Shooting the Breeze

Today we are wrapping up our series called “Text”. This has been a series on the Bible. I trust that you have learned a lot of things during this series. Some of the things that we have learned and we have been challenged with so far are: We’ve learned that the Old and New Testament was written by many different people, from different stages in life and in different places over a span of 1500 years. We also learned that if you took all of the books and you cross referenced them that you’re going to find that there is absolute one hundred percent congruity. There’s nothing that conflicts. It’s all-congruent. We also learned that there are multiple prophecies in God’s word that have been fulfilled perfectly. One hundred percent accuracy. This doesn’t happen unless God is involved and driving the process.

We’ve also learned that there were people who took the bible and they reproduced it. They sacrificed their time. They sacrificed their families. Literally, at points in time, they sacrificed their lives. Why? So that we could have the Bible put into our hands. This is a gift. And so my question to all of us this morning is: What are you going to do with this gift? Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Now, what this verse is saying is that we spend a significant amount of time on things that are going to pass away. I would say, “Yeah, that’s probably pretty accurate.” We spend time reading magazines like People Magazine, right? And maybe the National Enquirer although we would never admit to actually reading that. Right? We’ve seen it, though. We may spend a lot of time watching television. I don’t know what it is that you might be reading or watching right now but here’s the thing: the reality is that much of what we spend our time on is going to pass away. The only thing that is going to remain with us from now unto eternity is God’s word.

So, my question is, “What are we going to do with this gift that God has given us?” In Psalms 119:11, King David, he says, “I have hidden your word in my heart.” David challenges us take God’s Word and conceal it deep into the core of who we are. When we do this we are going to begin to see transformation in our lives. I know that many of you throughout this series have stepped up to the plate, and you’ve made a decision. You’ve said, “You know what? I want to become a student of God’s word. I’m going to read more. I’m going to study more.” But today, I want us to challenge again to become more than readers. I want us to intentionally take God’s word and allow it to transform us and change us. We know this is what God wants us to do and what He calls us to do but it is still a struggle.

As I look at my journey as a Christ Follower, let me tell you what I see. I see moments of absolute consistency. Times where I was hungry and I was reading God’s word and it was changing me and it was making me new. It was transforming me and things were rich and I was growing. I hope you have had times like that in your life too. But, as I look back on my journey with Christ, there have also been many times of seasons of inconsistency. Times when I haven’t been “hiding God’s word in my heart”. Times when I have not set time aside in my day to take God’s word and to study it. I am guessing that some of you here may have had times like this in your life as well. When we do this it leads us to a place of being in a spiritual desert. Some of you here today may be in a desert right now. Maybe it’s been a long time since you’ve connected with God, since you’ve really dove into His word and let it change you. Here’s what blows me away: We know this. Right? We know what God does in our life when we dive into His word. He changes us. He transforms us. He makes us new. Our thinking becomes straightened out. He picks us up above our circumstances and up above our challenges. We know what God does in our lives when we are really diving in with Him. So, my question is, “Knowing that, why do we continue to neglect God’s word?”

Let’s spend some time looking at a few things that God Words brings into our lives when we commit ourselves to spending time in it. One of the things that God’s word brings when we make a commitment to set aside some time to really dive into God’s word and become intimate with God, is it brings power. Hebrews 4:12 in the New Living Translation says, “For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.” What we have to understand about this verse is that God’s word is not only alive; it also brings power. So many of us struggle in the world that we live in today. We walk around without confidence and without knowing that it’s Jesus Christ that lives deep inside of who we are. God’s word deposits in us the ability to overcome, the ability to become who it is that God has made us to be. And I know right now that we have some people that are crying out, and you are in desperate need for God’s power, the supernatural overcoming power of God in your life.

God’s word also brings healing. Psalms 107 describes various people who are crying out because of different needs. One group that was calling out was those in need of healing Verses 17-20 say, “Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. 18 They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. 19 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. 20 He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.” You see, all throughout God’s word, God is referred to as “Jehovah Rapha”, which means “the healer”. He is the one that wants to come to you. He is running to you with His arms open wide and He has His bandages of healing. He desperately wants to wrap them around the wounds in your life. He is the healer and I know that there are some you here today who are in desperate need for healing. It may be physical healing. You continue to get sick, and you continue to struggle, and you just can’t get past it. There are others of you that are here that need relational healing. You had a relationship at one time that was really, really close, and it’s fragmented, and it’s broken, and it’s splintered apart. God’s word can bring healing. Maybe you need healing from your past. You’ve been abused. Maybe it was sexual, maybe it was verbal, and maybe it was mental abuse. Healing comes from God’s word.

God’s word also brings direction. Proverbs 16:9, it says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” So many times I can look at my own life, and many of the times when I cried out to God and when I re-connected to Him and said, “God, I need You,” was a time in my life when I was searching for direction. We go through life asking ourselves questions: What should I be doing for a living? What is my real purpose? How should I be spending my time? How can I be a better steward of my money? Should we have three kids? Should we have six kids? These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves. God’s word brings direction into our life.

Finally, God’s word also brings freedom. Luke 4:18-19 says (this is Jesus speaking), 18″The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” What we see when we look at these verses is the exact reason why Jesus Christ came to this earth. Why did He come? He came to set you free. He came to set me free. He came to set us free from addictions. He came to set us free from pain in our life. He came to set us free from the guilt of poor decisions that we have made in the past. God can set us free! Do you want to be set free? God’s word brings freedom!

So far, we’ve seen what happens in our lives when we really make a commitment and say, “God, I’m going to honour You. I’m going to hide Your word in my heart.” We have seen that God word brings power, healing, direction and freedom to our lives. God’s word will give us everything we need to fulfill everything that God is calling me to do. Here are two applications for us today. First, God calls us to master the text. Proverbs 7:1-3 in the New Living Translation says, “1Follow my advice, my son; always treasure my commands. 2 Obey my commands and live! Guard my instructions as you guard your own eyes. 3 Tie them on your fingers as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart.” I think to fully understand what this verse is saying we need to understand a little bit about the Jewish tradition and the Jewish background. The Jews literally dedicated their entire lives to mastering the text. As a matter of fact, if you had a young boy he would enter a certain school at a very young age. And by the age of ten, each boy will have memorized the entire Book of the Law. That’s the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy! That is crazy but it doesn’t stop there. When they graduate from that level of school, then from ages to ten to thirteen, they go to another school. In that school, what they would really begin to dive deeper and become masters of the text. Matter of fact, by the time that they graduate, by the age of thirteen years of age, they have the entire Hebrew scriptures memorized. Wow!

And so what we see in the Book of Proverbs is that we are commanded to take God’s words and guard it as we would guard our own eyes. In other words, we are to take God’s word very seriously. These verses also talk about taking God’s word and tying them to our fingertips and writing them on the walls of our heart. If you look back into Jewish history you will see that they took this very, very seriously and very, very literally. They would write the words of God on the walls of their home. They would even take parchment paper and write God’s word and His laws on them and then they would tie them to their wrists, so that everywhere they would go, they literally had God’s word with them. They also had phylacteries. You’re like, “Okay, what in the world is that?” It’s a little leather box. It had a strap on it, and they would tie it to their head. They would put God’s word inside of those boxes so that it literally would protect their minds and their thoughts. Here’s what we have to know and understand: why did they do these things? Because they wanted to take God’s word with them everywhere that they went. They talked about it at home. They talked about it at work. They talked about it with their kids when they were taking them to school, on the way home, as they went about life every single day, they were mastering the text.

So, what are some ways that can help us master the text? I want to offer four tools to help us master the text. First, we need to choose a bible. There are so many different versions and they come in different shapes, and they come in different sizes. One that you might be interested in is the New International Version. That’s the translation that I primarily use. There is also the Message. It is not a translation but it is easy to read. The New Living Translation is also very easy to read. The point is: find a bible that works for you. Second, we need to study the extra materials. One helpful tool for this is commentaries. One that I have used for many years is the Expositors Bible Commentary. It is fairly easy to use and read. There are lots of different commentaries out there. I also use the NIV study bible. It has lots of good notes in it too. It has God’s word and underneath it has an explanation of every single verse that’s in it, so it’s all in the same page. It’s concise. It’s together and it’s a great.

Third, we need to focus on the who, the when, and the why. We need to ask questions like: What was going on in that culture? What were their struggles? What was their pain? What was their hurt? What was the sin in their lives? And when you really begin to understand the who, the when, and the why, it’s going to make God’s word really jump out of the pages and jump into your life, and you’re going to see God really begin to reveal a lot of things to you. And another great way to help us master the text is going to the web. I mean, there are a ton of resources out there. The one that I use the most is “Bible Gateway”. Another one that I have used is “The World Wide Study Bible”. There’s a lot of good stuff on the web. Another great website is “YouVersion”. Its goal is help people begin to study and to know God’s word more intimately. So maybe you’re at a place in your life right now where you’re not spending enough time with God, and maybe you’re reading and it just doesn’t make sense and it’s not connecting. Maybe it’s time for you to really consider picking up some new tools.

So, those are some great practical study tools, some things that will help you dive in a little deeper so that you can understand God’s word and apply it to your life. But here’s the reality of it all. God is calling us to take His word with us literally everywhere that we go. We should write it on the walls of our heart and we should let it saturate our lives. We should let it literally consume everything that we do. Psalms 42:1-2, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” In these verses, David cries out, “When can I go and meet with God?” And that’s my question for us: When was the last time that you’ve met with God? Maybe you’ve been following Christ for a long time, maybe just a short amount of time. Regardless, the question still stands. No matter where you are in your journey, when is the last time that you’ve met with God? When is the last time that you’ve been intimate with Him? And you spoke to Him and He spoke to you? Here’s what we’ve got to know: the reason that we master the text is not for knowledge, and it’s not to say, “Look at me”. We master the text so that we can meet with God. When is the last time that you’ve met with God?

So, we’ve seen that God calls us to master the text but He also calls us to be mastered by the text. In Matthew 23:27, Jesus is talking to a group of people and He looks them right in the eyes and He says, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” Typically in Jesus’ day, when people were buried, they were buried in big tombs. And several times a year the religious leaders would wash these tombs. They would get water and lime and they would mix them together, and they would wash them literally white. They were called white-washed tombs. And so, you have Jesus. He comes on the scene and there’s a lot of scepticism surrounding Him. He comes in and He claims to be the Son of God. Some believe Him; some don’t. And I love this passage of scripture, because what He does is, He looks the spiritual leaders in the eyes and He says, “Guys, you know what? On the outside you look beautiful. You look great. You know all the verses. You know how to hold your Bible. You know what to say.” What Jesus is really saying is, “As I peer deep into the core of who you are, on the outside you’re great, but on the inside you’re unclean – you are dead.”

So, how about you? Are you posing? On the outside, are you putting on a spiritual fashion show? Are you washing the outside of your lives white but inside you are dead? What are we going to see when we peer deep into who you are? What is it that is really going on in the inside? 1 John 2:3-6 says, “3We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” So, here’s the deal. Today’s the day. It’s time to be mastered by the text and walk through life as Jesus did. God does call us to master the text. It’s about taking it with us wherever we go. My next question is, “Will you be mastered by the text? Will you walk as Jesus walked? Are you going to live it out? Are you going to stop talking about spending time with God and actually spend time with God? Today is the day. Are you going to say, “Okay, God, I am going to do everything that I can do to dive into Your word and begin to study and learn more about who You are?” The challenge for us this morning is this: Will you make the decision to dive into God’s word and allow it to change and transform your life?

Today we are continuing on in our series called “Text” on the Bible. If you have your bible, open it up to 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says this of itself. It says that, “All scripture is God breathed, and it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The Bible says of itself that all scripture is God-breathed. This word “God-breathed”, it comes from the Greek word “theopneustos”, and it means “divinely breathed”. It means “given by the inspiration of God”. From “Theo”, we get theology, the study of God. “Pneuma” means “spirit”. All scripture is God-breathed. It is useful for correcting, for training, for rebuking. God’s word will give you everything that you need to fulfill everything that God will call you to do. The question that many have is though: Is it God’s word? Can we truly trust it? I believe that it is and I believe that we can. Let’s look at some facts about the Bible.

The Bible is an incredibly interesting book. Let’s talk about some of the facts. Fact number one: This book is the best selling book in the history of the world. Fact number two: This book is also the most shoplifted book in the history of the world. Truthfully, this isn’t just one book. It’s actually sixty-six different books wrapped up into one. This Bible contains 773,692 words. It would take the average person about seventy hours to read the bible aloud. What’s amazing is that the Bible was written by all sorts of different people. It was written by politicians, by statesmen, by farmers, by shepherds, by peasants, by musicians, by poets and even by tax collectors. The Bible is also written from all sorts of different places. The Bible was written by Moses in the wilderness, by Jeremiah in the dungeon. It was written by Luke while traveling, Paul while he was in prison. It was written by John while he was in exile on the Isle of Patmos. The bible was written from thirteen different countries on three different continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe, and it was written in three different languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic; and what’s amazing is, even though the Bible was written from people from all different walks of life over a span of fifteen hundred years, it has amazing accuracy and consistency when it comes to the message about the character, the nature of God and His redemptive plan for mankind. The Bible is the word of God. Not only is it consistent, true, and inspired, but it speaks to so many different topics. Topics included in scripture include everything from marriage, divorce, re-marriage, adultery, sex, lust, greed, guilt, materialism, generosity, healing, hope, forgiveness, parenting, prayer, friendship, pride, obedience, Heaven, Hell, lying, murder, suicide, rape, fears, doubt, miracles, love, hate, money, criticism, creation, government, submission, rebellion, peace, leadership, comparisons, joy, discontentment, sacrifice, delayed gratification, patience, faithfulness, enjoying life, self control, disasters, injustices, demons, angels, discipleship, disciplines, fasting, honor, mercy, caring for the poor, handling wealth, family, and even cars. Yep, cars were even mentioned in the bible. Samuel talks about how David’s Triumph was heard throughout the land. A Honda is mentioned because the apostles were all in one Accord. And 2 Cor. 4:8 describes going out in service in a Volkswagen Beetle: “We are pressed in every way, but not cramped beyond movement.”

So, let’s talk for a few minutes about the reliability of the Bible. Is the Bible trustworthy, true, and accurate? Or is it just the opinions of a bunch of different people? Well, in 1952, there was a historian named Steve Sanders, who came up with three specific tests to evaluate the authenticity of historical writings. Let’s put the Bible to these three specific tests. The first test is known as the internal test. Now, what is the internal test? Regarding the Bible, the internal test wants to answer the question, “Do the writers of the Bible claim that their writings are true?” Basically, do the people who wrote the Bible say, “It’s just a story. I just made it up.” Or, “No, I was there. I saw it,” and, “This is accurate.” This is what scripture says in 2 Peter 1:16. Peter said this. He said, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye witnesses of his majesty.” In other words, “I was there. I saw it. I experienced Him first-hand.” Peter is saying, “What I’m telling you, I know is absolutely true.” Now, when was the New Testament written? It was written between 47 and 95 A.D., so there were plenty of first generation believers alive, who saw first-hand all that the Bible was talking about, and they could have at any time refuted scripture and said, “No, that’s not true,” but they didn’t. Clearly, across the board, everyone would say, “Yes, the Bible passes the internal test.”

Let’s talk about another very important test. This one is called the external test. What is the external test testing? Well, it wants to answer the question, “What does the outside evidence say about the Bible?” In other words, what do non-Biblical sources say about the Bible? Do they confirm Biblical stories, or do they say, “Well, those aren’t really true”? Well, first of all, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the historicity of Jesus Christ is incredibly well established. You can read all sorts of non-Biblical writings about Jesus. You can read Roman writers, Greek writers, and from Jewish sources, where people affirm the life of Jesus Christ. The First Century historian, Josephus, wrote about Jesus, and he wrote about John the Baptist, and he wrote about James, and he wrote about all sorts of other leaders that we read about in the book of Acts.

Now, you may say, “Okay, so we’ve obviously got other historical writings that affirm so much of what happened in the Bible, but what about archeology?” Well, truthfully for years, many Bible critics discredited the Bible because they said, “Archaeological discoveries didn’t support enough of scripture,” and in many cases, they had a valid statement. But, in the Twentieth Century, with all sorts of archaeological finds, all of these claims to discredit the Bible have been reversed. Now, here’s the absolute truth. While we cannot accurately say that archeology completely proves the authority of the Bible, it is fair to say that archaeological evidence has provided external confirmations for literally hundreds of Biblical statements. Over and over and over and over again, we are finding archaeological discoveries that confirm the truth of what scripture says. In fact, I love what Nelson Glueck says. He’s the former President of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and one of the great all-time archaeologists. He said this. “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference.” That is very, very good news when you are putting the Bible to the external test.

Let’s talk about the third test, and it’s called the Bibliographic test. What does the Bibliographic test try to accomplish? The Bibliographic Test determines the accuracy of the copies. Obviously, the more accurate the copies, the closer they reflect the reality of what actually happened. To do this we must know two things: (1) how much time elapsed between the original and the oldest copies, and (2) how many copies there are. Common sense tells us that the closer the copies are in time to the originals the more reliable they are likely to be; and the more copies there are the easier it is to catch any changes made. For example, there’s only one original manuscript, then people made copies of them. Sometimes, they’d make tons of copies. Sometimes they wouldn’t make very many copies at all. Now, let’s talk about how copies were made in the Old Testament. First of all, what’s amazing to me is that they would actually count up the Old Testament and find what the central letter of the Old Testament was, and then after a whole manuscript was complete, if they would find one mistake anywhere at all, they would destroy the whole copy.

Let’s continue to talk about the copies of the Bible. In the Old Testament, there were very few copies because they would either wear out or they’d be ceremonially buried, or they’d be destroyed if there were any imperfections found. So, because of this, for centuries, the most reliable and well-respected Hebrew manuscript was known as the Masoretic text. Now, here’s the amazing part of the story. In the year 70 A.D., the Romans were attacking the Jewish people. They were trying to destroy their culture, and especially, their religious heritage, so the Jewish people took their scrolls and they put them in bottles, and they hid them in caves. And for 1800 years, these historic writings, the Biblical scrolls, remained completely hidden. Then in the year 1947, a Bedouin shepherd stumbled upon some old bottles. Inside, he found what became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, archaeologists then went and discovered eleven other sources of these ancient scrolls. And what’s amazing is, when you compare what’s called the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Masoretic text, the accuracy is actually stunning.

So, let’s wrestle with the question, “How accurate are Biblical copies?” Well, let’s compare the Bible to some other historical writings. For example, in high school you might have had to read “The Odyssey”, or “The Iliad” by Homer. Well, “The Iliad” by Homer is the most accepted non-Biblical historical writing around. How many copies do you think that we have of “The Iliad”? Well, we have 643 copies of “The Iliad”, and that would be considered just a ton. Other historical writings like Plato’s “Republic”, has seven copies. Aristotle has five. Caesar has ten. So the most accepted non-Biblical historical writing would unquestionably be the writing of Homer with 643. How many copies do you think we have of the New Testament? Well, not 643, not a thousand, but over 24,000 copies of the New Testament. When you compare that against any other historical writing, beyond a shadow a doubt, the Bible stands alone and unquestionably passes the Bibliographic test with flying colors.

How many of you like watching movies? How many of you like predicting what’s going to happen in the movie? I do. You know, he did it; she did it … the rest of you that don’t predict because you just never know what’s going on. You’re the clueless ones. I love predictions, and when I read scripture, one of the things that amazes me most is to see the Old Testament predictions. We call them prophecies. Think about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The Old Testament would prophesy or predict what would take place either in New Testament times, or even centuries later in modern times. People would say, “This was going to happen,” and then it actually would. I want in a few moments to show you some of the prophecies of Jesus. Before we do that though I want us to get some perspective.

There was a professor named Peter Stoner who took twelve of his classes with 600 students, and they wanted to see what the likelihood of some of these prophecies being fulfilled. For example, it was prophesied that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, and so about the time of Jesus’ birth, they found out what the population of the world was and said, “What were the odds of a person being born in Bethlehem?” And they put a number on it. Well, they did this with eight specific prophecies of Jesus. Then they turned in their numbers to this group of people, a, kind of a governing board in statistics, who gave their stamp of approval and said, “Yes, these statistics are accurate and they are acceptable.” They took eight of them and they put them together, and said, “What are the odds of these eight specific things happening to one person?” And the odds were just one in ten with seventeen zeroes behind it. That would be the chances of these eight prophecies of the dozens being fulfilled in the life of Jesus – one in ten with seventeen zeroes behind it.

Now, what’s the likelihood of that? To give you a visual of it, imagine taking a loonie and putting a big “X” on it, and then dropping it somewhere, anywhere in the province of Alberta. It could be around Edmonton, Grand Prairie, Calgary, Lethbridge, Airdrie, Camrose, you know, anywhere in Alberta in a field, on a highway, anywhere at all, and then dumping two feet of loonies over the whole province of Alberta. All over Alberta, there’s one coin that you need to find in two feet of loonies, covering the whole province. Now imagine blindfolding one guy and saying, “Go find it. You can wander and walk anywhere you want for days, weeks, months, or years if you want to, all over Alberta. When you realize you think you might be there, reach down into the two feet of coins and pull up the right one.” The chances of finding that right coin would be about the same as these eight prophecies being fulfilled in the life of Jesus. In a moment, I want to show you a few of them and I want you to feel the power. Feel the emotion, and pay very careful attention to the words that were prophesied hundreds of years before they actually became true in the life of Jesus. Let’s look at a few of the prophecies that God fulfilled in the life of Christ.

It was prophesied in Isaiah 7:14 that Jesus would be born of a virgin. And in Matthew 1:25, it was fulfilled. Micah 5:2 prophesied that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, and it was fulfilled in Matthew 2:1-2. Isaiah 11:2 said Jesus would be anointed by the Spirit. It was fulfilled in Matthew 3:16. Zechariah 9:9 prophesied that Jesus would ride triumphantly on a donkey. In John 12:14-15, it was so. Psalm 41:9 said Jesus would be betrayed by a friend. And in Matthew 26:48-49, this prophecy was fulfilled. Isaiah 53:7 said Jesus would be silent before his accusers, and Matthew 27:12 showed this prophecy to come true. Isaiah 50:6 said that Jesus would one day be beaten and spat upon. Matthew 26:67 showed this horrible prophecy coming true. Concerning Jesus, Psalm 22:18 said they would one day cast lots for his clothing. And in John 19:23-24, it was fulfilled. Isaiah 53:5 said that Jesus would be pierced for our sins and that was fulfilled in John 19:34-35. And Psalm 118:17-18 showed that one day He would rise again. “I will not die, but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death.” And Mark 16:6-8 shows that’s exactly what He did. All the prophecies about Jesus that were made in the Old Testament came true in the New Testament.

We’ve looked at some facts about the Bible. We’ve looked at some tests about the Bible. We’ve looked at some prophecies that actually came true. But the question that we need to ask ourselves is: What does all this mean to us? What difference do all these facts, and tests and fulfillment of prophecies mean to our lives? They show us that we can trust God’s word! They show us that what is written in this book is true and accurate! They show us that this book is not like any other book that has ever been written! What it comes down to is this: If I could have all of us as a church do just one thing that would best help bring the most change in this world, what would it be? Would it be to have all of us be incredibly generous and we’d use our resources to give to people who are in need? Would it be to have all of us become mission minded to go into all the world and tell people about Jesus? Would it be for us to be incredibly prayerful, that we were a people of prayer, that we would pray, “God, Your kingdom come? Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”? Would it be that we would be very Godly in all that we do, and people would see our Godliness and desire it for themselves? Would it be that we would be so full of the joy of God that others would be hungry for what we have? Would it be that we’d be incredible parents, that we would raise the next generation of Christian leaders, and they would then carry on the message of the Gospel? If I could have all of us as a church do just one thing that would best help bring the most change in this world, what would it be? You know what my answer to that question is: I would have us daily read God’s word, and not just read it, but do what it says, because if we would do that, then I believe that all those other things that we just talked about would happen. We would be Godly parents. We would be Godly in all ways. We would be full of the joy of God. We would be generous, not holding on to the worthless material things of this world. We would be prayerful. We would be mission minded, if we truly valued and honored the word of God.

Let’s commit ourselves to reading and applying God’s word to our lives. Remember: that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16. God’s word will give us everything we need to fulfill everything that He is calling us to do!

Today, we are beginning a brand new three week series called “Text”. In this series we are going to examine the living word of God. Why is this so important? Because so many people today simply do not understand God’s word. The Bible is much more than a book of stories and rules from the past. It’s rich with a relevant message that God has for us today. If you have your Bibles with you, let’s open them up to Hebrews, chapter four. Throughout history, it’s been common for people to actually stand during the reading of God’s word, and I would like to do something a little different today. In honor of the living word of God, would you all stand together as we read God’s word. Hebrews 4 verse 12 says: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Scripture says that the truth in this book, is alive. It’s not just words on a page, but it’s living. It’s life transforming. It’s powerful. It’s active in every single way; and yet, even though it is alive, so many people neglect God’s word. For example, how many of you own a Bible? How many of you own two or more Bibles? How many of you this week did not read your Bible every single day? Be honest. What happened? Well, because we have God’s word so readily accessible, so many of us neglect it. Here’s what scripture says. Psalm 119:16, “I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your word.” This word “neglect” here comes from the Hebrew word, “shakach” (pronounced shaw-kakh). We get our word “shockacon” from it. Okay. Just joking. Bad joke. This Hebrew word means: “to lay aside”. It means “to forget”. If you are taking notes, it means “to take for granted or to neglect”. This verse is saying: “I will delight in your decrees. I will not lay aside your word. I will not forget you word. I will not take for granted your word. I will not neglect your word.”

Why is it that so many people today neglect God’s word? It’s because so many people today don’t understand what it really is and what it took for us to hold God’s word in our hands. Today, we are going to study the history of the Bible. The history of how we received what is now in our hands today. Let’s talk about how God brought His word to us. It started thousands and thousands of years ago, somewhere between 1400 and 1500 BC, when God, Himself, wrote the Ten Commandments on stone and ascribed these very first words of God in an ancient form of Hebrew. God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, and God began speaking His word to us. Years later, the very first scriptures were written. They were known as the Pentateuch, and they are now the first five books of the Bible. They include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. All of the Old Testament scriptures were written in Ancient Hebrew. These writing were passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years on scrolls made of animal skins, usually sheep, but sometimes deer or but never a pig. A pig would have been unclean, and that would have been totally inappropriate for God’s word.

What’s interesting is this: when the entire Pentateuch is found on a scroll, it’s called a Torah, and a Torah scroll, if it would be completely unraveled, would be over 150 feet in distance. The scroll was so long that it would often take an entire herd of sheep just to make one Torah scroll. The Jewish scribes who painstakingly produced each scroll were perfectionists. If they made even the slightest mistake in copying, such as allowing two letters of a word to touch, they destroyed that entire panel (the last three or four columns of text), and the panel before it, because it had touched the panel with a mistake! While most Christians today would consider this behavior fanatical and even idolatrous (worshiping the scripture, rather than the One who gave it to us), it nevertheless demonstrates the level of faithfulness to accuracy applied to the preservation of God’s Word throughout the first couple of thousand years of Biblical transmission.

By approximately 500 B.C., the thirty-nine books that we know today as the Old Testament were completed and continued to be preserved in Hebrew on scrolls. By the end of the First Century A.D., the New Testament was completed, and it was preserved in the Greek language on papyrus, a thin paper-like material made from crushed and flattened stalks of a reed-like plant. The word “Bible” comes from the same Greek root word as “papyrus”. The papyrus sheets were bound, or tied together in a configuration much more similar to modern books than to an elongated scroll. In the year 315 A.D., the Bishop of Alexandria, a guy by the name of Athanasius, wrote his Easter letter and in it, he listed all of the books that you read today in the New Testament. Then in the year 393 A.D., the African Synod of Hippo approved all of the books that you find listed as your New Testament today.

By the year 500 A.D., the Bible had been translated into over 500 different languages. People all over were so thankful, because they could read God’s word in their own language. But then, something very unusual happened. In just the next century, the next one hundred years, by the year 600 A.D. the Bible was only allowed in one language. Why is that? Well, the Catholic Church of Rome, at the time, was the only recognized church in the land, and they issued a decree that no Bible in any other language was allowed. If anyone found a Bible in any language besides Latin, that person holding that Bible could be executed on the spot. You may be wondering, “Why did this happen?” Well, unfortunately, the Catholic Church became very, very corrupt. The priests were the only one educated in the Latin language so that the common person could never, ever read God’s word. Well, that gave the priests ultimate power. They could teach what parts of the Bible they wanted to, and they could even throw in some things that weren’t in the Bible at all, and that was very common.

In fact, it was common for a person to go and to pay for indulgences. In a sense, they were paying for forgiveness. If they sinned, they’d pay a certain amount of money and the priest would say, “Well, because you’ve paid that, now you are forgiven.” The Catholic Church also taught about a place called purgatory, a word that’s not found in scripture, but they said if your relative dies, they go to purgatory, kind of a holding place, a place that you really don’t want to be, but for a certain amount of money, you can purchase the freedom for your relative from purgatory. In today’s world, it would kind of be like this: If your grandma dies, for $9,995 you can buy grandma a ticket out of purgatory. The priest used this forced ignorance, and between the years 400 A.D. and 1400 A.D. they deceived the masses during a 1,000-year period, which became known as the Dark Ages.

You may be wondering, “How did the church break free from this long season of dark and horrible corruption?” Well, the answer is simple. Once the Bible, the truth of God’s word, got in the hands of enough people and the right people, God used His truth through people to bring about the very necessary reformation of the church. Here’s how it happened. In the year 563 A.D., there was a guy named Columba. You may have seen his television show. You know the scruffy looking cop played by Peter Falk? Oh, that’s Columbo. We are talking about Columba. Sorry. Columba was a guy who started a secret Bible society, or a Bible school, where they could faithfully teach God’s word, and this group of people became the remnant on earth where God’s word was taught faithfully century after century after century. The students were known as the Culdee’s. It’s a term that means “certain stranger”. They were strangers of this world, but for around 700 years (500-1300 AD), the Culdee’s’s would disciple one another and they faithfully studied God’s word. In fact, it was out of this group that God raised up the right people to bring about the reformation.

In the late 1300’s, the secret society of Culdee’s chose John Wycliffe to lead the world out of the Dark Ages. He was a man that God used to do tremendous things. He was the very first guy to translate the Bible into the English language. This happened in 1380 AD. When he did so, all of a sudden, all these people who before couldn’t read scripture were now able to do so. At this time, some say that it would take about ten months to translate one single Bible – ten months people would work to get the Bible translated into this language. Well, he was faithful in spreading God’s word, but unfortunately, he was called a heretic, and the pope was so disgusted by this guy that forty-four years after his death, the pope ordered Wycliffe’s bones to be dug up, to be destroyed, and then to be spread across the river. Some people say that Wycliffe was actually the morning star of the reformation. He was the one that God used to start the ball rolling in the very necessary reformation of the church. Wycliffe also had a disciple, or another student, whose name was John Hus, and Hus was equally passionate about getting God’s word into as many hands of people as possible. Well, unfortunately, Hus too, was called a heretic and was actually burned at the stake in 1415. But get this. What do you think they used to start the fire around Hus as they burned him at the stake? They used his teacher, Wycliffe’s, Bibles. They spread Bibles all around him and then lit the Bibles on fire to burn Hus at the stake, but it was Hus’ final words that became known as a prophecy that helped direct the future of the church. At the stake before he was burned, the last words of John Hus were these. He said, “In the next one hundred years, God will raise up a man whose call for reform cannot be suppressed.” And that’s exactly what God did.

In the year 1517, God raised up the man named Martin Luther, who was fed up with all of the corruption in the church and he believed that God was calling him to help reform the church. In fact, it was on All Hallows Eve that Martin Luther took what became known as his ninety-five theses. It was a document with ninety-five claims of heresy, and he took his ninety-five theses, and he went and he nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg church. People now describe that event as the knock that was heard around the world. God used those accusations of heresy to spark what’s become known as the reformation of the protestant church. God also used Martin Luther to take the Bible and to translate it into the German language. He then took the recent invention called the printing press, the invention of Gutenberg, and used it to now get the Bible into the hands of the masses. Of course, Luther was called a heretic. People wanted to kill him, and he had to spend much of his life on the run, but God used him to spark major changes in the church and to get the word of God into the hands of the masses.

About that same time, there was another guy, an Oxford professor. His name was John Colet, and he translated the Bible into English for his Oxford students. He also taught the Bible in the English language at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London for, believe it or not, over 20,000 people would pack themselves into this cathedral simply to hear the word of God in a language that they could understand. Not only were 20,000 people in the building, but it said that as many people would be outside the building waiting for their turn to get in. Why? Because they were hungry, desperate. They would do anything to simply hear the word of God. What’s sad is that beautiful historic cathedral still exists today, but instead of over 20,000 people a weekend, they minister to about 200 people a weekend, and most of these are simply tourists.

In the year 1526, there was a guy named William Tyndale, who befriended Martin Luther, and God used William Tyndale to print the very first English Bible. That’s the good news. The bad news is, anyone who was caught with this illegal Bible would be executed immediately. You could only imagine what demand there would be for people that read English and wanted to read God’s word in the language that they could understand. They would do almost anything to get God’s word into their hands. These people, they were incredibly creative and would often smuggle Bibles into England, using all sorts of different means. Occasionally, they put Bibles in bales of cotton to smuggle them in, or other times, they’d put Bibles into bags full of flour. Ironically, the biggest buyers of Tyndale’s Bibles were actually the king’s men. That’s right, the king’s men would buy up as many English Bibles as they could, not because they wanted to read them, but instead, because they wanted to burn and destroy all of Tyndale’s Bibles. Well, Tyndale, he was a good businessman, and he would simply take the profits of all of these Bibles the king’s men would buy and he would use the money to print even more Bibles to get the word of God out. Unfortunately, because what he was doing was considered illegal, Tyndale was on the run for eleven years of his life.

Imagine waking up every single morning, knowing that people were hunting you down, wanting to kill you simply because you wanted to help other people experience the word of God. That’s what Tyndale experienced. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, he was on the run, running for his life because people wanted to execute him. Sadly, they eventually caught up to him and incarcerated him for about five hundred days before they finally decided in the year 1536 to burn him at the stake. His last words, though, were a prayer to God, which people will remember forever. He prayed, “Oh, Lord, open the eyes of the King of England,” and three years later in 1539, God answered that prayer. Not only did the King of England allow the printing of the Bible in the English language, but he actually helped to fund it, setting the word of God free. Think about this. Remember all the people who died, gave their lives fighting with everything in them to help God’s living and active word be available to you, and sadly, so many people today, they neglect God’s living word.

Sadly, so many people today neglect God’s word. They take it for granted. It is so, so important to engage in God’s word and to interact with the scriptures. Why? Because this is the word of God. It is living. It is active. Scripture says that in the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. This is Jesus, the word, becoming flesh. To know Him, to serve Him, to follow Him, we must feed on His word; and yet, so many people neglect it. A few questions to consider this morning: (1) What causes you to neglect God’s word? (2) What will you do to ensure that God’s word leads you daily?

Let’s conclude with this Scripture: Psalm 119:16 which says: “I delight in your decrees, and I will not neglect Your word.”