The History and Reliability of the Bible 1

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:01
This morning begins our Bible conference.
00:08
I already started a little bit in Sunday school this morning, giving some information on the history of the text of the Bible.
00:18
We are going to be looking at, over the next four days, the history and reliability of the Bible.
00:31
And I sort of wanted this morning to act as an introduction to talk about why I believe this particular issue is of utmost importance.
00:45
Nowhere in Christianity is there a more focused attack in our modern day than in the discussion of the history and reliability of the Bible.
01:01
I think that it is understood among those who repudiate the Bible and who do not believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, they understand that the heart of what we believe is found in the text of the Bible.
01:17
And if they can somehow disprove, discredit, or just simply dismiss the text of the Bible, then that would give them all that they need to run roughshod over Christianity in general.
01:31
In fact, all other religions, in one way or another, count the Bible as something to be attacked.
01:38
They count it as something to be called erroneous.
01:41
Mormons declare that the Bible is only correct inasmuch as it has been translated correctly.
01:47
Which is to say, if something disagrees with their theology, that's a place where it's been translated incorrectly.
01:53
And that's pretty much what their founding document says.
01:56
It says the Bible is correct inasmuch as it is translated correctly.
02:01
Muslims take a similar route in saying that the Bible is correct only as far as it agrees with the Quran.
02:07
And where it does not agree with the Quran, it has been corrupted.
02:12
Jehovah Witnesses even have created their own translation of the Bible.
02:17
They call it the New World Translation, which they claim is the only reliable translation.
02:22
Words, of course, being added and subtracted throughout the entirety of the text.
02:30
Yet it is not only those of other religions who have sought to count the Bible as erroneous.
02:37
The atheist and non-religious movement that has come out in full force in the last few years, particularly the last generation, is in direct opposition to any truth claims that come from the Bible.
02:50
They claim that the vast majority of the Bible is made up out of whole cloth.
02:55
And that it deserves no more attention than any other mythological tradition.
02:59
They compare God and Jesus to Zeus and Hercules.
03:03
And make the claim that for someone to believe that the history contained within the text to be true is tantamount to lunacy.
03:12
So we see that the battle which is before believers today is quite different than what has happened in the past.
03:19
There was a time in our nation's history where the history and reliability of the Bible was sort of taken for granted.
03:28
The founding fathers of our nation quoted extensively from the Bible, often referring to it as the holy book worthy of both study and obedience.
03:38
If you go to our nation's capital, you'll see different statues and memorials of things that remind us of our history being a very Christian history.
03:52
You'll see pictures of Moses that have been carved into the buildings.
04:00
And you'll see other things that remind us that there was a time in our history where the reliability of Scripture was not at issue.
04:08
Yet sadly today, we see the Bible being mocked even from the very highest office of the land.
04:16
The sitting president of the United States has made it very clear that the Bible is not something that should have any influence on public policy.
04:25
In a speech he gave, the sitting president said, which passages of Scripture should we guide, should guide our policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests that slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or should we go with Deuteronomy, which suggests the stoning of your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount? And he then went on to say that the Sermon on the Mount was so radical that it was doubtful that our defense department would ever survive its application.
04:54
So we see that even something that two or three generations ago would have been taken for granted, the truth of the Bible, the fact that the Bible is reliable, is now something that is repudiated even from the very highest offices in our land.
05:11
In the end, if one were to hear this from someone sitting in the presidency, it would be easy for one to get the idea that the Bible is a book wholly unworthy of our attention or at least full of unfathomable horrors and hardly worthy to be considered a moral compass.
05:32
So I hope you see my point.
05:33
I hope you see why I believe that this particular subject is so vital for us to be studying.
05:41
The Bible is being attacked from every direction.
05:45
By some, its textual history is called corrupt and unreliable.
05:51
By others, its contents are called despicable and unconscionable.
05:56
Yet in the church, the Bible is considered to be the sole infallible source of truth.
06:02
And we, as the church, are called to be the pillar and support of that truth.
06:08
So that's the reason for this conference.
06:11
That's the reason why we have chosen to talk on this subject.
06:16
I'm often astounded by how many who say they believe the Bible to be true, yet they do not know anything about its history.
06:29
I'll say that again.
06:30
This is another reason for the conference.
06:32
I am astounded by how many people say, yeah, I believe this book, I believe everything in it, but they have no idea how it came to be.
06:42
I think in their minds, they kind of picture that at some point in time, the heavens opened, God reached down with a book, handed it to somebody, and now we just make copies of that book.
06:56
And when they're faced with someone who questions the history and reliability of the Bible, they're often left unable to answer the objections.
07:09
And the objections usually go in one of two directions, or the person who's being objected to often goes in one of two directions.
07:15
Either their faith is broken because they get all these objections that they've never heard, and they're like, oh, I didn't know that that was even an issue.
07:22
And when they hear it, their faith is broken because they haven't considered these things or they go on continuing believing with a blind faith, not ever willing to consider the hard issues.
07:36
Neither one of those is good.
07:39
It is not positive to simply say you believe in something if it's not worthy of your belief.
07:46
And likewise, if the Bible is what it claims to be, then it certainly can stand up to the most severest of scrutiny.
07:54
If the Bible is the word of God, then then it can take it.
08:01
It can take our scrutiny.
08:02
It can take the scrutiny of the liberals.
08:04
It can take the scrutiny of the scholastics.
08:05
It can take the scrutiny of the universities.
08:07
It can take the scrutiny of other religions.
08:10
If the Bible is the word of God, it is able in and of itself to stand up for itself.
08:16
And its history is strong enough to stand up for itself.
08:22
So rather than close our eyes to its history, we ought to know it.
08:27
So that when we are faced with objectors and when our children are going to the university and our children are faced with objectors and when we're sitting in the coffee shops or we're sitting in the Barnes and Nobles or we're sitting in wherever we are and someone says, why do you believe that book? We know why we believe.
08:50
We must know why we believe what we believe.
08:54
If our faith is predicated on what the Bible says, then this lays an important question at our feet.
09:00
Why do we believe it's true? And again, that is this conference is about.
09:10
So I want to begin this morning with one of the most common objections.
09:15
And I know we haven't read from a text of scripture yet.
09:18
And we are going to I'm I'm simply I'm giving a lengthy introduction and we will get to a text of scripture in a moment.
09:27
But I want to begin this morning by offering up what I would consider to be the most common objection to the Bible.
09:36
When people talk about its history and reliability, many people and I've had this, I sat right on our front little driveway here and had this conversation with a couple of young girls one night who came to a fellowship thing we were having and they were intent on telling me why the Bible was unable to be trusted.
10:04
And they said this and they're not the only ones they I'm sure they heard it on the Discovery Channel or the Learning Channel, the History Channel or something else.
10:11
It was it's the objection that I think I think it sort of is at the root of all objections.
10:17
And it's a rejection that I call the telephone game.
10:21
How many of you know what the telephone game is? I mean, you were you were kids, right? And your teacher told you, you know, we're going to start on one end of the room and I'm going to whisper something in little Johnny's ear and the little Johnny's going to whisper it into Mary's ear.
10:36
And then Mary's going to whisper it into Jimmy's ear and Jimmy's going to whisper it.
10:38
And then it's going to go all the way around the room.
10:40
And if I started over here with with something, you know, if I whispered something to Miss Florence, by the time it got over to Nathan, it probably would have many additions or subtractions.
10:49
It might not even sound anything at all like it did when it was first said.
10:56
We understand, you know, the telephone is what it's called, the game.
11:01
Well, this is one of the first and foremost criticisms that is leveled against the history of the Bible.
11:07
People will say we don't know what the Bible originally said since it has been changed so much down the ages.
11:13
That's the argument.
11:17
Now, before we go any further, we have to ask ourselves, how would you handle such an objection if someone said to you, I can't believe what the Bible says because it's been changed down through the ages so many times? Now, the reason why, again, I ask this question is because this is often the objection that is used by universities and professors that are standing in front of your children and your children's children as they go to college.
11:47
One professor was even so brazen as to say that he said, we need to encourage everyone.
11:55
This is a quote.
11:56
So I'll go ahead and say the quote.
11:58
We need to encourage everyone to be in college for as many years as they possibly can in hope that somewhere along the line, they might get some exposure to the world outside their town and to moral ideas not exclusively derived from their parents' religion.
12:16
If they don't get this in college, they're not going to get it anywhere else.
12:21
End quote.
12:23
He said, we need them to be in college for as long as possible so that we can get them out of the religion and the teaching that their parents gave them and we can establish in their hearts and minds a new world view.
12:39
And don't think that that's just one sort of random professor out in the middle of nowhere.
12:45
That's pretty much, that's a strong majority within the universities.
12:52
There's a desire to win the children's minds and to get them away from what is taught to them at young ages, particularly by Christians.
13:02
And what better way to do it than to have them begin to question the text and reliability of the Bible? And that's the first thing they say.
13:07
If they start talking about, well, I believe the Bible, Professor whatever his name is, I believe what the Bible says.
13:13
Well, don't you know the Bible's been through countless changes? Don't you know the Bible has just changed and changed and changed? You can't trust that book.
13:27
Would your child know how to answer that objection? Would you know? It's an important question.
13:37
And this morning, I want us to begin to talk about it, to begin to go through and see that the old telephone objection is really not something that can be substantiated.
13:51
In fact, it is one of the most foolish arguments that I know of.
13:56
Yet it grabs a hold so tightly and doesn't let go.
14:01
Because it sounds very easy to accept.
14:04
Well, yeah, of course, if something's been handed down over the centuries, of course, it had to have been changed.
14:12
And what we're going to see over the next couple of days is that nowhere at no time has there been.
14:22
A time when the Bible could have simply been edited or redacted or changed in regard to the whims of a singular editor.
14:31
Rather, what we will see is that the textual history of the Bible and in particular, the New Testament is the most tenacious of any work of antiquity.
14:43
In fact, I sat in a debate between Dr.
14:46
Bart Ehrman and Dr.
14:47
James White on the subject of the history and reliability of the Bible and Dr.
14:51
Bart Ehrman, who was who was attacking the Bible.
14:54
And his entire presentation was to say that the Bible could not be trusted.
14:58
Yet even in his presentation, he was forced to admit that there is no other work in the history of the world, particularly antiquity.
15:10
But prior to the time of the printing press, there is no other work in the history of antiquity that is as tenacious or has such a reliable textual history than does the New Testament.
15:24
No other, not even close.
15:28
Homer's Iliad is the next and I'll give you the difference.
15:32
It's somewhere around 900 copies exist of Homer's Iliad and they are somewhere hundreds of years after the original was written as the earliest copies we have.
15:43
New Testament, we have manuscript evidence that goes back within one or two generations of the originals.
15:49
And we have over 5700 handwritten manuscripts.
15:57
If you compare that on a chart and you look at Homer's Iliad, the next closest.
16:05
It's not even it's not even to be compared.
16:10
I have a chart that I'm going to be showing tonight that's going to actually show all of the various works of antiquity and how the New Testament.
16:16
It's not even it's not even it's a joke to try to compare the textual history between one and the other.
16:22
But yet at the same time, the Bible makes extraordinary claims.
16:29
Thus, it's going to receive extraordinary criticism.
16:34
Hear that again, the Bible makes extraordinary claims, thus it is going to receive extraordinary criticism.
16:41
I understand that that's that's important to realize.
16:45
So this morning, I want to take you through four things.
16:48
I want to take you through how the Bible came to us.
16:51
How did we get this? What I'm holding in my hand, I'm holding the English Standard Version.
16:57
Some of you are holding King James.
16:59
Some of you are holding New American Standard Bibles.
17:01
Some of you are holding the NIV against your better judgment.
17:05
I'm just kidding.
17:07
NIV is OK, but no matter what you're holding, how did you get it? How did it come from from the mind of God to the book that you hold in your hand? And while we could take this in many, many steps, I've distilled it down to four.
17:28
So if you're taking notes, I want to give you the four steps that I would say are essential in understanding in the history.
17:35
Number one is inspiration.
17:38
Number two is canonization.
17:42
That one is C-A-N-O-N-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N.
17:47
Canonization.
17:50
Transmission.
17:52
And that's not what causes your engine to turn the wheels of your car.
17:57
Transmission.
17:59
And translation.
18:01
So that's four steps.
18:03
It's gone from inspiration, to canonization, to transmission, to translation.
18:08
And that's how it went from the mind of God to the book that you now hold in your hands.
18:12
That's basically a four step process.
18:18
So the first thing we're going to talk about is inspiration.
18:19
So if you want to turn in your Bible to 2 Timothy, we'll finally get to look at the text of scripture here, which is obviously the most important thing that we do when we study.
18:29
2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16.
18:40
I'm going to read the text of scripture and then I'm going to pray.
18:46
2 Timothy 3 and verse 16 says this.
18:49
All scripture is breathed out by God.
18:55
And profitable for teaching.
18:58
For reproof.
19:00
For correction.
19:02
And for training in righteousness.
19:06
Father, as I seek to continue preaching this morning, I pray that you'll bless what has already been said and continue to bless what's going to be said.
19:18
And I pray that you would keep me from error as only you can do.
19:24
Open your hearts, open the hearts and minds of your people to hear your word.
19:29
And Lord, let this be a time where our confidence in your word is strengthened.
19:36
And encouraged.
19:38
We love you, Lord, we trust you.
19:42
And give you all glory in Jesus name.
19:45
Amen.
19:48
Four steps in the process.
19:50
The first we call inspiration.
19:55
Inspiration is the process by which we believe that God revealed himself to his people through the written word.
20:03
The Bible itself claims to be of divine origin.
20:06
This text that we're looking at on the screen says that.
20:09
It says all scripture is theanoustos, that's the Greek word.
20:13
It's actually the only time that that Greek word is used in the New Testament.
20:18
It is a word that I believe the Apostle Paul invented.
20:25
Comes from two Greek words, theos, which is the word for God.
20:29
Numos, which is the word for breathe breath or spirit.
20:32
And essentially what it means is God breathed.
20:36
If you're looking at a King James Bible, it says all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
20:43
And that's why the doctrine that we normally assign to this teaching is what we call the doctrine of inspiration.
20:51
God inspired the words of the Bible to be written.
20:56
And that the entire Bible is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.
21:05
This is what the Bible says about itself.
21:08
Now, obviously, this is something that requires faith to believe.
21:14
We have to have faith that what it says about itself actually is the truth, yet it is not a blind faith.
21:22
It's not as if we are being asked to believe in something that has no substantiation at all.
21:30
The Bible does not just claim to be from God.
21:33
It also is marked by what we would call divine fingerprints.
21:39
What I mean is that the Bible itself demonstrates its own divine authority.
21:44
How? How does it demonstrate divine authority? Well, first, it addresses the universal problem of mankind.
21:51
And that is the problem of sin and guilt and a feeling of separation from God.
21:57
Throughout the world, there is an understanding of moral culpability and an understanding that we are not all that we should be.
22:04
This is why so many religions pop up.
22:06
People are trying to establish for themselves a righteousness that they know that they lack.
22:13
The Bible is the only book that provides the reasons for this universal understanding of guilt and what the solution should be.
22:21
Number two, it addresses the origins of life as a special creation of a divine being.
22:27
It does not promote the fairy tale of evolution, which tries to promote the idea that life came from non-life somehow and that organization came out of chaos.
22:37
It simply says that there is a being who lives outside of our time and space who himself created time and space itself.
22:44
Even the most strident evolutionists, when pressed about the beginning of the world, have said that an intelligence which they can never account for was likely involved in our coming into existence because the very nature and order of all of creation demonstrate that there was a divine intelligence behind it.
23:04
I don't know if you've ever seen the movie with Ben Stein called Expelled.
23:09
But at the end of the movie Expelled, Ben Stein had an opportunity to have a conversation with one of the leading atheistic skeptics, a biologist by the name of Richard Dawkins.
23:22
And Dawkins was pressed on the idea, well, you believe in evolution.
23:26
He said, yes, I believe everything that is alive came from non-life over a period of millions of years of cells simply reproducing and producing life.
23:35
And he says, well, where did the original cell come from? What caused life on this planet? And Dawkins had to freely admit, I don't know.
23:44
And that's pretty much where he went, I don't know.
23:47
I don't care.
23:48
I think this is how it is.
23:49
And that's pretty much where I'm at.
23:51
And he said it could be that aliens seeded our planet.
23:57
And here's the thing about it.
23:58
Go back, go watch the movie.
23:59
I'm not kidding.
24:00
He said it could be that aliens seeded our planet.
24:02
And Stein was like, OK, so you're willing to believe that aliens created us, but you're not willing to believe in God.
24:09
You see, atheism is not about intellectual skepticism.
24:15
It's about the desire to not have culpability for sin.
24:20
It's about the desire to not be judged.
24:24
Romans one is very clear that they suppress the truth and unrighteousness and replace God with gods of their own making so that they can be gods themselves.
24:34
It's very clear.
24:36
But anyway, that the Bible addresses the origin of life.
24:39
It addresses the mankind's universal problem, which is sin.
24:42
It also addresses future events before they happen.
24:44
I think one of the most powerful things about the Bible is that it provides a wide array of incontrovertible hard to say that word incontrovertible.
24:53
I'll try it again.
24:55
Prophetic announcements.
24:58
We see Old Testament prophecies which are fulfilled in their times and in the New Testament, which is particularly interesting in regard to Jesus Christ, where in passages were written about him centuries before he came into existence at Bethlehem.
25:10
Actually, Jesus didn't come into existence, but was the incarnation happened at Bethlehem and they were fulfilled in ways that could not have been orchestrated on their own.
25:21
One of my favorite Old Testament passages is an obscure passage.
25:26
It's in Isaiah where Isaiah says that Cyrus will be the one who sets his people free.
25:33
Cyrus wasn't born until 150 years after Isaiah wrote those words.
25:40
And Cyrus was the was also known as Darius the Mede.
25:44
He was the one who led the captives out of the Babylonian captivity.
25:50
Why is that important? Because that's that's not the kind of prophecy that you usually hear, like Nostradamus said, you know, he said fireflies are going to be in the sky.
25:59
And when now we know those are helicopters, you know, that's the kind of prophecy most people are used to, you know.
26:05
But when somebody says there is coming a king, his name is going to be this, and this will be the king that leads the people out of this.
26:14
And then it happens.
26:17
That's that's that's real life stuff.
26:19
When the Bible says that the that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem.
26:25
Well, that's not something Jesus could fake, can fake where he was born.
26:29
A lot of people said, well, Jesus is orchestrated being the fulfillment of prophecies.
26:33
How do you orchestrate where you're born? You don't you just get born.
26:41
You see, the Bible is not to be trusted blindly.
26:46
Trust in the Bible is simply faith in the fact that the world is the result of a divine creation and that the creator has sought to communicate with his creation through prophets and apostles and most clearly through his son.
27:00
The Bible says that long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets.
27:05
But in these last days, he has spoken by his son.
27:10
Whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he created the world.
27:14
You realize the New Testament is just the testimony of Jesus Christ.
27:19
It's not Jesus Christ writings, but it's everything that we need to know about what he said and what he did.
27:24
The New Testament, every time you read one of the New Testament books, it's focusing on Christ.
27:29
The New Testament is all about the testimony of Christ.
27:33
That's why the writer of Hebrews said in old times, God spoke to the prophets to our ancestors, but now he speaks to his son and we have the word of the New Testament, which is the testimony of what the son said and what the son did.
27:50
God has spoken through his prophets, his apostles and through his son.
27:55
How do we know what he said? We have the Bible.
27:58
The Bible is the written word of what he said.
28:02
So the first step in the process, God has spoken through prophets, through apostles, and then what? Well, then we have books that God wrote in the second step of the process is what we call canonization.
28:19
Canonization is the process by which God ensured that his people would recognize his word.
28:24
It is certainly true that while God inspired some books to be written, God did not inspire all books to be written.
28:29
When this says all scripture is breathed out by God.
28:33
Well, we know God didn't breathe out Homer's Iliad.
28:37
We know God didn't breathe out.
28:41
I don't know if there's anything out there, the purpose driven church.
28:43
I don't know, you know, anything you can just come up with any book.
28:48
How then do we know what books God inspired and what books God did not inspire? The Bible is not one singular book.
28:56
The Bible is 66 books.
29:01
How do we know that these 66 are the right ones? That's an important question.
29:06
I think even beginning to answer this question, we have to make an immediate distinction between two major divisions in the Bible.
29:13
The Bible comes to us in two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament.
29:16
The Old Testament was received as men who were known to be speaking on behalf of God.
29:21
The prophets wrote down what God spoke through them and the people recognize their position as prophets and they trusted their words.
29:29
There are times, though, wherein we do not have prophets writing, such as in the cases of the Chronicles and the Kings, which are mainly historical in nature.
29:37
Yet these books are still revered by Jews as having authority.
29:41
And more importantly, Jesus Christ considered them to be scripture.
29:46
He quoted from the Old Testament.
29:48
He called it scripture.
29:49
And he said, you do not know the scripture nor the power of God.
29:53
He's telling them you don't even know what God said.
29:55
And he says, I remember one time specifically, Jesus Christ, he said, he says, have you not read what God said? And if you think about that, it should say, have you not read what God wrote or have you not heard what God said? But when he said, have you not read what God said? And in essence, he's saying what was written was what was said by God.
30:18
So Jesus Christ gives us testimony that the Old Testament is correct and that the Old Testament is true.
30:23
This is one of the reasons why we don't accept the Apocrypha.
30:26
The Apocrypha is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church because it was included in the Latinized text of the scriptures and it was accepted by Egyptian Jews.
30:35
But it was never accepted by Palestinian Jews.
30:38
And where was Jesus from? Well, that would be a place called Palestine, Israel.
30:42
That's where Jesus was from.
30:43
And that's where the scriptures were understood to have come from, have originated from.
30:48
And the Apocrypha was historical text of the Jewish people that were never included in the Palestinian canon.
30:56
It was never included in the Jewish canon of scripture.
30:59
That's why even in the writings of the Jews, they say that about 400 years before Christ, which was in the last of the books that we have was written, they say there was a time when God stopped speaking.
31:11
They actually say that.
31:14
But yet there are still those who accept the Apocrypha, particularly the Roman Catholic Church accepts the Apocrypha.
31:18
But we don't have to consider the Apocrypha because of the truth that it was not accepted by Christ himself, as far as we know.
31:28
Now, the New Testament also was received as men were speaking on behalf of God.
31:32
But these were not prophets, but rather these were the apostles of Jesus Christ.
31:36
All of the New Testament books are written by either apostles or those to whom the apostles would have taught.
31:43
For instance, Luke is known as being Paul's disciple.
31:45
Mark is known as likely writing under the authority of Peter.
31:49
This is why later writings like the Gospel of Thomas and Mary Magdalene, which were written too late to actually have been written by either of them, are considered not worthy of inclusion.
31:58
How many have ever heard the Gospel of Thomas? The Gospel of Mary Magdalene? The Gospel of Judas? You go off through Walmart, you see the Gospel of Judas sitting there.
32:05
The Gospel of Judas was written hundreds of years after the time that Judas died.
32:09
And by the way, how long did he have to write? He killed himself right after he gave Christ over to the Pharisees.
32:19
I mean, really, I mean, he must have been a speed rider.
32:23
He didn't write that book.
32:24
We know he didn't write that book.
32:25
It's not even a question.
32:28
The liberals know he didn't write the book either, but they like to hold it up and say, oh, here's one that missed being included in the Bible.
32:34
No, it didn't.
32:37
That's a bait and switch.
32:40
They bring you in on one thing and then they switch you to something else.
32:43
Oh, well, how do you know which books are supposed to be there? Well, we believe that the apostles wrote it.
32:47
Well, here's one that was written by Judas.
32:48
No, it wasn't.
32:49
But this is bait and switch technique.
32:51
It's like people bring in car sales and do that.
32:54
They bring in, oh, yeah, we got a thousand dollar brand new truck and you get there.
32:58
There's no more of those.
32:58
But we got these over here for fifteen hundred.
33:00
You know, it's a bait and switch.
33:01
They get you in with one thing and they do that same thing in scholarship.
33:05
It's a joke.
33:07
And if you know better, you see it.
33:10
And sadly, people don't normally know better.
33:15
But we're going to we're going to look at some of the history of the manuscript tradition.
33:19
But the or rather, we're going to look at some of the history of canonization some this week.
33:24
But the key is that we understand that the issue of canonization is not as much a historical issue as it is a theological issue.
33:33
Hear that again.
33:34
The issue of canonization.
33:35
How we know which books are the right ones is not as much a historical issue as it is a theological issue.
33:43
If we believe that God intended for his people to have his word, then we believe that God would ensure that his people would know what his word is.
33:54
It's in one follows from the other.
33:56
And throughout the history of the church, there has been no division over whether Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are supposed to be in the Bible.
34:03
There has been no division over whether or not Acts should be included in the Bible.
34:07
There's been no division about Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians and Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.
34:11
These books were accepted.
34:13
In fact, the Pauline corpus, which is the the writings of Paul together as one book, was the first collection of books that the New Testament that were ever bound together and sent out as one book.
34:27
The right 13 books of Paul were put together and sent out.
34:30
That was the first what they call the Pauline corpus.
34:34
After that, the Gospels and Acts.
34:37
And then they began to be collected together and put together.
34:41
The last book to be accepted in the New Testament canon, Revelation.
34:45
There was some debate about Revelation.
34:48
I'm glad there was debate about Revelation.
34:50
It has a story of ten headed dragons and horns.
34:52
And I mean, there's a lot of stuff in Revelation that doesn't show up anywhere else.
34:55
I'm glad they had a conversation about it.
34:57
But when they realized it was written by the Apostle John under the authority of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, there was no question once they realized authority, apostolic authority.
35:09
But there was discussion and I'm glad there was.
35:11
I'm glad they didn't just take everything that was written by everybody and throw it in the Bible.
35:15
We'd have a book this thick and half of it would be untrue.
35:18
There was discussion, there was in the early church an understanding of what.
35:25
What constituted Scripture and obviously, apostolic authority, I would say, is the number one thing which constituted Scripture.
35:34
I've gone way long and I'm not done.
35:38
Let me just finish by saying this.
35:40
The next two steps in the process are what we're really going to be dealing with this week.
35:43
If we believe that God inspired the text and we believe that God ensured that we knew which books would be the right ones, the canon.
35:53
After that, the text is then transmitted.
35:58
What I mean by transmitted, I mean, it is copied.
36:01
It goes from John sat and he wrote the Gospel of John.
36:06
And then that Gospel of John is taken by copyists and those copies make copies and those copyists make copies.
36:13
And we get a family of manuscripts that all come from that one copy.
36:20
Beloved, know this.
36:21
We don't have any of the original copies and that's OK.
36:27
We have a 5700 plus manuscript tradition of those originals, but we don't have the originals anymore.
36:35
Could you imagine what would happen if we did? There are people all over the world that see Mary's image, you know, burned into a pancake and they fall over and they worship it.
36:44
Could you imagine if we had the original Gospel of John? There'd be people lined up to worship that that writing.
36:52
I'm sure there's people today who worship vials of milk that they say came from the breast of the Virgin Mary.
37:01
People will worship anything.
37:04
I have no problem with the fact that we don't have the originals anymore because I understand what happens to papyrus as it deteriorates.
37:11
It deteriorates.
37:13
And that happens.
37:15
What we have, though, is a manuscript tradition that is tenacious, and that's going to be the subject of tonight's lesson.
37:20
But finally, the last one in the four is translation.
37:27
This is the process by which the original language is translated into many other languages which people speak.
37:33
And this is important in regard to this conversation, as it's the last step in the process before it reaches your hands.
37:38
The Bible goes from the mind of God to the mind of the apostles.
37:41
It is written by the hand of the apostles.
37:43
It is copied throughout the history of the church.
37:46
And then somebody takes and translates it into a language you can understand.
37:50
Anybody in here read Koine Greek? I know some of you've been in my Greek class and you can you can you can recognize some of the words, but can you just sit and read it? No, all of us.
38:04
All of us are bound to what the English text says because we don't read other languages.
38:13
So we have to say, do we trust what this says? Can we trust what this says? That's why the last night of the week, this week, Wednesday night, I'm going to do an entire night on the King James Bible.
38:31
And I'm going to talk about what is called King James only ism.
38:36
I don't have a problem with the King James Bible, but I will tell you this.
38:39
I do have a problem with people who will say this is the only text that God has given to the English speaking world, because I think that in doing so, what they have done is they have they have simply said they have denied they've number one, they've denied the ability to have any better understanding of the original languages, which we have now 400 years after the King James is written.
39:05
We have a much better understanding of how the original language was written.
39:09
And number two, they deny that any better evidence has come out since 1611.
39:15
When Desiderius Erasmus was publishing the Greek New Testament, which was used as the foundation for the King James Bible, when Desiderius Erasmus was doing that, he had about 12 manuscripts from which he worked and he did not even have a completed manuscript of Revelation at all.
39:31
He had to take Latin and translate it back into Greek just to finish his Greek manuscript.
39:37
This is why the last six verses of what is called the Texas Receptus or the text that Desiderius Erasmus is based, his work is the work from which his is based on.
39:47
The last six verses don't read anything like the last six verses of any other Greek manuscript in the world.
39:53
This is why there's words in the King James Bible, the book of Revelation that are not found in any other translation.
39:59
Now, am I saying the King James Bible is untrustworthy? No, but I'm saying you need to know this stuff.
40:06
I'm saying you should know the history.
40:10
Don't accept things blindly, particularly something like King James only ism, because what King James only ism is, it's an attempt to solve a problem with another problem.
40:24
We have a problem of textual variation.
40:26
Well, what do we do? Well, we'll take this one English translation and we'll say this is the perfect one.
40:31
But then it's been edited seven times.
40:34
And right now, if I were to ask you, which one are you holding? If you have a King James Bible, is it the Oxford edition? Or is it the Cambridge edition? You probably wouldn't know.
40:44
And you wouldn't know that between the two, there are hundreds of differences.
40:49
So don't bring King James only ism.
40:52
As your answer to the problem, because it's not an answer to the problem.
40:57
But again, I'm now starting my Wednesday night sermon.
40:59
Better stop.
41:03
Anyway, translation is important.
41:05
Understanding translations is important because.
41:10
You will understand better.
41:12
What the Bible says, if you are able to look back at the original language and say, this is why they translated it this way.
41:20
Understand what the writer was trying to say.
41:23
Beloved, this whole morning has been about preparing you for what we're going to be studying the next few days.
41:28
I cannot impress upon you enough the reasons why I feel that learning these things is vitally important.
41:33
And over the years, I've had many interactions with unbelievers from very ignorant to the very knowledgeable.
41:40
And one thing I can tell you has occurred in every single interaction I've ever had with an unbeliever is that they have at some point in the conversation attacked the history and reliability of the Bible.
41:49
It is the consistent mantra of the unbeliever.
41:52
And they repeat the same arguments over and over and over.
41:56
And we need to be prepared.
41:59
This church was put here by God, I believe, to prepare you for these things.
42:08
I believe that's why God called me to ministry, because we are in a day and age where it's not easy to be a believer.
42:19
There are attacks that come from every side.
42:24
And if you are not equipped, you're going to get body slammed when people start challenging you and you don't know the answers.
42:39
We are called to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
42:42
But how are we to give a defense if we remain in ignorance? We can't.
42:51
So we mustn't.
43:06
Father, your word is the light unto our feet and the lamp unto our path.
43:12
It is worthy of our attention and adoration.
43:17
And Lord, though we forget that sometimes and sometimes we are we are pushed aside by the arguments of the world, Lord, we pray that the fact that your word stands against all arguments should give us great confidence and hope.
43:40
Help us this week as we study the word together.
43:44
Help us to have strength to face the day each day to learn and to be reminded of your truth.
43:54
I pray, Lord, that confidence in scripture would fill our hearts and Lord, that questions would be answered this week.
44:08
And Lord, we do pray and thank you for your son, Jesus.
44:13
We do not want, Lord, the gospel to be an afterthought in this conversation today.
44:18
We are reminded that your word tells us what the gospel is, and that is that we are sinners who are in need of salvation and only by grace can we be saved.
44:30
So we pray for that grace today, Lord.
44:33
We pray that you would shower it upon anyone here that does not know your son, that you would demonstrate to them their need of repentance and faith and that you would use what we have said here today as an encouragement to them to believe all that you have said in your scripture and that we can trust what it says.
44:57
In Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.