We are going to be starting a three-week series tonight, and we're going to be trying to answer this question, and that is, can we trust the Bible? And I'm going to appeal to our tech crew. I don't have my notes there. Is there any way I can get mine on the back wall so I don't have to keep turning around? We're going to be answering the question, can we trust the Bible? Now, thank you guys. If you were to, if you were in my office over the last week or two, you have seen, as there usually is, piles of books around my office. There's a pile of Luke. There's a pile on depression. And then there is this huge, ginormous pile on scripture, on how we got our Bible, on can we trust our Bible. books on the translation issues, all the different issues that come into play when we talk about whether or not we can trust the Bible. Now, if you are new to Grace, or maybe you've been coming for a while, or maybe you're newly saved, I don't know everyone's story that's here tonight, but if you're here, you know that every Sunday, every service, somebody, either myself or someone, stands in this pulpit and opens a Bible and speaks to us, speaks to you with authority. And that authority is not claimed in the person, right? I'm not, the pastor's not, I tell you my friend at the gym who always tells me he's upset with my boss who he thinks is the Pope. Okay, and I tell him over and over again, I don't see a Pope anywhere in the New Testament. I'm not a Roman Catholic. I don't accept the idea of the papacy. I'm just a preacher. I'm just an ambassador. I'm just a proclaimer. And so the message that I have to proclaim is the message that is found in the Bible. If a person came to this pulpit, I've had friends who were Christian scientists, for instance, which is neither Christian nor science, it's always an interesting name to me, but Christian scientists where they will read Shakespeare and they will read it basically on equality with the scripture. No one is going to come into our church and stand at this pulpit and preach from the Book of Mormon. They're not going to preach from the Quran. The reason being is there is a God in heaven and he has spoken, and he has revealed himself through what we call the Bible. Now, you are probably aware of the fact that we live in a culture that, what I just said, If I stood somewhere in a public place and said that, the reaction would be similar to what Paul got at Morris Hill. Some would mock, some would laugh, some would threaten, and some would say, well, maybe I'll listen to you again. This is a safe environment to say that this is God's word is accepted by all of you, at least the vast majority of you that are here tonight. There's no question. And maybe there is. I mean, maybe as we live in this culture where God's word is constantly under attack, that it may be that maybe in your own mind there's a seed of doubt. Is this really scripture? Can I really trust this? And the answer, lest I leave anyone confused, is absolutely yes. And I hope over the next three weeks that when someone stands in this pulpit and says, thus saith the Lord, that we can say with confidence, thus saith the Lord. Not thus saith this pastor or any other pastor, this is what God has said. And so we're gonna jump into this. Admittedly, admittedly, this afternoon reading through some more stuff and wading through more material, we could study this for a year. We could study this for a very long time. So three weeks, we'll not say every word about everything. And please, if I say something you don't understand or whatever, tough. No, that's not tough. Feel free to ask, okay? I hope you know that by now. You stop by, ask me whatever. I'd love to talk to you about it. Can we trust the Bible? Well, let's get some background, first of all. The Bible makes proclamation in its own words to be the word of God. For instance, Psalm 19, verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. Psalm 19, if you're familiar with it, verse 1, begins with the familiar statement, the heavens declare the glory of God. It begins with what we call general revelation. General revelation, if you think in theological terms, general revelation is revelation that God has given to all mankind. The reason for general revelation is for us to be able to look at the created order in which we live in and understand that there is a God. Now we know, you know as well as I do, that the common theory, and I use the word theory, underlined, bolded, highlighted, italicized, the theory of evolution has creeped into our minds and people trying to believe and take this into account that evolution is true, but the reality is that the purpose of creation is to demonstrate that there is a God. General revelation reveals to us that there is a God. However, salvation only comes through the revealed word of God, or what we call special revelation. That's what Psalm 19 verse seven is talking about. It starts with general revelation, the heavens declare the glory of God, and works down through special revelation, the law of the Lord, the word of God, okay, is perfect. And notice the word, it is converting. It converts the soul. Apart from scripture, apart from Christ, no one can be saved. No one can have a personal relationship without understanding who Christ is and how he was revealed through his word. So, Psalm 19, and we could look at other verses, and for sake of time, we can't look at all of them, but how many times in the scripture, in the Old Testament, you see, thus saith the Lord. We know that Moses, for instance, when God was revealing revelation to Moses, he spoke to Moses in a personal way. He spoke with the prophets. He gave them his word directly. And when the Old Testament writers, as they began to write down what God had inspired them to write, they were accepted very early as inspired, as scripture, as truth. Well, the Old Testament is not the only place that we find declaration of inspiration. We also see it probably most clearly in 2 Timothy 3. Verses 16 and 17 where it says, all scripture is given by inspiration. Notice we've underlined that word. We'll come back to it. It is given to us by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Okay, so under inspiration, Paul here, writing this book to Timothy, claims all scripture is given by inspiration of God. We'll come back to that word in just a moment. Another New Testament passage for you, 2 Peter verse 21 of chapter one says, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. When I was pastoring in New England, there was a professor that I got to know at a school there, a university that was in our town. There were several universities there, and I got to know this guy. And every semester, he would have me come to his classroom, and he would let me talk about whatever I wanted to talk about. And it was a religion class. It was a class on religion. And I was the representative of the Independent Baptist. That was in his curriculum. That's who I was representing. And so I would go into this room, and depending on the semester, there could be anywhere from 30 to 100 kids that were there. And so I would go in, and obviously for two hours, they got basically the gospel. And I would always, every time, ask the question, how many stories are in the Bible. And I would open it up to the floor, and I would let them talk, and they would have all kinds of answers, and they would say, you know, they would say 10, 15, 100, 45, whatever. They would throw numbers all around, and they're guessing. And then inevitably, somebody somewhere in the midst of all that would mumble under their breath the correct answer. How many stories are in the Bible? One. One story. And by story, I'm not using the word to mean fiction. There's one story. It is the story of redemption. A story that is so magnificent that men, separated by hundreds of years, wrote and wrote one story in absolute agreement. This is God. This is what he did. And we probably won't have time tonight, this will be Tuesday chapel at high school, getting into the issue of the supposed contradictions in scripture. There are not any. There is one story. Why? Because there's one author. God used human mankind to pen, to write, what God intended for you and for me to know and understand about who He is. And Deuteronomy 29, 29 tells us clearly, the secret things belong unto the Lord. There are things we can't answer. There are things we don't know. But it goes on to say, but God has revealed those things to us that He wants us to know so that we can know Him and obey Him and live for Him. He has told us about Himself. So all Scripture is inspired, it is a work of God himself. We often think about it in theology this way, there is a big A author slash little a author. And God used 40-ish little a authors to write the scripture, but under the supervision of the ultimate author, which is the big A in that little illustration, that being God. So let's try to understand this a little bit more. What is scripture? What are we talking about? What are we trying to understand? There are approximately, as I mentioned, 40 authors of the Bible. Some of the books we don't know who wrote them. For instance, the book of Hebrews. Some people ascribe that to Paul. I don't believe Paul wrote that. I think it was written by someone after him. But there's books we don't know. There are good men that disagree on that. So we say approximately 40 writers. in the Bible. There are 66 books in the Bible. Okay, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. Most of you are familiar with that, you know that, but these books were inspired by God. Now here is a, I can't see it well there, but I don't know how well you can see this. This just breaks down for us the books of the Bible, okay? The law, which the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Then history books, Joshua down through the book of Esther. Poetry, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. Okay, these were poetic books. Again, when you think poetry, don't think rhyme and meter like in English. Hebrew poetry. Major prophets, Isaiah down through Daniel. Minor prophets, Hosea all the way to Malachi. Okay, so that gives us a breakdown of the Old Testament scriptures. And then the New Testament, the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke's called Synoptic Gospels. And then the book of John, which is also a gospel, but it's not considered to be a synoptic gospel. And then we have history, the book of Acts, followed by Paul's letters, Romans, all the way down through Philemon, and then general letters or general epistles, which is Hebrews, down through the book of Revelation. Okay, so that is kind of a picture of what we're talking about. And again, for most of us, we know this. Okay, but this is a breakdown of what the scriptures look like. And we think about Genesis, okay? You say, well, Pastor Jay, you said there's only one story in the Bible. Well, Genesis gives us the story of creation, creation coming at a moment when there is heaven on earth, there is paradise, there's absolute perfection. And then, in Genesis, we see the fall of mankind and we see their sin against God. We see God's rejection, you will, of them and of their sin. And then, Genesis all the way through Revelation, we see this restoration process, the prophets, the history books, looking forward to what God would do on the cross, looking forward to what God was going to do in the historical section. raising up Israel and working through this people, this tiny nation, this one that compared to the rest of the nations had very little to offer and yet God was uniquely in a covenant with her and he was going to use her and he was going to be there their God, and they were going to be His people, and they were going to be this holy nation. And it was pointing forward, as you know, by the time the prophets come, they start predicting that the people of Israel were going to go into captivity. They're talking about this Messiah, this one that's going to come. He's going to rescue His people. And then we come to the Gospels, and we are introduced to this Messiah. We see who He is. We're studying that in the book of Luke. Understanding what he did, what he said, where he was on a historical level. Understanding his ministry. Book of Acts, then beginning in chapter 2. By the way, as you know, Luke and Acts are written by Luke. They're meant to be read together. They're separated. in our Bibles, the order is not inspired. The chapter numbers, the verse numbers, none of that is inspired. That was added later. But these things, Luke, Acts, written together as one unit. And then the epistles coming in and explaining what Christ was and how He was the Messiah and how He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies. and what it meant, and then we come to revelation, and the story that began in creation and Genesis is completed in revelation when what happens? When there's restoration. And all that mankind was intended to experience is found in the new heaven and in the new earth when the revelation of Christ is ultimately realized, and there is the story of the Bible, that's it. And there's people in there, real people, with real problems, with real failures, but with real hope. And this Bible, this one story written so that we can know our God personally, written under the inspiration of God so that we can know Him in a personal way. But let's look at some words. The word inspiration that we looked at in the Timothy passage, the literal meaning of that is God breathed. It is the supernatural work of God upon the human writers. Now, inspiration has ended. When somebody says they have a new revelation, no, you don't. The process of revelation ended with the apostles. It is over. That is why, when you think about the Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ, it is in addition to the Scriptures, which, by the way, is written about a group of people that have historically never been discovered by anybody. There's no historical record, there's no archeological record that this group of people in the Americas ever existed. The only university that says that they have found information that verifies the validity and the historicity of the people that the writing of the Book of Mormon is about is BYU. Convenient. They're the only ones. And yet, when we come to the scriptures, there is archaeological evidence, there is historical evidence. I told the high schoolers, I remember the day in ninth grade vividly. I was sitting in the front row, long hair, heavy metal t-shirt, half asleep, could care less about history or anything at that point in my life. And I'm sitting there, whatever, and the teacher pulls down the map and she says, today, we're gonna talk about Moses and the Exodus out of Egypt. And it's like, whoa, I just got transported to Sunday school. So I raised my hand, I said, Moses, I thought this was school, not church. She says, Moses was a real person. There's historical evidence to demonstrate that Moses was real. And there's a real evidence of the exodus and the things that happened. This was in a public university or public high school. She says, well, of course we're going to talk about Moses. He was a real person. And sometimes we've taken history and we've put history over there and the Bible over here as if they're two separate things. The Bible occurred in history. There's evidence of it. Things like the Book of Mormon and others, there's no archaeological evidence for those things. And yet, inspiration, while it is closed, it was inspiration by God given to the human writers that they would record what God intended for us. Now, the Bible also has authority. The Bible has authority because the Bible is the word of God. To disobey or to disbelieve any part of scripture is to disobey or to disbelieve, can't read that on the back, disbelieve God. And we'll get to this in a minute. But I believe we live in a world that so many start with the presupposition that this can't be true. Because if it's true, and I think we can demonstrate that it is, if it's true, then it's my authority. And if it's my authority, I have to change how I live. Actually, if it's true, I have to submit my life to God, and he's going to change the way that I live. And we start with this presupposition that this, it can't be true, it can't be accurate. If it's true, if it's accurate, it has authority over our lives, and yet it claims to have that authority, as we'll talk about. It's infallible. The Bible is not misleading on matters of faith and practice. Or it's not, there's no historical errors or anything like that, too. It is inerrant. That means it is without error in the original manuscripts. They are without error, true and accurate. They are free from falsehood or mistake. Now that's what the little thing in your hand there is, is a demonstration when we say, now we've got to be honest and say this, we don't have the original manuscripts. We don't have them. They didn't survive. We don't have them all. We have a tremendous amount of manuscripts that give validity to the New Testament and to the Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls and others, the discovery of those dates the Old Testament scrolls, for instance, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, backed up the history and the timeframe of the Old Testament manuscripts hundreds of years. And we'll look at some numbers in a few minutes. The number of New Testament manuscripts, the number that we have is overwhelming. So while we may not have the original, knowing that they were written on papyrus, they didn't survive, that we have accurate manuscripts that have been given to preserve the word of God. So in its original writing, it was inerrant. It is the autograph. Okay, we need to understand what the autograph is. It's not somebody signing their name. The autograph is a reference to the original document. So when we say that the Bible was inerrant, it means in the original autograph, there were no mistakes. It was absolutely perfect. They wrote what God intended for them to write. And we'll talk about the supposed mistakes in just a moment. Manuscript, this is a copy of the original document. Now, we know this, but let's think back to 65, 70 AD when Xerox did not yet exist, the internet didn't exist, computers didn't exist, you know, all these things that we have at our, you know, at our disposal to make copies, that there were people that would sit and they would meticulously copy The scripture, they were scribes. They would sit and they would copy them to make sure that there was adequate representation of what these documents said and they would sit and they would write them and they would copy them to make sure that this word of God was preserved. And we have thousands of them, okay, which we'll talk about in a minute. The next word that we want to understand is the word cannon. Okay, we're not talking about a cannon that shoots cannonballs. The canon is a reference to the books that are authoritative for faith and practice because they're inspired by God. Canon is from the Greek word canon, that's kind of a duh, meaning stick, ruler, or a standard. Okay, that's what the word canon means. Canonicity, okay, what went into the canon, canonicity means, maybe? Canonicity is the right to occupy a place in the collection of inspired writings called the Bible. Now this is important. Men did not assign canonicity, they recognized it. I was reading this afternoon about all the different councils. So I thought we'd run through one of the, no, we're not gonna do that. Okay, we'd be here forever. Councils. What were they? Why did they have them? Was man trying to just come up with this list of books? That's not what happened. The books, the writings, especially the Old Testament, there were Jewish lists of inspired works that are consistent with what we have. By the time the New Testament came, as the church fathers and others, the early church believers, they had compiled a list of those books that were inspired. We'll get into tests of canonicity probably next week to understand how did they do that. But remember this. If you were to go to my shelf, you look at my bookcase, and you go bottom shelf, bottom couple shelves to the left, there's these big fancy books called systematic theologies. Systematic theology is a writer that takes, he takes a topic, he takes salvation, and he searches, or she searches the Bible, and he comes up with all the verses, the places that the Bible talks about salvation. you could look up the deity of Christ, and you could go through and read this writer's definition of the deity of Christ, and then he is going to offer all the biblical evidence of the deity of Christ. Now, in the first century, you're now 110, 115 A.D. The last New Testament book is written in 96 A.D. There were no systematic theologies. So in these councils, they're wrestling through some of the questions of the day. What does it mean that Christ was man and God? We still haven't figured that fully out. What did the Trinity mean? How do we explain that? How do we compile information that is going to explain the Trinity? What about the canon? How are we going to make sure that only the books that are inspired by God are the ones that we include? They were wrestling with that. It wasn't, hey, let's get together next Friday and let's come up with a few doctrines, let's come up with a list of books we think might be inspired, put them together, put our stamp of approval on it, and then start telling everybody this is the Bible. That is not how it went. These texts will look at Christ alone when he quotes the Old Testament. The story of Jonah, for instance. I've had people say, well, that's just fiction. Jonah wasn't really swallowed by a fish. Jesus said he was. Jesus quoted it. He believed it was historical. And so when we look at these writings, and as they piece together some of the books, the apocryphal books, we'll talk about that in a minute, you may say, well, why, like the Catholic Bible, why are there extra books in there? They're called the apocrypha. And they were in the first King James, so we're honest. Because what was happening was these apocryphal books had to do some work on them for a couple of classes. The book of Judith, for instance. Great book. Puritans used it to preach from it. Not on the same authority as scripture, but they did. Book of Judith is a great book. Wow, it'll preach. The problem is there's historical inaccuracies in that. Bell and the Dragon, the addition to the book of Daniel. There's historical inaccuracies. So these books were weighted and discerned to say that there are no historical inaccuracies. These books are inspired. They are God's word. They are the ones that God has given to us for faith and practice. They are the standard. They are the canon. They are the books we read and understand who God is. By AD 120, we have the entire New Testament. We have the New Testament, which is really not terribly long after the New Testament's finished in 96 AD. 397 AD, the Bible was reaffirmed at the Third Council of Carthage. The Apocrypha was disregarded. Okay, so some of these works, there's other works called the Pseudepigrapha and other writers that were supposedly written, they were supposedly written by a person, their name was on it, but it wasn't really written by them. It's called Pseudepigrapha or Apocrypha. They were wrestling through all these books. The Apocrypha is dismissed in 397 A.D. But, by the way, FF Bruce said it this way, he said, they did not impose any innovation on the churches, they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches. Talking about this council in 397, they didn't come up with it, they were just, they were agreeing with, if you will, firming up, endorsing what the churches had already accepted even prior to that. Thomas puts it this way, the books of the Bible did not become canonical when men recognized them to be inspired. In no sense did men canonize the books by their recognition. He goes on and he says, they are canonical inherently by virtue of the fact that they are inspired. What men have done is merely to recognize them to be what they actually are. That's all these councils were doing. It wasn't man trying to create it. By the way, in 1546 at the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church added the Apocryphal Writings to their list of canonical writings. And if you're curious, the doctrine of purgatory comes out of one of the books that are entitled Maccabees, and it is, in my mind, sort of a misinterpretation of what that verse is even saying. Where did they get the idea of purgatory from? Well, it's from a verse in the Apocrypha, in the Book of Maccabees, that to me is likely even a misunderstanding of what that text is saying. But around this time, they bring that into canonical writings, purgatory becomes, indulgences, all those things begin to creep into the church. Now remembering, it's not long after that, around this time, the Reformation happens, and then we have the 1611 King James, which included the apocryphal writings. They were originally in, when people say, well, I stand by the 1611. Okay, get your apocrypha ready, because they had it in there. And by the way, I was going to put a page up here from the 1611. You can't even read it because of the change in letters and stuff. We'll talk more about that later. Illumination, the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian to produce understanding and relevance. In other words, this is a work of God that does continue today. Illumination, inspiration is done. God moved on holy men of God. They wrote down what God wanted. Have you ever sat down with somebody and you show them a verse of scripture that is as clear as day and they're like, yeah, I don't get it. I don't understand. And then they get saved and it's like, oh, that's what God is saying. That's illumination. That is God's Holy Spirit demonstrating to us what is the meaning of the scriptures. Now, here's where we wanna plant for the last, wow, seven o'clock already. Give me a few minutes. Variants, the difference between manuscripts. I will never forget the day in seminary when I walk into class and the teacher hands out photocopies of manuscripts. And he says, there are variants. Variants means mistake. There are variants. Mistakes isn't probably the right word. There are differences between these manuscripts. And there are variances here. And here's what I want you to do. Number one, you can't talk to anybody else about this. You do this assignment on your own. This is the same professor who told us the first day of Hebrew that our assignment was to go home and kiss our wife goodbye, because we wouldn't see her until May. And this was in September, which was pretty much right. So we didn't mess with Doc McLean. Doc McLean said it. You just said, yes, sir. Don't talk to anybody. You come in tomorrow and you be ready to explain to me and count, give me the number of variances, differences you find in this manuscript. And I'm sitting there like, what? There's mistakes? And I went home, you know, my hands shaking and like, what are these, what's this seminary gonna do to me? And we start circling these mistakes. Like, really? Really? Really? Huh. Come in the next day, not allowed to talk. Come in, sit down. Okay, go around the room. Leon, how many did you find? Seven. That's as high as Leon can count. Hey man, men's Bible study. Oh, that's not where we are. We're in church. Bob, how many did you get? 17. Michelle, how many did you get? 42. Lloyd, how many did you get? 109. Lloyd was on a roll. Zane, how many did you get? 64. We go around the room, and it's like, what? We all had the same stuff. How did you come up with all these different numbers? Well, you know, we can't trust those manuscripts, because there's variances in them. You better be careful what manuscripts you read, because they took words out. You've heard all that, whoa, what does that mean? It's scary. Obviously I'm being sarcastic, so it's really no big deal. Suppose problems of accuracy. I'm going to skip this, we'll come back to this. Wasn't that good, good, good, good, wasn't that good? Oh, you gotta see this, real quick. This is, well, those slides I just flew through, we'll come back to next week. This is the Hebrew alphabet. Okay, so you're starting right to left. Okay, so you're reading this way. Aleph, bait, vet, gimel, dalet, hay, vav, zion, ket. Now, if you look at the yod, this little boy right here. Okay, that's a letter. You've got a noon. This is equivalent basically to our N. If it's at the end of a word, it's this. You've got this letter, you've got this letter. Does anybody notice anything about these guys? They're pretty close, aren't they? So this little Yod fella, I mean, by the way, when Jesus said every jot and tittle, this is what he's talking about, this little Yod guy. Well, if I'm a scribe and I'm writing this and I make this a little long, you think it's possible that somebody's gonna mistake it for one of these other letters? What about, you can see, look at these guys. By the way, these little dots didn't come until later, so that's not entirely what the scribes would have been seeing, but you get the picture. You're dealing with this ancient language, and there's little marks, and this is what the scribes were working with, and there was no vowels. There's no vowels in Hebrew. The Hebrew vowels came later. That's what all the dots are, if you've ever seen Hebrew text. Those are the vowels, called vowel pointing. So there's no vowels. There's no space between words. And every Hebrew word has a basic three-letter basis to its word, but it can do, add things, and letters drop out. You add this ending, there's letters disappear, drives you nuts. It's crazy. Okay, so this gives you a taste of what they, in the Old Testament anyway, New Testament written in Greek, of what they were doing. So here's the process. God inspired holy men of God to write the autograph. the original manuscript. Then God, to preserve his word, had scribes come and copy those original manuscripts. And now we have things like the Dead Sea Scrolls that people, I've seen them, I've been in the museum there in Israel and stood and seen the Isaiah manuscript and all of that. So they can study them and understand them. And out of these manuscripts, we get translations. We get English translations, we get French translations, Creole translations, German, Russian, whatever. We get all these different translations that come from this textual work. If it doesn't come from a text, it's not a translation. It has to come from these texts. So we have our translation that we can read and understand, and then we can see God changing our lives. So do we have scripture? Yes! Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, this is interesting. Let me walk through this. This is cool. Let's just pick out some names you may have heard of. Caesar. He wrote 100 to 44 BC. The first copy that we found is 900 AD, 1,000 years later. We only have 10 of them. Plato, 427 to 347 B.C., first copy, we have 900 A.D. There's 1,200 years between those copies, we have seven. Herodotus, who was a historian, 480 to 425 B.C., first copy, 900 A.D., 1,300 years, we have eight of them. Aristotle, 384, 322 B.C., 1,100 A.D., first copy, 1,400 years span, 49 copies. How about Homer? We used him in chapel the other day. Homer wrote 900 B.C., First copy, 400 BC. 500 years later, Homer is in second place with 643 copies. I have never heard one liberal scholar ever stand up with the Iliad and say, I just don't believe Homer wrote this. I think we're wrong. I don't believe Homer wrote this. Nobody questions that. It's accepted. He's Homer, man, our homeboy Homer. Come on, we don't question him. I'm not going to ask how many of you have read Homer. The New Testament, finished 35 to AD, 96 AD, last book, first copy, 63 AD, time span 23 years, copies 24,000. Oh, but we can't believe it. How do we know Paul wrote that? Really? Really? We wouldn't question Homer or Aristotle or Plato, even though there's over a thousand years in between, and eight, nine, ten, six hundred copies, but we can't believe this? No! Come on! Do you do realize that the people that saw Christ and experienced His ministry were still alive? And if it was wrong, they would have said so. We don't believe it because we don't want to. He's like, well, just give me the evidence. Hello? What do you want? The Old Testament was confirmed again Dead Sea Scrolls and others Demonstrating that all these copies and manuscripts in this family in the Byzantine text. Oh, we got this Okay, you do realize that the amount of disagreement between the text that has any significance at all Would fit on this half sheet of paper It's like they are in amazing agreement Yeah, I just don't know I don't know if you can believe this Bible thing. I mean, who knows? What about Homer? Do you believe him? By the way, one writer said there's more errors and mistakes in the copies of Homer than there are in the New Testament. You don't question that? Wow, the Bible claims to be inspired, so... Yeah, because it is. Now here's our assignment in the last 10 minutes. You have before you, you have before you a note. I'll put it up here. This is a note that a father wrote to his son. And this is made up in the imagination of my brain, okay? But just to give you an illustration of what we're talking about. These variances, whew, scary. Look at the original. Here's the original note that the dad left in his lunchbox on a school morning. My son, I wanted to write to you a quick letter of encouragement. I know you're going through some difficult times in your life, but God is faithful to those who love him. I am praying for you each day. I pray that through these challenging times that God will mature you in your faith. Always remember that God's favor is on his children even during times of trial. If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know. I will do whatever I can to help you through these difficult days. I love you, my dear son. Keep your eyes forever fixed on Christ. He loves you very much. Now, this is in the day when there are no copy machines. Every copy machine in the world is broken. on the day this little boy gets this note in his lunchbox. So he goes to 10 of his friends, and he says to them, here's the note my dad wrote to me, and I wanna make sure that I don't lose this note, so I want you to copy it for me. And so the kids do, the 10 kids come, they make their copies, and they keep them, they keep possession of them, but the little boy keeps this note tucked away in his lunchbox, and he pulls it out to read it every day. But one day, he throws it away. It's in the trash, it's gone. So he goes to his 10 friends, and he wants to reconstruct the letter that his dad wrote. And so these 10 friends come, and here are their letters. Okay, your assignment is to pick out the variance. Where is there a mistake? Copy one. My dear son, I wanted to write you a quick letter. Stop me, yell, scream, whatever, when you find a mistake. I know that you're going through a difficult time, in your life. Did you catch one? There's a contraction. Mistake! But God is faithful to those who love him. I am praying for you each day. I pray that through these challenges, times that God will mature you in your faith. Always remember that God's favor is on his children. Did you catch another one yet? Capitalization of the word him and his. Mistake! If there is anything, another one, I can do for you, please let me know. And he goes on, keep your eyes forever fixed on Jesus Christ. He loves you very much. Oh man, mistakes. Can't trust that copy. Copy two, my dear son, I wanted to write you a short letter of encouragement. Short instead of quick. I know you're going through some difficult times in your life, but God is faithful to those who love him. I pray for you each day. I pray that through all of these challenges that God will mature you, okay? Different phraseology. Always remember that God's favor is on his children, even during times of trial. Favor with a what? With a you. Copy three, my dear precious son. I wanted to write You, a quick note of encouragement, for sake of time, I'll work you through these, deleted the word too. I know you're going through some difficult times in your life. God is faithful to those who love him with their whole heart. I am fervently praying for you every day. Always remember, times trial, read through that, and his last line, keep your eyes fixed on Christ, capitalization wrong. He loves you, deleted very much. Look at copy four, my dearest son. Notice the word dearest, I wanted to write to, T-O-O, you a quick letter of encouragement. I know your contraction, capitalization of him. Third line down, I pray that through these challenging times that God will mature your fieth. Notice the last line, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior because God loves you very much. Okay, copy five, my, deleted the word dear, son, I, capitalization. Second line, I know you're passing through some difficult times, deleted, in your life, but God is always faithful. I'm bringing you before the Lord each day in prayer. Okay, last line, keep your eyes forever fixed on Chris. I'm sure Chris is a great guy. And I did it in chapel, there was a Chris sitting right to the left of me, it was pretty good. My, copy six, my dear son, I write it down to you, a brief letter of encouragement for you, I know your, copy, your favor again, oh you are, copy seven, capitalization of he, him, his, copy eight, Again, for sake of time, we'll just flip through these. Copy eight, last line, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, the addition of Jesus. Copy nine, my child, instead of my son, I desire to write to you a quick, instead of a short, encourage you, the last line, deleted very much, we have the word through, T-H-R-U, times as tens, a couple mistakes, favor with a P-H, just some variations of that. Copy 10, the only mistake is God loves, God is faithful to those who loves Him instead of love Him. Okay, so did your faith just get shaken? Do you think we could take the 10 copies of this letter and take them and put them together and produce a copy that is exceptionally similar to the original? Yes! Yes! So when somebody says, oh, there's all these variances. Okay, first of all, we're talking about mistakes in spelling. We're talking about word order. You do realize in Greek, word order does not matter. It's irrelevant. We're talking about mistakes that do not in any way, shape, or form change any theological position that you and I would hold to as orthodox belief. None. And as I said, any of these variances that carry any weight at all that are of significant need of clarification and study would fit on the half sheet of a piece of paper. And that's what we're fighting about. We can't trust the Bible. I mean, these manuscripts have mistakes. If you got any one of these 10 copies of this letter to this boy from his father, do you think you would have an accurate representation of what that dad said to his son? Yes, absolutely. Well, you know, we don't have the original manuscripts of the New Testament. You're right, we only have 24,000 copies of which there is incredible agreement. So can I stand and say that when Paul wrote in Philippians whatever, this is what God said with authority and confidence? You better believe it. Because we have a very accurate representation of what the biblical writer said, and we can say with confidence, this is what God said. Now, this last slide, I just want to walk through quickly, and this may spark discussion, and that's great, but we're out of time. When you hear things, let's take Acts 19.10. And there's, believe me, I looked this afternoon at tons of examples of this. Tons of examples. This is one of many that we can look at later. I want you to look at Acts 19.10. Here's King James rendition. Heard the word of the Lord Jesus. Acts 19.10 in the New American Standard. Heard the word of the Lord. Acts 19.10. Heard the word of the Lord, ESV. NIV, heard the word of the Lord. Heard the message of the Lord, Holman Christian Standard. What's the problem, supposedly? What's the problem? Jesus, oh, they took Jesus out. Those new translations, you just can't trust them. I know you don't know Greek, and neither does our computer. That's cute. Although it may help you, here, Akuo, the, lagon, word, of, the Lord. Heard the word of the Lord. That's what's in the Greek manuscript. So which one of these are right? All of them. All of them. Now, to be, you know, the technical translation, word, you know, we want the translation that is close to word for word, and we want the, you know, we want the translation that is formal and word for word, then I, whoops, then I would say NASB, ESV, NIV are the, these three would be the most word for word translation. Okay, this one does not change the message there. It does not change the meaning. And certainly here, they added in Jesus. Some manuscripts may have included that. Some of the copies may have included the word Jesus. But either way, did this verse change in its meaning? No. Please, please, please. When you hear people say, that all the translations, they took words out. This is what they're talking about. And there are manuscripts where they would translate it and they wanted so desperately to preserve the deity of Christ that sometimes they would add, as in here, they would add Lord Jesus to clarify it. And we'll talk about this when we get to Erasmus and others. To clarify, it wasn't wrong, it's just to understand that it did not change the text. They were simply putting that there to make sure that it was preserving who Christ was. None of them are wrong. I got asked once, there are times, that out of an agenda that people have done translations of the Bible to blur gender lines. And I get that and I understand that. I remember a few years ago, somebody was upset. They said, well, you know, the ESV is taking gender out. You know, they took gender out of the ESV because there's places where The King James translates the word man, and ESV says mankind, or person. See, it's gender neutral. So I got this through email, whatever, and so I went, and I looked at some of the past, I didn't look at all of them, I'll be honest, I didn't look up every one, but I looked up a few, and the word was anthropos. Does anybody know what English word correlates with the Greek word anthropos? Anthropology, which is the study of what? Mankind. There's another Greek word that is used for gender man. If I said that Pam Daniels is a part of man, is she? Yes, she's part of mankind. You follow what I'm saying? If I said Pam Daniels is a man, you're not thinking gender. You're thinking she's part of the human race, correct? So when they said, well, they took men, they made it gender neutral, the word means people, male and female. It was not making a gender statement. It was making a mankind statement. So to say, translate Anthropos, Pam Daniels is a man who Christ died for, is accurate. It would be more accurate to say Pam Daniels is a part of mankind who Christ died for. You see what I'm saying? So we get all worked up on all these issues. And we gotta be honest. We gotta take a look at what did the text actually say? The slide's eye flew through. And by the way, we used this on a Wednesday night the other day. We had a figure of speech in Deuteronomy. The English translation is that the people of Israel were an apple in God's eyes. Okay, that was not a Hebrew expression. The Hebrew expression was something like it's a little person in the eye. The picture was talking about the pupil, the center of your eye. And we have all these idioms that we use. He put his foot in his mouth. He dropped the ball. You see what I'm saying? We have all these figures of speech that we use, and if you were to take them and translate them literally into another language, they would have no idea what you're talking about. So sometimes there is a translation, again, Deuteronomy is the text, where he says, you are the apple of God's eye. The literal translation in English would make zero sense. We wouldn't understand it. So the purpose of translation is understanding what did God say and what did it mean? So can we trust the Bible even though these manuscripts have variances? Absolutely. This is what God said. And we can live it with confidence. We gotta be honest with the questions. We gotta be honest with some of the textual stuff we'll talk about in the next couple weeks. We gotta be honest with that. With the overwhelming evidence, this is what God said. Let's pray. Father, thank you for our time together tonight, Lord, as we work through this study, I pray you would Help us all to think and to wrestle through some of the issues that I know are prevalent in our day. And Lord, I pray and ask that you would guide and direct in our conversation these next couple of weeks and help us to know your word better and honestly to have confidence in it that when we're talking with somebody, we can say, this is what you said. And so God, I pray that you would use this series in all of our lives to mature us and help us grow. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.