1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,360 Hello everyone and welcome today to Trinity Sermons. 2 00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:13,100 We at Trinity are starting a new sermon series and we are calling it The Bible for Grown-Ups. 3 00:00:13,100 --> 00:00:17,140 I love the idea of this series and we are really excited to share this first sermon 4 00:00:17,140 --> 00:00:18,340 with you. 5 00:00:18,340 --> 00:00:23,880 In the sermon today, Rob Herkman's will be exploring with us the story of the Bible. 6 00:00:23,880 --> 00:00:28,080 I hope you learn something new from this teaching and that you enjoy the message. 7 00:00:28,080 --> 00:00:30,080 God bless. 8 00:00:58,080 --> 00:01:19,580 So today we are starting something new. 9 00:01:19,580 --> 00:01:24,640 We're starting a new teaching series here at Trinity and we are calling it The Bible 10 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:28,240 for Grown-Ups. 11 00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:34,200 We are going to be spending four or five weeks on this topic and we are going to be looking 12 00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:40,320 at the Bible, what it is, how to read it and those kind of things. 13 00:01:40,320 --> 00:01:44,440 But I was actually struggling trying to figure out what is the right place to start. 14 00:01:44,440 --> 00:01:50,560 Where do we start a conversation where we are trying to talk a bit about the Bible? 15 00:01:50,560 --> 00:01:56,400 I came across a quote from a pastor in the United States, his name is Andy Stanley. 16 00:01:56,400 --> 00:02:00,840 He said something that I thought actually really resonated with me and I thought, okay, that's 17 00:02:00,840 --> 00:02:02,000 where we got to get started. 18 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:03,000 He said this. 19 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:08,480 He said, if you don't know the story of the Bible, then it's actually really hard to believe 20 00:02:08,480 --> 00:02:10,920 the stories in the Bible. 21 00:02:10,920 --> 00:02:14,360 I thought, yes, I think he's right. 22 00:02:14,360 --> 00:02:18,820 Because I think, well, almost all of us know some stories from the Bible. 23 00:02:18,820 --> 00:02:23,560 We know the story of creation or David and Goliath or the story of the prodigal son or 24 00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:25,040 something like that. 25 00:02:25,040 --> 00:02:27,520 We know Bible stories. 26 00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:31,000 Very few of us actually know the story of the Bible. 27 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:35,120 As in, where did the Bible come from anyways? 28 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:41,120 And because most of us were introduced to the Bible as children, I don't think we ever really 29 00:02:41,120 --> 00:02:43,320 thought this through very much. 30 00:02:43,320 --> 00:02:44,320 Because let's think about it. 31 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:49,200 If you go to a Bible to a child, do you really need to explain to them where this Bible came 32 00:02:49,200 --> 00:02:51,880 from and how it was kind of put together? 33 00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:53,040 Probably not. 34 00:02:53,040 --> 00:02:57,640 What you're more interested in is passing on to them the stories, the stories in the 35 00:02:57,640 --> 00:02:58,640 Bible. 36 00:02:58,640 --> 00:03:00,720 But that's okay when you're a child. 37 00:03:00,720 --> 00:03:04,680 But when you grow up, that's no longer the case. 38 00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:10,800 And as adults, we actually really do need to understand where the Bible came from. 39 00:03:10,800 --> 00:03:15,680 Because if you don't know the story of the Bible, then it becomes really hard to believe 40 00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:17,640 the stories in the Bible. 41 00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:21,360 And many people have walked away from their faith. 42 00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:22,520 And maybe you know someone. 43 00:03:22,520 --> 00:03:28,040 Maybe you are someone who has considered or is considering walking away from the faith 44 00:03:28,040 --> 00:03:33,960 because you're just like, I don't think I can really believe these stories. 45 00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:38,800 And maybe one of the reasons we can't believe the stories in the Bible, again, is because 46 00:03:38,800 --> 00:03:41,880 we don't really know the story of the Bible. 47 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:47,000 When most of us received our Bibles, we received it as a finished product, if you will. 48 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:49,400 It was already in a big book. 49 00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:53,720 It was bound with leather, had gold writing on top of it. 50 00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:58,600 And maybe the words of Jesus were all nicely in red. 51 00:03:58,600 --> 00:04:01,000 That's how we received the Bible. 52 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:05,760 It's really important that we understand that that is not how history gave us the Bible. 53 00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:12,520 And that is not how the world received the Bible with chapters and verses and an index 54 00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:15,440 in the front and maps at the back. 55 00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:21,480 By the way, this is my very first Bible that I received when I was probably just about 56 00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:23,080 12 or 13 years old. 57 00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:25,960 It was on November 13th, 1988. 58 00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:27,360 Still has the date there. 59 00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:31,240 And I got it on the occasion of my confirmation when I was confirmed. 60 00:04:31,240 --> 00:04:35,240 It was given to me by my church at the time, which is our family church we grew up in called 61 00:04:35,240 --> 00:04:38,360 St. John the Divine in Cayuga. 62 00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:42,040 It's a good old King James version of the Bible. 63 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:43,360 Definitely imitation letter though. 64 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:45,120 It's all like plasticky and cracky. 65 00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:50,120 But I remember being taught, being given this Bible and saying something to the effect. 66 00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:52,040 This is God's Word. 67 00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:53,560 Everything in it is true. 68 00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:55,640 Live your life by it. 69 00:04:55,640 --> 00:04:56,640 Try to read it. 70 00:04:56,640 --> 00:04:58,160 Try to read it every day. 71 00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:00,640 And that's how I received my Bible. 72 00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:04,400 Maybe you received a Bible like this too at one point in your life. 73 00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:06,520 Or maybe you were never given a Bible. 74 00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:08,240 My point is simply this. 75 00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:14,840 Many of us formulated our ideas of what the Bible is when we were children and not when 76 00:05:14,840 --> 00:05:16,160 we were grown up. 77 00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:20,440 And we didn't formulate our idea of what the Bible was based on what we read in the Bible 78 00:05:20,440 --> 00:05:26,880 because let's be honest, most people do not read the Bible. 79 00:05:26,880 --> 00:05:32,240 And even statistics would tell us most people, even many Christians, most Christians do 80 00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:33,560 not really read the Bible. 81 00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:38,840 So what we believe about the Bible is often something we've inherited when we were much, 82 00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:44,240 much younger and we carried that with us into childhood and into adolescence and on into 83 00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:46,480 adulthood. 84 00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:52,400 And for some of us, you know, some of us, we were kind of told when we were young, we 85 00:05:52,400 --> 00:05:58,160 were told, hey, if the Bible says it, then I believe it and that settles it. 86 00:05:58,160 --> 00:06:01,680 And there could be people here today and they say, actually, I still do believe that about 87 00:06:01,680 --> 00:06:02,680 the Bible. 88 00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:08,040 We're not going to slam that at all because that's kind of what we were taught as children. 89 00:06:08,040 --> 00:06:09,880 And many people still believe that as adults. 90 00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:10,920 And that's not wrong. 91 00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:16,960 But there are other people who actually at some point in our life, somebody said something 92 00:06:16,960 --> 00:06:21,880 to us or showed us something in the Bible that we didn't know was there, something we 93 00:06:21,880 --> 00:06:25,520 were frankly embarrassed to find out was in there. 94 00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:28,520 These were the stories that mom and dad never read us at bedtime. 95 00:06:28,520 --> 00:06:31,760 These were the stories in the Bible that the Sunday School teacher seemed to conveniently 96 00:06:31,760 --> 00:06:33,280 skip over. 97 00:06:33,280 --> 00:06:39,280 And we discovered this stuff and we had a real hard time reconciling our belief about the 98 00:06:39,280 --> 00:06:41,640 Bible with this stuff that was in the Bible. 99 00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:47,160 And because you couldn't just look the other way, a lot of people just walked the other 100 00:06:47,160 --> 00:06:48,160 way. 101 00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:49,800 So I can't believe a book like that. 102 00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:56,440 I actually remember very clearly when I was about in grade 10, I was in the basement of 103 00:06:56,440 --> 00:06:59,920 my friend, Emily's house, and there was a bunch of friends that were over. 104 00:06:59,920 --> 00:07:00,920 We were just hanging out. 105 00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:02,600 We were pretty good kids. 106 00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:07,760 And then what I remember sitting down on the, sitting cross legged on the floor with a few 107 00:07:07,760 --> 00:07:12,040 other friends that I remember I told them, I said, I believe the Bible. 108 00:07:12,040 --> 00:07:13,320 And they were like pretty shocked. 109 00:07:13,320 --> 00:07:16,560 And I was shocked that they didn't believe the Bible. 110 00:07:16,560 --> 00:07:19,200 And then they said, well, Rob, what about this? 111 00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:20,200 And what about that? 112 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:24,520 And they asked me some tough questions about the Bible that I didn't know the answers to. 113 00:07:24,520 --> 00:07:29,320 And they raised some serious concerns and problems with the Bible that these were problems 114 00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:32,400 and concerns that I had never even thought about or put much time into. 115 00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:34,640 Because again, I had just kind of been given the Bible as a kid. 116 00:07:34,640 --> 00:07:40,440 I never really, really read it in that sense and really understood it. 117 00:07:40,440 --> 00:07:42,240 And it made me question my faith. 118 00:07:42,240 --> 00:07:48,240 I remember driving home that night thinking, having a bit of a crisis in my faith, like, 119 00:07:48,240 --> 00:07:50,240 what is this book after all? 120 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:56,240 I had never stopped to really ask the question, where did this book even come from? 121 00:07:56,240 --> 00:07:57,560 What am I reading here? 122 00:07:57,560 --> 00:08:04,720 I knew some stories, but I didn't know the story of this book itself. 123 00:08:04,720 --> 00:08:08,480 So today we're starting this new teaching series. 124 00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:11,640 We're calling it the Bible for grownups. 125 00:08:11,640 --> 00:08:15,280 And yeah, we're going to look at some stories in the Bible over the next few weeks, for 126 00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:16,280 sure. 127 00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:17,600 Pardon me. 128 00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:23,360 But what we really need to do is start and say, let's look at the Bible itself. 129 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:29,080 And what we're going to discover is the Bible did not come to us like this, but rather, 130 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:41,000 the Bible came to us like this, and this, and this, and this, and there was this, and 131 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:44,760 then there was this, and there was these as well. 132 00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:46,600 Oh, and this, this too. 133 00:08:46,600 --> 00:08:49,560 That's how the Bible actually came to us. 134 00:08:49,560 --> 00:08:51,120 Let me explain what I mean. 135 00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:56,280 You're probably the best way to explain what I mean is to start by telling you the story 136 00:08:56,280 --> 00:08:58,760 of a guy named Luke. 137 00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:06,280 You see, Luke was a first century doctor, and he had kind of a rich friend. 138 00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:08,200 His friend's name was Theophilus. 139 00:09:08,200 --> 00:09:14,080 And Theophilus, like many people in the first century, had heard the stories of Jesus, heard 140 00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:19,920 eyewitnesses talk about Jesus, maybe even talk to people who had met or encountered Jesus, 141 00:09:19,920 --> 00:09:27,160 and as a result, Theophilus, his friend, had become a follower of Jesus. 142 00:09:27,160 --> 00:09:32,120 And he asked Luke, he said, hey, Luke, would you do me a solid? 143 00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:39,120 And would you sit down and write out for me just one big document about the events of 144 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:40,760 the life of Jesus? 145 00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:42,160 I'll pay you for it. 146 00:09:42,160 --> 00:09:44,480 He probably paid him for it, I think. 147 00:09:44,480 --> 00:09:48,960 And I want, all I know is a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but I want to know 148 00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:50,280 the whole story. 149 00:09:50,280 --> 00:09:54,440 I want an orderly account of who Jesus was. 150 00:09:54,440 --> 00:10:02,080 And so Luke decided, sure, and for his wealthy friend, he sat down and he began to write an 151 00:10:02,080 --> 00:10:06,480 orderly account of the story of Jesus. 152 00:10:06,480 --> 00:10:09,200 And this is how his notes started. 153 00:10:09,200 --> 00:10:13,040 If you open up your Bible and looked in Luke 1.1, this is how it starts. 154 00:10:13,040 --> 00:10:21,200 It says, many have undertaken to draw up an account, or many have undertaken to document 155 00:10:21,200 --> 00:10:24,400 the things that happened among us. 156 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:26,200 What an opening line. 157 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:27,200 Notice two things. 158 00:10:27,200 --> 00:10:31,480 First of all, something had happened, right? 159 00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:38,960 And secondly, many people had undertaken to document this thing that had happened. 160 00:10:38,960 --> 00:10:41,160 Now that alone is interesting. 161 00:10:41,160 --> 00:10:47,840 There are very few examples in antiquity of one person's life being documented by multiple 162 00:10:47,840 --> 00:10:51,960 authors or multiple document writers. 163 00:10:51,960 --> 00:10:56,280 Because in those days, it was very expensive, actually, to write something down. 164 00:10:56,280 --> 00:10:59,440 And a lot of people were illiterate anyways. 165 00:10:59,440 --> 00:11:05,760 So it's almost unheard of to know that many people were attempting to draw up an account 166 00:11:05,760 --> 00:11:06,960 of this thing. 167 00:11:06,960 --> 00:11:10,280 What was the thing that had happened? 168 00:11:10,280 --> 00:11:14,480 And what that means is, because many people had undertaken this, there were different 169 00:11:14,480 --> 00:11:16,440 accounts swirling around. 170 00:11:16,440 --> 00:11:20,800 There was somebody who had written one over here, and somebody was writing some accounts 171 00:11:20,800 --> 00:11:21,800 way over here. 172 00:11:21,800 --> 00:11:27,040 And way up in the north, somebody else had some recollections of Jesus' day, too, were 173 00:11:27,040 --> 00:11:28,040 writing down. 174 00:11:28,040 --> 00:11:32,840 But the question is, why did so many people decide they were going to write this down? 175 00:11:32,840 --> 00:11:33,840 Something had happened. 176 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:34,840 What had happened? 177 00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:39,240 Was it that Jesus had been a great teacher, and that was worth multiple people documenting? 178 00:11:39,240 --> 00:11:43,800 No, that's not enough to justify multiple people documenting a person's life. 179 00:11:43,800 --> 00:11:46,080 Well, maybe it was because he was a miracle worker. 180 00:11:46,080 --> 00:11:49,600 No, that's not the reason why they all decided they had to write it down. 181 00:11:49,600 --> 00:11:53,520 What about maybe the fact that he was killed, he was crucified? 182 00:11:53,520 --> 00:11:55,400 No, what about the fact that he was buried? 183 00:11:55,400 --> 00:11:57,880 No, that happened every day, every week. 184 00:11:57,880 --> 00:12:00,360 That's not worth documenting. 185 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:07,360 But Jesus rising from the dead, that event is the thing. 186 00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:13,680 That is the thing that happened that made the whole story of Jesus worth writing down. 187 00:12:13,680 --> 00:12:17,240 If Jesus had not risen from the dead, then all that would have happened would have been 188 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:22,920 a bunch of heartbroken friends gathered around the tomb and maybe scared for their own lives. 189 00:12:22,920 --> 00:12:28,040 And maybe years later, there would have been a footnote about Jesus in some ancient history 190 00:12:28,040 --> 00:12:30,600 book about being a great teacher. 191 00:12:30,600 --> 00:12:35,400 But there would be no Christians, there would be no church, and there would definitely be 192 00:12:35,400 --> 00:12:40,000 no Bible as we understand the Bible. 193 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:49,200 So Luke documented, and many people documented Jesus' life because his life did not end on 194 00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:52,240 a Roman cross. 195 00:12:52,240 --> 00:12:57,120 It was his rising from the dead that made his life worth documenting. 196 00:12:57,120 --> 00:12:58,480 That is so important. 197 00:12:58,480 --> 00:13:07,360 Now as we continue to read in Luke's Gospel, we read, he says, with this in mind, since 198 00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:13,800 I've investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account 199 00:13:13,800 --> 00:13:17,600 of this account and most excellent Theophilus. 200 00:13:17,600 --> 00:13:22,320 And of course, that's one of the reasons why people think Theophilus was a rich and successful 201 00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:27,960 member of the communities because he's called most excellent Theophilus in this letter. 202 00:13:27,960 --> 00:13:30,400 Now can I just pause for a second? 203 00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:36,480 When Luke started writing this down, did Luke think he was writing the Bible? 204 00:13:36,480 --> 00:13:39,160 The answer to that question is absolutely not. 205 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:41,360 Luke did not think he was writing the Bible. 206 00:13:41,360 --> 00:13:44,160 Luke did not think he was writing Scripture. 207 00:13:44,160 --> 00:13:50,240 Luke had no idea that no clue could never have fathomed that what he was writing would 208 00:13:50,240 --> 00:13:56,040 somehow have ended up in our Bible some 2000 years later. 209 00:13:56,040 --> 00:14:03,840 Luke was simply writing this, an orderly account, an orderly account of what had happened based 210 00:14:03,840 --> 00:14:07,760 on the eyewitnesses that he had talked to and interviewed. 211 00:14:07,760 --> 00:14:11,840 So if you opened up Luke's orderly account and you were to start reading it, you'd say, 212 00:14:11,840 --> 00:14:14,120 oh, he's got something in here about the birth of Jesus. 213 00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:16,920 Oh, he's got something in here about Jesus teaching. 214 00:14:16,920 --> 00:14:22,120 And oh, Luke also wrote some stuff about Jesus, miracles and the signs he performed. 215 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:27,840 And then, oh, yes, there is this bit about his arrest and his crucifixion and his burial 216 00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:32,400 and, oh, his resurrection from the dead. 217 00:14:32,400 --> 00:14:34,120 So Luke was just documenting that. 218 00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:36,480 He was not writing the Bible. 219 00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:43,320 And the thing is, Luke also, he knew a bunch of people who were firsthand that would have 220 00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:44,320 known this stuff. 221 00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:47,640 Luke would have known John, I believe. 222 00:14:47,640 --> 00:14:49,760 Luke would have known Peter. 223 00:14:49,760 --> 00:14:54,200 Luke would have been able to talk to James, the brother of Jesus. 224 00:14:54,200 --> 00:14:56,440 Imagine talking to the brother of Jesus. 225 00:14:56,440 --> 00:14:57,440 And that's what Luke did. 226 00:14:57,440 --> 00:15:01,320 He went around and he talked to people and he began to write things down in his little 227 00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:02,320 book. 228 00:15:02,320 --> 00:15:08,920 And then, actually, he kept going because he then eventually met up with the apostle Paul. 229 00:15:08,920 --> 00:15:14,400 The apostle Paul, of course, was going around the Mediterranean area and planting little 230 00:15:14,400 --> 00:15:16,520 churches here and there. 231 00:15:16,520 --> 00:15:18,800 And Luke traveled with Paul. 232 00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:25,000 And so, actually, Luke ended up writing a second kind of book that was called The Book 233 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:26,000 of Acts. 234 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:32,080 And in that book, he talks about how the church kind of began and how the followers of Jesus 235 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:36,440 started sharing the good news and started preaching sermons and they got arrested, but they kept 236 00:15:36,440 --> 00:15:37,440 telling others. 237 00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:42,280 And so, anyway, Luke ends up putting together these documents, these documents which we 238 00:15:42,280 --> 00:15:44,400 can call Luke Acts. 239 00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:45,520 Okay, Luke Acts. 240 00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:48,080 But I just want us to remember again. 241 00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:52,480 Just to remember this, that Luke says, I'm not the only one. 242 00:15:52,480 --> 00:15:55,920 I'm not the only one that is doing this, right? 243 00:15:55,920 --> 00:15:56,920 There are other people. 244 00:15:56,920 --> 00:15:57,920 There's somebody over here doing it. 245 00:15:57,920 --> 00:15:59,000 And somebody over there is doing it. 246 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:01,600 And someone years ago already did it over there. 247 00:16:01,600 --> 00:16:05,200 The things that have happened to us, the things that have happened to us, people are writing 248 00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:06,200 it down. 249 00:16:06,200 --> 00:16:08,920 I just want to just take a little moment here. 250 00:16:08,920 --> 00:16:12,600 And maybe you need to just ask yourself this question. 251 00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:15,880 Maybe you're one of those people who are kind of on the fence about your faith. 252 00:16:15,880 --> 00:16:19,240 And you need to ask yourself about that first word, many. 253 00:16:19,240 --> 00:16:20,960 Why did so many? 254 00:16:20,960 --> 00:16:26,960 Why did so many people think that this needed to be written down? 255 00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:31,440 Why so many people when it was so expensive and literacy was so high? 256 00:16:31,440 --> 00:16:36,720 It's because something extraordinary had happened. 257 00:16:36,720 --> 00:16:38,440 So again, Luke's over here. 258 00:16:38,440 --> 00:16:40,240 He's writing his stuff. 259 00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:41,240 He's not writing the Bible. 260 00:16:41,240 --> 00:16:42,640 He's just writing his stuff. 261 00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:44,160 And then let's take a look over here. 262 00:16:44,160 --> 00:16:48,520 Over here, though, meanwhile, or actually maybe even before Luke started writing, actually 263 00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:54,560 definitely before Luke started writing, Peter, the disciple of Jesus, is also putting something 264 00:16:54,560 --> 00:16:55,560 down on paper. 265 00:16:55,560 --> 00:16:58,960 Actually, he's not putting it down on paper because most people think Peter was illiterate. 266 00:16:58,960 --> 00:17:05,600 So he was dictating his recollections of Jesus to a guy by the name of John Mark. 267 00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:12,880 There's a second century theologian kind of church leader named Papias who tells us that 268 00:17:12,880 --> 00:17:16,320 Peter dictated the words of Mark's gospel. 269 00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:18,080 Only then it wasn't called Mark's gospel. 270 00:17:18,080 --> 00:17:22,440 It would have just been Peter's recollections of the life of Jesus. 271 00:17:22,440 --> 00:17:24,880 We now call it Mark's gospel. 272 00:17:24,880 --> 00:17:28,720 If you were to read Peter's recollections, you'll find that it's much shorter than Luke's 273 00:17:28,720 --> 00:17:29,720 recollection. 274 00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:32,560 It moves a lot faster than his. 275 00:17:32,560 --> 00:17:37,120 And it was probably written in the 50s, like 20 years after the death and resurrection of 276 00:17:37,120 --> 00:17:38,120 Jesus. 277 00:17:38,120 --> 00:17:40,480 So you've got Peter over here talking to John Mark. 278 00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:41,960 And then you've got another fellow over here. 279 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:44,040 His name is Matthew. 280 00:17:44,040 --> 00:17:48,760 Matthew is also writing down thoughts about who this Jesus was. 281 00:17:48,760 --> 00:17:49,960 He's doing his own research. 282 00:17:49,960 --> 00:17:55,520 Now Matthew, actually, he's doing it with a different audience in mind. 283 00:17:55,520 --> 00:18:00,640 There was Mark who was Peter who had a very kind of close relationship. 284 00:18:00,640 --> 00:18:02,400 And then you've got Matthew. 285 00:18:02,400 --> 00:18:05,640 Matthew of course is speaking to a Jewish audience. 286 00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:08,280 That's very clear if you read Matthew's recollections. 287 00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:15,000 In fact, you see, there was already a Bible, if you will, kind of what the Jewish people 288 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:17,080 called the Tanakh. 289 00:18:17,080 --> 00:18:22,040 And it was the sacred writings of the Jewish people that include the Torah, which was Genesis, 290 00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:24,160 Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 291 00:18:24,160 --> 00:18:28,520 And then it included the writings of the prophets and the writings of some history books and 292 00:18:28,520 --> 00:18:30,360 teachings. 293 00:18:30,360 --> 00:18:34,520 And this was already kind of considered sacred by, for sure, considered sacred and holy by 294 00:18:34,520 --> 00:18:37,040 the Jewish community. 295 00:18:37,040 --> 00:18:40,680 And because Matthew was Jewish and was writing to the Jewish community, Matthew, when he 296 00:18:40,680 --> 00:18:46,560 wrote his version of the recollections of Jesus, he was constantly pulling ideas and 297 00:18:46,560 --> 00:18:54,320 thoughts and connections from the Hebrew literature, the Tanakh, and including it into here as 298 00:18:54,320 --> 00:19:00,040 a way of saying, hey, Jesus was the fulfillment of God's plan from the very beginning. 299 00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:05,160 And he was always kind of tying things in and showing how Jesus was like the fulfillment 300 00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:08,960 of prophecies and how we fit right into God's overall story. 301 00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:16,040 In fact, people say that the first version of Matthew's recollections of Jesus was written 302 00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:20,800 in Hebrew, which actually makes sense because his audience would have been a Jewish audience, 303 00:19:20,800 --> 00:19:25,040 and only later did it get translated into Greek. 304 00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:26,040 Are you guys with me? 305 00:19:26,040 --> 00:19:27,040 Are you following with me? 306 00:19:27,040 --> 00:19:28,040 So basically, we've got no Bible. 307 00:19:28,040 --> 00:19:29,040 There's no Bible. 308 00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:31,920 And what we've got is people writing stuff. 309 00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:34,600 Here's a mind-blowing thought. 310 00:19:34,600 --> 00:19:35,800 Consider this. 311 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:43,640 Mark took Peter's recollections earlier than Luke and Matthew, and most scholars agree 312 00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:49,800 that when Luke was writing his recollections, he already had a copy of Mark on his desk. 313 00:19:49,800 --> 00:19:55,520 And when Matthew was writing his recollections, he had a copy of Mark, or at least parts of 314 00:19:55,520 --> 00:19:57,520 Mark, already with him. 315 00:19:57,520 --> 00:19:58,520 Isn't that kind of mind-blowing? 316 00:19:58,520 --> 00:19:59,520 Wait a second. 317 00:19:59,520 --> 00:20:02,400 That's not how I learned about the Bible, but that's how it came together. 318 00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:05,720 You've got to understand the story of the Bible. 319 00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:13,440 Meanwhile, we've got somebody else who is traveling around and not writing documents and recollections, 320 00:20:13,440 --> 00:20:15,440 per se, but writing letters. 321 00:20:15,440 --> 00:20:17,240 You've got the apostle Paul, who is... 322 00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:18,240 Where are my Pauls? 323 00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:19,240 Here they are. 324 00:20:19,240 --> 00:20:24,120 Paul is going around planting churches, and he's not writing the Bible. 325 00:20:24,120 --> 00:20:25,320 What he's doing is writing letters. 326 00:20:25,320 --> 00:20:28,200 He's writing a letter to the church in Philippi. 327 00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:30,920 He's writing a letter to the church in Thessalonica. 328 00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:33,760 He's writing a letter to the church in Ephesus. 329 00:20:33,760 --> 00:20:40,400 He's writing a letter to the church in Galatia, and another one to the church in Rome, and 330 00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:42,120 he's writing all these letters to them. 331 00:20:42,120 --> 00:20:43,800 Again, it's not Scripture. 332 00:20:43,800 --> 00:20:44,800 It's letters. 333 00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:48,880 And it's not just Paul who was writing letters, but there were some other letters that were 334 00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:51,320 getting written by Peter. 335 00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:52,480 And there was another... 336 00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:53,800 There was a letter or two that... 337 00:20:53,800 --> 00:20:56,760 Or definitely one letter written by James. 338 00:20:56,760 --> 00:20:58,200 They weren't writing the Bible. 339 00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:00,640 They were just writing letters. 340 00:21:00,640 --> 00:21:01,640 Let me... 341 00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:03,400 Let's talk about one very important one. 342 00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:12,320 There was a guy named John who said, I too am going to put down my memories and my recollections 343 00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:16,000 of Jesus so that people and generations can hear all about it. 344 00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:17,480 And people might say, well, John, come on. 345 00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:19,000 Look, we've already got this. 346 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:20,160 We've already got this. 347 00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:21,400 These guys are working on theirs. 348 00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:22,720 They're borrowing from him. 349 00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:23,800 The word is getting around. 350 00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:26,160 Why do you need to put down anything more? 351 00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,920 And I think, actually, John tells us. 352 00:21:28,920 --> 00:21:35,040 He tells us in his document why he felt it was important for him to write something more. 353 00:21:35,040 --> 00:21:36,520 And this is what he says right at the end. 354 00:21:36,520 --> 00:21:40,920 If you were to read John's recollections of Jesus, he says that Jesus performed many other 355 00:21:40,920 --> 00:21:41,920 signs. 356 00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:43,880 Oh, I couldn't even get them all in here. 357 00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:46,640 In other words, John is saying that I only put certain things in here. 358 00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:48,200 I didn't put them all in here. 359 00:21:48,200 --> 00:21:52,520 And he performed these signs in the presence of his disciples, not just the 12, but, you 360 00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:57,160 know, hundreds of people saw these that they're not recorded in this book. 361 00:21:57,160 --> 00:21:58,160 What book is he talking about? 362 00:21:58,160 --> 00:21:59,520 Is he talking about this book? 363 00:21:59,520 --> 00:22:01,360 No, this book did not exist. 364 00:22:01,360 --> 00:22:03,720 He's talking about this book, his own writing. 365 00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:09,360 He says, I didn't put them in here, but I have put some in here. 366 00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:12,920 And then he goes to tell us why he chose to put something in here. 367 00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:19,720 He says, these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son 368 00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:25,920 of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. 369 00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:28,000 This is a fascinating thing. 370 00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:33,280 He's basically saying, I didn't put everything in here, but what I did put in here is enough 371 00:22:33,280 --> 00:22:38,680 that if you just had this and you didn't have any of that, you could still believe that 372 00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:44,040 Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and you could have life in his name. 373 00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:49,040 Thanks, John, which is actually why when many people start reading the Bible, we don't recommend 374 00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:50,760 they start at Genesis. 375 00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:52,880 We don't even recommend they start at Matthew. 376 00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:56,440 We recommend they start reading the Gospel of John. 377 00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:57,440 Why? 378 00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:01,920 John has written his Gospel according to his own words in such a way that if you were to 379 00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:10,840 just read this, you could come to know the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. 380 00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:14,600 This is pretty crazy. 381 00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:19,280 All these books, all the, they're not books, all these documents that are being written. 382 00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:21,280 Now let's fast forward a bit. 383 00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:24,440 I know I'm kind of going a little all over the place here today, but let's get to the 384 00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:26,400 end of the first century. 385 00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:30,520 The end of the first century, it's still no Bible, but we have all these documents that 386 00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:32,840 are floating, floating, floating around. 387 00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:36,320 And actually what we do have is a number of Christians that are growing and growing too. 388 00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:41,000 Now there's more Christians that, you know, there's Greek Christians, and Roman Christians, 389 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:44,680 and there's Christians in different parts of the world. 390 00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:49,080 And what begins to happen is copies. 391 00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:50,440 Copies start to get made. 392 00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:55,840 So, you know, Luke wrote his document, but eventually somebody said, oh, I want to copy 393 00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:56,840 that down. 394 00:23:56,840 --> 00:23:57,840 Thanks. 395 00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:00,840 I'm going to take a copy and I'm going to take it over to this community here. 396 00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:02,280 So they've got a copy of it. 397 00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,400 And then Paul's letter said, oh, that's a really interesting thing Paul said in his 398 00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:06,400 letter. 399 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:07,400 It almost feels inspired. 400 00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:08,840 So they said, can we have a copy of that? 401 00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:13,040 So they took a copy of Paul's letter and they made a copy of that and somebody made a copy 402 00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:17,760 of that and there's copies and copies and copies start to proliferate. 403 00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:21,480 Soon there's dozens, then there's hundreds, then there's thousands of copies, not of 404 00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:22,480 the Bible. 405 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:27,240 There's thousands of copies of these documents floating all around. 406 00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:29,600 And in some towns, they're really fortunate. 407 00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:35,840 They've got like a copy, a full copy of Luke and a full copy of Mark and they've got a 408 00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:37,200 couple of Paul's letters. 409 00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:38,200 They're doing really good. 410 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:43,520 In other towns, they may just have one letter or they may just have a fragment, a piece 411 00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:47,320 of one of the Gospels that is so, so precious to them. 412 00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:50,200 So some have lots, some have little, right? 413 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:51,640 And they're so valuable. 414 00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:57,760 Can you imagine if, let's say your grandpa had told you, hey, when I was your age, I 415 00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:03,040 actually heard Peter, I heard Peter preach and it was amazing. 416 00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:08,440 And then one day, somebody comes to town and they have Mark's Gospel, which is Peter's 417 00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:17,200 recollections penned by Mark and you can now have an actual copy of Peter's words. 418 00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:18,680 It's a pretty incredible thing. 419 00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:27,400 Now, this is a pretty poor example, but when in my family, I had a great grandfather and 420 00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:28,400 that's him right there. 421 00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:33,720 His name was Herbert Henry Cawking and he apparently was kind of an amateur poet. 422 00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:38,920 He liked to write down poetry and was always reaming off a limb record or something like 423 00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:39,920 that. 424 00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:45,280 And I never knew him, but of course I knew my grandfather, his son, and my grandfather 425 00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:49,080 was often, you know, he was also a bit of a word smith. 426 00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:52,760 He was always saying something funny and a little turn of a phrase, a little poem, this 427 00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:58,600 a poem, that and maybe some of the things my grandpa was sharing were actually from Herbert 428 00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:01,640 Henry Cawking's kind of more formal poetry. 429 00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:07,400 Anyways, one day my uncle John said, we really should go around and collect all the poetry 430 00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:11,640 that my great grandfather, Herbert Henry Cawking, actually wrote down. 431 00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,320 And so that's exactly what he did. 432 00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:18,760 He put together this little book and he gave it to every member of our family and it was 433 00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:23,360 called, The Palms from the Past, the original works of Herbert Henry Cawking. 434 00:26:23,360 --> 00:26:28,640 And I got to be honest with you, these poems aren't like amazing. 435 00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:34,120 But you know, chat GPT could probably do as good as this these days, but here I'll read 436 00:26:34,120 --> 00:26:36,040 one to you. 437 00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:41,400 The village homes of England how peacefully they lay, the ivy holds the crumbling walls 438 00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:43,560 from falling clean away. 439 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:50,040 The pigsties and the roses give the air a hybrid scent and everything is coming down, 440 00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,560 of course, except the rent. 441 00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:58,760 Yeah, it's a, maybe it's kind of true even today. 442 00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:05,040 It's not scripture for sure, but it was very special to hold in your hands something that 443 00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:11,600 was kind of a collection of writings that you thought might have been lost over time. 444 00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:17,280 That's kind of what was happening with the documents concerning Jesus. 445 00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:21,400 And as they were copied and shared, something else began to happen. 446 00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:26,120 People began to feel like these are actually inspired somehow. 447 00:27:26,120 --> 00:27:31,200 These books, these documents, these letters, there's a sacredness to them. 448 00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:36,560 It's almost as if God is speaking to us through letters that were never intended to us, that 449 00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:42,200 God is speaking to us, even though Luke wrote to theophilus, that document actually speaks 450 00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:43,880 to us today. 451 00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:46,680 So there was the sense that these words are special. 452 00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:49,000 These words are inspired. 453 00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:56,080 Now I'm going to round out and end here shortly, but the Roman Empire had a problem with Christians 454 00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:58,440 and Christians didn't believe in Roman gods. 455 00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:00,280 And actually Roman Empire was fine. 456 00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:03,840 If you wanted to worship Jesus or worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you could 457 00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:04,840 do that. 458 00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:08,400 But you also had to worship the emperor, you also had to worship the Roman gods. 459 00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,680 And Christians, of course, wouldn't do that. 460 00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:15,760 And so that got them on the wrong side of Roman authorities. 461 00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:19,720 And whenever something went wrong, then Christians kind of got blamed for it and they were often 462 00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:21,560 persecuted for it. 463 00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:29,440 But things went really bad when in the year 303, Emperor Diocletian launched what was 464 00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:37,720 one of the most formidable attacks on Christianity, state-sponsored persecution. 465 00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,080 And what it amounted to was this, he wrote an edict. 466 00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:44,120 And in the edict it said that every house of Christian worship had to be destroyed. 467 00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:47,160 It said that every assembly of Christians was illegal. 468 00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:51,160 All the bishops of the church had to be rounded up and they had to recant. 469 00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:53,920 They had to deny their faith. 470 00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,680 And on top of that, guess what he said. 471 00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:04,200 You also, if you were caught carrying Christian literature, then you too would be killed. 472 00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:12,960 You and your whole family with you, all Christian literature, all this stuff was to be destroyed. 473 00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,040 And so you know what? 474 00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:23,480 Hundreds and hundreds of Christians risked their lives to protect and save not the Bible, 475 00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:31,040 but to protect and save copies and bundles and fragments of these pieces of John's Gospel 476 00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:34,560 and pieces of Paul's letters and pieces of Luke's Gospel. 477 00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:41,240 And they would rather have died than give up these sacred texts. 478 00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:45,720 And the only reason that these documents survived like the second, third and fourth centuries 479 00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:53,720 was because of the sacrificial commitment of Christians to protecting these documents. 480 00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:56,320 Now of course things in politics change. 481 00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:03,440 And in the year 324, Constantine became the undisputed emperor of the Roman Empire. 482 00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:05,800 And what he did was he canceled those edicts. 483 00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:09,680 He said, okay, Christians, you don't have to hide anymore. 484 00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:11,320 You can worship freely. 485 00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:17,320 In fact, Christianity became the religion of preference in the new empire. 486 00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:19,640 And that meant, can you believe this? 487 00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:29,680 That meant that for the first time ever, Christians and Christian scholars were able to come out 488 00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:34,280 of hiding and for the first time say, okay, wait a second, wait. 489 00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:36,840 We've got this. 490 00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:39,320 And we've got this. 491 00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,600 And there's this and this and hey, this is safe. 492 00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:44,000 We're able to do this now. 493 00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:45,440 We've got these. 494 00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:47,880 And we, of course, we can't forget that. 495 00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:50,320 And this, everybody seems to have a copy of this by now. 496 00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:52,000 And then they said, oh, oh, and you know what? 497 00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:55,640 Of course, we, the Tanakh, we have to include that too. 498 00:30:55,640 --> 00:31:00,920 And what they ended up doing for the very first time was gathering up all those documents 499 00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,040 and all those fragments and all those pieces. 500 00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:09,600 And they put it all together and they, they stacked it. 501 00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:20,360 And for the very first time in history, there was something we could call a Christian Bible, 502 00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,640 a Bible. 503 00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:26,080 Pretty amazing, that story. 504 00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:31,520 And let's just go back to the very first thing that I said there. 505 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:37,120 If you don't know the story of the Bible, it is really hard to believe the stories in 506 00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:38,800 the Bible. 507 00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:46,360 But once you know, once you know the story of the Bible and how it was created and the 508 00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:51,960 events that led to its creation and the, the sacrifice that it took to bring it to us, 509 00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:52,960 then you know what? 510 00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:59,760 It's actually a lot easier to believe the stories in the Bible and to make those stories 511 00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:01,680 our own stories too. 512 00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:06,520 I'm going to end it there today, but that's just a setup for where we're going to be going 513 00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:12,120 in the weeks ahead as we dig deeper and deeper into this amazing book, this amazing document 514 00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:13,840 of the Bible. 515 00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:15,760 So thanks be to God. 516 00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:16,760 Amen. 517 00:32:16,760 --> 00:32:22,040 Thank you so much for joining us today, and we hope that you found the sermon informative 518 00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:23,800 and inspiring. 519 00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:27,880 Join us next week as we continue to learn more about the Bible for grown-ups. 520 00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:33,480 Today's sermon was taken from the April 7th, 2024 service at Trinity Church Streetsville 521 00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:58,480 in Mississauga, Ontario.