Sermon Transcript
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Sermon by Gene Simco
Thu, Aug 11, 2024 10AM • 58:52SUMMARY KEYWORDSbible, books, people, Greek, God, church, talk, years, Jesus, old testament, word, read, reject, new testament, wrote, king James, love, version, scriptures, story
Gene, good morning, welcome if you're new here among us, my name is Gene. I serve here at c3 church as your pastor. And I heard a story. I heard a story about an atheist school teacher. So this school teacher knew that she had, you know, Christian children in her classroom, so any chance she got, she would kind of take a dig at the Bible. Well, she found a great opportunity one day, because the lesson was on whales, so she's going to take a poke at the Jonah story. So she makes sure to tell the children that it is impossible for a whale to swallow a human, right? So it's a big animal, again, a big creature, but at the same time, little throat, little stomach. It can't happen. Well, one of the Christian girls raised her hand the Bible says, Jonah got swallowed by a whale. So the teacher, again, no, you don't understand, right? So it can't happen. Goes on and on and on. Well, a little girl doesn't even bother raising her hand this time and says, Well, you know what I'm going to ask Jonah when I get to heaven, right? Good answer. Good job. Pastor agrees. Well, the school teacher got a little agitated and maybe spoke without thinking and said, Well, what if Jonah went to hell.
So little girl quickly said, then you ask him.
So we find ourselves continuing in our series the reset, right, or reset, as they're calling it. So the idea is, no matter how good you think you are, you know how long you've been in something, the basics are really, really important. So maybe you're a Christian today, maybe you've been in it for a while, maybe you've stumbled. You kind of maybe went down the wrong path. Maybe not. Maybe you're new and you know, you really need to study the basics. It's really, really important, right? So no matter where you're at, this is a really good series for everyone, even me going through some of my old notes, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's true. I haven't thought about that in a while. So it's been healthy for me. I'm Hope, I'm hoping it's going to be healthy for you. So last week, we asked the basic question, right? So we start at the very, very beginning, does God exist? And we looked at it from a faith based and philosophy. We had a joke about me messing up a word, there's my word philosophical standpoint. I was making fun of someone for messing up a word, and I cursed myself this morning. So we'll see how many times that happens. We'll forget a count, and I know someone will count for me, philosophical and face faith, faith based position. So now we're going to look at the Bible, right, the historical position. It barely ever happens now, alright, so this is the how we know about God from a historical perspective. We're going to look at the Bible this morning, and we're going to have fun doing it. So this is kind of outside of, like, perhaps an opinionated perspective, an emotional perspective. It's the Bible, right? I'm going to show you how it's it is history. It's kind of going to be almost a two parter. So we're going to stretch some of this into next week from a different angle here. Alright? So just to acknowledge, if you've been in church for a long time again, this could be a little bit of a test of humility for a lot of people. And it was for me in preparing the message, because, as it's been called now, I think I tend to go full all off. And so if you get that joke, I start describing the Bible and go crazy. And so to get this like in a short time frame, was really hard for me, because I have to leave out a lot of stuff, and I'm like, Oh no. And then this happened, and then you don't wait, you don't know this part. It's really cool. This lady stabbed a guy through the tempo with a 10 pick. And it's awesome, you know? So I have to, like, calm down. So I'm getting all that out now, but I'm not going to be doing a lot of these details, right? So we're just looking at the basics. Like, what does it mean? So when we look at the Bible, if I had to just, like, boil it down, like, just the Bible, I look at like, what's the Bible about after reading it, a lot, a lot, a lot. And when I look at the just the overview of the Bible, man's rejection of God, that's what the Bible really is all about, when you think about it, right? So man is not happy with anything, right? So what happens in the beginning paradise? Right? Nope, you know what I mean. So that's not going to reject it, right? Man rejects each other. Man rejects the prophets, everybody, the priests. Just constant rejection, right? So that's really what it's about. Then you get to the New Testament, and they even reject Jesus, God himself in the flesh, right? And then we find out that wait, we have to now accept God. So through accepting Jesus, we get back to that paradise. And that's kind of really the point, like really, really simple, if I had to boil it down, and that's a really important basic framework for all Christians, right? We have to remember that we as humankind and in our lives, at times, reject God. God, right? And the only way to get to heaven is through the acceptance of Jesus. We have this theme of rejection acceptance going on here. That's the Bible. Now, don't say it, no, I don't have to read it, because we'll get there, right? So, so they even kill God in this rejection through Jesus. So now let's look at it a little bit more closely, so. And I'm going to encourage you guys if, if you want to dig a little deeper, you can go into the rest of the story. We did the Bible in three years. That's how long it took to really look at it in a detailed way, very detailed way, right? So go back there. But So the smallest, the shortest version of the Bible that's accepted by all Christians the 66 books. So the Bible is made up of 66 books. In general, we'll get there in a minute, like so New and Old Testament. So I'll just kind of explain the categories to you and restrain myself, and it is basically what they're all about, right? So you have the Torah right, Genesis through Deuteronomy, right? First five books of the Bible, and it begins again. God says who he is, right? So we know who he is. He created everything. It's not necessarily like a science book where we're going to learn how to make a universe or earth or anything like that. No, it's just telling us, like, look, this is who God is. He's omnipresent, omnipotent, like, He's everything. He created everything, right? So boom, there you have God, the creation story, right? He gives us paradise again. We reject it. It was perfect. And we're like, nope. We want to be like God, right? So kick down to the garden all that. We don't even like each other. We reject each other. So you get like the first murders. It just gets so bad that he has to do his own reset, right? So he floods everything, and then Noah and his family are there. But even Noah gets it wrong. So people just keep getting it wrong. So then enter Abraham like so you get prophets. You get people who talk with God, and they speak on behalf of God. So you have this and that sets up the 12 tribes of Israel. So you get from eight Isaac, then you get Jacob and Esau, but Jacob becomes Israel, and then you get his 12 sons, he has a daughter, and that's the 12 tribes of Israel. So much of Genesis is dealing with this initially, like, you know, God's chosen people, Judah, Reuben, Gad Asham and Natalia, let me know, nuts. So Simeon, Levi is Garza and Joseph and Benjamin, right? So it's all tribes of Israel, but it's not Manasseh that's in Revelation. It's Dan. Anyway, I'm trying guys. So Joseph, the last part of Genesis deals with Joseph, like a large portion of it, because he's going to set us up for that Exodus account. So there's a famine. Joseph does really well. Even those brothers hate him, try to kill him, sell him to many, unite slave traders. Anyway, he ends up in Potiphar house, and then he ends up becoming like second highest to Pharaoh in Egypt, and he saves them from a famine. It's great, right? So his whole family gets to come there. They settle there, right? But we get to the end of Genesis, we get into Exodus. And Pharaoh forgets like, you know, 400 years. So he forgets all about what Joseph did enter Moses as a baby, but the Hebrews there. They're growing in population, so Pharaoh's worried, right? We're going to kind of enslave them. Then, you know what? Kill all the first born children. Moses gets saved by Pharaoh's daughter grows up in the house, and it's a really quick part of the story. All of a sudden he's like, 80 years old, right? So it just jumps ahead, and God's telling him, hey, look, you have to basically help redeem my people. I'm trying to make this really, really simple. I get them out of this slavery from Egypt, right? So that's what he is. He's a mouthpiece, a reluctant one. So his brother Aaron comes in. They do their thing. And you probably know about, like the 10 plagues and the Exodus account, right? So that happens. So that's Exodus there, 12. Exodus 12 is a Passover initiated there, and so Moses leads the people out, and they're going to get to like a promised land so, but not before God provides for them, right? So they reject that. We don't want this man and we want to go back to Egypt. And they're immediately complaining. So they get redeemed. They're complaining about that. They get provided for water from a rock, like all this cool stuff. They just complain about everything, rejection, rejection, rejection. They get laws. They complain about that, and they break that, right? So what a lot of people don't understand about the Old Testament, especially the Torah, is from basically the that Exodus that they experienced there, uh, redeemed from that slavery through Leviticus and into numbers. So it's like, almost like two books, right? So one half of two books and anyway, so all the way through Leviticus, it's like one year. It's like a book and two halves devoted to just one year of time, all the way into numbers 13 and 14, that's where they get to scout out the land. Like, look at this wonderful land I have for you. It's a promised land. Esh, gold is like grapes, right? But the people reject that too. Their giants there were scared, so they don't trust the Lord, except Joshua and Caleb. And now the punishment is, look, they've rejected the provision. They've rejected even the land. They're not even happy with that, right? So basically, everybody dies except those 20 years old and younger and Joshua and Caleb, who did not. Protect the provision, right? So they get to go in. So even Moses is like, Hey, look at this land. You're not going to get you die. And that's really what happens to Moses is quite sad when you think about it, right? So then enter Joshua, right? So Joshua, he doesn't even, like, secure the whole land, right? So Joshua's not completely successful either. Okay, we're going to try judges. We're going to give you guys judges, right? So, you know, some of them get rejected, they're kind of messed up. So it's just a wreck there with the judges, right? Then you have Ruth. Why Ruth? Well, Ruth sets us up for David, for King David. So it's his great grandmother. And so we get a little story of Ruth in there, and that's bring us into King David. A lot of the Bible's about King David, so it's going to be important, right? So then you have First Samuel. Samuel comes in, and now he's like a judge, Priest, Prophet, kind of mixed figure going on. Really important God. Now the people really reject God. They're like, No, we want a king. We want a king like everybody else. And here's the word comes in again. God tells Samuel. If I said Solomon, I said Samuel, he tells Samuel, look, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. So it's a big, big pivotal point in the book of Samuel. So Saul. They're given Saul because he's like a head taller than everyone else. He's going to work out, great. No, it doesn't, right. So he rejects God's instructions. And then enter in King David. But we saw right if you look back at the last series, the rest second last series, the rest of the story, David wasn't so great. It wasn't just the affair with Bathsheba, like he gets 70,000 people killed, like he's really just not all that. When you look at him, right then Solomon, we saw his son broke every rule set forward for a king every rule like he just was no good, right? But for your father's sake, I love David. I'm not going to destroy you, but it'll happen after you. Rehoboam comes along. Yep, it happens. And they have, like, a civil war. So Israel in the north, Judah in the south. So now everybody's fighting with them. They're fighting with each other, and it's just generation after generation of kings. Nobody's getting it right, even like Hezekiah, maybe Josiah, they kind of get it right. Ish, but they're bad, right? So everybody's bad. And throughout they reject God. They do some really bad things. Some of them even sacrifice their children in the fire. It's no good. It's really bad. So they get punished. So we go all the way through. And so what you have is First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles. First and Second Chronicles kind of like a retelling, but it's worth reading because you get more details in there. So the Bible kind of does that. It'll do some repeat material, but what happens is they get sent in exile. That's their punishment. So first, Israel falls to the Assyrians, and then in the south Judah to the Babylonians. And it's 70 years of punishment exile for them. So it's kind of like, similar to what happened they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years for rejecting the land. This is 70 years. So they get a corporate punishment there. And that that's what happens. So that is like, Well, that's all in the historical book. So we'll continue there. After the 70 years, you get Ezra and Nehemiah. So the king Cyrus of Persia allows the people to go back and they build like the wall. They build the temple. So Nehemiah is more like a practical book building the wall. Ezra is more of a spiritual book, building up the temple. And they kind of have totally different personalities. It's really interesting. And then you get to Esther. So from Joshua to Esther, that's the historical category, Hebrew woman who becomes queen in Persia. And so that's that section there. Then you get into the poetry section. So you get job through song of Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. So that's your like wisdom and poetry section from there. And what happens is interesting is that at job, at that point between Esther and job, you can kind of ish, take everything else in the New Testament and the Old Testament and put it back into what you read before, right? So interesting job, probably someone in Genesis there. So you have the Psalms. Like David wrote 74 of the Psalms. Moses even wrote one. Solomon even wrote one. So it can kind of all go back in there proverbs. Solomon wrote a lot of those right Song of Solomon, or song of Psalms, or Song of Songs. I'll talk about that later. And then Ecclesiastes probably Solomon. So we'll go back in there. Then you have your prophets. And the same thing happens with the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel Isaiah, Joel, Amos Obadiah, Joe Zechariah, Malachi. They can all go back in there, because they're like weaving through, like the Kings, mainly, and warning everyone, right, you're rejecting God, like, stop it, stop the idols. And so that's like the main theme there, right throughout. Then you get into Malachi, you get into the New Testament, again, rejecting God. So Jesus comes rejected by his own people. You get the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, ancient Greco Roman biographies about the life and ministry of Jesus. That's technically what they are, from a scholarly standpoint, right? Then you have acts, a history of the early church. And from this point, it's very, very interesting. I've noted this before, but. When you really look at it, everything else through the rest of the New Testament, the context is church. It's kind of funny, right? Have you ever heard anybody say, like, I can be a Christian without church? Okay? You got to throw away the majority of the Bible if you're going to do that, because the context is church, right? So think about acts. It's the formation of the church, right? So what are they doing on these missional journeys, setting up churches, planting churches. It's like about church Paul's letters, right? So there's 13 letters that Paul writes by the power of the Holy Spirit, all to churches. So Romans, first, Corinthians, second, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, first, Thessalonians, second, Thessalonians. First, Timothy, second, Timothy. Titus, Philemon, probably not Hebrews, right? But then James, right? So James, Jesus's brother. First and Second, Peter, Peter, the lead apostle. First and Third, John, John the disciple Jesus loved. And then even Jude, probably Jesus's brother. Then you get into Revelation. And there it starts with seven letters to the churches, and then it's a prophetic book. And again, the main point here is that Jesus is coming back, and you see, at the end of Revelation, he's going to bring us back to that paradise, like all who are in Him and accept Him. I'm going to bring you back. And that's really the crux of it. So the categories of the Bible, it's kind of how you break it down into sections and how it looks and the basic story. Okay,
I was able, you know, that was hard for me. Okay, so anyway,
keeping it short, really hard. I get excited because there's so many cool details that I want to share. Alright, so fun fact. So let's get into some of kind of, like, the technical details without being too boring. Another thing I'm like, don't be like a professor. Like, don't be too boring with these guys. So I'm trying to keep it moving, but some interesting things. So we can't possibly, in America, talk about the Bible without talking about the King James Version, right? Because it is probably the best selling of all the Bibles. I'm not really sure, but I know the Bible is the best selling book of all time. Like, by far, nothing's even close, but the King James. It's like, our culture's really, in a large way, kind of been built on that. When we think of the Bible, even, like, if you watch Jeopardy or something like that, they turn it on in the evening and the Bible questions will come on first. It was really weird, because it's not really my preferred version. So they'd ask a question. I'm like, that's weird. Like, I've already worded like that really old English they use, like the old units and measurements and things like that. So I went on a quest, and I'm like, No, I'm never going to get any Jeopardy questions wrong about the Bible again. And so I read the King James Bible, like 100 times. Very familiar. I have a bunch of King James Bible. It's not a knock on that Bible translation. It's very good, especially for its time. But there are some people who think that, like, Jesus spoke Victorian English and like, you know what I mean, and so we just got to deal with that. And so, you know, if that's you, you're going to be really insulted, but that's okay. So they think that that's the only version, and it just couldn't be further from the truth. It's just not. It's certainly the most influential, but it's not superior. I'll demonstrate a couple little things in there. In any way, there's a lot of idiomatic things that are different. It certainly is not word for word at all. There are some errors in it. You just got to deal with it. And if you want to know more about that, we can nerd out on that another time. But, but still, you know, first time, very, very good. You know, we owe a lot to the translators. It was a great feat, but I've actually heard and just got to, kind of just as the thing for you, there are people out there like this. It's like the King James only ism cult, right? So it's really like a cult, like, That's it, like, you can't read any other version. That's God's word. And, you know, it was like, printed in 1611 so I guess for 1600 years, like, all Christians were wrong. I don't get it like anything they read before, like, that's no good, right? Okay, so it's an arrogant, weird position. Anyway, it's kind of ignorant, if I'm being honest with you. And I actually had one person approach me and say, like, you know, to come at me with all this stuff. And I was like, okay, so you're saying, okay, like, people in China can be Christians, right? Yeah, okay. Do they have to learn English? Furthermore, Victorian English, like, or Shakespearian, whatever it is, right to become Christians. And they got kind of stuck. Well, it's the best thing to go back. Well, it is the best translation of God's Word. I'm like, Yeah, but shouldn't they just have a Chinese version or something like that, right? And I'm like, Well, you know what the best version is the Greek? And they're like, this just really came out of this guy's mouth. So expect everyone to learn Greek, right? So if you're going to force someone to learn a language, why don't we just all learn Greek, right? That would make sense, because that's the original, right? So Jesus didn't speak English. So let's go backwards from the King James, and we'll, kind of, I want to show you guys, kind of how the Bible, in a very basic way, was constructed, like, how did it come about? What? What would we have? So we'll go from the King James, not the modern translations. We'll go back to modern translations. So. So the first thing is that the King James Bible is not the first English translation, not even close. So I'm going to do show and tell via video. How about that? Alright, so let's do some show and tell. So these are some of my old Bibles. They're not actually that old, but they're like reprints and things like that. So you have the 1537, Matthews. That's English, very old English, kind of hard to read. 1560 Geneva. That's the Bible that the Pilgrims had tucked under their arm when they, like, discovered this land, or they came to this land, whatever you want to. So I'm not a history teacher, right? So it's a pilgrim Bible. So it's the first Bible that hit our shores before it was America. So you have that. And this is just a couple. So then you get to the 1611, King James. A notable feature, and that's what I'm pointing out in some of this video, is that the all of these Bibles, including the King James, they all have more books in the Old Testament. Oh, Jehovah, Judas like so it's not a Catholic thing at all. For those who want to hate on Catholic it's not a Catholic thing. They just have more books in the Maccabees, a longer version of Daniel in the early church. They're looking at that. So your great granddaddy's King James Bible looked a lot different, and not just like the writing. So the funny thing it's called the apocrypha. But the funny thing about it is Apocrypha means hidden. It was not hidden in the church for the first 1800 years. There's nothing hidden about it. Who is in the Bible. Another feature that I'm probably showing is that the oldest Christian bibles, the oldest of this is like, it's not literally that all I wish, right? Uh, old Bible. It's, again, a reprint. It's all in Greek, even the Old Testament. It's not in Hebrew, because the church was born in a Greek speaking world. And so I'll get a little bit into that too, but it's not so this is an Old Testament in Greek. I think it's frozen there. So that's my that's me. I stopped it there, so not in Hebrew, right? So we'll get into that. So when we look at the earliest of that's kind of why it's taking you back through time all the way to about 350 ad and that's like the oldest full complete copies. We have older fragments and stuff. But like, when you look at a complete copy of like the Bible of the early church, all Greek has some extra books in the Old Testament, and that's what it looked like. That's what the early Christians were reading from. So let's go all the way back to the beginning, and kind of think about how the Bible was constructed. Like, how did it all get put together? So we have to go to the Old Testament. And this, there are couple things in here which a lot of pastors don't like to say, and I say them, and pastors get mad at me, and they're like, Oh, you're going to upset the faith of everyone you know. And it's like, well, it's better that it comes from me than an atheist who, like, blows your mind or beats you in an argument, right? So this whole like, Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so, you know, doesn't work with atheists. You got to kind of we did talk about faith, and I'm not talking about arguing with people. That's not what we're supposed to do. But so that, you know, we need to be educated and intelligent about this stuff. So you're looking at, like, manuscript evidence in history. That's, that's what it comes down to. But in the simple way, I'll put it on a timeline for you. So Moses, it's around, let's just round numbers again, 1500 BC, like, that's, that's Moses. That's when he left. So just really, really like general time frames here. So if you're looking at it right, so that's, he's really the first author of the Bible, says Jesus, right? So he's writing some of the Old Testament, right? But we don't have any manuscripts until two to 300 BC. So you see the gap there. There is a gap there, right? So you're looking at somebody. Well, how long does this go back? So, yeah, like 2000 years, or 2002 or 300 years like that, right? So something like that, whereas Moses is, if I'm doing a math, right, like 3500 years before us, right? So it's 2000 years and zero and then 1500 right? 3500 years. So that's what you're looking at. So he's writing around 3500 years ago, but we don't have that. We don't have it. And so there's a couple of things you got to get comfortable with when you're really educating yourself about the Bible, oral tradition. That's just the thing like that. They just did that. And it's kind of like, it's hard to come up with an analogy, but like, it's not like telephone. It's more like if you have a close knit family, and like every family occasion, they're telling stories about your grandfather, your great grandfather, right? Those stories are generally very consistent. They're told the same way. The details are exactly the same. When someone misses one, somebody else chimes in, right? So that's kind of what it's like. It's pretty solid. Really. The more I get to know the Word of God. Like, you know, those of you know me know I can, like, paraphrase through a lot of, like, you know, complete sections of the Bible, just because I know it really well, right? So that was going on a lot two we see in the Bible, they are writing things down. So just because we don't have that original and we have old copies, it doesn't mean that it wasn't passed from a source. Right? So like, they wrote it down, they passed it on. They lost the first one, but they passed on the copy which was good. And one thing to note, so you're looking at also in the Old Testament, old manuscripts, and some are in Greek, and, like you have Dead Sea Scrolls, some are in Hebrew. And when you're looking at that stuff, like, even if something's in this part of the world and something's in this part of the world, when they come together, they're remarkably like, similar. They're remarkably similar. They really are. That's kind of amazing when you think about it. So this is a large work. I made it really fast, but it's a lot of text, and so it's coming together and really remarkably similar. So that is cool. So the oral tradition, you do have things being right. Some things are written on rocks. So like Gerizim and Ebel, if you know your Bible really well, like Joshua is told to write things down. Things down. So they did write them down, but we just don't have a lot of it.
But the important thing for the church, the Bible, the Church, which I want to kind of educate you on very briefly, and you can go back to this other series where I go into real depth about it. Very, very, probably one of the most important works of this time. It's called the Septuagint, or Septuagint. It's really, really important. There are many books written about it at a scholarly level, and people like pleading for this information to be out there more, because it clears up a lot of different things. So the basic story is that, so you have these Hebrew Scriptures, you have what we would call, let's just say, the Old Testament now, especially the Torah and light. I want to say lighthouse, because of the song The Library of Alexandria. So you've probably heard of that, right? King Ptolemy at the time wants copies made for that library, but he wants them in Greek, because it's a Greek speaking world. Alexander the Great took over most of the known world at that time. And so what happens is, and it's kind of an interesting story, some people will say it's a legend, but when you really look into it, you do have historical account of this written way back then. But when you look at all the Christian early fathers and other like historical writings and historians, they're all talking about this as if it's totally true. So this is what they believed, and that's what you have to look at. What did they believe at that time? So around 250 BC, so like couple 102, years before Jesus Ptolemy commissions these elders, so these scribes to go to the lighthouse of Alexander, essentially, and make these copies. So it's seventh Septuagint is like 70 but there are 72 of them. And the story goes that they were sectioned off, maybe like two by two, and they made the translation when they all came back together. It was exactly identical. And so the early church recognized this as a miracle. It was a Holy Spirit inspired translation of the Old Testament. The only thing probably the first five books at this point in time that was preparing the way for Jesus. So even Jewish scholars in this time frame, so like Philo Josephus, they're not Christians. They're saying like this is a superior version of the scriptures. So they believed that. And the early church, they believed that. And indeed, when you look at the Greek version of the Old Testament. It includes prophecies about Jesus that the Hebrew does not contain. It's not there, alright. So Isaiah 714 is probably one of the most popular, the virgin birth, not in the Hebrew. And so if you got to most Bibles do, if you look at Isaiah 714 it'll say like something like LXX, that means 70, that means Septuagint. And so the translator there is telling you, yeah, we got it from the Hebrew, but we had to go to the Greek to get the prophecy. And they just kind of, for some strange reason, don't want to admit it. It's really strange. So it's in your footnote. LXX is all over your Old Testament, and that's what it's pointing to, alright? So like in the Psalms, Psalm 22 pierced my hands and feet. Jesus, the prophecy about Jesus's crucifixion, that's not in Hebrew, that's only in the Greek alright. So this Greek version prepares like a path for Jesus. Scripturally, it's very, very, very important. Also, just as I mentioned before and we I talked about this in the last series, it also included those other books, like Judith Tobit, Maccabees, all that's in there, alright, so this is where that comes from, and this is what the early church is reading. That's it. And also in the other the rest of the story, series two, series back I showed you how in the New Testament, they quote from those books. They're also writing in Greek in Greek in the New Testament and quoting the Greek version. They're primarily not quoting any Hebrew version. That's all Greek. So very, very important and very interesting. So when you read it that way, when you're reading Greek, it's way more consistent. It's pretty amazing. Actually, you get to see like, Joshua is Jesus, what it says he's a pre figure of Jesus, right? Jeshua is Jesus. It's a pre figure of Jesus. So it lines up so much better. It's so much more clear. Alright, so this brings us to the New Testament. This is where we're going to do a little more next week on this. But the big deal about the New Testament is that they're, they're written in a witness, basically a witness category, a witness time frame, right? So. Of the written by witnesses or people who interviewed witnesses. And this is very important, right? So you have the Gospels, as I mentioned, acts as a history of epistles, letters to the churches, and then a prophecy book in Revelation, right? What you should know, if you're not going to you know you're going to leave the church today,
is that it's the works are better attested and greater in number than any for that time period, including those for Alexander the Great I'll show you demonstrate that next week. It's pretty amazing, way closer than any other historical writings of the time period, and in a lot of ways like so if you don't know my story. I was an atheist. I've been like everything, right? So all kinds of different world views. I really studied all the world views. If I was looking at Christianity and someone only gave me an Old Testament, I might be able to poke a few holes in again, very, very accurate. But I as a skeptic, it wouldn't get me to cross the finish line. It just would just me, I don't know, maybe, but me, it wouldn't have. It wouldn't have when I learned about sexual criticism, when I learned about the New Testament and how bulletproof it was, historically sold, sold, oh my gosh, it's really unbelievable. And what happens is, it's a commentary on the old so what it does is it comes along and really validates a lot of what is in the Old Testament from a historical perspective, not a faith based perspective, right? So if we're looking at it so hear what I said. You know, when I did not believe the Old Testament didn't get me there, but the New Testament did, and I'll show you how to do that next week. Very simple formula with really like, proofing the text there, really easy to do, right? So, but I have faith, and so it's all the Word of God, it, it's all good, right? So that's the big thing. So how did it come to be like, how do we know? Like, why are these books here? Certain books not well, when you're looking at the New Testament, you have something called canonization, right? So it's what's accepted by the church. So very, very, very early on, the church, especially with the New Testament, had accepted what goes in there. Like, really early on they knew who wrote what you're talking about, like, 100 something years out. Like, that's not a long time for that stuff. So the church had councils on it, and they're deciding, okay, these are legitimate. They belong in there. And it's in a different order. In old Bibles, yes, the books are kind of mixed up, a little bit different, but for the most part, these early church fathers are agreeing on what's in your Bible. There's not a lot of disagreement, like first Clements and outlier in there in the beginning, but then it slowly just dissipates. And you have qualifications. Had to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Talk about that in a minute. Had to have sound theology and doctrine and had to be written by a witness, or somebody who interviewed a witness, right? So, like Luke comes to mind, right? To Jesus. So, and the other thing that's really cool about a lot of people don't know, even if we didn't have the New Testament, and this is something really interesting to think about. You have all these early church fathers writing. They're like historical letters going back and forth to one another. If we didn't have the New Testament, we'd have enough from other historians and church fathers to completely reconstruct the New Testament. Think about that for a second. That's crazy. There's so many quotes that you could just rebuild it. So that's how like valid it is. You know what? I mean? Just from a historical standpoint, it's amazing, like people are it's out there. People are talking about it, quoting it, like super early on, right? So when we talk about the Old Testament, a lot of people say, Well, how did it change? Right? How come my Bible doesn't have even what the 1611, King James does in it? We've talked about this in the past. I'll get into a little more in this series. Really, Paul's worst nightmare. What? Well, think about the reason Paul's writing a lot of these letters, like Roman Ephesians, especially unity, he's only always calling for you. Like denominations are his worst nightmare, like he'd never wanted the church to split up like that. It was really bad. And so when you're going back and looking at these writings, when languages did change, you have, like, a interchange between Jerome and Saint Augustine. You probably know who he is, not just a place in Florida and so, so and so what happens is, like, 405, comes in. It's not just a Greek speaking world, it's a Roman world. And so they want a version in Latin. And so Jerome gets really passionate about this, and he decides to go to the Hebrew instead of the Greek that the church had been reading from. And Augustine has a problem with it. And he brings up two things, uh, he brings up that it's better in the Greek. That's like the Holy Spirit inspired version. Why are you changing it right then? Why you going to the Hebrew? And it was newer Hebrew Scriptures. It's not like the real old stuff, like two people have rejected Jesus. Why are you doing that? But he comes up with the Latin Vulgate. And you start getting divisions, right? So then you get the great schism in 1054 the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. And then you get the Protestants, which branch off of Catholics, and what a lot of Reformed, uh. Protestants don't realize is they're just reformed Catholics, because that's the branch you're from. The Orthodox church went a different way, better to be non denominational than any of it, right? So the Orthodox Church maintains the Greek. They don't go that Vulgate way. They never did. So their copy of their Bible is actually kind of a little more sound Old Testament wise. But what you get is some Protestant disputes about certain books like that they started calling apocryphal was not apocryphal on the original one. Such book is Maccabees, where Judah Maccabees prays for the dead. Alright? So instead of doing what you're supposed to do with all biblical texts, when a person, because Judah Maccabees is not God like David makes some mistakes, is you just tell it like it is and say, well, David's a sinner, right? Well, he made mistakes like Judy Maccabees. That might not have been a good decision. God never commands him to pray for the dead. This is something he did. But instead of kind of like reconciling that and talking about it, they read the books out of the Bible and got rid of them. That's it like. So that's the main reason it was, like a publishing excuse, or something like that. So they slowly got rid of it and finally got rid of it. So but about the 1800s you see, like the King James doesn't have those books in it anymore. So it's pretty amazing. Just think about it. Like for the first 1800 years of Christianity, we're around 2000 ish, the majority of Christianity, those books were in the Bible. So just food for thought, right? What are they scripture or not? Different discussion, right, for a different time, but it's, I'm just giving you guys facts. So they're kept by the Catholic Church. They're kept by the Orthodox Church. And what's really funny is, if you've been in church for a long time, you've probably had like, a pastor or seen someone think like they know so much about the Bible, and one of the Bible translations they probably touted as being the best translation, because it's word for word man is the ESV. Because I said, somebody be snooty about their ESV and tell you that that was the best translation. Well, if they said that, if they said the word literal, they absolutely don't know how to read Greek. They don't know what they're talking about. They have no basis for that. It's not literal. And so explain that in a moment about that. So anyway, the ESV, though, when you get to the scholarly editions, their version of the scholarly level has the Apocrypha in it, yeah. And in their forward, they say, Yeah, because it was in the original Bible of the church, yeah. So read it. So anyway, just fun facts, right? So I'm kind of nerding out, and I'm just making myself laugh. Who wrote them the Holy Spirit, and so that's the most important thing to remember. They're inspired. What does that mean? Let's look at what the Bible says about that second Timothy, 316, All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work, to prepare. I don't know why I did that. Yeah, I curse myself this morning anyway. So it's inspired by the Holy Spirit, right? So now you can bring up that picture that I almost lost for you guys, good. So think of it like MC Escher, a hand drawing hand, right? So it's God working with man, working together. So the Holy Spirit inspires these people to write the scriptures at that time. And so it's kind of a good visualization, I think, if not whatever. But you have people talking about it. One good place to go is in First Corinthians, seven. You have Paul, like, kind of delineating. He's like, Well, I don't necessarily have a command from the Lord on this, but I'm filled with the Holy Spirit, right? So he makes that delineation. So it's that, like hand drawing hand thing. There are Paul's personalities, especially when you get to read the Greek and it hasn't been glossed over. You can tell the difference between John, you can tell the difference between Paul and you can tell the difference between Peter, different people. They have, like, their own kind of style while the Holy Spirit's using them. So it's really quite interesting. Just like, if I'm speaking by the Spirit, you're going to use my voice. My voice will be different from another voice. So really interesting. Also, you get into Peter. He says Paul is writing Scriptures. He lets you know that it's scripture. The Holy Spirit is prompting him to write it. So the next question, just answering questions that people ask, would usually be, so what's the best translation? What translation, the original Greek is the best? So everybody learn Greek. If you are King James person, got to throw that away and learn the Greek, because that's the best. So just to really, just make this really simple, if you put it on, like, one of those, like meters, like, you know, like this, just like that, you're, you're dealing with two broad categories, thought for thought, word for word, right. So, formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence, so, but basically, thought for thought, word for word. Right now, here's the thing you got to know, nobody is word for word, so that's a lie. If they say literal lie like it's just not possible. Now, anyone in here and so many of my friends here speak another languages, some of you are like English as a second one. Language. Some, some of you have tried translating the service one, so we tried translating in Spanish. First problem with that is, and this was a ridiculous reason, was that I speak too fast,
and then I talk to Spanish people. I'm like, have you heard yourselves right now? Like, serious, like, I just, they gave you the hand. I was just like, I don't want to even talk to you about this anymore. That's stupid. I suppose you're welcome. You know, it's like, my attitude, like, I'm not slowing down. You just think too slow. Like, that's your problem. Anyway, anyway that you don't want to translate for me. But the problem was, like, what we ran into and realized you couldn't get a good translation. Like, I would use an idiom, I'd use a cultural reference, and the translator would sit there going, never mind, you know, or he means this, like, you're trying to get your equivalent idiom. We don't think the same. Also, if you know anything about like, especially Spanish Portuguese, I'm a little more familiar with Portuguese. We have people here. We talk about this all the time. It they think backwards, right? So it's just backwards for us, right? So we think black belt, right? They say Faxia Preta, which is like a belt black right? So it's like, it's backwards, so you have to take that time to reconstruct it in your mind, if you're really fast. And so those un like people like translating, I'm like, I don't know how they do it and get it right. But if you know both, like, we see it all the time, like, if anyone starts speaking Portuguese and movie nine times out of sound like, that's not what they said. Those weren't the exact words they gave you the point. So if you watch, like, Narcos who watch it, but they start speaking Spanish, right? And you know, that's not what they said. Like, like, that's not exact, because they've gone thought for thought, because sometimes that's better. So we need to understand that, like, so don't get like, when people are snooty, like NLT, I preach from NLT, because everyone's going to understand it. And then what if it's not close enough to the Greek? What do I do? I put the Greek in there, and I've done that. I did that last week, right? That's fine, you know, because I know everyone's going to understand that's the job. So thought for thought, a lot of times, is way better, because when you're doing word for word, crossing two cultures, it's not the way we think as it just doesn't work, alright? So just so you know, you know. And going back to the so anyway, in that category, like, you'll have like, word for word, it's not really like, it's like that word for word, you know, N, A, S V, E, S V, King James is in there, but even the King James. So an example. This is one example. It occurs once in well more than once in Romans. You get this example of where they say, God forbid. In Chapter Three Romans, I think six two, they'll say, God forbid. So should we just keep sinning so grace may abound? God forbid? Well, when you look at the Greek, it doesn't say God at all. You look at the Greek, it just says, like it not become, but like, May it never be. God is not there. So the King James has actually added the word God to the Word of God, which we're not supposed to do. Think about it, right? So, so it's bad, right? But it says God forbid. But why is it not bad? Because if you were living during that time, you would have said, God forbid, right? That was my best try in English accent. So, right, but you might say that, and so that's all it means. So even King James is thought for thought, it's not word for word. So there's no such thing. So all sinutiness out the window. Have you ever said, You know what the best translation is, repent? So which are the best ones? Well, if you want the mainstream, because there are some, like, what I would call garbage translations out there, a lot of commentaries and things like that. I'm like, No, but you know, the mainstream ones are all good as long as you understand it, as long as you read it, alright, which brings me to this point, alright, so we'll go to the Word of God for this, right? So Deuteronomy, six, four. Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength. I just want to take a second talk about the first two verses we're looking at not that they're like more important than any of the other verses, but so the first verse is the Shema. So every Jewish kid memorizes this, Shama Israel, Adonai elohinu, Adonai Echad. So that's the original, right? So they learn how to say that, and it's also often your dying words, if you're a Jewish person. So that's a pretty important scripture. The next one is in Jesus's dialog, right? With describing things, he knows everything. What's the most important command? Well, this is what he comes back with, right? So he's saying that to Jesus. Jesus validates it important. But look what it says next six, and you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you're at home and when you're on the road and when you're going to bed and when you're getting up, tie them on your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders, write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So, I mean, like be surrounded by this, like the Scriptures, the Bible all the time, and if you know Revelation 13 says hand and forehead, ah, it's the anti Shamal, right? So. It follows the Shema. So you're supposed to, like, be in the word constantly, is what the Bible commands us to do. Again, in Joshua, you've probably heard this, be strong and courageous, dot, dot, dot, right? And that's all you heard, right? So that was it for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. That's not you be strong and very courageous, right? So as we skip that part, be careful. Definitely say skip this. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or the left, then you will be successful in everything you do. So it's not just the strong and courageous part that gets you over the finish line. It's obeying God's word, then you will be successful. Study this book of instruction continually meditate on it day and night so that you'll be sure to obey everything, not just some of it, everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in what you do that's just never going to be the verse of the day, right? We get to the New Testament. First, Timothy, four, six, in pointing out these things to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ, Jesus constantly nourish on the words of the faith and of the good doctrine which you have been following. Entophemenos in Greek. It's like, like, perpetually fed on it, like just all the time. It's a part of you. It's in you. You're just, that's it. You're like a living, breathing Bible like that. That's really what we're committed. I want to put the New Testament in there too. It's not just Old Testament saying that, right? And did you notice only then, only then will you succeed? Not a program we get in churches today, right? If you do this program, you're going to be set or if you do this, no, only if you are in the Word of God all the time, will you succeed? That's what the Bible says, Not saying, sorry. Alright, so that's what God tells us. So
let's go back to second Timothy again. Look
at something else. Second Timothy, 316, All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong, and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. So its purpose for you is to find your purpose in God. So how well to explain what is true? I don't think anyone would disagree that we live in the misinformation age, right? There's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of garbage out there's a lot of lies out there. I don't care what side I mean at this point, are we ready to admit that they're all liars? It's just like, crazy, right? Like, I got to pick which one's not the worst somehow, right? Like, this is nuts. It's so bad you go on the internet and you could find a truth about anything, right? Totally. The opposite, totally. I mean, it's a mess, right? So we go to this for truth, truth, right? So the real news, right? This is the good news. The good news is not delivered from the world, the good news is delivered from the word period and not but someone came along and realized that there was something better, there is nothing better. There's nothing more true than this. So it teaches us what is true,
right, to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. Here's
where everyone's like, let's talk about this for a while, right? It corrects us
when we are wrong. That's what people do. I'm all the time, right? So they try to just move that line on sin a little bit. Well, we're saying it's okay. Now, I know what the Bible says, But you know, the Bible really needs to modernize. You know, like, it's like it hasn't been around for 1000s of years, so you people justifying certain sins and different things. And it's like, we our nature hasn't changed people, I'm sorry. It just, it just has not right? So it lets us know, right? It makes us realize we should be reading it the listen the Bible. I I'm making it a lot of fun, but if I had a really bad day,
like I might be as negative as the Bible is. Sometimes
it's mostly it doesn't. This isn't like, Hey, you're doing great. Put this down. Hey, you're doing great. Whoa. Jesus didn't need to die because you got it. It's not what the Bible says. The Bible is highly negative and highly corrective for our good. Talks a lot about sin and what we're doing wrong. What did I just say? The Bible is about how we rejected God. But in our lives, do we sometimes reject God? Yeah, so the Bible comes along and, yo, you're wrong. You need to get back in line. It's important, right? So more people, when you read the Bible, you need to think that, right? He's a good father, so he's going to correct us. He uses it to prepare and equip his people for every good work shows us how to do life like I was even amazed. It was a couple weeks ago, whenever it was when I was talking about sin and I went there, I was like, Alright, let me find all the scriptures that say, prove it like you're a Christian, but prove it. It's the. Mean, I was like, preparing the message. I'm like, Heather, the Bible tells Christians, they need to prove they're Christians a lot, and we put that up on the screen. It was overwhelming. If you were here for those messages, it's literally, like, I think like, 10 people didn't come back, right? Because the Bible says, like, again. And it was just unreal. And I didn't even put them all up. I was like, reading and listening the other day. And I'm like, I could use those too, like it says it so much. Prove it. Prove it. Why? What's Paul saying there, which is, be blameless, all these other things, we're to be witnesses, or we read the Bible, but it's been said, right? We may be the only Bible that anyone reads, right? Well, it's partially true. We're to be witnesses, right? So we need to approach everything we do like that with love and grace and try to attract people to the faith, right? If we love them, we want them to get in heaven too, right? So it's really, really important. I've said this before, what we do says more about what we believe than anything we can possibly say. So it's important. And just to encourage you as I close this up. You know, I've given this illustration before, but it's just worth noting, right? Like, if you're, if you love someone, you know you're in a marriage. It's a 22 years we just celebrated, which is great. That's for her, by the way. That's, that's, you made it, but you really love someone. I wasn't even going to put that in there. I just but it, but anyway, so I really love my wife, right? So that's the key. You don't know the key. Like, well, don't talk a lot, so it's hard for me, right? How did you make it? Right? But you need to love the person. Really love them, right? So we've been through so much, it's not perfect away. We've been through like, some bad stuff, right? But it's love, like, I
just love her, like, I That's it. I can't
even explain it. I just love her, right? So every year I get a letter from her. It comes in an envelope, and I love getting it. I can't wait I get this and she writes it, and it's a car. Don't even read the card. I just sorry. I just read what she wrote, right? So she knows, but, you know, I look forward to it. But can you imagine, like, if I got to a place where, like, she gives me the envelope and then it's just sitting there a week later, unopened,
that would say a lot.
It might say something like, maybe he doesn't love me,
you know, like, why isn't he excited about getting this from you? Why doesn't he want to read a love letter from me?
This is God's love letter to us.
Didn't have to do it.
So what does it say about
our relationship with God, if we don't want to read it, what does it say about someone who comes in here and they're like, Pastor gene, you use too many scriptures. That frightens me. I'm like,
the little girl, like,
you're going to hell, right? But you know, I'm like, There's no way you can have a relationship with the Lord and not and be bothered by the fact that I use scriptures. Now. What is it with these churches where one line of scripture on the screen and then they just talk, not about anything important, huh? Like, you know, I've read whole books of the Bible. Do you guys like so remember James today? And you're like, Oh no, I didn't want to kill myself, right? So, but like the sermons, talk about the Sermon on the Mount. What did I do? I just read the Sermon on the Mount. I don't know.
And then people I'm not joking. Every time I do that, people
leave like, are you crazy? You'd rather hear my stupid jokes. Right Then the word of God, that says a lot, and it's scary, really scary, right? So we need to always have this in our minds and hearts and how much God loves us, what he and you, and if you don't believe today, how much God loves you, you need to know that He loved us so much he could have just said, Fine, you rejected me. Paradise back, you know, like I'm done with you, right? No, he keeps trying again and again and again, or like the prodigal son, like a vision of that, right? But then finally, okay, fine, I'm going to come, and he knew the plan from the beginning. I'm going to come in a human form like them, and suffer and die for them. Is that enough? It is for me, somebody say yes, yes. That should be enough. Remember that, right? And then he gave us this love letter, right? So that when we have those lapses in faith, when we're going through, we have the truth we know we can be certain. So just an encouragement to you guys, look, if you're just sick of everything that's out there, I've been sick of everything that's out there, nothing in the world. Long time ago did it for me, and that's how I came to Christ. It's not doing it for me anymore. It's not right. But if you're sick Furthermore, of everything, like the lies, sick of lies like just, just so annoying to me. Done with the lies of the world, done with programs that didn't work right from the world, right? Or self help stuff, or whatever it is you enter, right if you're tired of trusting in other things, whether it be financial or political institutions. Are you done yet? Cuz I haven't met one person who put their stock in any of these programs, any of these institutions, even financially, that isn't actually totally miserable on the inside, these things exist to make you angry, to make you fearful, in a bad way, right, to keep you in the loop of consumerism. And if you're done, I want to invite you
read God's word.
This is the only book that is going to bring you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self, control. It's here. This is the truth. And so if there's one takeaway today, and you forget about how long Moses ago Moses wrote it, or whatever, whatever, know this that this is God's love letter to you, and it is all true, and this is the only place in the world that you can find the truth, the good news is here and here alone. We pray for you. Lord, I thank everyone who came in today to hear Your word, to listen to the truth this morning. And Lord I just, I want to encourage everyone who's watching online, listening in, everyone here today just to be encouraged if, if you just to know the truth, Lord, just empty them and so that they can surrender to you of all this nonsense, Lord, and fill them with your Holy Spirit, which will guide them to that love, that joy, that peace, that patience, that kindness, the goodness, that faithfulness, that you desire for every single person in this room, Lord, let them know that you love them no matter what they've done. It's never too late for the truth. It's never too late for a new beginning. I ask these things In Jesus's Name. Amen.
Gene, good morning, welcome if you're new here among us, my name is Gene. I serve here at c3 church as your pastor. And I heard a story. I heard a story about an atheist school teacher. So this school teacher knew that she had, you know, Christian children in her classroom, so any chance she got, she would kind of take a dig at the Bible. Well, she found a great opportunity one day, because the lesson was on whales, so she's going to take a poke at the Jonah story. So she makes sure to tell the children that it is impossible for a whale to swallow a human, right? So it's a big animal, again, a big creature, but at the same time, little throat, little stomach. It can't happen. Well, one of the Christian girls raised her hand the Bible says, Jonah got swallowed by a whale. So the teacher, again, no, you don't understand, right? So it can't happen. Goes on and on and on. Well, a little girl doesn't even bother raising her hand this time and says, Well, you know what I'm going to ask Jonah when I get to heaven, right? Good answer. Good job. Pastor agrees. Well, the school teacher got a little agitated and maybe spoke without thinking and said, Well, what if Jonah went to hell.
So little girl quickly said, then you ask him.
So we find ourselves continuing in our series the reset, right, or reset, as they're calling it. So the idea is, no matter how good you think you are, you know how long you've been in something, the basics are really, really important. So maybe you're a Christian today, maybe you've been in it for a while, maybe you've stumbled. You kind of maybe went down the wrong path. Maybe not. Maybe you're new and you know, you really need to study the basics. It's really, really important, right? So no matter where you're at, this is a really good series for everyone, even me going through some of my old notes, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's true. I haven't thought about that in a while. So it's been healthy for me. I'm Hope, I'm hoping it's going to be healthy for you. So last week, we asked the basic question, right? So we start at the very, very beginning, does God exist? And we looked at it from a faith based and philosophy. We had a joke about me messing up a word, there's my word philosophical standpoint. I was making fun of someone for messing up a word, and I cursed myself this morning. So we'll see how many times that happens. We'll forget a count, and I know someone will count for me, philosophical and face faith, faith based position. So now we're going to look at the Bible, right, the historical position. It barely ever happens now, alright, so this is the how we know about God from a historical perspective. We're going to look at the Bible this morning, and we're going to have fun doing it. So this is kind of outside of, like, perhaps an opinionated perspective, an emotional perspective. It's the Bible, right? I'm going to show you how it's it is history. It's kind of going to be almost a two parter. So we're going to stretch some of this into next week from a different angle here. Alright? So just to acknowledge, if you've been in church for a long time again, this could be a little bit of a test of humility for a lot of people. And it was for me in preparing the message, because, as it's been called now, I think I tend to go full all off. And so if you get that joke, I start describing the Bible and go crazy. And so to get this like in a short time frame, was really hard for me, because I have to leave out a lot of stuff, and I'm like, Oh no. And then this happened, and then you don't wait, you don't know this part. It's really cool. This lady stabbed a guy through the tempo with a 10 pick. And it's awesome, you know? So I have to, like, calm down. So I'm getting all that out now, but I'm not going to be doing a lot of these details, right? So we're just looking at the basics. Like, what does it mean? So when we look at the Bible, if I had to just, like, boil it down, like, just the Bible, I look at like, what's the Bible about after reading it, a lot, a lot, a lot. And when I look at the just the overview of the Bible, man's rejection of God, that's what the Bible really is all about, when you think about it, right? So man is not happy with anything, right? So what happens in the beginning paradise? Right? Nope, you know what I mean. So that's not going to reject it, right? Man rejects each other. Man rejects the prophets, everybody, the priests. Just constant rejection, right? So that's really what it's about. Then you get to the New Testament, and they even reject Jesus, God himself in the flesh, right? And then we find out that wait, we have to now accept God. So through accepting Jesus, we get back to that paradise. And that's kind of really the point, like really, really simple, if I had to boil it down, and that's a really important basic framework for all Christians, right? We have to remember that we as humankind and in our lives, at times, reject God. God, right? And the only way to get to heaven is through the acceptance of Jesus. We have this theme of rejection acceptance going on here. That's the Bible. Now, don't say it, no, I don't have to read it, because we'll get there, right? So, so they even kill God in this rejection through Jesus. So now let's look at it a little bit more closely, so. And I'm going to encourage you guys if, if you want to dig a little deeper, you can go into the rest of the story. We did the Bible in three years. That's how long it took to really look at it in a detailed way, very detailed way, right? So go back there. But So the smallest, the shortest version of the Bible that's accepted by all Christians the 66 books. So the Bible is made up of 66 books. In general, we'll get there in a minute, like so New and Old Testament. So I'll just kind of explain the categories to you and restrain myself, and it is basically what they're all about, right? So you have the Torah right, Genesis through Deuteronomy, right? First five books of the Bible, and it begins again. God says who he is, right? So we know who he is. He created everything. It's not necessarily like a science book where we're going to learn how to make a universe or earth or anything like that. No, it's just telling us, like, look, this is who God is. He's omnipresent, omnipotent, like, He's everything. He created everything, right? So boom, there you have God, the creation story, right? He gives us paradise again. We reject it. It was perfect. And we're like, nope. We want to be like God, right? So kick down to the garden all that. We don't even like each other. We reject each other. So you get like the first murders. It just gets so bad that he has to do his own reset, right? So he floods everything, and then Noah and his family are there. But even Noah gets it wrong. So people just keep getting it wrong. So then enter Abraham like so you get prophets. You get people who talk with God, and they speak on behalf of God. So you have this and that sets up the 12 tribes of Israel. So you get from eight Isaac, then you get Jacob and Esau, but Jacob becomes Israel, and then you get his 12 sons, he has a daughter, and that's the 12 tribes of Israel. So much of Genesis is dealing with this initially, like, you know, God's chosen people, Judah, Reuben, Gad Asham and Natalia, let me know, nuts. So Simeon, Levi is Garza and Joseph and Benjamin, right? So it's all tribes of Israel, but it's not Manasseh that's in Revelation. It's Dan. Anyway, I'm trying guys. So Joseph, the last part of Genesis deals with Joseph, like a large portion of it, because he's going to set us up for that Exodus account. So there's a famine. Joseph does really well. Even those brothers hate him, try to kill him, sell him to many, unite slave traders. Anyway, he ends up in Potiphar house, and then he ends up becoming like second highest to Pharaoh in Egypt, and he saves them from a famine. It's great, right? So his whole family gets to come there. They settle there, right? But we get to the end of Genesis, we get into Exodus. And Pharaoh forgets like, you know, 400 years. So he forgets all about what Joseph did enter Moses as a baby, but the Hebrews there. They're growing in population, so Pharaoh's worried, right? We're going to kind of enslave them. Then, you know what? Kill all the first born children. Moses gets saved by Pharaoh's daughter grows up in the house, and it's a really quick part of the story. All of a sudden he's like, 80 years old, right? So it just jumps ahead, and God's telling him, hey, look, you have to basically help redeem my people. I'm trying to make this really, really simple. I get them out of this slavery from Egypt, right? So that's what he is. He's a mouthpiece, a reluctant one. So his brother Aaron comes in. They do their thing. And you probably know about, like the 10 plagues and the Exodus account, right? So that happens. So that's Exodus there, 12. Exodus 12 is a Passover initiated there, and so Moses leads the people out, and they're going to get to like a promised land so, but not before God provides for them, right? So they reject that. We don't want this man and we want to go back to Egypt. And they're immediately complaining. So they get redeemed. They're complaining about that. They get provided for water from a rock, like all this cool stuff. They just complain about everything, rejection, rejection, rejection. They get laws. They complain about that, and they break that, right? So what a lot of people don't understand about the Old Testament, especially the Torah, is from basically the that Exodus that they experienced there, uh, redeemed from that slavery through Leviticus and into numbers. So it's like, almost like two books, right? So one half of two books and anyway, so all the way through Leviticus, it's like one year. It's like a book and two halves devoted to just one year of time, all the way into numbers 13 and 14, that's where they get to scout out the land. Like, look at this wonderful land I have for you. It's a promised land. Esh, gold is like grapes, right? But the people reject that too. Their giants there were scared, so they don't trust the Lord, except Joshua and Caleb. And now the punishment is, look, they've rejected the provision. They've rejected even the land. They're not even happy with that, right? So basically, everybody dies except those 20 years old and younger and Joshua and Caleb, who did not. Protect the provision, right? So they get to go in. So even Moses is like, Hey, look at this land. You're not going to get you die. And that's really what happens to Moses is quite sad when you think about it, right? So then enter Joshua, right? So Joshua, he doesn't even, like, secure the whole land, right? So Joshua's not completely successful either. Okay, we're going to try judges. We're going to give you guys judges, right? So, you know, some of them get rejected, they're kind of messed up. So it's just a wreck there with the judges, right? Then you have Ruth. Why Ruth? Well, Ruth sets us up for David, for King David. So it's his great grandmother. And so we get a little story of Ruth in there, and that's bring us into King David. A lot of the Bible's about King David, so it's going to be important, right? So then you have First Samuel. Samuel comes in, and now he's like a judge, Priest, Prophet, kind of mixed figure going on. Really important God. Now the people really reject God. They're like, No, we want a king. We want a king like everybody else. And here's the word comes in again. God tells Samuel. If I said Solomon, I said Samuel, he tells Samuel, look, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. So it's a big, big pivotal point in the book of Samuel. So Saul. They're given Saul because he's like a head taller than everyone else. He's going to work out, great. No, it doesn't, right. So he rejects God's instructions. And then enter in King David. But we saw right if you look back at the last series, the rest second last series, the rest of the story, David wasn't so great. It wasn't just the affair with Bathsheba, like he gets 70,000 people killed, like he's really just not all that. When you look at him, right then Solomon, we saw his son broke every rule set forward for a king every rule like he just was no good, right? But for your father's sake, I love David. I'm not going to destroy you, but it'll happen after you. Rehoboam comes along. Yep, it happens. And they have, like, a civil war. So Israel in the north, Judah in the south. So now everybody's fighting with them. They're fighting with each other, and it's just generation after generation of kings. Nobody's getting it right, even like Hezekiah, maybe Josiah, they kind of get it right. Ish, but they're bad, right? So everybody's bad. And throughout they reject God. They do some really bad things. Some of them even sacrifice their children in the fire. It's no good. It's really bad. So they get punished. So we go all the way through. And so what you have is First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles. First and Second Chronicles kind of like a retelling, but it's worth reading because you get more details in there. So the Bible kind of does that. It'll do some repeat material, but what happens is they get sent in exile. That's their punishment. So first, Israel falls to the Assyrians, and then in the south Judah to the Babylonians. And it's 70 years of punishment exile for them. So it's kind of like, similar to what happened they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years for rejecting the land. This is 70 years. So they get a corporate punishment there. And that that's what happens. So that is like, Well, that's all in the historical book. So we'll continue there. After the 70 years, you get Ezra and Nehemiah. So the king Cyrus of Persia allows the people to go back and they build like the wall. They build the temple. So Nehemiah is more like a practical book building the wall. Ezra is more of a spiritual book, building up the temple. And they kind of have totally different personalities. It's really interesting. And then you get to Esther. So from Joshua to Esther, that's the historical category, Hebrew woman who becomes queen in Persia. And so that's that section there. Then you get into the poetry section. So you get job through song of Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. So that's your like wisdom and poetry section from there. And what happens is interesting is that at job, at that point between Esther and job, you can kind of ish, take everything else in the New Testament and the Old Testament and put it back into what you read before, right? So interesting job, probably someone in Genesis there. So you have the Psalms. Like David wrote 74 of the Psalms. Moses even wrote one. Solomon even wrote one. So it can kind of all go back in there proverbs. Solomon wrote a lot of those right Song of Solomon, or song of Psalms, or Song of Songs. I'll talk about that later. And then Ecclesiastes probably Solomon. So we'll go back in there. Then you have your prophets. And the same thing happens with the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel Isaiah, Joel, Amos Obadiah, Joe Zechariah, Malachi. They can all go back in there, because they're like weaving through, like the Kings, mainly, and warning everyone, right, you're rejecting God, like, stop it, stop the idols. And so that's like the main theme there, right throughout. Then you get into Malachi, you get into the New Testament, again, rejecting God. So Jesus comes rejected by his own people. You get the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, ancient Greco Roman biographies about the life and ministry of Jesus. That's technically what they are, from a scholarly standpoint, right? Then you have acts, a history of the early church. And from this point, it's very, very interesting. I've noted this before, but. When you really look at it, everything else through the rest of the New Testament, the context is church. It's kind of funny, right? Have you ever heard anybody say, like, I can be a Christian without church? Okay? You got to throw away the majority of the Bible if you're going to do that, because the context is church, right? So think about acts. It's the formation of the church, right? So what are they doing on these missional journeys, setting up churches, planting churches. It's like about church Paul's letters, right? So there's 13 letters that Paul writes by the power of the Holy Spirit, all to churches. So Romans, first, Corinthians, second, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, first, Thessalonians, second, Thessalonians. First, Timothy, second, Timothy. Titus, Philemon, probably not Hebrews, right? But then James, right? So James, Jesus's brother. First and Second, Peter, Peter, the lead apostle. First and Third, John, John the disciple Jesus loved. And then even Jude, probably Jesus's brother. Then you get into Revelation. And there it starts with seven letters to the churches, and then it's a prophetic book. And again, the main point here is that Jesus is coming back, and you see, at the end of Revelation, he's going to bring us back to that paradise, like all who are in Him and accept Him. I'm going to bring you back. And that's really the crux of it. So the categories of the Bible, it's kind of how you break it down into sections and how it looks and the basic story. Okay,
I was able, you know, that was hard for me. Okay, so anyway,
keeping it short, really hard. I get excited because there's so many cool details that I want to share. Alright, so fun fact. So let's get into some of kind of, like, the technical details without being too boring. Another thing I'm like, don't be like a professor. Like, don't be too boring with these guys. So I'm trying to keep it moving, but some interesting things. So we can't possibly, in America, talk about the Bible without talking about the King James Version, right? Because it is probably the best selling of all the Bibles. I'm not really sure, but I know the Bible is the best selling book of all time. Like, by far, nothing's even close, but the King James. It's like, our culture's really, in a large way, kind of been built on that. When we think of the Bible, even, like, if you watch Jeopardy or something like that, they turn it on in the evening and the Bible questions will come on first. It was really weird, because it's not really my preferred version. So they'd ask a question. I'm like, that's weird. Like, I've already worded like that really old English they use, like the old units and measurements and things like that. So I went on a quest, and I'm like, No, I'm never going to get any Jeopardy questions wrong about the Bible again. And so I read the King James Bible, like 100 times. Very familiar. I have a bunch of King James Bible. It's not a knock on that Bible translation. It's very good, especially for its time. But there are some people who think that, like, Jesus spoke Victorian English and like, you know what I mean, and so we just got to deal with that. And so, you know, if that's you, you're going to be really insulted, but that's okay. So they think that that's the only version, and it just couldn't be further from the truth. It's just not. It's certainly the most influential, but it's not superior. I'll demonstrate a couple little things in there. In any way, there's a lot of idiomatic things that are different. It certainly is not word for word at all. There are some errors in it. You just got to deal with it. And if you want to know more about that, we can nerd out on that another time. But, but still, you know, first time, very, very good. You know, we owe a lot to the translators. It was a great feat, but I've actually heard and just got to, kind of just as the thing for you, there are people out there like this. It's like the King James only ism cult, right? So it's really like a cult, like, That's it, like, you can't read any other version. That's God's word. And, you know, it was like, printed in 1611 so I guess for 1600 years, like, all Christians were wrong. I don't get it like anything they read before, like, that's no good, right? Okay, so it's an arrogant, weird position. Anyway, it's kind of ignorant, if I'm being honest with you. And I actually had one person approach me and say, like, you know, to come at me with all this stuff. And I was like, okay, so you're saying, okay, like, people in China can be Christians, right? Yeah, okay. Do they have to learn English? Furthermore, Victorian English, like, or Shakespearian, whatever it is, right to become Christians. And they got kind of stuck. Well, it's the best thing to go back. Well, it is the best translation of God's Word. I'm like, Yeah, but shouldn't they just have a Chinese version or something like that, right? And I'm like, Well, you know what the best version is the Greek? And they're like, this just really came out of this guy's mouth. So expect everyone to learn Greek, right? So if you're going to force someone to learn a language, why don't we just all learn Greek, right? That would make sense, because that's the original, right? So Jesus didn't speak English. So let's go backwards from the King James, and we'll, kind of, I want to show you guys, kind of how the Bible, in a very basic way, was constructed, like, how did it come about? What? What would we have? So we'll go from the King James, not the modern translations. We'll go back to modern translations. So. So the first thing is that the King James Bible is not the first English translation, not even close. So I'm going to do show and tell via video. How about that? Alright, so let's do some show and tell. So these are some of my old Bibles. They're not actually that old, but they're like reprints and things like that. So you have the 1537, Matthews. That's English, very old English, kind of hard to read. 1560 Geneva. That's the Bible that the Pilgrims had tucked under their arm when they, like, discovered this land, or they came to this land, whatever you want to. So I'm not a history teacher, right? So it's a pilgrim Bible. So it's the first Bible that hit our shores before it was America. So you have that. And this is just a couple. So then you get to the 1611, King James. A notable feature, and that's what I'm pointing out in some of this video, is that the all of these Bibles, including the King James, they all have more books in the Old Testament. Oh, Jehovah, Judas like so it's not a Catholic thing at all. For those who want to hate on Catholic it's not a Catholic thing. They just have more books in the Maccabees, a longer version of Daniel in the early church. They're looking at that. So your great granddaddy's King James Bible looked a lot different, and not just like the writing. So the funny thing it's called the apocrypha. But the funny thing about it is Apocrypha means hidden. It was not hidden in the church for the first 1800 years. There's nothing hidden about it. Who is in the Bible. Another feature that I'm probably showing is that the oldest Christian bibles, the oldest of this is like, it's not literally that all I wish, right? Uh, old Bible. It's, again, a reprint. It's all in Greek, even the Old Testament. It's not in Hebrew, because the church was born in a Greek speaking world. And so I'll get a little bit into that too, but it's not so this is an Old Testament in Greek. I think it's frozen there. So that's my that's me. I stopped it there, so not in Hebrew, right? So we'll get into that. So when we look at the earliest of that's kind of why it's taking you back through time all the way to about 350 ad and that's like the oldest full complete copies. We have older fragments and stuff. But like, when you look at a complete copy of like the Bible of the early church, all Greek has some extra books in the Old Testament, and that's what it looked like. That's what the early Christians were reading from. So let's go all the way back to the beginning, and kind of think about how the Bible was constructed. Like, how did it all get put together? So we have to go to the Old Testament. And this, there are couple things in here which a lot of pastors don't like to say, and I say them, and pastors get mad at me, and they're like, Oh, you're going to upset the faith of everyone you know. And it's like, well, it's better that it comes from me than an atheist who, like, blows your mind or beats you in an argument, right? So this whole like, Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so, you know, doesn't work with atheists. You got to kind of we did talk about faith, and I'm not talking about arguing with people. That's not what we're supposed to do. But so that, you know, we need to be educated and intelligent about this stuff. So you're looking at, like, manuscript evidence in history. That's, that's what it comes down to. But in the simple way, I'll put it on a timeline for you. So Moses, it's around, let's just round numbers again, 1500 BC, like, that's, that's Moses. That's when he left. So just really, really like general time frames here. So if you're looking at it right, so that's, he's really the first author of the Bible, says Jesus, right? So he's writing some of the Old Testament, right? But we don't have any manuscripts until two to 300 BC. So you see the gap there. There is a gap there, right? So you're looking at somebody. Well, how long does this go back? So, yeah, like 2000 years, or 2002 or 300 years like that, right? So something like that, whereas Moses is, if I'm doing a math, right, like 3500 years before us, right? So it's 2000 years and zero and then 1500 right? 3500 years. So that's what you're looking at. So he's writing around 3500 years ago, but we don't have that. We don't have it. And so there's a couple of things you got to get comfortable with when you're really educating yourself about the Bible, oral tradition. That's just the thing like that. They just did that. And it's kind of like, it's hard to come up with an analogy, but like, it's not like telephone. It's more like if you have a close knit family, and like every family occasion, they're telling stories about your grandfather, your great grandfather, right? Those stories are generally very consistent. They're told the same way. The details are exactly the same. When someone misses one, somebody else chimes in, right? So that's kind of what it's like. It's pretty solid. Really. The more I get to know the Word of God. Like, you know, those of you know me know I can, like, paraphrase through a lot of, like, you know, complete sections of the Bible, just because I know it really well, right? So that was going on a lot two we see in the Bible, they are writing things down. So just because we don't have that original and we have old copies, it doesn't mean that it wasn't passed from a source. Right? So like, they wrote it down, they passed it on. They lost the first one, but they passed on the copy which was good. And one thing to note, so you're looking at also in the Old Testament, old manuscripts, and some are in Greek, and, like you have Dead Sea Scrolls, some are in Hebrew. And when you're looking at that stuff, like, even if something's in this part of the world and something's in this part of the world, when they come together, they're remarkably like, similar. They're remarkably similar. They really are. That's kind of amazing when you think about it. So this is a large work. I made it really fast, but it's a lot of text, and so it's coming together and really remarkably similar. So that is cool. So the oral tradition, you do have things being right. Some things are written on rocks. So like Gerizim and Ebel, if you know your Bible really well, like Joshua is told to write things down. Things down. So they did write them down, but we just don't have a lot of it.
But the important thing for the church, the Bible, the Church, which I want to kind of educate you on very briefly, and you can go back to this other series where I go into real depth about it. Very, very, probably one of the most important works of this time. It's called the Septuagint, or Septuagint. It's really, really important. There are many books written about it at a scholarly level, and people like pleading for this information to be out there more, because it clears up a lot of different things. So the basic story is that, so you have these Hebrew Scriptures, you have what we would call, let's just say, the Old Testament now, especially the Torah and light. I want to say lighthouse, because of the song The Library of Alexandria. So you've probably heard of that, right? King Ptolemy at the time wants copies made for that library, but he wants them in Greek, because it's a Greek speaking world. Alexander the Great took over most of the known world at that time. And so what happens is, and it's kind of an interesting story, some people will say it's a legend, but when you really look into it, you do have historical account of this written way back then. But when you look at all the Christian early fathers and other like historical writings and historians, they're all talking about this as if it's totally true. So this is what they believed, and that's what you have to look at. What did they believe at that time? So around 250 BC, so like couple 102, years before Jesus Ptolemy commissions these elders, so these scribes to go to the lighthouse of Alexander, essentially, and make these copies. So it's seventh Septuagint is like 70 but there are 72 of them. And the story goes that they were sectioned off, maybe like two by two, and they made the translation when they all came back together. It was exactly identical. And so the early church recognized this as a miracle. It was a Holy Spirit inspired translation of the Old Testament. The only thing probably the first five books at this point in time that was preparing the way for Jesus. So even Jewish scholars in this time frame, so like Philo Josephus, they're not Christians. They're saying like this is a superior version of the scriptures. So they believed that. And the early church, they believed that. And indeed, when you look at the Greek version of the Old Testament. It includes prophecies about Jesus that the Hebrew does not contain. It's not there, alright. So Isaiah 714 is probably one of the most popular, the virgin birth, not in the Hebrew. And so if you got to most Bibles do, if you look at Isaiah 714 it'll say like something like LXX, that means 70, that means Septuagint. And so the translator there is telling you, yeah, we got it from the Hebrew, but we had to go to the Greek to get the prophecy. And they just kind of, for some strange reason, don't want to admit it. It's really strange. So it's in your footnote. LXX is all over your Old Testament, and that's what it's pointing to, alright? So like in the Psalms, Psalm 22 pierced my hands and feet. Jesus, the prophecy about Jesus's crucifixion, that's not in Hebrew, that's only in the Greek alright. So this Greek version prepares like a path for Jesus. Scripturally, it's very, very, very important. Also, just as I mentioned before and we I talked about this in the last series, it also included those other books, like Judith Tobit, Maccabees, all that's in there, alright, so this is where that comes from, and this is what the early church is reading. That's it. And also in the other the rest of the story, series two, series back I showed you how in the New Testament, they quote from those books. They're also writing in Greek in Greek in the New Testament and quoting the Greek version. They're primarily not quoting any Hebrew version. That's all Greek. So very, very important and very interesting. So when you read it that way, when you're reading Greek, it's way more consistent. It's pretty amazing. Actually, you get to see like, Joshua is Jesus, what it says he's a pre figure of Jesus, right? Jeshua is Jesus. It's a pre figure of Jesus. So it lines up so much better. It's so much more clear. Alright, so this brings us to the New Testament. This is where we're going to do a little more next week on this. But the big deal about the New Testament is that they're, they're written in a witness, basically a witness category, a witness time frame, right? So. Of the written by witnesses or people who interviewed witnesses. And this is very important, right? So you have the Gospels, as I mentioned, acts as a history of epistles, letters to the churches, and then a prophecy book in Revelation, right? What you should know, if you're not going to you know you're going to leave the church today,
is that it's the works are better attested and greater in number than any for that time period, including those for Alexander the Great I'll show you demonstrate that next week. It's pretty amazing, way closer than any other historical writings of the time period, and in a lot of ways like so if you don't know my story. I was an atheist. I've been like everything, right? So all kinds of different world views. I really studied all the world views. If I was looking at Christianity and someone only gave me an Old Testament, I might be able to poke a few holes in again, very, very accurate. But I as a skeptic, it wouldn't get me to cross the finish line. It just would just me, I don't know, maybe, but me, it wouldn't have. It wouldn't have when I learned about sexual criticism, when I learned about the New Testament and how bulletproof it was, historically sold, sold, oh my gosh, it's really unbelievable. And what happens is, it's a commentary on the old so what it does is it comes along and really validates a lot of what is in the Old Testament from a historical perspective, not a faith based perspective, right? So if we're looking at it so hear what I said. You know, when I did not believe the Old Testament didn't get me there, but the New Testament did, and I'll show you how to do that next week. Very simple formula with really like, proofing the text there, really easy to do, right? So, but I have faith, and so it's all the Word of God, it, it's all good, right? So that's the big thing. So how did it come to be like, how do we know? Like, why are these books here? Certain books not well, when you're looking at the New Testament, you have something called canonization, right? So it's what's accepted by the church. So very, very, very early on, the church, especially with the New Testament, had accepted what goes in there. Like, really early on they knew who wrote what you're talking about, like, 100 something years out. Like, that's not a long time for that stuff. So the church had councils on it, and they're deciding, okay, these are legitimate. They belong in there. And it's in a different order. In old Bibles, yes, the books are kind of mixed up, a little bit different, but for the most part, these early church fathers are agreeing on what's in your Bible. There's not a lot of disagreement, like first Clements and outlier in there in the beginning, but then it slowly just dissipates. And you have qualifications. Had to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Talk about that in a minute. Had to have sound theology and doctrine and had to be written by a witness, or somebody who interviewed a witness, right? So, like Luke comes to mind, right? To Jesus. So, and the other thing that's really cool about a lot of people don't know, even if we didn't have the New Testament, and this is something really interesting to think about. You have all these early church fathers writing. They're like historical letters going back and forth to one another. If we didn't have the New Testament, we'd have enough from other historians and church fathers to completely reconstruct the New Testament. Think about that for a second. That's crazy. There's so many quotes that you could just rebuild it. So that's how like valid it is. You know what? I mean? Just from a historical standpoint, it's amazing, like people are it's out there. People are talking about it, quoting it, like super early on, right? So when we talk about the Old Testament, a lot of people say, Well, how did it change? Right? How come my Bible doesn't have even what the 1611, King James does in it? We've talked about this in the past. I'll get into a little more in this series. Really, Paul's worst nightmare. What? Well, think about the reason Paul's writing a lot of these letters, like Roman Ephesians, especially unity, he's only always calling for you. Like denominations are his worst nightmare, like he'd never wanted the church to split up like that. It was really bad. And so when you're going back and looking at these writings, when languages did change, you have, like, a interchange between Jerome and Saint Augustine. You probably know who he is, not just a place in Florida and so, so and so what happens is, like, 405, comes in. It's not just a Greek speaking world, it's a Roman world. And so they want a version in Latin. And so Jerome gets really passionate about this, and he decides to go to the Hebrew instead of the Greek that the church had been reading from. And Augustine has a problem with it. And he brings up two things, uh, he brings up that it's better in the Greek. That's like the Holy Spirit inspired version. Why are you changing it right then? Why you going to the Hebrew? And it was newer Hebrew Scriptures. It's not like the real old stuff, like two people have rejected Jesus. Why are you doing that? But he comes up with the Latin Vulgate. And you start getting divisions, right? So then you get the great schism in 1054 the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. And then you get the Protestants, which branch off of Catholics, and what a lot of Reformed, uh. Protestants don't realize is they're just reformed Catholics, because that's the branch you're from. The Orthodox church went a different way, better to be non denominational than any of it, right? So the Orthodox Church maintains the Greek. They don't go that Vulgate way. They never did. So their copy of their Bible is actually kind of a little more sound Old Testament wise. But what you get is some Protestant disputes about certain books like that they started calling apocryphal was not apocryphal on the original one. Such book is Maccabees, where Judah Maccabees prays for the dead. Alright? So instead of doing what you're supposed to do with all biblical texts, when a person, because Judah Maccabees is not God like David makes some mistakes, is you just tell it like it is and say, well, David's a sinner, right? Well, he made mistakes like Judy Maccabees. That might not have been a good decision. God never commands him to pray for the dead. This is something he did. But instead of kind of like reconciling that and talking about it, they read the books out of the Bible and got rid of them. That's it like. So that's the main reason it was, like a publishing excuse, or something like that. So they slowly got rid of it and finally got rid of it. So but about the 1800s you see, like the King James doesn't have those books in it anymore. So it's pretty amazing. Just think about it. Like for the first 1800 years of Christianity, we're around 2000 ish, the majority of Christianity, those books were in the Bible. So just food for thought, right? What are they scripture or not? Different discussion, right, for a different time, but it's, I'm just giving you guys facts. So they're kept by the Catholic Church. They're kept by the Orthodox Church. And what's really funny is, if you've been in church for a long time, you've probably had like, a pastor or seen someone think like they know so much about the Bible, and one of the Bible translations they probably touted as being the best translation, because it's word for word man is the ESV. Because I said, somebody be snooty about their ESV and tell you that that was the best translation. Well, if they said that, if they said the word literal, they absolutely don't know how to read Greek. They don't know what they're talking about. They have no basis for that. It's not literal. And so explain that in a moment about that. So anyway, the ESV, though, when you get to the scholarly editions, their version of the scholarly level has the Apocrypha in it, yeah. And in their forward, they say, Yeah, because it was in the original Bible of the church, yeah. So read it. So anyway, just fun facts, right? So I'm kind of nerding out, and I'm just making myself laugh. Who wrote them the Holy Spirit, and so that's the most important thing to remember. They're inspired. What does that mean? Let's look at what the Bible says about that second Timothy, 316, All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work, to prepare. I don't know why I did that. Yeah, I curse myself this morning anyway. So it's inspired by the Holy Spirit, right? So now you can bring up that picture that I almost lost for you guys, good. So think of it like MC Escher, a hand drawing hand, right? So it's God working with man, working together. So the Holy Spirit inspires these people to write the scriptures at that time. And so it's kind of a good visualization, I think, if not whatever. But you have people talking about it. One good place to go is in First Corinthians, seven. You have Paul, like, kind of delineating. He's like, Well, I don't necessarily have a command from the Lord on this, but I'm filled with the Holy Spirit, right? So he makes that delineation. So it's that, like hand drawing hand thing. There are Paul's personalities, especially when you get to read the Greek and it hasn't been glossed over. You can tell the difference between John, you can tell the difference between Paul and you can tell the difference between Peter, different people. They have, like, their own kind of style while the Holy Spirit's using them. So it's really quite interesting. Just like, if I'm speaking by the Spirit, you're going to use my voice. My voice will be different from another voice. So really interesting. Also, you get into Peter. He says Paul is writing Scriptures. He lets you know that it's scripture. The Holy Spirit is prompting him to write it. So the next question, just answering questions that people ask, would usually be, so what's the best translation? What translation, the original Greek is the best? So everybody learn Greek. If you are King James person, got to throw that away and learn the Greek, because that's the best. So just to really, just make this really simple, if you put it on, like, one of those, like meters, like, you know, like this, just like that, you're, you're dealing with two broad categories, thought for thought, word for word, right. So, formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence, so, but basically, thought for thought, word for word. Right now, here's the thing you got to know, nobody is word for word, so that's a lie. If they say literal lie like it's just not possible. Now, anyone in here and so many of my friends here speak another languages, some of you are like English as a second one. Language. Some, some of you have tried translating the service one, so we tried translating in Spanish. First problem with that is, and this was a ridiculous reason, was that I speak too fast,
and then I talk to Spanish people. I'm like, have you heard yourselves right now? Like, serious, like, I just, they gave you the hand. I was just like, I don't want to even talk to you about this anymore. That's stupid. I suppose you're welcome. You know, it's like, my attitude, like, I'm not slowing down. You just think too slow. Like, that's your problem. Anyway, anyway that you don't want to translate for me. But the problem was, like, what we ran into and realized you couldn't get a good translation. Like, I would use an idiom, I'd use a cultural reference, and the translator would sit there going, never mind, you know, or he means this, like, you're trying to get your equivalent idiom. We don't think the same. Also, if you know anything about like, especially Spanish Portuguese, I'm a little more familiar with Portuguese. We have people here. We talk about this all the time. It they think backwards, right? So it's just backwards for us, right? So we think black belt, right? They say Faxia Preta, which is like a belt black right? So it's like, it's backwards, so you have to take that time to reconstruct it in your mind, if you're really fast. And so those un like people like translating, I'm like, I don't know how they do it and get it right. But if you know both, like, we see it all the time, like, if anyone starts speaking Portuguese and movie nine times out of sound like, that's not what they said. Those weren't the exact words they gave you the point. So if you watch, like, Narcos who watch it, but they start speaking Spanish, right? And you know, that's not what they said. Like, like, that's not exact, because they've gone thought for thought, because sometimes that's better. So we need to understand that, like, so don't get like, when people are snooty, like NLT, I preach from NLT, because everyone's going to understand it. And then what if it's not close enough to the Greek? What do I do? I put the Greek in there, and I've done that. I did that last week, right? That's fine, you know, because I know everyone's going to understand that's the job. So thought for thought, a lot of times, is way better, because when you're doing word for word, crossing two cultures, it's not the way we think as it just doesn't work, alright? So just so you know, you know. And going back to the so anyway, in that category, like, you'll have like, word for word, it's not really like, it's like that word for word, you know, N, A, S V, E, S V, King James is in there, but even the King James. So an example. This is one example. It occurs once in well more than once in Romans. You get this example of where they say, God forbid. In Chapter Three Romans, I think six two, they'll say, God forbid. So should we just keep sinning so grace may abound? God forbid? Well, when you look at the Greek, it doesn't say God at all. You look at the Greek, it just says, like it not become, but like, May it never be. God is not there. So the King James has actually added the word God to the Word of God, which we're not supposed to do. Think about it, right? So, so it's bad, right? But it says God forbid. But why is it not bad? Because if you were living during that time, you would have said, God forbid, right? That was my best try in English accent. So, right, but you might say that, and so that's all it means. So even King James is thought for thought, it's not word for word. So there's no such thing. So all sinutiness out the window. Have you ever said, You know what the best translation is, repent? So which are the best ones? Well, if you want the mainstream, because there are some, like, what I would call garbage translations out there, a lot of commentaries and things like that. I'm like, No, but you know, the mainstream ones are all good as long as you understand it, as long as you read it, alright, which brings me to this point, alright, so we'll go to the Word of God for this, right? So Deuteronomy, six, four. Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength. I just want to take a second talk about the first two verses we're looking at not that they're like more important than any of the other verses, but so the first verse is the Shema. So every Jewish kid memorizes this, Shama Israel, Adonai elohinu, Adonai Echad. So that's the original, right? So they learn how to say that, and it's also often your dying words, if you're a Jewish person. So that's a pretty important scripture. The next one is in Jesus's dialog, right? With describing things, he knows everything. What's the most important command? Well, this is what he comes back with, right? So he's saying that to Jesus. Jesus validates it important. But look what it says next six, and you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you're at home and when you're on the road and when you're going to bed and when you're getting up, tie them on your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders, write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So, I mean, like be surrounded by this, like the Scriptures, the Bible all the time, and if you know Revelation 13 says hand and forehead, ah, it's the anti Shamal, right? So. It follows the Shema. So you're supposed to, like, be in the word constantly, is what the Bible commands us to do. Again, in Joshua, you've probably heard this, be strong and courageous, dot, dot, dot, right? And that's all you heard, right? So that was it for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. That's not you be strong and very courageous, right? So as we skip that part, be careful. Definitely say skip this. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or the left, then you will be successful in everything you do. So it's not just the strong and courageous part that gets you over the finish line. It's obeying God's word, then you will be successful. Study this book of instruction continually meditate on it day and night so that you'll be sure to obey everything, not just some of it, everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in what you do that's just never going to be the verse of the day, right? We get to the New Testament. First, Timothy, four, six, in pointing out these things to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ, Jesus constantly nourish on the words of the faith and of the good doctrine which you have been following. Entophemenos in Greek. It's like, like, perpetually fed on it, like just all the time. It's a part of you. It's in you. You're just, that's it. You're like a living, breathing Bible like that. That's really what we're committed. I want to put the New Testament in there too. It's not just Old Testament saying that, right? And did you notice only then, only then will you succeed? Not a program we get in churches today, right? If you do this program, you're going to be set or if you do this, no, only if you are in the Word of God all the time, will you succeed? That's what the Bible says, Not saying, sorry. Alright, so that's what God tells us. So
let's go back to second Timothy again. Look
at something else. Second Timothy, 316, All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong, and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. So its purpose for you is to find your purpose in God. So how well to explain what is true? I don't think anyone would disagree that we live in the misinformation age, right? There's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of garbage out there's a lot of lies out there. I don't care what side I mean at this point, are we ready to admit that they're all liars? It's just like, crazy, right? Like, I got to pick which one's not the worst somehow, right? Like, this is nuts. It's so bad you go on the internet and you could find a truth about anything, right? Totally. The opposite, totally. I mean, it's a mess, right? So we go to this for truth, truth, right? So the real news, right? This is the good news. The good news is not delivered from the world, the good news is delivered from the word period and not but someone came along and realized that there was something better, there is nothing better. There's nothing more true than this. So it teaches us what is true,
right, to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. Here's
where everyone's like, let's talk about this for a while, right? It corrects us
when we are wrong. That's what people do. I'm all the time, right? So they try to just move that line on sin a little bit. Well, we're saying it's okay. Now, I know what the Bible says, But you know, the Bible really needs to modernize. You know, like, it's like it hasn't been around for 1000s of years, so you people justifying certain sins and different things. And it's like, we our nature hasn't changed people, I'm sorry. It just, it just has not right? So it lets us know, right? It makes us realize we should be reading it the listen the Bible. I I'm making it a lot of fun, but if I had a really bad day,
like I might be as negative as the Bible is. Sometimes
it's mostly it doesn't. This isn't like, Hey, you're doing great. Put this down. Hey, you're doing great. Whoa. Jesus didn't need to die because you got it. It's not what the Bible says. The Bible is highly negative and highly corrective for our good. Talks a lot about sin and what we're doing wrong. What did I just say? The Bible is about how we rejected God. But in our lives, do we sometimes reject God? Yeah, so the Bible comes along and, yo, you're wrong. You need to get back in line. It's important, right? So more people, when you read the Bible, you need to think that, right? He's a good father, so he's going to correct us. He uses it to prepare and equip his people for every good work shows us how to do life like I was even amazed. It was a couple weeks ago, whenever it was when I was talking about sin and I went there, I was like, Alright, let me find all the scriptures that say, prove it like you're a Christian, but prove it. It's the. Mean, I was like, preparing the message. I'm like, Heather, the Bible tells Christians, they need to prove they're Christians a lot, and we put that up on the screen. It was overwhelming. If you were here for those messages, it's literally, like, I think like, 10 people didn't come back, right? Because the Bible says, like, again. And it was just unreal. And I didn't even put them all up. I was like, reading and listening the other day. And I'm like, I could use those too, like it says it so much. Prove it. Prove it. Why? What's Paul saying there, which is, be blameless, all these other things, we're to be witnesses, or we read the Bible, but it's been said, right? We may be the only Bible that anyone reads, right? Well, it's partially true. We're to be witnesses, right? So we need to approach everything we do like that with love and grace and try to attract people to the faith, right? If we love them, we want them to get in heaven too, right? So it's really, really important. I've said this before, what we do says more about what we believe than anything we can possibly say. So it's important. And just to encourage you as I close this up. You know, I've given this illustration before, but it's just worth noting, right? Like, if you're, if you love someone, you know you're in a marriage. It's a 22 years we just celebrated, which is great. That's for her, by the way. That's, that's, you made it, but you really love someone. I wasn't even going to put that in there. I just but it, but anyway, so I really love my wife, right? So that's the key. You don't know the key. Like, well, don't talk a lot, so it's hard for me, right? How did you make it? Right? But you need to love the person. Really love them, right? So we've been through so much, it's not perfect away. We've been through like, some bad stuff, right? But it's love, like, I
just love her, like, I That's it. I can't
even explain it. I just love her, right? So every year I get a letter from her. It comes in an envelope, and I love getting it. I can't wait I get this and she writes it, and it's a car. Don't even read the card. I just sorry. I just read what she wrote, right? So she knows, but, you know, I look forward to it. But can you imagine, like, if I got to a place where, like, she gives me the envelope and then it's just sitting there a week later, unopened,
that would say a lot.
It might say something like, maybe he doesn't love me,
you know, like, why isn't he excited about getting this from you? Why doesn't he want to read a love letter from me?
This is God's love letter to us.
Didn't have to do it.
So what does it say about
our relationship with God, if we don't want to read it, what does it say about someone who comes in here and they're like, Pastor gene, you use too many scriptures. That frightens me. I'm like,
the little girl, like,
you're going to hell, right? But you know, I'm like, There's no way you can have a relationship with the Lord and not and be bothered by the fact that I use scriptures. Now. What is it with these churches where one line of scripture on the screen and then they just talk, not about anything important, huh? Like, you know, I've read whole books of the Bible. Do you guys like so remember James today? And you're like, Oh no, I didn't want to kill myself, right? So, but like the sermons, talk about the Sermon on the Mount. What did I do? I just read the Sermon on the Mount. I don't know.
And then people I'm not joking. Every time I do that, people
leave like, are you crazy? You'd rather hear my stupid jokes. Right Then the word of God, that says a lot, and it's scary, really scary, right? So we need to always have this in our minds and hearts and how much God loves us, what he and you, and if you don't believe today, how much God loves you, you need to know that He loved us so much he could have just said, Fine, you rejected me. Paradise back, you know, like I'm done with you, right? No, he keeps trying again and again and again, or like the prodigal son, like a vision of that, right? But then finally, okay, fine, I'm going to come, and he knew the plan from the beginning. I'm going to come in a human form like them, and suffer and die for them. Is that enough? It is for me, somebody say yes, yes. That should be enough. Remember that, right? And then he gave us this love letter, right? So that when we have those lapses in faith, when we're going through, we have the truth we know we can be certain. So just an encouragement to you guys, look, if you're just sick of everything that's out there, I've been sick of everything that's out there, nothing in the world. Long time ago did it for me, and that's how I came to Christ. It's not doing it for me anymore. It's not right. But if you're sick Furthermore, of everything, like the lies, sick of lies like just, just so annoying to me. Done with the lies of the world, done with programs that didn't work right from the world, right? Or self help stuff, or whatever it is you enter, right if you're tired of trusting in other things, whether it be financial or political institutions. Are you done yet? Cuz I haven't met one person who put their stock in any of these programs, any of these institutions, even financially, that isn't actually totally miserable on the inside, these things exist to make you angry, to make you fearful, in a bad way, right, to keep you in the loop of consumerism. And if you're done, I want to invite you
read God's word.
This is the only book that is going to bring you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self, control. It's here. This is the truth. And so if there's one takeaway today, and you forget about how long Moses ago Moses wrote it, or whatever, whatever, know this that this is God's love letter to you, and it is all true, and this is the only place in the world that you can find the truth, the good news is here and here alone. We pray for you. Lord, I thank everyone who came in today to hear Your word, to listen to the truth this morning. And Lord I just, I want to encourage everyone who's watching online, listening in, everyone here today just to be encouraged if, if you just to know the truth, Lord, just empty them and so that they can surrender to you of all this nonsense, Lord, and fill them with your Holy Spirit, which will guide them to that love, that joy, that peace, that patience, that kindness, the goodness, that faithfulness, that you desire for every single person in this room, Lord, let them know that you love them no matter what they've done. It's never too late for the truth. It's never too late for a new beginning. I ask these things In Jesus's Name. Amen.