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Andy Stanley - The Bible For GrownUps Part 2 In The Beginning · Andy Stanley Sermons

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To b d L. Yes, that's the book for me. I stand
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alone on the World of God. The b I b L E. The
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b I b L E. Yes, that's the book for me. What
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are you doing? Nothing? So we're in part two of the series titled
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The Bible for Grown Ups, and the reason I wanted to do the series,
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and the reason I'm so glad that you're here and that you're watching her,
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that you tuned in, is because while most people Christians, non Christians,
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people even from other religions. While most people know some of or parts
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of some Bible stories, most people do not know the story of the Bible.
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In fact, one of the reasons it has been so easy for you
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to dismiss the Bible for some of you, the reason it was so easy
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for you to dismiss Christianity or to walk away from your childhood faith is because
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while people told you Bible stories as you were growing up, nobody ever sat
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down and explained to you the story of the Bible. And part of the
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reason they didn't tell you the story of the Bible as a child is because
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you wouldn't be interested. And the other reason people didn't tell you the story
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of the Bible is because in many instances, the people that handed you your
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first Bible did not know the story of the Bible themselves. But this is
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a really big deal. It's a really big deal in our culture. It's
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a really big deal in your life. It's a really big deal for Christians.
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And it's maybe even a bigger deal if you grew up in the faith
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and walked away from the faith, because understanding how we got this is as
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it's almost as important as what is in this because the backstory sheds light on
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the story. Now. Part of the challenge really for all of us,
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for all of us, regardless of what kind of home you grew up in.
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Christian non Christian. Part of the challenge is that the way that we
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got our Bibles, the way I got my first Bible, the way that
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you got your first Bible, if you got a Bible as a child,
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or you bought one as an adult, or even just downloaded one on your
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phone, the difference. The challenge is that the way we got our personal
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Bibles is very different from the way we got the Bible. By the time
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I got my Bible, it was chaptered and versed and mapped and wrapped right,
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it was all put together. The Jewish scriptures were in here, that
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Christian scriptures were in here, they were footnoted, had these cool maps in
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the back, and mine was wrapped as I told you last time, and
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genuine, you know, fake artificial red leather with my name printed on it
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and what color gold. That's right, because that's what they did. I
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don't know why, but we all got our names printed on our bibles in
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gold. So we're talking about how we got the Bible. Now. The
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interesting thing is if I were to serve, if we could survey everybody and
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I gave you three by five card and those of you were watching from home
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or you're listening wherever you are, and I said, hey, would you
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write down on three by five cards where you think the Bible came from?
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We would probably get as many answers as there are people listening and people watching,
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and they're all kinds of crazy, I mean crazy ideas about where the
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Bible came from. And again, if you don't know the story of how
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the Bible came to be, it's just so much easier to dismiss everything inside
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of it. So just to kind of get us started, okay, Jesus
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did not write it. In fact, Jesus didn't write any of it.
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But here is the new information really for most people, especially if you've walked
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away from faith or you grew up in faith but didn't know the story of
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the Bible. Jesus didn't write it, but Jesus is the reason that we
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have it. Our story begins, the story of the Bible begins not in
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Genesis. The story of the Bible begins when Jesus was discovered alive after he
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had been crucified. It's important to know, as we talked about last week,
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if Jesus had been crucified and didn't rise from the dead, you need
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to understand this would not exist. There would be nothing to write about.
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The reason men and women decided to document the life of Jesus is not what
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he taught, and it wasn't that he was crucified. Jesus made too many
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claims about himself. The fact that Nicodemus and Josepha Faimathia actually took a lifeless
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body down from a Roman cross proved that Jesus was not who he claimed to
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be, and he was not who his followers hoped that he was. But
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when that tomb was discovered empty. And when his disciples, and by disciples,
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I don't mean the Twelve Apostles, the hundreds of people that followed Jesus
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from the banks of the Jordan River throughout his ministry, when they saw him
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alive from the dead. These men and women who ran for their lives when
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he was arrested, went into the streets of Jerusalem and proclaimed not what they
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had read about, not what they'd heard about, but what they had seen
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with their own eyes, a resurrected savior. And the church began. And
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do you know where the church began. The Church began in the city where
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Jesus was arrested, and inside the city whose walls, outside those walls Jesus
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had been crucified. It began right there with the around the men and women
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who had said crucify him, and around the men and women who had run
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for their lives when he was arrested, right there in that city, in
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that very same timeframe, the church was launched. And so the events surrounding
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the life of Jesus, this resurrected Rabbi, this resurrected son of man,
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son of life, resurrected resurrection of the life, all these titles that he
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gave himself and others gave him. This very same Jesus, his the the
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events of his life were extremely important to first century followers. So many,
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and this is so unusual. This is an overlooked detail. Many people attempted
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to write down an orderly account of the life of Jesus, not just a
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few many the fact, and again I gotta move on, but the fact
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that we have four different documents that document the life of Jesus in others we
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don't have references to these documents. And most of ancient history, you should
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know, are references to documents that we no longer have. In fact,
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you would be shocked how much ancient history there are no copies of any original
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documents. It's authors who reference documents, who reference documents, and the documents
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are no longer with us because they just disintegrated over time. But the story
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of Jesus, who was a come on, a nobody. In fact,
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if you don't believe Jesus is the son of God, then here's something we
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have in common. If he's not the son of God, he's a nobody,
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He's just another first century wanna be rabbi wanna be Messiah who claimed things
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about himself that weren't true. He was a nobody. And yet we have
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four different accounts of the life of Jesus. And the reason we have those
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accounts is not what he taught, and not that he was crucified, and
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not that he was arrested. The reason someone sat down to document the life
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of Jesus is because he rose from the dead. So consequently, we talked
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about this last week. If you didn't hear the first part of this series,
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you really owe it to yourself to go back and watch. So consequently,
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we have this document we call Matthew, that's an account of the life
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of Jesus, Mark Luke, and John. And as soon as these were
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written, and they were written in different times, but as soon as they
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were written, they were immediately immediately considered valuable. They were immediately considered reliable
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and consequently sacred because of the story it told and inspired. And very quickly
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these four documents were considered by the early Church to be scripture. But it's
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still it's important to understand after the Gospel of Matthew, Mark Luke, and
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John were written, there was no Bible. There were just four accounts of
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the life of Jesus that the early Church held in high regard, and as
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we just talked about last week, would eventually risk their lives to protect.
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And that's where the story picks up. This week. The apostle Paul and
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others left Judea and began telling gentiles, non Jewish people about the claims of
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Jesus and the biggest transition, the biggest struggle for gentiles who were enamored by
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the life of Jesus and the message of Jesus, and gentiles who wanted to
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embrace the life of Jesus, embrace Jesus as their savior and as their lord.
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The struggle for them was the whole idea of giving up everything they had
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been brought up to believe, giving up everything that everyone around them had been
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brought up to believe, and embracing the idea that there was only one God.
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Now, this is such a you know, a no brainer for us
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because we're not polytheist. But and it would be like many of you who
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grew up believing in God to suddenly just stop believing in God. It would
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be like those of you who don't believe in God to suddenly start believing in
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God. So the entire ancient non Jewish world was expected, in order to
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be a Christian, to embrace this notion that there was only one God.
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This was unimaginable. It's important to know this that in ancient times people didn't
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convert from one religion to another. They didn't leave this lam to become a
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Christian, or leave Christian to become Buddhists, or Buddhist to be Hindu.
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I mean, that's not how it worked. There weren't religions like that.
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Every region, every nation, the Barbarians, the Romans, the earlier Greeks,
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you know, every region, every nation had their own gods, and
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most families had family gods. They worshiped their ancestors. And so when you
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move from place to place, you just took your gods with you, just
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put them in a sack and brought them set up your family alter, and
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nobody really cared what gods that you worship are served. In fact, you
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might adopt some more gods from the region you were in, or something bad
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happened to you while you were worshiping some other gods. You may throw those
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into fire and say, hey, those aren't really gods. So it didn't
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really matter. And as we said last week, the Roman Empire, they
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didn't care who you worshiped, as long as you paid homage to Caesar,
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and as long as you did not dishonor the Roman gods. You could keep
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your household gods, you could keep your families gods. It just didn't matter.
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And then Christianity comes along and says, no, you have to give
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up all your gods. In fact, you should know this. In the
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first century, in the second century, Christians were actually considered to be atheist.
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The Christians were the atheists twi fi. That was the term that was
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used to describe them sometimes. Why were they considered atheists Because Christians didn't believe
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in the gods, and then they added a new one who claimed to be
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the only one. So this was an obstacle for Gentiles to embrace Christianity.
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But more and more and more, in different parts of the world, gentiles
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came to faith in Jesus. But the idea of there being one God seemed
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to them to be very novel and very new. Now, this is a
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really important part of our journey, and we're going to talk a little bit
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more about the next week. But this is the part maybe nobody told you
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when gentiles, When gentiles became enamored with one particular Jew, who would that
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be? Yeah, not a truck question, everybody, who would that be?
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Yes? When the gentile world became enamored with one particular Jew, they
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became enamored with the sacred text of the Jews. Now, before Jesus came
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along, this was not the case. I mean, there were always a
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tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of Gentiles who followed Judaism as close as they
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can could. Occasionally somebody would actually be baptized and go through a ceremony to
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sort of become a Gentile version of a Jewish person. But for the most
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part, Gentiles were not interested in the Jewish sacred texts. For a lot
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of good reasons, Jews kept to themselves. Jews ate different kinds of food.
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Jews refused to work on the Sabbath. Jews would not allow you to
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marry their daughters and would not allow their sons to marry. Would not allow
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their sons to marry your daughters, and they would not allow their daughters to
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marry your sons. We know in the first century the apostle Peter, one
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of Jesus followers fifteen years after the resurrection still had not entered a gentile home
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and had probably never invited a gentile into his home. So the Jews kept
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to themselves. They had their own dietary laws. So even I mean inside
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Judea and Galilee were its mostly Jewish. That was easy, but there were
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pockets of Jews in every major city in Ephesus, in Rome and Corinth and
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Glacia and the region of Glacia, and where they settled they kept to themselves.
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So gentile people had virtually no interest in Jewish religion and virtually no interest
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in the Jews until they were introduced to the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus
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and the claims of Jesus. And they were confronted with the apostle Paul and
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Peter and others who were eyewitnesses to the resurrection. And when they discovered that
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the Jewish texts, which they called the Law and the Prophets, not the
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Old Testament. That wouldn't come till later, when they discovered that the Law
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and the Prophets were the backstory to this new story, they became interested in
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the Jewish text. They weren't interested in Judaism, and this causes a problem.
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Later on, they were interested in finding Jesus in the text of the
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Jewish people. Now, to their amazement, to their shock and awe,
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to a degree of amazement we can't even begin to describe when they began to
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explore the text of the Jews, of the Jews, when they began to
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read it for themselves, they didn't even know what to call some of these.
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It took them till about the middle second century before the Gentile Church even
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was able to assemble a list of Jewish texts that they would even eventually begin
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to consider a canon. So this took place over a long period of time.
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But to their amazement when they discovered that the Jews, whose religion was
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older than the religion of the Romans, that was older than the religion of
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the Greeks, they discovered that the Jewish people had all from the very beginning,
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only believed in one God. Yahweh. Now a little bit of history
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for you before we get back into the plot line, because this is important.
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You know, during the first century and second century, third century Christians
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were persecuted by the Romans because the Christians, as we said last week,
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would not worship the gods and would not declare that Caesar is Lord. But
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the Jews had never worshiped or honored the Greek of the Roman gods, and
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the Jews had never declared that Caesar was Lord. So a question you may
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have never asked before, but you should ask, is why is it that
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the empire, the Roman Empire, gave the Jews a pass, but they
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persecuted the Christians. I mean, the Jews were just as guilty as the
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Christians of not declaring Caesar as Lord and not honoring any of the Roman gods.
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But the Romans left the Jews alone. And do you know why Rome
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allowed the Jews to have a pass as it related to Caesar and the Roman
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gods. This is very important because Rome honored ancient things, and the Romans
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knew that the Jewish religion was older than the story of Romulus and Remus,
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that the Jewish religion was older than the pantheon of Greek gods. They recognized
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that the Jewish scripture and the Jewish religion was older than any of their religions.
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So even though they didn't honor Yahweh as God, they honored the fact
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that the Jewish religion was older than their religion, so the Jews got a
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pass. So when these gentile Christians began for the first time, their scholars
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and their bishops began for the first time exploring Jewish scripture, they were shot
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to discover that the oldest religion anyone ever knew about had recognized that there was
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only one God from the very beginning. The implications of this were staggering.
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The implications were that since ancient times, every single other nation that worshiped multiple
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gods, that every family that worshiped their ancestors, that every single single culture
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since ancient times had it wrong, and the Jews had known this from the
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beginning. They opened up, they unscrolled that first segment in the Jewish text
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that we call Genesis, and here's what they found. In the beginning.
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God, we've heard this so many times, We've read this so many times.
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You've argued this may against this, so many times, you've disputed whether
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or not this is true or who wrote it. But don't don't don't don't
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miss the original context. Then don't miss the implications of the original context.
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This was This was shocking to the ancient world because what they would expect to
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find is what they found in all the other Jews and all the other non
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Jewish cults in creation stories in the beginning, the gods, but God.
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The word Genesis is a Greek word. It actually means origin. The first
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book of our English Bibles, Moses wrote the first five books. We know
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for sure of our English Bible and of the Jewish text. But something very
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interesting happened that has effected every single one of you here, in every single
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one of you watching and listening. Here's what happened in the nineteenth and twentieth
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centuries. Like currently in the nineteenth the current, in the nineteenth and twentieth
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centuries, archaeological finds made the claims of what we find in Genesis a little
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suspect. In nineteenth and twentieth centuries, archaeological finds created doubt regarding the origins
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of the Jewish or the Genesis creation account. And here's why those doubt,
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where those doubts came from. In fact, most of us were taught this
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and a university or college setting or a graduate school setting. They found Egyptian,
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Sumerian, Canaanite, and Babylonian creation text. They discovered these texts,
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and they were very similar. They were very similar, or so they thought,
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to the Hebrew text. They were so similar that the initial assumption was
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this that these ancient Hebrew texts actually borrowed from other ancient creation stories. In
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fact, when I was in college, I had a class on ancient civilization,
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and so we read some of the portions of these ancient texts, and
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sure enough, they sounded a lot like Genesis. And the assumption is,
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look, this was this didn't come from God. This doesn't I mean,
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the ancient Hebrews just borrowed from all these other stories. So it's just one
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of many stories. Why take it seriously? The point being it's not unique.
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What you need to know because who keeps up with this stuff other than
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nerds like me. What you need to know is that that view has been
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pretty much abandoned in scholarship. Not only not only does Genesis not borrow from
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other creation myths, Genesis Genesis stands in startling contrasts to other ancient creation stories.
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Genesis is a worldview unto itself, an extraordinary ahead of its time worldview.
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In fact, the scientific community, the modern scientific community, wouldn't even
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begin to catch up with the first statement in Genesis until nineteen twenty seven,
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when a Belgian priest first suggested the theory that we call the Big Bang theory,
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that the universe had a beginning. Maybe you know this now you will.
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Since the time of Aristotle in the fourth century BC. Since the time
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of Aristotle, everyone pretty and much assumed that the universe just existed, that
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it had always existed, that matter just was. Albert Einstein embraced this idea
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that the universe just has always been. But in nineteen sixty four, with
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the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation that some of you studied in school,
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the view that the universe has always existed was abandoned. Scientists pretty much
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agree that in a trillion trillion, in a trillion trillion of a second,
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the universe expanded at an extraordinary speed from the size of something smaller than a
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pebble to its current astronomical scope, or, in the words of Genesis,
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in the beginning everything everything that has a beginning has a cause. Not everything
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has a beginning, and not everything has a cause, but everything that has
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a beginning has a cause. So the debate today, the debate in school,
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the thing that you may be interested in read about. The debate today
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is not did the universe have a beginning? The debate today is around was
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that a personal, purposeful, intentional cause. Now we'll talk by that some
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other time. Back to Genesis. So the significance, and this is what
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I want you to get. This is such a big deal, especially if
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you struggle with Genesis. I'm going to tell you about a resource in just
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a few minutes, So hang with me. The significance of what comes next
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is lost on us. And the reason the significance of what comes next in
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Genesis is lost on us is because the point that Moses is trying to make
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is actually assumed by us. Or to say it a different way, Moses
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is building a case that's no longer needed because his argument ultimately succeeded. The
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point that Moses is trying to make is something that we all assume. But
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Moses is writing to an ancient, ancient like triple ancient group of people who
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all they know is slavery. All they know is the power of the Egyptian
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gods, this pantheon of gods, and so Moses is trying to help them
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narrow their focus and rebelieve and become atheists as it relates to the Egyptian gods
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and become believers in the One God, Yeahweh. In Genesis, he's not
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trying to explain how God created the heavens and the earth, and this is
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where we get mixed up. Moses is making the point that God created the
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heavens and the earth, not the gods, just yahweh. And so he
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says in the beginning, God created not Egypt's a'm on Rey or Babylon's Marduke
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who rode into this epic battle. There's so much detail around Marduke, it's
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kind of cool. He rides into this epic battle on his two steeds,
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slaughterer and Merciless. Marduk stands astride these two powerful stallions, and after defeating
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the goddess Tiamat by shooting an arrow into her mouth and through her throat,
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he splits her body in half, and with her the upper half of her
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body, he creates the heavens, and with the lower part of her body,
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he creates the earth. I mean, you know, Sunday school for
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Babylonian children was like awesome. It's like I don't want to miss that.
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You know, this epic battle of the gods, you know. But in
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Genesis we find something extraordinarily extraordinarily different, not even close, no similarity,
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no borrowing. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Genesis is nothing like the Egyptian creation myths. It is nothing like the Canaanite
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creation myths. It is nothing like the Babylonian creation myths, where the gods
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are at odds with themselves, where the gods war with each other, and
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then where the gods actually create other gods out of body parts and out of
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body fluids. And this brings us to the next epic ahead of its time
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statement, this is so extraordinary. The Babylonian creation myth, perhaps you've heard
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of and maybe studied in read parts of in colleges, called the numa Alish.
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It means went on high and in the anuma Alish, mankind is eventually
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created. I think you're like five books into the anu Malish before you ever
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even get to the creation of mankind. And mankind is created to serve the
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lazy gods. So after becoming the chief of the gods, the king of
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all the gods, Marduke says the following, And this is actually a text
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from the Annum Malish. Here's what Marduke says. He says, I will
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establish a savage man. Shall be his name, savage Man I will create.
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He shall be charged with the service of the gods, that they might
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be at ease. In all of the ancient creation myths, mankind womankind is
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an afterthought to take the load off, to lighten the load of the gods.
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Genesis is completely different because of the way ancient people embrace these ancient mythologies
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about their gods. Individuals had absolutely no rights, women had absolutely no status.
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No, there was no intrinsic value in anyone. The violence and the
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injustice. The violence and the injustice of the gods justified the violence and the
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injustices of their leaders, the men and women that worshiped them. They were
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acting that the kings of these foreign nations, in these pagan cults. The
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kings were essentially acting like their fathers in the heavens. And then you come
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to Genesis, in stark contrast, with no parallel, nothing even close,
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a concept that the human race continues to struggle with even to this day.
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Genesis tells us the religion that was older than any of the current religions.
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In the first century Genesis says what no other pagan myth said. Then God
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said, let us make mankind in our image. In the Jewish text,
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the creation of mankind womankind is the pinnacle, not the afterthought of creation,
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which means, don't miss this dignity, the dignity of every man, the
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dignity of every woman, the dignity of every child is established. At the
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very beginning, this was unheard of. There was no parallel anywhere, and
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the pagan mythologies and the pantheon of gods that would develop after this through the
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ages, none of them established this kind of thought or this kind of idea.
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But it gets there's more. What comes next is even more unthinkable,
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a more unimaginable. This is why later archaeologists and later scholars decided, you
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know what, the Jews didn't borrow from any of these ancient myths. This
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myth, as they would consider it is, is far and away different.
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Again, it is a worldview unto itself because what came next was completely unimaginable.
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It would have been unimaginable five hundred years later, years later, fifteen
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hundred years later, almost two thousand years later. This would still be unimaginable.
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Here's what the text says. Then God said, let us make mankind
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and our image and our likeness, so that so that they may rule over,
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not worship, not make idols out of, not deify, so that
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they may rule over the fish and the sea, and the birds and the
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sky, and over the livestock and all the wild animals. That in the
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very beginning, God told the Jewish people, you will make no idols.
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You will make no idol of me, Yahweh. You'll make no idol or
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images out of animals or other people, or anything that crawls on the ground
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or flies in the air. You will have no other gods before me,
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because there aren't any other gods. And I'm telling you and start contrast to
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the Egyptian pantheon of gods that they had just escaped from. God says,
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you will not worship nature. Think about this. You will not worship nature.
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You will rule over nature, the implication being you will be the stewards
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of this world, an idea we are still wrestling to the ground this very
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day. Every single pagan culture following the establishment of the Jewish people worshiped nature
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and the elements of nature and the animals of nature, and all kinds of
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mixtures of animals of nature. From the very beginning, God established a unique
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worldview. So God created mankind in his own image. Unthinkable in the image
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of God. It's repeated for emphasis. In the image of God. He
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created them ladies, male and female. He created them. Look up here.
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You've heard me say this before, if you've been around. I think
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every woman should be a Christian. Jesus was the first to elevate the status
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of women. This is why so many women follow Jesus. But ladies.
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In the very beginning, the God of the Jews, who became the God
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of the Christians, gave you dignity that the world is still trying to catch
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up with today. Only recently has civilization begun to wrestle the way it needs
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to wrestle with the dignity of men and women. And it was there in
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the very beginning. Now, our problem with this, our problem is we
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get distracted because when we read Genesis, we think, oh, Moses is
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trying to explain how God created the world. I mean, how in the
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world. Come on, how in the world can anyone understand? And ancient
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times, especially how God created the world. His point wasn't how God created
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the world. His point was that God created the world. We all confused
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and focused on the timing and the sequencing of the creation account, and we
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miss we missed the magnificence of these ancient statements Moses. This is no exaggeration.
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Moses dropped a bomb in the very beginning. Moses introduced a radically,
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radically different, unparalleled, untested worldview. This would be the foundation of what
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would later be called the Golden Rule. And the Golden Rule is not reflected
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in nature. And let's be honest, the Golden Rule isn't even reflected in
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human nature. But the idea was introduced at the very beginning when God said
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you were not a means to an end, You are not to worship nature.
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I'm going to make you as close as possible to me. I'm going
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to make you in my image, which means every man, every woman,
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every child. You are ever face to face with bears the image of their
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creator. Be careful how you treat them. According to the Anuma Alish,
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according to the New Malish, you were born a slave to the gods.
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According to the New Alish, you have no individual dignity. No individual rights,
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there is no redeemer, and there is no afterlife. According to the
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New Atheist, you were born a slave to your DNA, You have no
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free will, there is no redeemer, and there is no afterlife. But
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in the very beginning, we are introduced to a God who saves, who
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redeems, and who delivers, and who never ever, ever, ever ever
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gives up on you. All of this in the very beginning, a god
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who gives us a freak, gives us freedom to choose, and then honors
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our choices. And then and then Yahweh does the most ungod'sly thing imaginable.
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He goes to work to reverse the consequences of mankind's decision to choose against him.
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Genesis one creates and gives us and provides us with the meta narrative of
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our lives, the big picture, the ultimate context for human experience and monotheistic
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worldview. A worldview and please don't miss this, this is so important.
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A worldview that answers life's most important questions, the why questions, Why is
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there something rather than nothing? Question? More personal, why are you here?
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And why do you matter? That You're here on purpose with a purpose?
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You are not the result of some cosmic conflict between the gods and you
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were not created by the universe. God wanted image bearers who could know and
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relate to one another, and image bearers that can know and relate to him.
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This is my favorite part. And when the time was right, when
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everything was just as it needed to be, Yahweh, the God of Genesis
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joined us. But that's later. I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay,
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So back to the first century Gentile. Sorry, I got kind of caught
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up. That's amazing, isn't it. I mean, does that not just
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kind of make go? Are you kidding? No? This is indisputable,
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this is fabulous. This is why. Well we'll get to that too anyway,
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So back to the first century Gentiles. I lose my place in the
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opening line of the Hebrew Bible. And the opening line of the Hebrew Bible,
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they realized something that it was very difficult, very difficult for first century
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Jews to acknowledge in the opening line of the scripture that they began to adopt
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as their own scripture. They realized that the Jews had it right all along,
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which of course only fueled their interest in the law and the prophets the
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Hebrew scriptures, and they moved very quickly to adopt the Hebrew Scripture, or
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the Hebrew Bible, or the Law and the Prophets as their own Christian scripture.
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And thus the stage was set for the inclusion of Jewish scripture in the
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Christian Bible. But that inclusion would not be without its struggles. So please,
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please please don't miss episode three of the Bible for Grown Ups. Before
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you go, I want to tell you about omar thing. Genesis is a
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compli thing as it relates to science and as it relates to faith. So
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I want to recommend a resource one of my favorite authors. I think I've
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read five of his books now, and somebody just gave me an advanced reader
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copy of his newest book. I'm so excited. John Lennox is a mathematician
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an Oxford who was an Oxford professor for many, many many years in math,
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and he wrote a book called Seven Days that Divide the World. The
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Beginning according to Genesis and Science. If the Book of Genesis has been an
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obstacle to faith for you, if the Book of Genesis is something that you're
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curious about and wonder how it lines up with modern science, I highly recommend
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this resource. And here's why I take time to talk about it. I
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don't want any of you to spend another season of your life with leftover questions
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from college in graduate school or high school, or a book you read or
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a blog you read, or somebody told you something in a bar one night
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and it just kind of rocked your faith, you know, So as you
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decide, and as you journey, and as you navigate the complexities of real
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life and the ancient world and Jesus and all that you've been told, this
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may be a resource that will help you take a next step. And I
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just wanted you to know about it. But next week we're going to pick
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up the journey in terms of how we got our Bible