All language subtitles for The God Who Speaks (2018) Full Movie Alistair Begg Darrell Bock D.A. Carson.eng(transcribed).eng(transcribed)

if god could speak

what would he say what would he tell us

about the world

what would he tell us about himself

if god could speak how would he speak

would he tell us everything at once

would he have an angel bring heavenly

books to earth

if god could speak would we understand

would his language be so far beyond us

would his intention be impossible to see

when god speaks what does he say

[Music]

the bible's the revelation of the

character and the will of god

it tells us who he is and how we can

live in a relationship with him

that's the primary thrust i think of the

bible

it's interesting the bible starts in

eden and it ends

in eden so it's all about living a

relationship with him and what that

looks like

when we ask the question what the bible

is the best way to say it is the bible

is god's written revelation

to his people now god reveals himself in

all kinds of ways and he actually speaks

in ways outside the bible and

days of old to prophets and to the

people of god and so you would hear the

voice of the lord and call it the word

of the lord but over time that became

inscriptionated

became written down into his word and

over time we've collected the books that

contain those words

into 66 smaller books that collectively

we call the bible

the bible is a collection of divinely

inspired texts

that document not only what god has done

throughout history but also what that

means

so it interprets what those events mean

you have a book written by 40

some authors or over 1500 plus

years on dozens of different topics that

have

absolute unity most of the people didn't

know each other

who wrote it so it has amazing unity

within great diversity which is best

accounted for

by deity but here we have this grant's

narrative that is meant to bring us back

into fellowship with him

to bring us into a harmonious fellowship

with one another where

we live together in reflecting his

character and ultimately a redeemed

humanity

in a new heaven and a new earth

here is the one who made us addressing

us about how life should be lived and

how we should approach life it's full of

wisdom

it's full of discernment it's full of

direction and guidance

in some cases correction and so i think

to get a good look at who we really are

as people the image and metaphor that's

used about the bible is

a good mirror it helps us to see things

as they really

are i often tell people

that one of the ways that i know that

the bible is true

is the way that it diagnoses my sin i'm

i'm often reading through a passage and

i'm thinking

this was written 3000 years ago

and yet it perfectly diagnoses the state

of the sin

of my heart how could human beings have

been

able to do that and the only way that

can happen is if my creator

is actually the author of the book we

read books so that we might understand

them but when we read the bible we

realize that it is describing who we are

and what we

are it's also unique in that

it provides the only satisfying answer

to the question of our human existence

it tells us why we're here and where

we're going

and why it matters you need god

specifically in propositional language

telling us

certain facts about reality including

himself uh

you can get some of those facts from

nature

but you can't get all of them you can't

get that god is triune you can't get the

plan of salvation from the stars you can

only get it

from special revelation so if we're

going to be saved and sanctified we need

the scriptures

the study of the word of god at any

level

is the study of god himself there's some

kind of identity between god and his

word

and yet to say that the study of the

word

as words and propositions on a page

um is not an end in itself

because it's to drive us to christ to

god himself in the

upper room in the great intercessory

prayer jesus

prayed for the sanctification of his

disciples

and he said sanctify them by thy

word that's the means by which we are

sanctified then he went on to say

thy word is truth so the scriptures

should dominate everything that

the church does it shouldn't be an

aside to what the church does the

foundation of what the church should do

should be about

advancing the message of scripture where

you

find a healthy biblical church by

definition you're going to find a church

happily faithfully living under the

authority of that word

understanding that the most historic

formula for the christian church has

been this

when the scripture speaks god speaks and

if you understand that rightly

then everything else simply falls into

place

language is an incredible mystery really

what is it that makes human beings able

to communicate in word

personally i think that is the image of

god

in us because god speaks

right at the beginning of the bible god

spoke

the world into existence

you know you think about words and

whether or not they're important and we

realize

we can't even have a conversation

without words what's really interesting

is that we can't even think to ourselves

uh without words

we can't explain ourselves to ourselves

without words now that's either

an accident of evolutionary biology and

development

uh or it is evidence of the fact that

god made us in his image

and so here the bible tells us that that

we are

god's creatures made in his image

and what distinguishes us from other

creatures at least in part

the use of words and because he's making

himself accessible through

speaking to us and through the display

of his character in what he's made he's

made himself accessible

that means that truth also is accessible

now that includes ordinary truths like

two plus two is equal to four

but it also includes the truths about

who god is that he's everlasting that

he's all-powerful that he's

supremely good so for god to speak

is for god to engage in self-revelation

we only

know god because god has

condescended to speak to us so one of

the first things we say about god

is that he is a speaking god we would

not

know him except that he speaks to us

and the beautiful thing really what

makes

life worth living and gives us the

ability

to with hope with joy with tenacity make

it through the valleys of life

is the fact that the eternal god who

created us

can be personally known he's with us

and according to one passage of

scripture in hebrews chapter 13

if we will commit our lives to him he

will never

never leave us or forsake us the bible

is essentially god's self-revelation and

god doesn't just reveal himself in terms

of

what you must do that

is the consequence of

who he is and the way in which

he wants us to understand his world

if god created us then he sets the terms

of his revelation

what we know when we know it how it is

revealed

it's all dependent on him but it seems

so strange

an eternal god tying himself to human

history

illustrating his character in law

prophecy and wisdom

what happens when he appears when he

steps down into history

and speaks you know the question that

always exists in people's mind

is simply this what is god like

and are there many gods or is there one

god

of course left on our own all of these

are mysteries

what you have at sinai is very

remarkable

you find for example that the people

were to stand back god said

stand back no animal was even to touch

the mountain

if an animal touched the mountain it was

to be put to death but not directly with

the human hand it was to be shot with an

arrow because god says i'm coming

stand back get out of

the way what god was revealing there was

his holiness

so when we think of the ten commandments

they were not

simply given for a certain point in time

they really are

let me use the word amna temporal by

that i mean

they exist as the basic law of god

throughout

all eras and god is really saying in the

ten commandments

this is what i'm like and so there's no

other words like him in all of scripture

jesus speaks in the new testament god

but nowhere else

does god thunder words

to the entire congregation of the people

of god

these obviously are of fundamental

importance

to god's covenant with these people god

speaks in an audible voice to the people

but then he writes it down in the ten

commandments

in written form it was written the first

time by the very finger of god

god himself did the writing that's

hammering home the fact that this

original writing

was the very word of god and had

the authority of the same god who spoke

in

thunder and fire in mount sinai but that

written form of the ten commandments was

the first

piece of what we call canon

that is it's the body of things that god

set aside of his own word for in

permanent form

there are some things that god said that

he said to particular people

and they weren't recorded in written

form

for posterity that's okay there are many

things for instance

in jesus earthly life that he taught not

all of those have been written down it

would be overwhelming

if we had all of those but god purposed

that there would be a selection of those

things

that would be there in permanent form

if god wrote a book would it be a

history book

the transcendent being interacting with

creatures who are separated by sin

distanced by unbelief

what would he write about these people

would he paint grand pictures would he

hide the embarrassing details

this human experience beyond him

it's been said that the bible is not a

book that

man would write if he could write or

could write if he

would write every now and then i'll be

in a debate at a university and someone

will say well the old testament is

merely

pro-israeli zionistic propaganda it's

just

the jewish people were trying to feel

good about who they were

but that claim falls apart upon closer

look at the the content because look

you've got

one of the greatest kings of israel

david was an adulterer

abraham twice lied about

the identity of his wife so one of the

things

that bears the ring of truth is the

thing

that we probably would have excluded

had the bible been a merely human

invention

the the sin the foibles the the failures

of many of the bible's great figures we

probably would have left out

the bible's appeal to prophecy and

fulfillment

before and after all of that depends on

historical progress on continuity on

on sequence of time so god himself

doubtless inhabits eternity and it

is in some sense above space and time in

that sense

he's transcendent that's what we mean by

transcendent not limited by space and

time yet at the same time he discloses

himself to us

in space and time that is to say in

history

now one of the things to understand

about the bible

is that it talks about god's plan

through the ages and call it redemptive

history

and the bible is intrinsically connected

to that in two ways

one is that it gives a lot of intention

to explaining

how god was dealing with the human race

from creation onwards the fall into sin

and then various periods of redemption

so it talks about redemptive history but

the second way

is that it's given progressively in

history god didn't have it just dropped

from heaven

at one point in times there's some

people who practically treat it as if

it was that way it is a book from god

but it's a book where he addresses

people where they are in history

and he doesn't reveal everything all at

once

his plan of redemption keeps pace

with his speaking about redemption

redemptive history moves forward through

prophets priests

and kings to an ultimate prophet priest

and king but people need proof

how can we be confident that jesus is

the fulfillment

how do we see it the way his earliest

followers would see it

when jesus came and the disciples

preached there wasn't a new testament to

appeal to

they were dealing with promises that

were coming out of the old testament

tied to the great covenants the

covenant of abraham that god was going

to bless the world through abraham's

family the covenant to david that there

would be

a king and a line of kings that would

represent

the way of god and then finally the new

covenant the idea that god was going to

write

his law on our hearts put his spirit

within us and that we were going to do

that in the context of having

our sins forgiven and the story of jesus

steps into those promises made centuries

before

uh and addresses really the reconnecting

of god to us

you know in what had been a broken

relationship you know the

the very first book of the new testament

matthew opens with the genealogy of

jesus

and the purpose of that genealogy is to

affirm that jesus

is the fulfillment of the whole old

testament story

it's crafted very we could go into

detail but there's another time very

carefully crafted

to show that he fulfills the whole

history of israel the whole story

of the old testament as we look through

the new testament and he he fulfills

everything in the old testament he is

the revelation of god that fulfills

god's revelation in moses and brings it

to its completion

he is the the lamb slain from the

foundation of the world the lamb of god

who takes away the sin of the world

that fulfills all the old sacrificial

system

in the old testament

i would imagine that jesus probably knew

the whole old testament off by heart

so that when he then in the synagogue in

nazareth

says you know this is about me

uh he's able to say this is about me

because he knows

what this is about and that the prophecy

of isaiah

was revealing who and what the messiah

truly is

i would talk about these prophecies they

a professor would say well i don't

believe this ever happened

i don't think these prophecies in the

old testament were written down to jesus

was born

and then they were written out so they

would coincide with his life

i said wow that's amazing that sounds

pretty good

unless you want to think i would say

look

if you say there's not a 500-year gap

minimum from the completion of the old

testament the time of christ

i said you got a problem with a

septuagint the greek translation of the

hebrew old testament

documented history was initiated right

around 250 years before christ

well first of all the septuagint is the

ancient

translation of the hebrew scriptures

into greek it was probably the first

translation

made of the hebrew scriptures it was

begun

in the 3rd century before christ with

the pentateuch being translated

probably in alexandria egypt tradition

has it that there were about

70 translators so it was

the bible of greek speaking judaism

before christ came and because greek was

the lingua franca of the mediterranean

world

when the apostles go out to preach the

gospel they

naturally preach in greek because

their language aramaic probably wasn't

widely used outside of

first century palestine

if the old testament is composed of 39

books

written across hundreds of years from a

diversity of authors how do we know that

these are the books that god intended

would jesus even recognize the old

testament we hold in our hands

the books that were being discussed is

possibly a part of the old testament

canon by the time we get to the first

century

are books like lamentations song of

songs ecclesiastes

works like that and maybe a few other

works that end up showing up in what we

call the apocrypha

wisdom sirac those kinds of works

but the works that everyone recognizes

were seen as inspired and a part of the

jewish scripture at the time

include the torah of the first five

books

proverbs psalms your major prophets

most of your minor prophets and so if we

don't know the exact limits of the old

testament canon in the first century

which is possible it may be that it was

already decided by then that's also

conceivable

that which is being excluded doesn't

really represent

any significant portion of the text that

the new testament's interacting with

we all know now that if we have catholic

friends their bibles will generally be a

bit bigger than

ours because they contain a number of

books in the old testament a

book of maccabees for example that

protestant books

exclude and they're excluded

by and large on the grounds that they we

don't find them

in the hebrew they don't seem to to have

the

kind of long-standing

universal acceptance within the church

prior to say the council of trent that

one expects from

canonical books one of the primary

reasons we don't use those books

or don't view those script books of

scripture is because jesus and the

apostles

did not use those books or view those

books of scripture it's a very basic way

of putting it

if those books indeed was viewed as

scripture and that people were using

them widely

as scripture and they were they were

considered part of the old testament

canon we would have expected jesus and

the apostles somewhere

sometime at least once using one of

those books

as scripture and the fact is we don't

see that even a single time

they were respected and utilized because

they were regarded as

helpful jewish sources of material and

information

particularly about what was called the

maccabean war in the case of the

historical apocryphal books

which is a very traumatic period in

israel's history when she was almost

wiped out by antiochus epiphanes

and had the jews not won the maccabean

war we may not have judaism today it

might have been extinguished from the

earth

it's true that some of the apocryphal

books are found bound within some of the

biblical manuscripts but

not all of them and not in every codex

and i don't think that that necessarily

entails that they must be canonical if

you look at our bibles today

uh we've got between the covers called

the holy bible we've got essays we've

got maps we've got

indices we've got reader resources we've

got study notes on the bottom of the

page there's lots of material in our

modern bibles

that none of us would consider canonical

or inspired

uh it's noteworthy for example that

jesus disagrees with the

pharisees and sadducees over a number of

different issues theologically and

doctrinally they debate all kinds of

things all throughout the pages of the

gospels

but one of the things that's noteworthy

is that they never debate about which

books belong on the canon and which

books do not belong in the canon

jesus refers to the scripture and the

pharisees seem to understand what books

he's talking about

jesus refers to the old testament

writings sadducees seem to be fairly

content that we all agree on which books

are in and which books are out

there's no uh oddity of them saying well

you're quoting from a book that's not in

the canon and

jesus never says that to a pharisee or

sadducee and there seems to be every

good

reason to think that that issue was

relatively settled in the time of jesus

you know of course one of the most

favorite verses in all the bible is john

1

1 where it says in the beginning was the

word

the greek word is logos we could say in

the beginning

was logic and why is that word used and

applied to

jesus as john later says in verse 14

the word became flesh first of all

because the word

had a great meaning in those days and

there's some debate as to whether or not

it's based on the greek or

other meanings but here's the idea

jesus is the logic and the

intelligibility

of god the word signifies

god's self-disclosure the word is god's

self-revelation it's how god

makes himself known so it's profound

and immensely significant and

actually quite logical that christ would

be called the word

made flesh because now visibly

before our eyes we have the revelation

of god himself

as much as i love the book of hebrews if

i were marooned

on a desert island and could only have

one biblical book it would be one of the

gospels

because it's there we meet jesus

it's there that the narrative the story

the account

of the actual incarnation of the son of

god takes place

so he sent his son as the god

man just as much man as he'd never been

god and just as much

god as if he'd never been man so that we

could see

and hear in a way that we could

comprehend the truth

of god's very uh heart and mind

in order that you might know that the

son of man has authority on earth to

forgive sins

i say to you get up and walk he does

something that you can see and links it

to something you can't see you can't see

forgiveness of sins

you can see someone being healed and if

that guy gets up and walks his walk

talks and it says the son of man has

authority on earth to forgive sins

and then the context for that remark is

but no one can forgive sins but god

and words are cheap i mean they i can

utter it

and you know then you're left with the

choice of whether to believe it or not

but if i can

show it if i can compellingly

demonstrate that what i'm claiming might

have

you know some avenue to the truth and be

reflective of what's going on

that's a more powerful way to do it so

the bible calls the miracles that jesus

does things like signs

or powers those are the words that are

used to describe the miracles

and the miracles are really what i call

power points they're audio visuals to a

truth about who jesus is

that shows his power and authority

[Music]

i love the beginning of the gospel of

mark where jesus

stands forward and he says the time is

fulfilled

the kingdom of god is at hand repent and

believe the good news

because there had been 400 years

essentially of silence in the

inter-testamental period john the

baptist had stepped forward and he was

pointing the way and it was all

pregnant for the appearing of this one

and the very fact that mark begins

by jesus reaching into the old

in order to put himself in the present

is so wonderfully helpful for him to

unroll the isaiah's scroll and explain

today

this is fulfilled in your hearing speaks

of a sense of his own

messianic identity and mission but also

suggests that

he had studied the scriptures someone

had taught them to him

and he saw fit to announce his own

mission and ministry

with a reference to the bible if anyone

could have just announced it's me

you don't need to read that dusty book

anymore that old scroll it would have

been jesus

but he never did that because he

understood that his ministry

was an extension and a fulfilling

but never an abolishing or an

eradicating

i remember when i was in bible college i

said to myself i can believe in the new

testament but

it's hard for me to believe in the old

testament

and then i realized something i can't

believe

less than jesus believed

and he had absolute confidence in the

old testament

there's no debate about what his view of

scripture was

he says you know his word is true thy

word is truth he said that

not one jot or tittle will pass away to

all this for he got

john tittle inspiration as what he

taught he never set scripture aside

what he did was to make very clear that

he perfectly fulfilled scripture

and of course he went beyond even the

old testament law

in the sermon on the mount saying you've

heard it said and he never reverses it

he never minimizes it instead he goes

even beyond it you've heard it said

you shall not commit adultery i will

tell you that if you've lusted in your

heart you have already

committed adultery our popular

evangelical understanding of jesus and

the pharisees

is this we think that jesus big message

to the pharisees

is oh come on guys don't be so nitpicky

you will never once find jesus in the

gospels

saying to the pharisees you care too

much about the law

invariably jesus will say you have added

to the law and thus contradicted it

or he'll say you guys make a whole lot

about the law

but you don't really follow it over and

over watch him make that move

those are what he says and what is that

flowing out of

a rock solid commitment to the sole

final authority and sufficiency of the

word of god what does jesus want to see

the word of god as the sole final

authority for faith and practice in the

life of believers and he's saying

pharisees

for all the bells and whistles that you

attach to your teaching on the law

you undermine it so

every evidence is that

that jesus knew our old testament the

books that we have

that he affirmed them as holy scripture

along with

the other other jewish people of his day

and

that from beginning to end he

interpreted

and understood his own life in that way

he is the messiah

he is the fulfillment

of the history of god's people in the

old testament

so yes jesus jesus very much affirmed

the authority of the old testament so if

you deny it you have to disagree with

jesus

[Music]

the new testament needed to be written

because

the old testament hadn't completed the

story

that the timeline and the arc of god's

redemptive purposes

reached a point where everybody if you

like was

standing on their tiptoes to see how the

thing would finish

and so in the way that uh the writer to

the hebrew says that god

you know has spoken in the past in

various ways and by different prophets

and so on

it anticipates the fact that that that

story will then come to completion

and it's the new testament that does

that for us in the old testament

jesus is uh anticipated and

in the gospels jesus is revealed

in the acts he's preached in the

epistles he's explained so in other

words everything is just

pointing forward to that great

fulfillment which comes in jesus

you have to understand the early jews

were not looking for a crucified messiah

they did not expect a crucified messiah

even isaiah 53 the great old testament

text that's thought to refer

to this right early jesus didn't

interpret that as a

crucified messiah for one thing my

servant

israel was assumed to be the nation of

israel suffering for the sins of the

world not a particular individual

so on the one hand they had to explain

this to the world

on the other hand they had to explain

this to themselves because they were not

expecting this was

this was an unexpected outcome and

let's be clear if crucifixion was the

end of jesus story

there is really no good historical

explanation for why we have the gospels

or the rest of the new testament at all

there had to be a reversal

of that final judgment when you think

about

where the new testament came from

it came out of judaism why would these

jewish believers who thought they were

god's chosen people

why would they invent a resurrected

jesus

what motivation would they have for that

why would they invent this it makes no

sense at all

i mean if one of them said hey we're

going to start a new religion and one of

the others said

we are yeah well what's it going to get

us well

first of all we're going to get kicked

out of the synagogue and then we're

going to get beaten tortured and killed

you think the other guy's going to go

hey great idea

sign me up no he's not going to say that

right

there's no motivation for jews to invent

a resurrected jesus

in fact let me put it this way because i

hear some people out there thinking that

the new testament writers invented the

resurrection no

the new testament writers did not invent

or create the resurrection

the resurrection created the new

testament writers

there would be no new testament unless

there was a resurrection

the resurrection is god's amen to

christ's atoning work it is the

signal evidence that what jesus

has accomplished has been

if you like ratified by the father that

that what god the father if you like has

planned

that god the son has procured and the

resurrection

is the signal to the entire world that

the mission upon which jesus has

embarked

has actually been accomplished so

we're not just talking about a reversal

of death

we're talking about a whole new kind of

life that he gets by means of

resurrection and that's what

the earliest writers about jesus were

trying to make clear

is this is not just a kindness or a

mercy of god on jesus

no this is a vindication of who he was

and of his claims

and uh you need to pay attention now

the first corinthians 15 i mean that is

a a text that has a robust resurrection

theology where paul says on multiple

occasions

that jesus died and was raised according

to the scriptures according to the

scriptures according to the scriptures

and he he suggests that there was a real

physical

bodily resurrection of jesus christ from

the dead

and without that there is no christian

faith

in my view it is theological insanity

and

an exegetical suicide to argue

that there is no real

resurrection of jesus from the dead is

something spiritual

jesus lives in the heart of his people

that belief

does not save anybody

[Music]

if jesus's bible only consisted of the

old testament

why do we need the new when was the

story written down

why was the story written down at all

how do sinful people write the undefiled

words

of transcendence if memories fade

people exaggerate and events get

misinterpreted

if the new testament is true how could

we know

there's a difference between what

happened two days ago which was just a

benign event

and what we call psychologically an

impact event

an impact event is something that

impacts you so dramatically you'll never

forget what happened

like for example where were you when the

second plane hit the tower

right right now as we record this that

was 15 years ago but i can remember what

happened exactly

i remember who i was talking to and what

i was saying and what he was saying to

me

and the question is do you think a

resurrection would have been an impact

event

do you think if jesus really rose from

the dead that would have had an

impact on the people that saw him after

he had resurrected

yeah they would have remembered that

till their grave

so i don't have any doubt that even if

the eyewitnesses wrote it down 20 years

later or 30 years later

it doesn't matter they remembered it the

reason

to not just rely on oral tradition

and to actually write down a gospel like

the earliest gospel

probably the gospel of mark the reason

to do that

is because you're losing the living

voice you're losing the eyewitnesses

so there is this huge impetus in the

second half of the first century a.d

to produce documents that would allow us

to not

lose the memory of what jesus was like

what he did what he said and what his

earliest followers were like as well

that's really the impetus behind the

writing in the new testament

and when they got busy with it they got

busy with it between about 49 and about

100

all 27 documents of the new testament

seemed to have been written

[Music]

when we think in terms of authorship of

the bible

we have essentially a dual authorship so

it's true to say that paul wrote romans

is equally true to say that god wrote

romans and the great wonder of it is

that without any violation of paul's

personality or his

intellect god through the

instrumentation of the holy spirit

both provided paul and enabled paul

to write as he wrote and that would be

true for all the bible authors

when david writes psalm 23 it's not as

if he came in after a hard day's work

and was about to fall asleep when a

voice spoke to him out of the gloom and

said

not yet david pick up your stylist i've

got some dictation for you

and then god said um the lord

the lord is my is my shepherd shepherd i

shall lack nothing i shall act

there's no way in god's green earth

psalm 23 was

was written that way and it was spoken

out of the fullness of david's

experience

both as a believer and as a shepherd and

he thought about these things turn them

over in his mind and he picked up his

stylus and he wrote

nevertheless scripture insists that god

so

worked through such forms of inspiration

that the result

was nonetheless the word of god

i think on the other end of that

spectrum perhaps we also can't get

too loose between the text of scripture

and the meaning of scripture

that those words really are there for a

reason

and they're not dictated but that

doesn't mean that we can just kind of

loosely

paraphrase or understand the text that

we do have to respect

what the biblical authors actually wrote

of course the christian claim from the

start is that this is a supernatural

event

we don't believe that that it just

happened to work out that human beings

wrote down perfect words

or that they just tried a lot and

eventually got it right or something

like this you know we believe that god

superintended the whole process

by his holy spirit and and this is why a

common complaint by

by uh non-christians and by critics of

christianity often misses the point

the people would say well you can't

believe the bible is the word of god

because it was written by men

but of course that presumes the

non-christian view of the way it

happened

that's not the christian claim the

christian claim is it wasn't just that

it was written by

man our claim that it was written by men

who were carried along by the holy

spirit and it's that second step that's

so key

behind your doctrine of scripture is a

doctrine of god

and behind the the product of scripture

is the activity of god the the scripture

is the product of god the holy spirit

which is why god the holy spirit uses it

in conversion

and in sanctification so what we believe

about the bible is based on

what we believe about its source

and because we believe god to be the

author of the bible

we talk about the quality of the bible

as inspired or god

breathed

paul's letters were written somewhere

between about 49

and maybe 63 or 64 a.d

not a big timeline but that's almost

half the new testament

13 of the documents of the new testament

are attributed to paul

and they are by consensus the earliest

new testament documents

so we don't have any documents that are

today

part of the new testament from before

about 49.

even the atheists admit that that paul

is writing first corinthians in about 55

a.d

and we can date that from an

archaeological discovery in in this in

delphi in greece and we can date all of

paul's

missionary journeys from that

archaeological inscription

and we're almost certain that paul is

writing first corinthians in either

55 or 56 a.d i think

colin hemmer's work who is a roman

historian i don't even think he was a

christian

he wrote a book called back in the late

80s

called acts in the setting of

hellenistic history

in which he makes in my view a very

persuasive case that acts the book of

acts had to be written by 62 a.d

in fact he gives number a number of

reasons in the book

if ax is 62 a.d that means luke has to

be prior to acts because acts is luke's

second work

and then if luke is written say sometime

in the 50s

it appears that luke maybe maybe one of

his sources is mark

which means mark is prior to luke so

you're very early now you're in the

early 50s maybe 40s

so the bulk of the new testament is said

to be written from

the end of the 40s 49 thereabouts

all the way up to the last decade of the

first century

and you're dealing with a period of

about 50 years from start to finish

i would say that mark is our earliest

gospel that yes

matthew and luke used the vast majority

of mark there's

95 of mark is in matthew's gospel

but matthew was not just copying mark

he added another 50 to his document from

various other sources so he was using a

variety of sources to produce this

document

and under the inspiration of god each

one

wanted to present a slightly different

portrait of jesus

it's not as if let's say matthew says

that jesus is the king in the line of

david he emphasizes

that even in the beginning of his gospel

is that incompatible

with john who emphasizes that jesus is

the revelation of god the father

well no they're both true right but

they're complementary

what's hard for people to remember is is

that when you wrote a gospel

and you did it on a on a on a running

scroll of papyrus if you want to think

of it that way there's a certain

length that oftentimes is a maximum that

you can deal with and particularly when

we get into

matthew luke and john our longer gospels

they're running up into those limits

and so that impacts how much detail they

communicate about the stories that they

present

still another issue is in recorded

speech

because some people expect that a

recorded speech will be verbatim

accurate it will be

like the court stenographer who just

takes down every word exactly

if we did most preaching classes and

used the sermon on the mount as an

example

most of our church services would be

very short because you can read through

the sermon on the mount in five to seven

minutes

what we know is that jesus spoke to

people all day

and you know when you bring a crowd out

from the city to come

sit in the fields and listen to a

teacher he isn't speaking for just five

to seven minutes

so there are cases where you may not be

getting

always the exact words of jesus you may

be getting a summary of something that

he actually spent much longer time

talking about and you may be getting

snippets of that or a summary of that

that's boiled down into a

you know into a packageable length given

everything else that's going on in the

gospel

we need to stop thinking about the

gospels as if they were like modern

photographs

they're not they're like portraits and

portraits are inherently

interpretive they're not just history

they are interpreted history history

from a particular theological and

ethical

angle and this is true of all four

gospels not just true about john which

is highly theological

all four gospels provide us with a

theological

interpretation of the historical figure

jesus

and we may be thankful to have four of

them that have

differences of angles of incidents and

yet recognizably it's the same person

remember ancient biographies their issue

was characterization

who is this person as revealed by his

words and deeds that's what they're

trying to get at

[Music]

one of the big challenges in biblical

studies today

is the very subtle suggestion

that well it's the theological teachings

of the bible that are inspired

and whether any of those historical

narratives that the teachings come out

of

whether they ever happened or not it

really doesn't matter

i want to argue that's absolutely wrong

it does matter the the the fundamental

divide

on the issue of inspiration is whether

it is subjective or objective

when i was a first-year phd student in

edinburgh scotland the very first debate

that i witnessed at the university of

edinburgh was debate on the topic of the

inspiration of the old testament

and and a liberal old testament scholar

and an evangelical were going to have a

debate

and the moderator's first question to

both of them was how do you define

inspiration

and dr all said well i believe that the

bible is inspired

because it inspires me now that is a

classic subjective definition of

inspiration in other words whatever

inspiration is doesn't reside

in scripture itself it resides

in its effect on or in me

whereas the bible claims an objective

inspiration listen again to paul's words

all scripture is god

breathe it's not something that has put

been put into scripture

it's not something that scripture does

to me it is something

that is inherent in scripture because of

where it comes from

peter in particular draws this contrast

between myths

just stories fables legends versus

eyewitness

accounts he says we saw this we didn't

make up a story to make you feel better

we're not just giving you uh you know

the spirit of

christmas or the inspiration of easter i

was on the mountain

i saw jesus christ transfigured

in glory these are things we saw with

our eyes we heard with our ears

they happened you can count on them

and that sets the bible apart from

almost

everything else in the ancient world and

its

religious pantheon of gods and goddesses

because

this good news is rooted in history

something that happened and based on a

future

that we know then will happen one of the

remarkable things about

the gospels that we have in our new

testament

as well as the whole bible is that the

bible subjects itself to historical

verification

it puts itself at risk of inquiry

unlike the gospel of thomas unlike the

quran

unlike the bhagavad-gita or the

teachings of the compassionate buddha

that are talking head theology

the bible says jesus did this at a

certain place

here's the guy's name whom he healed or

here's the house where he did that like

in mark 2

when you had these four men who lift

parts of the thatched roof at peter's

house

and they dropped this paralyzed man

right in front of jesus

and he heals the man and he walks out

i've been to peter's house it's

it's in capernaum on the shore of the

sea of galilee

you can see the very place where jesus

stood when he was lecturing to this

crowd that was packed

and the actual door that this man walked

out of that's historically verifiable

stuff

you don't have that in these other

documents

a faith rooted in history a revelation

coming through human instruments

a religion spreading through the entire

region and beyond

but we wonder who wrote these books

how did they spread can we be confident

they are the actual words that god meant

for us to have the question of

authorship is a common one if we're

going to

rely on these books we want to know who

wrote them we want to know when they

were written and whether we should

listen to the person whose names are

attached to them

many people doubt whether we can know

those things i i don't think those

things are out of the range of knowing

in fact

uh we have a tremendously uh good amount

of evidence about the authors of these

books and there's all kinds of ways we

know

who wrote these books certainly the

titles attached to these books are a key

part of that evidence they go back very

very early

when we look at the gospels themselves

for for example we know those

titles were attached probably by the end

of the first century if not the early

second century

there's an uh second century impulse

that begins that says

add the name of apostle to a book to

make sure that we know that it really is

by that person

those kinds of things we see in these

apocryphal books the gospel of thomas

the gospel philip of mary of judas

all these works ascribe authorship in

the text not as a title above it but

actually in the text

the new testament gospels don't do that

they were originally anonymous i believe

the ancient church fathers were

unanimous

that mark got his gospel from the

apostle peter

now mark was a follower of paul an

associate of paul's to start with

but he got his gospel from peter

if you have this apostolic authorship

impulse

why isn't the gospel of mark ever ever

called the gospel of peter it isn't

so that apostolic authorship impulse

is not something that's intrinsic to the

new testament

it's intrinsic to pseudepigrapha

apocryphal books books that came later

and guys like bart ehrman who wrote this

book forged about the

books that were not really written by

the people that we think they were

he tries to argue for this apostolic

authorship impulse in the first century

if that's the case why don't we have it

for the gospel of mark

did jesus change over the first 300

years of the church

uh the depiction of jesus and when you

look at people who followed the apostles

clement

papias irenaeus these types of

individuals

uh justin martyr these folks when you

look at their writings

you see they're given the same basic

data that the new testament writers gave

so you have this chain of custody going

through the first three centuries of the

church

before we we have say the first full

copy of say the new testament or the old

testament

[Music]

early christianity was basically an

evangelistic movement

which is distinctive in early judaism

the other early jewish movements like

the qumran community

or john the baptizer they were not

evangelistic in the sense that they were

going out and getting recruits that were

non-jews

this is something pretty distinctive

about early christianity is

a was a missionary movement and b it

went after gentiles

deliberately by intention so

in that kind of environment they needed

some tools

to do a better job of evangelizing and

teaching in those kind of environments

and so

the the impetus to generate sources

of important material to convince both

jews and gentiles about jesus

was paramount when it comes to the new

testament writings

authors not only had to write a book and

then people read that book but

eventually that book had to be

copied and then transmitted over time

obviously this was before the printing

press this is before you go down to your

copy machine and run off a few copies

and so if

people wanted their book to be spread

far and wide if people wanted their book

to be published so to speak

that book had to be copied i would

reckon

it would take somebody oh a good three

or four

hours to just

take dictation for a document like

romans and then

on top of that you'd have to produce a

fair hand copy

that's the one that would be given so

from the start there would be two copies

the one that the

describe and the author retained

and the one that was sent to whoever the

recipients of the document

are it is a laborious process

you know if it would me my hand would

have fallen off about halfway through

the job at best

um they and they had to be clear

because without punctuation and division

of words

the the capital letters had to be

absolutely clear as to what they are

and somebody knew where to divide the

words right

so it's an expensive process the longest

usable scroll that was still wieldy of

some sort would be no more than about 35

feet long and would take

the average sized lettering what that

means is it could only contain

one gospel the gospel of luke the book

of acts would be right around 28 feet

long by those estimates

you couldn't put luke and another gospel

in there just just luke or just acts

this is why luke himself wrote both of

these books as separate volumes

they almost surely were written at the

same time but because

of the material that was used namely

papyrus scrolls

they couldn't be bound together as a

single book the number two

manuscript authority in history is the

iliad by homer

more manuscripts are being discovered of

homer than any other classical work

and right now we have about a thousand

see

the moment i make this statement it's

obsolete a thousand eight hundred and

twenty some manuscripts

of the iliad by homer but when it comes

to this

bible now and this is incredible it's

hard to grasp

i can now document 66

000 manuscripts and scrolls

of the bible 66 000.

manuscripts are divided between two

different groups

those that are written in the original

language greek

and those that are written in other

languages or translations of the the

greek into other languages and those are

typically called versions

the vast majority of these are not

complete new testaments

we only have about 60 that are complete

new testament manuscripts

but the vast majority of them also are

very large the

average greek new testament manuscript

is more than 450 pages long

so they're they're they're they're big

texts

and we have well over two million pages

of greek manuscripts handwritten

manuscripts from before the time of the

printing press

and they come pretty early on starting

in the second century we have as many as

a dozen

manuscripts the earliest to date is

still considered p-52 which is at

manchester university in manchester

england

p-52 still stands today is one of our

earliest new testament manuscripts maybe

even still the earliest

dated around 100 to 125 a.d

uh and it's a little fragment of john

18.

once that manuscript was discovered they

realized that the dating of john had to

be much earlier than even that

manuscript

which ended up putting the dating well

into the first century so it's just a

small fragment

it's about the size of a credit card but

it proves

that the gospel of john existed before

that time and

for almost a hundred years up until then

there was european scholarship that

argued that the gospel of john could not

have been written before 160

and should have been written at about

170

when this scrap of papyrus was

discovered in 1934 at manchester

university

it sent two tons of german scholarship

to the flames

here was an ounce of evidence that

proved a pound of presumption

dead wrong and that's what christians

have is we have

lots and lots of ounces of evidence

[Music]

we have to recognize a problem the

original autographs

written by the apostles are gone lost to

time

what we have are the thousands of copies

that survive

but is that enough can we really rely on

the bible

if we don't even have the very first

copies

one of the most common questions i

receive is what good is a belief in

inerrancy if an errancy only applies the

original autographs

and we don't have the original autograph

so how can we believe in inerrancy

but i think that objection makes a

fundamental mistake it assumes that

when we talk about the original text

thinks of it as only a physical object

as if we have to have the actual

autographs in order to have access to

the original text and since those

physical objects are lost therefore we

don't have access

to the original text but the text itself

the words of god themselves aren't

necessarily a physical object that you

can put in a museum the words of god can

be preserved in other ways beyond just

the autographs and we think that's

happened

you see the more manuscripts or scrolls

that you have

the easier it is to reconstruct the

original called the autographa

autographa the autographer the original

and check out any errors or

discrepancies

and you try through the bibliographical

test to create what is called

a pure text what percentage of the

original text

do you know for sure today what

percentage is a pure text

the problem is the way i like to

describe it is is that we have 105

of the text we have the text as it was

and then we have

the variations that have been introduced

to the text and text criticism is the

job of trying to pair off

that 105 percent down to the to what we

originally had

and the places where we're not sure are

noted i tell people you actually have

the opportunity to be a little bit of a

textual critic because in

some places in your bible in the margin

though

it will say or or some manuscripts say

and that's telling you those places that

are really the most discussed

a lot of people out there talking about

these things now give the impression

that

every word is questioned and that's just

simply not true

at any level it's not true

99 of the text is sure there are yes

there are some places in the greek text

where

we scratch our heads and go i don't hm

i'm not sure which one it is they're

called c ratings

uh in our bibles so things like

spellings

is it gadarenes or gergazines is it

bethsaidia bessatha or bethesda

is the form of the verb sd or s-tin

is there an n sound on the end doesn't

affect the meaning at all but

you know we can't really tell a lot of

that is

that's what makes up that one percent 99

of the text were very comfortable with

this is what was originally said

and just as importantly that one percent

that we're not sure

doesn't bring any major creation

doctrine into question

there there is simply is no major and i

don't even think any minor

doctrine that's raised in the question i

mean not many of us

are going to go to heaven or hell based

on whether scatterings or garrick's

seeds

of the hundreds of thousands of textual

variants that we actually have

the smallest group are those that are

both meaningful

and viable it's less than one-fifth

of one percent of all textual variants

and yet these are the ones that

christians

and non-christians always hear about the

ones that skeptics talk about the ones

that

make the news because they're so

interesting

and they seem to destroy the christian

faith or uphold the christian faith

it's a very small fraction well you get

textual variants of all kinds perhaps

the two most discussed in relationship

to the gospels is the pericope

where the woman's caught in adultery in

the middle of john john

last part of seven and eight and then

the ending

to the gospel of mark the only thing

that is different about that passage

is that it is a longer one most sexual

variants are a word or two

whereas this is a whole unit in both of

those cases i would argue

pretty strongly that those units were

not part of the original given by god

um but if you think that they are

nothing much depends on it if you think

that they're not nothing much depends on

it either

the message of the bible is secure in

any case when skeptics talk about

how we can't get back to the original

text because

we don't have the original manuscripts

they typically have

never examined the texts of greco-roman

literature

if they're right that we can't get back

to the new testament

then we might as well kiss the ancient

world goodbye and the middle ages would

still be the dark ages

we would never have the renaissance

because we can't possibly tell what

these ancients said

if we're going to be skeptical about the

new testament

on average we should be a thousand times

more skeptical

about greco-roman writings the textual

richness of what is found in the new

testament

and now in the old testament where the

discovery of the dead sea scrolls

is really very remarkable it's utterly

unique from from documentation from the

ancient world

so god in his providence has been

wonderful in providing so much

we would be at fault if we criticized

him for not providing infallible copies

with new miracles every time somebody

picked up a pen

how did the church come to embrace these

new testament books

were they chosen out of a list did a

council determine their worth

as the church grows and the religion

formalizes

what is the god who gives authority

to the bible

a perception again out there in the in

the world today whether in popular

literature or on the internet that there

were votes that took place in councils

and that

people picked these books and that there

was some shady deal going on in a

smoke-filled room where

one book barely got in by a vote and

some books got out and i can tell you

all that is

is a misunderstanding of the way things

happened in the early church the fact of

the matter is when it comes to most of

the books of the new testament

again probably 22 23 out of the 27 there

was never any real discussion about them

there was never any real debate about

them there was never any sense that you

had to decide

on which books these were these were the

books that were simply handed down

to the early church in fact that

language handed down we see used

numerous places throughout the second

century where early church fathers refer

to these books as the

as the books that were passed down to

them that were given to them by the

apostles that were

ones that the church had always known

you have these documents produced in the

first century a.d

by the second century a.d we had a

collection of

the four canonical gospels and a

collection of paul's letters this we

know

in the second century these were already

considered sacred texts

and you already have house churches

where

people are saying bishops are saying

we're not going to read from any text

from the lectern

or at the meeting except our sacred text

or the sacred text of the old testament

there were criteria that the church used

to recognize these

and these criteria are essentially three

apostolicity which means

the book is either written by an apostle

or an associative apostle

that's the most important criterion

secondly

is orthonoxy does the book conform to

what we know to be true

from the other books that we know to be

inspired the gospels were the very first

ones almost surely to be accepted

uh we don't have any any period when

there was a time where there's any hint

that they were not accepted

and then the third criterion is

catholicity it doesn't mean roman

catholic it means

accepted by the the majority of the

churches

now there's some that would be

considered orthodox like

the epistle of barnabas and that may be

a first century document late first

century document

but the church recognized early on that

the epistle of barnabas was not written

by barnabas

any time the church recognized that a

book was not written by the name

that it claims to be written by

automatically it got rejected

when it was discovered that some deacon

had produced the letter to the

laodiceans the bishop said not only are

we not

reading these in church we're defrocking

you

for producing false documents and the

first person to name

the books that make up our new testament

was athanasius and he did it in 367 a.d

in a letter on easter that was written

in that year

irenaeus writing long before athanasius

talks about four gospels he talks about

acts he talks about the pauline epistles

he talks about first john and first

peter that's the bulk of your new

testament clearly

being seen and utilized is inspired and

valuable to the church

at the end of the second century but

what's interesting is if you go a little

earlier if you go to the first part of

the second century or the middle part of

the second century

and you read what's written there what

you see are writers who may have one

gospel access to one gospel or two

they may have access to one two or three

of the pauline epistles

but they aren't they aren't thinking of

the new testament the way we think about

it because

they only had exposure and access to

some of the works they had

the works hadn't circulated across the

church yet when you look at the state of

the canon in the early

church there's two important facts to

get right about it one is to recognize

that very early

there was a core collection of books

that the church recognized almost out of

the gate

what that means is by the second century

we've got 22

maybe 23 out of the 27 books already

there

that's one thing to recognize but

there's a second thing to recognize and

that is that there were some books that

were disputed

we have some books that you know we can

call the books around the edges or the

peripheral books the smaller books that

there was some more controversy about

and these would be books like

second peter and james and jude and

second and third john

and there was some controversy about

some of these books there was discussion

about them

the the kind of books that typically

were disputed were little books

and this is noteworthy small books for

obvious reasons were were not as

impactful in the literature of the day

they weren't

read as often they weren't as widely

known they were cited less

so that they weren't familiar across

different geographical regions so it

would take more time to recognize these

books you can understand why they might

be disputed more

than others but here's what's

interesting despite occasional

challenges here and there once the

church had reached a consensus

on these 27 books that consensus has

been wide and long-standing

and i think that's an encouraging truth

for us as christians we can look at

the church through the ages with a great

deal of unanimity around these books not

not absolute anonymity where there's

never an objection from any quarter

but a predominant unity which i think is

evidence of the spirit's work and the

church to receive these 27 books

in just these 27 books why don't we

include

some of these other books like the

gospel of thomas or philip or mary

or third corinthians or paul's letter to

the laodiceans

or the acts of paul or the revelation

of john there's a second revelation of

john besides the one that's in the new

testament

or the revelation of peter why don't we

include these books in the new testament

there's a fundamental reason why none of

those are included

and that is they are not first century

documents so they could not have been

written by an apostle

or an associate of an apostle that right

there excludes

all of these documents what makes thomas

such an interesting work we think it's a

second century work of some kind is that

it seems to have

one element of sources feeding into it

that do come from jesus and another set

of materials

that are that is coming from somewhere

else what i call a hybrid gospel

and that's why i didn't make it into the

canon is because

what is represented by the hybrid is not

a representation of the kind of orthodox

christianity

the other gospels reflect most scholars

think

that the gospel of thomas while it

contains some earlier material was not

assembled until the second century a.d

and the reason they assume that is

because it seems to know

all four canonical gospels well where

could a person have been

to have had access to all four canonical

gospels together at one time

that surely didn't happen before the

second century a.d

the gospel of thomas has in its last

login or last saying

something that scholars are embarrassed

by those who want it to go into our new

testament

they're embarrassed or they really

should be embarrassed by it

peter starts out by saying let mary

namely mary magdalene

go out from us because women are not

worthy of the life

and the jesus responds he says look i'm

going to change her into a male so

she'll look like you guys

so that she can make it into heaven so

just like you guys because any

woman who makes herself into a male is

going to get saved

that really is that how we should view

this

let me tell you how the canon the new

testament was not produced it was not

produced

by the emperor constantine the supposed

bad guy

getting a bunch of people together and

saying you need to get your act together

tell me what are the sacred texts y'all

decide right here at the council and i

see it and we're done

the da vinci code myth

about how the new testament was created

is just that it's a myth

it's not historical fiction it's

hysterical fiction one main

misconception is that

the council of nicea was where they

chose the books of the new testament

canon and in my field i hear that all

the time that

no one knew what books to read and

finally with constantine's help we we

got it figured out and i see it as

patently false there's no evidence at

all that the new testament canada was a

topic of conversation

i see and so there's no reason to think

and i see it really has anything to do

with what books we're reading now

the council of nicaea was was about how

to best articulate

the divinity of jesus and the humanity

of jesus so that when we did articulate

it we we made sense and and got it right

and reflected the truth reasons of

scripture and didn't contradict

ourselves

when it comes to the question of the

canon of the new testament or

what books belong in the new testament

there are two

broad views within christendom one is

that it's an authoritative list of books

the other is that it's a list of

authoritative books

if it's an authoritative list of books

then that means there is some authority

over the new testament that it

establishes what the new testament is

that's the catholic view that's the

greek orthodox view

if it's a list of authoritative books

then there is no authority

over the new testament that establishes

the new testament as our final authority

instead it's the final authority you

know i think the very first thing to

recognize about the authority of

scripture

is that the word author is right there

in the center of the word authority

so the foundation for the authority of

scripture can never be scripture

and it can never be the church even as

the believing community receiving

scripture

it goes back by the very word to the

author

the ultimate author of scripture being

god himself

the bible has authority in the sense

that

it is the word of god

and therefore the authority is not so

much in the black and white

letters that we are seeing in that book

but in the god who has communicated with

us

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if you remember when jesus was being

tempted by satan in the wilderness

the in the very first temptation satan

says look jesus i know you're hungry

you've been out here fasting for 40 days

and 40 nights

and i know that you have the power to

turn

those stones into bread and to

sate your hunger and jesus responds to

satan by quoting moses from deuteronomy

man shall not live by bread alone

but by what every word

that proceeds from the mouth of god and

i think that when paul says

all scripture god breathed

just listen to that every word

that comes from the mouth of god i think

paul has jesus

and moses in his mind when he says that

so there you see

moses view of biblical authority jesus

view of biblical authority

paul's view of biblical authority in

three greek words

if the bible is reliable the questions

of the canon answered

the means of inspiration understood

how do we interpret it are there true

interpretations or is there just a sea

of opinions

is the bible a book locked in mystery

only open to the religious elite

or can an ordinary person sit down and

know

what the living god has to say to them

before the reformation came a church

service would have been

very pedantic it would have been

ritualistic

and unfortunately often

not understood you must understand that

in catholic theology the idea

is that the ritual itself the mass

itself

has validity and therefore people don't

even have to understand what is going on

that's why the mass was done in latin

it didn't matter if you understood it as

long as you were there

as long as you were participating as

long as somehow you were spiritually

connected

you did not need to know what the words

were that were being spoken

the catholic church's attitude to the

scriptures in the run-up to the 16th

century and during the 16th century

is quite intriguing certainly the

intellectual hierarchy of the church

regarded the scriptures as important one

of the reasons they weren't keen on lay

people reading the scriptures was they

regarded them

as important and had a concern that the

scriptures would be abused if they fell

into the hands of

of lay people on the other hand however

the

the catholic church i think at a a

demotic level

at a grassroots level did not have a

high view of the scriptures the

scriptures did not feature

highly in the piety of your typical

parish priest

didn't feature highly in the liturgical

practices

of the church there were of course very

low literacy rates in europe at that

time so

no book functioned particularly

significantly

in the life of ordinary people

one of the chief things the reformers

wanted to recover about the bible

was the sense of its clarity it's

perspicuity there really wasn't a debate

that the bible was authoritative

everyone

in christendom understood that it was

inspired and

and it was infallible or they would view

some some

term similar to that but it was often

the clarity

do we have to rely on

priests on a magisterium on

church tradition and we don't we don't

throw out those things we don't come to

the scripture by ourselves we

we do want to stand on the shoulders of

giants to

understand it but of course god wouldn't

be god and he wouldn't be good if he

didn't communicate

with us in a way that we could

understand

since language is his idea anyways

and since he saw fit to communicate and

make himself

known in language he wants to be

understood and the doctrine of the

clarity of scripture asserts that

if god wants to be understood he is able

to be understood

now there are areas of the bible that

are harder for us to grapple with

you know peter peter says the same of

paul's writings he says you know some of

the stuff that he writes

is not just real obvious well that's

very helpful to me i'm glad he felt that

way

we studied daniel recently and daniel

you know the half of the second half of

daniel it was a great encouragement to

me to realize that daniel

when he was on the receiving end of some

of these revelations

actually fell on the floor and then went

to bed for two weeks because he was so

overwhelmed by it

and he couldn't really figure it all out

now

that would be alarming if we were

dealing with

main things and plain things but there

are certain things

that are even secrets to god as

deuteronomy 29

29 tells us you know the things that

have been revealed are there

and with some work with some hard work

with some

dependence upon the spirit of god with

some help from those who are brighter

than ourselves

we'll be able to get to this because the

bible actually is clear

oh there are many many wrong approaches

to scripture

many individual examples for example

people sometimes cite philippians 4 i

can do all things through christ who

strengthens me

which warrants them to do anything they

really

want to do or a pastor can use it um

we would like you to teach such-and-such

a sunday school class oh i can't do that

oh you can't say can't you can do all

things through christ who strengthens

you

and the fact is no you can't

i can't sing and you know i just can't

sing that's

not a gift that god gave me and i can't

say i mean

a silly example but i can't do all

things through christ strengthens me

but the all things is pointing back to

what paul just said

and paul just said i am content in all

circumstances

good times and bad persecutions and and

not

in having money not having money i can

do all

these things is what it really says i

can do all these things through christ

strengthens me so paul's not just carte

blanche saying christians can do

anything they want

but christians can learn to be content

in

all circumstances we can't make

one part of scripture say something that

contradicts the rest of scripture

therefore if we are having difficulty

with this section

then perhaps we don't know the totality

of scripture well enough

to be able to place this properly and

then to interpret it accurately

we can say dogmatically god

loves the world we we can say that

without

fear of being contradicted we may not

know everything that we

could know should know would like to

know about the word god

or even the word loves or even the word

world

but but nevertheless the proposition god

loves the world is

is a faithful interpretation of of john

3 and many other passages

we have to make clear the difference

between meaning and significance

sometimes people have tried to point out

well look you can

you know hear 10 different sermons about

jesus encounter with

the woman at the well and one preacher

will make the text about evangelism

another one about apologetics another

about confronting sin

another about how to befriend strangers

and someone will say look

nobody can agree on the meaning well no

the issue there is really significance

that

the text of scripture will never be

fully exhausted and any good

preacher is going to find ways to apply

it in a number of different

avenues but the meaning nevertheless

is is fixed that the meaning of the text

is what the author intended to

communicate by that text

which dealing with scripture uniquely

means

there is both the intention of the human

author

and sometimes even superseding that in

ways they may not have fully understood

is the intention of the divine author

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sis

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we work on the basis of evidence not on

the basis of speculation

or weird ideas or philosophy and

whenever you

argue with somebody who is not a

believer they almost always bring in

non-evidence well god would not have

done this or this is really what i think

happened and

it's just on speculation let's look at

what the evidence says

our faith is rooted in history and uh

and and consequently we need to use the

evidence and never be afraid of it

half the battle of dealing with the

trustworthiness

or reliable of the bible is to know what

are the subjects of the bible

and the subjects of the bible are really

pretty simple history theology and

ethics

the three major subjects of the bible

are history because we have a historical

god who intervenes in human history it's

about

theology the character of god and the

character of his people and it's about

ethics how should we behave in response

to all of that

it's very sad in our culture that we've

seen the body of christ

called charged mandated to

proclaim and even defend the faith but

in many quarters the church has

denied questioned the faith we're we're

not to spin it

nuance it change it undermine it we're

called to proclaim it

the church of jesus christ always faces

a tremendous temptation

and that is to deviate from the word of

god and when we do that

what happens first of all we may get

wrong

doctrine because we no longer see the

clarity of the deity of jesus christ

and the issues of salvation the other

thing that's going to happen almost

immediately is there is going to be a

devaluation

of moral teaching and pretty soon we

begin to

reason based on our own notions based on

our own desires

and the word of god is there but it is

not believed

it is not preached and it is not lived

often a contemporary jeff drifting

church is very comfortable

what is preached may sound very orthodox

but it doesn't challenge anybody it

doesn't

call them back to the gospel where they

are drifting

this saying is attributed to martin

luther so many pungent sayings are i'm

not sure if it comes from him or not but

it's a true

saying if you preach the gospel

at every point except where the

gospel is being challenged you're not

preaching the gospel

at all if you preach the gospel to a

church

at every point except the place where

they need it

or they place they need to be called

back to obedience to god

you're not preaching the gospel at all

if you can get people to doubt the bible

then you will get them sooner or later

to deny but you have to doubt first

before you're going to deny

then as they deny then you're going to

get them to disobey

and that's worked so well

since the garden of eden he hasn't had

to change his tactics

he still uses it

god made us for himself

he has made us for his own glory

he communicates with us telling us

how we ought to live

through his word he has given us

an entire library there to

fit into quite a lot of the various ways

in which we

think and all that is authoritative

so we don't go to the bible

wanting to judge the scriptures we go to

the bible

with a sense of submission wanting to

hear

what the living god has to say to us

and that's crucial

i have a good friend who is

famous for saying i love the word of god

he loves

and he does he truly loves the bible

we were talking about it one day and i

said i have a question for

you you love the bible don't you you

love the word of god don't you yes i do

i said do you love its author

and you know that there's a difference

and he just went blank it had never

occurred to him that there was something

beyond

bible study i've read from genesis to

revelation in the bible

and not once does anyone

ever have an encounter with the true and

living god and come away and say

who's kind of boring and irrelevant he

said people encounter god and

die they encounter god and they

are paralyzed with fear they encounter

god and they're overwhelmed with joy

they encounter god and they cry because

all their hopes are realized but

nobody ever encounters god and says that

was boring and irrelevant

well when people say that about the

bible it just says to me they've not

encountered the god of the bible

if you think the bible is boring then

either you don't realize what you need

or you've never met the god that the

bible talks about and and very frankly i

do think there are a lot of people that

are preachers by profession that have

never met god

or they'd never say his word is boring

and irrelevant

i love the way psalm 119

unfolds it's the longest chapter in the

bible and it's all about

the word and you see there what the word

produces it produces

delight it produces desire

for god it produces obedience

so sometimes it's helpful to look at a

text like psalm

119 and say what does what does it look

like

and feel like what's the experience of

the person of the heart of the soul

that's been captivated by the word of

god and you see there they're singing

the word they're storing

up the word they're treasuring god's

word they have

the greatest sense of delight in it they

are pained when people

don't follow it it's their greatest

longing to

obey it they see god's character and

smile in it that that's what we want

that's why

having the right view of scripture

matters because

with without it we're going to come to

not only wrong conclusions about god and

the gospel in ourselves

but we won't think rightly we won't feel

rightly we won't be the sort of

human beings that god made us to be if

we

don't take him at his word and

understand all that he means for us to

know about himself

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so

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do

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you