Hey friend, welcome back to the semi -seminary
in another week. Another installment of our Bible
study that we call here the Bible for Grownups.
Just a reminder, the Bible for Grownups is the
understanding that most of us from the Christian
faith were taught the Bible as children. Or maybe
we came to the faith later in our lives and we
were taught the Bible as adults, but unfortunately,
we were taught the Bible by adults who were taught
the Bible as children. Nobody's fault. The problem
is, though, that it leaves us in a lurch. It
puts us in a position where we have a childish
understanding of God's relationship with us.
In a very complex and adult world. So let's take
a second. And I want to thank all of the new
listeners to the podcast. And on this Thanksgiving
break. Given that we can't have a Bible study
on Wednesday night. Tonight we like to let the
volunteers that take place. That do all of the
wonderful work down at our church. For the Bible
study to take place. For them to be able to have
the night off. So that they can be with the families
ahead of the holiday, the Thanksgiving holiday.
So we don't have a fresh new episode. Joe will
continue next week despite what you're hearing
in this episode. Because this episode is going
to be a rewind. It's going to take us back to
the very, very, very first episode of the podcast.
If you've never heard this episode, I hope you
give it a listen. Been with us for some time.
I'd hope you'd give it a re -listen and kind
of think about the things that we've talked about
for the last couple of, I guess, years now. About
this idea of how we can approach Scripture in
a way in which it's more accessible to us. It's
more human. Tonight, we talk about how we came
to the Bible. And what I'm trying to highlight
this evening is how we need to get to an understanding
that Scripture, the thing that we consider our
handbook, our guidebook to our daily lives, is
a patchwork. It is created in cooperation between
fallible humans and the divine. That the human
experience is... Not erased in the spirit divine
truth of the Bible. That means that there are
bumps and there are warts. It also means it's
authentic because it's just like the life you
and I both lead. It's something we can relate
to. I hope you'll revisit this rewind with us
back to episode one. And I'll see you on the
other side. Tonight we're going to do the story
of the Bible. This is a series. All of these,
whether we're doing Matthew or whether we're
doing 1 Chronicles, whatever it may be, all of
these are going to fall under the heading of
the Bible for Grownups, which I think is a valuable
series. This is a series that is for adults who
were introduced to the Bible as children. or
for adults who were introduced to the Bible as
adults who were introduced to the Bible as children.
Either way, most of us know some stories in the
Bible, but very few of us actually know the story
of the Bible. And the story of the Bible is so
incredibly important to the stories in the Bible.
The problem is that the story of how we got the
Bible is different than how we got the stories.
In the Bible, the story of the first Bible. So
many of you probably are a lot like me. This
is actually not mine. This is my grandfather's
what I actually keep on the pulpit. But you probably
received if you have received the first Bible,
probably something like this in imitation, authentic
imitation leather. It might have had your name
in gold leaf down here in the corner. I'm not
sure. why we do it that way, but it seems like
that's what we do. And also by the time we received
our Bible, it's been chaptered and versed. There
are maps, there are concordances. The reason
why I wanted to show you this Bible here is because
this much of the book is the Bible. This much
of the book is stuff explaining the Bible. So
about half of this Bible isn't even the Bible.
It's explaining the Bible. So by the time we
get the Bible, it's had all of this stuff added
to it. And it's been separated out. Some Bibles
even have little subheadings that talk about
specific events or stories that are in the Bible.
But that's vastly different than how the Bible
originally began. And I just real quickly want
to show you, this is... A copy of mine of the
Greek New Testament. This is just the New Testament.
And you can perhaps see that there's no English
in it. It's just Greek. So this would have been,
if you would have had a copy of all of the letters
and the gospel accounts, the epistles in the
first century, this is what, at least, this is
what it would have looked like in Greek. Because
that's what it would have been written in. This
is a copy of the Hebrew Bible. And so as you
can see, this is written in Hebrew text. And
it goes right to left, right, as Semitic languages
go. So Genesis isn't here. Genesis is here. Because
you actually read it the other way. So that's
a Hebrew Bible. That's a Greek New Testament.
That's a Holy Bible, right? But we're a long
way where we start our story tonight from getting
from these to this. Okay, so that's what we want
to talk about tonight. And the thing about how
we get to know the Bible and what's in the Bible,
I think is pretty similar. We're all shown as
usually as children, familiar or easy stories
in the Bible that we can understand. But unfortunately
for many of us as we got older, there might have
been some of us that were shown Bibles, parts
of the Bible that... They didn't talk about in
church, or maybe they weren't as easy to explain.
And as a result, we begin to question the authenticity
of the Bible. And that can lead to disillusionment,
confusion, and for some people, walking away.
So where does the story of the Bible begin? Ironically,
the story of the Bible begins when Jesus was
not who he claimed to be. Now, don't leave early.
You have to stick with me because you'll see
how on that first Good Friday, the day that he
was crucified, there was a man by the name of
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Joseph of
Arimathea was a rich man in Jerusalem. Nicodemus
was a Pharisee. They would have been considered
famous people. They took Jesus' body down from
the cross. They laid it in a fresh cut. and then
they arranged for women to prepare spices and
perfumes so that they might embalm the body of
Jesus. Why? Because they expected Jesus to stay
dead. And in that particular moment, there was
no Jesus movement, there were no Christians,
there was certainly no the Bible. All there was
was a handful of heartbroken women and frightened
disciples that feared for their own lives. And
then something happened. Not that something great
was written down. That would come much, much
later. But something happened. So, where does
the Bible begin? In the beginning, right? No,
no. The story of the Bible does not begin in
the beginning. As a matter of fact, the story
begins somewhere about halfway through the end
of the Bible. About halfway through the last
third of the Bible is where the Bible actually
begins. And it began with a first century doctor
by the name of Luke who began to write an orderly
account of the life of Jesus on the behalf of
another first century believer, a wealthy man
by the name of Theophilus. And he wanted Luke...
as a historian, to carefully document the events
and eyewitness testimony of Jesus' life. So,
in your little handout there, here's how Luke
begins his account, his gospel according to Luke.
He says, Many, many have undertaken to draw up
an account of the things that have been fulfilled,
or things that have happened among us. And just
as they were handed down to us by those, From
the first, he's talking about people who are
familiar with the events of Jesus' life from
the beginning. From the time the whole thing
happened, there were eyewitnesses and servants
of the word. With this in mind, since I myself
have carefully investigated everything from the
beginning, I too decided to write down an orderly
account for you, most excellent Theophilus. This
title, Most Excellent, is what gives us the clue
that Theophilus would have been a rich guy in
Jerusalem at the time. So that you may know the
certainty of the things you've been taught. That's
very interesting because Luke, right at the very
beginning of his gospel account, says, I'm not
the only one that's writing stuff down like this.
He says many are doing this. Now what's interesting
about that is that That is actually very rare
in the ancient world. Writing down documents,
preparing documents, and then preserving those
documents was something that was very rare in
the first century and before. Why? Because it
was expensive. Writing was a specialized talent.
It took time to prepare. You had to have someone
that could dedicate their time instead of working
in the fields or being a fisherman. It was such
a tedious work that it actually took someone
as it would a job to do. So it's expensive. It's
hard to do. And literacy rates, high or low in
the first century, right? Relatively low. So
even that, even whenever you get something written
down, your audience is very, very small. Our
consumption of the written word today as we all
flip through our phones or we read books or we
watch TV cannot possibly prepare our minds for
the fact that it was just something that was
not even hardly considered amongst the average
person in the first century because the literacy
rates people that had the ability to either acquire
written documents or even if they got their hands
on them to be able to read them was very, very
small. So the fact that Luke notes at the very,
very beginning of the writing of this gospel
account that there are many people doing this
same thing, that makes the writing down of Christ's
life rare, very atypical to other ancient historical
events. And we'll get into that a little bit
later. Now, when Luke was writing his account,
he was not writing the Bible. He had no idea
that the Bible would ever exist. He was only
writing an orderly account of what had happened
when the Jewish authorities and the Roman Empire
had crushed this Jesus movement. And if the story
had simply just ended there, there'd be no church,
there would be no Christians, there would be
no Old Testament or New Testament, there would
be no the Bible. Luke documented the story of
Jesus because that story didn't end on a Roman
cross. Luke tells us that he is a Jesus follower
and that Theophilus is a Jesus follower because
Jesus came back to life. Those are the events
in which he is describing. And that there were
followers, many followers who had seen Jesus
alive. And those same followers went back into
Jerusalem to face down the very authorities that
had hung Jesus from a cross. And it's in that
moment when they decide to go back into Jerusalem
and challenge the Roman and Jewish authorities
about the death and resurrection of Christ in
which the church was born. But in that moment,
even though the church had been created by a
spark, there's still no the Bible. And so Luke
goes on to document about the next 30 years or
so of the story of the lives of Jesus followers
and how the story of Jesus spread throughout
the Mediterranean basin. And that account is
in the Bible, and we call that book the Acts
or the Acts of the Apostles. And that book documents.
Luke's relationship with Peter and with John
and also the fact that Luke traveled around the
Mediterranean basin with the Apostle Paul and
described the rise of the Gentile church. So
just so I can, I can't assume that anybody, that
everybody knows exactly what I'm talking about
when I talk about the Gentile church. I'm talking
about those people who lived in Ephesus or in
Rome or in Asia Minor. Those people, even in
Judea, people that lived in the Mediterranean
basin that heard and believed in the story of
Jesus Christ that were not ethnically or religiously
Jewish. OK, anybody, whether you be Greek or
Roman or Persian, Syrian. Right. If you're not
a Jew, but you believe in Jesus, you're a Gentile.
OK, just so I'm not trying to just so we all
know for sure what we're talking about. And this
movement of Jesus followers largely made up by
Gentiles in this area of the world would end
up shaping the whole of Western civilization.
Now, like I said, Luke mentions that he is not
the only one documenting these events. Remember,
many had undertaken these same things. And why
had so many decided to do it? Because something
extraordinary had happened. One of those accounts.
is Matthew. And we'll begin scrubbing through
Matthew next week. Matthew is also known as Levi.
And at the time that he encountered Jesus, he
worked for the Roman authorities as a tax collector.
Something that's interesting to me, at least,
about the Gospel of Matthew is that it's believed
to have originally been written in Hebrew. And
then later versions of the manuscript of the
gospel account, according to Matthew, were then
translated into Greek, which at that time was
the universal language of government in the region.
Now why is that important? Because what we're
going to begin to discover next week, and we're
going to talk about essentially throughout...
our talk about the gospel according to Matthew
is Matthew writes his gospel account to a specific
audience. He writes his gospel account to Jews
about Jesus being the one that is foretold in
the Hebrew scripture, right? So basically Matthew
is saying, hey, my fellow Jewish friends, the
guy that Isaiah and that Jeremiah and that Hosea
and Micah, the guy that they're talking about,
It's this guy, Jesus. And if we go back to Hebrew
Scripture and we look at all of the conditions
that were set forth by those prophets to make
sure that this was the real dude, I'm actually
going to write in my gospel account how he checks
things off the box. That's the point of the Gospel
of Matthew, is to show the Hebrew reader that
Jesus is not just some guy who was raised from
the dead. but actually is the Deliverer, the
Messiah of the Jewish people. Now, what's interesting
to me about that is because if it was originally
written in Hebrew, and it was written to the
Hebrews, why was the Gospel account according
to Matthew written in Greek? Because the story
of the Bible was not a story that was just for
the Jewish people. It was a story that was for
the whole world. If it was a story that was just
for the Jewish people, then there would have
been no reason to translate the gospel according
to Matthew into any other language. Because if
you were a Jew and spoke Hebrew and it was just
for you, then that was all that you needed. But
the fact that Matthew was originally written
in Hebrew and then translated into Greek shows
us a transformation of the relationship of the
God, Yahweh, and his covenant with the people
on the earth, the Jewish people, seeing that
transition. Between that covenant extending to
a specific group of people, to all of the people
of the world whom hear and believe. Just in that
little mechanism. So this is a story not just
for the Jewish people, but for the whole world.
Now the next gospel account that's written up
in our Bible is the gospel according to Mark.
Now Mark is the shortest of all the gospels.
Mark is the first gospel that was ever recorded.
There is believed to be the Gospel according
to Mark and another document called the QL, and
that's German for source. And there's believed
to be another version of a manuscript, biblical
manuscript out there called the QL source. And
Matthew, Luke, and John all draw from the Gospel
of Mark and this other document that we know
exists because... Quotations from it exist in
the other documents. It's just that we don't
have a copy of that document. I don't know how
they figure all of that out. I'm not a biblical
scholar, but they have shown that there is another
document that the gospel writers drew upon when
they were writing their own document. We just
don't have a copy of it anymore. So Mark is the
shortest. It's the second that's in your Bible,
but it's the first ever written. And it's written
by a guy by the name of John Mark. And does anybody
know who John Mark is in the Jesus story? Just
curious. John Mark, the guy who writes the gospel
according to Mark? Mark wasn't actually a follower
of Jesus. He was a follower of the way. He was
a Jesus follower, but John Mark did not encounter
Jesus in real life. John Mark was a disciple
of Peter. And as Peter went around and preached.
his gospel account, and spread the word of Jesus
in open churches, his right -hand guy was John
Mark. And finally, somebody said, John Mark,
you're literate. Why don't you write down what
Peter talks about in these sermons about Jesus?
And so the gospel account, according to Mark,
what that is is a collection of things that were
transmitted to listeners by Peter whenever he
gave sermons about Jesus in his life. So Mark
is the... the oldest of our gospel accounts and
then finally we get to john the gospel according
to john we have this account and it was the last
of the four gospels to written be written and
the gospel of john was written around 80 to 90
a .d just before the end of the first century
and at the time of the writing of his gospel
account john would have been a very old man We
also know that John was aware of the writings
of the other three gospels, and so one would
have to kind of ask, you know, John, why bother?
Well, John tells us why he bothered. At the end
of his account, we find this in John chapter
20, and it's verses 30 and 31. John very clearly
tells us. It's on your handout there. He says,
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence
of his disciples. And what John is trying to
say when he says that is, if you've gotten to
the end of my book and you've read all of the
things that I've written that Jesus said or Jesus
did, please know that is not all Jesus did and
said. If I tried to write down everything Jesus
said and did, there's not enough paper in the
world to do that. And so when John's saying this,
he's saying, I didn't write down everything he
said and did, but the reason why I chose these
stories is because I believe they demonstrate
to you who Jesus really is, the Messiah, the
Savior of the world. He says, he did many other
signs in the presence of his disciples which
were not recorded in this book. And whenever
he says this book, he doesn't mean the Bible,
right? He's talking about his. his document,
his account, but these that are written that
you may believe. Well, believe what? Believe
what? That Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God,
and that by believing you may have life in his
name. So, at the end of the first century, there
are hundreds and then there are thousands of
Jesus followers, but still at this moment, there's
no the Bible. And these early accounts of Jesus,
these Gospels, these four Gospel accounts, at
first there are a few, then there are dozens,
then there are hundreds of copies of these manuscripts.
And copies of these manuscripts eventually get
to become bundled together and then shared amongst
Jesus' followers. But not just Jewish people,
far, far from it. These manuscripts were written
and translated into Greek, and they begin to
get circulated around the Gentile or the non
-Jewish world. Now, given what we know and what
we've already talked about regarding these ancient
manuscripts and their rarity and their difficulty
to produce, This copying and this sharing and
this transmitting shows us something about the
Bible from the very beginning. That these documents,
from the very, very beginning, these documents
were considered by their readers to be valuable
and sacred. Considered them to be reliable. And
also considered them to be inspired. Considered
them to be scripture. but still no Bible. In
the year 303, the emperor Diocletian, the Roman
emperor, declared the religion of Christianity
illegal. Now, this is something that's a little
bit different than the way that the Romans had
done things in the past. And basically, what
they had done in the past was if you will throw,
we don't even care if you mean it, if you will
just throw lip service and an occasional grain
offering at the Roman gods, then you can practice
whatever religion in your home you want. The
Roman government just didn't really care. As
long as you made an appearance to be a loyal
Roman subject, however you worshipped in private
is your own business. And that changed in 303
when Diocletian said, no more Christianity. And
it's at this moment that Christianity begins
to experience its worst persecution in history.
Not only was the religion made illegal, but religious
houses of worship, in other words, churches,
were all to be torn down. And all Christian literature
confiscated and burned. And the penalty for the
crime of possessing Christian literature was
death. So countless men and women and children
lost their lives trying to hang on to these collections
of letters and documents that we have from these
writers from the first century. So I said that
without the resurrection, there'd be no story.
There would be no one to write down the story,
and then there would be no story if there was
no story of the resurrection. And then without
the gospel accounts, there'd be no Bible. Well,
how can that be? And I think the reason... Why
we think that is because when we think of the
Bible, we think of the Old Testament being a
part of it too, right? And so as we think of
our Bible as it exists today, and we think, well,
if there was no Jesus story, then how can you
even say that there'd be no other Old Testament
stuff? Well, the reason why we have the Bible
is because these Gentile believers, this... Vast
number compared to Jewish believers. This vast
number of believers compared to the Jewish followers.
These believers became enamored with the story
of Jesus. And as they become Jesus followers,
they began to seek out the ancient texts that
they felt like foretold Jesus' coming. Today
we call that collection the Hebrew Bible or the
Old Testament. But at this point in the story,
these early Jesus followers would have called
this collection the Law and the Prophets. That's
what they would have called it originally. And
these Gentile believers, they believed in these
texts not because they were interested in Judaism.
And the fact that they're not interested in Judaism,
but they are interested in the Old Testament,
that's actually going to create some friction
later on in the early church, and there'll come
a time when we'll talk about that as well. They
weren't interested in the scripture as Jewish
scripture, but they saw it as Christian scripture.
And by the end of the second century, Hebrew
scripture was being used in religious worship
services for... christians but there's still
no bible but we do have collections as parts
of in parts of collections of these two books
beginning to be collected together and although
they couldn't really at this time the what we
might think of as the proto new testament and
the proto old testament we probably couldn't
characterize them in any modern sense as books
the way we know them We do recognize that the
two, Christian and Hebrew scriptures, were being
utilized together by these early followers. And
how do we know that? Because the writer of about
two -thirds of the New Testament, a guy by the
name of Paul, he hid a large portion of his letters
to these early churches, deals with, in the light
of Jesus, how do we interpret Hebrew scripture?
That's what a big part of his letters in the
New Testament, what they actually talk about
to these early churches. Given that we believe
Jesus rose from the dead and that Jesus came
to perfect the law and Jesus said that the only
commandments are to love God and to love each
other. How do we make sense of being Christians
while we have this too? And that's what Paul's
talking about with his letters. Not only, but
that's what he talks about quite a bit. So let
me just back up. And I want to fill in the story
just in case you're a little bit sketchy on who
the Apostle Paul is. I don't want to make any
assumptions that you know all of this. I'm going
to very briefly just say that Paul, the Apostle
Paul, he was originally a guy by the name of
Saul. And he was from a place called Tarsus.
And Saul was a Pharisee. He was a Jewish religious
leader. And not only was he a Pharisee, but his
job, he was actually tasked with chasing down
Christians and persecuting them and in some instances
killing them for what they considered to be apostasy.
Basically, what that word means is that there
were Jewish people that said there are people
out there who have taken Judaism, who have taken
what the Hebrew scripture says, and they have
perverted it. to make it seem like that guy Jesus
is the guy that the prophets are talking about.
And we can't have that. That is bad for synagogue
business. Saul, go kill him. And that's what
happens. And then in about the year 37, there
are some biblical scholars that actually place
this date at about 35. I just learned this today.
I didn't know that there are some out there that
make the argument that... Paul's conversion to
Christianity might come around 35 AD, which means
just a couple of years after the resurrection,
Paul has been converted. So I think it shocks
a lot of people sometimes whenever they realize
that it was very, very quickly after the resurrection
that Saul, the guy persecuting, became Paul the
apostle and began promoting. And he writes these
letters. He begins to start these churches. He
starts churches in Ephesus and in Corinth, in
Galatia and Thessalonica. And he starts churches
in these places. And then they grow up and they
begin to have problems, as all churches do. And
they write letters to Paul to tell him about
the problems that they're having. And Paul writes
back letters to them telling them how to solve
those problems. And that's the letters that we
get in the New Testament. And so that's essentially
the story of the New Testament. So let me just
back up a little bit briefly here and talk about
the history of Hebrew Scripture. Now, the writing
of Hebrew Scripture started thousands and thousands
of years ago, somewhere between 1400 and 1500
BC, when we as Christian believers believe that
God himself wrote the Ten Commandments on stone.
and ascribed the very first words of God in the
ancient form of Hebrew. God gave those Ten Commandments
to a guy named Moses on the top of Mount Sinai.
And at that point, God began speaking his word
to us through his prophets. Years later, the
very, very first scriptures, they were known
as the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch, that word
in Greek is five, right? Penta. So that is the
first five books of the Bible. So Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those books
comprise the Pentateuch. And if you had all of
those five books written on a scroll, that scroll
would be about 150 feet long. And it would be
called the Torah. So you probably have heard
the term Torah. So the Torah is a collection
of the first five books of the Hebrew scripture
or the first five scrolls of the Hebrew scripture
on one scroll. I thought it was also interesting
to learn that the scroll was so long that it
would often take an entire herd of sheep to make
one Torah scroll. So by approximately 500 B .C.,
500 years before Jesus, the 39 books that we
know as the Old Testament or Hebrew Scripture
was completed and compiled and continued to be
preserved in Hebrew on scrolls. By the end of
the first century where we were with John, the
New Testament basically had been done. And it
was being preserved and protected using the Greek
language, and instead of writing on animal skin
scrolls, it was written on papyrus, which is
a thin paper -like material made from the crushed
and flattened stalks of a reed -like plant. Thank
you, Wikipedia. In the year 367 A .D., the Bishop
of Alexandria, doesn't that sound just like a
definite, I didn't write that. In the year 367
A .D., the Bishop of Alexandria, a guy by the
name of Athanasius, wrote a letter to his church
on the celebration of the Easter event. And in
that letter, Athanasius listed the books of the
Bible that we know as the Bible today in the
New Testament. Then in the year 393, The African
Senate of Hippo approved all of the books that
we find in our New Testament today as canon.
By the year 500 AD, the Bible had been translated
into over 500 languages. By 500 AD, 500 languages
of the Bible. But then, then something very unusual
happened. In the very next century, Within the
next 100 years of having 500 different language
copies of the Bible, by the year 600 AD, the
Bible was allowed in only one language, Latin.
Why is that? Well, the Catholic Church in Rome
at the time was the only recognized church in
the whole of the land, and they issued a decree
that the Bible in any other language was considered
to be And as a result, the Catholic Church becomes
very, very corrupt. The priests are the only
ones who could be educated in the Latin language.
So a common person like you or I could never,
ever, ever in our lifetimes read God's word.
And that gives priests ultimate spiritual power.
But in the year 1517, God raised up a man by
the name of Martin Luther, who was so fed up
with all of the corruption that was going on
in the church, he actually believed that God
was calling him to help reform the church. And
in fact, it was on All Hallows' Eve, Halloween,
that Martin Luther took what became known as
his 95 Thesis, and he nailed them to the door
in the church in Wittenberg, Germany. People
describe that event today as the knock that was
heard around the world. God used those accusations
of heresy to spark what becomes known as the
Reformation of the Protestant Church. God also
used Martin Luther to take the Bible and translate
it into German, and then he took the invention
called the printing press, the invention of a
guy by the name of Gutenberg, and he utilized
it to now put the Bible in the hands of the masses.
And in the year 1526, there was a guy named William
Tyndale who befriended Martin Luther, and God
used William Tyndale to print the very first
English Bible. That's the good news. The bad
news is that anybody who was caught with this
illegal Bible would be executed immediately.
You can only imagine what demand there would
have been for people that read English. and wanted
to read God's word in a language that they could
understand. Day after day, week after week, month
after month, year after year, Tyndale was on
the run. He was running for his life because
people wanted to execute him, and sadly, they
eventually caught up to him and incarcerated
him for about 500 days before they finally decided
in the year 1536 to burn him at the stake. His
last words, though, were a prayer to God, which
people will remember forever. He prayed, O Lord,
open up the eyes of the king of England. And
three years later, in 1539, God answered his
prayer. Not only did the king of England allow
the printing of the Bible in English, but he
actually helped fund it, setting the word of
God free. Think about this. Remember all of the
people who died. All of those people back in
the 300s, all of those people in the Middle Ages
that died to keep these stories that meant so
much to them, to keep them alive and help them
fight with everything in them to keep God's living
and active word available to you and to me. And
sadly today, so many people neglect God's living
word. It's so important for us to engage in God's
word. And why is that? because this is the word
of God. It is living. It is active. Scripture
says that in the beginning there was the word
and the word was with God and the word was God
and the word became flesh and made his dwelling
among us. This is Jesus, the word becoming flesh.
To know Jesus, to serve him, to follow him, we
must feed on his word and we must realize. That
something extraordinary happened in the first
third of the first century that caused all of
this to happen. Something that wasn't just written
down. Something that wasn't just made up or contrived,
but was actually witnessed by hundreds and hundreds
of people. And that's how we got the story of
the Bible. Well, I hope that you could see what
I see after that discussion, that this idea of
this holy book, this book that is so significantly
different, maybe than all other books, well,
at least for we Christian believers, we'd certainly
think that, how this book didn't come floating
down from the sky or riding down some... fiery
escalator from heaven rather it's created in
a cooperation cooperation from humans who experienced
the breakthrough of God in the world in such
a way that the lives could no longer be different
that they could not be silenced that they had
to continue to tell their story Of what they
had experienced. The peace. The love. The joy
that is the experience of God. Breaking through
the world. And they couldn't stop telling it.
Until that story was remembered. Finally. Being
memorialized. Written down. And then considered
amongst readers. Sacred. This book that we have.
Friends, let us not diminish the role that we
humans have in this living book. This is a book
that breathes from the creation until our very
day and even into the future of a relationship
in which we share the heartbeat. We share the
breath of God. And while it may not always be
perfect, it's always perfect in its truth. I
hope that you can see that. I hope you can maybe
see the Bible in a different way. Happy Thanksgiving.
I hope you'll join us next week as we continue.
on our third installment of the story of Job,
which we're calling It's Not My Fault. Happy
Thanksgiving, friends, and until next week, be
blessed.