Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Ha-foke-Bah Hebrew

Ha-foke-Bah English

Two weeks ago started a new Series called, “It’s Alive!”

This whole series is aimed at unpacking this one question, “Should we really trust the Bible to make sense of our lives?”

Can a book written to ancient people, to an ancient culture, to ancient problems and ancient needs really, really make sense of my life?

And to really probe deeper, Can we be confident that...

the Translation is accurate?

the Copyist did not change things?

the Books we have are the right ones?

the Original Authors were Reliable?

The Original Authors were Accurate?

These questions can’t be answered by just knowing the stories of the Bible you must know the story of how we got the Bible.

The problem is that most of you in this room have spent a lifetime learning the “stories of the bible” but not the story of how we got the Bible.

Last week we said that early followers of Yeshua who may have only had scraps of Scriptures thought it was...

Valuable & Reliable

Sacred & Inspired

Alive & Active

Scripture

Even if all they had were scraps and fragments because even though it was not written to them it understood them.

Transition to Bible: If I were to take a survey on how we got the Bible in this room I would probably get so many different answers I could fill up a book.

The story of how we came to accept the claim of

does not start with Genesis but with Yeshua.

The story of how we came to accept that “all Scripture is inspired by God” does not start with Genesis but with Yeshua.

Remember that for a long time you could not just get a Bible wrapped and with maps.

They did not have copies of the Scriptures just lying around.

Here is the thing, in the first century the Scriptures were important to the Jewish community but there was a growing interest in tradition, ritual and the teaching of the elders that diverted attention away from the Scriptures.

By the first century and definitely the second century tradition and the teaching of elders was also considered “inspired” as oral teaching but Yeshua and his disciples said only “Scripture” is inspired.

I am going to talk more about how Jewish people came to believe the Scriptures were inspired in my next message.

Yeshua had to teach them to “re:believe only the Scriptures were inspired and that he was in them.”

We have to know first know how the Gentiles came to accept that “All Scriptures” are inspired by God.

So if you are Jewish this message today is like a refresher in how the ancient, ancient, like really ancient Jewish community came to believe the story of the Bible.

The Gentiles got there a bit later but they got there.

Yeshua didn’t write it.

Yeshua is the reason we have it.

For jews

And for Gentiles

Yeshua is the reason.

Gentiles were not interested in Jews or Jewish religion necessarily.

Jews kept to themselves.

Jews did not work one day a week.

Jews did not eat with Gentiles.

Jews denied that other gods even existed.

Jews believed their capital was for worship.

Other nations saw their capitals as the seat of political power and military might.

Jews saw time as managed by God the nations saw it as uncontrollable.

Jews made a startling claim...

One God

Gentiles had to make the massive transition to: One God

Gentiles usually, barely, switched religions.

When Gentiles were confronted with the resurrection they became enamored with a particular Jew, then they became interested in the sacred texts of the Jews.

When they became enamored with the Jew, Yeshua,

they discovered that there was a backstory for the life of Yeshua contained in ...

The Law and the Prophets and the Writings.

They went to these books because Paul and the other guys were saying they are the inspired Scriptures the Jew, Yeshua, pointed to.

The Gentiles then wanted to know the back story of Yeshua’s life.

So the Gentiles accepted the Jewish sacred texts but they did not accept Jewish religion and eventually rejected the Jewish people.

This is a problem we will look at next week.

Now in a sense Rome created a “curiosity” in the Jewish religion.

What I mean is Rome gave Jewish people a pass when it came to the Roman custom of honoring Caesar as a god.

Rome honored Israel’s God because they recognized that it was older than any of their religions.

Rome honored Israel’s God because they recognized that it was older than any of their religions.

So they got a pass.

It was older than the story of Romulus and Remes, Greek pantheon.

They oldest religion recognized only one God from the beginning.

That means every other culture had it wrong but the Jews had it right from the very beginning.

It was older than the story of Romulus and Remes, Greek pantheon.

They oldest religion recognized only one God from the beginning.

That means every other culture had it wrong but the Jews had it right from the very beginning.

For the Gentiles investigating the claims of Yeshua what they were trying to figure out is why Rome was calling these Jewish believers “atheists.”

See Rome did not give a pass to the Jewish followers of Yeshua and the synagogue was getting rid of us faster than a rat a cat convention.

Paul and all the Jewish believers and their disciples and their disciples were all saying, “We believe the One God who gave us the Law and the Prophets and the Writings became one of us, died for us and rose again for us.”

Bible

Bible

Genesis: Origins

19th and 20th century made the claims in Genesis a little suspect.

They found Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian and Canaanite creation accounts.

The claim was that..

The Hebrews borrowed from other creation stories.

That view has been abandoned by scholarship.

Genesis stands in startling contrasts to other creation stories.

The Egyptians had the Great Sneeze

The Akkadians had the Dead God

The ANE involved gods and deification of the cosmos.

Genesis is a worldview unto itself.

The modern scientific community did not even catch up to the Bible until 1927 when the Big Bang Theory was first put forward (verify date).

Since the time of Aristotle people believed that the Universe just has always been.

But, In 1964 cosmic microwave background caused scientist to abandon the view that the universe always existed.

Scientist pretty much agree..

A trillion trillionth of a second.

From the size of a pebble to its current scope.

Or in the words of Genesis

The ancient debate Moses was entering into was “Is the creation personal or is it impersonal?”

Is there real purpose and meaning in the creation for humankind.”

The debate is not about did it have a cause but was that cause personal?

That is the same debate even today.

Moses is building a case that is no longer needed because his argument ultimately succeeded.

Moses is not making the case that the heavens and earth were created but that God made the heavens and the earth.

Moses is not making a case for “how” the heavens and earth were created but “that One God” made the heavens and the earth.

This was huge then and is huge now.