Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - The Bible For GrownUps Part 1 Last Things First

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Andy Stanley - The Bible For GrownUps Part 1 Last Things First · Andy Stanley Sermons

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The b I b L. E Yes, that's the book for me.
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I stand alone on the word of the b I L the b I b
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L. Yes, that's the book for me. I stand alone on the
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world of that the b I b L E the b I b L.
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E Yes, that's the book for me. I stand alone the word.
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Mm hmmm. Since, hey, Bob, what are you doing? Nothing?
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Just cleaning up a little. So this is a series for adults really
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who were introduced to the Bible as children. And this is a series for
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adults who were introduced to the Bible as adults by adults who were introduced to
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the Bible as children, because either way you go, most of us know
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some Bible stories, but very few of us know the story of the Bible.
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That is how we got the Bible to begin with. And understanding how
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we got the Bible is almost as important as knowing what's in the Bible,
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because, as we're gonna see, the backstory sheds enormous light on the story.
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Now for children growing up, was it important that children knew that we
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knew when we were kids how the Bible came to be? Probably not.
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We would have been bored stiff and we weren't interested at all, so it
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wasn't a big deal. But as adults, this is an extraordinarily extraordinar extraordinarily
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important topic. And it's a fabulous, fabulous story because if you don't know,
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if you don't know the story of the Bible, it's easy to discount
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the stories in the Bible. In fact, some of you have walked away
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from faith, or you have friends or family member or kids who've walked away
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from faith. Maybe you're watching today hadn't been to church in a long time,
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or somebody invited you hadn't been for a long time, and you haven't
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told the person that invited you, or you haven't told the person you're sitting
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next to, or maybe you haven't told the person that you're married to,
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or that your parents that you know what, I just don't think I believe
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all that stuff anymore. And it's understandable because if you don't know the story
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of the Bible, it's very difficult to continue to embrace the stories in the
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Bible. And the problem is, the big problem is we'll talk about this
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for the next few weeks, is that the way that we got our Bibles
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is not the way the world got the Bible. By the time you got
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your Bible, it had been chaptered and versed up right, it had been
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footnoted, it was in English. All the type was set, there were
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maps, there were titles, there were headers, there was all kind of
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and there were cross references, there was a concordance. When you got your
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Bible, it was all done. But that's not how the world got the
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Bible. And the story of how the world got the Bible sheds extraordinary light
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and gives us insight into the stories in the Bible. Now, my first
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Bible didn't look like this. My first Bible was red. It was much
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smaller. It was wrapped in in genuine imitation leather, and it had my
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name printed on the front and gold leaf. Now, I'm just curious,
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if you're watching, or everybody everywhere at all of our campuses, how many
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of you had a Bible as a child with your name printed on the front
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in some form of fashion. Yes, that's right, And I bet when
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you received your Bible, and for those of you who didn't raise your hand,
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you're feeling kind of left out. Chill. I'll tell you why in
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just a minute. Okay, it's no big deal. So the thing is
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when you received your Bible, if you received a Bible like I did as
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a child, we were probably told similar things. We were told, this
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is God's word, it's all true. Try to live your life by it.
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I don't know what kind of words you were told, depending on how
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old you were. And of course we believe what we were told, because
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you know, these were adults telling us, and we believed whatever adults told
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us. And if you're like me, you've always had respect and held the
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Bible in high regard. And I was an unusual child. As I began
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to read, I actually read the Bible, and then throughout my entire life
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and every season, even high school in college, I've always read the Bible.
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But the way I received, even my Bible that I love, is
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not the way the world received the Bible. Now, your situation may be
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very different. You weren't given a Bible as a child. In fact,
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maybe you went to a church, or maybe you had a religious tradition where
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you are not even encouraged to read the Bible. There's a couple in our
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small group all right now who they said, you know, the tradition they
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grew up in, they were actually encouraged not to read the Bible, even
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though it was a Christian congregation, because the pastor or the priest was responsible
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for telling everyone in the church what was in the Bible and how to understand
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the Bible. But regardless of how you were raised with the Bible, the
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truth is, for most of us we developed an understanding of a respect for
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the Bible, not based on reading it, because very few people actually read
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it. We based our understanding on what we were told about the Bible and
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the stories that we were told in the stories that were selectively told to us
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as children and as high school students, and ultimately as adults. But either
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way, regardless, and again, you may have not been raised in a
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Christian tradition at all. But even if you've not been raised in any kind
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of Christian tradition, even if you've never read the Bible, you have a
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perspective or you have an or a sort of an attitude about you have a
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belief about what the Bible is and what the Bible isn't. So regardless where
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we were coming from, what happens is this that all of us carry our
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childhood perspective of the Bible into adulthood. Now, for many of us,
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if the Bible says it, that still settles it. But for many of
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you, those many of you maybe who were even raised with the Bible,
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it's just not that simple anymore, because somewhere along the way, somebody pointed
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out to you, what else the Bible says, the parts they didn't talk
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about in Sunday school, the parts they didn't talk about at church. In
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fact, you may be in a situation where you brought some of the parts
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to your parents' attention, or to your pastor or priest's attention, that they
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skipped over in Sunday school, that they skipped over in church, and you
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find yourself having a very difficult time reconciling what you found in the Bible with
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the reality that you live in, in the world that you live in,
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and you're an honest person, you couldn't just look the other way. So
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perhaps because of what you discovered about or in the Bible, you walked away,
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or perhaps you're considering walking away. So, regardless of where you came
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from and regardless of how you were introduced to the Bible, this is a
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very very important series. Now, you may be surprised to learn that the
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story of the Bible does not begin in the beginning. The story of the
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Bible doesn't begin in the beginning. The story of the Bible actually begins towards
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the end of the middle. The story of how we actually got the Bible
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begins with a first century doctor who is not Jewish but Greek, and his
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name is Luke. And Luke actually spent the time necessary to document the events
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of the life of Jesus. And the reason he sat down to document the
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events of the life of Jesus is he had a wealthy friend named Theophilis,
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and Theophilis was a first century Jesus follower, first century Christian, and Theofulists,
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like many people in this region of the world, had heard enough stories
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about Jesus and had met enough of the eyewitnesses of jesus life and miracles that
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he had put his faith in Jesus. But Theophilis wanted an orderly account of
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how this whole thing transpired. It's a little bit like hearing about somebody that
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you have a lot of respect for, and you hear bits and pieces of
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the story, and you have two or three quotes, but at some point
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it's like, okay, but tell me the whole story. Put it in
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order for me. So Luke decided, for the sake of this wealthy friend,
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Theophilis, he decided to sit down and write an orderly account of the
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events of the life of Jesus. In fact, this is how his document
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begins. We know it as the Gospel of Luke, but let's not call
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it that yet, because that would happen way down the road. This was
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simply a Greek in the first century who's documenting, to the best of his
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ability, the life and the works and the words of Jesus. And here's
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how his document begins. He says, many have undertaken to draw up an
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account or a document of the things that have been fulfilled, or the things
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that happened among us. Something had happened worth documenting. And the interesting thing
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is that Luke says, I'm not the only one trying to document all this.
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I'm not the only one that's trying to put down the story of the
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events that actually happened here in this region of the world. And this,
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you should know, is very unusual. There are not many cases, historically
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speaking, there are not many cases of multiple written accounts of the same event
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or series of events. In ancient times, we have virtually no multiple written
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accounts of the same events. The life of Jesus in some ways stands out
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all by itself in that regard. He goes on. He says this with
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this in mind, With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated
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everything from the beginning going back to the beginning of jesus life, I too,
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along with a lot of other people, I too, decided to write
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an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilis. And this title, most
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excellent Theophilis is what gives us the idea that Theophilis was an important person.
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He was a well known person, either a merchant or a landowner, who
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was a Jesus follower who wanted to know the story in order. He wanted
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to know the facts. And so Luke says, I'm going to spend the
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time necessary to put together an orderly account of this is really really important.
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What I'm gonna say next. When Luke was writing this document, Luke was
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not writing the Bible. Luke had no idea that this would ever exist.
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Luke could not even begin to fathom that two thousand years later there would be
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something that included what he wrote along with what other people had written about Jesus
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and other things. Luke isn't writing the Bible. Luke is simply creating an
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orderly account of the events of Jesus' life based on eyewitnesses and based on the
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people that he interviewed. And Luke, because of the way he did this
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tells us why and how the story of the Bible began, and the story
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of the Bible began, and the reason we even have a Bible is because
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when it became clear to the people who followed Jesus in the first century,
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when it became clear to them that Jesus was clearly not who he claimed to
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be, that's when the story of the Bible actually began. Because Jesus claimed
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too many things about himself. I mean, he said some wonderful things,
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he did some wondrous things. But Jesus said too much about himself. And
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when Jesus was crucified, and there are other extra biblical literature that tells us
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that Jesus was a historical person, that Jesus was actually crucified or put to
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death under the Roman Empire, so nobody disputes that, but in the first
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century when the Jesus. When jesus followers recognized that Jesus had been put to
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death by Rome, it was game over. There was going to be no
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story. So Luke is documenting something fabulous that happened in the first century.
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And his story tells us that a man named Joseph of Arimathea, a part
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of the Jewish Supreme Court, and a man named Nicodemus, two people that
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everybody in that region would have known. These were famous guys in the first
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century within Judaism. That these two men went to the cross and took Jesus's
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body down, not because they believed he was the savior of the world,
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not because they believed they would ever get their names in a book, but
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because they had so much respect for him. But they were so disappointed because
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clearly Jesus was not who Jesus claimed to be. In fact, Luke says
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I thoroughly investigated, and here's what happened. After he was crucified. Joseph
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of Arimathea and his servants took the body down and wrapped it in a linen
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cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which
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no one had ever been laid. Luke gives us all this detail, and
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he gives us all this detail because he's a doctor. He's detail oriented,
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and he's trying to write an orderly, detailed account. He goes on and
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he says this. The women, the women who had come with Jesus from
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Galilee, followed Joseph of Arimathea and saw the tomb and how his body was
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laid in it. And then these women went home and they prepared spices and
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perfumes. Why they were going to come back and re embalm the body.
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Why would they come and re embalm the body. Because Jesus was dead and
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everybody expected Jesus to stay dead. And in this moment, this is so
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important. In this moment, there are no Christians, there are no Jesus
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followers, there is no church, there is no hope. There are just
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broken hearted women and disillusioned disciples that are scared for their own lives. There's
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Rome, the eternal city, and clearly the gods of the Romans had won
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again, and there was the Temple, and the leaders of the Temple had
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won again. Between Rome and the Temple, the Jesus movement had been crushed
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out of existence. And if it had ended there, there would be no
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the Bible, and there would be no Christians, and there would be no
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Church, and there would be no as we're going to see Old Testament,
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and there would be no account by Luke considering and looking into the details of
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the life of Jesus. This is so important Luke documented. Luke documented the
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life of Jesus because the story of Jesus didn't end on a Roman cross.
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If the story had ended there, there would be no story. Luke tells
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us the reason that he was a Jesus follower, the reason that Theophilis was
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a Jesus follower in the first century, is because Jesus was seen alive,
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and once he came back to life, his followers came out of hiding and
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they went to Jerusalem, and they went into the streets of Jerusalem and faced
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down the very people that had Jesus crucified, and they got arrested, and
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they had to face down the very men who were responsible for taking Jesus to
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Pilot to be crucified in the first place. And Luke documents these early sermons,
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and Luke documents what these men said in the face of extraordinary, in
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the face of actually being arrested and put to death, just like Jesus was.
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In fact, here's just one sentence from one sermon that Luke documents,
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because again he's trying to document everything that happens surrounding the life of Jesus and
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beyond. Peter, one of Jesus followers, to Chiaphas, the High Priest,
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said God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are witnesses of
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it. We didn't read about it, we didn't hear about it. He
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saw him. And so the Jesus movement the Church was birth. But still
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there's no Bible. Luke goes on to document what happens for the next about
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thirty years following the resurrection. He documents it in a book in our New
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Testaments called Acts or Acts of the Apostles. Luke knew Peter. He interacts
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with Peter. There are conversations between Luke and Peter that are documented. Luke
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knew John. There are conversations between Luke and John and James, the brother
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of Jesus. These men knew each other. Luke traveled with the apostle Paul
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all around the Mediterranean basin planting churches, and he documents the rise of the
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Gentile Church, as the church became more and more gentile and less and less
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Jewish, and this movement called the church would ultimately shape Western civilization. In
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fact, the most secular of secular historians all acknowledge that Christianity shaped and greatly
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impacted all of Western civilization. And here's the cool thing, and here's the
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interesting thing, and here's the thing that you need to know. Luke admits
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right up front, Hey, I'm not the only one. I'm not the
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only one trying to document what happened in our midst. Remember what he said,
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many many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that had
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been fulfilled or the things that happened among us. And the question that we
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all should wrestle to the ground. And if you've walked away from faith or
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walked away from Christianity, I understand it. If I heard your story as
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to why you walked away, I would probably say, who could blame you?
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But here's something you need to wrestle with, because I think you should
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come back. Why so many? Why so many? Why so many?
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That would be unusual now for multiple people to cover the same event in detail,
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but then it was expensive to write. Most people were illiterate. Anyway,
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Why would Luke and why would others feel compelled to document the events that
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happened in the first century surrounding the city of Jerusalem. And the answer is
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undeniable, because something extraordinary happened, not something extraordinary was written that would come
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later. Something extraordinary happened, something that had to be preserved, because after
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all, Peter and the boys, Peter and the followers of Jesus, they
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weren't getting any younger, and their lives were threatened constantly. So several of
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them sat down and dictated or wrote their account and their experiences with Jesus.
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In fact, Peter the apostle Peter dictated his account to a young man or
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a young Greek named John Mark. We know this from a second century writer
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named Papius, who tells us that the Gospel of Mark came from the lips
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of Peter and Peter. It was probably illiterate, illiterate, but you know,
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smart fishermen. So consequently he sat down with another Greek and he gave
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him the story and the Gospel of Mark. But let's not think gospel yet.
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The document that we call Mark is short. Its action, its action,
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it's action. It's almost as if a fisherman. This is how the
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fisherman's account would sound, its bottom line. It's event driven. And again
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John Mark has no mystery to the history. John Mark traveled with the apostle
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Paul. John Mark knew Luke. He was a friend of Luke, and
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this document was written in the fifties, just about twenty years after the resurrection.
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Luke said, several people sat down to document this extraordinary event. Matthew
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was one of them. We call it the Gospel of Matthew, but before
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it was called a gospel, it was simply a document, a document addressing
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first century Jews to say, trust me, Jesus is the one we've been
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waiting for. Jesus is the Messiah. And he leverages Old Testament passage after
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Old Testament passage after Old Testament prophecies, saying, look, all of the
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prophets, all the law, and the prophets pointed to the coming of the
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Messiah, and Jesus fulfills so many of those prophecies. Believe that he is
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who he claimed to be. The Church Fathers, that's what we call the
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group of people that came after the Disciples in the late first century. Second
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century Church Fathers indicate that there was actually a Hebrew copy, a Hebrew version,
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and that the original version of Matthew was probably written in Hebrew, which
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makes sense. It was written to the Jews, but then it was translated
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into Greek, and the version that we have today is a Greek version.
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And why would a Hebrew document be translated into Greek Because Greek was the language
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of the Eastern Empire. And this was not simply a message for Jewish people.
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This was not simply a message for people in that region of the world.
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This was a message for the whole world. So there's Luke, and
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there's Mark, there's Matthew, and then there's the Gospel of John. But
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again we call it a gospel. John wasn't thinking Bible. John wasn't thinking
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gospel. John decided that he too needed to get out of him the story
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and the experiences that he had with Jesus. So we might say to John,
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John, I mean, you're an old man, because by the time
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he dictated this document, he was an old man. John. Why bother
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others have already written and here's something so fascinating, and regardless of where you
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are with faith, and regardless of where what your church experience has been,
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I hope you'll lock into this. John in the first century. Again,
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he's not thinking about this. This is the furthest thing from his mind.
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John is simply documenting his experiences with Jesus. And in his document that we
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call the Gospel of John, he tells us at the end of his account
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why he bothered to write in the first place, knowing that other people had
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written as well. And here's what he said. And I don't want you
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to miss this. John writes, Jesus performed many other signs, because he's
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just given us a list of things that Jesus has done. So we're at
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the very end of the gospel. He says, Oh, yeah, we're
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getting to the end of this thing. But I want you to know this
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isn't the whole story. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his
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disciples. These weren't done in secret and by disciples. He's not talking about
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the twelve He's talking about the hundreds of people that followed Jesus from the banks
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of the Jordan River right through the crucifixion and then showed up after the resurrection.
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He said, there are many other things that Jesus did that are not
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recorded in this book. And here's something very important for you to know.
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When John says that there are events that Jesus accomplished and things that Jesus did
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that don't show up in this book, this book is not a reference to
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this book. This book is a reference to the document he's writing. He
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says, there are many other things that Jesus did that don't show up in
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my account of the life of Jesus. And then he says something so important,
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But these the ones I have chosen, the ones I have chosen,
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These are written. In other words, as I face the end of my
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days, as I face the end of my life, my faith is still
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intact, not based on what I see around me now, but based on
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someone I met and what I saw. And so John says, I want
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to speak to future generations. I want future generation to know what I saw,
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what my hands have handled, what we experienced. Here's what he says.
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He says, but these things are written that you and do you know
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who you is? You is you and you as me and you as all
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of us. In other words, John is saying this, The reason I've
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written this account of the life of Jesus is so that whoever stumbles across this
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document imagine this. He spends all this time documenting his story. He has
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no idea if it will survive a day, or a week or a month,
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much less two thousand years, and would, several hundred years later be
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wrapped together with other ancient sacred documents to be called the Bible. He's not
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thinking the Bible. He's thinking, I just want the future generations to know
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what I saw, what I experienced, what I what changed my life,
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what changed my worldview, what gives me hope when the world around me seems
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to be absolutely hopeless. This document was dictated by an eyewitness of these extraordinary
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events that Luke felt like he had to tell about Peter, Matthew and others.
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So here's what he says. But these are written that you may believe.
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Now again, we have to ask the question, but believe what I
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mean? John, what is it you want us to believe? Now again?
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Back to us, It's possible that you left faith because you know you
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have a lot of presenting reasons. If you walked away from faith, or
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if you're considering walking away from faith, you have lots of presenting reasons.
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You know something, you read, something you heard, you're just not interested.
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But at the end of the day, for most people who walk away
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from faith, you know what the bottom line is. And maybe this is
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your bottom line. Maybe you know this, maybe you haven't thought about it.
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The bottom line is, you know, Andy, it's good for you,
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but I don't believe it anymore. I mean, I just don't believe
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it anymore. And the question that I hope you will wrestle to the ground,
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and the one that John wants you to wrestle to the ground because he
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wants to wrestle it to the ground with you, is this. What is
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the it that you don't believe if you walked away from faith or considered it
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or are considering it, What is the it? And John, not the
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Bible. We haven't gotten there yet, John, not the Bible is about
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to tell you the only it that really matters. This is so important.
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John, an eyewitness, someone who spent time with Jesus, says this,
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these things that I've written in this gospel, these things are written that you
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may believe, believe that Jesus is in fact the Messiah to the Jews,
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the Son of God to the Greeks and the Romans, and that by believing
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you may have life in his name, regardless of what you've heard, regardless
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of what you've seen, regardless of what you've experienced in your life as a
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Christian. John says, this is the it, that's it, and that's
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the only it that really matters. And the implications of this statement in this
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doc we call the Gospel of John are staggering. And here's why I say
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that. If John's account of the life of Jesus, if John's account is
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all you have, John's account is all you need. If John's account is
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all you have, John's account is all you need. He said, I
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have written this in such a way that if this is the only message you
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stumble across, if this is the only document you ever read, if this
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is the only bundle of stories you are ever aware of, it's enough for
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you to have confidence that God has done something in the world, that God
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has done something in the world on your behalf. Because it's John that interrupts
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Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, because he can't help himself, and he writes that
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famous verse that most of us grew up having memorized as children's John that says,
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look, let me summarize it. For God so loved the whole world,
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the Jewish world, the Greek world, the Roman world, the Pagan
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world, the barbar world. That God loved the whole world so much that
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he sent his son. And I have been eyeball to eyeball with the Son
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of God. That I'm convinced is God in a body that whoever believes,
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whoever places their trust in Him, and who he claims to be, will
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not perish, will not be lost to God, but will begin to experience
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in this life a different kind of life. John calls it eternal life.
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John says, this is all you ever hear, This is all you ever
26:32
need. Isn't that amazing? You know what's so interesting about that? For
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decades, actually for generations, for you know, a couple three hundred,
26:41
four hundred years, people have been directed not to read the Bible, but
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to read the Gospel of John. In fact, some of you may have
26:52
become Christians because somebody said, Hey, you know, I just want you
26:55
to read something. Don't start in Genesis. You know, don't start in
26:57
Matthew, just you know, don't read the Bible. Just read this one
27:02
account of the life of Jesus. And in reading the Gospel of John,
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you put your faith in Jesus, because John was right. If this is
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all you ever have, if this is all you ever get, this is
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all you'll ever need. Isn't that amazing? Two hundred and seventy years before
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this book is ever assembled. So that brings us up to the end about
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the end of the first century. At the end of the first century,
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there's still no the Bible. At the end of the first century, there
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are thousands and thousands of Christians, Jewish Christians, Greek Christians, Roman Christians,
27:44
Christians and other parts of the world. At the end of the first
27:47
century, there are thousands of Christians, and there are a dozens and then
27:49
hundreds, and then eventually thousands of copies of these documents floating around telling about
27:56
the life and the works of Jesus, and they're meticulously copied, and they're
28:00
bundled together. And some people have a Gospel, and some people have two
28:03
gospels, and some people have three, and some people have a part of
28:07
one and part of another, and can you imagine. Can you imagine if
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you were a first century Jesus follower or a second century Jesus follower. Can
28:15
you imagine how valuable these documents would be to you, that perhaps you would
28:21
only heard the stories of Jesus. And then somebody comes to your town or
28:23
your village, or your grandfather shows up and says, let me show you
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something he uncovers. Here is a full copy of John's recollections of his life
28:33
with Jesus. Can you imagine this here to have a parent or grandparents who
28:37
had actually heard Peter or John preach, and they've told you, to the
28:41
best of their memory, what Peter and John preach. And then one day
28:45
somebody comes to your town or your village and they say, look, look,
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we have an actual copy of a letter that Peter wrote. Can you
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imagine I'll give you an illustration that I'll admit a front falls way short of
28:59
the magnitude of what was happening in the first or second century. I grew
29:03
up hearing stories of George Washington Stanley, Yes that's his real name. This
29:11
is my father's grandfather. And it looks like he's preaching during the apocalypse,
29:17
like there's nothing left. Only the machines roam the earth, and he's the
29:22
last surviving human being. I don't know where this picture was taken. He
29:26
lived and he did most of his ministry in North Carolina. But my dad's
29:30
grandfather, George Washington Stanley, was a preacher and he started a whole bunch
29:34
of churches, and he traveled around and when my dad was a teenager,
29:37
just as he was leave finishing high school and about to start college, my
29:41
dad went and spent a good bit of time with his grandfather. My dad's
29:45
dad died when he was seventeen months old, so we never knew his father,
29:49
and so George Washington Stanley for a short period of my dad's life,
29:53
this was his guide. This is a big part of the reason my dad
29:57
went into ministry and became a past And I grew up as a kid hearing
30:02
these amazing stories that my dad's grandfather told my father, that my father told
30:07
me, And if I had time, I could tell you some of the
30:10
stories. And maybe they were embellished a little, I don't know. They
30:12
are fascinating. As a child, you just leaned forward and said, Dad,
30:17
just tell us that one again. Because he preached during some very difficult
30:22
times in the Southeast, and he wasn't liked by certain groups of people,
30:26
and yet he stood firm and he taught the Bible the best he knew.
30:30
How was an uneducated pastor in the southeast, mostly in the area of North
30:33
Carolina, a little bit of Virginia. So I grew up on these stories.
30:38
And then about five years ago, my dad calls me. He said,
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Andy, I want you to come over. I want to give you
30:42
something. I'm like, well, you know what, then, then just
30:45
come over. I want to give you something. So I drove over to
30:48
my dad's house and we go in the kitchen and they're on the kitchen counter
30:51
are these two little blue books. They're about this thick, they're about this
30:56
big. In fact, I should have brought mind, I don't know why
30:56
didn't bring my copy. And there are two of them, and I can
30:59
tell they're very, very old. He said, guess what these are?
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I said, what he said. I didn't know this until last week,
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But my grandfather actually wrote a book, he said. And my sister was
31:10
cleaning out some things and she ran across these two and these are the only
31:14
two copies that she had, and she knew that I would want one,
31:17
and she knew that I'd probably want to give you one. And he hands
31:19
me a copy of a book written by his grandfather, my great grandfather,
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the man that was so instrumental in influencing my dad, who influenced me as
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it relates to the ministry. Now, what do you think I felt when
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I held that little blue book in my hand? Do you think I got
31:38
in my car and she tossed it in the back seat. And no,
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I mean before I even opened it, before before I even knew what was
31:47
in it, it was all ready precious to me because of the influence he'd
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had on my father, and through my father, the influence he'd had on
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me. And so I went home and I read every single word, and
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then I read every single word. How how valuable is that book to me?
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How valuable is that book to my father? We can't even begin to
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imagine. Again, two hundred or plus years before there was ever one of
32:19
these, there were these precious, extraordinary documents that gave the first and second
32:27
and third century Christians a picture of details quotes from their master and their savior,
32:32
Jesus. From the very beginning, they were considered valuable and reliable.
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From the very beginning they were considered sacred and eventually inspired. And it is
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no surprise and should come as no surprise, that very quickly these four documents
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were considered sacred scripture two hundred than
33:00
seventy two hundred and fifty years before one of these ever existed. Isn't that
33:05
amazing? Now? Catch you up the empire, the Roman Empire was very
33:09
suspicious of Christians. And the reason the Roman Empire was suspicion suspicious of Christians
33:15
was not because of what Christians believed. It was because of what Christians didn't
33:19
believe, because Christians didn't believe in the gods. Now, Rome could care
33:23
less who you worship, as long as you kind of threw a few,
33:27
you know, did a grain offering every once in a while to Caesar,
33:29
and a grain offering every once in a while for the sake of the gods
33:31
of Rome. You could keep your household gods. You could keep your regional
33:36
gods. If you were Barbarian, you could keep your Barbarian gods, your
33:37
Greek gods. As long as you acknowledge the gods, and as long as
33:42
you acknowledged Caesar, and that was a problem for Christians because Christians refused to
33:46
declare that Caesar was their lord. They declared that Jesus was their lord,
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which offended Caesar and the gods. Now, in the words of Stevie Wonder,
33:55
the Romans were very, very superstitious. Okay, So anytime something went
34:02
bad in the empire, and this is true for us today, even as
34:05
Americans or Canadians or wherever you live, anytime things went bad in the empire,
34:09
they look for someone to blame. And when things were good, they
34:14
consider that the blessing of the gods. And when things went bad, they
34:16
just assumed that the gods were disturbed. And if the gods were disturbed,
34:21
there was a reason the gods were disturbed. And why would the gods be
34:23
disturbed? It must be the growing number of Christians who don't recognize the gods.
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There was a late second early third century Christian leader author named Tertullian,
34:35
and he wrote this famous statement that survived antiquity, and this gives us a
34:38
glimpse of what the Christians were up against in the second and third century.
34:42
He wrote this, he said, if the Tiber River it's a river,
34:45
if the Tiger River floods the city, or if the nile refuses to rise
34:50
and water the crops, or if the sky withholds its rain, if there
34:54
is an earthquake, a famine, a pestilence. At once the cry is
34:58
raised Christians to the lions that as Christians were blamed for everything just about that
35:04
went bad in the Empire. The point was to keep the gods happy at
35:09
all costs and at all times. And the gods demonstrated their pleasure or displeasure
35:15
through the wonders of nature, through the rains and the floods and the river
35:19
and victory in war. So from time to time when things were bad in
35:22
the Empire, Christians got too much attention from the Empire. And this culminated,
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and I'll end with this. This culminated in the year three o three
35:30
when Emperor Diocletian. Emperor Diocletian issued an edict that resulted in the worst state
35:38
sponsored persecution of Christians that had happened up until that time. It was very
35:43
official, and this edict declared that every single house of Christian worship must be
35:47
destroyed, that assembly by Christians was illegal, that the bishops were to be
35:53
rounded up and forced to recant and offer a sacrifice to the gods and declare
35:58
that Caesar was their lord, or else they would be punished by death.
36:00
But perhaps worst of all, all Christian literature, all Christian literature was to
36:07
be turned in and was to be burned. And if you were caught with
36:12
Christian literature, you could lose your life after you watch your wife, your
36:16
daughter, and your son lose their lives in order, and hundreds and hundreds
36:23
of Christian risk and lost their lives protecting this is important, not the Bible.
36:31
There still wasn't a the Bible. They risk and lost their lives protecting
36:37
fragments of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, bundles of two or three
36:42
Gospels together, copies of the Letters of Paul and the Letters of Peter.
36:46
And the reason that those valuable documents survived the third and early fourth century is
36:52
because of their confidence that these documents told the truth about something that had happened
36:58
on planet Earth in the first century. When God showed up in the person
37:05
of Jesus Christ. They died rather than give up those sacred documents. Even
37:12
during that persecution, Christianity continued to spread, and then political change brought about
37:17
reform and an easing of hostilities, and by the year three twenty four,
37:22
Constantine the Great became the undisputed emperor of both sides of the empire, canceled
37:29
those edicts, returned property to the church, allowed Christians to worship freely,
37:35
and Christianity, as you know, became the preferred religion of the empire.
37:39
And then, for the first time ever so important, For the first time
37:44
ever, Christian scholars were able to work in the open, and Christian scholars
37:49
were able to work in the daylight, and Christian scholars could gather to gather
37:53
without fear of persecution and without fear of having their ancient documents taken away.
37:58
They were able to work in the open, and for the first time they
38:00
were able to bring together this extraordinary collection of valuable what we would call New
38:06
Testament documents, and the stage was set for the assembly of the very first
38:12
Tabiblia, the Bible. But there is so much more to this story,
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and we will pick the story up there next time in Part two of The
38:23
Bible for Grown Ups.