It's Alive Part 2
It's Alive • Sermon • Submitted
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· 4 viewsThis Bible was alive because it gave them a new view of life.
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Introduction
Introduction
Ha-foke-Bah Hebrew
Ha-foke-Bah English
Two weeks ago started a new Series called, “It’s Alive!”
This whole series is aimed at unpacking this one question, “Should we really trust the Bible to make sense of our lives?”
Can a book written to ancient people, to an ancient culture, to ancient problems and ancient needs really, really make sense of my life?
And to really probe deeper, Can we be confident that...
the Translation is accurate?
the Copyist did not change things?
the Books we have are the right ones?
the Original Authors were Reliable?
The Original Authors were Accurate?
These questions can’t be answered by just knowing the stories of the Bible you must know the story of how we got the Bible.
The problem is that most of you in this room have spent a lifetime learning the “stories of the bible” but not the story of how we got the Bible.
Last week we said that early followers of Yeshua who may have only had scraps of Scriptures thought it was...
Valuable & Reliable
Sacred & Inspired
Alive & Active
Scripture
Even if all they had were scraps and fragments because even though it was not written to them it understood them.
Transition to Bible: If I were to take a survey on how we got the Bible in this room I would probably get so many different answers I could fill up a book.
The story of how we came to accept the claim of
All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for restoration, and for training in righteousness, so that the person belonging to God may be capable, fully equipped for every good deed.
does not start with Genesis but with Yeshua.
The story of how we came to accept that “all Scripture is inspired by God” does not start with Genesis but with Yeshua.
Remember that for a long time you could not just get a Bible wrapped and with maps. They did not have copies of the Scriptures just lying around.
Here is the thing, in the first century the Scriptures were important to the Jewish community but there was a growing interest in tradition, ritual and the teaching of the elders that diverted attention away from the Scriptures. By the first century and definitely the second century tradition and the teaching of elders was also considered “inspired” as oral teaching but Yeshua and his disciples said only “Scripture” is inspired. I am going to talk more about how Jewish people came to believe the Scriptures were inspired in my next message. Yeshua had to teach them to “re:believe only the Scriptures were inspired and that he was in them.”
We have to know first know how the Gentiles came to accept that “All Scriptures” are inspired by God. So if you are Jewish this message today is like a refresher in how the ancient, ancient, like really ancient Jewish community came to believe the story of the Bible. The Gentiles got there a bit later but they got there.
Yeshua didn’t write it. Yeshua is the reason we have it.
For jews
And for Gentiles
Yeshua is the reason.
Gentiles were not interested in Jews or Jewish religion necessarily.
Jews kept to themselves.
Jews did not work one day a week.
Jews did not eat with Gentiles.
Jews denied that other gods even existed.
Jews believed their capital was for worship. Other nations saw their capitals as the seat of political power and military might.
Jews saw time as managed by God the nations saw it as uncontrollable.
Jews made a startling claim...
One God
Gentiles had to make the massive transition to: One God
Gentiles usually, barely, switched religions.
When Gentiles were confronted with the resurrection they became enamored with a particular Jew, then they became interested in the sacred texts of the Jews.
When they became enamored with the Jew, Yeshua,
they discovered that there was a backstory for the life of Yeshua contained in ...
The Law and the Prophets and the Writings.
They went to these books because Paul and the other guys were saying they are the inspired Scriptures the Jew, Yeshua, pointed to.
The Gentiles then wanted to know the back story of Yeshua’s life.
So the Gentiles accepted the Jewish sacred texts but they did not accept Jewish religion and eventually rejected the Jewish people. This is a problem we will look at next week.
Now in a sense Rome created a “curiosity” in the Jewish religion.
What I mean is Rome gave Jewish people a pass when it came to the Roman custom of honoring Caesar as a god.
Rome honored Israel’s God because they recognized that it was older than any of their religions.
Rome honored Israel’s God because they recognized that it was older than any of their religions. So they got a pass. It was older than the story of Romulus and Remes, Greek pantheon. They oldest religion recognized only one God from the beginning. That means every other culture had it wrong but the Jews had it right from the very beginning.
It was older than the story of Romulus and Remes, Greek pantheon.
They oldest religion recognized only one God from the beginning. That means every other culture had it wrong but the Jews had it right from the very beginning.
For the Gentiles investigating the claims of Yeshua what they were trying to figure out is why Rome was calling these Jewish believers “atheists.” See Rome did not give a pass to the Jewish followers of Yeshua and the synagogue was getting rid of us faster than a rat a cat convention.
Paul and all the Jewish believers and their disciples and their disciples were all saying, “We believe the One God who gave us the Law and the Prophets and the Writings became one of us, died for us and rose again for us.”
Bible
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Bible
Genesis: Origins
19th and 20th century made the claims in Genesis a little suspect. They found Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian and Canaanite creation accounts. The claim was that..
The Hebrews borrowed from other creation stories.
That view has been abandoned by scholarship.
Genesis stands in startling contrasts to other creation stories.
The Egyptians had the Great Sneeze
The Akkadians had the Dead God
The ANE involved gods and deification of the cosmos.
Genesis is a worldview unto itself.
The modern scientific community did not even catch up to the Bible until 1927 when the Big Bang Theory was first put forward (verify date). Since the time of Aristotle people believed that the Universe just has always been. But, In 1964 cosmic microwave background caused scientist to abandon the view that the universe always existed. Scientist pretty much agree..
A trillion trillionth of a second. From the size of a pebble to its current scope. Or in the words of Genesis
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The ancient debate Moses was entering into was “Is the creation personal or is it impersonal?” Is there real purpose and meaning in the creation for humankind.”
The debate is not about did it have a cause but was that cause personal? That is the same debate even today.
Moses is building a case that is no longer needed because his argument ultimately succeeded.
Moses is not making the case that the heavens and earth were created but that God made the heavens and the earth.
Moses is not making a case for “how” the heavens and earth were created but “that One God” made the heavens and the earth.
This was huge then and is huge now.
My Seminary Professor on strongest possible argument for Monotheism.
Huge then because creation determines the society your create.
The Romans creation myth was founded on violence and subjugation and so the culture that was created was one of violence and subjugation.
The Image of the Roman Collar for Slaves
The Forehead
Talk about Marduk and Tiamat
The Enuma Elish Quote
I will establish a savage, ‘man’ shall be his name.
Verily, savage-man I will create.
He shall be charged with the service of the gods That they might be at ease!
People had no rights.
The violence and injustice of the gods justified mankind.
The gods were primarily the gods of a place. The gods of Egypt, of Sumer, of Babylon of Canaan.
Moses introduced a radically different, unparalleled, untested worldview.
In stark contrast, the God of the Jews is not the god of a violent place of subjugation but the God of a people He built a paradise for.
There is nothing even close to this.
Do you know why I trust the Scriptures, why I trust the authors of the Scriptures, trust that they gave me what was originally written because if you were trying to create a good story in the world of Moses this would be the worst story. People would have laughed at this idea and called it insane, ludicrous: that One God by himself out of nothing created a paradise for people to live in and enjoy.
If the authors were trying to fake it or improve it would have sounded so much more like the other stories. But it is not even close. That is why modern scholars all say today that the Hebrews did not borrow anything at all.
Genesis says what no other myth says:
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness! Let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the flying creatures of the sky, over the livestock, over the whole earth, and over every crawling creature that crawls on the land.”
Don’t miss this, the dignity of every person is established in the very beginning.
This was unheard of.
The Jews did not borrow it is too different. Then it says that they were to rule over creation and not worship it. The controlled creation, creation did not control them. They were masters and not mastered by creation.
The world around Israel did the opposite.
You controlled nature by worshiping nature.
Male and Female he created them.
I think everyone woman should be a follower of the Messiah for more than one reason but for this one reason. Yeshua elevated women in a way no one else did before him and he did so because of His Bible.Our problem is we think Moses is trying to tell us “how” God created the world but that is not what he is doing he is telling us “that” God created the world.
Moses introduced a radically different, unparalleled, untested worldview.
Every person bears the image of the creator.
According to the Enuma Elish you are a slave to the gods but according to the New Atheists you are a slave to your genetics.
But, according to the Bible you are created in the image of God.
God does the most “un-god-like” thing imaginable. He goes to work to reverse the evil mankind created.
He answers the “why” questions not the “how” question. It is personal.
The Gentiles came to the sacred texts of the Jews because they fell in love with the Jew, Yeshua.
When they started to read the claims of the text they became enamored with the sacred texts.
These texts was alive because they gave them a new view of life.
Can we be confident that...
the Translation is accurate?
the Copyist did not change things?
the Books we have are the right ones?
the Original Authors were Reliable?
The Original Authors were Accurate?
They said it is so different and so new and alive it must be:
Valuable & Reliable
Valuable & Reliable
Sacred & Inspired
Alive & Active
Scripture
In the opening line of the Hebrew Bible the Gentiles
In the opening line of the Hebrew Bible the GentilesThe jews had it right all along. This caused them to adopt the Hebrew Bible but this was not so easy of an adoption and came with lots of problems.
The Jews had it right all along.
This caused them to adopt the Hebrew Bible but this was not so easy of an adoption and came with lots of problems. We will look at this next week.
He helped the Jews re:believe in the One God who gave the TaNaK and joined with us.