How did our Bible come to be? How is it that we have the 66 books we know as the Bible? This presentation delves into how the canon was formed.

<p>How did our Bible come to be? How is it that we have the 66 books we know as the Bible? This presentation delves into how the canon was formed.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

East Ridge SDA Church

The Word of God

Steven Grabiner

The Flawed Word, Part 1

The Flawed Word, Part 2

The Rule of Faith

The last 2 Sabbaths we were examining the Scripture.

I'm just noticing that my title doesn't show through so clearly on the slide.

And the title for the sermon, the rule of faith, has to do with really the question, how did our Bible come to be?

We spent 2 Sabbaths kind of looking at critiques that people make about the Word of God and we've explored them And see now the Bible really gives us a foundation for depending upon it.

But do you know there's like all sorts of other books?

You know, like there's the Epistle of Barnabas.

There's a host of it, there's the Acts of John and all sorts of different books and sometimes people ask the question, well why those books that you have in your Bible and not other ones.

You know, did some arbitrary person or a group of people, council people, they say, look, these are the ones we want because they agree with us, or was there something else at play?

So this morning let's kind of study together.

I'm going to begin there with Jesus' response or how Jesus looked at scriptures.

But before we do, let me just share something that was interesting in the news this week.

Those of you that are tech savvy, please don't start Googling right now.

They found an early fragment of the Gospel of Mark.

I guess in those days, the material, papyrus, that they used to make these masks was valuable.

They would cut them apart and they would kind of glue them together and make these masks.

And there had been a group of people taking them apart and trying to find out what these documents originally were.

And they found what is supposedly a copy of the Gospel of Mark that goes all the way back to the first century, around 95 AD.

Now there's still some study that needs to be done, but if this turns out to be true, it will give us a copy of the Gospel of Mark about 100 years earlier than the 1 we currently have.

And if it's true, and if it matches up to what we have, which is what the scholars are thinking, that's really good evidence, bringing us very close back to that first copy that Mark wrote.

Didn't make the headlines in the New York Times, but it still was very interesting.

And Luke 24 is the account after Jesus has died and raised again, was risen, And 2 of his disciples are walking back to their village, the village of Emmaus.

And as they're walking, a stranger comes alongside of them.

And the stranger notices that the 2 disciples are downcast, they're discouraged, they're downtrodden, their hopes have been dashed.

And so the stranger comes up and says, what's wrong with you guys?

And these 2 men are like, are you the only person that doesn't know what's been happening in Jerusalem?

And the stranger says, well, what things?

And then the 2 disciples begin to describe the crucifixion and how they had put their hopes on Jesus.

And now their faith was completely shattered.

And then the stranger says something very intriguing.

Luke chapter 24 in verse 25, and he said to them, O foolish men and slow of heart, to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary for the Christ, the Messiah, to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?

And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.

It is a tremendously interesting thing that's happening here.

The very event that brought discouragement, despondency that seemed to destroy their faith was actually the event that should have encouraged their faith.

And rather than Simply just saying, look, I am the risen Christ.

And could you imagine walking that 8 miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus as they're going along and the stranger Jesus just continually pulls passage after passage after Old Testament text.

And he begins to explain to them how this is pointing to the death of the Messiah.

That would have been a Bible study, amen?

Just to hear Jesus go through that and this passage continues that you know they could tell that is they felt their hearts burning within them as he explained all these things and they urge him to stay and as he breaks bread they realize this is Jesus and their excitement contains no bounds they jump up they start going back another 8 miles, 8 miles, 8 miles, how many is that?

16, because they wanna get back to the disciples to let everyone know Jesus is raised.

Before revealing himself, he points them where?

And he explains everything from beginning with Moses when he comes to this meeting when they are describing their experience to the other disciples, let's drop down to verse 36.

The 2 disciples have come back And Jesus came back with them, unknown to them.

But in verse 36 it says, while they were telling, these are the 2 disciples to the others, while they were telling these things, he himself stood in their midst and said to them, peace be to you.

I like the way the Gospel of Luke opens up with a message of peace from the angels and it ends with a message of peace from Jesus Christ.

But they were startled and frightened, thought they were seeing a spirit.

And he said to them, why are you troubled?

See my hands and my feet that it is I myself.

For a spirit does not have flesh and bones.

And then in verse 44, now he said to them, these are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me, where?

In the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

And so again, verse 45, then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them, thus it is written that the Christ, the Messiah, should suffer and rise again the third day and he continues giving them their commission.

I just want to 0 in on Jesus' reaction or relation to the Hebrew Scriptures.

We call it the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures.

Jesus clearly saw that they pointed to him.

Now notice that expression, everything written in the law of Moses, that would be the first 5 books of the Bible.

So there's this division that Jesus identifies.

1 more verse for you if you're interested you can look at this later Luke 16 31.

Jesus this is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and at the end of the story, Jesus says, they have Moses and their scriptures, their writings, let them believe them.

So Jesus in his life continually pointed people back to the Hebrew Scriptures, what we would call the Word of God.

And so it's interesting to begin thinking about this threefold division, Law of Moses, Prophets and Psalms, or sometimes called the writings.

And if you go back and read the history of the forming of the Old Testament, you will find that very early the Law of Moses was seen to be authoritative.

In fact, there's a group of distant cousins to the Jews, the Samaritans, and their copy of the Old Testament only has the first 5 books in the Bible.

So they said, well, that's authoritative, but nothing else.

And then a collection was gathered of prophets and writings and over time the Hebrew community, the Jewish community said, look, this really is the authoritative word of God to us.

Now let's not think that it happened overnight.

For example, the book of Esther took a long time for people to realize, yeah, that's really authoritative.

Anyone care to venture a guess as to why?

Esther doesn't mention the word God in it at all.

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Series

The Word of God

The Rule of Faith

Transcript

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Parent Series

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Recorded

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