Asking for a Friend 2
Asking for a Friend • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Next Steps
Next Steps
Grow Group? Nah rGroup!! We will start in May! it will still be every other Monday, both guys and girls will be at 6:00 PM!
Women’s Tea! Ladies if you’re interested you can get all dolled up, drink some fancy tea and worship Jesus together! Guys if you are interested Jenna could use some help getting things set up and serving during the event!
Serve Weekend is July 17th - 20th! The cost is $50 and this experience includes a serve weekend kickoff party on Wednesday, July 17th, two days of serve projects, team wars, and worship sessions, and a full day at a local summer camp swimming in the lake, using the zip line, and playing paintball on Saturday the 20th!
Intro
Intro
In this series we intend to answer your questions
You guys submitted questions to us and over the next 7 week we intend to answer them!
If you have questions, or thoughts that pop up, you can always submit them in the bucket in the lobby, or by scanning the QR code in the pre and post service slides!
I always love doing this type of series because it allows for us to really dive deep into the questions that you and to show you that Jesus is truly the answer to every question we have
Body
Body
Today we are looking at three questions all dealing with the Bible
Who wrote the Bible?
How can I trust the Bible?
How do I understand the Bible when I read it?
These three questions were asked and I want to answer all of them
Since all three of these questions are different I want to run down each one of them individually to help you better understand the Bible
Writer
Writer
Who wrote the Bible?
The thing to remember is this, man wrote it but God controlled it
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Many people claim that the Bible is wrote by man, and that man made up all the things that are said about the Bible
Yet the Bible itself says that it was breathed out by God
Other translations use the word inspired to explain how the Bible was written
When we say inspired often times we think of words like “motivate” or “encourage”, but this is not what it means when we say Scripture is inspired by God
We literally mean that all Scripture is breathed out by God — that it is His words
Here is an example to show this:
17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh: “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may demonstrate my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”
Paul writing Romans quotes from the book of Exodus saying that the Scriptures said “for this purpose...”
Yet listen to Exodus 9:13 and 16
13 The Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, stand before Pharaoh, and tell him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: “Release my people so that they may serve me!
16 But for this purpose I have caused you to stand: to show you my strength, and so that my name may be declared in all the earth.
We see that the Lord Himself is the one speaking to Pharoah, not Moses
So why does Paul say Scripture said that to Pharoah instead of God? Because God “breathed out” all of Scripture — it’s His words!
Here’s another example to help:
4 He answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female,5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?
Jesus tells us that God said “leave his father and mother...”
Yet look at what the Genesis 2:24 says
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family.
This wasn’t God saying it — it was the Bible, Moses who wrote it.
So why does Jesus say God said it when Moses wrote it? Because all Scripture is “breathed out” by God!
To be inspired means it was the very literal words of God! Reading the Bible is the same as having God Himself speak to you, because it is HIS WORDS!
So who wrote the Bible?
Yes the human authors wrote it, but it was all God’s Words. He is the author, He is the one who caused everything to be put in
Trust
Trust
The second question dealt with how we can trust the Bible
So I want to look at a couple ways we can know the Bible is true
BIG DISCLAIMER!!!
None of these ways “show the Bible is inerrantly true”
It takes faith to fully trust that the Bible is true!
Archaeology shows the Bible is true
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,
Critics said that the fact that Lysanias was said to be a ruler was an error in the Bible - until a stone fragment with an inscription was found with the name "Lysanias" as a ruler in Abilene.
The dead sea scrolls found in 1947
The Dead Sea Scrolls was one of the greatest discoveries in modern times. Before this 1947 discovery, many skeptics questioned the copies of Isaiah in the Old Testament. Skeptics said the book had been changed and revised by men throughout the centuries. It wasn't until scholars dated the Great Isaiah Scroll (one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1947 in the caves of Qumran), that they discovered the book of Isaiah’s amazing accuracy. The Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Isaiah dates 1,000 years prior to the copy previously possessed.
In Acts, Luke names 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands without an error, which have all been identified through archaeology
Nelson Glueck (June 4, 1900 – February 12, 1971) was an American rabbi, academic and archaeologist said this
“It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference”
Ancient copies prove Biblical accuracy
The Bible was constantly copied because it was wrote on papyrus which had a very short shelf life
So every little bit they had to copy it all down
YET!
The NT was written between 50-100 AD and there are more than 5,000 copies, all within 50-225 years of their original writing preserved. They are better preserved in terms of variances and errors of sight than any other ancient manuscripts
The Bible never contradicts
The Bible is one big story about Jesus
In the Bible there are over 63,779 cross references! Meaning that the OT and NT connect back and forth
SHOW PICTURE
The crazy thing is that all these cross references agree!
The Bible is 66 books, 30+ authors, and wrote over the course of 1500 years
YET it all connects and all agrees!
It is the first ever hyperlink, long before the internet was invented
Now none of this will cause you to believe that the Bible is true.
I can give you all the imperial evidence in the world. But if you don’t believe that the Bible is true it doesn’t matter
It takes faith to trust that God is true and that His Word is true
Understanding
Understanding
The last question regarding the Bible was how can you understand the Bible
For that I want to give you three simple hermeneutic tools that will help you understand more than you’ll ever know
Hermeneutic by the way means the art and science of studying the Bible
The first tool is this:
Look for the literal sense
If the plain sense makes sense, look for no other sense
I had a Bible professor say that to me in college and let me tell you, it’s a game changer
So often we want to look at the Bible and spiritualize every single aspect of it, yet in reality if it makes sense, that is what it means
The Bible is meant to be understood — if we seek and ask God will give us the answers
So when you come to passages that talk about money, time, names of people, orders of events, actions that take place, or anything else if it makes sense — that’s the meaning
When you read about Jesus feeding the five thousand with some bread and fish — that is the reality of what happened
When you read about how the veil was torn from top to bottom the day Jesus died on the cross that is what happened
When you read that we are saved by faith alone by grace alone — that is how we are saved
Taking the literal meaning will help you understand so much about what God is trying to tell us and teach us from His word
Here’s the second tool:
Don’t read a single verse
The second tool is that we shouldn’t just read one verse
The Bible is one cohesive story — we can’t pick and choose where we want to read without first understanding the greater context of that passage
Instead of jumping straight away to the middle of Matthew instead read the whole chapter and see what God is telling us. If we are unclear read the chapter before and after. If we are still unclear — read the entire book
For example listen to Matthew 7:1
1 “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.
So many people today take this verse and use it to show how we are not to call out people’s sins
We are not to tell people they can’t sin
People in the LGBTQ community use this verse to say that we cannot judge them — but only to accept them
Instead of reading one verse and stopping — read the whole section and see what is being taught
1 “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.2 For by the standard you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be the measure you receive.3 Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ while there is a beam in your own? 5 You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Jesus isn’t telling us not to judge people — He isn’t saying don’t call out sin
Instead what He is warning against is judging people without first dealing with our own sin
He warns us that we have sin that first needs to be dealt with long before we focus on the sin of others
We must focus on our own sin — and only then — can we help someone else with their own sin
Here’s the last hermeneutical tool:
Let Scripture interpret Scripture
The last thing I want you know that will help you better understand the Bible is to simply let Scripture interpret itself
From our example earlier in Matthew 7 we see that Jesus isn’t telling us not to judge — but to fix our own sin first and make sure that our judgment is right
Look at what John 7:24 tells us about judging
24 Do not judge according to external appearance, but judge with proper judgment.”
Here we see that Jesus tells us to in fact judge people — but not judged based on the outside, but based on the inside, based on the person themselves
We are also told that when there is judgment cast on someone we must make sure it is legitimate and not someone falsely accusing
19 Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless it can be confirmed by two or three witnesses.
To understand the Bible we must let the Bible tell us what the Bible means
We are meant to let Scripture interpret itself — after all it is the very literal words of God
I do want to tell you a couple resources you can use that will help
Those are tools that can help in your everyday reading but there are other things you can use
Use a study Bible — those are designed to quite literally make it easier to understand what the Bible is saying
gotquestions.org — this website is designed to help you understand the Bible and the questions of life
Ask your small group leader — if you don’t have a study Bible, if you can’t find your questions on gotquestions.org — ask your small group leader and they will help you with the information
Conclusion
Conclusion
The Bible is the very real Words of God
We can trust it because everything backs it up
God authored it
And if we use those tools:
Literal sense
Context
Bible interpret Bible
We can better understand it