The Writing of The Bible
It was this it's my pleasure to call Epona Boulevard Park Senior pass the bun to come and give today's sermon for us. Thank you.
I just took my click off.
I try to wear a jacket to look formal, but then it just gets way too hot and then it just makes me look embarrassing. So I don't wear my jacket and some of the myths about Christianity. I don't know about you guys. But when you going to shopping centres now all those trees or up you see all the lights and everything and and sometimes Christmas is just like a fairy tale or Jesus is his kind of Fairy Tail. The Bible is this in a super spiritual kind of thing just break down some of those caricatures give some evidence for why there is a reason to believe I'm interested to see the truth behind Christmas Christianity and the Christ. So that's the plan for this month now growing up for me boy Malaysia grew up here in Sydney, but I felt like he was always a Westin kind of thing. So I grew up in a Buddhist family and being an Eastern eyes seem like What's the right thing to do? The Westin has had this Christian thing growing up. I said I watched a lot of I'm sale of the century who can't remember sale of the century answering questions. And I remember very specifically at the end of it the people who won more often than not with thank God and somebody was in a God was the one you think when you were winning lots and lots of money. I know it's kind of the understanding I had but the more I thought about it as well as the more so that's actually Christianity a blood a lot into our society. Do I put this all these phrases that we become so accustomed with that actually have Christian kind of foundation. Sorry, like turn the other cheek is actually from the Bible fight. The good fight is from the Bible rise and shine is actually from the Bible mean what the Bible means but a lot of the couch and a language that we have a dump. Comes from Christian things will come from the Bible and a Christian kind of heritage. How Society actually is filled with Christian kind of symbols, I don't know if you know this guy he's not really part of our society, but he's American so I don't know who some of you might know him. But he's Tim Tebow and he's one of the greatest Rugby Football in a row NFL some card. Okay, they play sports but he put these signs on his cheeks. It says John 3:16 and everybody's Googling. What's John 3:16? And he's the son of missionaries to be strong Christian background famous in America, and then you would make you popular the Bible and Christian faith. There's one time you wrote Proverbs 3 5 to 6, and nobody had a clue what that meant and it became one of the trending things online because everybody needed to look it up, but I think you and I are familiar with John 3:16 by John 3:16 that Kind of Cry of Christianity with for God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life and you see people holding up signs John 3:16 John 3:16, John 3:16. You might be familiar with this The Gideons Bible right in every Hotel supposedly in the Year 2005 in every hotel in America 95% of them 95% of the hotel rooms in America in 2005. You would find a Gideon's Bible in There and Everywhere printable. There was so many bibles the way the Gideon started was John haedge Nicholson and Samuel e hill in 1898 to businessman looking for a place to stay and then managed to find one room, which they shed together. They started talkin and fan of that had a common faith in Christ. And so this is great. Why don't we share this with others and they charged us thinking. Howcast businessman they could do this. So I started this group and then they ran a meeting and only one other person came and then they thought that's why we should call ourselves Gideon's speaker as we remember that God can use the small to conquer armies and Nations running from their they've grown and they put Bibles in every hotel that's kind of changed now because I kind of see that really necessary in every hotel room Wi-Fi is Riley. So then you can get The Gideons Bible app and you can do what I kind of stuff by the Bible. What's so important about what would drive these people these guys to do something like this and get a Bible in everybody's hotel room in everybody's hand. What is this Bible? Depending on who you ask you. Get a whole bunch of different dances, is it fact is it fiction? Is it focal? Is it Legend this thing that's made up like it the fairy tales. Is it real or does it fit into this category of religious touch it cuz it's kind of just you know, Special Care kind of religious stuff in the category of itself for some people the Bible is actually big business. Why the Bible is actually be busy. I don't know if you noticed but it's the best-selling book of all time, right every year. It's the best seller you can count it because you know if they are nobody actually reads the Bible or you know, it's just left Michelle of all people buy it. So then they distributed so doesn't really count right but according to book Riot. Com or he's an if you can say all of this, right but it isn't the 10 best selling books of all time the top one. This is A Tale of Two Cities 200 million cup / Nelson. What a book Is A Tale of Two Cities? Yes. Hey, those are the hands up are the cultured once my friends. That's Charles Dickens. Now. I had no idea. I had to Google it to add that book The Lord of the Rings might be more familiar The Little Prince Harry Potter and the Philosopher's the Philosopher's Stone and so on and so forth. Harry Potter and the whole JK Rowling series is the best series of all time sales of books ever 500 million copies sold worldwide 500 million now the estimates for the Bible six billion copies. I'm sorry. You take The Tale of Two Cities 200 million. I need times at 5:30 and that's how many bibles have been sold. 6 billion, this is the best selling this this book is the best-selling book of all time every year year after year after year after year. Why? What is it what's special about this book? The word bible just means a collection of books is Latin for Biblia. Okay, and it just means books and that's what the Bible is. The Bible is a collection of 66 books Summa longer than others summer shorter than others some fit nicely on one page depending on your font size but it's a collection of 66 books Old Testament and New Testament together. So a whole bunch of office as well, but that's all it is. It's just like any other book. ink printed on a page No different from any other book in the Bible is so different from any other book.
Conter page from this Bible who he feels nervous.
Who you think I'm weird actually do it.
Yes, Demi, right, but he's just like
Turn the page, that was some 122. Jokes about a whole lot of judgment turn reading to that. Okay that okay. Just put it back nicely together here ask you who she has ever deleted a Bible app. Beaverhead an app on your phone and then you deleted it. You've done much worse than what I've done. All right, you're taking the Bible on your phone and you throw it in the bin. All I did was I put it back. It's nice but this is part of it. What is it? What is this? What is this book when you go up to preach make sure you take with you a hard copy Bible there be preaching from an iPad will from your phone don't use electronic copies and I was trying to say this something about this a special but you lose in this modern generation of having, you know, your electronic Bibles. And if somebody else responded and goes but the reality is if you want that original Miss of it and actually you're cheating but bringing up one of these what you should be doing is giving out your Papyrus getting out the scroll getting of the original Greek and Hebrew and that's what you should bring to your Pulpit. Right? Because if you want something special like that then this is just technology just like you electronic copies in the Bible actually is the Papyrus Chucky is a picture of it. This is the Chester Beatty papyri. Read its plural take us to the whole bunch of papyrus's there. But this is p 45 P just as well papyrus in the book. This one in particular has a 13 leaves and originally would have got 220 pages and it all about in a full size sheet. This was stated to the third Century. Now if you wants to bring this to the pulpit, this is what it would actually look like right actual sheets right now. This is in the library in Manchester. Manchester University Manchester University of Michigan. Sorry Manchester's the other one. We talked about later in the University of Michigan. You can go and see the actual leaves of Papyrus. This one here is p46 answer. This one actually has the letters of Paul as a romance is found here and keyboards. This is the oldest copy that we have to last week when Lawrence was preaching and the week before when was preaching. This is what we should have brought up to the pulpit and they kept it at Heritage in that honor of protecting the pulpit with the Original Scriptures E46. I want to show you P52 p52 this is in the John rylands library in Manchester so you can go and see it. It's their Wireless Papyrus full five 7 and it's just Nick Carney because there are actually so many of these manuscripts that we have. This one actually is the earliest fragments that we have in existence and it is a portion of John 18. It's only but that's what it looks like. So you go to Manchester you can actually see this and it's it's it's beautiful. It's dated to the first half of the second century about 120 ad oldest surviving manuscript that we have manuscript of the manuscript of the manuscript has been kept preserved and that's how we ended up with this.
5600 manuscripts he's what we have. For the New Testament compare that with any other ancient historical figure you get no way close you get nowhere close at all. The point here is the Bible that you actually is an incredible work of history. To get from all these friends they put together to get from those leaves and sheets that they put together to come up with a translation that matches. What we had all this time. It's reliable it's accurate but I don't want you to miss the point. The point isn't about studying the scripture and just in some since worshipping this piece of paper is again, it's just paper the point here is this when Jesus says you study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about me yet you refuse to come to me to have life in John chapter 5 verse 39 to 40 this the black and white ink on a page and you missed the point of this this testifies to Jesus. The Bible is all about Jesus is a collection of 66 books. Yes, and we forgot one unified message about the Son of God about Jesus the Messiah the Christ. It's reliable it's accurate. But can we trust it? Really? Can we actually trust what we have here? Isn't it? Just made up didn't a group of guys just sit in a room and then come up with this is someone just come up with a plan to write down all of his kind of stuff. Like how do we actually come to get to this Bible? I think some of us feel like we really would really like it to be like this Papyrus would like it to be beamed down from heaven, you know floating is Holy Scripture.
disregard But when we talk about people writing it when we talk about writers and authors and editors and that the humanness of this writing makes ask it a little bit worried. Are these people who wrote it just as broken as we are, how can we trust what they rooted? Do they scheme and put something together? For me, I think that that it didn't just drop out of Heaven actually makes it more reliable and more trustworthy when you think about it. If it had just dropped from Heaven would be tempted to worship it the woods rather than the speaker of the words appreciating what stores are not the teacher of the woods, but the content actually because it's written by people gives it a particular shape and I think a particular trustworthiness different office different styles different times.
Sometimes we read the Bible we want to disregard it. We talked about the history of the Bible and we go Recon trust Luke. You can't trust Matthew on Jesus's side. Right what they say about Jesus doesn't look for non-Christian people to tell us about Jesus. Now that we'll talk about it later. But that seems a bit strange right you want to people who don't know Jesus to tell you who Jesus is, but I want to show you this guy. Cassidy's, right. That's his clean-shaven look on the left on the right and then he's Beauty look right. This is tacitus. He's a He was the senator under Emperor Vespasian a K in 116 ad. He's non-Christian. He doesn't like Christians. He doesn't like Jesus. This is what he writes. Consequently, and he's talking about and Mero Mero the great persecution of Christians consequently to get rid of the report Nero, fossen, the guilt and inflicted the most Exquisite torches on the clasp hated for the Abominations called Christians by the populist Christus from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of a procurator Pontius Pilate and a most mischievous Superstition. That's check for the moment again broke out the source of the evil. But even in Rome with all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find the center and become popular. This is a guy who doesn't like a Christian and doesn't like the Bible, but he's talking about the Christ of the Bible. Right? And what happened to Christ as well? I saw what you see when people tell you isn't Jesus just made up. Isn't he just a fairytale, isn't he? Just like Santa Claus? He's not. He's not because you have people talking about him who I Witnesses who saw Jesus walked with Jesus, but you also have people who hated Jesus writing about him had no other intention butter badmouth him and saying he did these things and the other one I want to show you is Josephus again. I'll give you two looks one. He's clean-shaven one and the other one disputed one, but your cephas was a Jewish person who lived on the Roman rule and he wrote the time of that he was better 90. How you doing? Okay, but he wrote the entities right in his great history of what happened to the Jewish people and this is what he said now around this time. So again, he's not a Christian person. He said you're around this time live Jesus A wise man, but he was a work of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people who gladly accepted the truth. He won over both many Jews and Minnie Mouse pilot when he heard him Accused by the leading men among us talking about the Jews condemned him to the Cross. But those who had first love him did not see you doing so to this day the tribe of Christians named after him has not disappeared and I will for tonight at the end is to say a lot of this historical stuff. Again. We are just received as being bias here. And so this translation or this rendering is actually a conservative one because when they founded your cephus is manuscripts, The thinking is somebody is come and actually edited it to make it more favorable for Christians remembered receivers doesn't like Christian. So when they found these few additions which made him out to be a really like Christians, I thought this couldn't be him. So the reading I've given you is actually the more conservative one. The point here to say is Jesus is real the Bible actually talks about a real person real events Real History. This isn't just made up is not just the people who love Jesus that wrote about him. It's the people who also hated it all the people who had no agenda who couldn't care less who wrote about him as well.
The point of all this is to tell you that you can trust what you have in the Bible. You're the reason why you can trust which have in the Bible is because you and I are not at the first skip tiks of Jesus. The disciples in the Bible was skeptical of Jesus. After all of these years Miracles are still unbelievable that hasn't changed when the disciples were there seeing Jesus do Miracles. They couldn't believe it when Jesus fed the 5000. They couldn't believe it when Jesus calmed the winds in the ways. They couldn't believe it. When Jesus rose from the dead. They couldn't believe it. They would just as skeptical as you and me. I didn't believe it. Jesus says to them you of little faith. Why are you so afraid? over and over again Jesus rebukes Jesus criticized right Jesus comments that the disciples are skeptical and that's why you can believe what's written in the Bible because if you were to write something about Jesus, you wouldn't make it look like you didn't know what you were talking about. You wouldn't put the shame and humility on yourself. You'd want to sell Jesus. And you want to leave at all the shameful bits shameful bits about you, but shameful bits about your savior as well. This is why the cross is actually a testimony to the reliability and the truthfulness of the scripture. Because of Jesus truly was the hero then and if it was made up nobody would ever make up that Jesus went to the Cross because the cross was the most humiliating the most shameful the most outrageous way to die. If you were going to be the hero the Christ the Messiah if you were going to save the world, it was not by being stripped naked nailed bloodied beaten mocked on a cross.
You wouldn't do that. That's why when you see the authenticity of the Bible how the disciples share the story how they share their weakness their vulnerability that humility. It gives it more credibility that what you're reading is actually what happened. This isn't made up if it was made up in end up much more like Harry Potter. Then the cross.
The Bible is this incredible piece of work because it's a one-story 66 books written not just buy a small group of men was written over 1500 years. There were 40 + office here in three continents in three languages. The Bible is incredible piece of work, you get to hold. Patel's one unified story about Jesus the son of God Author of the author page after page pointing to Christ. So why should I care about the Bible anyway? I want to suggest you that if you care about the Bible if you read the Bible, it will change your life hear the free things. I'll see if Lewis has dispatched to Christianity if false is of no importance and if it is true of infinite importance. The only thing is more important if the Bible is actually true of infinite importance, right it cannot just sit on your shelf and collect dust cannot do that. He's so happens. You read the Bible. It says it will change your life. The story tells when I just bring up 3 highlights will tell you it will give you purpose in life because Jesus tells us the Great Commission. He's a sole Authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me there for go and make disciples of all Nations go and make disciples of all Nations. I don't want you to misunderstand that making disciples of all Nations. He's not getting the Bible and beating them over the head is not getting the Bible making them memorized and read every page everyday making disciples of all Nations is making them like Christ to the Great Commission here. The purpose you have goes along with the greatest commandment and that's the prop is the principal in which you live by Where Jesus asked this question, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus responses? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul. And with all your mind. This is the great and a first commandment and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The Great Commission make disciples goes hand-in-hand with the great commandment love God and love your neighbor to disciples that we making love and to love neighbors. The discipleship is built around the love of God and the love of neighbors and how do we go and do all of this the Bible doesn't just give us rules to live by It actually gives us a person to leave for because I want you to see a lost point is there is a great commitment. The great commitment is not from us to God, but it's from God to us when we talked about John 3:16 in the love of God. That's not just talk that's action as well and the action that love was so painful. I want you to see the great commitment is this Jesus is going to the Cross right when God gives his son. It's told me about Jesus going to the Cross when Jesus goes to the Cross. It's just painful. Why this is painful and so he prays as he goes along this journey. He says this in Matthew 26. My soul is overwhelmed with sorry. This is Jesus told the person is doing those Miracles feeding 5000 Healing The Sick casting out demons feeding about that, in the wind and the waves doing Miracles. He says, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me going a little he's talking to his disciples are going to going a little further he fell with his face to the ground and prayed my father if it is possible. May this be taken from me. You're not as I will but as you will This copies the cup of broth is copies the cup of judgement the penalty for the sins of the world, which he was coming to take on Alba cough it away from me. But Jesus is commitment. Stop the love of his people heart was filled with his soul was filled with sorrow to the point of death. He was committed to love you and I to go to the Cross to take that penalty could drink that cup to forgive us of our sins to close us with righteousness and bring us back to God. How do you and I with changeable eyes do the Great Commission with the great commandment? It's because of God's great commitment. He's coming to us. His death and Resurrection to forgive us of our sins and to bring us back to God. That's what Jesus does for us.
That's what this book is all about.
Juan Unified message about Jesus the son of God
He's a challenge I want to poop before you. If you've never read the Bible. Pick it up and read it with adult eyes read it with the seriousness of the text not with childish eyes with Barns and stables and fairytale Santa Clauses, but read it. as an adult and see who Jesus says he is forking self if you pick up the Book of Luke. And you read a chapter a day from today the 1st of December, you'll finish it on Christmas Eve 24 chapters in The Book of Luke and then Christmas day you celebrate the birth of Jesus knowing why we celebrate knowing what the joy is all about because Jesus didn't stay a little baby didn't just make people sing Christmas carols and give presents to each other. Jesus is the Messiah the Christ the head of that tribe, which we call Christians who he forgave and reconciled back to God. Read a chapter of the Book of Luke. Look at the very beginning rights to say that many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled amongst us just as they were handed out into us by those by those who from the first will eyewitnesses and seventh of the word with this in mind since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning. I to decided to write an orderly account for you. Most excellent Theophilus. So that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
as you read Lux account You will have certainty of the things that you have been taught. And that is Jesus is the Christ the son of God. Let's pray. A father we thank you so much. But you're spoke.