Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Good morning, 11:00 AM Good morning. Uh, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the Village Church. I have the joy to open up God's word with you. We are in a series on the origin of the Bible, how we got it, where it came from. So last week we talked about the origin of the new, of the Old Testament, how we actually got it. We answered some pretty challenging questions behind that. And then this morning we're gonna be answering the question. So how did we get the New Testament? Here's a thought that most of your non-Christian friends have about the Bible that you read. He goes something like this. Somehow, somewhere someone was up to no good. That's, that's about how most people process the Bible that you hold in your hand. Whenever I hear a sentiment like this, I have a simple response. It goes like this, Okay? Who I don't know, I just know that some people change the words to make it say what they wanted. Some politicians and corrupt spiritual leaders, they added rules to control people. The earliest Christians, they didn't even believe that Jesus was God, that Jesus of today's Christianity, it was a myth developed over 300 years after Jesus even died. By the way, Jesus never even believed he was God. What about all the other gospels? False.
Speaker 1 00:01:43 These are each cultural mantras implanted by the machine into people's heads to bypass thinking. And we know this to be true. If everybody believes it, it must be right. That's actually not true, Sarcas, but, but this is how it's designed. You hear it over and over again. And because it's repeated so frequently, people are not, they don't have that felt need to go verify whether or not these statements are accurate or not. So this, this last week, um, I was on a plane and I read an ancient Christian document called the Diday. Now it wasn't that long. You can read it in about 20 or 30 minutes. Um, but this document actually dates back to sometime between 90 AD and one 10 ad and it is one of the earliest Christian documents. And guess what? If you just opened up the Diday and you read it, you would realize right away that almost all of the cultural mantras are trash.
Speaker 1 00:02:57 They're not even accurate. In fact, we have incredible documentation of the first hundred years of the Christian Church. Now there there are two men particularly that I wanna draw your attention to. In fact, rewind. I wanna read you a section of the data case. You can actually hear what Christians believed in sometime between 90 80 and 101 10 80. By the way point of reference, uh, the book of Revelation written by John, written sometime in the middle nineties. Ad this could have been written before Revelation. Here's what it says. And then shall appear the signs of the truth. First, the sign of an out spreading in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet. And third, the resurrection of the dead as it has said, The Lord shall come and his saints with him. Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven?
Speaker 1 00:03:48 Did did Christians in the first century believe that Jesus was God and that he died in the cross and was raised from the dead and is coming back to judge the world? You better believe it. That wasn't a doctrine made up in the fourth century ad that is actually rooted in first century documentation. If you feel like you need to throw the Bible in the trash, it's still there. And we can see what the early Christians believe. So two men I wanna draw your attention to both of them are disciples of John who wrote the book of Revelation, of the Gospel of John. Uh, the first guy's name is Ignatius. You might have heard of Ignatius. Ignatius was born in 35. AD again, point of reference. Jesus died somewhere around 30 AD ish, born right after the death and resurrection of Jesus, lived all the way to 1 0 7 ad.
Speaker 1 00:04:40 And guess what? He was mentored personally by the Apostle John. And we have his writings. And do you know what Ignatius believed? He believed in the first century, that Jesus was God, that he died on the cross, was raised from the dead and is coming back. There's another pastor who's directly mentored by John, who wrote Revelation. His name is Polycarp. A weird name, but incredibly influential pastor of the first and second century, born in 69 AD right around the time of Paul's death, lived until 1 56 AD and you're not gonna believe this. We have his writings. And do you know what Polycarp believed in the Dav of Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. He's coming back. Salvation is through faith in Christ alone. All of these mantras are objectively obliterated by simply opening up documents from the first and second century. We have 'em all.
Speaker 1 00:05:35 So this isn't even a matter of debate anymore. The only reason people debate is cuz they've actually never read it or thought through it. But this is, this is the net effect of cultural mantras. They make us not look into things that we should because we believe we already know what truth and reality is. By the way, um, both Ignatius and Polycarp were both murdered martyred for their conviction of who Jesus Christ was. Th this notion that, um, Jesus, his deed is mythology developed over a few hundred years, it's literally historically inaccurate. So there's, there's two big goals we have in this series. The first one is what we want to do is to increase your confidence in the word of God. So that when you open up the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, you are confident that what you are reading is divinely orchestrated, protected, preserved, and transmitted by God for you.
Speaker 1 00:06:32 The second thing I want to do is we want to increase your discernment so that you can sniff out cultural mantras quickly. And number three, we want to increase your excitement. I want you, when you open up the Bible to be so excited to hear God's personal revelation, his heart and his mind for you. And I want you just to be pumped up when you read it, I want you to open it up and then understand God loves you and is revealing his heart and his mind to you. Now, there's some vocabulary we need to know. Um, two specific words. The first is coin a Greek. This is not classical Greek, this is the language that the New Testament was written in. So if you speak Greek today, it's pretty different than coin. A Greek coin, A Greek is what's considered to be a dead language.
Speaker 1 00:07:21 In fact, if you had the original manuscripts of the uh, New Testament, the one that the Apostle Paul or Matthew Mark Luer John wrote on, uh, what you would find is that on those original manuscripts that'd be written in coin a Greek and there would be no spaces between any of the words. I am really, really grateful for the people who put spaces <laugh> in the words. Thank you Jesus. The second vocabulary word I want you to know is the word cannon. Now, if you were here last week, you already got 1 0 1 on this, many of you weren't here. So let's take a brief moment and review. Cannon is not something you shoot a cannonball out of. That is a can, but that's not what we're referring to. This is the list of books that are recognized as scripture. So cannon is, comes from a Greek word, which means read.
Speaker 1 00:08:09 We measure in feet, they measure by reads. And if something was going to be cannon, it was going to be the standard by which other things are measured. And so in the early church had this notion of a cannon. They were saying the cannon are the books by which all other truth in reality will be measured. Uh, last week I used the illustration of mini golden doodles and we talked about how um, this principle, it's really important that the cannon, it doesn't make something scripture, but the cannon recognizes that which is scripture. So if I had a hundred dogs and you told me, go find the mini golden doodles, um, I'm gonna try to figure out, I'm gonna know the, the, the, the criteria for what a mini golden doodle is and I'm gonna pluck them out. And if I take a golden retriever and I put it in the golden doodle pile, does that all of a sudden make it a golden doodle?
Speaker 1 00:08:56 No, you can, you can take any book you want and just cuz you put it in the cannon, does that make it direct revelation of God? Not at all. In fact, the whole point is the early church leaders and pastors where they're trying to figure out is which books were direct revelation from God. And when they could confirm that, then they would put them into the can. I wanna use a different illustration this week to describe this. Um, there is an apple I discovered last week, it's called Piza. Every ever heard of piza apples. So we went, uh, to the apple orchard. I saw piza and these apples are enormous. My son was so excited about them that on Monday he said to my wife and I, he said, All I want for lunch for my main meal is the piza apple. And it was so big, actually, I'm like that it's sort of epic.
Speaker 1 00:09:44 It was a good choice for lunch. It's probably a thousand calories. I don't want so big. So I wondered if anybody was gonna notice. And so, um, the head of school sends me this picture of my son at lunch eating an apple. And she's like, That is the biggest apple I've ever seen here. Here's what's hilarious. I I wanna show you this picture. This picture is of one of the piza apples we got. This is my wife and a piza apple. And I want you to know that this isn't even the biggest one. Now, pizazz apples, like, I think what happened is somebody took all the sugar from a can of coke and injected it into it because it is the single sweetest apple I have ever tasted in my life. Super, super crispy. And so they come from half honey crisp. And then the other half, actually, nobody knows what bee brought over from what kind of apple tree.
Speaker 1 00:10:30 So I want you to imagine like we're putting, there's a thousand apples and we gotta pluck out all the piza apples. So some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller. We're gonna bite into 'em, we're gonna discern, it's gonna take time, it's gonna be a little bit of debate. Somebody's gonna say, No, I think that's honey crisp. When someone's gonna say no, that's pizazz. Look at the size, look at the color, and you're gonna do some work to kind of draw out and figure out which ones are really the piza. And this is similar to the notion of cannon. Uh, some council doesn't get to say, Oh, that book is in the Bible. The council's job, the church's job was to discover what already was scripture and to identify that. So what I've done with the rest of this message is I've broken it up in a handful of, of questions.
Speaker 1 00:11:12 And so let's dig in together and have a little bit of fun here. How did the early church determine the New Testament cannon? How did the early church determine the books that were gonna be in, quote unquote the Bible or the New Testament? Again, did they sanction them or recognize them? They recognize them. There was a series of criteria that a book had to meet in order for it to be confirmed as direct revelation of from God and therefore, recognize this canon. Here are the four criteria. Number one, it had to be apostolic or written by an apostle or endorsed by an apostle. Number two, it needed to be accepted. It needed to be generally accepted by church leaders and by people who have walked with the Lord for some time. What you would find is that when you have somebody filled with the Holy Spirit and they interacted with direct revelation from God, it had a different net effect.
Speaker 1 00:12:12 And so they would look at what, which books were accepted. And then number three, we have this, it had to be consistent. The document has to have the overall feel and character of confirmed writings. A little bit later in the message, I'm gonna read to you from some gospels that are not scripture and you're gonna understand kind of the character in the feel of some of these other books. Number four, it had to be Orthodox, it had to be truthful, it had to harmonize and be consistent with teaching that we know, that we know to be direct revelation from God. And it took eight long time for some books to be vetted through this process. And we're gonna explain a little bit too, while it took so long. Number two, when was the New Testament cannon finalized? Okay, technically, when John finished writing the book of Revelation and his pen came off that parchment, uh, that is when the New Testament cannon was finalized.
Speaker 1 00:13:08 But the real question is when, when did the church kind of figure out that these are really the 27 books of the New Testament? This is the totality of direct revelation from God in writing. Uh, the first time we get all 27 books of the New Testament in one group, it was in a letter from a pastor named Athenasius. An athenasius wrote an Easter letter for some people in 360 7 ad that's the first time we really see this group of 27 New Testament books written out. Fast forward 3 93, there's a council or a gathering of a bunch of pastors in a place called Hippo. It's in current day Algeria. And so these pastors came together and they didn't make, uh, they didn't like sanction anything as can, but they did recognize these 27 books you have in your New Testament as canon or direct revelation from God.
Speaker 1 00:14:04 A few years later, there was another council in a city called Carthage. And what Carthage did is they confirmed the 27 books referenced in atheist letter and referenced in Hippo and kind of just said, This is our cannon if you, if you will. Now I wanna remind you this, did these councils or Athena make the New Testament cannon known? All they did is recognize by the criteria laid out what exactly was and was not direct revelation from God. Well, here's, here's another question. So why did the New Testament can take 300 years to finally be nailed down? Two reasons. Number one is persecution. Christianity was highly illegal throughout the entire Roman Empire until around three 13 ad. So if you were caught in certain times of the first 300 years of the church, if you will, with scripture, you could be jailed or killed. In fact, right?
Speaker 1 00:15:15 The 10 years leading up to three 13 AD when Constantine declared, um, that Christianity was no longer illegal, uh, there was an emperor named Dion and it was some of the most intense persecution the church has ever seen, and he sought to eradicate the word of God. Christian writings, Christian pastors, so many believers were killed in the 10 years leading up to the legalization of Christianity in 3 13 80. And so here's what would happen. They would come and they would say, Do you, we we want all of your sacred writings. And there were some really bold and courageous men and women who hid the actual scriptures and gave them secondary books or letters written by other pastors. And so they would give them something to burn and they would go hide and protect with all of their soul taking huge risks, those books that they knew to be scripture.
Speaker 1 00:16:07 And I am so grateful for those brave men and women because today we have so many manuscripts preserved because of their faithfulness here. Here's the second reason. It took 300 plus years to finalize distance. Uh, Christianity grew rapidly, grew all over the Roman Empire, from Spain to India, from Russia to Africa. But here's, here's the challenge, ideas and the gospel and the word of God could not travel faster than a horse. And I, I want you to imagine, okay, the sheer distance of the Roman Empire and how challenging it would be to get consensus on anything in the first, we'll say up until three 13 ad impossible. In fact, if I were to call a meeting with a handful of pastors, very likely we would be arrested or possibly killed. When the church is persecuted, it is near impossible to get consensus on anything. But the distance alone would make this doubly challenging.
Speaker 1 00:17:07 If you walked from Jerusalem to the city of Hippo, again, modern day Algeria, this is where they had that major council in 3 93 80, it would take you 30 days of nonstop walking. And the terrain, by the way, is incredibly dangerous. Now, I want you to imagine that your job is to project manage a council In the fourth century, your job is to get pastors from all over the known world. Pastors who have a good reputation are doctorally sound who are smarter loving people. And you gotta get word to all of them. Then you need to get word back that they're coming. Then you need to schedule a date. And then the whole time some of, of these correspondences are taking six months or more to get to their location and for you to even get a response is gonna be another six months back. Can, can you appreciate the level of coordination that would go into just calling a church council or senate or a group of pastors to get together from around the world to have a meeting.
Speaker 1 00:18:09 Here's the, here, here's one of the most encouraging numbers. Three 13 ad From the moment Christianity became legal, it was under 75 years. It's all it took for there to be consensus on what books or direct revelation from God and should be in the New Testament. It actually didn't take 400 years, it took just under 75. And in a world without technology, with language barriers, distance, that is a utter miracle. That's how quickly these 27 books were recognized. Question number four, uh, did the New Testament authors know that they were writing scripture? It, it seems as you read through the New Testament, the the apostles understood their job. Their job was to write scripture, to write the very words of God. The Apostle Paul, he definitely believed he was writing scripture and want you to see this in first Deon chapter two, verse 13, Listen to what he says.
Speaker 1 00:19:02 He says, When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is the word of God, which is at work. And you believers, Paul, by nature of being an apostle, understood the weight, the authority of what he was writing for these churches. Uh, here's another, um, passage from second Peter, chapter three, verse 16. And, uh, Peter believed that what Paul wrote was scripture. Here's what he said. Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him as he does in all of his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand. Don't you appreciate that? Even Peter is like the word of God can be challenging at times, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
Speaker 1 00:20:03 And, and as Peter processes Paul's writing, he puts them on par with scripture in his mind. The scriptures of the Old Testament, the Apostle Paul and the letters that he's writing in Peter's mind, these are authoritative scripture, direct revelation from God. Uh, one of the most common questions I get is what New Testament books almost didn't make it like, were there any that were like hotly debated? And the answer is absolutely. Here, here are the most debated books. Uh, the book of Hebrews is debated because nobody really knows who wrote it. Some people think of Paul, some people think Paul, some people think others. There's a lot of debate, but nobody really knows. The book of James uses the word justification differently than Paul does. And it is irritating, particularly for 21st century Christians, let alone the early church trying to navigate is salvation by grace through faith or salvation by works.
Speaker 1 00:20:57 Read the book of Jude, um, Jew bases a lot of its doctrine. Often apocryphal book called Enoch was a little concerning for some people. And so they, they debated it and they duke this out. They came to the conclusion, no, it's okay for the Apostle Paul to quote an apocryphal book. Second, third, John. There were some authorship questions. Second Peter, same thing. Revelation, um, was actually pretty uncontested think was until about the third century. There were two pastors specifically who doubted it created a whole bunch of debate. But the debate ended quickly and they realized no revelation. The book of Revelation is actually direct revelation from God and it should be included in the cannon. Uh, here's a, a fun one. Why are the New Testament books ordered this way? There actually is a logic to the flow in the order. The gospels are first for obvious reasons because the whole Bible, especially the New Testament centers on Jesus Christ, he's the foundation.
Speaker 1 00:21:46 Next you have the letters of the Apostle Paul. Why are they there? Because he's considered to be the most important influential apostle theologian writer of scripture. The Apostle Paul or the apostle. The book of Hebrews follows that because it goes right after Paul's letters because they don't know if Paul wrote it or not after that, or the general a epistles. And these are the debated EPIs, like are they supposed to be there, are they not? And then we put revelation as last because we are an expectant people. If you take the general EPIs, everything from Hebrews on, uh, after Hebrews, you're gonna find that they're generally put in order by how many words are in the book for what it's worth. Number seven, are we missing any books? I'm gonna give you my answer debate amongst yourselves, definitely. And if we found these books, uh, I would 100% preach on them and have a blast doing it.
Speaker 1 00:22:42 If we can find a book that meets the four criteria and we can confirm that an apostle wrote it or endorsed it like I'm all in. Now let me, let me show you where this comes from. The book of first Corinthians, um, is written before second Corinthians, but Paul infers that there is a book even before this, we'll call it zero Corinthians. He says in first Corinthians five nine, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually moral people. And I read that and I go, What letter? There was another letter. I wanna know what's in that letter, don't you? Well, the Lord has seen it fit that for at least the first 2000 years of church history, this letter is gone. The book of Colossians chapter four 16. Uh, here's what it says. When this letter has been read among you have it read in the Church of the Leo de scenes and see that you also read the letter from Leo Desia.
Speaker 1 00:23:35 What have you ever heard of first Leo de scenes? I haven't. I want to, I wanna know exactly what it says. I wanna preach on that book. If we found zero Corinthians and Leo Dees, uh, I would be an advocate of calling Zondervan and Crossway and all of them and saying, Tindale publish new Bibles. And we would of course want to confirm that they do actually meet the criteria. Could you imagine the debates in churches, churches would split over whether or not Lao Dece is from Paul or not. It'd be insanity. Uh, maybe the Lord doesn't do that to protect unity. I don't know. Next question. Why did so many books not make the New Testament? Can? What about the gospel? And Mary, what about the gospel of Tom? So what about the guys? Anybody who asked you that question? I'm gonna tell you two things about them.
Speaker 1 00:24:23 One, I know to be true. The other I inferred to most likely be true. One, they've never read them. If they had, they wouldn't be asking these kinds of questions. Number two, they have most likely not read the four gospels that we have. They might know sections or pieces of it, but I'm telling you, almost anybody who says that to you has not read it, nor are they gonna be familiar with the actual gospels. So there's a, a worldview in the second century really emerged and became popular into the third century. It's called narcissism. And narcissism. Very simply, it's a false worldview that saw the spirit realm as good. The physical realm is evil and to utilize deception and pseudo authors to propagate its ideas. In other words, uh, say it's two 50 ad and I write this crazy book and I want people to know about it.
Speaker 1 00:25:12 I'm gonna say the gospel according to Thomas. Oh, the gospel according to Jesus. And then people would get this book and they would go, Is this real or not? And it didn't take long for most stic literature to be exposed as false. You really only need to read it once and you'll figure it out quickly. But there were so many of them all over the Roman Empire that pastors and churches were trying to weed through all of the false books so that they could be sure that they were not missing anything in the 27 books of the New Testament cannon. Uh, what I wanna do is I wanna read to you a section from the gospel of Thomas. And this is like the tip of the iceberg for what you find in nasic literature. And for those of you who have the spirit of God, uh, I wanna ask you, do, does this sense, do you feel in your gut, does your, does your discernment telling you that this could plausibly be actual revelation from God?
Speaker 1 00:26:08 Here we go. Simon Peter said to them, Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said, Behold, I shall lead her that I may make her male in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes yourself male shall enter the kingdom of heaven. <laugh> anyone. Do you get the point If someone says to you one about the gospel of Thomas, you say, have you read it and then compare it to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John act and you are gonna find a very, very, very different kind of literature. You're also gonna realize that the values doctrine and theology of the diagnostics are very different than the Christians. You're gonna find that they use Christian terminology, but it does not mean the same thing. Last question, can I trust our Greek New Testament?
Speaker 1 00:27:16 I'm gonna give you the easy answer. The answer is absolutely. I'm gonna give you another word here. This is like a seminary 1 0 1 class. So here we go. The word is textual criticism. This is the science of determining the exact contents. God bless you, of original manuscripts. So there are scientists who know dead languages, Fragments Inc at you name it. And they labor over thousands of manuscripts to figure out what were the original contents of the original letter written. Now here, here's the deal. You have to know this. When the authors wrote their original manuscript the very first time, Paul Penn Ephesians, they did not have any intent whatsoever to save that document forever. That wasn't the point. In fact, here's what they intended. They intended that this document would be delivered, that document would be copied, it would be copied multiple times, and it would be sent to all the churches in a region so that they can all have consistent apostolic teaching and training.
Speaker 1 00:28:22 The intention of the originals was always from the beginning to be copied. So when you see copies, this was the point. And when you see and hear about a multiplicity of manuscripts, that is actually a really, really good thing. Uh, I wanna show you, um, uh, a picture. It's an image, a graph if you will, of manuscript evidence. And I, I want you to see this because it's really important to see how many manuscripts we have of major literature over the last 2,003,000 years. So you take somebody like play do for example, and he wrote some time in the fourth century, uh, BC the earliest copy you have is 900 ad there's about a 1200 year span and there are only seven of these manuscripts. And we look at this and we say, Yeah, generally we think we're pretty close to what we have. Now I the document with the absolute most amount of manuscripts, second to the New Testament is homer's Id written around 900 bc The earliest copy goes back to about 400 bc it's only about a 500 year difference.
Speaker 1 00:29:26 And in manuscript world like that is actually not a bad thing. But I want you to look at the total New Testament manuscripts. Uh, that number should be updated should be just under 25,000 at this point, written between 40 and 180 ish. Earliest copy 1 25 ad this distance of 25 to 50 years is nothing. And we have 24 5,000 manuscripts. We have about 5,000 of these manuscripts in the Greek language alone. All of these are like puzzle pieces. And there are these men and these women and they go to work every day and they put together all of these fragments and they study them and they pour over them and they look at the ink and the font and the paper and the place and they discern where it was from, what book of the Bible it is, et cetera. And they are doing this on a daily basis that's happening all over the world.
Speaker 1 00:30:15 Archeological digs are pulling up new pieces of papyrus and fragments and different things and they are analyzing these things and they're trying to figure out what exactly were the, in the original contents that the apostles wrote. Uh, I had a Bible teacher in one of the things I loved about or Greek teacher. And one of the things he always said, and I loved this line, he said, We have 101% of the New Testament. And we would go, What does that even mean? Let me illustrate. If you have a digital Bible or paper, paper bible, I want you to open up your Bible to the book of Mark and I want you to look at Mark 16 and I want you to go to verse nine. When you go there, you should see something that says this. Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include Mark chapter 16 versus nine through 20.
Speaker 1 00:31:12 Uh, what's interesting is that it appears sometime later, some added this section to the end of Mark. Now does that mean it's wrong? No. Does that mean the stories aren't true? Not necessarily. Does that mean you should be scared of it? Nope. It most likely means that when Mark ended his book, he ended his book with verse eight, or there was some other ending and we don't know where it is, but it seems that verse eight is actually where he ended the book. So there's actually more in the Bible than it's actually probably in the original manuscripts. I wanna give you another example of this. Uh, turn in your Bibles to the book of one John chapter five, verse seven. All modern translations are going to leave out what the King James puts in. So here's what the King James says for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost.
Speaker 1 00:32:14 And these three are one. Every modern translation stops about six words. In this is the English standard version says this for there are three that testify end, end of end of verse. So you have this Trinitarian theology tacked on to the end of First John five, seven, but it's not in the earliest manuscripts. And you can see that somebody was trying to make sure that Trinitarian theology got in there, but that actually wasn't there. Now we're gonna blow your mind again. Okay? There are certain demons. Turn with me in Mark chapter nine. There are demons that if I were to ask you how are really, really bad demons able to be cast out? And you're gonna say something like this, probably if you've read scripture, heard some teaching. These kind only come out by prayer and fasting, right? So let's go, let's look at Mark 9 29.
Speaker 1 00:33:09 Most of your versions should not have fasting. They should say this. This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. What, what happened to fasting? It was put into the King James Bible, but the earliest manuscripts don't have fasting. Now does that mean fasting's bad? No. Does it mean that you shouldn't fast if you're gonna cast out a demonn fast away? The only point is to say there are places in the New Testament where scholars and textual critics and translators, they will put in stuff like this to queue you in and say, Hey, fyi, early manuscripts don't have this. And this is why they do this work they labor and they work to bless you. You have a Bible because of scientists who study and they go to work every day and they have been doing this. By the way, this is a Christian tradition that goes back roughly 1700 years laboring over making sure that we have original copies of original or copies of original manuscripts that are accurate.
Speaker 1 00:34:19 There's a New Testament, um, scholar who is dead now, but he, he said this, his name's ff Bruce. He said, If the great number of manuscripts increases the number of s scribble errors, which it does, it increases proportionally the means of correcting such error. So the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is in truth remarkably small. And so because of the science of textual criticism, we can look at you in saying that what you have actually in your hands is 99.8 or 99.9% accurate, likely to the original manuscripts written. And that 0.1 or 0.2% is grammar and syntax. There is nothing in that small percentage that affects doctrine or practical Christian living in any way. You have a wonderful gift in your hands that is a gift from God through the hands of men and women who have faithfully protected, preserved, copied, transmitted, dug holes in the ground to try to find old documents and manuscripts who have done remarkable work to make sure you have God's word. Two. So what's number one? Thank God for scribes Bible translators and textual critics from around the world. We are good at thinking pastors. We're good at honoring missionaries, but there is this quiet group of people that literally makes sure we have a Bible that's accurate to the original. What a gift.
Speaker 1 00:35:56 I wanna illustrate how hard their job is. As scribes would copy the New Testament, they would also put little notes in the margin. Let me read to you some of the notes. They're very funny. It's so cold in here that my free my, my ink is freezing on me. This is one new parchment bat ink. I say nothing more <laugh>. He knew that whoever was gonna read this thing was gonna judge him. What did this guy do? Was new parchment bat ink. Oh my hand. <laugh>. I just love the guy who's like in the march like, oh my hand. Right? Let's, This is I think one of my favorites. St. Patrick delivered me from writing <laugh>. Let's just be honest, This is a hard, meticulous job. All of it done by sunlight or candlelight, like this is not easy. And this is the body of Christ in action.
Speaker 1 00:36:49 Over the past 2000 years, the Lord has brought apostles, he's brought prophets, he's brought strives to copy these things, pastors and teachers, uh, to teach the word of God, elders to lead the people of God. All of this comes together in this really amazing way. Each part playing the part it needs to for the good of the body of Christ. Uh, I think God sincerely for those pastors and Christians in the first 300 years that when Rome came knocking at their door and demanded all of their Christian literature, they hid the Bible. I am thankful for the amount of people who willingly went to death to protect the gospel and to hide the word of God. I am particularly grateful for 14th century, um, church leaders like John Wickliffe who advocated, put the Bible in the language of common people so they can read it.
Speaker 1 00:37:41 And the Roman Catholic Church said, No, it's too dangerous. The 15th century, I'm thankful for Johanna Gutenberg who created the printing press for the west so that we could actually propagate this literature at an exponential rate around the world. I'm grateful for Martin Luther in the 16th century when he went into hiding and he translated the Bible into the common German man's language and then made copies. It distributed, it sold out immediately. And they had to keep making copies of this. And the people were blown away when Rome stopped interpreting the word of God for them and they were able to read it in their language for themselves. There was spiritual renewal across the country because of his faithfulness. And I'm thankful for the hundreds of thousands of pastors, teachers, scholars, and scientists who have given us this wonderful gift of the Bible. So at number two, don't waste their sacrifice and God's offer to know him personally through his word.
Speaker 1 00:38:42 You have an incredible gift. We are obese with scripture. We have more than we could ever possibly need. And because we're so used to it, we neglect it. We believe sometimes I already know enough, I've mastered this. But when you open up the word of God, God is revealing directly his heart, his mind, his will, his love for you, the past, the present, the future. And it's there as Peter said. Is it hard to understand at times? For sure. Nothing good has ever been easy in this world. And, and if you want to dig out the mind, the treasures of God's word, it's labor at times. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's work, but it's always worth it because his word is so incredibly valuable. And so village church, we want you to do, and we're doing this serious to train you, to teach you, but we also wanna just reinspire you to open up the word of God confidently pick it up and know that when you read these words that says, if God is speaking for you in this moment and when he tells you to do something, it is is it is as if he is saying it right to your face.
Speaker 1 00:39:46 Just because it's written, it doesn't change it's utter authority because it is direct revelation from God for you. And if you're here and you have never trusted in Christ, if you've never made the decision to believe in him, I am telling you that one of the greatest assets to being able to approach the word of God and understand it is to be in relationship with God. When you trust in Christ, he gives you the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is your helper, is you open the word of God, the Holy Spirit is there to train you, to teach you, to equip you, to help you understand it and to discern it. And I think one of the greatest things that somebody can do is trust in Jesus Christ. But not only do you get help in understanding and interpreting scripture, you get eternal life.
Speaker 1 00:40:30 You have forgiveness of sins, You are a concile back to God. You're adopted into his family. You get the confident hope of resurrection, you get the Holy Spirit. I mean there is, it's a no brainer in my mind. And, and if today you have never trusted in Christ, I wanna encourage you, make a decision to believe, to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Do you believe that Jesus is God? Just like the first century church leaders did, do you believe that he died in the cross, your sins was raised from the dead? Do you believe he's coming back? Do you believe that salvation and forgiveness are not by accruing more and more good works? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? If so, tell him you are sorry for your sin and ask him to forgive you. And I love this. There's no game, there's no like mantra.
Speaker 1 00:41:14 You have to say, anybody who believes in Jesus Christ is immediately once and for all and forever forgiven. If that's a decision you wanna make today, I just wanna encourage you tell somebody you came with, that you made a decision to trust in Christ. It is single-handedly the greatest decision you will ever make. Future you when you die will be very thankful that you are reconciled to God. Let's pray together. Father, love you, thankful for your written word. And I'm thankful for your living word. Father, we are so privileged. Would you give us, for some of us the courage to really face the word of God, But many of us, we just, we just need help and understanding. Some of us think discipline and Lord, as we do, would you reveal more and more of your heart and your mind to us? Would you bite your Holy Spirit continue to illuminate your words, that as we read it, we are instructed and we are transformed? I think of John 1717 where Jesus says, Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Father, would you make us more holy and more like Christ? Because if your word, because it is true and it is powerful, Lord, we love you and we thank you for all of this, and we pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
