1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:22,417 --> 00:00:26,912 - If God could speak, what would he say? 4 00:00:26,912 --> 00:00:29,555 What would he tell us about the world? 5 00:00:29,555 --> 00:00:32,555 What would he tell us about himself? 6 00:00:33,475 --> 00:00:36,725 If God could speak, how would he speak? 7 00:00:37,677 --> 00:00:40,339 Would he tell us everything at once? 8 00:00:40,339 --> 00:00:45,117 Would he have an angel bring heavenly books to Earth? 9 00:00:45,117 --> 00:00:48,450 If God could speak, would we understand? 10 00:00:50,097 --> 00:00:53,437 Would his language be so far beyond us, 11 00:00:53,437 --> 00:00:56,854 would his intention be impossible to see? 12 00:00:59,837 --> 00:01:02,670 When God speaks, what does he say? 13 00:01:41,853 --> 00:01:43,939 - The Bible's a revelation of the character 14 00:01:43,939 --> 00:01:45,533 and the will of God. 15 00:01:45,533 --> 00:01:48,357 It tells us who he is and how we can live 16 00:01:48,357 --> 00:01:49,981 in a relationship with him. 17 00:01:49,981 --> 00:01:53,053 That's the primary thrust, I think, of the Bible. 18 00:01:53,053 --> 00:01:55,341 It's interesting the Bible starts in Eden 19 00:01:55,341 --> 00:01:58,157 and it ends in Eden, so it's all about living 20 00:01:58,157 --> 00:02:01,240 in a relationship with him, and what that looks like. 21 00:02:01,240 --> 00:02:03,128 - When we ask the question what the Bible is, 22 00:02:03,128 --> 00:02:04,419 the best way to say it is the Bible 23 00:02:04,419 --> 00:02:07,693 is God's written relation to his people. 24 00:02:07,693 --> 00:02:09,581 Now, God reveals himself in all kinds of ways, 25 00:02:09,581 --> 00:02:11,640 and he actually speaks in ways outside the Bible, 26 00:02:11,640 --> 00:02:14,653 in days of old to prophets and to the people of God, 27 00:02:14,653 --> 00:02:16,141 and so you'd hear the voice of the Lord 28 00:02:16,141 --> 00:02:17,373 and call it the word of the Lord, 29 00:02:17,373 --> 00:02:19,597 but over time, that became inscripturated, 30 00:02:19,597 --> 00:02:21,341 became written down into his word, 31 00:02:21,341 --> 00:02:23,293 and over time we've collected the books 32 00:02:23,293 --> 00:02:26,141 that contain those words into 66 smaller books 33 00:02:26,141 --> 00:02:28,440 that collectively we call the Bible. 34 00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:32,891 - The Bible is a collection of divinely-inspired texts 35 00:02:32,891 --> 00:02:37,677 that document not only what God has done throughout history, 36 00:02:37,677 --> 00:02:39,760 but also what that means. 37 00:02:40,874 --> 00:02:44,493 So it interprets what those events mean. 38 00:02:44,493 --> 00:02:48,579 - You have a book written by 40-some authors 39 00:02:48,579 --> 00:02:52,746 over 1,500-plus years, and dozens of different topics 40 00:02:55,800 --> 00:02:57,883 that have absolute unity. 41 00:02:58,957 --> 00:03:01,541 Most of the people didn't know each other who wrote it, 42 00:03:01,541 --> 00:03:05,458 so it has amazing unity within great diversity, 43 00:03:06,485 --> 00:03:09,568 which is best accounted for by deity. 44 00:03:10,536 --> 00:03:13,311 - But here we have this grand narrative that is meant 45 00:03:13,311 --> 00:03:16,453 to bring us back into fellowship with him. 46 00:03:16,453 --> 00:03:20,431 To bring us into a harmonious fellowship with one another, 47 00:03:20,431 --> 00:03:23,354 where we live together, reflecting his character. 48 00:03:23,354 --> 00:03:25,893 And ultimately, a redeemed humanity 49 00:03:25,893 --> 00:03:28,560 in a new heaven and a new Earth. 50 00:03:29,664 --> 00:03:33,710 - Here is the one who made us, addressing us about how 51 00:03:33,710 --> 00:03:36,074 life should be lived and how we should approach life. 52 00:03:36,074 --> 00:03:37,790 It's full of wisdom. 53 00:03:37,790 --> 00:03:39,573 It's full of discernment. 54 00:03:39,573 --> 00:03:41,729 It's full of direction and guidance. 55 00:03:41,729 --> 00:03:43,775 In some cases, correction. 56 00:03:43,775 --> 00:03:47,135 And so, I think to get a good look at who we really are, 57 00:03:47,135 --> 00:03:49,969 as people, the image and metaphor that's used about 58 00:03:49,969 --> 00:03:52,495 the Bible is that it's a good mirror. 59 00:03:52,495 --> 00:03:56,373 It helps us to see things as they really are. 60 00:03:56,373 --> 00:03:58,533 - I often tell people that one of the ways 61 00:03:58,533 --> 00:04:01,071 that I know that the Bible is true 62 00:04:01,071 --> 00:04:03,674 is the way that it diagnoses my sin. 63 00:04:03,674 --> 00:04:06,394 I'm often reading through a passage and I'm thinking: 64 00:04:06,394 --> 00:04:09,144 this was written 3,000 years ago, 65 00:04:10,613 --> 00:04:13,631 and yet it perfectly diagnoses the state 66 00:04:13,631 --> 00:04:15,615 of the sin of my heart. 67 00:04:15,615 --> 00:04:19,173 How could human beings have been able to do that? 68 00:04:19,173 --> 00:04:21,914 And the only way that can happen is if my creator 69 00:04:21,914 --> 00:04:24,954 is actually the author of the book. 70 00:04:24,954 --> 00:04:28,335 - We read books so that we might understand them. 71 00:04:28,335 --> 00:04:31,295 But when we read the Bible, we realize that it is describing 72 00:04:31,295 --> 00:04:33,559 who we are and what we are. 73 00:04:33,559 --> 00:04:38,464 It's also unique in that it provides the only satisfying 74 00:04:38,464 --> 00:04:42,297 answer to the question of our human existence. 75 00:04:44,053 --> 00:04:48,449 It tells us why we're here and where we're going. 76 00:04:48,449 --> 00:04:50,074 And why it matters. 77 00:04:50,074 --> 00:04:53,151 - You need God, specifically, in propositional language, 78 00:04:53,151 --> 00:04:57,413 telling us certain facts about reality, including himself. 79 00:04:57,413 --> 00:05:01,230 You can get some of those facts from nature, 80 00:05:01,230 --> 00:05:02,771 but you can't get all of them. 81 00:05:02,771 --> 00:05:04,271 You can't get that God is triune, 82 00:05:04,271 --> 00:05:06,794 you can't get the plan of salvation from the stars. 83 00:05:06,794 --> 00:05:09,471 You can only get it from special revelations. 84 00:05:09,471 --> 00:05:11,813 So if we're gonna be saved and sanctified, 85 00:05:11,813 --> 00:05:14,351 we need the scriptures. 86 00:05:14,351 --> 00:05:17,034 - The study of the word of God, at any level, 87 00:05:17,034 --> 00:05:20,154 is the study of God, himself. 88 00:05:20,154 --> 00:05:22,714 There's some kind of identity between God and his word, 89 00:05:22,714 --> 00:05:26,687 and yet, to say that the study of the word 90 00:05:26,687 --> 00:05:29,687 as words and propositions on a page, 91 00:05:30,553 --> 00:05:34,720 is not an end in itself, because it's to drive us to Christ. 92 00:05:36,815 --> 00:05:38,431 To God, himself. 93 00:05:38,431 --> 00:05:41,413 - In the upper room, in the great intercessory prayer, 94 00:05:41,413 --> 00:05:45,887 Jesus prayed for the sanctification of his disciples, 95 00:05:45,887 --> 00:05:49,137 and he said: sanctify them by thy word. 96 00:05:50,289 --> 00:05:52,735 That's the means by which we are sanctified. 97 00:05:52,735 --> 00:05:56,794 Then he went on to say: thy word is truth. 98 00:05:56,794 --> 00:05:59,114 - So the scriptures should dominate 99 00:05:59,114 --> 00:06:02,350 everything that the church does. 100 00:06:02,350 --> 00:06:06,351 It shouldn't be an aside to what the church does. 101 00:06:06,351 --> 00:06:08,469 The foundation of what the church should do 102 00:06:08,469 --> 00:06:11,973 should be about advancing the message of scripture. 103 00:06:11,973 --> 00:06:14,975 - Where you find a healthy biblical church, 104 00:06:14,975 --> 00:06:17,647 by definition, you're going to find a church happily, 105 00:06:17,647 --> 00:06:20,495 faithfully, living under the authority of that word. 106 00:06:20,495 --> 00:06:23,524 Understanding that the most historic formula 107 00:06:23,524 --> 00:06:25,871 for the Christian church has been this: 108 00:06:25,871 --> 00:06:28,415 when the scripture speaks, God speaks. 109 00:06:28,415 --> 00:06:30,590 And if you understand that rightly, 110 00:06:30,590 --> 00:06:34,340 then everything else simply falls into place. 111 00:06:39,354 --> 00:06:42,554 - Language is an incredible mystery, really. 112 00:06:42,554 --> 00:06:45,205 What is it that makes human beings 113 00:06:45,205 --> 00:06:47,390 able to communicate in word? 114 00:06:47,390 --> 00:06:51,471 Personally, I think that is the image of God in us. 115 00:06:51,471 --> 00:06:55,870 Because God speaks right at the beginning of the Bible. 116 00:06:55,870 --> 00:06:58,787 God spoke the world into existence. 117 00:07:01,434 --> 00:07:03,674 - You know, you think about words and whether or not 118 00:07:03,674 --> 00:07:06,095 their important, and we realize we can't even have 119 00:07:06,095 --> 00:07:08,053 a conversation without words. 120 00:07:08,053 --> 00:07:10,495 What's really interesting is that we can't 121 00:07:10,495 --> 00:07:13,959 even think to ourselves without words. 122 00:07:13,959 --> 00:07:16,693 We can't explain ourselves to ourselves without words. 123 00:07:16,693 --> 00:07:20,175 Now, that's either an accident of evolutionary biology 124 00:07:20,175 --> 00:07:23,093 and development, or it is evidence 125 00:07:23,093 --> 00:07:25,333 to the fact that God made us in his image. 126 00:07:25,333 --> 00:07:28,609 And so, here the Bible tells us that we are 127 00:07:28,609 --> 00:07:31,855 God's creatures, made in his image. 128 00:07:31,855 --> 00:07:34,133 And what distinguishes us from other creatures? 129 00:07:34,133 --> 00:07:36,613 Well, at least in part the use of words. 130 00:07:36,613 --> 00:07:40,293 - And because he's made himself accessible, 131 00:07:40,293 --> 00:07:44,495 through speaking to us and through the display 132 00:07:44,495 --> 00:07:47,089 of his character in what he's made, 133 00:07:47,089 --> 00:07:50,270 he's made himself accessible, that means that truth, 134 00:07:50,270 --> 00:07:52,053 also, is accessible. 135 00:07:52,053 --> 00:07:54,933 Now, that includes ordinary truths like two plus two 136 00:07:54,933 --> 00:07:58,750 is equal to four, but it also includes the truths 137 00:07:58,750 --> 00:08:01,249 about who God is, that he's everlasting, 138 00:08:01,249 --> 00:08:04,693 that he's all powerful, that he's supremely good. 139 00:08:04,693 --> 00:08:08,449 - So for God to speak is for God to engage 140 00:08:08,449 --> 00:08:11,914 in self-revelation; we only know God 141 00:08:11,914 --> 00:08:15,581 because God has condescended to speak to us. 142 00:08:16,794 --> 00:08:19,150 So one of the first things we say about God 143 00:08:19,150 --> 00:08:21,765 is that he is a speaking God. 144 00:08:21,765 --> 00:08:26,369 We would not know him, except that he speaks to us. 145 00:08:26,369 --> 00:08:28,911 - And the beautiful thing, really, 146 00:08:28,911 --> 00:08:32,015 what makes life worth living and gives us 147 00:08:32,015 --> 00:08:35,249 the ability to, with hope, with joy, 148 00:08:35,249 --> 00:08:38,895 with tenacity, make it through the valleys of life, 149 00:08:38,895 --> 00:08:42,671 is the fact that the eternal god who created us 150 00:08:42,671 --> 00:08:45,329 can be personally known. 151 00:08:45,329 --> 00:08:49,151 He's with us, and according to one passage of scripture 152 00:08:49,151 --> 00:08:53,215 in Hebrews, chapter 13, if we will commit our lives to him, 153 00:08:53,215 --> 00:08:57,535 he will never, never leave us or forsake us. 154 00:08:57,535 --> 00:09:01,889 - The Bible is essentially God's self-revelation, 155 00:09:01,889 --> 00:09:03,569 and God doesn't just reveal himself 156 00:09:03,569 --> 00:09:05,986 in terms of what you must do. 157 00:09:07,215 --> 00:09:10,298 That is the consequence of who he is, 158 00:09:14,015 --> 00:09:18,182 and the way in which he wants us to understand his world. 159 00:09:24,031 --> 00:09:25,253 - If God created us, 160 00:09:25,253 --> 00:09:28,369 then he sets the terms of his revelation. 161 00:09:28,369 --> 00:09:32,335 What we know, when we know it, how it is revealed, 162 00:09:32,335 --> 00:09:34,874 it's all dependent on him. 163 00:09:34,874 --> 00:09:36,991 But it seems so strange. 164 00:09:36,991 --> 00:09:40,415 An eternal God, tying himself to human history? 165 00:09:40,415 --> 00:09:45,173 Illustrating his character in law, prophecy and wisdom? 166 00:09:45,173 --> 00:09:47,733 What happens when he appears? 167 00:09:47,733 --> 00:09:51,316 When he steps down into history and speaks? 168 00:09:52,773 --> 00:09:55,535 - You know, the question that always exists in people's mind 169 00:09:55,535 --> 00:09:58,285 is simply this: what is God like? 170 00:09:59,455 --> 00:10:03,114 And are there many gods, or is there one God? 171 00:10:03,114 --> 00:10:06,335 Of course, left on our own, all of these are mysteries. 172 00:10:06,335 --> 00:10:10,350 What you have at Sinai is very remarkable. 173 00:10:10,350 --> 00:10:13,409 You find, for example, that the people were to stand back. 174 00:10:13,409 --> 00:10:14,853 God says: stand back. 175 00:10:14,853 --> 00:10:17,813 No animal was even to touch the mountain. 176 00:10:17,813 --> 00:10:19,514 If an animal touched the mountain, 177 00:10:19,514 --> 00:10:21,695 it was to be put to death, but not directly 178 00:10:21,695 --> 00:10:24,990 with the human hand; it was to be shot with an arrow. 179 00:10:24,990 --> 00:10:28,407 Because God says: I'm coming, stand back. 180 00:10:29,594 --> 00:10:31,177 Get out of the way. 181 00:10:32,209 --> 00:10:35,434 What God was revealing there was his holiness. 182 00:10:35,434 --> 00:10:38,691 So when we think of the 10 commandments, 183 00:10:38,691 --> 00:10:42,415 they were not simply given for a certain point in time. 184 00:10:42,415 --> 00:10:46,053 They really are, let me use the word omnitemporal. 185 00:10:46,053 --> 00:10:50,575 By that I mean they exist as the basic law of God, 186 00:10:50,575 --> 00:10:52,750 throughout all eras. 187 00:10:52,750 --> 00:10:55,615 And God is really saying, in the 10 commandments, 188 00:10:55,615 --> 00:10:57,893 this is what I'm like. 189 00:10:57,893 --> 00:10:59,733 - And so there's no other words 190 00:10:59,733 --> 00:11:01,493 like them in all of scripture. 191 00:11:01,493 --> 00:11:02,991 Jesus speaks in the New Testament, God's, 192 00:11:02,991 --> 00:11:06,241 but nowhere else does God thunder words 193 00:11:08,554 --> 00:11:12,495 to the entire congregation of the people of God. 194 00:11:12,495 --> 00:11:16,154 These obviously are of fundamental importance 195 00:11:16,154 --> 00:11:19,093 to God's covenant with these people. 196 00:11:19,093 --> 00:11:21,535 - God speaks in an audible voice to the people, 197 00:11:21,535 --> 00:11:25,653 but then he writes it down in the 10 commandments 198 00:11:25,653 --> 00:11:28,847 in written form; it was written the first time 199 00:11:28,847 --> 00:11:33,090 by the very finger of God, God himself did the writing. 200 00:11:33,090 --> 00:11:38,015 That's hammering home the fact that this original writing 201 00:11:38,015 --> 00:11:42,058 was the very word of God, and had the authority 202 00:11:42,058 --> 00:11:45,514 of the same God who spoke in thunder and fire 203 00:11:45,514 --> 00:11:50,197 at Mount Sinai, but that written form of the 10 commandments 204 00:11:50,197 --> 00:11:53,697 was the first piece of what we call canon. 205 00:11:54,858 --> 00:11:58,617 That is, it's the body of things that God set aside, 206 00:11:58,617 --> 00:12:01,354 of his own word, for impermanent form. 207 00:12:01,354 --> 00:12:04,638 There's some things that God said that he said 208 00:12:04,638 --> 00:12:07,317 to particular people, and they weren't recorded 209 00:12:07,317 --> 00:12:09,817 in written form for posterity. 210 00:12:11,354 --> 00:12:13,541 That's okay; there are many things, for instance, 211 00:12:13,541 --> 00:12:15,637 in Jesus's earthly life that he taught. 212 00:12:15,637 --> 00:12:17,359 Not all of those have been written down. 213 00:12:17,359 --> 00:12:20,661 It would be overwhelming if we had all of those. 214 00:12:20,661 --> 00:12:23,279 But God purposed that there would be a selection 215 00:12:23,279 --> 00:12:27,446 of those things that would be there in permanent form. 216 00:12:28,874 --> 00:12:30,741 - If God wrote a book, 217 00:12:30,741 --> 00:12:33,276 would it be a history book? 218 00:12:33,276 --> 00:12:35,671 The transcendent being interacting with creatures 219 00:12:35,671 --> 00:12:39,671 who are separated by sin, distanced by unbelief. 220 00:12:41,679 --> 00:12:44,929 What would he write about these people? 221 00:12:46,261 --> 00:12:49,114 Would bh paint grand pictures? 222 00:12:49,114 --> 00:12:53,098 Would he hide the embarrassing details? 223 00:12:53,098 --> 00:12:55,681 Is human experience beyond him? 224 00:12:58,158 --> 00:13:00,895 - It's been said that the Bible is not a book 225 00:13:00,895 --> 00:13:03,898 that man would write, if he could write, 226 00:13:03,898 --> 00:13:06,479 or could write if he would write. 227 00:13:06,479 --> 00:13:09,137 Every now and then, I'll be in a debate 228 00:13:09,137 --> 00:13:11,439 at a university, and someone will say: 229 00:13:11,439 --> 00:13:14,399 well, the Old Testament is merely pro-Israeli, 230 00:13:14,399 --> 00:13:16,558 Zionistic propaganda. 231 00:13:16,558 --> 00:13:18,821 It's just the Jewish people were trying 232 00:13:18,821 --> 00:13:20,778 to feel good about who they were. 233 00:13:20,778 --> 00:13:24,638 But that claim falls apart upon closer look 234 00:13:24,638 --> 00:13:27,781 at the content, because look, you've got 235 00:13:27,781 --> 00:13:29,658 one of the greatest kings of Israel, David, 236 00:13:29,658 --> 00:13:31,418 was an adulterer. 237 00:13:31,418 --> 00:13:36,298 Abraham twice lied about the identity of his wife. 238 00:13:36,298 --> 00:13:41,139 So one of the things that bears the ring of truth 239 00:13:41,139 --> 00:13:45,518 is the thing that we probably would have excluded, 240 00:13:45,518 --> 00:13:49,621 had the Bible been a merely human invention. 241 00:13:49,621 --> 00:13:53,002 The sin, the foibles, the failures 242 00:13:53,002 --> 00:13:55,141 of many of the Bible's great figures, 243 00:13:55,141 --> 00:13:57,541 we probably would have left out. 244 00:13:57,541 --> 00:14:00,901 - The Bible's appeal to prophecy and fulfillment, 245 00:14:00,901 --> 00:14:03,221 before and after, all of that depends 246 00:14:03,221 --> 00:14:05,781 on historical progress, on continuity, 247 00:14:05,781 --> 00:14:08,042 on the sequence of time. 248 00:14:08,042 --> 00:14:10,661 So God himself doubtless inhabits eternity, 249 00:14:10,661 --> 00:14:13,295 and is, in some sense, above space and time. 250 00:14:13,295 --> 00:14:15,118 In that sense, he's transcendent. 251 00:14:15,118 --> 00:14:16,682 That's what we mean by transcendent: 252 00:14:16,682 --> 00:14:19,178 not limited by space and time. 253 00:14:19,178 --> 00:14:21,918 Yet, at the same time, he discloses himself to us 254 00:14:21,918 --> 00:14:26,257 in space and time, that is to say, in history. 255 00:14:26,257 --> 00:14:29,381 - Now, one of the things to understand about the Bible 256 00:14:29,381 --> 00:14:33,838 is that it talks about God's plan through the ages. 257 00:14:33,838 --> 00:14:36,575 And we call it: redemptive history. 258 00:14:36,575 --> 00:14:38,575 And the Bible is intrinsically 259 00:14:38,575 --> 00:14:41,498 connected to that, in two ways. 260 00:14:41,498 --> 00:14:45,562 One is that it gives a lot of attention to explaining 261 00:14:45,562 --> 00:14:47,898 how God was dealing with the human race, 262 00:14:47,898 --> 00:14:51,082 from creation onwards, the fall into sin, 263 00:14:51,082 --> 00:14:54,332 and then various periods of redemption. 264 00:14:55,861 --> 00:14:58,238 So it talks about redemptive history, 265 00:14:58,238 --> 00:15:01,258 but the second way is that it's given, 266 00:15:01,258 --> 00:15:04,078 progressively, in history. 267 00:15:04,078 --> 00:15:06,638 God didn't have it just drop from heaven, 268 00:15:06,638 --> 00:15:08,495 at one point in time. 269 00:15:08,495 --> 00:15:10,618 There's some people who practically treat it 270 00:15:10,618 --> 00:15:13,781 as if it was that way; it is a book from God. 271 00:15:13,781 --> 00:15:16,762 But it's a book where he addresses people 272 00:15:16,762 --> 00:15:19,615 where they are in history, 273 00:15:19,615 --> 00:15:22,618 and he doesn't reveal everything all at once. 274 00:15:22,618 --> 00:15:25,998 His plan of redemption keeps pace 275 00:15:25,998 --> 00:15:28,915 with his speaking about redemption. 276 00:15:31,198 --> 00:15:33,838 - Redemptive history moves forward, 277 00:15:33,838 --> 00:15:36,878 through prophets, priests, and kings, 278 00:15:36,878 --> 00:15:40,341 to an ultimate prophet, priest, and king. 279 00:15:40,341 --> 00:15:42,762 But people need proof. 280 00:15:42,762 --> 00:15:46,602 How can we be confident that Jesus is the fulfillment? 281 00:15:46,602 --> 00:15:47,861 How do we see it the way his 282 00:15:47,861 --> 00:15:50,528 earliest followers would see it? 283 00:15:52,058 --> 00:15:54,218 - When Jesus came and the disciples preached, 284 00:15:54,218 --> 00:15:56,897 there wasn't a New Testament to appeal to. 285 00:15:56,897 --> 00:15:58,977 They were dealing with promises that were coming 286 00:15:58,977 --> 00:16:01,775 out of the Old Testament, tied to the great covenants. 287 00:16:01,775 --> 00:16:04,238 The covenant of Abraham, that God was gonna bless 288 00:16:04,238 --> 00:16:05,962 the world through Abraham's family. 289 00:16:05,962 --> 00:16:08,458 The covenant to David that there would be a king 290 00:16:08,458 --> 00:16:12,202 and a line of kings that would represent the way of God, 291 00:16:12,202 --> 00:16:13,882 and then finally, the new covenant, 292 00:16:13,882 --> 00:16:17,061 the idea that God was gonna write his law on our hearts, 293 00:16:17,061 --> 00:16:19,178 put his spirit within us, and that we were gonna do that 294 00:16:19,178 --> 00:16:22,122 in the context of having our sins forgiven. 295 00:16:22,122 --> 00:16:24,922 And the story of Jesus steps into those promises, 296 00:16:24,922 --> 00:16:29,089 made centuries before, and addresses really the reconnecting 297 00:16:30,165 --> 00:16:34,581 of God to us in what had been a broken relationship. 298 00:16:34,581 --> 00:16:37,119 - You know, the very first book of the New Testament, 299 00:16:37,119 --> 00:16:40,958 Matthew, opens with the genealogy of Jesus. 300 00:16:40,958 --> 00:16:43,530 And the purpose of that genealogy is to affirm 301 00:16:43,530 --> 00:16:45,418 that Jesus is the fulfillment 302 00:16:45,418 --> 00:16:48,168 of the whole Old Testament story. 303 00:16:49,061 --> 00:16:51,402 It's crafted very, we could go into detail, 304 00:16:51,402 --> 00:16:53,722 but there's not time, very carefully crafted, 305 00:16:53,722 --> 00:16:56,442 to show that he fulfills the whole history of Israel, 306 00:16:56,442 --> 00:16:58,732 the whole story of the Old Testament. 307 00:16:58,732 --> 00:17:00,238 As we look through the New Testament, 308 00:17:00,238 --> 00:17:03,297 I mean, he fulfills everything in the Old Testament. 309 00:17:03,297 --> 00:17:05,338 He is the revelation of God that fulfills 310 00:17:05,338 --> 00:17:08,741 God's revelation in Moses, and brings it to its completion. 311 00:17:08,741 --> 00:17:12,181 He is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, 312 00:17:12,181 --> 00:17:14,741 the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 313 00:17:14,741 --> 00:17:17,578 That fulfills all the old sacrificial system 314 00:17:17,578 --> 00:17:19,328 in the Old Testament. 315 00:17:21,063 --> 00:17:24,238 - I would imagine that Jesus probably knew the whole 316 00:17:24,238 --> 00:17:28,261 Old Testament off by heart, so that when he, then, 317 00:17:28,261 --> 00:17:31,898 in the synagogue in Nazareth says, you know, 318 00:17:31,898 --> 00:17:34,122 this is about me. 319 00:17:34,122 --> 00:17:37,455 He is able too say "this is about me" because he knows 320 00:17:37,455 --> 00:17:40,537 what this is about, and that the prophecy of Isaiah 321 00:17:40,537 --> 00:17:44,537 was revealing who and what the messiah truly is. 322 00:17:45,962 --> 00:17:48,448 - I would talk about these prophecies, and a professor 323 00:17:48,448 --> 00:17:51,118 would say: well, I don't believe this ever happened, 324 00:17:51,118 --> 00:17:53,057 I don't think these prophecies in the Old Testament 325 00:17:53,057 --> 00:17:55,695 were written down until Jesus was born, 326 00:17:55,695 --> 00:17:57,301 and then they were written out so they 327 00:17:57,301 --> 00:17:59,301 would coincide with his life. 328 00:17:59,301 --> 00:18:01,039 I said: wow. 329 00:18:01,039 --> 00:18:03,135 That's amazing, that sounds pretty good. 330 00:18:03,135 --> 00:18:05,038 Unless you wanna think. 331 00:18:05,038 --> 00:18:09,205 I would say: look, if you say there's not a 500-year gap, 332 00:18:10,895 --> 00:18:13,855 minimum, from the completion of the Old Testament 333 00:18:13,855 --> 00:18:16,218 and the time of Christ, I said, you got a problem 334 00:18:16,218 --> 00:18:19,338 with the Septuagint, the Greek translation 335 00:18:19,338 --> 00:18:21,877 of the Hebrew Old Testament, documented in history, 336 00:18:21,877 --> 00:18:26,211 that was initiated right around 250 years before Christ. 337 00:18:26,211 --> 00:18:28,974 - Well, first of all, the Septuagint is the ancient 338 00:18:28,974 --> 00:18:31,970 translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. 339 00:18:31,970 --> 00:18:34,233 It was probably the first translation made 340 00:18:34,233 --> 00:18:36,190 of the Hebrew scriptures. 341 00:18:36,190 --> 00:18:39,490 It was begun in the third century before Christ, 342 00:18:39,490 --> 00:18:41,694 with the Pentateuch being translated, 343 00:18:41,694 --> 00:18:44,931 probably in Alexandria, Egypt. 344 00:18:44,931 --> 00:18:48,793 Tradition has it that there were about 70 translators, 345 00:18:48,793 --> 00:18:52,626 so it was the Bible of Greek-speaking Judaism, 346 00:18:54,627 --> 00:18:59,150 before Christ came, and because Greek was the lingua franca 347 00:18:59,150 --> 00:19:02,750 of the Mediterranean world, when the apostles go out 348 00:19:02,750 --> 00:19:07,630 to preach the gospel, they naturally preach in Greek, 349 00:19:07,630 --> 00:19:10,947 because their language, Aramaic, probably, 350 00:19:10,947 --> 00:19:15,114 wasn't widely used outside of first-century Palestine. 351 00:19:17,250 --> 00:19:20,389 - If the Old Testament is composed of 39 books, 352 00:19:20,389 --> 00:19:21,913 written across hundreds of years 353 00:19:21,913 --> 00:19:24,633 from a diversity of authors, how do we know 354 00:19:24,633 --> 00:19:27,550 that these are the books that God intended? 355 00:19:27,550 --> 00:19:29,134 Would Jesus even recognize 356 00:19:29,134 --> 00:19:32,384 the Old Testament we hold in our hands? 357 00:19:33,470 --> 00:19:36,149 - The books that were being discussed as possibly 358 00:19:36,149 --> 00:19:37,934 a part of the Old Testament canon by the time 359 00:19:37,934 --> 00:19:40,894 we get to the first century are books like Lamentations, 360 00:19:40,894 --> 00:19:44,850 Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, works like that. 361 00:19:44,850 --> 00:19:47,673 And maybe a few other works that end up showing up 362 00:19:47,673 --> 00:19:50,110 in what we call the apocrypha. 363 00:19:50,110 --> 00:19:52,547 Wisdom, Sirrac, those kinds of works. 364 00:19:52,547 --> 00:19:56,945 But the works that everyone recognizes were seen 365 00:19:56,945 --> 00:19:59,810 as inspired and a part of the Jewish scripture at the time 366 00:19:59,810 --> 00:20:02,371 include the Torah, the first five books, 367 00:20:02,371 --> 00:20:06,039 Proverbs, Psalms, your major prophets, 368 00:20:06,039 --> 00:20:09,385 most of your minor prophets, and so, 369 00:20:09,385 --> 00:20:11,961 if we don't know the exact limits of the Old Testament canon 370 00:20:11,961 --> 00:20:13,971 in the first century, which is possible, 371 00:20:13,971 --> 00:20:16,105 it may be that it was already decided by then. 372 00:20:16,105 --> 00:20:18,025 That's also conceivable. 373 00:20:18,025 --> 00:20:20,999 That which is being excluded doesn't really represent 374 00:20:20,999 --> 00:20:23,097 any significant portion of the text 375 00:20:23,097 --> 00:20:25,899 that the New Testament's interacting with. 376 00:20:25,899 --> 00:20:28,219 - We all know now that, if we have Catholic friends, 377 00:20:28,219 --> 00:20:30,323 their Bibles will generally be bigger than ours 378 00:20:30,323 --> 00:20:33,885 because they contain a number of books in the Old Testament. 379 00:20:33,885 --> 00:20:36,359 Book of Maccabees, for example, 380 00:20:36,359 --> 00:20:38,859 that Protestant books exclude. 381 00:20:40,003 --> 00:20:42,825 And they're excluded, by and large, on the grounds 382 00:20:42,825 --> 00:20:45,582 that we don't find them in the Hebrew, 383 00:20:45,582 --> 00:20:50,483 they don't seem to have the kind of longstanding, 384 00:20:50,483 --> 00:20:53,650 universal acceptance within the church 385 00:20:54,777 --> 00:20:57,350 prior to, say, the Council of Trent, 386 00:20:57,350 --> 00:21:00,441 that one expects from canonical books. 387 00:21:00,441 --> 00:21:02,601 - One of the primary reasons we don't use those books, 388 00:21:02,601 --> 00:21:04,382 or don't view those books as scripture, 389 00:21:04,382 --> 00:21:07,145 is because Jesus and the apostles did not use those books, 390 00:21:07,145 --> 00:21:08,963 or view those books as scripture. 391 00:21:08,963 --> 00:21:10,665 That's a very basic way of putting it. 392 00:21:10,665 --> 00:21:13,017 If those books, indeed, were viewed as scripture 393 00:21:13,017 --> 00:21:15,262 and that people were using them widely as scripture 394 00:21:15,262 --> 00:21:18,302 and they were considered part of the Old Testament canon, 395 00:21:18,302 --> 00:21:20,521 we would have expected Jesus and the apostles somewhere, 396 00:21:20,521 --> 00:21:23,262 sometime, at least once, using at least one of those books 397 00:21:23,262 --> 00:21:25,283 as scripture, and the fact is, 398 00:21:25,283 --> 00:21:27,283 we don't see that even a single time. 399 00:21:27,283 --> 00:21:29,465 - They were respected and utilized because 400 00:21:29,465 --> 00:21:33,145 they were regarded as helpful Jewish sources of material 401 00:21:33,145 --> 00:21:35,342 and information, particularly about 402 00:21:35,342 --> 00:21:37,342 what was called the Maccabean War, 403 00:21:37,342 --> 00:21:39,842 in the case of the historical apocryphal books, 404 00:21:39,842 --> 00:21:42,211 which is a very traumatic period in Israel's history, 405 00:21:42,211 --> 00:21:45,886 when she was almost wiped out by Antiochus Epiphanes, 406 00:21:45,886 --> 00:21:49,065 and had the Jews not won the Maccabean War, 407 00:21:49,065 --> 00:21:51,038 we may not have Judaism today. 408 00:21:51,038 --> 00:21:53,486 It might have been extinguished from the Earth. 409 00:21:53,486 --> 00:21:55,662 - It's true that some of the apocryphal books 410 00:21:55,662 --> 00:22:00,526 are found bound within some of the biblical manuscripts, 411 00:22:00,526 --> 00:22:04,193 but not all of them, and not in every codex. 412 00:22:06,243 --> 00:22:10,862 And I don't think that that necessarily entails 413 00:22:10,862 --> 00:22:12,425 that they must be canonical. 414 00:22:12,425 --> 00:22:15,261 If you look at our Bibles today, we've got, 415 00:22:15,261 --> 00:22:17,363 between the cover's called the Holy Bible, 416 00:22:17,363 --> 00:22:19,182 we've got essays, we've got maps, 417 00:22:19,182 --> 00:22:21,406 we've got indices, we've got reader resources, 418 00:22:21,406 --> 00:22:23,422 we've got study notes on the bottom of the page. 419 00:22:23,422 --> 00:22:25,603 There's lots of material in our modern Bibles 420 00:22:25,603 --> 00:22:29,865 that none of us would consider canonical or inspired. 421 00:22:29,865 --> 00:22:32,723 - It's noteworthy, for example, that Jesus disagrees 422 00:22:32,723 --> 00:22:36,019 with the Pharisees and Sadducees over a number 423 00:22:36,019 --> 00:22:38,261 of different issues, theologically and doctrinally. 424 00:22:38,261 --> 00:22:40,926 They debate all kinds of things, all throughout 425 00:22:40,926 --> 00:22:42,728 the pages of the gospels, but one of the things 426 00:22:42,728 --> 00:22:44,766 that's noteworthy is they never debate about 427 00:22:44,766 --> 00:22:46,478 which books belong in the canon 428 00:22:46,478 --> 00:22:48,381 and which books do not belong in the canon. 429 00:22:48,381 --> 00:22:50,163 Jesus refers to the scripture, and the Pharisees 430 00:22:50,163 --> 00:22:51,966 seem to understand what books he's talking about. 431 00:22:51,966 --> 00:22:53,625 Jesus refers to the Old Testament writings, 432 00:22:53,625 --> 00:22:55,763 Sadducees seem to be fairly content that we all agree 433 00:22:55,763 --> 00:22:57,998 on which books are in and which books are out. 434 00:22:57,998 --> 00:23:00,425 There's no oddity of them saying: 435 00:23:00,425 --> 00:23:02,563 well, you're quoting from a book that's not in the canon. 436 00:23:02,563 --> 00:23:05,612 And Jesus never says that to a Pharisee or a Sadducee, 437 00:23:05,612 --> 00:23:08,170 and there seems to be every good reason to think 438 00:23:08,170 --> 00:23:11,927 that that issue was relatively settled in the time of Jesus. 439 00:23:22,969 --> 00:23:24,851 - You know, of course, one of the most favored verses 440 00:23:24,851 --> 00:23:28,009 in all the Bible is John 1:1, where it says: 441 00:23:28,009 --> 00:23:30,509 in the beginning was the word. 442 00:23:31,867 --> 00:23:34,807 The Greek word is "logos". 443 00:23:34,807 --> 00:23:38,089 We could say: in the beginning was logic. 444 00:23:38,089 --> 00:23:41,273 And why is that word used and applied to Jesus? 445 00:23:41,273 --> 00:23:45,947 As John later says in verse 14: the word became flesh. 446 00:23:45,947 --> 00:23:49,070 First of all, because the word had a great meaning, 447 00:23:49,070 --> 00:23:52,407 in those days, and there's some debate as to 448 00:23:52,407 --> 00:23:55,550 whether or not it's based on the Greek or other meanings, 449 00:23:55,550 --> 00:23:58,800 but here's the idea: Jesus is the logic 450 00:23:59,763 --> 00:24:02,346 and the intelligibility of God. 451 00:24:04,930 --> 00:24:08,513 - The word signifies God's self-disclosure. 452 00:24:09,790 --> 00:24:11,913 The word is God's self-revelation. 453 00:24:11,913 --> 00:24:14,663 It's how God makes himself known. 454 00:24:15,534 --> 00:24:19,513 So it's profound and immensely significant 455 00:24:19,513 --> 00:24:24,450 and actually quite logical that Christ would be called 456 00:24:24,450 --> 00:24:27,950 the word made flesh, because now, visibly, 457 00:24:29,102 --> 00:24:33,269 before our eyes, we have the revelation of God, himself. 458 00:24:34,473 --> 00:24:36,814 - As much as I love the book of Hebrews, 459 00:24:36,814 --> 00:24:39,587 if I were marooned on a desert island 460 00:24:39,587 --> 00:24:41,854 and could only have one biblical book, 461 00:24:41,854 --> 00:24:43,971 it would be one of the gospels. 462 00:24:43,971 --> 00:24:47,054 Because it's there we meet Jesus. 463 00:24:47,054 --> 00:24:51,250 It's there that the narrative, the story, the account, 464 00:24:51,250 --> 00:24:55,570 of the actual incarnation of the son of God takes place. 465 00:24:55,570 --> 00:24:58,570 - So he sent his son as the god-man, 466 00:24:59,454 --> 00:25:01,673 just as much man as if he'd never been god, 467 00:25:01,673 --> 00:25:05,070 and just as much god as if he'd never been man. 468 00:25:05,070 --> 00:25:08,473 So that we could see and hear in a way that we could 469 00:25:08,473 --> 00:25:12,640 comprehend the truth of God's very heart and mind. 470 00:25:15,410 --> 00:25:17,214 - In order that you might know that the son of man 471 00:25:17,214 --> 00:25:19,374 has authority on Earth to forgive sins, 472 00:25:19,374 --> 00:25:20,947 I say to you: get up and walk. 473 00:25:20,947 --> 00:25:23,513 He does something that you can see, 474 00:25:23,513 --> 00:25:25,250 and links it to something you can't see. 475 00:25:25,250 --> 00:25:27,150 You can't see forgiveness of sins. 476 00:25:27,150 --> 00:25:29,353 You can see someone being healed. 477 00:25:29,353 --> 00:25:32,611 And if that guy gets up and walks, his walk talks. 478 00:25:32,611 --> 00:25:34,467 And it says: the son of man has authority 479 00:25:34,467 --> 00:25:36,147 on Earth to forgive sins. 480 00:25:36,147 --> 00:25:37,907 And then the context for that remark is: 481 00:25:37,907 --> 00:25:40,094 but no one can forgive sins but God. 482 00:25:40,094 --> 00:25:43,374 And words are cheap, I mean, they, I can utter it 483 00:25:43,374 --> 00:25:45,273 and you know, then you're left with the choice 484 00:25:45,273 --> 00:25:46,654 of whether to believe it or not. 485 00:25:46,654 --> 00:25:50,050 But if I can show it, if I can compellingly demonstrate 486 00:25:50,050 --> 00:25:52,654 that what I'm claiming might have, you know, 487 00:25:52,654 --> 00:25:54,734 some avenue to the truth and be reflective 488 00:25:54,734 --> 00:25:57,214 of what's going on, that's a more powerful way to do it. 489 00:25:57,214 --> 00:26:00,130 So the Bible calls the miracles that Jesus does 490 00:26:00,130 --> 00:26:03,107 things like signs, or powers. 491 00:26:03,107 --> 00:26:06,014 Those are the words that are used to describe the miracles. 492 00:26:06,014 --> 00:26:08,734 And the miracles are really what I call: power-points. 493 00:26:08,734 --> 00:26:11,810 They're audio-visuals to a truth about who Jesus is, 494 00:26:11,810 --> 00:26:14,727 that shows his power and authority. 495 00:26:20,350 --> 00:26:22,510 - I love the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, 496 00:26:22,510 --> 00:26:25,353 where Jesus stands forward and he says: 497 00:26:25,353 --> 00:26:29,673 the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. 498 00:26:29,673 --> 00:26:32,110 Repent and believe the good news. 499 00:26:32,110 --> 00:26:35,410 Because there had been 400 years, essentially, 500 00:26:35,410 --> 00:26:38,387 of silence in the inter-testamental period. 501 00:26:38,387 --> 00:26:40,494 John the Baptist had stepped forward 502 00:26:40,494 --> 00:26:44,885 and he was pointing the way, and it was all pregnant 503 00:26:44,885 --> 00:26:48,885 for the appearing of this one, and the very fact 504 00:26:49,985 --> 00:26:54,633 that Mark begins by Jesus reaching into the old, 505 00:26:54,633 --> 00:26:58,073 in order to put himself in the present 506 00:26:58,073 --> 00:27:00,611 is so wonderfully helpful. 507 00:27:00,611 --> 00:27:03,507 - For him to unroll the Isaiah scroll 508 00:27:03,507 --> 00:27:06,814 and explain, today, this is fulfilled in your hearing, 509 00:27:06,814 --> 00:27:10,897 speaks of his own messianic identity and mission. 510 00:27:11,774 --> 00:27:15,267 But also suggests that he has studied the scriptures. 511 00:27:15,267 --> 00:27:17,390 Someone had taught them to him. 512 00:27:17,390 --> 00:27:21,200 And he saw fit to announce his own mission and ministry 513 00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:24,190 with a reference to the Bible. 514 00:27:24,190 --> 00:27:26,414 If anyone could have just announced: it's me. 515 00:27:26,414 --> 00:27:28,850 You don't need to read that dusty book anymore, 516 00:27:28,850 --> 00:27:30,969 that old scroll, it would have been Jesus. 517 00:27:30,969 --> 00:27:32,510 But he never did that, because he understood 518 00:27:32,510 --> 00:27:36,677 that his ministry was an extension and a fulfilling, 519 00:27:37,825 --> 00:27:41,189 but never an abolishing or an eradicating. 520 00:27:41,189 --> 00:27:43,150 - I remember when I was in Bible college, 521 00:27:43,150 --> 00:27:46,050 I said to myself: I can believe in the New Testament, 522 00:27:46,050 --> 00:27:50,190 but it's hard for me to believe in the Old Testament. 523 00:27:50,190 --> 00:27:52,329 And then I realized something. 524 00:27:52,329 --> 00:27:55,746 I can't believe less than Jesus believed. 525 00:27:57,529 --> 00:28:01,267 And he had absolute confidence in the Old Testament. 526 00:28:01,267 --> 00:28:04,366 There's no debate about what his view of scripture was. 527 00:28:04,366 --> 00:28:07,502 He says, you know, his word is true, thy word is truth. 528 00:28:07,502 --> 00:28:10,846 He said that: not one jot or tittle will pass away. 529 00:28:10,846 --> 00:28:13,827 To all this will, he got jot and tittle inspiration, 530 00:28:13,827 --> 00:28:15,187 is what he taught. 531 00:28:15,187 --> 00:28:16,766 - He never sets scripture aside. 532 00:28:16,766 --> 00:28:18,467 What he did was to make very clear 533 00:28:18,467 --> 00:28:21,325 that he perfectly fulfilled scripture. 534 00:28:21,325 --> 00:28:25,427 And of course, he went beyond even the Old Testament law 535 00:28:25,427 --> 00:28:27,325 in the Sermon on the Mount, saying: you've heard it said. 536 00:28:27,325 --> 00:28:30,605 And he never reverses it, he never minimizes it. 537 00:28:30,605 --> 00:28:32,910 Instead, he goes even beyond it. 538 00:28:32,910 --> 00:28:35,769 You've heard it said, you shall not commit adultery. 539 00:28:35,769 --> 00:28:37,449 I will tell you that if you've lusted in your heart, 540 00:28:37,449 --> 00:28:40,190 you have already committed adultery. 541 00:28:40,190 --> 00:28:42,144 - Our popular evangelical understanding 542 00:28:42,144 --> 00:28:44,142 of Jesus and the Pharisees is this. 543 00:28:44,142 --> 00:28:47,929 We think that Jesus's big message to the Pharisees is: 544 00:28:47,929 --> 00:28:51,310 aw, come on guys, don't be so nitpicky. 545 00:28:51,310 --> 00:28:54,409 You will never once find Jesus in the gospels 546 00:28:54,409 --> 00:28:59,246 saying to the Pharisees: you care too much about the law. 547 00:28:59,246 --> 00:29:03,485 Invariably, Jesus will say: you have added to the law, 548 00:29:03,485 --> 00:29:05,427 and thus contradicted it. 549 00:29:05,427 --> 00:29:08,270 Or he'll say: you guys make a whole lot about the law, 550 00:29:08,270 --> 00:29:10,270 but you don't really follow it. 551 00:29:10,270 --> 00:29:12,702 Over and over, watch him make that move. 552 00:29:12,702 --> 00:29:14,489 Those are what he says. 553 00:29:14,489 --> 00:29:16,205 And what is that flowing out of? 554 00:29:16,205 --> 00:29:20,409 A rock-solid commitment to the sole, final authority 555 00:29:20,409 --> 00:29:22,125 and sufficiency of the word of God. 556 00:29:22,125 --> 00:29:23,584 What does Jesus wanna see? 557 00:29:23,584 --> 00:29:26,205 The word of God as the sole, final authority 558 00:29:26,205 --> 00:29:28,627 for faith and practice in the life of believers. 559 00:29:28,627 --> 00:29:31,885 And he's saying Pharisees, for all the bells and whistles 560 00:29:31,885 --> 00:29:33,986 that you attach to your teaching on the law, 561 00:29:33,986 --> 00:29:35,403 you undermine it. 562 00:29:36,787 --> 00:29:40,954 - So, every evidence is that Jesus knew our Old testament, 563 00:29:44,227 --> 00:29:47,662 the books that we have, that he affirmed them as holy 564 00:29:47,662 --> 00:29:51,662 scripture, along with the other Jewish people of his day, 565 00:29:51,662 --> 00:29:54,245 and that from beginning to end, 566 00:29:55,827 --> 00:30:00,067 he interpreted and understood his own life in that way. 567 00:30:00,067 --> 00:30:03,754 He is the Messiah, he is the fulfillment 568 00:30:03,754 --> 00:30:07,470 of the history of God's people in the Old Testament. 569 00:30:07,470 --> 00:30:10,430 So, yes, Jesus very much affirmed the authority 570 00:30:10,430 --> 00:30:12,147 of the Old Testament, so if you deny it, 571 00:30:12,147 --> 00:30:15,407 you have to disagree with Jesus. 572 00:30:15,407 --> 00:30:19,325 - The New Testament needed to be written because 573 00:30:19,325 --> 00:30:22,227 the Old Testament hadn't completed the story. 574 00:30:22,227 --> 00:30:26,672 That the timeline and the arc of God's redemptive purposes 575 00:30:26,672 --> 00:30:30,772 reached a point where everybody, if you like, 576 00:30:30,772 --> 00:30:33,150 was standing on their tiptoes 577 00:30:33,150 --> 00:30:35,022 to see how the thing would finish. 578 00:30:35,022 --> 00:30:38,089 And so, in the way that the writer to the Hebrews says, 579 00:30:38,089 --> 00:30:41,725 that God, you know, has spoken in the past in various ways 580 00:30:41,725 --> 00:30:45,322 and by different prophets and so on, it anticipates the fact 581 00:30:45,322 --> 00:30:48,787 that that story will then come to completion. 582 00:30:48,787 --> 00:30:51,168 And it's the New Testament that does that for us. 583 00:30:51,168 --> 00:30:55,325 In the Old Testament, Jesus is anticipated 584 00:30:55,325 --> 00:30:58,492 and in the gospels, Jesus is revealed. 585 00:31:00,227 --> 00:31:02,270 In the acts, he's preached. 586 00:31:02,270 --> 00:31:04,286 In the epistles, he's explained. 587 00:31:04,286 --> 00:31:06,910 So, in other words, everything is just pointing forward 588 00:31:06,910 --> 00:31:11,150 to that great fulfillment, which comes in Jesus. 589 00:31:11,150 --> 00:31:12,910 - You have to understand, the early Jews 590 00:31:12,910 --> 00:31:15,726 were not looking for a crucified messiah. 591 00:31:15,726 --> 00:31:18,707 They did not expect a crucified messiah. 592 00:31:18,707 --> 00:31:22,190 Even Isaiah 53, the great Old Testament text 593 00:31:22,190 --> 00:31:24,569 that's thought to refer to this, right? 594 00:31:24,569 --> 00:31:28,980 Early Jews didn't interpret that as a crucified messiah. 595 00:31:28,980 --> 00:31:33,630 For one thing, my servant, Israel, was assumed 596 00:31:33,630 --> 00:31:36,062 to be the nation of Israel, suffering for the sins 597 00:31:36,062 --> 00:31:38,467 of the world, not a particular individual. 598 00:31:38,467 --> 00:31:42,147 On the one hand, they had to explain this to the world. 599 00:31:42,147 --> 00:31:44,729 On the other hand, they had to explain this to themselves. 600 00:31:44,729 --> 00:31:46,445 Because they were not expecting this. 601 00:31:46,445 --> 00:31:49,710 This was an unexpected outcome. 602 00:31:49,710 --> 00:31:53,129 And let's be clear, if crucifixion was the end 603 00:31:53,129 --> 00:31:57,049 of Jesus's story, there is really no good historical 604 00:31:57,049 --> 00:31:59,667 explanation for why we have the gospels. 605 00:31:59,667 --> 00:32:01,630 Or the rest of the New Testament at all. 606 00:32:01,630 --> 00:32:05,166 There had to be a reversal of that final judgment. 607 00:32:05,166 --> 00:32:09,333 - When you think about where the New Testament came from, 608 00:32:10,285 --> 00:32:12,329 it came out of Judaism. 609 00:32:12,329 --> 00:32:15,966 Why would these Jewish believers who thought 610 00:32:15,966 --> 00:32:17,966 they were God's chosen people, 611 00:32:17,966 --> 00:32:21,187 why would they invent a resurrected Jesus? 612 00:32:21,187 --> 00:32:23,024 What motivation would they have for that? 613 00:32:23,024 --> 00:32:24,537 Why would they invent this? 614 00:32:24,537 --> 00:32:26,387 It makes no sense at all. 615 00:32:26,387 --> 00:32:27,281 I mean, if one of them said: 616 00:32:27,281 --> 00:32:28,452 hey, we're gonna start a new religion! 617 00:32:28,452 --> 00:32:30,112 And one of the others said: we are? 618 00:32:30,112 --> 00:32:30,945 Yeah! 619 00:32:30,945 --> 00:32:31,989 Well, what's it gonna get us? 620 00:32:31,989 --> 00:32:33,705 Well, first of all, we're gonna 621 00:32:33,705 --> 00:32:35,438 get kicked out of the synagogue. 622 00:32:35,438 --> 00:32:37,479 And then we're gonna get beaten, tortured and killed. 623 00:32:37,479 --> 00:32:39,523 You think the other guy's gonna go: hey, great idea! 624 00:32:39,523 --> 00:32:40,665 Sign me up! 625 00:32:40,665 --> 00:32:42,723 No, he's not gonna say that, right? 626 00:32:42,723 --> 00:32:45,865 There's no motivation for Jews 627 00:32:45,865 --> 00:32:48,425 to invent a resurrected Jesus. 628 00:32:48,425 --> 00:32:49,742 In fact, let me put it this way, 629 00:32:49,742 --> 00:32:51,159 because I hear some people out there thinking 630 00:32:51,159 --> 00:32:53,582 that the New Testament writers invented the resurrection. 631 00:32:53,582 --> 00:32:55,639 No, the New Testament writers did not invent 632 00:32:55,639 --> 00:32:57,579 or create the resurrection. 633 00:32:57,579 --> 00:33:01,019 The resurrection created the New Testament writers. 634 00:33:01,019 --> 00:33:02,665 There would be no New Testament 635 00:33:02,665 --> 00:33:05,332 unless there was a resurrection. 636 00:33:06,738 --> 00:33:10,905 - The resurrection is God's amen to Christ's atoning work. 637 00:33:12,599 --> 00:33:16,766 It is the signal evidence that what Jesus has accomplished 638 00:33:18,659 --> 00:33:23,177 has been, if you like, ratified by the Father. 639 00:33:23,177 --> 00:33:27,344 That what God the Father, if you like, has planned 640 00:33:28,293 --> 00:33:30,958 that God the Son has procured. 641 00:33:30,958 --> 00:33:35,125 And the resurrection is the signal to the entire world 642 00:33:35,977 --> 00:33:40,201 that the mission upon which Jesus has embarked 643 00:33:40,201 --> 00:33:42,675 has actually been accomplished. 644 00:33:42,675 --> 00:33:46,878 - So we're not just talking about a reversal of death. 645 00:33:46,878 --> 00:33:49,737 We're talking about a whole new kind of life. 646 00:33:49,737 --> 00:33:51,715 That he gets by means of resurrection, 647 00:33:51,715 --> 00:33:54,578 and that's what the earliest writers about Jesus 648 00:33:54,578 --> 00:33:57,838 were trying to make clear, is this is not just 649 00:33:57,838 --> 00:34:01,715 a kindness or a mercy of God on Jesus. 650 00:34:01,715 --> 00:34:04,878 No, this is a vindication of who he was 651 00:34:04,878 --> 00:34:09,045 and of his claims and you need to pay attention now. 652 00:34:10,041 --> 00:34:12,718 - The First Corinthians 15, I mean, that is a, 653 00:34:12,718 --> 00:34:15,561 a text that has a robust resurrection theology, 654 00:34:15,561 --> 00:34:18,057 where Paul says on multiple occasions 655 00:34:18,057 --> 00:34:21,177 that Jesus died and was raised according to the scriptures, 656 00:34:21,177 --> 00:34:23,539 according to the scriptures, according to the scriptures. 657 00:34:23,539 --> 00:34:26,121 And he suggests that there was a real, physical, 658 00:34:26,121 --> 00:34:30,137 bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 659 00:34:30,137 --> 00:34:33,278 And without that, there is no Christian faith. 660 00:34:33,278 --> 00:34:36,201 In my view, it is theological insanity. 661 00:34:36,201 --> 00:34:40,201 And an exegetical suicide to argue that there is 662 00:34:41,598 --> 00:34:44,747 no real resurrection of Jesus from the dead, 663 00:34:44,747 --> 00:34:47,683 it's something spiritual, Jesus lives in the heart 664 00:34:47,683 --> 00:34:51,766 of his people; that belief does not save anybody. 665 00:35:09,863 --> 00:35:11,822 - If Jesus's Bible only consisted 666 00:35:11,822 --> 00:35:15,902 of the Old Testament, why do we need the new? 667 00:35:15,902 --> 00:35:18,361 When was the story written down? 668 00:35:18,361 --> 00:35:21,323 Why was the story written down at all? 669 00:35:21,323 --> 00:35:23,083 How do sinful people write 670 00:35:23,083 --> 00:35:26,983 the undefiled words of transcendence? 671 00:35:26,983 --> 00:35:30,622 If memories fade, people exaggerate, 672 00:35:30,622 --> 00:35:32,942 and events get misinterpreted, 673 00:35:32,942 --> 00:35:35,342 if the New Testament is true, 674 00:35:35,342 --> 00:35:36,842 how could we know? 675 00:35:38,702 --> 00:35:40,059 - You know, there's a difference between 676 00:35:40,059 --> 00:35:42,503 what happened two days ago, which was just a benign event, 677 00:35:42,503 --> 00:35:45,523 and what we call psychologically, an impact event. 678 00:35:45,523 --> 00:35:47,966 An impact event is something that impacts you 679 00:35:47,966 --> 00:35:50,601 so dramatically, you'll never forget what happened. 680 00:35:50,601 --> 00:35:51,806 Like, for example, where were you 681 00:35:51,806 --> 00:35:53,966 when the second plane hit the tower? 682 00:35:53,966 --> 00:35:56,782 Right, right now as we record this, that was 15 years ago. 683 00:35:56,782 --> 00:35:58,683 But I can remember what happened exactly. 684 00:35:58,683 --> 00:35:59,923 I remember who I was talking to, 685 00:35:59,923 --> 00:36:02,585 and what I was saying, and what he was saying to me. 686 00:36:02,585 --> 00:36:03,886 And the question is: do you think 687 00:36:03,886 --> 00:36:06,183 a resurrection would have been an impact event? 688 00:36:06,183 --> 00:36:08,563 Do you think if Jesus really rose from the dead, 689 00:36:08,563 --> 00:36:11,566 that would have had an impact on the people that saw him, 690 00:36:11,566 --> 00:36:13,001 after he had resurrected? 691 00:36:13,001 --> 00:36:16,763 Yeah, they would have remembered that til their grave. 692 00:36:16,763 --> 00:36:19,123 So I don't have any doubt that even if the eyewitnesses 693 00:36:19,123 --> 00:36:21,325 wrote it down 20 years later or 30 years later, 694 00:36:21,325 --> 00:36:24,023 doesn't matter; they remembered it. 695 00:36:24,023 --> 00:36:27,662 - The reason to not just rely on oral tradition, 696 00:36:27,662 --> 00:36:30,203 and to actually write down a gospel, 697 00:36:30,203 --> 00:36:33,043 like the earliest gospel, probably the Gospel of Mark, 698 00:36:33,043 --> 00:36:36,121 the reason to do that is because you're losing 699 00:36:36,121 --> 00:36:39,203 the living voice, you're losing the eyewitnesses. 700 00:36:39,203 --> 00:36:42,526 So there is this huge impetus in the second half 701 00:36:42,526 --> 00:36:46,193 of the first century AD to produce documents 702 00:36:47,262 --> 00:36:50,046 that would allow us to not lose the memory 703 00:36:50,046 --> 00:36:52,942 of what Jesus was like, what he did, what he said, 704 00:36:52,942 --> 00:36:55,523 and what his earliest followers were like, as well. 705 00:36:55,523 --> 00:36:57,623 And that's really the impetus behind the writing 706 00:36:57,623 --> 00:37:00,643 of the New Testament, and when they got busy with it, 707 00:37:00,643 --> 00:37:04,206 they got busy with it, between about 49 and about 100, 708 00:37:04,206 --> 00:37:06,361 all 27 documents of the New Testament 709 00:37:06,361 --> 00:37:08,528 seem to have been written. 710 00:37:11,043 --> 00:37:13,763 - When we think in terms of authorship of the Bible, 711 00:37:13,763 --> 00:37:16,843 we have essentially a dual authorship. 712 00:37:16,843 --> 00:37:19,943 So it's true to say that Paul wrote Romans. 713 00:37:19,943 --> 00:37:22,782 It's equally true to say that God wrote Romans. 714 00:37:22,782 --> 00:37:26,103 And the great wonder of it is that without any violation 715 00:37:26,103 --> 00:37:29,966 of Paul's personality or his intellect, 716 00:37:29,966 --> 00:37:33,943 God, through the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, 717 00:37:33,943 --> 00:37:38,110 both provided Paul and enabled Paul to write as he wrote. 718 00:37:39,763 --> 00:37:44,585 And that would be true for all the Bible authors. 719 00:37:44,585 --> 00:37:48,302 - When David writes Psalm 23, it's not as if he came in 720 00:37:48,302 --> 00:37:51,543 after a hard day's work and was about to fall asleep 721 00:37:51,543 --> 00:37:53,801 when a voice spoke to him out of the gloom and said: 722 00:37:53,801 --> 00:37:55,395 not yet, David, pick up your stylus. 723 00:37:55,395 --> 00:37:57,262 I've got some dictation for you. 724 00:37:57,262 --> 00:38:00,835 And then God said: the Lord, the Lord, 725 00:38:00,835 --> 00:38:03,218 is my, is my, shepherd, shepherd. 726 00:38:03,218 --> 00:38:05,198 I shall lack nothing, I shall lack nothing. 727 00:38:05,198 --> 00:38:07,022 There's no way in God's green Earth 728 00:38:07,022 --> 00:38:09,321 that Psalm 23 was written that way. 729 00:38:09,321 --> 00:38:13,582 It was spoken out of the fullness of David's experience, 730 00:38:13,582 --> 00:38:16,595 both as a believer and as a shepherd. 731 00:38:16,595 --> 00:38:18,238 And he thought about these things, turned them over 732 00:38:18,238 --> 00:38:21,038 in his mind, and he picked up his stylus and he wrote. 733 00:38:21,038 --> 00:38:24,382 Nevertheless, scripture insists that God so worked 734 00:38:24,382 --> 00:38:27,598 through such forms of inspiration that the result 735 00:38:27,598 --> 00:38:30,348 was nonetheless, the word of God. 736 00:38:31,393 --> 00:38:33,813 - I think, on the other end of that spectrum, 737 00:38:33,813 --> 00:38:37,151 perhaps, we also can't get too loose between the text 738 00:38:37,151 --> 00:38:40,213 of scripture and the meaning of scripture. 739 00:38:40,213 --> 00:38:44,190 That those words really are there for a reason, 740 00:38:44,190 --> 00:38:47,355 and they're not dictated, but that doesn't mean 741 00:38:47,355 --> 00:38:50,395 that we can just kind of loosely paraphrase 742 00:38:50,395 --> 00:38:52,530 or understand the text. 743 00:38:52,530 --> 00:38:54,651 That we do have to respect what 744 00:38:54,651 --> 00:38:57,611 the biblical authors actually wrote. 745 00:38:57,611 --> 00:39:00,091 - Of course, the Christian claim from the start 746 00:39:00,091 --> 00:39:01,711 is that this is a supernatural event. 747 00:39:01,711 --> 00:39:04,751 We don't believe that it just happened to work out 748 00:39:04,751 --> 00:39:06,731 that human beings wrote down perfect words. 749 00:39:06,731 --> 00:39:09,173 Or that they just tried a lot and eventually got it right, 750 00:39:09,173 --> 00:39:11,035 or something like this, no, we believe that God 751 00:39:11,035 --> 00:39:14,156 superintended the whole process by his Holy Spirit. 752 00:39:14,156 --> 00:39:18,613 And this is why, a common complaint by non-Christians 753 00:39:18,613 --> 00:39:21,730 and by critics of Christianity often misses the point. 754 00:39:21,730 --> 00:39:23,253 People would say: well, you can't believe the Bible 755 00:39:23,253 --> 00:39:25,195 is the word of God, because it was written by men. 756 00:39:25,195 --> 00:39:28,133 But of course, that presumes the non-Christian view 757 00:39:28,133 --> 00:39:29,291 of the way it happened. 758 00:39:29,291 --> 00:39:30,411 That's not the Christian claim. 759 00:39:30,411 --> 00:39:32,155 The Christian claim is that, wasn't just that it was 760 00:39:32,155 --> 00:39:34,235 written by men, our claim is that it was written 761 00:39:34,235 --> 00:39:36,395 by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 762 00:39:36,395 --> 00:39:38,592 And it's that second step that's so key. 763 00:39:38,592 --> 00:39:41,392 - Behind your doctrine of scripture is the doctrine of God. 764 00:39:41,392 --> 00:39:45,559 And behind the product of scripture is the activity of God. 765 00:39:47,653 --> 00:39:51,335 The scripture is the product of God, the Holy Spirit. 766 00:39:51,335 --> 00:39:55,013 Which is why God, the Holy Spirit, uses it in conversion 767 00:39:55,013 --> 00:39:57,071 and in sanctification. 768 00:39:57,071 --> 00:39:59,904 So what we believe about the Bible 769 00:40:00,891 --> 00:40:04,641 is based on what we believe about its source. 770 00:40:06,331 --> 00:40:09,551 And because we believe God to be the author of the Bible, 771 00:40:09,551 --> 00:40:12,891 we talk about the quality of the Bible as inspired, 772 00:40:12,891 --> 00:40:14,224 or God-breathed. 773 00:40:19,410 --> 00:40:23,253 - Paul's letters were written somewhere between 774 00:40:23,253 --> 00:40:25,836 about 49 and maybe 63 or 64 AD. 775 00:40:27,691 --> 00:40:29,573 Not a big timeline. 776 00:40:29,573 --> 00:40:31,531 But that's almost half the New Testament. 777 00:40:31,531 --> 00:40:33,648 13 of the documents of the New Testament are attributed 778 00:40:33,648 --> 00:40:37,611 to Paul, and they are by consensus the earliest 779 00:40:37,611 --> 00:40:39,573 New Testament documents. 780 00:40:39,573 --> 00:40:42,911 So we don't have any documents that are, today, 781 00:40:42,911 --> 00:40:47,435 part of the New Testament, from before about 49. 782 00:40:47,435 --> 00:40:49,808 - Even the Atheists admit that Paul is writing 783 00:40:49,808 --> 00:40:53,151 First Corinthians in about 55 AD, and we can date that 784 00:40:53,151 --> 00:40:57,968 from an archeological discovery in Delphi in Greece, 785 00:40:57,968 --> 00:41:00,795 and we can date all of Paul's missionary journeys 786 00:41:00,795 --> 00:41:03,410 from that archeological inscription, 787 00:41:03,410 --> 00:41:05,631 and we're almost certain that Paul is writing 788 00:41:05,631 --> 00:41:09,573 First Corinthians in either 55 or 56 AD. 789 00:41:09,573 --> 00:41:13,051 I think Collin Hemmer's work, who is a Roman historian, 790 00:41:13,051 --> 00:41:15,035 I don't even think he was a Christian, 791 00:41:15,035 --> 00:41:18,411 he wrote a book called, back in the late '80s, 792 00:41:18,411 --> 00:41:21,568 called: Acts in the Setting of Helenistic History. 793 00:41:21,568 --> 00:41:24,155 In which he makes, in my view, a very persuasive case 794 00:41:24,155 --> 00:41:27,675 that Acts, the Book of Acts, had to be written by 62 AD. 795 00:41:27,675 --> 00:41:30,811 In fact, he gives a number of reasons in the book. 796 00:41:30,811 --> 00:41:34,692 If Acts is 62 AD, that means Luke has to be prior to Acts. 797 00:41:34,692 --> 00:41:37,333 Because Acts is Luke's second work. 798 00:41:37,333 --> 00:41:40,555 And then if Luke is written, say, sometime in the 50s, 799 00:41:40,555 --> 00:41:44,715 it appears that Luke, maybe one of his sources is Mark. 800 00:41:44,715 --> 00:41:47,711 Which means Mark is prior to Luke, so you're very early now. 801 00:41:47,711 --> 00:41:50,251 You're in the early 50s, maybe 40s. 802 00:41:50,251 --> 00:41:53,071 - So the bulk of the New Testament is said to be written 803 00:41:53,071 --> 00:41:56,404 from the end of the 40s, 49 thereabouts, 804 00:41:57,408 --> 00:42:02,128 all the way up to the last decade of the first century, 805 00:42:02,128 --> 00:42:03,771 and you're dealing with a period 806 00:42:03,771 --> 00:42:07,021 of about 50 years from start to finish. 807 00:42:08,933 --> 00:42:11,771 - I would say that Mark is our earliest gospel. 808 00:42:11,771 --> 00:42:16,352 That yes, Matthew and Luke used the vast majority of Mark. 809 00:42:16,352 --> 00:42:20,431 There's 95 percent of Mark is in Matthew's gospel, 810 00:42:20,431 --> 00:42:23,650 but Matthew was not just copying Mark, 811 00:42:23,650 --> 00:42:26,429 he added another 50 percent to his document 812 00:42:26,429 --> 00:42:28,031 from various other sources. 813 00:42:28,031 --> 00:42:29,755 So he was using a variety of sources 814 00:42:29,755 --> 00:42:31,408 to produce his document. 815 00:42:31,408 --> 00:42:34,491 And under the inspiration of God, each one wanted 816 00:42:34,491 --> 00:42:37,333 to present a slightly different portrait of Jesus. 817 00:42:37,333 --> 00:42:40,091 - It's not as if, let's say, Matthew says 818 00:42:40,091 --> 00:42:43,311 that Jesus is the king in the line of David. 819 00:42:43,311 --> 00:42:47,088 He emphasizes that, even in the beginning of his gospel. 820 00:42:47,088 --> 00:42:50,555 Is that incompatible with John, who emphasizes 821 00:42:50,555 --> 00:42:53,968 that Jesus is the revelation of God the Father? 822 00:42:53,968 --> 00:42:56,352 Well, no, they're both true, right? 823 00:42:56,352 --> 00:42:58,431 But they're complementary. 824 00:42:58,431 --> 00:43:00,411 - What's hard for people to remember is, 825 00:43:00,411 --> 00:43:02,251 is that when you wrote a gospel and you did it 826 00:43:02,251 --> 00:43:06,251 on a running scroll of papyrus, if you wanna think about 827 00:43:06,251 --> 00:43:08,811 it that way, there's a certain length that, 828 00:43:08,811 --> 00:43:11,410 oftentimes, is the maximum that you can deal with, 829 00:43:11,410 --> 00:43:13,803 and particularly when we get into Matthew, Luke, 830 00:43:13,803 --> 00:43:15,671 and John, our longer gospels, 831 00:43:15,671 --> 00:43:17,625 they're running up into those limits. 832 00:43:17,625 --> 00:43:20,905 And so that impacts how much detail they communicate 833 00:43:20,905 --> 00:43:23,305 about the stories that they present. 834 00:43:23,305 --> 00:43:27,311 - Still another issue is in recorded speech. 835 00:43:27,311 --> 00:43:30,308 Because some people expect that recorded speech 836 00:43:30,308 --> 00:43:32,267 will be verbatim accurate. 837 00:43:32,267 --> 00:43:35,385 It will be like a court stenographer 838 00:43:35,385 --> 00:43:38,831 who just takes down every word, exactly. 839 00:43:38,831 --> 00:43:40,667 - If we did most preaching classes 840 00:43:40,667 --> 00:43:43,231 and used the Sermon on the Mount as an example, 841 00:43:43,231 --> 00:43:45,908 most of our church services would be very short. 842 00:43:45,908 --> 00:43:47,768 Because you can read through the Sermon on the Mount 843 00:43:47,768 --> 00:43:49,529 in five to seven minutes. 844 00:43:49,529 --> 00:43:52,511 What we know is that Jesus spoke to people all day. 845 00:43:52,511 --> 00:43:55,748 And you know, when you bring a crowd out from the city 846 00:43:55,748 --> 00:43:58,788 to come sit in the fields, and listen to a teacher, 847 00:43:58,788 --> 00:44:01,448 he isn't speaking for just five to seven minutes. 848 00:44:01,448 --> 00:44:04,831 So there are cases where you may not be getting always 849 00:44:04,831 --> 00:44:07,129 the exact words of Jesus, you may be getting a summary 850 00:44:07,129 --> 00:44:09,467 of something that he actually spent a much longer time 851 00:44:09,467 --> 00:44:12,388 talking about, and you may be getting snippets of that, 852 00:44:12,388 --> 00:44:14,991 or a summary of that, that's boiled down into, 853 00:44:14,991 --> 00:44:17,128 you know, into a package-able length, 854 00:44:17,128 --> 00:44:19,711 given everything else that's going on in the gospel. 855 00:44:19,711 --> 00:44:21,848 - We need to stop thinking about the gospels 856 00:44:21,848 --> 00:44:24,452 as if they were like modern photographs. 857 00:44:24,452 --> 00:44:25,812 They're not. 858 00:44:25,812 --> 00:44:27,625 They're like portraits. 859 00:44:27,625 --> 00:44:31,311 And portraits are inherently, interpretive. 860 00:44:31,311 --> 00:44:35,732 They're not just history, they are interpreted history. 861 00:44:35,732 --> 00:44:38,911 History from a particular theological and ethical angle. 862 00:44:38,911 --> 00:44:40,568 And this is true of all four gospels. 863 00:44:40,568 --> 00:44:43,768 It's not just true about John, which is highly theological. 864 00:44:43,768 --> 00:44:47,348 All four gospels provide us with a theological 865 00:44:47,348 --> 00:44:50,831 interpretation of the historical figure, Jesus. 866 00:44:50,831 --> 00:44:53,412 And we may be thankful to have four of them 867 00:44:53,412 --> 00:44:56,772 that have differences of angles of incidence. 868 00:44:56,772 --> 00:45:01,129 And yet recognizably, it's the same person. 869 00:45:01,129 --> 00:45:02,969 Remember, ancient biographies, 870 00:45:02,969 --> 00:45:04,808 their issue was characterization. 871 00:45:04,808 --> 00:45:08,969 Who is this person, as revealed by his words and deeds? 872 00:45:08,969 --> 00:45:12,052 That's what they're trying to get at. 873 00:45:21,071 --> 00:45:25,188 - One of the big challenges in biblical studies today 874 00:45:25,188 --> 00:45:29,355 is the very subtle suggestion that, well, it's the 875 00:45:31,028 --> 00:45:35,195 theological teachings of the Bible that are inspired, 876 00:45:37,046 --> 00:45:40,879 and whether any of those historical narratives 877 00:45:41,732 --> 00:45:45,208 that the teachings come out of, whether they ever happened 878 00:45:45,208 --> 00:45:48,628 or not, it really doesn't matter. 879 00:45:48,628 --> 00:45:52,388 I wanna argue, that's absolutely wrong. 880 00:45:52,388 --> 00:45:53,638 It does matter. 881 00:45:54,612 --> 00:45:57,769 - The fundamental divide on the issue of inspiration 882 00:45:57,769 --> 00:46:00,488 is whether it is subjective or objective. 883 00:46:00,488 --> 00:46:04,168 When I was a first year PhD student in Edinburgh, 884 00:46:04,168 --> 00:46:06,457 Scotland, the very first debatE that I witnessed 885 00:46:06,457 --> 00:46:08,654 at the University of Edinburgh was a debate 886 00:46:08,654 --> 00:46:11,179 on the topic of the inspiration of the Old Testament. 887 00:46:11,179 --> 00:46:13,879 And a liberal Old Testament scholar 888 00:46:13,879 --> 00:46:16,503 and an evangelical were going to have a debate. 889 00:46:16,503 --> 00:46:19,259 And the moderator's first question to both of them was: 890 00:46:19,259 --> 00:46:21,442 how do you define inspiration? 891 00:46:21,442 --> 00:46:24,299 And Dr. Alls said: well, I believe that the Bible 892 00:46:24,299 --> 00:46:27,943 is inspired because it inspires me. 893 00:46:27,943 --> 00:46:30,962 Now, that is a classic subjective definition 894 00:46:30,962 --> 00:46:34,158 of inspiration, in other words, whatever inspiration is, 895 00:46:34,158 --> 00:46:37,979 doesn't reside in scripture, itself. 896 00:46:37,979 --> 00:46:41,062 It resides in its effect on or in me. 897 00:46:41,943 --> 00:46:45,758 Whereas the Bible claims an objective inspiration. 898 00:46:45,758 --> 00:46:49,362 Listen again to Paul's words: all scripture is God-breathed. 899 00:46:49,362 --> 00:46:52,722 It's not something that has been put into scripture. 900 00:46:52,722 --> 00:46:55,740 It's not something that scripture does to me. 901 00:46:55,740 --> 00:46:58,620 It is something that is inherent in scripture 902 00:46:58,620 --> 00:47:01,203 because of where it comes from. 903 00:47:02,540 --> 00:47:04,620 - Peter, in particular, draws this contrast 904 00:47:04,620 --> 00:47:08,759 between myths, just stories, fables, legends, 905 00:47:08,759 --> 00:47:11,180 versus eyewitness accounts. 906 00:47:11,180 --> 00:47:13,079 He says: we saw this. 907 00:47:13,079 --> 00:47:15,038 We didn't make up a story to make you feel better. 908 00:47:15,038 --> 00:47:17,079 We're not just giving you, you know, 909 00:47:17,079 --> 00:47:21,276 the spirit of Christmas, or the inspiration of Easter. 910 00:47:21,276 --> 00:47:25,543 I was on the mountain, I saw Jesus Christ transfigured 911 00:47:25,543 --> 00:47:29,879 in glory; these are things we saw with our eyes, 912 00:47:29,879 --> 00:47:33,168 we heard with our ears, they happened. 913 00:47:33,168 --> 00:47:36,194 You can count on them, and that sets the Bible apart 914 00:47:36,194 --> 00:47:40,700 from almost everything else in the ancient world 915 00:47:40,700 --> 00:47:44,096 and its religious pantheon of gods and goddesses, 916 00:47:44,096 --> 00:47:48,140 because this good news is rooted in history. 917 00:47:48,140 --> 00:47:49,778 Something that happened. 918 00:47:49,778 --> 00:47:54,156 And based on a future that we know, then, will happen. 919 00:47:54,156 --> 00:47:56,591 - One of the remarkable things about the gospels 920 00:47:56,591 --> 00:47:58,854 that we have in our New Testament, 921 00:47:58,854 --> 00:48:01,778 as well as the whole Bible, is that the Bible 922 00:48:01,778 --> 00:48:05,147 subjects itself to historical verification. 923 00:48:05,147 --> 00:48:07,980 It puts itself at risk of inquiry. 924 00:48:09,072 --> 00:48:12,534 Unlike the gospel of Thomas, unlike the Koran. 925 00:48:12,534 --> 00:48:14,764 Unlike the Bhagavad Gita or the teachings 926 00:48:14,764 --> 00:48:18,230 of the compassionate Buddha that are talking-head theology. 927 00:48:18,230 --> 00:48:21,611 The Bible says: Jesus did this at a certain place. 928 00:48:21,611 --> 00:48:24,512 Here's the guy's name whom he healed. 929 00:48:24,512 --> 00:48:26,118 Or here's the house where he did it at, 930 00:48:26,118 --> 00:48:29,094 like in Mark two, where you had these four men 931 00:48:29,094 --> 00:48:33,450 who lift parts of the thatched roof at Peter's house, 932 00:48:33,450 --> 00:48:36,854 and they drop this paralyzed man right in front of Jesus, 933 00:48:36,854 --> 00:48:38,774 and he heals the man and he walks out. 934 00:48:38,774 --> 00:48:41,952 I've been to Peter's house, it's in Coppernium, 935 00:48:41,952 --> 00:48:44,010 on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. 936 00:48:44,010 --> 00:48:46,614 You can see the very place where Jesus stood 937 00:48:46,614 --> 00:48:48,950 when he was lecturing to this crowd that was packed, 938 00:48:48,950 --> 00:48:51,707 and the actual door that this man walked out of. 939 00:48:51,707 --> 00:48:53,974 That's historically verifiable stuff. 940 00:48:53,974 --> 00:48:57,670 You don't have that in these other documents. 941 00:48:57,670 --> 00:49:00,032 - A faith rooted in history. 942 00:49:00,032 --> 00:49:03,350 A revelation coming through human instruments. 943 00:49:03,350 --> 00:49:07,670 A religion spreading through the entire region and beyond. 944 00:49:07,670 --> 00:49:11,530 But we wonder: who wrote these books? 945 00:49:11,530 --> 00:49:13,510 How did they spread? 946 00:49:13,510 --> 00:49:15,791 Can we be confident they are the actual words 947 00:49:15,791 --> 00:49:18,214 that God meant for us to have? 948 00:49:18,214 --> 00:49:20,230 - The question of authorship is a common one. 949 00:49:20,230 --> 00:49:21,952 If we're gonna rely on these books, 950 00:49:21,952 --> 00:49:23,707 we wanna know who wrote them. 951 00:49:23,707 --> 00:49:25,350 We wanna know when they were written, and whether we should 952 00:49:25,350 --> 00:49:28,250 listen to the person who's names are attached to them. 953 00:49:28,250 --> 00:49:30,507 Many people doubt whether we can know those things. 954 00:49:30,507 --> 00:49:33,536 I don't think those things are out of the range of knowing. 955 00:49:33,536 --> 00:49:37,552 In fact, we have a tremendously good amount of evidence 956 00:49:37,552 --> 00:49:39,334 about the authors of these books. 957 00:49:39,334 --> 00:49:41,610 And there's all kinds of ways we know who wrote these books. 958 00:49:41,610 --> 00:49:43,942 Certainly, the titles attached to these books are a key part 959 00:49:43,942 --> 00:49:46,294 of that evidence that go back very, very early. 960 00:49:46,294 --> 00:49:48,507 When we look at the gospels themselves, for example, 961 00:49:48,507 --> 00:49:51,430 we know those titles were attached probably by the end 962 00:49:51,430 --> 00:49:53,974 of the first century, if not the early second century. 963 00:49:53,974 --> 00:49:56,992 - There's a second-century impulse that begins 964 00:49:56,992 --> 00:50:00,752 that says: add the name of an apostle to a book, 965 00:50:00,752 --> 00:50:04,192 to make sure that we know that it really is by that person. 966 00:50:04,192 --> 00:50:07,227 Those kinds of things we see in these apocryphal books. 967 00:50:07,227 --> 00:50:09,229 The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Phillip, of Mary, 968 00:50:09,229 --> 00:50:12,829 of Judas, all these works ascribe authorship in the text, 969 00:50:12,829 --> 00:50:15,670 not as a title above it, but actually in the text. 970 00:50:15,670 --> 00:50:17,670 The New Testament gospels don't do that. 971 00:50:17,670 --> 00:50:20,630 They were originally anonymous, I believe. 972 00:50:20,630 --> 00:50:24,091 The ancient church fathers were unanimous that Mark 973 00:50:24,091 --> 00:50:27,414 got his gospel from the apostle Peter. 974 00:50:27,414 --> 00:50:30,010 And Mark was a follower of Paul, an associate of Paul's 975 00:50:30,010 --> 00:50:33,910 to start with, but he got his gospel from Peter. 976 00:50:33,910 --> 00:50:37,270 If you have this apostolic authorship impulse, 977 00:50:37,270 --> 00:50:39,632 why isn't the Gospel of Mark ever, 978 00:50:39,632 --> 00:50:42,299 ever called the Gospel of Peter? 979 00:50:43,147 --> 00:50:44,470 It isn't. 980 00:50:44,470 --> 00:50:47,494 So that apostolic authorship impulse is not something 981 00:50:47,494 --> 00:50:50,891 that's intrinsic to the New Testament. 982 00:50:50,891 --> 00:50:54,150 It's intrinsic to pseudepigrapha, apocryphal books, 983 00:50:54,150 --> 00:50:55,931 books that came later. 984 00:50:55,931 --> 00:50:58,528 And guys like Bart Erman, who wrote this book, Forged, 985 00:50:58,528 --> 00:51:00,971 about the books that were not really written 986 00:51:00,971 --> 00:51:02,864 by the people that we think they were, 987 00:51:02,864 --> 00:51:05,547 he tries to argue for this apostolic authorship impulse 988 00:51:05,547 --> 00:51:07,227 in the first century. 989 00:51:07,227 --> 00:51:08,447 If that's the case, 990 00:51:08,447 --> 00:51:10,786 why don't we have it for the gospel of Mark? 991 00:51:10,786 --> 00:51:13,328 - Did Jesus change over the first 992 00:51:13,328 --> 00:51:15,611 three hundred years of the church? 993 00:51:15,611 --> 00:51:16,731 The depiction of Jesus? 994 00:51:16,731 --> 00:51:19,691 And when you look at people who followed the apostles, 995 00:51:19,691 --> 00:51:23,984 Clement, Papias, Irenaeus, these types of individuals, 996 00:51:23,984 --> 00:51:28,054 Justin Martyr, these folks, when you look at their writings 997 00:51:28,054 --> 00:51:30,027 you see they're given the same basic data 998 00:51:30,027 --> 00:51:32,150 that the New Testament writers gave. 999 00:51:32,150 --> 00:51:34,352 So you have this chain of custody, 1000 00:51:34,352 --> 00:51:36,694 going through the first three centuries of the church, 1001 00:51:36,694 --> 00:51:39,371 before we have, say, the first full copy of, 1002 00:51:39,371 --> 00:51:43,038 say, the New Testament or the Old Testament. 1003 00:51:44,330 --> 00:51:47,947 - Early Christianity was basically an evangelistic movement, 1004 00:51:47,947 --> 00:51:50,694 which is distinctive in early Judaism. 1005 00:51:50,694 --> 00:51:54,269 The other early Jewish movements like the Kumran community 1006 00:51:54,269 --> 00:51:57,709 or John the Baptizer, they were not evangelistic 1007 00:51:57,709 --> 00:52:00,171 in the sense that they were going out and getting recruits 1008 00:52:00,171 --> 00:52:02,410 that were non-Jews. 1009 00:52:02,410 --> 00:52:04,672 This is something pretty distinctive about early 1010 00:52:04,672 --> 00:52:07,552 Christianity is, A, it was a missionary movement, 1011 00:52:07,552 --> 00:52:12,107 and B, it went after Gentiles, deliberately, by intention. 1012 00:52:12,107 --> 00:52:16,470 So, in that kind of environment, they needed some tools 1013 00:52:16,470 --> 00:52:19,947 to do a better job evangelizing and teaching 1014 00:52:19,947 --> 00:52:21,872 in those kinds of environments, 1015 00:52:21,872 --> 00:52:25,472 and so the impetus to generate sources 1016 00:52:25,472 --> 00:52:28,694 of important material to convince both Jews 1017 00:52:28,694 --> 00:52:32,534 and Gentiles about Jesus was paramount. 1018 00:52:32,534 --> 00:52:34,512 - When it comes to the New Testament writings, 1019 00:52:34,512 --> 00:52:37,309 authors not only had to write a book, 1020 00:52:37,309 --> 00:52:39,069 and then people would read that book, 1021 00:52:39,069 --> 00:52:40,912 but eventually that book had to be copied 1022 00:52:40,912 --> 00:52:43,110 and then transmitted over time. 1023 00:52:43,110 --> 00:52:44,971 Obviously this was before the printing press. 1024 00:52:44,971 --> 00:52:46,854 This was before you could go down to your copy machine 1025 00:52:46,854 --> 00:52:49,174 and run off a few copies, and so if people wanted 1026 00:52:49,174 --> 00:52:51,792 their book to be spread far and wide, 1027 00:52:51,792 --> 00:52:54,250 if people wanted their book to be published, so to speak, 1028 00:52:54,250 --> 00:52:56,310 that book had to be copied. 1029 00:52:56,310 --> 00:53:00,374 - I would reckon it would take somebody, oh, 1030 00:53:00,374 --> 00:53:04,457 a good three or four hours to just take dictation 1031 00:53:05,814 --> 00:53:09,494 for a document like Romans, and then on top of that, 1032 00:53:09,494 --> 00:53:11,770 you'd have to produce a fair-hand copy. 1033 00:53:11,770 --> 00:53:13,174 That's the one that would be given. 1034 00:53:13,174 --> 00:53:16,027 So, from the start, there would be two copies. 1035 00:53:16,027 --> 00:53:20,470 The one that the scribe and the author retained, 1036 00:53:20,470 --> 00:53:23,334 and the one that was sent to whoever the recipients 1037 00:53:23,334 --> 00:53:25,147 of the document are. 1038 00:53:25,147 --> 00:53:27,072 It is a laborious process. 1039 00:53:27,072 --> 00:53:30,269 You know, if it was me, my hand would have fallen off 1040 00:53:30,269 --> 00:53:33,152 about halfway through the job, at best. 1041 00:53:33,152 --> 00:53:36,534 They, and they had to be clear. 1042 00:53:36,534 --> 00:53:39,152 Because without punctuation and division of words, 1043 00:53:39,152 --> 00:53:42,810 the capital letters had to be absolutely clear 1044 00:53:42,810 --> 00:53:44,667 as to what they are, and somebody 1045 00:53:44,667 --> 00:53:46,907 knew where to divide the words, right? 1046 00:53:46,907 --> 00:53:49,199 So it's an expensive process. 1047 00:53:49,199 --> 00:53:53,423 - The longest usable scroll that was still wieldy, 1048 00:53:53,423 --> 00:53:56,447 of some sort, would be no more than about 35 feet long. 1049 00:53:56,447 --> 00:53:58,563 And when taking the average sized lettering, 1050 00:53:58,563 --> 00:54:02,003 what that means is it could only contain one gospel. 1051 00:54:02,003 --> 00:54:03,946 The Gospel of Luke, the Book of Acts, 1052 00:54:03,946 --> 00:54:07,146 would be right around 28 feet long by those estimates. 1053 00:54:07,146 --> 00:54:09,343 You couldn't put Luke and another gospel in there. 1054 00:54:09,343 --> 00:54:11,103 Just Luke or just Acts. 1055 00:54:11,103 --> 00:54:13,540 This is why Luke himself wrote both 1056 00:54:13,540 --> 00:54:15,622 of these books as separate volumes. 1057 00:54:15,622 --> 00:54:18,223 They almost surely were written at the same time, 1058 00:54:18,223 --> 00:54:21,043 but because of the material that was used, 1059 00:54:21,043 --> 00:54:23,247 namely Papyrus scrolls, they couldn't be 1060 00:54:23,247 --> 00:54:25,466 bound together as a single book. 1061 00:54:25,466 --> 00:54:29,203 - The number two manuscript authority 1062 00:54:29,203 --> 00:54:31,764 in history is the Iliad by Homer. 1063 00:54:31,764 --> 00:54:34,106 More manuscripts are being discovered of Homer 1064 00:54:34,106 --> 00:54:36,127 than any other classical work. 1065 00:54:36,127 --> 00:54:38,943 And right now, we have about a thousand, 1066 00:54:38,943 --> 00:54:41,343 see, the moment I make this statement, it's obsolete. 1067 00:54:41,343 --> 00:54:45,093 1,820-some manuscripts of the Iliad by Homer. 1068 00:54:47,066 --> 00:54:51,567 But when it comes to this Bible now, and this is incredible, 1069 00:54:51,567 --> 00:54:54,964 it's hard to grasp, I can now document 1070 00:54:54,964 --> 00:54:58,631 66,000 manuscripts and scrolls of the Bible. 1071 00:55:02,740 --> 00:55:03,573 66,000. 1072 00:55:07,983 --> 00:55:11,523 - The manuscripts are divided between two different groups. 1073 00:55:11,523 --> 00:55:14,543 Those that are written in the original language, Greek, 1074 00:55:14,543 --> 00:55:16,902 and those that are written in other languages, 1075 00:55:16,902 --> 00:55:21,041 or translations of the Greek into other languages. 1076 00:55:21,041 --> 00:55:23,542 And those are typically called versions. 1077 00:55:23,542 --> 00:55:26,383 The vast majority of these are not complete New Testaments. 1078 00:55:26,383 --> 00:55:28,687 We only have about 60 that are 1079 00:55:28,687 --> 00:55:31,041 complete New Testament manuscripts. 1080 00:55:31,041 --> 00:55:34,143 But the vast majority of them also are very large. 1081 00:55:34,143 --> 00:55:36,666 The average Greek New Testament manuscript 1082 00:55:36,666 --> 00:55:39,763 is more than 450 pages long. 1083 00:55:39,763 --> 00:55:41,513 So they're big texts. 1084 00:55:43,124 --> 00:55:46,902 And we have well over two million pages 1085 00:55:46,902 --> 00:55:49,450 of Greek manuscripts, hand-written manuscripts, 1086 00:55:49,450 --> 00:55:52,607 from before the time of the printing press, 1087 00:55:52,607 --> 00:55:55,343 and they come pretty early on. 1088 00:55:55,343 --> 00:55:56,964 Starting in the second century, 1089 00:55:56,964 --> 00:55:59,620 we have as many as a dozen manuscripts. 1090 00:55:59,620 --> 00:56:04,180 The earliest, to date, is still considered P-52, 1091 00:56:04,180 --> 00:56:08,026 which is at Manchester University in Manchester, England. 1092 00:56:08,026 --> 00:56:10,447 - P-52 still stands today as one of our earliest 1093 00:56:10,447 --> 00:56:13,462 New Testament manuscripts, maybe even still the earliest. 1094 00:56:13,462 --> 00:56:15,712 Dated around 100 to 125 AD, 1095 00:56:17,647 --> 00:56:20,447 and it's a little fragment of John 18. 1096 00:56:20,447 --> 00:56:21,947 Once that manuscript was discovered, 1097 00:56:21,947 --> 00:56:23,722 they realized that the dating of John 1098 00:56:23,722 --> 00:56:26,116 had to be much earlier than even that manuscript. 1099 00:56:26,116 --> 00:56:27,556 Which ended up putting the dating 1100 00:56:27,556 --> 00:56:28,922 well into the first century. 1101 00:56:28,922 --> 00:56:30,623 - So it's just a small fragment. 1102 00:56:30,623 --> 00:56:33,002 It's about the size of a credit card. 1103 00:56:33,002 --> 00:56:34,959 But it proves that the Gospel of John 1104 00:56:34,959 --> 00:56:36,863 existed before that time. 1105 00:56:36,863 --> 00:56:40,358 And for almost 100 years up until then, 1106 00:56:40,358 --> 00:56:43,183 there was European scholarship that argued 1107 00:56:43,183 --> 00:56:45,476 that the Gospel of John could not have been written 1108 00:56:45,476 --> 00:56:49,895 before 160, and should have been written at about 170. 1109 00:56:49,895 --> 00:56:52,820 When this scrap of papyrus was discovered 1110 00:56:52,820 --> 00:56:55,983 in 1934 at Manchester University, 1111 00:56:55,983 --> 00:56:59,958 it sent two tons of German scholarship to the flames. 1112 00:56:59,958 --> 00:57:02,522 Here was an ounce of evidence that proved a pound 1113 00:57:02,522 --> 00:57:04,783 of presumption dead wrong. 1114 00:57:04,783 --> 00:57:07,322 And that's what Christians have, is we have lots 1115 00:57:07,322 --> 00:57:09,905 and lots of ounces of evidence. 1116 00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:14,623 - We have to recognize a problem. 1117 00:57:14,623 --> 00:57:18,522 The original autographs, written by the apostles, are gone. 1118 00:57:18,522 --> 00:57:19,605 Lost to time. 1119 00:57:20,943 --> 00:57:25,599 What we have are the thousands of copies that survive. 1120 00:57:25,599 --> 00:57:27,939 But is that enough? 1121 00:57:27,939 --> 00:57:31,139 Can we really rely on the Bible if we don't even have 1122 00:57:31,139 --> 00:57:32,972 the very first copies? 1123 00:57:34,179 --> 00:57:36,676 - One of the most common questions I receive is: 1124 00:57:36,676 --> 00:57:38,977 what good is a belief in an errancy if an errancy 1125 00:57:38,977 --> 00:57:40,662 only applies to the original autographs, 1126 00:57:40,662 --> 00:57:41,844 and we don't have the original autographs, 1127 00:57:41,844 --> 00:57:43,930 so how can we believe in an errancy. 1128 00:57:43,930 --> 00:57:46,532 But I think that objection makes a fundament mistake. 1129 00:57:46,532 --> 00:57:49,647 It assumes that, when we talk about the original text 1130 00:57:49,647 --> 00:57:52,270 that thinks of it as only a physical object. 1131 00:57:52,270 --> 00:57:54,554 As if we have to have the actual autographs 1132 00:57:54,554 --> 00:57:56,314 in order to have access to the original texts, 1133 00:57:56,314 --> 00:57:57,850 and since those physical objects are lost, 1134 00:57:57,850 --> 00:58:00,268 therefore we don't have access to the original texts. 1135 00:58:00,268 --> 00:58:03,468 But the text, itself, the words of God, themselves, 1136 00:58:03,468 --> 00:58:05,167 aren't necessarily a physical object 1137 00:58:05,167 --> 00:58:06,689 that you can put in a museum. 1138 00:58:06,689 --> 00:58:08,430 The words of God can be preserved in other ways, 1139 00:58:08,430 --> 00:58:11,332 beyond just the autographs, and we think that's happened. 1140 00:58:11,332 --> 00:58:15,082 - You see, the more manuscripts or scrolls that you have, 1141 00:58:15,082 --> 00:58:18,155 the easier it is to reconstruct the original, 1142 00:58:18,155 --> 00:58:20,363 called the autographa, auto-grapha, 1143 00:58:20,363 --> 00:58:22,337 the autographa, the original, 1144 00:58:22,337 --> 00:58:25,457 and check out any errors or discrepancies. 1145 00:58:25,457 --> 00:58:29,050 And you try through the bibliographical test 1146 00:58:29,050 --> 00:58:31,974 to create what is called a pure text. 1147 00:58:31,974 --> 00:58:35,270 What percentage of the original texts do you know, 1148 00:58:35,270 --> 00:58:38,572 for sure, today, what percentage is a pure text? 1149 00:58:38,572 --> 00:58:40,490 - The problem is, the way I like to describe it is 1150 00:58:40,490 --> 00:58:43,790 that we have 105 percent of the text. 1151 00:58:43,790 --> 00:58:47,633 We have the text as it was, and then we have the variations 1152 00:58:47,633 --> 00:58:50,353 that have been introduced to the text, and text criticism 1153 00:58:50,353 --> 00:58:53,633 is the job of trying to pare off that 105 percent 1154 00:58:53,633 --> 00:58:56,216 down to what we originally had. 1155 00:58:57,230 --> 00:58:59,932 And the places where we're not sure are noted. 1156 00:58:59,932 --> 00:59:02,268 I tell people, you actually have the opportunity 1157 00:59:02,268 --> 00:59:03,910 to be a little bit of a textural critic, 1158 00:59:03,910 --> 00:59:06,332 because in some places in your Bible, 1159 00:59:06,332 --> 00:59:09,036 in the margin note, it will say "or", 1160 00:59:09,036 --> 00:59:11,422 or "some manuscripts say" and that's telling you 1161 00:59:11,422 --> 00:59:15,628 those places that are really the most discussed. 1162 00:59:15,628 --> 00:59:17,664 - A lot of the people out there talking about these things 1163 00:59:17,664 --> 00:59:20,316 sort of give the impression that every word is questioned, 1164 00:59:20,316 --> 00:59:22,401 and that's just simply not true. 1165 00:59:22,401 --> 00:59:24,604 At any level, it's not true. 1166 00:59:24,604 --> 00:59:27,187 99 percent of the text is sure. 1167 00:59:28,081 --> 00:59:29,822 There are, yes, there are some places 1168 00:59:29,822 --> 00:59:32,646 in the Greek text where we scratch our heads and go: 1169 00:59:32,646 --> 00:59:36,464 I don't, hm, I'm not sure which one it is. 1170 00:59:36,464 --> 00:59:39,286 They're called C-ratings, in our Bibles. 1171 00:59:39,286 --> 00:59:41,628 So things like spellings. 1172 00:59:41,628 --> 00:59:43,628 Is it Gadarenes or Gergesenes? 1173 00:59:43,628 --> 00:59:46,508 Is it Bethsaida, Bethzatha, or Bethesda? 1174 00:59:46,508 --> 00:59:49,675 Is the form of the verb esti or estin? 1175 00:59:50,844 --> 00:59:52,566 Is there an N sound on the end? 1176 00:59:52,566 --> 00:59:54,144 It doesn't affect the meaning at all, 1177 00:59:54,144 --> 00:59:56,144 but we can't really tell. 1178 00:59:56,144 --> 00:59:59,984 A lot of that is, that's what makes up that one percent. 1179 00:59:59,984 --> 01:00:02,828 99 percent of the text, we're very comfortable with. 1180 01:00:02,828 --> 01:00:04,806 This is what was originally said, 1181 01:00:04,806 --> 01:00:07,201 and just as importantly, that one percent 1182 01:00:07,201 --> 01:00:09,004 that we're not sure, doesn't bring 1183 01:00:09,004 --> 01:00:11,964 any major Christian doctrine into question. 1184 01:00:11,964 --> 01:00:14,748 There is simply is no major, and I don't even think 1185 01:00:14,748 --> 01:00:17,884 any minor, doctrine that's raising the question. 1186 01:00:17,884 --> 01:00:21,345 I mean, not many of us are gonna go to Heaven or Hell 1187 01:00:21,345 --> 01:00:24,245 based on whether it's Gadarenes or Gergesenes. 1188 01:00:24,245 --> 01:00:27,468 - Of the hundreds of thousands of textural variants 1189 01:00:27,468 --> 01:00:30,544 that we actually have, the smallest group 1190 01:00:30,544 --> 01:00:34,784 are those that are both meaningful and viable. 1191 01:00:34,784 --> 01:00:38,304 It's less than one-fifth of one percent 1192 01:00:38,304 --> 01:00:41,664 of all textural variants, and yet these are the ones 1193 01:00:41,664 --> 01:00:45,744 that Christians and non-Christians always hear about. 1194 01:00:45,744 --> 01:00:47,388 The ones that skeptics talk about. 1195 01:00:47,388 --> 01:00:51,676 The ones that make the news, because they're so interesting 1196 01:00:51,676 --> 01:00:53,921 and they seem to destroy the Christian faith, 1197 01:00:53,921 --> 01:00:55,724 or uphold the Christian faith. 1198 01:00:55,724 --> 01:00:58,044 It's a very small fraction. 1199 01:00:58,044 --> 01:01:00,382 - Well, you get textural variants of all kinds. 1200 01:01:00,382 --> 01:01:03,164 Perhaps the two most discussed in relationship 1201 01:01:03,164 --> 01:01:06,188 to the gospels is the percopi, where the woman's caught 1202 01:01:06,188 --> 01:01:09,424 in adultery in the middle of John, John, 1203 01:01:09,424 --> 01:01:11,366 the last part of seven and eight, 1204 01:01:11,366 --> 01:01:14,385 and then the ending to the Gospel of Mark. 1205 01:01:14,385 --> 01:01:16,726 - The only thing that is different about that passage 1206 01:01:16,726 --> 01:01:18,406 is that it is a longer one. 1207 01:01:18,406 --> 01:01:20,782 Most textural variants are a word or two, 1208 01:01:20,782 --> 01:01:22,806 whereas this is a whole unit. 1209 01:01:22,806 --> 01:01:25,366 In both of those cases, I would argue pretty strongly 1210 01:01:25,366 --> 01:01:29,533 that those units were not part of the original given by God. 1211 01:01:31,774 --> 01:01:35,761 But if you think that they are, nothing much depends on it. 1212 01:01:35,761 --> 01:01:37,286 If you think that they're not, 1213 01:01:37,286 --> 01:01:39,388 nothing much depends on it, either. 1214 01:01:39,388 --> 01:01:42,188 The message of the Bible is secure in any case. 1215 01:01:42,188 --> 01:01:45,068 - When skeptics talk about how we can't get back 1216 01:01:45,068 --> 01:01:47,745 to the original texts, because we don't have the original 1217 01:01:47,745 --> 01:01:51,468 manuscripts, they typically have never examined 1218 01:01:51,468 --> 01:01:54,364 the texts of Greco-Roman literature. 1219 01:01:54,364 --> 01:01:56,225 If they're right, that we can't get back 1220 01:01:56,225 --> 01:01:58,646 to the New Testament, then we might as well kiss 1221 01:01:58,646 --> 01:02:00,668 the ancient world goodbye, and the Middle Ages 1222 01:02:00,668 --> 01:02:02,222 would still be the dark ages. 1223 01:02:02,222 --> 01:02:03,868 We would never have the Renaissance, 1224 01:02:03,868 --> 01:02:06,604 because we can't possibly tell what these ancients said. 1225 01:02:06,604 --> 01:02:09,564 If we're gonna be skeptical about the New Testament, 1226 01:02:09,564 --> 01:02:12,646 on average, we should be a thousand times 1227 01:02:12,646 --> 01:02:16,146 more skeptical about Greco-Roman writings. 1228 01:02:17,363 --> 01:02:20,486 - The textural richness of what is found 1229 01:02:20,486 --> 01:02:23,948 in the New Testament and now in the Old Testament 1230 01:02:23,948 --> 01:02:26,284 with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1231 01:02:26,284 --> 01:02:27,644 is really very remarkable. 1232 01:02:27,644 --> 01:02:29,265 It's utterly unique from documentation 1233 01:02:29,265 --> 01:02:30,401 from the ancient world. 1234 01:02:30,401 --> 01:02:32,428 So God in his providence has been wonderful 1235 01:02:32,428 --> 01:02:34,044 in providing so much. 1236 01:02:34,044 --> 01:02:35,868 We would be at fault if we criticized him 1237 01:02:35,868 --> 01:02:38,646 for not providing infallible copies with new miracles 1238 01:02:38,646 --> 01:02:41,646 every time somebody picked up a pen. 1239 01:02:43,236 --> 01:02:45,228 - How did the church come to embrace 1240 01:02:45,228 --> 01:02:47,265 these New Testament books? 1241 01:02:47,265 --> 01:02:49,843 Were they chosen out of a list? 1242 01:02:49,843 --> 01:02:52,668 Did a council determine their worth? 1243 01:02:52,668 --> 01:02:55,441 As the church grows and the religion formalizes, 1244 01:02:55,441 --> 01:02:56,774 what is the God? 1245 01:02:57,846 --> 01:03:00,596 Who gives authority to the Bible? 1246 01:03:02,428 --> 01:03:04,844 - There's a perception again, out there in the world today, 1247 01:03:04,844 --> 01:03:07,121 whether in popular literature or on the internet, 1248 01:03:07,121 --> 01:03:09,345 that there were votes that took place in councils, 1249 01:03:09,345 --> 01:03:11,606 and that people put, picked these books, 1250 01:03:11,606 --> 01:03:13,424 and that there was some shady deal going on 1251 01:03:13,424 --> 01:03:15,686 in a smoke-filled room where one book barely got 1252 01:03:15,686 --> 01:03:17,564 in by a vote and some books got out. 1253 01:03:17,564 --> 01:03:19,644 And I can tell you all of that is a misunderstanding 1254 01:03:19,644 --> 01:03:22,284 of the way things happened in the early church. 1255 01:03:22,284 --> 01:03:23,926 The fact of the matter is, when it comes to most 1256 01:03:23,926 --> 01:03:25,964 of the books of the New Testament, again, 1257 01:03:25,964 --> 01:03:29,104 probably 22, 23 out of the 27, there was never 1258 01:03:29,104 --> 01:03:31,765 any real discussion about them. 1259 01:03:31,765 --> 01:03:33,164 There was never any real debate about them. 1260 01:03:33,164 --> 01:03:34,908 There was never any sense that you had to decide 1261 01:03:34,908 --> 01:03:37,324 on which books these were. 1262 01:03:37,324 --> 01:03:40,321 These were the books that were simply handed down 1263 01:03:40,321 --> 01:03:42,704 to the early church, in fact, that language, 1264 01:03:42,704 --> 01:03:45,345 handed down, we see used in numerous places, 1265 01:03:45,345 --> 01:03:47,724 throughout the second century, where early church fathers 1266 01:03:47,724 --> 01:03:50,483 refer to these books as the books that were passed down 1267 01:03:50,483 --> 01:03:52,886 to them, that were given to them by the apostles, 1268 01:03:52,886 --> 01:03:55,708 that were ones that the church had always known. 1269 01:03:55,708 --> 01:03:58,787 - You have these documents produced in the first century AD. 1270 01:03:58,787 --> 01:04:00,881 By the second century AD, we had a collection 1271 01:04:00,881 --> 01:04:03,148 of the four canonical gospels, 1272 01:04:03,148 --> 01:04:04,486 and a collection of Paul's letters. 1273 01:04:04,486 --> 01:04:05,846 This we know. 1274 01:04:05,846 --> 01:04:07,846 In the second century AD, these were already 1275 01:04:07,846 --> 01:04:10,444 considered sacred texts, and you already have 1276 01:04:10,444 --> 01:04:13,265 house churches, where people are saying, 1277 01:04:13,265 --> 01:04:16,464 bishops are saying: we're not gonna read 1278 01:04:16,464 --> 01:04:19,504 from any text from the lectern, 1279 01:04:19,504 --> 01:04:22,042 or at the meeting, except our sacred texts 1280 01:04:22,042 --> 01:04:24,784 or the sacred texts of the Old Testament. 1281 01:04:24,784 --> 01:04:26,908 - There were criteria that the church used to 1282 01:04:26,908 --> 01:04:30,716 recognize these, and these criteria are essentially three: 1283 01:04:30,716 --> 01:04:33,441 apostolicity, which means the book is either written 1284 01:04:33,441 --> 01:04:36,163 by an apostle or an associate of an apostle. 1285 01:04:36,163 --> 01:04:38,643 And that's the most important criterion. 1286 01:04:38,643 --> 01:04:40,784 Secondly is orthodoxy. 1287 01:04:40,784 --> 01:04:43,878 Does the book conform to what we know to be true 1288 01:04:43,878 --> 01:04:46,620 from the other books that we know to be inspired? 1289 01:04:46,620 --> 01:04:48,684 The gospels were the very first ones, almost surely, 1290 01:04:48,684 --> 01:04:50,124 to be accepted. 1291 01:04:50,124 --> 01:04:53,841 We don't have any period when there was a time 1292 01:04:53,841 --> 01:04:56,339 when there was any hint that they were not accepted. 1293 01:04:56,339 --> 01:04:59,244 And then the third criterion is catholicity. 1294 01:04:59,244 --> 01:05:00,870 That doesn't mean Roman Catholic, 1295 01:05:00,870 --> 01:05:04,444 it means accepted by the majority of the churches. 1296 01:05:04,444 --> 01:05:06,875 Now, there's some that would be considered orthodox, 1297 01:05:06,875 --> 01:05:09,259 like the Epistle of Barnabas. 1298 01:05:09,259 --> 01:05:11,925 And that may be a first century document, 1299 01:05:11,925 --> 01:05:14,502 late first century document, but the church 1300 01:05:14,502 --> 01:05:16,940 recognized early on that the Epistle of Barnabas 1301 01:05:16,940 --> 01:05:18,960 was not written by Barnabas. 1302 01:05:18,960 --> 01:05:21,820 Any time the church recognized that a book 1303 01:05:21,820 --> 01:05:24,268 was not written by the name that it claims 1304 01:05:24,268 --> 01:05:27,250 to be written by, automatically it got rejected. 1305 01:05:27,250 --> 01:05:29,614 - When it was discovered that some deacon 1306 01:05:29,614 --> 01:05:33,614 had produced the letter to the Laodecians, the bishop said: 1307 01:05:33,614 --> 01:05:37,635 not only are we not reading these in church, 1308 01:05:37,635 --> 01:05:41,454 we're defrocking you for producing false documents. 1309 01:05:41,454 --> 01:05:44,355 - And the first person to name the books 1310 01:05:44,355 --> 01:05:46,771 that make up our New Testament was Athenasius, 1311 01:05:46,771 --> 01:05:50,595 and he did it in 367 AD in a letter on Easter, 1312 01:05:50,595 --> 01:05:52,696 that was written in that year. 1313 01:05:52,696 --> 01:05:55,534 Irenaeus, writing long before Athenasius, 1314 01:05:55,534 --> 01:05:57,912 talks about four gospels, he talks about Acts, 1315 01:05:57,912 --> 01:05:59,934 he talks about the Pauline Epistles, 1316 01:05:59,934 --> 01:06:02,488 he talks about First John and First Peter, 1317 01:06:02,488 --> 01:06:04,274 that's the bulk of your New Testament, 1318 01:06:04,274 --> 01:06:06,974 clearly being seen and utilized as inspired 1319 01:06:06,974 --> 01:06:08,856 and valuable to the church, 1320 01:06:08,856 --> 01:06:10,835 at the end of the second century. 1321 01:06:10,835 --> 01:06:12,949 But what's interesting is, if you go a little earlier, 1322 01:06:12,949 --> 01:06:14,872 if you go to the first part of the second century, 1323 01:06:14,872 --> 01:06:16,766 or the middle part of the second century, 1324 01:06:16,766 --> 01:06:18,574 and you read what's written there, 1325 01:06:18,574 --> 01:06:21,752 what you see are writers who may have access 1326 01:06:21,752 --> 01:06:24,674 to one gospel or two, they may have access to one, 1327 01:06:24,674 --> 01:06:26,792 two, or three of the Pauline Epistles, 1328 01:06:26,792 --> 01:06:28,931 but they aren't thinking of the New Testament 1329 01:06:28,931 --> 01:06:31,416 the way we think about it, because they only had 1330 01:06:31,416 --> 01:06:34,376 exposure and access to some of the works. 1331 01:06:34,376 --> 01:06:36,211 They hadn't, some of the works hadn't circulated 1332 01:06:36,211 --> 01:06:37,934 across the church yet. 1333 01:06:37,934 --> 01:06:39,314 - When you look at the state of the canon 1334 01:06:39,314 --> 01:06:41,694 in the early church, there's two important 1335 01:06:41,694 --> 01:06:43,192 facts to get right about it. 1336 01:06:43,192 --> 01:06:44,952 One is to recognize that very early, 1337 01:06:44,952 --> 01:06:47,416 there was a core collection of books 1338 01:06:47,416 --> 01:06:50,312 that the church recognized almost out of the gate. 1339 01:06:50,312 --> 01:06:52,373 What that means is, by the second century, 1340 01:06:52,373 --> 01:06:57,336 we've got 22, maybe 23 out of the 27 books, already there. 1341 01:06:57,336 --> 01:06:59,672 That's one thing to recognize, but there's a second thing 1342 01:06:59,672 --> 01:07:01,134 to recognize, and that is that there were 1343 01:07:01,134 --> 01:07:02,478 some books that were disputed. 1344 01:07:02,478 --> 01:07:04,254 We have some books that, you know, we can call 1345 01:07:04,254 --> 01:07:06,396 the books around the edges, or the peripheral books. 1346 01:07:06,396 --> 01:07:08,936 The smaller books that there was some more controversy about 1347 01:07:08,936 --> 01:07:10,755 and these would be books like Second Peter, 1348 01:07:10,755 --> 01:07:13,850 and James, and Jude, and Second and Third John. 1349 01:07:13,850 --> 01:07:16,396 And there was some controversy about some of these books. 1350 01:07:16,396 --> 01:07:18,456 There was some discussion about them. 1351 01:07:18,456 --> 01:07:19,918 The kind of books that typically 1352 01:07:19,918 --> 01:07:22,019 were disputed were little books. 1353 01:07:22,019 --> 01:07:23,358 And this is noteworthy. 1354 01:07:23,358 --> 01:07:25,038 Small books, for obvious reasons, 1355 01:07:25,038 --> 01:07:27,400 were not as impactful in the literature of the day. 1356 01:07:27,400 --> 01:07:30,659 They weren't read as often, they weren't as widely known. 1357 01:07:30,659 --> 01:07:33,762 They were cited less, so that they weren't familiar 1358 01:07:33,762 --> 01:07:35,289 across different geographical regions, 1359 01:07:35,289 --> 01:07:36,807 so it would take more time to recognize these books, 1360 01:07:36,807 --> 01:07:38,015 and you can understand why they 1361 01:07:38,015 --> 01:07:40,952 might be disputed more than others. 1362 01:07:40,952 --> 01:07:42,312 And here's what's interesting. 1363 01:07:42,312 --> 01:07:44,072 Despite occasional challenges here and there, 1364 01:07:44,072 --> 01:07:47,107 once the church had reached a consensus on these 27 books, 1365 01:07:47,107 --> 01:07:49,733 that consensus has been wide and longstanding. 1366 01:07:49,733 --> 01:07:51,032 And I think that's an encouraging 1367 01:07:51,032 --> 01:07:52,312 truth for us as Christians. 1368 01:07:52,312 --> 01:07:54,195 We can look at the church through the ages 1369 01:07:54,195 --> 01:07:56,094 with a great deal of unanimity around these books. 1370 01:07:56,094 --> 01:07:58,935 Not absolute unanimity, where there's never an objection 1371 01:07:58,935 --> 01:08:01,815 from any quarter, but a predominant unity, 1372 01:08:01,815 --> 01:08:04,549 which I think is evidence of the Spirit's work in the church 1373 01:08:04,549 --> 01:08:09,534 to receive these 27 books and just these 27 books. 1374 01:08:09,534 --> 01:08:11,507 - Why don't we include some of these other books, 1375 01:08:11,507 --> 01:08:13,992 like the Gospel of Thomas or Philip or Mary? 1376 01:08:13,992 --> 01:08:18,414 Or Third Corinthians, or Paul's letter to the Laodiceans? 1377 01:08:18,414 --> 01:08:22,286 Or the Acts of Paul or the Revelation of John? 1378 01:08:22,286 --> 01:08:24,152 There's a second Revelation of John, 1379 01:08:24,152 --> 01:08:25,797 besides the one that's in the New Testament, 1380 01:08:25,797 --> 01:08:27,726 or the Revelation of Peter. 1381 01:08:27,726 --> 01:08:30,754 Why don't we include these books in the New Testament? 1382 01:08:30,754 --> 01:08:34,072 There's a fundamental reason why none of those are included, 1383 01:08:34,072 --> 01:08:37,614 and that is: they are not first century documents. 1384 01:08:37,614 --> 01:08:40,152 So they could not have been written by an apostle, 1385 01:08:40,152 --> 01:08:42,014 or an associate of an apostle. 1386 01:08:42,014 --> 01:08:46,094 That right there excludes all of these documents. 1387 01:08:46,094 --> 01:08:48,186 - What makes Thomas such an interesting work, 1388 01:08:48,186 --> 01:08:51,109 we think it's a second century work of some kind, 1389 01:08:51,109 --> 01:08:54,410 is that it seems to have one element of sources 1390 01:08:54,410 --> 01:08:56,506 feeding into it that do come from Jesus, 1391 01:08:56,506 --> 01:08:58,549 and another set of materials 1392 01:08:58,549 --> 01:09:00,183 that is coming from somewhere else. 1393 01:09:00,183 --> 01:09:02,106 It's what I call a hybrid gospel. 1394 01:09:02,106 --> 01:09:04,709 And that's why it didn't make it into the canon, 1395 01:09:04,709 --> 01:09:07,488 is because what is represented by the hybrid 1396 01:09:07,488 --> 01:09:09,929 is not a representation of the kind of orthodox 1397 01:09:09,929 --> 01:09:12,729 Christianity the other gospels reflect. 1398 01:09:12,729 --> 01:09:15,269 Most scholars think that the Gospel of Thomas, 1399 01:09:15,269 --> 01:09:18,009 while it contains some really early material, 1400 01:09:18,009 --> 01:09:20,629 was not assembled until the second century, AD. 1401 01:09:20,629 --> 01:09:24,106 And the reason they assume that is because it seems 1402 01:09:24,106 --> 01:09:26,768 to know all four canonical gospels. 1403 01:09:26,768 --> 01:09:28,809 Well, where could a person have been 1404 01:09:28,809 --> 01:09:31,309 to have had access to all four 1405 01:09:32,288 --> 01:09:33,989 canonical gospels, together at one time? 1406 01:09:33,989 --> 01:09:37,210 That surely didn't happen before the second century AD. 1407 01:09:37,210 --> 01:09:41,168 - The Gospel of Thomas has, in its last logion, 1408 01:09:41,168 --> 01:09:45,335 or last saying, something that scholars are embarrassed by, 1409 01:09:46,368 --> 01:09:48,649 those who want it to go into our New Testament, 1410 01:09:48,649 --> 01:09:50,329 they're embarrassed, or they really 1411 01:09:50,329 --> 01:09:52,181 should be embarrassed by it. 1412 01:09:52,181 --> 01:09:53,463 Peter starts out bey saying, 1413 01:09:53,463 --> 01:09:56,688 let Mary, namely Mary Magdalene, go out from us, 1414 01:09:56,688 --> 01:09:59,863 because women are not worthy of the life. 1415 01:09:59,863 --> 01:10:01,386 And then Jesus responds and he says: 1416 01:10:01,386 --> 01:10:03,109 look, I'm gonna change her into a male 1417 01:10:03,109 --> 01:10:04,746 so she'll look like you guys, 1418 01:10:04,746 --> 01:10:07,290 so that she can make it into heaven just like you guys. 1419 01:10:07,290 --> 01:10:09,305 Because any woman who makes herself 1420 01:10:09,305 --> 01:10:11,888 into a male is gonna get saved. 1421 01:10:13,306 --> 01:10:14,309 That, really? 1422 01:10:14,309 --> 01:10:16,976 Is that how we should view this? 1423 01:10:17,829 --> 01:10:19,209 - Let me tell you how the canon 1424 01:10:19,209 --> 01:10:20,848 of the New Testament was not produced. 1425 01:10:20,848 --> 01:10:24,503 It was not produced by the Emperor Constantine, 1426 01:10:24,503 --> 01:10:27,530 the supposed bad guy, getting a bunch of people together 1427 01:10:27,530 --> 01:10:29,546 and saying: you need to get your act together. 1428 01:10:29,546 --> 01:10:31,130 Tell me, what are the sacred texts? 1429 01:10:31,130 --> 01:10:33,568 You all decide right here at the Council of Nicea, 1430 01:10:33,568 --> 01:10:35,141 and we're done. 1431 01:10:35,141 --> 01:10:39,029 The Da Vinci Code myth, 1432 01:10:39,029 --> 01:10:42,010 about how the New Testament was created is just that. 1433 01:10:42,010 --> 01:10:43,689 It's a myth; it's not historical fiction. 1434 01:10:43,689 --> 01:10:45,210 It's hysterical fiction. 1435 01:10:45,210 --> 01:10:48,327 - One main misconception is that the Council of Nicea 1436 01:10:48,327 --> 01:10:50,490 was where they chose the books of the New Testament canon, 1437 01:10:50,490 --> 01:10:52,215 and in my field, I hear that all the time. 1438 01:10:52,215 --> 01:10:53,282 That no one knew what books to read, 1439 01:10:53,282 --> 01:10:54,960 and then finally, with Constantine's help, 1440 01:10:54,960 --> 01:10:56,917 we got it figured out at Nicea. 1441 01:10:56,917 --> 01:10:58,400 That is patently false. 1442 01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:00,514 There is no evidence at all that the New Testament canon 1443 01:11:00,514 --> 01:11:02,160 was a topic of conversation at Nicea, 1444 01:11:02,160 --> 01:11:04,538 and so there's no reason to think Nicea really has 1445 01:11:04,538 --> 01:11:06,757 anything to do with what books we're reading now. 1446 01:11:06,757 --> 01:11:10,618 The council at Nicea was about how to best articulate 1447 01:11:10,618 --> 01:11:13,620 the divinity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus, 1448 01:11:13,620 --> 01:11:15,954 so when we did articulate it, we made sense 1449 01:11:15,954 --> 01:11:18,980 and got it right and reflected the true reasons of scripture 1450 01:11:18,980 --> 01:11:21,578 and didn't contradict ourselves. 1451 01:11:21,578 --> 01:11:24,048 - When it comes to the question of the canon 1452 01:11:24,048 --> 01:11:26,197 of the New Testament or what books belong 1453 01:11:26,197 --> 01:11:28,938 in the New Testament, there are two broad views 1454 01:11:28,938 --> 01:11:30,757 within Christendom. 1455 01:11:30,757 --> 01:11:34,816 One is that it's an authoritative list of books. 1456 01:11:34,816 --> 01:11:39,034 The other is that it's a list of authoritative books. 1457 01:11:39,034 --> 01:11:41,957 If it's an authoritative list of books, then that means 1458 01:11:41,957 --> 01:11:45,797 there is some authority over the New Testament, 1459 01:11:45,797 --> 01:11:49,056 that it establishes what the New Testament is. 1460 01:11:49,056 --> 01:11:52,314 That's the Catholic view, that's the Greek Orthodox view. 1461 01:11:52,314 --> 01:11:54,311 If it's a list of authoritative books, 1462 01:11:54,311 --> 01:11:57,477 then there is no authority over the New Testament 1463 01:11:57,477 --> 01:12:00,791 that establishes the New Testament as our final authority. 1464 01:12:00,791 --> 01:12:03,111 Instead, it's the final authority. 1465 01:12:03,111 --> 01:12:05,097 - You know, I think the very first thing to recognize 1466 01:12:05,097 --> 01:12:09,018 about the authority of scripture is that the word "author" 1467 01:12:09,018 --> 01:12:11,354 is right there in the center of the word "authority". 1468 01:12:11,354 --> 01:12:13,749 So the foundation for the authority of scripture 1469 01:12:13,749 --> 01:12:16,496 can never be scripture, and it can never be the church, 1470 01:12:16,496 --> 01:12:18,871 even as the believing community receiving scripture. 1471 01:12:18,871 --> 01:12:22,149 It goes back by the very word to the author. 1472 01:12:22,149 --> 01:12:25,676 The ultimate author of scripture being God, himself. 1473 01:12:25,676 --> 01:12:27,834 - The Bible has authority in the sense 1474 01:12:27,834 --> 01:12:30,084 that it is the word of God. 1475 01:12:32,537 --> 01:12:34,869 And therefore, the authority is not so much 1476 01:12:34,869 --> 01:12:38,037 in the black and white letters that we are seeing 1477 01:12:38,037 --> 01:12:42,204 in that book, but in the God who has communicated with us. 1478 01:12:59,754 --> 01:13:03,936 - If you remember when Jesus was being tempted by Satan 1479 01:13:03,936 --> 01:13:07,111 in the wilderness, in the very first temptation, 1480 01:13:07,111 --> 01:13:09,354 Satan says: look, Jesus, I know you're hungry. 1481 01:13:09,354 --> 01:13:12,416 You've been out here fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, 1482 01:13:12,416 --> 01:13:16,058 and I know that you have the power to turn 1483 01:13:16,058 --> 01:13:20,736 those stones into bread and to sate your hunger. 1484 01:13:20,736 --> 01:13:24,757 And Jesus responds to Satan by quoting Moses, 1485 01:13:24,757 --> 01:13:28,924 from Deuteronomy: man shall not live by bread alone. 1486 01:13:31,353 --> 01:13:32,353 But by what? 1487 01:13:33,194 --> 01:13:37,269 Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 1488 01:13:37,269 --> 01:13:39,237 And I think that when Paul says: 1489 01:13:39,237 --> 01:13:41,570 all scripture, God breathed. 1490 01:13:42,677 --> 01:13:43,994 Just listen to that: 1491 01:13:43,994 --> 01:13:47,536 every word that comes from the mouth of God. 1492 01:13:47,536 --> 01:13:51,637 I think Paul has Jesus and Moses in his mind, 1493 01:13:51,637 --> 01:13:53,098 when he says that. 1494 01:13:53,098 --> 01:13:55,994 So there you see Moses view of biblical authority, 1495 01:13:55,994 --> 01:13:57,831 Jesus's view of biblical authority, 1496 01:13:57,831 --> 01:14:00,069 Paul's view of biblical authority, 1497 01:14:00,069 --> 01:14:01,819 in three Greek words. 1498 01:14:03,216 --> 01:14:05,716 - If the Bible is reliable, the questions 1499 01:14:05,716 --> 01:14:09,978 to the canon answered, the means of inspiration understood, 1500 01:14:09,978 --> 01:14:12,416 how do we interpret it? 1501 01:14:12,416 --> 01:14:14,016 Are there true interpretations, 1502 01:14:14,016 --> 01:14:16,836 or is there just a sea of opinions? 1503 01:14:16,836 --> 01:14:18,938 Is the Bible a book locked in mystery, 1504 01:14:18,938 --> 01:14:21,481 only opened to the religious elite, 1505 01:14:21,481 --> 01:14:23,440 or can an ordinary person sit down 1506 01:14:23,440 --> 01:14:27,440 and know what the living God has to say to them? 1507 01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:31,380 - Before the Reformation came, 1508 01:14:31,380 --> 01:14:34,602 a church service would have been very pedantic. 1509 01:14:34,602 --> 01:14:36,519 It would have been ritualistic, 1510 01:14:36,519 --> 01:14:39,936 and unfortunately, often, not understood. 1511 01:14:41,962 --> 01:14:44,378 You must understand that in Catholic theology, 1512 01:14:44,378 --> 01:14:48,999 the idea is that the ritual itself, the Mass itself, 1513 01:14:48,999 --> 01:14:52,320 has validity, and therefore people don't even have 1514 01:14:52,320 --> 01:14:54,039 to understand what is going on. 1515 01:14:54,039 --> 01:14:56,160 That's why the Mass was done in Latin. 1516 01:14:56,160 --> 01:14:58,538 It didn't matter if you understood it. 1517 01:14:58,538 --> 01:15:01,162 As long as you were there, as long as you were 1518 01:15:01,162 --> 01:15:03,840 participating, as long as somehow you were 1519 01:15:03,840 --> 01:15:07,860 spiritually connected, you did not need to know 1520 01:15:07,860 --> 01:15:11,443 what the words were that were being spoken. 1521 01:15:12,458 --> 01:15:14,597 - The Catholic church's attitude to the scriptures 1522 01:15:14,597 --> 01:15:16,378 in the run up to the 16th century 1523 01:15:16,378 --> 01:15:19,159 and during the 16th century is quite intriguing. 1524 01:15:19,159 --> 01:15:22,560 Certainly the intellectual hierarchy of the church 1525 01:15:22,560 --> 01:15:25,218 regarded the scriptures as important. 1526 01:15:25,218 --> 01:15:27,317 One of the reasons they weren't keen on laypeople 1527 01:15:27,317 --> 01:15:29,840 reading the scriptures was they regarded them 1528 01:15:29,840 --> 01:15:32,400 as important and had a concern that the scriptures 1529 01:15:32,400 --> 01:15:36,378 would be abused if they fell into the hands of laypeople. 1530 01:15:36,378 --> 01:15:39,642 On the other hand, however, the Catholic church, 1531 01:15:39,642 --> 01:15:43,809 at I believe, a demotic level, at a grassroots level, 1532 01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:47,322 did not have a high view of the scriptures. 1533 01:15:47,322 --> 01:15:51,698 The scriptures did not feature highly in the piety 1534 01:15:51,698 --> 01:15:54,058 of your typical parish priest. 1535 01:15:54,058 --> 01:15:57,562 Didn't feature highly in the liturgical practices 1536 01:15:57,562 --> 01:15:58,729 of the church. 1537 01:16:00,277 --> 01:16:02,298 There were, of course, very low literacy rates 1538 01:16:02,298 --> 01:16:06,538 in Europe at that time, so no book functioned 1539 01:16:06,538 --> 01:16:10,705 particularly significantly in the life of ordinary people. 1540 01:16:12,847 --> 01:16:15,655 - One of the chief things that Reformers wanted to recover 1541 01:16:15,655 --> 01:16:19,536 about the Bible was the sense of its clarity. 1542 01:16:19,536 --> 01:16:20,869 Its perspicuity. 1543 01:16:21,834 --> 01:16:24,496 It really wasn't a debate that the Bible was authoritative. 1544 01:16:24,496 --> 01:16:27,936 Everyone in Christendom understood that it was inspired 1545 01:16:27,936 --> 01:16:31,017 and it was infallible, or they would have used 1546 01:16:31,017 --> 01:16:34,944 some term similar to that, but it was often the clarity. 1547 01:16:34,944 --> 01:16:37,444 Do we have to rely on priests, 1548 01:16:39,136 --> 01:16:42,535 on a magisterium, on church tradition? 1549 01:16:42,535 --> 01:16:44,437 Now, we don't throw out those things. 1550 01:16:44,437 --> 01:16:46,377 We don't come to the scripture by ourselves. 1551 01:16:46,377 --> 01:16:49,216 We do want to stand on the shoulders of giants 1552 01:16:49,216 --> 01:16:52,960 to understand it, but of course, God wouldn't be God 1553 01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:55,856 and he wouldn't be good if he didn't communicate with us 1554 01:16:55,856 --> 01:16:59,237 in a way that we could understand, 1555 01:16:59,237 --> 01:17:02,117 since language is his idea anyways. 1556 01:17:02,117 --> 01:17:06,240 And since he saw fit to communicate and make himself known 1557 01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:09,918 in language, he wants to be understood. 1558 01:17:09,918 --> 01:17:12,138 And the doctrine of the clarity of scripture 1559 01:17:12,138 --> 01:17:14,997 asserts that if God wants to be understood, 1560 01:17:14,997 --> 01:17:17,330 he is able to be understood. 1561 01:17:18,418 --> 01:17:20,437 - Now, there are areas of the Bible 1562 01:17:20,437 --> 01:17:22,858 that are harder for us to grapple with. 1563 01:17:22,858 --> 01:17:26,938 You know, Peter says the same of Paul's writings. 1564 01:17:26,938 --> 01:17:28,656 He says, you know, some of the stuff 1565 01:17:28,656 --> 01:17:31,678 that he writes is not just real obvious. 1566 01:17:31,678 --> 01:17:33,298 Well, that's very helpful to me. 1567 01:17:33,298 --> 01:17:34,640 I'm glad he felt that way. 1568 01:17:34,640 --> 01:17:37,157 We studied Daniel recently, and Daniel, 1569 01:17:37,157 --> 01:17:39,957 you know, half, the second half of Daniel 1570 01:17:39,957 --> 01:17:42,248 was a great encouragement to me to realize that Daniel, 1571 01:17:42,248 --> 01:17:44,397 when he was on the receiving end of some 1572 01:17:44,397 --> 01:17:46,797 of these revelations actually fell on the floor 1573 01:17:46,797 --> 01:17:48,597 and then went to bed for two weeks 1574 01:17:48,597 --> 01:17:50,517 because he was so overwhelmed by it, 1575 01:17:50,517 --> 01:17:52,917 and he couldn't really figure it all out. 1576 01:17:52,917 --> 01:17:56,032 Now, that would be alarming if we were dealing 1577 01:17:56,032 --> 01:17:59,354 with main things and plain things, 1578 01:17:59,354 --> 01:18:03,521 but there are certain things that are even secrets to God, 1579 01:18:04,574 --> 01:18:07,056 as Deuteronomy 29:29 tells us. 1580 01:18:07,056 --> 01:18:09,712 You know, the things that have been revealed are there, 1581 01:18:09,712 --> 01:18:12,174 and with some work, with some hard work, 1582 01:18:12,174 --> 01:18:16,154 with some dependence upon the spirit of God, 1583 01:18:16,154 --> 01:18:19,077 with some help from those who are brighter than ourselves, 1584 01:18:19,077 --> 01:18:20,892 we'll be able to get to this. 1585 01:18:20,892 --> 01:18:23,058 Because the Bible actually is clear. 1586 01:18:23,058 --> 01:18:26,581 - Well, there are many, many wrong approaches to scripture. 1587 01:18:26,581 --> 01:18:28,261 Many individual examples. 1588 01:18:28,261 --> 01:18:31,578 For example, people sometimes cite Philippians four, 1589 01:18:31,578 --> 01:18:34,357 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 1590 01:18:34,357 --> 01:18:37,803 Which warrants them to do anything they really want to do. 1591 01:18:37,803 --> 01:18:41,498 Or a pastor can use it: we would like you 1592 01:18:41,498 --> 01:18:43,631 to teach such and such a Sunday school class. 1593 01:18:43,631 --> 01:18:44,789 Oh, I can't do that. 1594 01:18:44,789 --> 01:18:46,558 Oh, you can't say "can't"; you can do all things 1595 01:18:46,558 --> 01:18:48,082 through Christ who strengthens you. 1596 01:18:48,082 --> 01:18:50,818 - And the fact is: no you can't. 1597 01:18:50,818 --> 01:18:51,901 I can't sing. 1598 01:18:53,118 --> 01:18:55,319 And you know, I just can't sing. 1599 01:18:55,319 --> 01:18:57,276 That's not a gift that God gave me. 1600 01:18:57,276 --> 01:18:59,959 And I can't say, I mean, silly example, 1601 01:18:59,959 --> 01:19:02,978 but I can't do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 1602 01:19:02,978 --> 01:19:06,258 But the "all things" is pointing back 1603 01:19:06,258 --> 01:19:08,380 to what Paul just said, and Paul just said: 1604 01:19:08,380 --> 01:19:11,019 I am content in all circumstances. 1605 01:19:11,019 --> 01:19:12,402 Good times and bad. 1606 01:19:12,402 --> 01:19:14,199 Persecutions and not. 1607 01:19:14,199 --> 01:19:16,418 In having money and not having money. 1608 01:19:16,418 --> 01:19:20,059 I can do all these things, is what it really says. 1609 01:19:20,059 --> 01:19:22,878 I can do all these things through Christ who strengthens me. 1610 01:19:22,878 --> 01:19:25,420 So Paul's not just carte blanche saying: 1611 01:19:25,420 --> 01:19:28,220 Christians can do anything they want. 1612 01:19:28,220 --> 01:19:32,387 But Christians can learn to be content in all circumstances. 1613 01:19:33,819 --> 01:19:37,420 - We can't make one part of scripture say something 1614 01:19:37,420 --> 01:19:40,178 that contradicts the rest of scripture. 1615 01:19:40,178 --> 01:19:43,719 Therefore, if we are having difficulty with this section, 1616 01:19:43,719 --> 01:19:46,338 then perhaps we don't know the totality 1617 01:19:46,338 --> 01:19:48,818 of scripture well enough to be able to place 1618 01:19:48,818 --> 01:19:52,796 this properly and then to interpret it accurately. 1619 01:19:52,796 --> 01:19:57,479 - We can say, dogmatically, God loves the world. 1620 01:19:57,479 --> 01:20:00,418 We can say that without fear of being contradicted. 1621 01:20:00,418 --> 01:20:03,020 We may not know everything that we could know, 1622 01:20:03,020 --> 01:20:04,780 should know, would like to know 1623 01:20:04,780 --> 01:20:07,659 about the word "God", or even the word "loves", 1624 01:20:07,659 --> 01:20:10,140 or even the word "world", but nevertheless, 1625 01:20:10,140 --> 01:20:13,522 the proposition "God loves the world" is a faithful 1626 01:20:13,522 --> 01:20:17,378 interpretation of John three and many other passages. 1627 01:20:17,378 --> 01:20:19,698 - We have to make clear the difference between 1628 01:20:19,698 --> 01:20:21,858 meaning and significance. 1629 01:20:21,858 --> 01:20:24,258 Sometimes people have tried to point out, well, 1630 01:20:24,258 --> 01:20:27,508 look, you can hear 10 different sermons 1631 01:20:28,482 --> 01:20:31,900 about Jesus's encounter with the woman at the well, 1632 01:20:31,900 --> 01:20:34,599 and one preacher will make the text about evangelism 1633 01:20:34,599 --> 01:20:36,299 and another one about apologetics, 1634 01:20:36,299 --> 01:20:38,119 and another about confronting sin, 1635 01:20:38,119 --> 01:20:40,418 another about how to befriend strangers, 1636 01:20:40,418 --> 01:20:43,719 and someone will say: look, no one can agree on the meaning. 1637 01:20:43,719 --> 01:20:45,938 Well, no, the issue there is really significance. 1638 01:20:45,938 --> 01:20:49,959 The text of scripture will never be fully exhausted, 1639 01:20:49,959 --> 01:20:53,260 and any good preacher is going to find ways to apply it 1640 01:20:53,260 --> 01:20:55,980 in a number of different avenues. 1641 01:20:55,980 --> 01:20:59,313 But the meaning, nevertheless, is fixed. 1642 01:21:00,338 --> 01:21:04,759 That the meaning of the text is what the author intended 1643 01:21:04,759 --> 01:21:08,882 to communicate by that text, which, dealing with scripture, 1644 01:21:08,882 --> 01:21:12,300 uniquely, means there is both the intention 1645 01:21:12,300 --> 01:21:16,380 of the human author and sometimes even superseding that 1646 01:21:16,380 --> 01:21:18,578 in ways they may not have fully understood, 1647 01:21:18,578 --> 01:21:21,993 is the intention of the divine author. 1648 01:21:49,196 --> 01:21:51,058 - We work on the basis of evidence, 1649 01:21:51,058 --> 01:21:54,519 not on the basis of speculation or weird ideas 1650 01:21:54,519 --> 01:21:57,772 or philosophy, and whenever you argue 1651 01:21:57,772 --> 01:21:59,899 with somebody who is not a believer, 1652 01:21:59,899 --> 01:22:02,322 they almost always bring in non-evidence. 1653 01:22:02,322 --> 01:22:03,778 Well, God would not have done this. 1654 01:22:03,778 --> 01:22:05,719 Or this is really what I think happened. 1655 01:22:05,719 --> 01:22:08,338 It's just all speculation. 1656 01:22:08,338 --> 01:22:10,638 Let's look at what the evidence says. 1657 01:22:10,638 --> 01:22:13,042 Our faith is rooted in history. 1658 01:22:13,042 --> 01:22:16,300 And consequently, we need to use the evidence 1659 01:22:16,300 --> 01:22:18,060 and never be afraid of it. 1660 01:22:18,060 --> 01:22:21,543 - Half the battle of dealing with the trustworthiness 1661 01:22:21,543 --> 01:22:24,300 or reliability of the Bible is to know: 1662 01:22:24,300 --> 01:22:26,380 what are the subjects of the Bible. 1663 01:22:26,380 --> 01:22:28,540 And the subjects of the Bible are really pretty simple. 1664 01:22:28,540 --> 01:22:30,684 History, theology, and ethics. 1665 01:22:30,684 --> 01:22:34,562 The three major subjects of the Bible are history, 1666 01:22:34,562 --> 01:22:36,300 because we have a historical God 1667 01:22:36,300 --> 01:22:38,380 who intervenes in human history. 1668 01:22:38,380 --> 01:22:40,763 It's about theology, the character of God, 1669 01:22:40,763 --> 01:22:42,240 and the character of his people. 1670 01:22:42,240 --> 01:22:43,659 And it's about ethics. 1671 01:22:43,659 --> 01:22:47,643 How should we behave in response to all of that? 1672 01:22:47,643 --> 01:22:49,983 - It's very sad in our culture that we've seen 1673 01:22:49,983 --> 01:22:53,963 the body of Christ called, charged, and mandated 1674 01:22:53,963 --> 01:22:56,877 to proclaim and even defend the faith, 1675 01:22:56,877 --> 01:22:59,782 but in many quarters, the church has denied, 1676 01:22:59,782 --> 01:23:01,984 questioned the faith. 1677 01:23:01,984 --> 01:23:05,824 We're not to spin it, nuance it, change it, 1678 01:23:05,824 --> 01:23:09,324 undermine it, we're called to proclaim it. 1679 01:23:11,243 --> 01:23:13,421 - The church of Jesus Christ always faces 1680 01:23:13,421 --> 01:23:17,562 a tremendous temptation, and that is to deviate 1681 01:23:17,562 --> 01:23:19,904 from the word of God. 1682 01:23:19,904 --> 01:23:22,923 And when we do that, what happens? 1683 01:23:22,923 --> 01:23:25,581 First of all, we may get wrong doctrine, 1684 01:23:25,581 --> 01:23:29,104 because we no longer see the clarity of the deity 1685 01:23:29,104 --> 01:23:33,403 of Jesus Christ and the issues of salvation. 1686 01:23:33,403 --> 01:23:34,861 The other thing that's going to happen, 1687 01:23:34,861 --> 01:23:37,846 almost immediately, is there is going to be 1688 01:23:37,846 --> 01:23:41,302 a devaluation of moral teaching. 1689 01:23:41,302 --> 01:23:46,077 And pretty soon we begin to reason based on our own notions, 1690 01:23:46,077 --> 01:23:49,542 based on our own desires, and the word of God is there, 1691 01:23:49,542 --> 01:23:52,864 but it is not believed, it is not preached, 1692 01:23:52,864 --> 01:23:54,781 and it is not lived. 1693 01:23:54,781 --> 01:23:58,362 - Often, a contemporary drifting church is very comfortable. 1694 01:23:58,362 --> 01:24:02,000 What is preached may sound very orthodox. 1695 01:24:02,000 --> 01:24:05,302 But it doesn't challenge anybody. 1696 01:24:05,302 --> 01:24:07,981 It doesn't call them back to the gospel, 1697 01:24:07,981 --> 01:24:09,901 where they are drifting. 1698 01:24:09,901 --> 01:24:12,144 This saying is attributed to Martin Luther. 1699 01:24:12,144 --> 01:24:14,304 So many pungent sayings are. 1700 01:24:14,304 --> 01:24:15,981 I'm not sure if it comes from him or not, 1701 01:24:15,981 --> 01:24:17,680 but it's a true saying. 1702 01:24:17,680 --> 01:24:21,462 If you preach the gospel, at every point, 1703 01:24:21,462 --> 01:24:24,781 except where the gospel is being challenged, 1704 01:24:24,781 --> 01:24:27,302 you're not preaching the gospel at all. 1705 01:24:27,302 --> 01:24:29,184 If you preach the gospel to a church, 1706 01:24:29,184 --> 01:24:33,163 at every point except the place where they need it, 1707 01:24:33,163 --> 01:24:34,843 or the place they need to be called back 1708 01:24:34,843 --> 01:24:38,784 to obedience to God, you're not preaching the gospel. 1709 01:24:38,784 --> 01:24:39,617 At all. 1710 01:24:42,381 --> 01:24:45,920 - If you can get people to doubt the Bible, 1711 01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:50,003 then you will get them, sooner or later, to deny. 1712 01:24:52,800 --> 01:24:56,282 But you have to doubt first, before you can deny. 1713 01:24:56,282 --> 01:25:01,280 Then as they deny, then you're going to get them to disobey. 1714 01:25:01,280 --> 01:25:05,504 And that's worked so well since the Garden of Eden, 1715 01:25:05,504 --> 01:25:08,342 he hasn't had to change his tactics. 1716 01:25:08,342 --> 01:25:09,759 He still uses it. 1717 01:25:17,280 --> 01:25:19,447 - God made us for himself. 1718 01:25:21,181 --> 01:25:23,931 He has made us for his own glory. 1719 01:25:25,981 --> 01:25:30,148 He communicates with us, telling us how we ought to live. 1720 01:25:33,661 --> 01:25:37,828 Through his word, he has given us an entire library there, 1721 01:25:39,563 --> 01:25:43,840 to fit into quite a lot of the various words 1722 01:25:43,840 --> 01:25:48,064 in which we think, and all that is authoritative. 1723 01:25:48,064 --> 01:25:52,231 So we don't go to the Bible wanting to judge the scriptures. 1724 01:25:54,464 --> 01:25:58,480 We go to the Bible with a sense of submission. 1725 01:25:58,480 --> 01:26:03,184 Wanting to hear what the living God has to say to us. 1726 01:26:03,184 --> 01:26:04,767 And that's crucial. 1727 01:26:07,882 --> 01:26:11,901 I have a good friend who is famous for saying: 1728 01:26:11,901 --> 01:26:13,840 I love the word of God. 1729 01:26:13,840 --> 01:26:18,282 He loves it, and he does, he truly loves the Bible. 1730 01:26:18,282 --> 01:26:20,759 We're talking about it one day, and I said: 1731 01:26:20,759 --> 01:26:23,162 I have a question for you. 1732 01:26:23,162 --> 01:26:24,384 You love the Bible, don't you? 1733 01:26:24,384 --> 01:26:25,722 You love the word of God, don't you? 1734 01:26:25,722 --> 01:26:26,902 Yes I do. 1735 01:26:26,902 --> 01:26:29,485 I said: do you love its author? 1736 01:26:30,582 --> 01:26:34,144 And do you know that there's a difference? 1737 01:26:34,144 --> 01:26:36,592 And he just went blank. 1738 01:26:36,592 --> 01:26:38,560 It had never occurred to him that there 1739 01:26:38,560 --> 01:26:41,310 was something beyond Bible study. 1740 01:26:43,082 --> 01:26:46,363 - I've read from Genesis to Revelation in the Bible. 1741 01:26:46,363 --> 01:26:50,800 And not once does anyone ever have an encounter 1742 01:26:50,800 --> 01:26:53,802 with the true and living God and come away and say: 1743 01:26:53,802 --> 01:26:56,282 it was kind of boring and irrelevant. 1744 01:26:56,282 --> 01:26:59,728 He said: people encounter God and die. 1745 01:26:59,728 --> 01:27:03,803 They encounter God and they are paralyzed with fear. 1746 01:27:03,803 --> 01:27:06,923 They encounter God and they're overwhelmed with joy. 1747 01:27:06,923 --> 01:27:09,184 They encounter God and they cry because all their hopes 1748 01:27:09,184 --> 01:27:13,387 are realized, but nobody ever encounters God and says: 1749 01:27:13,387 --> 01:27:15,686 that was boring and irrelevant. 1750 01:27:15,686 --> 01:27:18,280 Well, when people say that about the Bible, it just says 1751 01:27:18,280 --> 01:27:20,827 to me they've not encountered the God of the Bible. 1752 01:27:20,827 --> 01:27:23,664 If you think the Bible is boring, 1753 01:27:23,664 --> 01:27:27,331 then either you don't realize what you need, 1754 01:27:28,638 --> 01:27:32,347 or you've never met the God that the Bible talks about. 1755 01:27:32,347 --> 01:27:35,227 And very frankly, I do think that there are a lot of people 1756 01:27:35,227 --> 01:27:39,206 that are preachers by profession that have never met God. 1757 01:27:39,206 --> 01:27:43,373 Or they'd never say his word is boring and irrelevant. 1758 01:27:47,707 --> 01:27:50,624 - I love the way Psalm 119 unfolds. 1759 01:27:51,686 --> 01:27:53,560 It's the longest chapter in the Bible, 1760 01:27:53,560 --> 01:27:55,504 and it's all about the word. 1761 01:27:55,504 --> 01:27:58,921 And you see there what the word produces. 1762 01:28:00,603 --> 01:28:02,270 It produces delight. 1763 01:28:04,267 --> 01:28:06,517 It produces desire for God. 1764 01:28:07,563 --> 01:28:09,396 It produces obedience. 1765 01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:15,024 So, sometimes it's helpful to look at a text like Psalm 119 1766 01:28:15,024 --> 01:28:18,326 and say: what does it look like and feel like? 1767 01:28:18,326 --> 01:28:21,707 What's the experience of the person, of the heart, 1768 01:28:21,707 --> 01:28:25,664 of the soul that's been captivated by the word of God? 1769 01:28:25,664 --> 01:28:27,728 And you see there they're singing the word, 1770 01:28:27,728 --> 01:28:31,606 they're storing up the word, they're treasuring God's word. 1771 01:28:31,606 --> 01:28:34,427 They have the greatest sense of delight in it. 1772 01:28:34,427 --> 01:28:37,344 They are pained when people don't follow it. 1773 01:28:37,344 --> 01:28:41,387 It's their greatest longing to obey it. 1774 01:28:41,387 --> 01:28:45,563 They see God's character and smile, and that's what we want. 1775 01:28:45,563 --> 01:28:50,283 That's why having the right view of scripture matters. 1776 01:28:50,283 --> 01:28:53,003 Because without it, we're going to come to 1777 01:28:53,003 --> 01:28:55,000 not only wrong conclusions about God and the gospel 1778 01:28:55,000 --> 01:28:58,144 and ourselves, but we won't think rightly, 1779 01:28:58,144 --> 01:29:00,683 we won't feel rightly, we won't be the sort 1780 01:29:00,683 --> 01:29:04,107 of human beings that God made us to be, 1781 01:29:04,107 --> 01:29:08,274 if we don't take him at his word, and understand all 1782 01:29:09,606 --> 01:29:13,227 that he means for us to know about himself.