Latest / The Salty Pastor / The Importance of the Bible [Ep. 131]
Transcript
- [00:00:00] This is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus said. This is what Jesus accomplished. And so we see the content of what the apostles were teaching to the people was the life and teaching and commands of Jesus Christ himself. And they thought this was incredibly important to early church was based on This Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for joining us here on the Salty Pastor Podcast. My name is Jesse Maher. I'll be your host and we are here to help you grow your critical thinking skills and your faith. It's not something we can do for you. It's something you have to put the work in, on, but we are here to be your guides. And obviously we can't have the Salty Pastor Podcast without the Salty Pastor himself back from his remote, uh, broadcast in Boston, back in the studio. [00:01:00] Dr. Douglas Peake. How you doing? Oh, is that what you picked up there? That's I said that a lot and wicked. It's wicked, man. That's wicked good. That's wicked excellent. Any of our Boston listeners, I'm sorry. We've got a quarter down over there. That's about as good as I can do with a Boston accent. It was a lot of fun. Glad I was there. Beautiful, beautiful days that we had there. New Hampshire, Maine, on the coast Vermont, beautiful. Beautiful colors, turning and then getting the history and downtown Boston ton of fun. Ton of fun. Well, we are glad you are back as well, because we are finishing up our series. Jesus Loves Me. This is our final installment this weekend. Um, and just to review kind of these essentials of the faith that we've been talking about, uh, the first essential we talked about was Jesus. Who is he? He is God. Uh, second we said loves, what does, what does he do? He loves. Uh, three was me. Who are [00:02:00] we? What is our nature? What do we need? Why do we need love in our lives from, God? Right? And then last week we did this, I know, um, the next portion of the song, which is every person is invited to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And so today we're finishing out the song for the Bible tells me so. For the Bible tells me so. It's all about the Bible and we're going to try to answer some questions, you know, like how important is the Bible to what is known as classic or Orthodox Christianity and what is really the meaning of classic and Orthodox Christianity? Or what does the meaning of those words we use? Is w the, the Christianity of the earliest followers, what was the actual gospel that Jesus Christ proclaimed. And when you focus on that, you're saying, well, that's classic. And then it's also Orthodox meaning. Not straying from that. It's staying [00:03:00] focused on it. And so we're going to kind of get into that. How did early followers view the Bible and then what's been the effect on the civilization of the Bible over the last 2000 years? I, I I'll tell you what I taught a course to the staff. It actually took two semesters to teach it just on, the history of the church over the last 2000 years. And one of the things that we covered in that course over and over and over again is how people would start to follow God. Um, they would form communities, they become Christians, and then they'd kind of over time, these communities would get off track and then there'd be some really weird things going on, but it was always corrected. There was always a reform. And what's interesting is because of the Bible, it was always reinforced. Back to a classic Orthodox Christianity, which is really important because most belief systems never do that. Right. And so that's what makes Christianity so unique. So we're going to talk about the Bible today. Well, [00:04:00] we, in our, um, format is usually Tuesdays as a Bible study, so we get to study the Bible even more. We're going to Bible study about the Bible. We're going to Bible study about the Bible Bible- ception. I love that. So what passages of scripture are we going to be digging into today? The it's it's interesting because I always like to start with Jesus. And so I want to talk about a situation in his life recorded in Matthew chapter four. And then there's a parallel passage in Luke chapter four in Matthew it's verses one through 11. And in Luke it's verses one through 13, they're extremely similar. So we could pick one or the other and read them and we'll go through it. Okay. Well, uh, I believe this story is the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. And, uh, let me read the Matthew passage. Okay. So Matthew chapter four, verse one, then Jesus was led up by the spirit, into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after he had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry and the tempter came and said to him, Well, let me break in here real quick, [00:05:00] because notice how. The point at which the devil made his move is when Jesus was at his weakest point. I mean, he hadn't eaten for 40 days and he's out there in the desert. And so he's probably ready for a bath and something to eat. So he's pretty weak. Yeah. He didn't come to him on day one when he just left. He was at his lowest point basically. Well, it was point. Yeah. So let's keep reading, digging and see how he deals with the devil who approaches him at his lowest point. So picking it back up, he says, if you're the son of God command that these stones become bread, but he answered and said it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God, then the devil took him along into the holy city and had him Stand on the pinnacle of the temple. And he said to him, if you're the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written. He will give his angels orders concerning you and on their hands, you will be lifted up so that [00:06:00] you do not strike your foot against the stone. Jesus said to him, on the other hand, it is written you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him along to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said that. So I said to him, all these things I will give to you. If you fall down and worship me, then Jesus said to him, go away, Satan for it is written. You shall worship the Lord, your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him and behold angels came and began to serve him. We see here is that the devil made his move when Jesus was at his weakest. And so what did Jesus rely upon to give him strength and direction? And it was a scriptures. So, what this tells us is that Jesus had an extremely high view of the scriptures. And what he's quoting are scriptures from the Old Testament. And so he not only had a high view of the Old Testament, we're going to see later on, [00:07:00] there's a high view of the New Testament, because he says a new command I give to you. And he talks about his mission for the church in acts chapter one and Matthew chapter 28 and so forth. But what we see here right up front is that oftentimes the things that we need to deal with. Is, ha, when we're at our weakest points that the scriptures are there for a purpose. You see? And for Jesus, the purpose was that which gave him strength and guidance when he was at probably his weakest or lowest point dealing with these temptations. Right. So why, I mean, I guess the answer to this question for me, so. Why is something truthful and objective important when you're at your lowest? Well, I, I, what do you think? What do I think? Yeah. What, why, what do you think about that then? What is, why is an objective truth, so critically [00:08:00] important that not only it's true, but it's objective outside of you when you're at your weakest, when you're being, tempted the most. I mean, I think because obviously when you're at that point, basically anything could be quote unquote truth for you. Right. And so it's like when you, you know, you'll do almost anything. Uh, a burger at that point, you're like, you haven't eaten for 40 days. You're pretty weak. You're you're doing whatever you need to, right. And so having that solid rock to stand on and say, this is what I believe. This is the truth. This does not change based on my mood, based on my mental state, based on my physical needs, financial needs, whatever. This is the truth that stays the same forever and ever. Because when do we make our worst decisions when we're in our worst states. When we're in our worst. Yeah, we make our worst decisions there. And so, so this goes on early on, I think to show us that the scriptures provide an incredibly important role in our lives. Not when [00:09:00] we're our strongest, but when we're, we're our weakest and when we need them the most. So we kind of get a glimpse of what Jesus thought about the scriptures through this passage, but what did the apostles thing. Of the scriptures. Well, it's really interesting because the apostles, you know, had an extremely high view of scripture in the book of acts. We see right after the day of Pentecost that, uh, in the latter part of chapter two, it says that the people would gather together daily to listen to the apostles teaching. So exactly what were they teaching? Well, uh, It's encapsulated in the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you see Matthew and John were apostles. Mark traveled with the apostle Paul and Luke traveled with the apostle Paul. And so these, uh, men were recording what the apostles, two of them were apostles. What they were [00:10:00] actually teaching in what we see, like in the book of Matthew, we see this in the book of John, we see it in Luke is that they first used the Old Testament scriptures, which they knew very well, to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. But the primary content of their teaching was the, the activity, the teaching, the council, and the behavior of Jesus. So they taught, this is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus said. This is what Jesus accomplished. And so we see the content of what the apostles were teaching to the people was the life and teaching, and commands of Jesus Christ himself. And they thought this was incredibly important to early church was based on this. I got in a conversation with my son. And he was asking me, you know, uh, why, well, why do we preach? You know, I mean, sometimes it seems kind of, kind of [00:11:00] weird, you know, that people gathered together and some guy stands up and talks to him, you know, kind of a thing. And I said, well, thank you son. This is what I've dedicated my life to. Do you think what I do for a living is weird. Really appreciate that. But no, I'm just teasing him. He was just, no, but he was just, you know, he he's like me. He's curious about the derivation of things. And I said, well, because that's how the early church started. You see that at the day of Pentecost, it says Peter stood up and he addressed the crowd and he, he gave a testimony. The gospel of Jesus Christ. And on that day is when the church was birthed on the day of Pentecost acts chapter two. And so what we see from early on is that the church gathered together to hear teaching about the scripture. And, uh, preaching is different than teaching. Teaching comes from the Greek word, the didaskalos to give over or to give. And so that's a form of teaching. And what, uh, preaching is, is Caruso, which means to proclaim the good news. [00:12:00] And so from day one of the church and over the. 2000 years on the first day of the week, the church would gather together to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to preach Jesus. And whenever the church stopped doing that, the church becomes a mess, you know, and cause all kinds of problems. But when the church stays faithful to preaching the gospel of Jesus, that's why foothills. We are all about Jesus and nothing else. And so we read what he said. We pursue what he said to pursue. We value what he valued. We seek what he seeks, because it's all about Jesus. And so we see that the early apostles did this. Over and over again. They taught about Jesus. And then when you read the other letters that they wrote in the New Testament, there's only 27 books in the new Testament. And the first four are gospels or biographies on the life of Jesus. And then the fifth book. Axe, according to the apostles and it covers the [00:13:00] 30 years of right after Jesus ascended. So it starts with the day of Pentecost and then it covers a 30 year period. And it talks about all the things that the early church. Had to deal with. And so you can just read story after story, after story, it starts off mostly about Peter or he's kind of the main character, uh, up until, uh, about the, I dunno, eighth, ninth chapter, somewhere in there. And then you were introduced to Saul who meets Jesus and becomes Paul and he's called to be an apostle as well. And then it's about Paul planting churches after that. So it's how the church expanded and how it continued to grow throughout the entire Roman empire. And so they, uh, the letters that were written to these churches are the remaining books of the new Testament. And it's very important to understand is that the Bible is a library of books. They all talk about the same thing. There's tremendous consistency through them, but there are [00:14:00] different authors. And they approach it from different angles, but it doesn't really ever contradict itself. It has this phenomenal continuity to it. And that's because it was guided. These men were guided to write these things through the Holy Spirit. It says in second Timothy chapter three, it says all scripture is inspired by God. And it is beneficial for teaching rebuking, correction or training and righteousness so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable or fully equipped for every good work. And the key phrase there is all scripture is inspired by God. So these men wrote these words. With the inspiration of God in Hebrews chapter four, verse 12, it says the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword. It pierces as far as the division of soul and spirit joints and marrow, and is able to judge the [00:15:00] thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to him, to whom we must give an account. And so what we see here is why Jesus in the wilderness uses scripture. Because when you're at your weakest, right? It says that it can divide the soul and the spirit, joint, and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of your heart. Uh, by this early apostle belief in the scriptures, they used it to judge their intentions, to judge their thoughts. And what's fascinating is in American society. We'll talk about this on Thursday podcast is that this is dramatically been lost and that is well because I feel it, it must be true. And Jesus is in the desert at his worst. And he says to himself, I have a whole lot of feelings and they can't be trusted. I can trust the word of [00:16:00] God. It never changes. It is foundational and it can divide. You see the intentions of my heart and keep me from doing really, really dumb things. Of course, we know that Jesus didn't sin. And so the scripture kept him on the right path. And so that's really, really important to see that the apostles had just as high of a, uh, perspective of scripture that Jesus Christ himself did. Okay. So there's no question in, in, after kind of that discussion that the apostles valued the scriptures, um, and they were critical to knowing Jesus. So, what about the early followers, the early church, what was their view when it came to scriptures, did they, did they adhere to the old ones? Did they, I mean, obviously these letters weren't really around, like they, they got these letters, like the church and emphasis got a letter. Right. But it wasn't, I guess it wasn't considered scriptures then. Right. It [00:17:00] was just a letter at that point in time. So they were still looking at the, Well, that's a great, that's a great question because. Uh, the early church for the first 500 years had an extremely high view of. Uh, scripture because Paul wrote a letter and then he would send somebody, you know, it could have been Timothy, it could have been Titus, thecould have been somebody who took the letter to emphasis and then read it to the church. And they believed that that letter was so important and so critical. The first thing they did is they. Copied it. Right. And then what happened is they started copying that is like, so the people in Colossae, which was close to Emphasis said, well, wait a second, what did he say to you guys? And they said, well, we have a copy. You know, we'll make us a copy and we want it. And so, because what they want to do is they wanted to devote themselves to the apostles teaching. You see, and it's really important to understand is that, uh, in the biographies of the life of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, [00:18:00] and John, uh, Mark is the shortest of all the gospels. In there, it's also the first gospel that they considered to be written. And the reason why is because Mark, who did it, his name was John mark. He felt he was in the entourage with Paul. And so Paul would go into a city, they would start to meet in the synagogue, and try to convince people about Jesus. He would start to talk about Jesus. And while that was going on, John Mark would sit down and make another copy of the gospel of Mark, and then they would leave it with the church. And then they would move on. And so the gospel of Mark was the first gospel about what Jesus did and taught. And it was kind of a short version because, you know, He was replicating it a lot. He was replicating it as he went in into. What's really fascinating about that whole process. Is that that's what, uh, why all of these letters. And all of these biographies are gospels [00:19:00] became so critically important. It's so different than us today. You know, like anything you want, you pull out your phone, you know, and you Google it real quick, right. You can find out anything you want, but, but back then you knew Jesus, but it's like, There's no newspaper. Right. You know what I'm saying? The printing press was not around. There was no newspaper. And so all you had was word of mouth, but the, the real problem with word of mouth is that that was pretty unreliable. I mean, it's still unreliable to this day. To this day. So, so what they wanted to know is, well, what did Paul act? What did Peter actually say? And so they started writing these letters. It became a critical. So the early church was very, very committed to it. As a matter of fact, Timothy is credited with collecting all of these letters that Paul wrote and Peter and James, the author of Hebrews and so forth. The gospels, in. So Timothy through kind of church tradition is considered the [00:20:00] one. And of course he was a disciple of Paul. Right. That gathered these books together, these 27 books and put them together and made sure that this library could be replicated in given to churches. You see, as they grew so that people could know the teaching of the apostles and that's what it encapsulates. And when you read early church fathers, you know, Arrhenius and all these other guys that were what they could call the early church fathers, and they quote big chunks of the New Testament, you know, first Corinthians and Colassians they quote big chunks of these books of the Bible, uh, in their writings as well. Right? So their writings and what they said was very, uh, centered on the scriptures. Or the new Testament scriptures, and it flowed from these New Testament [00:21:00] scriptures. They didn't write a whole bunch of stuff that was out there. That was crazy. And that's why they call them the early church fathers. Now, there were some other people that tried to replicate it or use it, or these became known as a pseudepigrapha, which has false writings. Someone write a letter and say, oh, I'm Paul, the apostle. And I wrote this and then they, and they also became known under a heading called the Gnostic gospels. Um, but these were all discredited and false. Nobody believed it. You know what I'm saying? So it'd be very similar today. You know, if, if you say, Hey, I want to go out and I want to read a copy of the Lord Of The Rings or whatever, you know, and you go, I want to get on there. And someone says, Hey, I can get you a really cheap copy here. You know? And, uh, uh, the first book of, uh, the Lord Of The Rings, you know, The Fellowship Of The Ring, everybody knows it has, you know, 700 and some odd pages in it and they show up and it's got 350. Okay, this is not this isn't, this isn't, this is not helpful. This is not what I wanted, but so in the same way, it was like that. It's like nobody believed it. [00:22:00] And as a matter of fact, this was encapsulated in 3 25, AD at the second most famous council, the council of Nicea in the city of Nicea and the most famous council, early church council is in acts chapter 15 and in 3 25, what happened is at this point in time, there were over 1800 bishops in a Bishop was usually over, anywhere from a five to 25 churches in different cities and villages. So Bishop had a big area and the, at that time, so 1800 bishops were invited to come together, but they all couldn't come to Nicea. They all didn't have the funds to travel and they all weren't able to leave or whatever. Maybe the case. Uh, and so 300, well, they're not really quite sure, but they've stuck with 318 showed up. And, but they did represent [00:23:00] all of these regions. All of these churches. So we're talking thousands and thousands of churches and thousands and thousands of towns, villages, and cities, and they came together. And one of the first things that they did is they said, who do you recognize? What books do you recognize as the 20 S you know, how many books do you recognize is inspired, uh, by God written by the apostle. And so they said, well, we have 27. And so they go to another person and say, what do you got? Well, we got 27. And so they, they had the, they were trying to resolve a heresy called the area in heresy. And that was the nature of Jesus. And they said, but before we do that, we have to agree on what our sources on which we're going to make a decision. And so they said, are these what the standard do? These 27 books meet the standard. And it was like 316 to two. That's a pretty good margin. Yeah. Yeah. You don't get anywhere close to that in anything. And so, and these were churches at . These were [00:24:00] bishops that Rosa represented all of these thousands of churches throughout the entire Roman empire. So some of these people had never even heard of eachother. Right. You know, and they come together and they're like, well, who are you? And I'm well, I'm from this neck of the woods. So I didn't even know that was part of the Roman empire. And so they come together and they find out, wow, what consistency? These 27 books. And so they found all of these books, met the standard, the highest bar that they could in that standard in Latin. The word for standard is called cannon. Okay. So that's where we get the concept of canonical scriptures. And that is all of these books. These 27 books in the New Testament all met the standard. None of the other books did. So they set extremely high stakes. 316 to two voted that these were it. So, so the, the Bible was critically important to the early church. They loved the early, uh, the scriptures. They [00:25:00] poured over the scriptures because this was the only way once the apostles died there weren't new apostles. Um, unless you were Roman Catholic, you believe the Pope is a part of the, uh, app systolic succession under Peter. Uh, the one difficulty with that, not meaning to, uh, criticize Catholicism, but just to point out is that the apostleship was only as an office passed on calling of Jesus Christ in the laying on of hands. And so it's really difficult for S you know, Christ would have to show up for each time they chose a Pope, Pope and lay hands on and call that person. But the last person that was called by Jesus Christ himself to be an apostle was Paul on the road to Damascus. And once that's happened, we don't have any other record of any other apostles being called or established. Uh, even after we knew that they started to be martyr'd. You don't have any record of that in the book of acts, you don't have any record of [00:26:00] that in John's apocalypse, which is known as the book of revelation. We don't have any of that. And once John, the apostle died, the office of apostle, not the rule of possible, which is a giftedness, but the office of apostle died out. And so what's interesting is that the scriptures then became critically important for the church to propagate the teaching of the apostles. Right. It only. Through, but they could only do that by reading the scriptures. And so the scriptures became incredibly important to the early church. The, all the doctrinal issues were resolved from the scriptures in the early church. All the creeds of the early church were established from the scriptures. All the early church fathers wrote and taught from the scriptures and what we see over the last. 2000 years is that the church always gets off base when it abandons [00:27:00] the scriptures. You know, there's all kinds of examples of that. So, I mean, it's, it's very clear that Jesus, the apostles, the early church were all dedicated to the importance of scriptures and their role in guiding us in a relationship with Jesus and the new life that he calls us to live. So, I mean, it's. It's very important that you're spending time in your scriptures. I'm sure we're going to be talking about that. Um, On Thursday of how important it is to be spending time in the Bible. Um, and you actually have a book all about reading and understanding the Bible that if you're ever on campus over by the coffee bar, we have how to read and understand the Bible by Dr. Douglas Peake. So I encourage you to check that out if. It's also on Amazon, if you are listening from afar and would like a copy. Um, so I'd encourage you to, to look into that. We're also doing a little mini video series. That'll cover some of that as well. That's [00:28:00] coming out soon. Um, I might just take a couple of, you know, just a minute or two to talk about some other cool stuff that we've got coming up soon. That Salty Pastor related. Um, we've got a brand new podcast that we're, we're in the works of planning. That's going to be with you and Kim Cross our parenting and family coaching specialist here at Foothills, of, with the Salty Pastor and ramping heritage. Um, and talking about how to parent, how to increase your effectiveness as a parent, to how to deal with certain things when it comes to parenting all of that. So I'm be looking forward to that in the next few weeks. We're, we're, we're ramping up to that. So we'll give you more information on that. If you're a first time listener or you've only been listening to the last few episodes, um, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to episode 1 0 2, 1 0 4, 1 0 6 and 1 0 8, which are the, what in the Sam Hill series, um, which we made those after our hundredth episode, because we're like, this is a hundred hour or this is 50 hours of content that we've gone through and not everyone's going to have time, to go back and [00:29:00] listen to a hundred episodes. So we created those as kind of a quick onboarding to The Salty Pastor that talks about different topics that we reference a lot postmodernism, things of that nature, um, philosophy, stuff like that. So if you've not listened to those and you're new to the podcast, we encourage you to listen to listen to those. Yes. Please come up to speed. Um, and we actually have YouTube versions of those as well that have some graphics and stuff too. So if you, if you visually process philosophy a little bit better, That's a great way to get that as well. So, um, last thing I have, um, we had some YouTube comments on some episodes from last week that I want to read. Um, Jen Frisky says that background in reference to when you were sitting out on the, here in Boston and then Ernie says awesome remote coverage. So it seems like the people want you going on remote more often. Um, and then April, um, just really loved. She loves that you're utilizing this song and that you are [00:30:00] bringing it to life in a way that a lot of people don't anymore. She referenced a couple of other songs, um, and how important those songs have messages as well. And we can get a lot from songs. Um, obviously you gotta be careful, not every lyric is, you know, inspir inspired by, but, and you use the Bible. That's how you don't use the Bible is the Bible. Um, and so I think, uh, I think. She brings up a great point that you can in worship as well, utilize some of those words to kind of see some truths that are, that are, um, maybe not so easy to express and just one-on-one conversations. So, and you've demonstrated that a lot. So we really appreciate those comments. That's awesome. They let us know that you guys are listening and enjoying it. Um, we've even had a couple of debates breakout on a couple of comments. So we also yay. So thank you guys so much. Um, we really appreciate you guys joining us here on the Salty Pastor Podcast. Make sure you tune in on Thursday. We're going to do some practical application and the modern day, and then obviously Sunday, we'll wrap it all up. [00:31:00] So thanks so much. And we will see you on Thursday. Alright, greetings and blessings, everyone.