Latest / The Grove Church / Can I trust the Bible I have to be God’s word?

Transcript

Can I trust the Bible I have to be God’s word? · The Grove Church

0:11
Everyone, welcome to the cultivate podcast through the Grove church. I'm Charlie
0:15
Lofton, the lead pastor there, and I'm here with my friend and partner, Mark
0:19
Freeman. Hey, yo, what's up, dude? It's all good, man. I've
0:22
enjoyed this series that we've been doing, doing last couple of episodes. I
0:26
hope you have been enjoying it. We've been kind of
0:30
answering, kind of wrestling through some questions about the
0:33
authority. Where does authority come from? It's kind of where we started. Where does authority
0:37
come from and where does truth come from? Ultimate comes
0:41
from God revealed in Jesus, revealed through his word.
0:44
And that is what we believe, that truth is found in
0:48
God's word. And then we spent some time, last time just kind of building on
0:52
that a little bit, just kind of talking about what the Bible says about itself,
0:55
about does it claim to have this sort of authority.
1:01
And really, I think we ended up spending some fairly impromptu time, it feels
1:05
like to me just kind of talking about what is it like to even
1:09
wrestle with that idea of me
1:12
wanting to have authority versus really yielding authority to
1:16
God through his word and
1:20
ultimately kind of coming to the conclusion still that we really believe
1:24
that God's word is
1:28
true and that's where truth is. So we need to be really
1:31
careful about how we interpret it because that is
1:35
the Christian's ultimate source for truth about the world, about
1:39
God, about ourselves. So I want to be faithful to
1:43
submit to that authority, and I would be faithful to be a diligent student of
1:46
the scriptures, not with an arrogance that says, I've got everything figured out
1:50
always, but constantly learning to understand
1:53
what God's word really says and what it means when it says it.
1:57
And so we've been kind of back and forth and on that for a
2:01
couple of episodes now. But I feel like we've got one
2:04
more really big question left and probably
2:08
100 other small ones that would take three years worth of
2:11
podcasts to answer. But I feel like we got one more big one. Yeah.
2:15
Yeah, I think so, too. Because if you're going to say
2:19
that the Bible has that kind of authority, which I kept thinking about this the
2:22
last episode, man, I've always loved C. S.
2:26
Lewis. His statement, don't, don't
2:30
come at me with this. Jesus was just a good teacher
2:34
because of the claims he made about himself. He didn't leave us
2:38
that option. Right? He is either a crazy man, he's an
2:41
absolute liar, or he is Lord. And I had
2:45
never thought about that with what the Bible says about itself,
2:49
but that it also doesn't leave us any room to just treat it like a
2:52
normal book because of what it says about itself. We
2:56
have to come to it and decide either it is authoritative or
3:00
it's nothing. There's no in between.
3:04
No, just, hey, this is just some good ideas, right?
3:08
So anyway, I'd never thought about that, but it does. It begs the
3:12
question. So we're saying a lot about this,
3:16
and we're giving it a really high place in our
3:20
life and our church and our decision making and what we do
3:24
and the way we see things. So how did the Bible.
3:28
I know it's a bunch of books. Everybody like, how do you know
3:32
this? And we've decided. You said scripture, but there are a lot
3:36
of ancient spiritual texts. Right?
3:39
Why this group of books and this group of authors?
3:43
Where did that come from? How does that all work?
3:47
That is an amazing question. And that is definitely what I feel like the big
3:51
question is, which is if we say that scripture
3:54
is inspired by God, and this
3:58
happens 2000 years ago in the case of Paul and
4:01
earlier for the stuff in the Old Testament, and now here
4:05
I am, thousands of years later in a completely
4:09
different language, reading an english
4:13
translation of the Bible. Can I trust
4:17
that these are the words that God inspired?
4:21
Because the word that we talked about in two, Timothy
4:25
316, it says that all scripture is God breathed. It's
4:28
sourced by him. And then we talked about that other verse that says that combining
4:32
spiritual thoughts and spiritual words and that Paul's talking
4:36
about. Even if I just wrote it down, you better make sure you
4:39
believe that these words
4:43
that were written down by a varying group of authors.
4:47
If we believe that those words were sourced by God,
4:52
what level of trust can I have
4:55
that these words are those words?
5:00
And because the doctrine of inspiration, this is
5:03
kind of a theological deal. We're kind of talked about inspiring that when we say
5:07
inspired by God, we don't mean
5:11
I felt something and so I wanted to write it. Not inspired like he's
5:15
a cheerleader, but a deeper inspiration as source
5:19
and life. And so the pretty
5:22
well used definition for what inspiration
5:26
means is that essentially that the Bible, again, comes from
5:30
God. And if it comes from God, it's completely
5:34
trustworthy. We use words like inerrant or infallible,
5:37
which can feel overwhelming. But if we can say that if the
5:41
words come from God, God doesn't lie. God doesn't make mistakes.
5:45
So the words that God said, he said them without
5:49
error. And so what
5:53
he told the author to write, and again, the definition, obviously is
5:56
superintend. He kind of superintended the author to make sure
6:00
that what the author wrote would be without error
6:03
coming from God. And so
6:07
essentially, that idea, inspiration, really
6:10
only applies to the original manuscript
6:15
that they wrote it on, because inspiration happened at the moment of
6:18
authorship. He inspired the process by which
6:22
the book was written. So Moses writes it out, Samuel writes it
6:26
out. Isaiah writes it out, mark writes it out. Not
6:30
you. Different Mark, Paul,
6:33
John, Peter. When they wrote it out, they were inspired
6:37
by God. That was a God breathed moment. And so it was
6:41
true of the words they wrote.
6:44
We don't have that. We have something very
6:47
different. So the question is, can
6:51
I trust what I have? And so, really, this is
6:55
kind of how I have historically answered this question.
6:59
In order for me to trust God's word,
7:03
the Bible that I have, I guess we'll say it that way. I can
7:07
100% trust God's word. Can I trust the Bible? I have to
7:10
be God's word. There's two things that I have
7:14
to believe. One, I have to believe in the doctrine of
7:18
inspiration. I have to believe that the Bible is God
7:21
breathed and that God is capable,
7:24
capable, capable, desiring
7:28
and did use a human
7:31
person to create something error free.
7:35
Humans make mistakes, and so if you're going to use the human author, it's going
7:38
to have mistakes. Do I believe that God is capable of using
7:41
a sinful, mistake filled person to do something error
7:45
free? Can God work
7:49
through somebody to write something like that?
7:53
And I think the answer to that question is yes, of course he is
7:56
capable of doing that. God is capable of working through somebody, that
8:00
everything that they say for a given time period is 100%
8:04
true. That's what prophets do. I
8:08
think I can do it for one sentence.
8:12
My birth name is Charles Emmett Lofton.
8:16
Sure, I'm a sinful person, but I am capable for a short windows of time
8:19
of saying man. I'm calling you Emmett from now on.
8:24
I think I prefer Charles. If you're going to go that direction.
8:28
I've used Chuck a lot. You can call me C. Emmett Lofton. That's my
8:31
lawyer. Uh, where were we?
8:35
Oh, yes, sorry. And so if God gets involved, then I'm capable
8:39
for a particular period of time, for speaking truth even longer, as long as
8:43
God wants to. And so that's the doctrine of inspiration. Do I believe
8:47
that God is capable of doing that, and do I believe that
8:50
God did that? That's faith. Step one,
8:55
faith. Step two is, do I believe
8:58
that same God
9:02
can and did
9:05
superintend oversee the process by which it went
9:08
from? Paul wrote it
9:13
on a piece of papyrus, sent it to
9:18
Galatia, and
9:21
2000 years later, what
9:25
I have communicates the same thing.
9:29
Do I trust that God oversaw that process? So there
9:33
really are two significant moments of faith,
9:38
and so you can go in and
9:41
analyze the process, which I'm more than happy to do.
9:45
I've given day long seminars on this topic. I can talk
9:49
about this for anywhere from two to 400
9:53
minutes, depending on what the situation calls
9:56
for. Do you have 400 minutes? 400 minutes. That was a
10:00
weirdly specific number. It really was, and I'm trying. It's not divisible by 60,
10:04
it's not hours. I did it on purpose because I'm an
10:07
idiot.
10:12
But really, no matter what I say, whatever
10:16
we say about the authorship, and whatever we say about how
10:20
the particular books got selected, whatever we say about
10:23
the process by which the books were copied, whatever it is we say
10:27
about the way the Bible has been translated,
10:32
you can always give back the answer. But if humans are
10:35
involved, there is the potential and capacity for
10:39
sin and error. That is absolutely, 100%
10:43
true. There's nothing I can say to convince you that I can show
10:46
you without, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the element of human
10:50
error has been eliminated because
10:54
there has been some human error that has gotten
10:57
involved. I wouldn't say that. And even if I
11:01
could, I can't prove
11:05
it. And so ultimately, before we even get into
11:08
the details,
11:13
really, both of these things come from a trust
11:17
and faith in God. Do I believe God inspired them? And
11:21
do I believe that same God that inspired them would protect the word that he
11:25
inspired? Does that make sense?
11:29
Yeah, I love it because it's just the
11:33
reality of faith is one of those things that we want to
11:36
get to a place where it doesn't require it. Right? But God has not given
11:40
us that. At some point, you're going to hit a place where
11:44
you're going to have to go, all right, I trust something I can't
11:47
see. Does God want me
11:51
to have a trustworthy
11:55
translation of his word? Is that what God
11:59
wants? And was he willing to do
12:03
what had happened, to do what was necessary to make that
12:07
happen? It's not just simply
12:11
an act. It really, at its core, is a thing of faith. And so then
12:14
I go to all these things that I learn, and I'm
12:18
blinded, but I'm informed by that
12:22
when I read all these things about all the processes that
12:26
happen to make this happen, I look at it
12:29
through a lens of this seems like what a
12:33
trustworthy God would do. So we can take these in any
12:37
order I'll let you pick.
12:40
When you think about this process, which is the one that kind of hits
12:44
you, is it how the books got picked, how they got copied?
12:48
Translation, which is the one that's kind of like. That's the one that I kind
12:51
of wonder about how they got picked, probably. Yeah. Because
12:55
it seems like. And some were picked and some weren't picked. Right.
12:59
There were people making those decisions, and it seems like
13:02
that's where error could have entered the easiest. Right?
13:06
Maybe. So let's think about it
13:09
logistically and historically. While the
13:13
apostles are alive, all the way up until, I think, John died,
13:17
probably around the year 90 AD,
13:20
and revelation being the last book that was written, all the way up until
13:24
the point that the apostles were alive, scripture was still
13:28
being written. And so there was no point, while the apostles
13:32
were still alive, that there was a point in which, okay,
13:36
we're done, now we're done.
13:43
There's no means by which one could say, okay, this is all the
13:47
things post Jesus that are Bible
13:51
scripture. And so then you write a letter and you send it
13:54
to know.
13:59
The people in Ephesus and Thessalonica have no idea, but
14:02
apparently what's happening is these letters are being copied,
14:06
really because of Paul's instruction to do so, you
14:10
should copy these and send them on. And so these letters
14:14
are being copied and sent to other towns. In other
14:17
towns. So Ephesus is getting to read what he said to
14:21
Colossi and vice versa, and all these letters are being circulated
14:25
amongst each other. And then as
14:28
the gospel is expanding beyond just these initial
14:32
cities where Paul was preaching, beyond Israel,
14:36
into kind of the roman cities kind of
14:39
surrounding it, and just kind of expands beyond,
14:43
these letters are just being distributed widely.
14:48
And so in addition to that, some other versions of the story
14:51
of Jesus, or gospels, as we call them, are also going out there. And people
14:55
who aren't apostles, like people like Timothy, right,
14:58
people who were Peter's disciples, John's disciples, they're
15:02
also writing letters to other churches and to each other, and
15:06
all they're spreading around. And so there are all these letters and
15:09
gospels, some of which we know about, some of which
15:14
they're known, but a lot know, most people don't know
15:17
about. They're being circulated widely,
15:21
and there's no denominations. And regardless
15:25
of what the Catholic Church wants us to believe, there really was
15:28
not a uniform worldwide
15:32
authority structure by which
15:37
it was very clear who's in charge. And this is
15:40
exactly what we would believe. What would happen would be, from time to time,
15:44
situations would come up, they would start challenging whether or not
15:47
Jesus. People would start challenging whether or not Jesus was fully God, which was really
15:51
never the debate. The biggest debate the church has ever really
15:55
had, were mostly around, was Jesus actually a real
15:58
person, or was he just God pretending to be? Now,
16:02
there was one, a controversy called the aryan controversy, not to be
16:06
confused with A-R-Y-A-N Hitler,
16:09
A-R-I-N Aryan, a guy named
16:13
Arius, kind of more of a predecessor to modern day Jehovah's Witnesses,
16:17
who did believe that Jesus was just a human.
16:21
And so there would be all of these controversies. And when these
16:24
controversies would arise, kind of the leaders in all of these different cities would come
16:28
together, and they would have a council. They started to have
16:32
these leaders in these cities would gain the title of bishop. And then
16:35
eventually, the structure by which the Catholic Church
16:40
happened, where there was kind of a bishop of bishops, the bishop of Rome kind
16:43
of existed as the bishop of bishops. All of this starts to happen.
16:47
And so most of these things were governed
16:50
city by city until there kind of became a
16:54
growing need to bring an
16:57
answer to these things. And so whether or
17:01
not which of these letters and gospels and books are the
17:05
authoritative ones or not really just wasn't a question
17:09
that they necessarily felt like answering. It wasn't like there was this
17:12
point at which we've got to figure this out. And really, to be able
17:16
to answer that question thoroughly is going to require a
17:19
significant amount of time to happen for these things to
17:23
fully circulate amongst the world. And so
17:27
what happened was that there was a controversy
17:31
where a heresy develops. A guy named
17:35
Pelagius, he develops this heresy. Pelagius? Yeah, I
17:39
know. He's the worst. Not plagiarist. He wasn't
17:43
stealing other people's work. Pelagius, anyways.
17:47
And he put together what he considered to be a canon,
17:50
which was a. I think it was like excerpts from the
17:54
Gospel of Mark and some of Paul's letters, and
17:58
through a select view of these things, was able to
18:02
develop a fairly works centered
18:05
approach to Christianity.
18:09
And so this was needed to be put down. So
18:13
he is spreading out there. This is what we call. This is the New
18:17
Testament. And then like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
18:21
whoa. So then the bishops and the leaders are like,
18:25
we need to put a stop to this. And so there were two
18:28
councils, one around 393, called
18:31
the Council of Hippo, which is the name of a town,
18:35
not a large water mammal. But did
18:39
their high school mascot, was it a hippo, though? It would had to have been.
18:42
That would be awesome. Maybe just call yourself. Have we missed that? The hippopotamuses.
18:46
Do you know any towns? The high schools? That sounds
18:50
like a great topic for. When we start a school.
18:54
First we have to rename the town. We have to rename the
18:58
town Hippo. Wow.
19:02
It was around 393 AD, and then the council of Carthage four
19:06
years later, 397. And so what they did
19:09
was this was. And again, it was built out of a
19:13
concern, and the question
19:16
was, what are the
19:19
authoritative texts? And
19:24
their decision making process really came down to three different ideas.
19:28
Does it have apostolic authority? Did an
19:32
apostle write it, or did someone under the immediate care of
19:35
an apostle write it? Not a disciple of
19:39
Paul after Paul was dead, but a
19:43
companion of Paul. So Paul was kind of with Luke when
19:47
he wrote the gospel. Mark was with Peter
19:51
when Mark wrote his gospel. Or did an
19:54
apostle write it like Matthew, like John, like Paul, like Peter?
19:58
And so does it have apostolic authority? Is
20:02
it theologically consistent with each other and with the Old
20:06
Testament? And does it have
20:09
universal appeal and acceptance?
20:13
And so the third one, I'll explain this way pretty easily. You can imagine a
20:17
book that Paul would write to Galatia where he's like,
20:20
tell Fred to cut it out. He's an idiot. He needs to
20:24
stop. Jim, sorry for whatever
20:27
Fred's doing. Please hang in there. Love, Paul.
20:31
I mean, that's really a powerful letter that Fred
20:35
really needs to listen to. But it is not universal in its
20:39
nature. Right. And then there are going to be some
20:42
book letters that were probably written, or gospels that were probably written that the
20:46
president, this is good, not great, and probably didn't feel
20:49
compelled to copy, or they did. It was just kind of like, hey, this is
20:52
kind of interesting. You should probably read this. But if
20:56
it's God breathed, you would expect it to have a
20:59
certain intangible quality to it
21:03
and also a universal nature to it.
21:07
Probably the one that is probably most on the fence when it comes to that
21:10
is Philemon, which seems to be addressing a very specific issue
21:14
with a very specific guy. But the principles in there
21:18
about freedom and kindness and treating one another with respect and
21:21
dignity are still universal enough. They include it.
21:25
Second Timothy is a little bit like that. Right. There's just some of these things,
21:28
like maybe galatians even, right? There's some of these that
21:32
are kind of like, this is definitely addressing a very specific situation,
21:36
but even still, there's a universal appeal to it. There's a
21:39
universal quality to it. So there's an apostle involved. The
21:43
theology is consistent, and
21:48
there's a universal nature to it. So they're debating all these things, and it
21:51
was a debate. There were some things that were involved. I mean, James seems a
21:55
little different than some of the other ones. It got debated a lot. Revelation is
21:59
just weird. It got know there are some ones
22:02
that there was some conversation about it. And
22:05
ultimately both of those councils came to the
22:09
list of what we would call the New Testament. And it really wasn't until the
22:13
second one, the council of Carthage, and they had a follow up a few years
22:16
later, that it really just kind of felt like for the first time,
22:20
the universal church at the time, the catholic church at the time,
22:24
said, these are the books.
22:27
And if you want to say
22:32
it was about politics and mean between the
22:36
established church and these cults and heresies that were
22:39
sprouting out. So that's either a good thing or a bad thing. I can't say
22:43
no. It had nothing to do with power and
22:46
politics. Of course it did, because I don't want cult leaders
22:50
and heretics to have power.
22:55
And so now we have to trust some people that probably
22:59
did rightly have mixed motives,
23:02
and we also have to trust a God that superintends it. But to
23:06
me, we've got people who are genuinely, both
23:09
culturally and time wise, significantly closer to
23:13
the timeline than we are,
23:17
regardless of mixed motives. Wouldn't their primary
23:21
motive be when you're a person and you say that you're a bishop
23:25
and you got a whole bunch of them, and our primary mission here
23:29
is to figure out which one of these
23:33
books are sourced by God. And if
23:37
we say it, then what we're saying to the world with confidence is,
23:40
this is from God. I don't know these
23:44
guys. Two people I
23:48
might be worried about three people, maybe, but this number, that level of
23:51
accountability. I don't know how you feel when you teach.
23:55
I get nervous every time because people are. When I
23:59
get up there and talk, they're thinking, this dude's about to tell me what God
24:03
thinks. That's
24:06
scary. I can only imagine even
24:10
again, even if these guys have mixed motives in, there has to
24:14
have been a significant fear
24:17
of what would happen if people who say they represent God
24:22
claim something is from God, but they really don't believe it, but they do it
24:25
because they think it gives them some power. I'm just not in on
24:29
that. Does that make sense?
24:33
And so then there really has not been any real challenge
24:37
to that in the over 1600 years. Since then,
24:41
there's some famous things like that. Martin Luther said that he didn't particularly care for
24:45
the book of James, he's probably not the first
24:48
person to say that, and he's certainly not the last person to say that.
24:53
People have wondered about revelation. They wondered about it
24:57
then, people still wonder about it now. Right. It's
25:01
saying it's very normal and natural to feel like one or two books may stick
25:04
out from the rest. But there's never really been any significant
25:08
challenge to that as the collective works. And so there's some
25:11
books that refer to as the apocrypha, which is different than the books that
25:15
are in between. In the Old New Testament, there's some other
25:19
books
25:23
that didn't make it in, but most
25:27
of them were just second generation books. They're not
25:31
bad books, necessarily. They're just second gen. Right. And it's
25:34
like, we're not going to include those. Doesn't make those books
25:38
bad anymore. And it is bad if you quote a
25:42
Wayne Grudom theology book to somebody or an Andy
25:45
Stanley leadership book, doesn't make them bad. They don't
25:49
feel like they have that same level of authority and
25:53
quality. Any follow up questions? Any of that? I know that was
25:56
very speechy. No, but it was very helpful. Yeah.
26:02
And so then in addition to that, then there's a process by which these things
26:05
are getting copied.
26:08
And again, there is an overwhelming
26:12
amount of texts,
26:15
like old manuscripts, old greek manuscripts of
26:19
New Testament letters. An overwhelming number. Overwhelming
26:23
even people who are not inclined to
26:27
believe the Bible as being inspired by God would say
26:30
there is probably more textual evidence. We
26:34
probably have a higher level of confidence in
26:38
that the texts have been copied authentically, and we have
26:42
enough of them to know. Okay, well, this one is a little bit different than
26:45
this, but we got so many of them to compare. We got 20 that say
26:49
this and one that says this. This is clearly what was meant. This is
26:53
just a mistake somebody made. They just skipped over
26:57
a word, or they added a word, or a word got
27:00
misspelled here. There's so many different copies that there
27:04
is just an overwhelmingly high level of confidence
27:08
that the manuscripts themselves are the same. And there's some great examples of
27:12
this. You ever heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls? So there was a time when
27:15
the earliest copy of the book of Isaiah that
27:19
we had was a few hundred years after Jesus
27:23
died. And so then there's certain parts of Isaiah that were
27:27
just, like, talking
27:30
about that, talk about Jesus. It seemed like
27:34
he's talking about him very specific. He's going to be like this. He's going to
27:37
be like this. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. And it
27:40
was a very common belief all the way up until the moment of the Dead
27:43
Sea Scrolls, which is getting in the 19 hundreds.
27:48
That somebody had written. They wrote that in, they
27:51
wrote that in post Jesus. But then in the discovery
27:55
of these Dead Sea Scrolls,
27:58
a copy of Isaiah that predates Jesus was found, and it was
28:02
found to be almost identical to the book of Isaiah that
28:06
we had, and very much had
28:10
those Jesus centered passages, word for word, the same.
28:15
And there are just a lot of stories like that. You would think at
28:19
some point there would be some copy somewhere that would emerge of something that would
28:22
make you think, we missed this. You can tell this whole
28:26
thing, this is all bad, but there's just a high
28:30
level of confidence and there are a couple of stories,
28:34
a couple of things that are in your New Testament
28:37
that people still have some question marks about the story of the woman
28:41
caught in adultery without sin. Cast the first stone,
28:45
the great commission at the end of Mark where it says, hey, you're going to
28:48
see different. Drink poison and have snakes. People like
28:53
question whether or not that was a late ad and not part of the
28:57
original. But if you take all of those out,
29:00
if you take out, hey, he who was out sin, cast the first
29:04
stone, take it out, it doesn't exist.
29:09
Do we know less about the character of Jesus? That's just
29:12
another story of a pretty consistent character
29:16
trait of Jesus. And you take the great
29:19
commission out of Mark, it's still in Matthew, still
29:23
in Luke, still in acts, which it's still
29:27
there. It's still, oh, but the thing
29:31
about the snakes, the thing about the snakes is widely
29:34
misunderstood. It doesn't say that everyone is going to get bit by a snake. It
29:37
says, one of the signs of the power of the gospel will be some people
29:41
will get bit by snakes and won't die. Which in fact happened,
29:45
like 15 years. Later to Paul in Molten, it was recognized, right?
29:48
I mean, it did happen. Doesn't mean it's going to happen to you today. Doesn't
29:51
mean you should have snakes in your service, doesn't mean you should drink poison in
29:55
your service. Just because it's been misinterpreted doesn't mean it's. But
29:58
anyway, you get rid of that, there
30:02
isn't anything lost.
30:06
And so I believe that, again, even the people
30:10
who are the most critical of God's word have a high level
30:13
of confidence in it. Again, they would say, hey,
30:18
if it's God, we should have 100%
30:22
level of confidence. 99.9 isn't good
30:25
enough. Well, let's just say, let's imagine a
30:28
hypothetical where every copy, every
30:31
manuscript of every New Testament book we ever saw
30:35
were exactly the same. You know what people would
30:38
say then? Conspiracy theory.
30:42
Too perfect. It's fake. It's as fake because it's not
30:46
possible for this to be true. So in
30:50
the realm of realistic, you would expect, if
30:54
God is superintending the process, you would expect a
30:57
super high level, 99.99% of
31:01
accuracy, and you would expect there to be a widespread
31:04
number of manuscripts that were preserved. That's what you would expect, and that is what
31:08
you have. And the last thing that I think that is
31:12
incredibly important. I know this is more speechy than normally we do this.
31:17
Some people say, I can't trust my english translation because it's a little bit
31:20
like the game of telephone. It was written in Greek,
31:24
and then it was translated into Latin, and then it was translated into
31:28
German, and then it was translated into English. Well, all
31:32
of those things are true, except they're not in a dotted line. It
31:35
was translated from Greek to Latin, and it was
31:39
translated from Greek to German, but it was not translated
31:43
from Latin to German. It was translated from Greek into German. And
31:47
all of the english translations we have, every one of them were
31:51
translated directly from the greek and hebrew
31:53
manuscripts that they had at the time.
31:58
Every one of them. There is some debate about whether or not
32:01
maybe one book in the King James
32:05
was translated from the Latin. There's a latin
32:09
version out there called the septuagint, which we're just kind of nerding here for a
32:12
little bit that whether or not that was used for some of
32:17
the King James. But
32:23
these are all direct translations, and they're
32:26
all going to be very different from each other because they have different approaches. Some
32:30
are going to be highly more literal. Some are going to intentionally use higher
32:33
church language. Some of them are going to just be more casual in the way
32:37
that they're written. But everybody who undertakes
32:41
this, undertakes it with, I want to be faithful to this.
32:44
Well, you're saying that nowhere, ever and anytime
32:48
anybody's ever inserted their own political ideology
32:52
into a translation. I would never say that.
32:56
But in the same way that we have a voluminous number
32:59
of
33:02
manuscripts, we also have
33:05
a wide variety of scholarship and scholars
33:09
and translations to which one person having an
33:13
agenda wouldn't last very long. Right. So
33:16
overwhelming. Right. Because there are way too many people looking at it being like,
33:20
that's not how that word is translated. And
33:24
I believe unintentional errors that have been made in
33:27
translation over the years are constantly being
33:31
corrected. And so we are
33:35
constantly refining the process, constantly getting better and
33:38
better greek manuscripts and constantly getting better and
33:42
better translations.
33:46
But over, above and all of that,
33:50
do we trust a God in the process?
33:55
So to me, there's plenty of reason to be confident
34:00
in the process as it's understood. I think I can trust
34:03
this as a reliable representation. But on
34:07
top of that and in that is I trust God
34:10
wants me to have his word.
34:16
Any follow up questions there?
34:22
I think if I did, I would send us down another rabbit trail.
34:28
Well, I appreciate you at least listening. It wasn't a rant, I don't guessing, but
34:32
it's a pretty well not rehearsed.
34:36
It's a thing that's deep in me. It's something that really has mattered to
34:40
me over the years. I spent a lot of time in
34:44
my college years and in the years immediately after that, really studying that
34:47
and understanding, because there was a time when it's a pretty big question people were
34:51
asking. I think most of the questions people are asking now
34:55
really are kind of what we talked
34:59
about last time. Can I really trust the authority
35:03
that this has when it competes against
35:06
what I want to believe or what
35:10
we want to believe as a society? I think
35:13
that's most of the question. It's really not about whether or not
35:18
the divine nature of the transcription process or the translation
35:22
of the Latin Vulgate and the Septuagint and all these things. I mean,
35:27
those aren't the questions that people have, but I just think it's important
35:31
just for people to be able to hear it. And if you do have that
35:35
question, you can feel confident. And
35:39
honestly, I would be like, if you really do have more questions on this,
35:42
I'm available. I'm not trying to talk anybody's ear off
35:46
for 400 minutes,
35:50
but if you need an extra four or five minutes, I would be glad to
35:53
keep talking to you. So please just let me know. You can email me, Charlie,
35:56
at the grovechurch.org. We can talk about this all you want, any questions you
36:00
have. And Abigail, who's over here running the cameras, I know she's
36:03
probably, over the course of the last 2030 minutes, probably has 15
36:07
questions. Have you already texted them to me? Oh,
36:11
great. She's already texting me some, so that's going to be great. So thanks
36:15
for being here. Thanks for joining us. And I really do hope that it says,
36:18
strengthened your faith. And to the degree that has had you asking
36:21
questions, I hope you'll ask them and you can do that. By again by emailing
36:25
me. Or we can just connect on a Sunday. You can find everything you need
36:28
to know about us at the grovechurch.org slash Connect. Whether you're local
36:31
or away, you can join us in person or stream us online. Connect
36:35
with us. We would love to hear from you Mark, again, thanks for being here
36:38
and being a part of this. Thank you for being a part of this and
36:41
we'll see you soon. Have a blessed day.