour had not come yet. So the Pharisees are wrestling with the problem of certainty.

They're saying, Jesus, you call yourself the light of the world. That's a bold claim. you say that whoever follows you will have the light of life. But who are you to say that? On whose authority, why should we believe you? And on some level, I can't judge them. If someone on the street said what Jesus said in this verse, I am the light of the world,

I'd probably think that he was mentally unwell, that he had delusions of grandeur. But Jesus isn't phased. His answer is rather remarkable. He says that he can speak better to his identity than anyone else because he knows himself. Well, fair enough, barring insanity. but then he goes one step further and says that the true witness to his identity is his father in heaven.

And you ought to ask why. I mean, God isn't constantly breaking open the heavens to affirm him in front of people. And I think that Jesus's answer is implied, but quite compelling. What he's trying to say is that to believe anything about the world, like him saying that he's the light of the world. Well, to do that, you must have some base-level foundational belief upon which to build. You can make that yourself, I think therefore I am, but that's a dangerous gambit for creature who lives 80 or 90 years at best. No, Jesus says that the baseline reality, upon which all reality can be constructed and known, must be one who stands outside of physical reality, outside

of time, one who knows all and made all. In other words, God. Build your vision of reality from the testimony of the one true God who sees all and knows all, well, if you do that, then you cannot be led astray. So he turns the mirror on us and forces us to ask, what does God say about Jesus? and he gives the audacious answer that God the Father says that Jesus is his eternal son. So we are left with a question. Even though you cannot be 100% confident about anything, what's most reasonable? That God is real and testifies to Jesus' identity, or that Jesus is a fraud. This is the question every human must answer, and as he answers it, he must hold his life in his own hands.

But Jesus promises that those who hear the testimony of God and believe in Jesus, while those are the ones who live by his light. In other words, the ones who can actually see. They can build. They can bivouac out into the world not with total certainty, but with proper confidence that they walk in the light by the light. So where do you stand on these questions? I can only speak for myself. When I consider Jesus who he was, what he did, what he taught, how he lived, I can do nothing but conclude that he really was who he says he was. When I look at the works the Father does in the lives of real people today through Jesus in the present, well, I can do nothing but conclude that the most reasonable explanation is that God is at the base of the world and Jesus is his son. So what about you? Can you look at the evidence honestly and draw a different conclusion?

Does it make sense to make your limited perception the baseline of reality? Well, maybe some people have that level of confidence in themselves, but I do not. The world cannot and does not make sense without God, without Jesus, without this story, and so I believe I can have a proper confidence about the truth. Jesus is the light of the world.