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These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. Welcome back to Words of Life. Last week we began an eight-part series with a panel of believers discussing what intentional Bible study has meant in their life. Check out the show notes, and we will have plenty of links to resources to also help in your own Bible study. Let's break it down for the listeners.
What is the Bible? Where did it come from? How is it put together? Why is it important to us? Yeah, the Bible is the canon of texts that we say are authoritative for determining what we believe, how we practice our faith.
They provide the frame. For The church. understanding itself and who God's called Her to be. The word canon comes from the idea of having a rule, the idea being that you have some sort of way to measure something. And so the church is saying with the canon: this is the rule.
This is the measurement by which we're going to measure everything that we believe and do. If we didn't have a canon, then any text could be definitive for who the church is.
So you need uh to Say, here are the documents, here are the texts that we're going to say are authoritative for us as an entity, as anything. Uh we're excluding everything else and saying these sixty-six books are definitive for who we are, what we believe about God. And that process happened. over centuries. by the time of Jesus?
Uh there was, it appears something of an Old Testament Canon, one that was divided into three Groups of writings, the Torah, the prophets, and the writings. In the Christian Bible, there are a couple criteria that guided that process. One and the most important being that you could find in these books the teaching of the apostles, those things that Jesus taught the church. The church together determine that of the ancient writings that there were. These books though, these twenty-seven were saying clearly convey.
the rule of faith, the teaching of the apostles. As the church progressed on and controversies came up, as I think continues to happen today, I think in the church today we have our own set of controversies. it became apparent that the church needed to say These books are what we believe to be canonical and are going to call scripture. That's really beyond dispute now. Because Those books are canonical.
They have been definitive for the church for centuries, and you could not add to the canon now because. You couldn't have books that have had the same impact now, centuries since. The church first. identified them as canonical. And so we have our canon.
They are Books that the church says. These are inspired. That they are God-breathed, as it says, in 1 Timothy. And because they're God-breathed. We also say that we can encounter the living person of Jesus Christ in them.
That through the Holy Spirit, we don't just receive information, but we receive Jesus Himself through the reading of these texts because they convey the rule of faith. In the gospel and in the proclamation of that gospel. This inspired gospel in the Word of God. we encounter the one whom the gospel is about. This being a process that took a long time.
how do we have confidence that it's reliable and that it wasn't just like a giant game of telephone where it started as one thing and then by the time it all got put together, it's very different. I've heard you kind of talk about this and Um yeah, would love your thoughts on that. I love the idea that there's so many different authors. And particularly in the New Testament, when we're looking at people that walked alongside Jesus or who were. shepherded by Jesus, or who witnessed first hand things that Jesus did or said, all those stories come together in some beautiful way that help us with scenarios that we can apply to our own lives to Think about how we would respond to something because we saw it work for Jesus so long ago, or saw it work in the community so long ago.
And Caleb. I I don't know if that's a sophomoric or a like a A very immature way to think of it, but I always think of The Bible in two parts. There's the Old Testament. And then the arrival of Jesus and the New Testament, and they're both inspired texts, no question. Yeah, I want to speak to that, and then I could speak to the reliability issue too.
Because one thing that is important to say is there's this theologian, Robert Jensen, who says, God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.
So when Jesus enters in on the scene, He does so in continuity with all that God had done in the people of Israel prior to him. He is a Jew. He's raised as a Jew. He practices Torah and For Jesus, the Old Testament is authoritative for his. participation in the people of God.
And so we as Christians affirm the Old Testament because Jesus affirmed the Old Testament and because Jesus' life is in fact the fulfillment of all that came before him. In the writings of the Old Testament and the history of God's movement through Israel and Judah, He is the culmination of it. In fact, The law was given. with the intent that it would produce a person like Jesus. He is the Entire realization of what the law was all intended to be.
And no one ever was able to live up to the law until Christ. And it's in his being obedient to the law, being A practicing Jew, a participant of the old covenant. That we can ground our salvation. He did what we couldn't do and has died in our place, taking our consequence, the consequence of our sins upon himself, even though he was perfect in every respect. And so, It is super important to say that the Old Testament isn't like Bible light.
It is the Word of God, it's as inspired as the New Testament is. Even though some of our Bibles have red letters. in the Bible. All the words of the Bible are God's words. And so we have to affirm that.
Otherwise, We would lose. the fullness of our understanding of how God's come in Christ to save us. to then empower us by the Holy Spirit. Hey, you're listening to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. We're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be right back.
You know, the Bible tells us, I will bless those who bless you. That's not just a nice sentiment, it's biblical prophecy. and it's a commandment from God. It's a calling and right now we're called to act. The teachings of the New Testament are deeply intertwined with the Hebrew scriptures.
As Christians we are called to honor and respect this shared heritage. The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 11.18, Do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this you do not support the root, but the root supports you. Supporting the people of Israel is more than a belief. It's a biblical mandate.
By partnering with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, IFCJ. we can live out this calling together. Just as the fellowship blesses God's children, we know that you will be blessed too. Learn more about the fellowship and how you can live out your faith, bless Israel, and be blessed in return. Visit ifcj.org today.
Again, that's ifcj dot org. Be the blessing. Live the word. Answer the call. The Bible.
is remarkably reliable in a variety of ways. I'll start with the New Testament. We are aware, just aware right now, of about 28,000. manuscripts of the New Testament, ancient Manuscripts in the New Testament. It's far and away the most Well-documented ancient text in human history.
Nothing comes close. We have a portion of the Gospel of John that dates to about the middle of the second century AD. That's not to say that there weren't other. Copies of the Gospel of John. That's just to say that in the course of time, that's the earliest fragment that we still have.
And that's remarkably early as well. The distance even between The texts that we have, which again are just the surviving text, not the first time these things are penned to paper. The distance between those documents and the events they describe is also far shorter. than the distance between. other similar ancient texts.
Then you add to that most scholars will will confidently date the Gospel of Mark around 65 to 75 AD. The writing of it, which is also a remarkably short amount of time.
something to happen and then it be. Written about later in terms of ancient history. And then we also believe that the earliest of Paul's letters date to about the late 40s AD. That's probably either 1 Thessalonians or Galatians being his first letters that he wrote.
So, again, these texts are happening very quickly, they're being crafted very quickly after. The events that they describe. That is something else that has no parallel. Within the ancient world, the New Testament documents are remarkable in just about every conceivable way in terms of their historiography. And so that contributes to the reliability of them.
that we can think of them certainly as The Word of God as religious texts, but they also have significant value as historical documents. And we could have a long conversation about. The historical details of the Gospels, particularly the book of Acts, and how the level of detail. In these books, could not have been achieved at the time of the writing without someone actually being on the ground witnessing these things happen. In the book of Acts, especially, you have government leaders named, and there's no way.
For the writer of Acts. to have known that that was the person at that particular region in government. without someone having been there. at that time, very close to the location of that. event.
For the Old Testament, for a long time, the oldest extant copy entire copy of the Old Testament was the Leningrad Codex. The Hebrew document dates to around one thousand AD. But then these Shepherd Boys were in the Holy Land and you know, we're just playing around in some caves and Stumbled upon the Dead Sea Scrolls, which then moved our earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible to.
Something like the third century BC, so much earlier than that. We have this little fragment of a scroll that dates back to the, I believe, the 8th century BC. and it has on it this little quote. From numbers. And this Fragment of the scroll was rolled up and contained in an amulet and a woman's necklace.
It's this little necklace that had words of blessing in it from Numbers. 6:24 through 26. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine on you. and be gracious to you. Lord turned his face toward you, and and give you peace.
And again, that It dates back to about the late. Seventh century or eighth century. BC And so We have really great historical evidence for the canon that we have. Not without Variances sometimes. fragments of manuscripts that differ.
on the exact wording in certain places. But ninety nine percent of those textual variances involve The placement of the word the here or there, or not including it at all, or. Just very minute differences. Not changing the meaning. Not changing the meaning.
There may be a handful where it might.
Something like a dozen places in the New Testament where it could change the meaning this or that way, but it wouldn't change the faith, wouldn't change the faith overall.
So we have remarkable confidence in the Bible. We pray that you're enjoying and being blessed by this conversation. We're going to take one more ad break and we'll be right back. You know, the Bible tells us, I will bless those who bless you. That's not just a nice sentiment, it's biblical prophecy.
and it's a commandment from God. It's a calling and right now we're called to act. The teachings of the New Testament are deeply intertwined with the Hebrew scriptures. As Christians we are called to honor and respect this shared heritage. The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 11.18, Do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches.
If you do, consider this you do not support the root, but the root supports you. Supporting the people of Israel is more than a belief. It's a biblical mandate. By partnering with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, IFCJ. we can live out this calling together.
Just as the fellowship blesses God's children, we know that you will be blessed too. Learn more about the fellowship and how you can live out your faith, bless Israel, and be blessed in return. Visit ifcj.org today. Again, that's ifcj.org. Be the blessing.
Live the word. Answer the call. It's amazing to think about. A room full of scribes, having to listen. To it being read aloud, you know, probably in a dark room, having to just very painstakingly.
Write that down. Word for word, and to have that level of agreement. And that also just. Yep. causes me to want to thank the Lord and to praise him for These people who we you know who are nameless now.
And have come before us over the centuries, working so. faithfully and tirelessly. Who have given us this gift that is now the most published book in human history? You know, they're still found in many hotel rooms around the country. You can have every version just about ever made of it on your phone.
And so I think we make this mistake of taking it for granted. But man, people's sweat and blood and treasure were spent. on us having this, people died for our ability. Do wake up in the morning and Open the Bible or a cup of coffee. I think that too also speaks to the credibility, the circumstances that these people were writing, often being persecuted.
Like, why would you risk your life for something that you didn't believe to be true? What caused these people to be so passionate about this one person? about his story. We know what it is, because they knew he's the son of God. That to me is one of the most compelling historical details in all of this.
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These are the These are the words of life. These are the words. These are the words. These are the words of life. Thanks so much for listening to Words of Life.
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