Intro and Background

The Privilege of Having the Scriptures

Turn with me, please to the gospel of John chapter 10. The gospel of John. Chapter 10. Now stop look at what you're doing right now. Brother George has a Bible. He's turning in a book with pages to the gospel of John.

And many of the rest of you are as well. But not all of you some of you. Like brother Paul have a digital device. Maybe it's an iPad like mine, or maybe it's a phone or maybe if. Maybe if you're like brother boots.

You have a droid device. Which hopefully isn't that note 7 because if it is we need him to stay back in that room when you hear a poof. You'll know what it would happen. So if you have no idea what that's about, but that's okay, you just just don't want one of those.

You can't even take them on planes anymore. It's really fun. But anyway. What are you doing? You're looking Into a Bible. Well, wow, we were in a church. That's a shocking thing. That's never happened before that may be true.

It's a rather basic thing pretty much everybody in churches. Well, I was gonna say everybody in churches to turn the Bible. That's not the case anymore, unfortunately. But I want you to I want you to look at that book you have in your hand has a cover.

It's written on both sides of the page bound together and Most of us know where the Gospel of John is. How many of you remember? How many of you had the opportunity of doing Bible sword drills when you were a kid remember those?

Where you'd sit there and you'd have to start with the Bible closed and you would go Ezekiel 18 and the first one to Ezekiel 18, you know wins the prize whatever else might be and Things like that. Do you realize?

How few Christians down through the history of the church Have been able to do What you can do having the scriptures personally. And how many of you have more than one copy of the Bible? Yeah having a personal copy of the scriptures.

Bound together all of it together and in one place in your own language. Very few Christians up through the time of the Reformation. Had that privilege. We're studying church history in the early church as the Canon the New Testament was coming together even then.

Very often what you might have in an entire church wouldn't even be a completed New Testament. You'd have the Old Testament in Greek. But then you you might only have a Gospels manuscript and maybe maybe Paul's writings and maybe one or two other manuscripts of some other books.

But the entirety of the New Testament and of course John chapter 10 didn't mean anything until the Middle Ages. Because there was no John chapter 10. There was no Chapter divisions until about that time the final verse divisions didn't happen as you know until 1551 and so you have a tremendous privilege as a Christian to possess the Word of God and We were all able to reach toward that and none of us were looking around to see if maybe there are some Representatives of the government here to see who has Bibles and who doesn't.

Maybe you'd be the one that doesn't get out today because there'd be some people waiting outside to take your scriptures from you. That happens in lands in the world today. There are many places that people are gathering and there's there's people the door that you need to know everybody was coming in.

Because you might have people trying to infiltrate you we all turned to the scriptures. We all possess them in your bulletin today. You have an insert. Yes. When Pastor Fry is away The mice will play.

You have an insert in your bulletin. I Made more inserts than there are bulletins because I didn't know how many bulletins Mrs. Fry Puts together. I found out this morning. There are some extra inserts in the back if all the bulletins are gone.

They probably are. You might want to hold on to this insert because we're not going to get through what's on the back, which is from John chapter 10. In our time even today, so hold on to that. I'll probably provide some more next month when I have the opportunity of speaking again.

But on what I would call the the front of the insert is an image Turned out pretty well. Actually. I'm I Would like to point out that that's actually legible and you might say right Hey only to very strange people.

An Ancient Papyrus of John 10

Well, this is true. What you are looking at is in fact John chapter 10 Containing portions of verses 7 through 25 now as you can tell looking at it that is a single page and well it looks a little on the old side and.

And obviously as you get toward the bottom of the page, especially if you look on the back, you'll notice there's a lot of a lot of not parentheses but brackets and I've put the brackets there so you can have sort of an indication of What's missing on the front and you start seeing it's well Sort of a hole in the middle and Then the whole right side falls off about halfway down and and it went a lot lower than this.

We're not sure exactly how far much well, we can sort of figure out by the next page obviously, but you basically have most of verses 7 through. Just one little portion of verse 25 from John chapter 10.

And what you're looking at is called p 45 the P you see it there on the front is in what's called frac tour script. It's fancy German script and P just simply means papyrus. This is an ancient piece of papyrus.

Well, what is papyrus? Well papyrus comes from the papyrus plant and If you take the leaves that plant and press them together at 90 degree angles. It produces a well at least in some instances fairly Durable writing surface.

It's not the smoothest thing on the planet, but it's not bad. And what you're looking at is just one page of what was originally a book that had 220 pages in it and When it was first written and we estimate that took place somewhere and I hope to have Sometime over the next couple years a little more focused number, but right now somewhere between 180 and 220 ad.

That's about so we could we could say 200 maybe Leaning a little bit more toward the 210 220 range, but it could be as early as 180. So it's a little bit on the old side. In fact, if you think it looks pretty bad, I just remind you What are you gonna look like when you're as old as this is?

Probably a whole lot worse off and We know that when this book was originally written it contained Matthew mark Luke John and interestingly enough acts. Now you might say oh so it was like the first volume of the New Testament.

Well It's possible. The fact the matter is it's it's sort of hard when looking at ancient manuscripts of the New Testament to Learn a lot about their scribes or the context in which these manuscripts were first written but p45 P45 is going to be the foundation of the strangest most unusual sermon series that any Reformed Baptist Church has ever gone through and You get to be the people that endure it.

Lucky people you are we don't believe in luck providentially blessed people that you are. Why do I mean by that. Well When you think of a sermon series. Around here. It's normally a book, right? We did Hebrews for a few years and pastor Fry just did Romans.

He's in Job, but Sometimes you do a topic. We just finished the whole series on the Holiness Code and the law. Pastor Fry is doing parables of Jesus. So sometimes we'll do something that's topical. But it's always exegetical that is it's always seeking to bring out the meaning of the text to allow God to speak.

So what will make this one? So unusual. So unusual that I'll be perfectly honest with you. I've never heard of anybody doing anything like this before. Never. Well We are going to allow p45 to be our guide.

We are going to preach an ancient papyrus of the New Testament. Now, how does that work? Well looking at the at the graphic. You can sort of tell we don't have all 220 pages of p45 anymore. Most of it's gone in some places all we have is just a This is actually a pretty a pretty complete page.

There are a few pages that are a little bit more complete than this, but most pages are even less complete than this and so what we have are portions of a latter section of Matthew middle section of Mark middle section of Luke only John chapter 10 and a couple of verses in John chapter 5 and then we got a Pretty healthy section of the middle of the book of Acts and That's what we're gonna preach.

We're gonna let the papyrus what has survived down through all of these ages. Be our guide as to what texts we're going to be dealing with now, obviously such as today. This begins in verse 7. We don't have verses 1 through 6.

So I'm not gonna skip verses 1 through 6 just because they don't happen to be in p45 we'll do John chapter 10 and Later on the study we'll go back and pick up the couple of verses in John chapter 5 and we'll probably do at least a topical portion of John chapter 5 and Then we'll do the rest of the chapters that are represented in p45.

Now p45 if you want to know where it is, I actually have seen I have not seen all of it. I saw a portion of it In the Chester Beatty library in Dublin, Ireland. I don't know about four or five years ago I think is when I specifically saw this.

I am hoping over the next couple of years to spend a little more time. Good quality time with p45 in Ireland if I can arrange that. But that's where this particular papyrus is housed currently and of course thankfully in these days We have extremely high quality digital photography of the entire papyri available to us online.

You don't have to go to Ireland if you want to be able to see everything and of course Greek scholars When they translate whatever translation you have in front of you. Have access not only to those images, but through Critical editions of the Greek New Testament are able to access all the readings of this particular text now.

It is a fascinating text. You may say why have you chosen it. Well because for the next few years. I'm going to be living with it. I am doing a very high level graduate study with a fairly well-known textual scholar from elsewhere in the world on p45.

So I have to translate it. I have to be intimately familiar with all of its characteristics and everything else and so Why not preach it? I mean It's the Word of God. The only reason that I would be studying this stuff in the first place is because We believe this is just one of the many Gifts that God has given to us.

I mean think about it. Think about what this. What this thing has survived? I mean wars and Bugs and fire and and sandstorms and floods and It's a lot of stuff that's happened over the past 1 ,800 years and we don't know.

We can't tell there's there's nothing at the beginning even if there had been at the when it first first made that said I am So-and-so scribe of this book and I copied this in the 14th year of the reign of Whoever we don't we don't have that kind of information.

So we don't know where or when in an exactitude. We don't know what motivated this individual. We don't know if this was a a Christian Recognizing That this was a dangerous thing to be doing because the persecution the Roman Empire or was it Was it someone that a Christian was paying to do it during a period of?

Non-persecution in their area. We don't know Seems to be a Christian scribe because it like almost all other early papyri uses what's called the gnomon a sacred that is abbreviations of The name of God Jesus Lord throughout the text.

But we can't we can't tell a lot about this individual. But when you think about it, I Believe every single one of these early manuscripts is a gift of God to us. We live in a day of such tremendous unbelief.

Such tremendous attack upon the veracity of the text of the New Testament. That you really have to wonder once in a while if God did not well if we if you've read the 1689 London Confession. We believe God foreordains all that comes to pass.

And so it was God's intention that this particular papyrus Be sitting in front of you today. That was God's purpose. That was God's intention. And so I've often wondered about the angel that was given charge this particular manuscript.

What a job. Okay, see this you got to get it through at least till 1930s, okay then months, you know. Okay. All right. Well, you know here comes a flood here comes fire here comes a plague of locusts eat everything in the process and kept that angel pretty busy and then there would be lengthy periods of time where that Angel just sort of sat around Playing an early version of Tetris on his cell phone or whatever it is angels do when the papyri is buried in the ground someplace.

But here it is today a gift from God. And you say well, what would cause you to invest such an amount of time in the study of something like this? Well, I'll tell you in the background very quickly and we'll expand upon this over the course of the next couple of years.

What's fascinating about this particular? Manuscript is this one of the common accusations is made against our New Testament is That well, we don't really know what it originally said there may have been changes, you know, let's say John actually wrote a Gospel, but you know, there's there's a there's a long period of time before we have the first manuscript.

Well, actually there's only about 35 years, but okay. Well mark it's longer still there's a period of time and there might have been changes and it might have been edits and. And maybe things were taken out and things were put in and you know, it's sort of like the phone game you know, maybe it was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and you get all these errors and since you don't have the First copies who really knows that's what people are told.

The reality is that the text of New Testament came to us through many lines many lines. It doesn't come from one line. The original is copied over and over and the original stayed around for a while and so there would actually be copies of Copies of copies being made while the original still existed and.

So you you would have a multiple lines of transmission and it wouldn't just be straight lines. They would be crossing each other. How could you change? Fundamentally the text of the New Testament and of each individual book when you have Multiple lines going multiple places and you might have a manuscript you might have a first-generation manuscript.

That ends up buried in the sands of Egypt. Very early on and It's never seen again for 1 ,800 years and then it's discovered. Now all of a sudden you can compare that with those that went through copy after copy after copy after copy.

And when we do that, guess what? They say the same thing now if there had been changes in the Line with many steps in it. Well, they stick out when you compare it with the earlier one. So, how would you change something like this because of these multiple lines?

Textual Families and the Transmission of the New Testament

Well, here's here's where p45 is extremely extremely interesting. Because when we look at Matthew What you can do is you can What scholars do when they examine a an early papyri because these were only discovered back in the 1930s the the papyri as a whole is you can look at how they read in particular areas where we know that there are textual variations there are textual differences and by sort of counting up how they Stack up against other manuscripts.

We already possess. We have 5 ,717 of portions of the New Testament. You can identify what family they come from sort of their genealogical tree what part of this spectrum there to be found in. There's the Alexandrian family.

There's the Western family some people identify what's called the Caesarean text and then you have what's called the Byzantine text and There are major early manuscripts that contain these families. Well, when you look at p45 now we have other manuscripts we have you know, for example P75 p66.

These are gospel manuscripts too, but they tend to be very consistent from one family. P45 is not that way. You see in Matthew p45 follows one perspective one family seems like in Mark it's a little bit different John it's different.

Luke might be sort of like this sort of like that and Acts is over here and You know what it tells us? This scribe had access to a number of different manuscripts from differing families as early as the beginning of the third century and He was picking and choosing between them that means this one manuscript gives us a light that almost no other manuscript does into the very Earliest period of time the transmission of the text and it demonstrates for us the interrelatedness of those families.

What that should we're hoping that's what I'm gonna be working on hours and hours every day. What that should allow us to do is to cast a light backwards into even the earlier Period of the New Testament and the development of these text types.

You say you lost me preacher. In fact, you don't sound like much of a preacher today. You sound like a professor. Well, I am both I confess. But you all know me you all know what I do and You all know the context in which I do those things or at least most of you do for those of you who may be Visiting.

I work as an apologist. I am a professor, but I work as an apologist. For example, I leave for Australia at the end of this month and in Sydney, I will be having a public debate and discussion with a fine young Muslim thinker by the name of Abdullah Kunda and He and I have debated before I have debated in mosques in South Africa.

And I am very frequently called upon to defend the veracity of the text of New Testament so you can see the importance there. But here we have an incredible opportunity to respond to some of the most vitriolic and unfortunately popular Attacks upon the text of New Testament that your young people are exposed to in almost every university class.

They take people like Bart Ehrman and They're hyper skepticism about the text of New Testament. So by combining that together with preaching the actual texts themselves I'm hoping over the course of the next couple of years as this sermon because there's a Number of chapters of Acts that are involved and places in the Gospels.

I'm gonna have to try to avoid running into Pastor Fry as far as the Material and Matthew and Luke goes and things like that. But we'll make it work as we preach through p45 my hope for you and I'll have to remind folks over the time of the of the sermon series because I I Would like to think that all of you will remember this first sermon all the way through but I won't so you probably won't either.

But I hope that the thought will be this. It's one thing to work through John chapter 10. My hope is that as we start getting into it and as you turn that over and you start seeing these words some of you will actually have sat through classes with me and You might start looking at that text.

It's actually readable and You might start going. Hey, I I see that word. Yep. Yep. There's there it is right there, huh? And that was written 1 ,800 years ago and God preserved it. He preserved it for his people.

We talked theologically about the fact that God preserves his word because he loves his people and he wants his people to possess his word. He's given us light. He's given us guidance in his word. Well, there it is right there.

And I don't know much about whoever wrote it and he didn't write all that straight now did he Sort of had a bit of a slant there. I you know when I was in first grade that I'm not sure I would have won the handwriting contest if I had had quite as much a slant to my lines as the Scribe does here, but I wonder who it was.

I Wonder what they believed. I wonder How old they were? Did they love these words as much as I do? If they if it was a period of persecution They may have been risking their lives to write these words and as they wrote these words out.

Were they thinking about the message? Did they know people who had already died for this message? How many people have read this. Was it passed down through a family. Was it hidden from Roman soldiers 50 60 years later?

That was grandpa's Bible. Did they have all the New Testament? Was this the only portion of New Testament they had? Was it preached from where for how long? We don't know but what I want you to understand is This is what gave you this this is why you have this and People gave their lives risked their lives, so not only can you have this, but then you can have that.

Which we take so much for granted. Which we take so much for granted there were people 1 ,800 years ago that wrote out in Longhand. I Sort of wonder if I made the assignment for my next sermon the next time I preach.

Your assignment is to write out John chapter 10 for use during the service. That might be the lowest attended service on a Sunday morning. We would ever have. I just have that feeling and Yet this was a 220 page book written out we learn all sorts of things about the scribe.

Because he did have a tendency To skip over some things once in a while. This was the only manuscript we had. That would be a bad thing because we could lose things. Thankfully it's not the only manuscript we have.

That's one of the reasons it's so good that we have that the multiple lines of transmission and Yes over the course of the next few years I May bother you tremendously by noting. Oh and by the way P 45 says this here instead of this isn't that interesting and I Know you're a patient and loving people.

And what you're gonna. Do is you're gonna sit there, and you're gonna go. That's interesting. Even if in your heart you're going please not again now. It will be interesting there is one other thing. I'm gonna try to do.

Because when I asked you to turn mostly returning to books and things like that we do have one other ancient Manuscript of the Bible amongst us codex ricotonius. Right over here brother Ricketts has codex ricotonius in fact I understand that the New Bible Museum in Washington offered brother Ricketts a fair amount of money To be able to display this ancient manuscript, and he turned it down so we will compare p45 because it's about as old as codex ricotonius.

We'll be checking those things out. You did not know the NIV study Bible was quite that ancient, but it really does go a Long ways back there so with all of that said really by means of Introduction and background as we look at John chapter 10 unfortunately We actually have to.

We have to start on The preceding page which we don't possess. You know who knows? The process by which a manuscript comes to us is often an Amazingly. It's just an amazing thing how it happens. Why do we have this page not the previous page?

Don't know 1 ,800 years is a long time. Did the first person find it leave it sitting out in a a goat ate that page and just didn't get to this one. We don't we just really don't know. But we don't have John chapter 10 verses 1 through 6.

But we're still going to preach from it because it's sort of important to the context, but as I said as we do so we will Repeatedly be making reference back to this and when we move into the next section I will Have to go back through and create another handout and put it in the bulletin as an insert and this time I'll know how many Bulletins we actually make and I do believe we ran out.

Didn't we I think we probably did run out of bulletins back there so My understanding was Mrs. Frye says we only do 50 because if we do a hundred we'll have extra left over and we cannot have that happen.

So we only do the 50. So maybe we'll Run a few extras in in the future. Let's look briefly though at John chapter 10. Just in a few moments just as an introduction for this evening because we will continue with this study this evening.

It is wonderful that God has preserved for us John chapter 10. It is one of the favorite texts of all of God's people. Just a few verses truly truly I say to you This is Jesus speaking he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep.

But climbs up some other way. He is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he puts forth all his own he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A Stranger they simply will not follow but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which he had been saying to them now Just by way of introduction again introductory toward this evening and our time together.

It is often said that The gospel of John is just meant to communicate to us a particular theological viewpoint about Jesus. It does not really have a deep historical connection. But please note something about John chapter 10 so often We just sort of jump into the text and not realize where it stands.

Do you remember what happened in John chapter 9? I? Think I think Christians especially should be people who have a Familiarity with the New Testament so that we really have in our minds and an outline of at least the major books of the New Testament and what they contain and if you recall John chapter 9 is focused upon the healing of the blind man and Then his interaction with whom?

The Jewish leaders. The Jewish leaders and Remember what happens? The blind man in essence Shames the Jewish leaders because he says Whether this man who healed me as a sinner or not. I don't know all I know is I was blind, but now I see and Isn't an amazing thing that a sinner would be able to open blind eyes and Then when he is cast out by the Jewish leadership he then is sought out by Jesus and Jesus introduces himself to him and the man worships him and It seems rather clear that Someday in glory we will get to hear more of the story Because we will know this man and be able to speak to this man.

And I'm sort of looking forward to some of those things like that and so there is a context and it seems That it's not that John is just gone. Okay today. I'm gonna talk about shepherds and sheep. I'm gonna change the subject no when you think about What the Old Testament taught the Jewish leaders were supposed to be whom they're supposed to be the shepherds of God's people and There are a number of places in the prophets in Ezekiel, especially Where there are entire? statements made by God About the false shepherds.

The leaders who were entrusted by God with the feeding of the flock of God But who were actually false shepherds. They were hirelings and They were starving God's sheep and They were mistreating those that they were supposed to be tenderly caring for.

And so it's not happenstance That you go from John chapter 9 where you have this this poor sheep and He's blind He's been ignored. He hasn't been cared for The Good Shepherd comes along provides for him and then the false shepherds reject him and cast him out and It is in chapter 9 that we are told that it was already understood and this we end up having documentation of from other sources outside the New Testament later on that anyone who would confess that Jesus was the Messiah was to be cast out of the synagogue and so There's fear on the part of the man's parents because it's already recognized that there is going to be this this clash that these false shepherds will not follow the true shepherd and so What is the text begin with but this idea of the shepherd calling his sheep and the voice of the true shepherd and the true sheep responding to that voice.

For you see the blind man blind man heard the true voice and He followed the voice of the shepherd and you see what's being explained here. What's going to be explained here in fullness is The fact that not only are the true sheep in the house of Israel Going to follow the true shepherd, but what else is mentioned in John chapter 10?

I have sheep who are not of this fold. I must bring them together and they will become what? One fold one shepherd. This is foundational to an understanding of the fact. There's not to be two Christian churches a Jewish and a Gentile Christian Church one.

One fold one shepherd one gospel. Vitally important and so we often just think of just how much The the picture of Jesus as the good shepherd means to us and to me. Well, that's true. But has a whole lot more meaning than that.

It's actually foundational to what the Apostle Paul ends up doing. It's foundational to why we Recognize there was only one gospel. There's not one gospel for the Jews and another gospel for Gentiles.

Jesus is the good shepherd and this is the natural continuation of the illustration that had been given. Which you can even carry back into chapter 8. How did chapter 8 end? Jesus reveals himself as the I am.

Unless you believe that I am you will die in your sins. And even people who had believed in him now pick up stones to stone him. It was Jesus say before Abraham was I am and the Jews do try to stone him for blasphemy, they understand the false shepherds are Rejecting the good shepherd.

They're not hearing the voice. But others do and it's not the ones you'd expect. You'd expect it to be the Jewish leaders. It's not the Jewish leaders, it's the despised it's the outcasts. It's those who are not well-born as Paul will say in 1st Corinthians chapter 1.

And so this is the background. This is the illustration. This is what will lead us into our study of John chapter 10 based upon Manuscript p45. Now I am really looking forward To this study. I'm gonna be a little bit disappointed if the next Sunday morning that I'm preaching word gets out and It's me and the crickets.

Maybe that'll communicate something to me. I don't know but my hope is my hope really is that you all are gonna go well. That's weird, but it could be interesting. We'll give them a shot. Anyways, it's a little bit easy.

Trust but let's put it one way the material is significantly easier than anything we covered in Leviticus. That much I can promise you it really really is so with that let's close our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father we do.

Thank you for the preservation of your scriptures. We thank you that you have given us the Word of God. We thank you that You worked in the life of John and Mark and Matthew. But then you worked in such a way as you gave to us through them that revelation that you then preserved through generation after generation after generation and We today can look back and here in p45.

We have one of those monuments. To the fact that your word was active amongst your people long long ago and It thrills our hearts Lord to think that you continue to draw people's hearts and minds out to these very same words.

Thank you for that we thank you that we stand in a long line that we're not alone. Encourage us with this truth as We listen to Jesus words in John chapter 10. May our hearts be stirred. May our faith increase.

May we understand and make application all to the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for it's in his name that we pray. Amen.