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Andy Stanley - The Bible For GrownUps Part 4 For The World · Andy Stanley Sermons

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To bd ll. Yes, that's the book for me. I stand Alone
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on the World of God to b I b Ley the bib l e Yes,
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that's the book for me. What are you doing nothing? Hey?
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We're wrapping up this series today called The Bible for Grown Ups. And I've
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been so excited about planning for this series and I'm so excited to kind of
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land the plane today. And the reason we did this, and we've said
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this every week, is that most of us grew up knowing or hearing Bible
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stories. If you grow up in church, you grew up with Bible stories.
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Even if you did grow up in church, you've heard some Bible stories.
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In fact, some of you grew up in church and heard the Bible
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stories, and then as you got older, you walked away from the Bible
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because the stories just didn't add up. They just didn't make sense anymore.
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They didn't connect with real life, they didn't connect with science, they didn't
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connect with what you learned in a university or graduate school setting. And the
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problem for many of us is, even though we know a lot of Bible
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stories, most people don't know the story of the Bible. And understanding how
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we got the Bible is really almost as important as knowing what is in the
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Bible, because knowing the story of the Bible is the backstory for the stories
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in the Bible. In fact, the backstory actually sheds a lot of light
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on the stories in the Bible. And the big challenge for us, and
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this is what we've talked about in these weeks together, is that the way
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that you received your Bible and the way we got our Bibles is not the
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way the world got the Bible. By the time I got my Bible and
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the time you got your Bible as a child or as an adult, or
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perhaps you haven't gotten a Bible yet, but when you do, it comes
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all chaptered and verse and mapped and and as we've said, most of us,
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when we got our first Bible, our names were printed on in front
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of it. But the way we received our individual Bibles is not the way
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the world received the Bible. And the story or really the journey of how
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this book came to be is almost as important as what's in the book itself.
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We said on Week one that the story of this book actually doesn't begin
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in Genesis. The story of this book begins on Easter. The story of
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the Bible. The reason we have the Bible is because jesus followers discovered that
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his tomb was empty, and they assumed initially that someone had stolen the body.
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Nobody assumed a resurrection. But later that same day, the women and
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his closest male followers saw Jesus, and suddenly there were Jesus sidings all around
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Jerusalem, the very city in which he had been arrested and tried and eventually
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crucified. And once Jesus rose from the dead, and once people knew that
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he rose from the dead, suddenly, instantly the story of Jesus became very,
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very, very important. But it wasn't until the resurrection. And that's
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why we've said throughout the series. If there had been no resurrection, there
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would be no Bible, because the story of Jesus would not have been worth
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telling. He would have been just another first century wanna be Messiah, another
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rabbi who made extraordinary claims, did a few magic tricks, and then was
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executed by Rome like so many had been in the past. But when it
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was discovered that Jesus had risen from the dead, suddenly there was interest in
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the life of Jesus, and Luke a first century doctor. As we saw
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in week one, Luke said that many people, many people actually set out
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to give a documented account or an account for the life of Jesus. And
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the four documents that had include the Life of Jesus that made it through antiquity
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that we have today are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John And in
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week one we talked about these four documents. And then as the story continues,
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we discovered that before long gentiles, non Jewish people outside the area of
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Judea and Galilee, began to embrace the message of Jesus. And this was
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the trends in the story when Gentiles, when non Jewish people became enamored with
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Jesus, they became enamored with the sacred text that told of his coming.
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We would call it, or they would call it the Hebrew Bible, or
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we would call it the Old Testament, but they called it the Law and
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the Prophets. And so the early Church got really interested in this book,
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not because they were interested in Judaism, but because they were interested in Jesus
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and this was the backstory to his story. So they eventually embraced this as
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sacred scripture, but they didn't embrace it as Jewish scripture. The first century
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and second century Church, and especially the third century Church eventually embraced it as
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Christian scripture. And by the middle or the actually the beginning of the second
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century, the Hebrew Bible or the Law and the Prophets was being used in
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Christian worship. And then they eventually gave it a new name. They called
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it the Old Covenant, or as it has come down to us because of
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the Latin term, the Old Testament. Still, and this is important as
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we conclude this series. Still there's no Bible. There's a Hebrew text that's
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now considered a Christian text by the Church, which of course was very very
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offensive to the Jewish communities around the world. And there were these documents that
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hadn't been titled yet, but there were the accounts of Jesus' life. We
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know them as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then in
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addition to that, there was a famous church planter who began writing letters to
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the churches and the people in the churches that he had planted. And it's
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to him we now turn our attention. We know him as the Apostle Paul.
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But the Apostle Paul stepped onto the pages of history actually as Saul of
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Tarsus. And the reason he has two names is because this was his given
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Hebrew name, Saul. But he was also a Roman citizen, so he
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had a Roman name Paul. But when he transitioned from the role of Pharisee
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to becoming a church planter to the gentile world, he began using his Roman
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name Paul. Now, the Apostle Paul is so famous. In fact,
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if you've read any of the New Testament, you've read something that he's written.
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Doubt anybody listening to this message has never heard of the Apostle Paul.
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In fact, it is not an exaggeration. Nobody argues with this in academic
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circles. It is not an exaggeration to say the letters of the Apostle Paul
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have shaped Western civilization. That is not an exaggeration. The letters of Paul
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of shape Western civilization and the thought of Western civilization. So if Paul had
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a Twitter account, I think it would look something like this Apostle Paul at
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the Colossal Apostle. Okay, and you don't need to check, We've already
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grabbed this, okay, So don't go after this okay, so and the
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colossal Apostle because of all the apostles of Jesus, Paul did more than any
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of them. In fact, it could be argued Paul did more than all
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the rest of them combined. So yeah, he was like the colossal Apostle.
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Pharisee, author, preacher, church planner. I'm wandering the Mediterranean realm.
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And then I love his url. Wassaul got the call now Paul dot
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com. You gotta love that Wassaul got the call now Paul dot com.
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But the truth is, if the Apostle Paul were here, he would say,
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no, no, no, no, no no no. That's not
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how I view myself. You may view me on this side of history as
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the colossal Apostle who changed and shaped Western civilization. But when the Apostle Paul
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talked about himself, he talked about himself in very, very different terms.
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Here's what he actually said in a letter to Christians living in Corinth. He'd
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already visited with this group. Now he's writing them a letter, and here's
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what he says about himself. He says, I am the least of the
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apostles of all Jesus' closest followers. He said, no, I am the
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least of them, and I don't even deserve to be called an apostle.
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Well why, Paul, I mean, you wrote so much, you know,
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created so much theology. I mean you explain the relationship between the old
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and new. I mean, why wouldn't you. Why don't you deserve some
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credit? And he said, let me tell you why. Because when I
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first stepped onto the pages of history, I did not step onto the into
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the pages of history as an apostle or a follower of Jesus. Quite the
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opposite. I actually stepped into history as one persecuting the Church of God.
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That the amazing thing about the apostle Paul is that he was first known as
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the person that decided he was going to put the church out of business.
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They called it a Nazarene sect because Jesus was from Nazareth. They called it
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the Way because they claimed to have some unique way. In these first century
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Jesus followers had the audacity to try to hijack, to hijack the Jewish scripture,
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to say it meant things that everybody knew it didn't mean. In the
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apostle Paul, who was a Pharisee who knew the Old Testament or the Law
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and the prophets inside and out, decided to single handedly put the Church out
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of business because clearly they were robbing from Jewish tradition and robbing from the value
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of what went on in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. So he went to
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the Jerusalem and he got the High Priest, and he got the Chief Priest
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to give him basically deputize him, to allow him to go anywhere in Judea
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and Galilee, basically anywhere he wanted to to arrest Jewish people who had embraced
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Christianity, or as they called it, the Way. And he said that
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he was responsible for several or for many losing their life, for others that
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were tortured are pressure to the point of blaspheming the name of Jesus. So
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for his entire life, the apostle Paul carried the weight of the guilt of
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having been one who actually persecuted the Church. And then, in this strange
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twist of events that only God knows why and how this happened, your heavenly
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father and mind, decided to recruit the Paul, you know, the Saul
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of Tarsus to become the person that would take the message of Jesus to basically
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the entire known gentile world in the Roman Empire. He was the one,
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and why God chose him, we don't know. But I'll tell you this,
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regardless of what you've done, and regardless of where you've been, and
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regardless of what you have done to other people, there is room and the
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kingdom for you, because regardless of your story, I have a feeling if
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you were to hold it up beside the Apostle Paul, your sin and your
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guilt and your shame with pale and significance, and in comparison to what he
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claimed to have done to people in the name of God. And yet the
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Apostle Paul plays an extraordinary role in the story of the Bible. In fact,
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there are three. There are three things that he's done that you know,
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cause him to be a primary character in the story of the Bible.
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And I want to talk about these three to begin with. He wrote some
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of it. The Apostle Paul wrote a lot of letters to these churches that
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he had planted around the Mediterranean basin, and thirteen of these letters were survived
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antiquity several of them weren't to churches somewhere, to individuals. And then one
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he wrote a letter, a long letter, famous letter to Christians living in
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Rome. It's called the Book of Romans. But he never he had visited
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Rome when he wrote that. But anyway, his letters were circulated and copied
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and circulated, and they were considered so valuable that the church meticulously copied his
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letters, and over time and eventually they were considered sacred scripture. But the
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thing that is so important for you to understand is this, When the Apostle
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Paul was writing those letters, he was not writing the Bible. No one
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had this in mind. No one could have even imagined there would ever be
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a document or a group of documents that included both the Hebrew Scripture and these
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first century writings of Jesus followers. Nobody had this in mind. So when
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the Apostle Paul was writing these letters, he was just writing letters to friends,
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and letters to Christians living in Rome, and letters to Timothy and the
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letter to Titus. But he wasn't writing the Bible. The second reason he's
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so important to the story is this. The Apostle Paul explains the relationship between
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the parts of the Bible. In fact, if you ever get confused about
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how does the Old Testament and the New Testament work together, why does it
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seem to say one thing here and one thing there. Us Paul is your
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guy. He explains how Christians should view and how Christians should use the Old
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Testament. And he should know because he was an expert in the law.
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He was an expert in this book. He was an extraordinary pharisee. He
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knew it inside out. And the extraordinary thing about his story is this he
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pivots in a single afternoon on the one and one afternoon. He goes from
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a law abiding pharisee who is out to put, you know, put out
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of business the entire church. He goes from that to a Jesus follower.
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So the Apostle Paul had extraordinary, extraordinary, extraordinary clarity about the relationship between
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the Jewish scriptures and what would eventually be called the New Testament. This is
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the Jewish Scripture. This is my Greek New Testament from seminary. I will
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confess this got a lot more use than this, because Hebrew is such a
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difficult, difficult language. But the Apostle Paul knew this back and forward,
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and it would eventually be used to write much of this and his clarity,
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his clarity around the relationship between these two sets of documents was extraordinary, in
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fact, so much so that I think if the apostle Paul had been there
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the day that you first received your Bible and I received my first Bible,
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I think he would have given us two bits of instruction. I think he
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would have looked at you as a child or as an adult whenever you received
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your first Bible. And I think he would have said this, first of
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all, read the Old Testament for inspiration and motivation, but not application.
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And the reason I say that is because of something he wrote in this letter
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to Christians living in corinth and First Corinthians, Chapter ten, verse six,
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and eleven he makes this case, or he makes this point First Corinthians ten
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six and eleven, and in other places he would say, read the Old
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Testament for inspiration. God's people struggled and God came through. Read it for
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motivation, that God is faithful, that when God's people cry out to him,
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he responds. The stories of the Old Testament are the backstory that leads
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to the coming of Jesus. So read it that way. But remember this,
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the entire Jewish Bible, the entire Jewish Bible, is organized around a
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covenant or a contract between God and an ancient people. His ancient people Israel,
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to which Paul would have said, of which I am one. I'm
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from the tribe of the twelve Tribes. I'm from the tribe of Benjamin.
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And I understand what this is. This is basically a contract, and the
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stories that emanate from the contract and the prophets that prophesied within the context of
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a contract between God and an ancient people. But with the coming of Jesus,
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there is a brand new contract. There is a brand new covenant,
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and you, as gentile modern Christians, even Jewish modern Christians, you are
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a part of a brand new covenant and it is a better covenant with better
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promises. His second piece of advice to us, I think would be this,
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you should take your application cues from jesus new covenant command that when it
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comes to application, you get inspiration and motivation here. And the stories are
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fascinating and it points in the direction of Jesus. But when it comes to
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knowing how to live your life, how to manage your money, how to
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manage your marriage and your relationships. The apostle Paul clearly teaches that we should
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take our application cues from Jesus' new covenant command. And what was Jesus' new
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covenant command? At the end of his ministry before he was crucified, when
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he gathered with his apostles in the upper room for their last Passover meal together,
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he said this, He said, a new command I am giving you
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to which they thought, wait a minute, only God can give commands.
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And then they probably thought, yeah, but only God can heal the blind,
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and only God can raise the dead. So we're kind of getting used
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to this. Okay, So what's the new command. Only God can give
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a command? He said, here's the new command. And it's not a
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command to add to the other commands. This is the command. This is
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the pre eminent command. This is the north Star command. Don't take this
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command and put it in a bucket with all the other commands, shake it
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up and out, and try to figure out how to live your life.
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This was the ultimate ethic. This was the guiding light for all Christian behavior.
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He said, guys, here is a new command. As I have
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loved you, you are to love one another. In fact, by that
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unique kind of love, the entire world will know that you are my follower.
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In other words, don't love as you've been loved by others, and
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don't even love others the way you want them to love you. That's the
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golden rule. We're moving beyond that. This is the platinum rule. I
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want you to treat people that you meet. I want you to treat people
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in your family. I want you to treat people at school and at work
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and at play. I want you to treat every single person you are ever
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eyeball to eyeball with, face to face with I want you to treat them
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and light of the way that your heavenly Father treated you through me. And
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then the next day Jesus would put on a demonstration of love that would take
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their breath away because it took his breath away. And the Apostle Paul would
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say, that is your guiding light when it comes to your behavior. His
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letters are filled with applications of Jesus' new Covenant command. In fact, you
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should know this when you read Paul's letters and he says, do this,
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and don't do that, and do this and don't do that. He's not
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giving you new commands. He is simply giving you applications of what it means
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to live your life and lie to the fact that God through Christ has done
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so much for you. So let me give you a few examples of this.
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Here's what he says in his letter to Christians. I'm living in Philippi.
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He says, in your relationships with one another? Yeah, well what
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about our relationships? How do we manage our relationships? He says, Well,
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it's not easy, but it's simple. You just have the same mindset
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as Christ Jesus. It's like what, Yeah, you just have the same
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mindset as Christ. Jesus who took on the form of a servant who never
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powered up even though he was God in a body, didn't walk into the
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restaurant and say, you know what I'd like to have that table? Would
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you ask him to move? I'm Jesus. Okay, it's Jesus, Okay,
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just ask it. No, never powered up. In fact, he
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goes on and on in the same passage, and Paul says, if you
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want to know how to be a good husband, a good wife, a
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good father, a good mother, a good son, a good employer,
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a good employee. You just have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. That's
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all you need. You don't need ten, you don't need nine, you
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don't need eight commandments. You just set that as the guiding light, and
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you will know what to do. It's terrifyingly clear. In another letter,
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he says this to Christians. He says, submit to one another. Well,
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why would I want to submit to somebody he's not worth submitting to?
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Well, that's the point. You're to submit, not out of reverence to
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them, and you're not to submit out of reverence for yourself. You're to
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submit out of reverence for Christ. That just as Christ came and got up
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under your burden, just as Christ did for you what you could not do
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for yourself, you are to do the same for every single person you meet
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when you have the opportunity, submit to one another. And then from that
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verse he goes on and talks about husbands and wives. What does that look
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like in marriage? What does it look like for children? What does it
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look like for people who work for other people? In his letter to Christians
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living in Ephesus, he says this, be kind and compassionate to one another,
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and forgive each other well, why because she's not worth forgiving, I
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mean forgive him. Do you know what he did to me? Do you
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know what he refused to do for me? Paul says, wait, wait,
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wait, you're missing the point. That's the golden rule. We're beyond
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that. This is Jesus' new covenant command. You're to be kind and compassionate
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to one another and forgive each other, just as in Christ, God forgave
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you. And there it is again. You are to do unto others as
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God in Christ is done un to you. And then he says this in
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the same letter or in his again his letter to Christians living in Corinth,
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his first letter to that group of people. He says, hey, by
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the way, you know when Christ died for you, do you know he
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bought you? You know, basically he paid your send debt and in paying
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you that he bought you out of sin. So consequently you don't even belong
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to you. And here's what he says. He says, you're not your
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own. You have been bought at a price. Therefore, here's what you
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should do. Here's the application of that honor God with your bodies. Your
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bodies don't belong to you, Your bodies belong to your heavenly Father. He
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bought you, and he purchased you. The reason you should honor God with
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your body, with what you do with your body, with where you take
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your body, with how you allow your body to behave where you take your
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queue is not in a list of commandments. You take your cue from how
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you exercise and how you use your body, and how your body impacts other
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bodies, from what God in Christ has done for you. He says,
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you belong to Me. Now your body your behavior should manifest the fact that
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you belong to me. Honor Me with your body, Honor God with your
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body, and by the way, honor all the other bodies with your body,
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because they may belong to God as well, and they may belong to
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God in the future. So we could go on and on and on and
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on. The Apostle Paul was so clear. The Apostle Paul was hey,
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the Old Testament pointed towards Jesus. The Old Testament is full of inspirational stories,
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but when it comes to behavior, you take your behavioral cues from what
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God through Christ has done for you. Now, before we go to this
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third reason, he's so important to the story of the Bible. What have
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we'd gotten that? Right? I mean, imagine what would happen in your
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marriage if both of you did that, and both of you can't be a
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one way thing. It has to be a two way thing. In fact,
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when I teach pastors and leaders, I often say that marriage, and
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I've said this to you, that marriage is simply a submission competition. That's
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what marriage is. It is mutual submission. And why do we mutually submit?
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Because the person you're married to is worth submitting to? Or are you
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worth submitting? No? No, no, because as Christians, as Christians,
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we take our behavioral cues from what Jesus did for us. It is
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the one commandment, as I have loved you, you are to love one
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another. And the next day he would lay down his life for the men
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in that room and for you. And the fact that Jesus would say,
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it is this kind of demonstration of love that will mark you. This is
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to be your brand. This is how people will know you are my follower.
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Not what day of week you worship, not how you do communion,
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not how you do baptism, not your system of theology, not which translation
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of the Bible you use. People will know you're my follower because you have
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created the habit, you've embraced the idea that you are to treat people the
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way that God in Christ has treated you. That's what Paul would tell us,
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I think when he gave us, or when we received our first Bible.
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But there's a third reason that Paul is so important to the story of
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the Bible. He wrote some of it. He explains the relationship between parts
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of it. And then this third part is a bit academic. But you're
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above average people, so no, you're going to be able to follow this.
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And this may be the most important part of this final message in this
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series. In fact, if you walked away from faith, if you walked
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away from faith because of something in the Bible or something about the Bible,
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I want you to especially pay attention to what I'm about to explain. The
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Apostle Paul authenticates the most important event recorded in this book. The Apostle Paul
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authenticates in a way that no one else does, the most important event in
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the Bible. Because the most important event in the Bible is the reason we
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have the Bible. It's the resurrection. Again, if there was no resurrection
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of Jesus, there would be no Bible. Now here's why Paul is so
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important to that line of thinking. Perhaps you in college, or maybe high
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school or in graduate school, or maybe you read a book that a case
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that the authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is disputed, that
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the dates that those gospels were written were disputed, and the storyline goes this
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way, that Matthew didn't write Matthew, that we don't know who Mark was
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exactly, Luke probably wrote Luke, but Luke wrote Luke way way, way
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later than the events that took place, and we don't know who wrote the
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Gospel of John, and that these gospels were written actually by the Christian community
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many many, many years after the eyewitnesses of some supposed resurrection had died,
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and that the myth of the resurrection of Jesus grew up over time and was
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eventually embraced by the Christian community and it became a stake in the ground for
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the Christian community. Now, there are so many problems with that way of
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thinking, not to mention the fact why in the world would somebody in the
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first century abandon their religion to embrace a Jewish sect, lose your job,
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be ostracized by your family, and be persecuted for the rest of your life,
25:00
and be forced to worship not a new God, not one of the
25:03
gods you grew up worshiping, but worship the Jewish God when the Jewish people
25:07
themselves were against the sect that you had joined. It's very difficult to make
25:12
a case for this case against the gospels, but let's leave that aside.
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The problem with that argument is not what we find in Matthew Martin Luther John.
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The problem with that argument is something that the apostle Paul says that the
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Christian community, the Christian community that supposedly developed all of these myths about Jesus
25:33
later. That whole argument ignores First Corinthians. Paul's letter, Paul's letter to
25:38
Christians living in corinth Paul's letter to Corinthian believers is indisputable evidence that jesus resurrection
25:45
was accepted immediately, immediately after it supposedly happened, not eventually. That just
25:52
because this one letter in First Corinthians is indisputable evidence that the Jewish community in
25:57
Jerusalem immediately, not the Jewish community, the Christian Jewish community in Jerusalem accepted
26:03
the idea of Jesus resurrection immediately, not many many many years later. Now
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to make this case, I have to show you a timeline. And this
26:11
is going to feel a little bit like school, and some of you are
26:15
going to glaze over. Now. I know if I did math, some
26:17
of you'd wake up. But I will never do math in front of you,
26:18
I promise. I'll have to ask my wife to come do math.
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But we're not going to do math. But we are going to do a
26:22
little history. And again, for any of you who've lost confidence in the
26:26
Bible or lost confidence in faith because of something enter about the Bible, this
26:29
is so important. Nobody disputes that the apostle Paul was a historical character,
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and nobody disputes that he wrote the document that we call First Corinthians, and
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nobody disputes the fact that he wrote it around the year fifty five to a
26:45
church that he had planted about three years earlier in the year fifty two,
26:49
after visiting Jesus' apostles in Jerusalem around forty nine and around forty which was only
26:59
three years out after his conversion in thirty seven. And some very very secular
27:03
scholars in fact, one in particular who's pretty famous, who's an atheist,
27:07
argues that the Apostle Paul probably became a Jesus follower in the year thirty five,
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which is only two, three, maybe five years after Jesus was actually
27:17
crucified. So the reason this is important is simply this, and for many
27:22
of you, you see why it's important. Immediately, if the Christian community
27:26
created and fabricated the life and the message of Jesus, and if they fabricated
27:30
the story of the resurrection, then how in the world did the Apostle Paul
27:34
know about it so close to the time of the resurrection. In his letter
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to Christians living in Corinth, he said, there are he writes to them.
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He says, there are currently hundreds hundreds of people in the city of
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Jerusalem that saw Jesus alive from the dead. So again, belief in the
27:55
resurrection was immediate, not eventual. Here are his actual words in his letter
28:00
to Christians living in Corinth. He says this. He says, now,
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brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel or the good
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news that I preached to you three years ago when I was physically with you.
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For what I received in other words, what I was told I passed
28:18
on to you. I didn't make this up. Somebody told me, and
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I'm passing it on to you, and I'm passing it on to you in
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the year fifty five or the year fifty two, when he was actually there
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with them as the first importance that Christ died for our sins, and nobody
28:32
disputes the fact that Christ died, and nobody disputes the fact that he was
28:34
crucified. But very early on the Christian community had embraced this idea that Christ's
28:41
death was meaningful for individuals, that Christ was the final sacrifice for sin.
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This was not an idea that the Church created many many many years later.
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The apostle paulses, when I was with you, I was already preaching this
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to you. And the reason I was able to preach it to you is
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because when I was in Jerusalem, this is what people in Jerusalem close to
29:00
the action actually believe. So I'm simply passing on to you with the Christian
29:03
community in Jerusalem all ready believe that He died for our sins according to the
29:10
scripture, and that he was buried because that's what you do when someone dies,
29:15
and that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures,
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and that he appeared to Cephas. Cephas is the apostle Peter. Wait,
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wait, wait, Paul, pap Paul, wait wait, how do
29:23
you know Jesus appeared to Peter? Paul? How do you know that,
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Paul would say, because I was just in Jerusalem and I talked to him
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and he told me and then he appeared to the twelve. Okay, Paul,
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how do you know that I just told you I was just in Jerusalem.
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I've been to Jerusalem twice since I wrote this letter, and they told
29:48
me and that get this, and that he and that he appeared to more
29:55
than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the scene. Again, he's
29:59
writing this to a group of people he's already been with, He's been to
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Jerusalem. It's like, Hey, I just want you to know the people
30:04
who saw Jesus rise from the dead. There are hundreds of them, not
30:10
one hundred years later, one hundred miles away, during the period of time
30:14
this happened, in the city where it happened. They're brothers and sisters at
30:18
the same time, most of whom are still living. In other words,
30:21
fact check me. Just get yourself a boat ticket, you know, and
30:23
just go to Jerusalem. I'd be happy to introduce you to some of these
30:27
people. I can write letters of connection. I can connect you with Peter
30:30
and James and John. And these people are alive and well in Jerusalem.
30:36
That's why the church in Jerusalem has just blown up. It's exploded. Thousands
30:41
of people in this area have embraced Christianity. But here's the part that is
30:45
tender to me every single time, and it has nothing to do with the
30:48
message. But I just cannot go past these words without pausing. I love
30:52
this. At the same time, most of these people who've seen Jesus alive
30:56
are still living, though some have fallen asleep. From the very beginning,
31:04
from the very beginning, Christians described death as sleep. And do you know
31:11
why, because when you go to sleep, you eventually what you wake up.
31:21
These were men and women who lost their fear of death. And why
31:26
did they lose their fear of death? Because they saw their rabbi die and
31:33
then they had breakfast with him on the beach. And when you have breakfast
31:40
on the beach with your dead rabbi, you lose your fear of death.
31:45
Especially especially when that rabbi's taught you for three years all about eternal life.
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When he said to you in a meeting and you had no idea what he
31:56
was talking about. I'm going somewhere, and where I'm going you can can't
32:00
go, but I'm gonna come back. And sure enough, he did exactly
32:04
as he predicted. That's why I tell you all the time, when somebody
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predicts their own death and resurrection and pulls it off, you just go with
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whatever that person says. It's as simple as that. And the Apostle Paul,
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writing very early, says, everybody in Jerusalem knows something has happened,
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and there are hundreds of believers who saw Jesus rise after he rose from the
32:27
dead, and their family members and friends are so convinced that thousands of people
32:32
have embraced the message of Christianity. But Paul's not done. He says,
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then after Cephis, and after the twelve and after all this, then he
32:39
appeared to James. And this is James, the brother of Jesus. And
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why is this important Because, as we've talked about before, James did not
32:50
believe Jesus was who Jesus claimed to be. But of course he didn't.
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He was his brother. I mean, how do you convince your brother you're
32:54
the son of God. It's virtually impossible until your brother watches you crucified,
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and then your brother meets you on the other side. And James, James
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becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Why because he didn't have anything
33:14
else to do. No, because he loved being persecuted by the temple leaders.
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No, because he knew eventually he would be martyred for his belief and
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his brother. No, James becomes a follower of his brother. When he
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dies, he believes his brother is his lord. Why because of something he
33:30
read, because of something someone told him. No, because James saw his
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brother alive from the dead. And Peter and Paul, the apostle Paul,
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and James met, and James told the apostle Paul this story. Now,
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it gets even better than that, even more convincing than that. In this
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letter to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul actually quotes a creed that
33:54
already existed. Now, if you didn't grow up with creedle Christianity. A
33:59
creed is basically a carefully crafted statement that's used to ensure that something is accurately
34:05
transmitted from generation to generation generation most people. Most people could not read or
34:09
write and had access to nothing to read. Even if they could read,
34:12
there was not very much that they could read. So consequently, the early
34:15
community in the Jewish community did the same thing. They would create craft these
34:19
statements to make sure that every generation said the same thing the same way for
34:22
generations. And by the time the Apostle Paul is writing this letter, there
34:28
had already been a creed established around the resurrection of Jesus, because the Christian
34:35
Church in Jerusalem embraced it immediately, not eventually. And here is that creed.
34:42
All Just about every scholar agrees that the Apostle Paul didn't create this.
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He was actually quoting this, and even in English, it has a little
34:49
bit of a rhythm to it. Christ died for our sin and was buried.
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He rose from the dead and was seen. Christ died for our sin
34:55
and was buried. He rose from the dead and was seen. Christ died
34:59
for our sin and was buried. He rose from the dead and was seen.
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Very early the Christian community in Jerusalem had already embraced this as absolute truth.
35:09
The resurrection was so widely known they had already written a song or a
35:14
poem or a creed. So the apostle Paul is extremely important when it comes
35:21
to the story of the Bible. To begin with, he wrote some of
35:24
it. That makes you important, right, He explains the relationship between the
35:28
parts of it, and he authenticates the most important event recorded in it,
35:31
the resurrection of Jesus. Now, while the Gospels were being written Matthew,
35:37
Martin, Luke, and John, and while the Apostle Paul was writing,
35:39
other writers were writing as well. James, the brother of Jesus, actually
35:43
wrote an epistle or a letter that survived antiquity and was included in the New
35:47
Testament documents. The Apostle Peter dictated at least two letters, probably more,
35:52
but two of them survived. And sometimes people say, well, the apostle
35:57
Peter was ignorant. He was an ignorant fisherman. There's no way he could
36:00
have written in the developed Greek that we find in his letter, And they're
36:04
exactly right. In fact, the Book of Acts tells us that when he
36:07
was arrested, he was recognized as someone who was illiterate. In fact,
36:09
that's what shocked the high priest and the people who had decided trying to figure
36:15
out what to do with Peter. He was so ignorant, but he was
36:17
so confident, and he spoke with such clarity and courage because he'd been with
36:22
Jesus. So how did we get first and second Peter? He dictated it
36:25
to someone who could write in Greek. I mean, it's not a mystery.
36:29
The apostle John. In addition to the Gospel Matthew Martin Luke John,
36:32
he also wrote several letters. Three of those survived. We call it first,
36:36
Second, and third John. And other documents were written during the same
36:39
time, and they were collected, and they were protected, and they were
36:43
considered valuable, not because any of those people were writing the Bible. They
36:49
were considered valuable because of who was writing and what they wrote. They were
36:54
collected and they were protected. And then something fabulous happened. In the fourth
37:00
century. Constantine lifted the ban, lifted the ban on all just about all
37:07
religions, including Christianity, and for the first time, for the first time
37:10
in history, in the fourth century, scholars could come out of the shadows
37:14
and begin to work openly on these incredible documents and the empire. This is
37:19
amazing the Empire responsible for crucifying Jesus, funded funded the collection of these documents
37:28
and the copying of these documents, and somewhere toward the late fourth century,
37:32
a copy of the Jewish scripture and a copy of Christian text were combined together
37:39
and was eventually called Ti Biblia or the Bible, and together when these were
37:46
bound together, and it was an extraordinarily large book, an extraordinarily expensive book,
37:52
and there was only one of them, probably for a very long time.
37:57
And that book would eventually the ape Western civilization, shape Western culture.
38:05
But more personally, that book would shape my life, and perhaps it has
38:13
shaped yours as well, and it's why I read it every single day.
38:19
But here's what I want you to remember from this whole series. The Bible,
38:24
as fabulous as it is, did not create Christianity. The Bible did
38:31
not create Christianity. Christianity, the Christian faith is the result of an event
38:39
that launched or created a movement that produced texts that were collected and protected and
38:46
bound into a book. Christianity is the result of an event, the Resurrection,
38:54
that created a movement the church that produced text Matthew Mark Luke John the
39:02
Epistles of Paul and Peter and others that were collected through the years and protected
39:07
through the years because they were considered so valuable, and then eventually bound together
39:12
into a book that we call the Bible. If there had been no resurrection,
39:17
there would be no Bible, because the story of Jesus would not have
39:24
been worth telling. And the reason his story is worth telling is because it
39:30
is a story for every generation, and it is a story for you.
39:37
It's a story that's personal. It's a story that's personal because, well,
39:40
the first century Church said it best, because Christ died for our sin.
39:46
Christ died for your sin and was buried. He was raised from the dead
39:52
and he was seen. So the story of the Bible, and this is
39:57
so important. The story of the Bible reminds us, reminds us that the
40:00
most important question is not do you have peace or are you at peace with
40:06
everything in the Bible. The story of the Bible reminds us that the most
40:08
important question is not are you at peace with everything in the Bible. The
40:14
story of the Bible reminds us that the most important question is this, are
40:19
you at peace with the God who sent his son into this world to die
40:23
and to pay for your sins so that you could have what Jesus promised,
40:28
eternal life and a relationship with your father in heaven, because that's where the
40:35
story of the Bible intersects with your story, and that is the story of
40:43
the Bible. Assas