Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care: Tim Mackie (Transcript)

So even if it’s not your question, you need to care about this question because almost everybody’s asking it, even if you aren’t yet with the program, basically. I started asking the question.

TIM MACKIE’S STORY

So I need to kind of tell my own story of why this is a big deal to me and it’s been a big deal over the years. I became a follower of Jesus when I was almost 20 through a ministry called Skate Church. It’s an outreach ministry to skateboarders over in East Portland. You guys heard about Skate Church before? It’s outstanding, outstanding ministry.

So I started going at 16 because it’s a dry place to skateboard in the winter, especially. And you know, you got to sit through the Jesus talk, you know, and sit at the back or whatever. But over the years, the friendships and this presentation of Jesus became just unavoidable to me, just who Jesus was.

And for me, really, it was that I got to this point where Jesus was so compelling and so amazing and so beautiful and I just started to read the stories about Him and I’m just like this, holy cow. And stuff going on in my life and I was like, I’m going to give my life to Jesus. And so I did that when I was 20.

And so I got involved in that ministry to skateboarders and whatever was with it for a lot of years. And as I got to know Jesus more, I’m reading about Him and Jesus cares a lot about the Bible. Like He talks about it constantly. It seems like He had it memorized — His Bible, which was what we call the Old Testament.

And He was constantly alluding to it, quoting from it, talking where I’m okay, I’m a follower of Jesus. I need to not only really immerse myself in these stories about Jesus, I need to get familiar with this whole thing.

And so I did that. And my parents are Christians and the Bible didn’t play a huge role in my growing up though. And so I just wasn’t really familiar with it as a 20 year old.

And so I’m reading the Bible pretty much for the first time in my early 20s. And I am just bewildered. I mean, there’s a talking snake on page three, for goodness sake, and that’s just – you know the God cloud on the mountain and all kinds.

And so everything, like the Bible was this strange world to me as a new Christian and as a young adult. And so I just — first it was, I love Jesus and I’m enjoying and exploring and learning about the Bible. That’s awesome. And just the content of the Bible was new and foreign to me.

And then came the historical questions of like, well, man, I’m reading this thing more. There’s a lot that I resonate with. It’s beautiful. There’s a lot that’s very strange to me. What do I do with this thing?

WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

And so ultimately it kind of, it led — this is not the normal career arc. I had no career arc except to skateboard. And then I got involved with this ministry to skateboarders and it’s a Skate Church. The Skate Park is across the street from Multnomah, now a university, it was just Multnomah Bible College back then.

I thought, well, I guess I’ll go to school here so I can figure out what to tell these junior hires about the Bible. And so I did.

And then I did what would naturally come next is sign up to learn ancient Greek and then ancient Hebrew. And I just became a bonafide Bible nerd. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t get enough of it. And a lot of it was both a growing and continuing to grow just allegiance and love for Jesus, but also this kind of weird relationship to the Bible.

What is this thing? Where did it come from? And why should I care about what it says? And I love it, but I’m also repulsed by it sometimes because it’s so strange.

You guys know what I’m talking about. It was just a very honest, it was a growing, my growing relationship with the Bible.

So all that to say, 14 years later, four educational institutions later, it was way too long to go to school. But I mean, I had the privilege to study the Bible under a host of great scholars in Jerusalem for a year working with the Dead Sea Scrolls and I just couldn’t get enough.

And so here you go.

And then I finished all of that and then was like, Oh, what do I do with this education? BecauseI didn’t know if I wanted to be like a university prof or whatever. And so the Lord kind of led me back into local church ministry, but working with Western Seminary here in town. Anyway, that’s kind of my story.

All that to say is my relationship to the Bible is very much born out of my own journey of trying to follow Jesus and trying to figure out what this thing is and where it comes from and why is it that for me, this thing grows more and more beautiful as I immersed myself in the history and origins of the Bible.

Now here’s, what’s interesting, I can’t even tell you how many cups of coffee I’ve had over the years where people — followers of Jesus, Christians, they are learning all of the same stuff that I couldn’t get enough of the history and origins of the Bible or whatever. And in whatever form, you know, there’s a self proclaimed expert on YouTube, right? And so they’ve somebody seen that, you know, something you have university students, they take an intro to biblical literature class or something like that and, and they are exposed to the very complex, involved, fascinating history of the origins of the Bible.

And they walk away from that with the conviction, this cannot be God’s word. It’s a thoroughly human book. I mean, it has such a complex history with all these historical, you know, sociological factors of geography and time and, and so on and the history out of ancient Israel and the early church is complex. This thing can’t be God’s word. It’s such a thoroughly human book.

And I didn’t know what to do with these conversations because for me, it was precisely learning about that complex, fascinating human story of the origins of the Bible that for me gave me a more robust sense of the beauty of the Scriptures as God’s word to His people. It’s the same exact history led to completely opposite conclusions about the Bible.

And so for me, pastorally, then it’s been an effort like what’s going on here?

ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

And so here’s what I think the root of the problem is. And then we’re going to take the root of the problem and then explore it in two ways. One about the authority of the Bible, what we mean when we say that and, and that question, and then the authenticity of the Bible.

What do I think the root issue is? Root issue can be summarized in a beautiful drawing by MC Escher in my humble opinion. You guys know Escher, MC Escher? My dad’s an artist. I grew up on lower Hawthorne, 20th and Hawthorne, if you know the Hawthorne area. So of course my dad’s a painter. He has a studio in his back garage and that’s how we rolled as a kid.

So my house was filled with art books growing up and MC Escher very early obsession from about seven years old. So this is one of his most well-known drawings called Drawing Hands. And if you know Escher’s work, it’s all about exploring visual paradoxes and optical illusions and so on in his work.

But for me, this image gets at, describes visually what historically has been the historic orthodox view of the Scriptures in both Jewish and Christian tradition. Because this is an image that is of two things that even though they’re distinct, they exist as one. Are you with me?

So the whole point is that it was about, you know, which hand is drawing it. It’s like the chicken and the egg, you know, type of thing, right? Which hand is drawing the other? Neither they both exist as one simultaneously.

And so for me, this image helps with a lot of different things, but it’s helped me as a way to think about the Bible. The historic confession within Judaism and Christianity about the Bible is that the Bible is both a human book and a divine book.

It’s a human book. It was written by people and that shouldn’t scandalize you at all. It was written by people. That says it quite a few times, right, in the book itself. It’s a human book. It’s written by people, which means it was born out of history and history’s complex. And so the origins of the Bible is bound up with that complex history. It’s a human book.

But at the same time, both what the Scriptures claim about themselves and historically what Orthodox Jews and Christians have believed throughout the millennia is that it is also a divine book, meaning that through these human words, God speaks to His people. God speaks to His covenant people, as we’re going to explore here, through these human words.

And for somehow in our modern context, this has been framed as an either or. And I just think that’s totally unnecessary and it’s totally unhelpful and will lead you down dead ends, I think.

So most, I can’t, I’m not very good at Photoshop, but if I was, I would erase one of the hands. And then I would say that’s the view of the Bible that most Christians in America, especially who hold kind of Orthodox, I don’t like the word traditional, but whatever, traditional view about what the Bible is, have a view of the Bible that actually isn’t true to our historic confession as followers of Jesus.

Many American Christians who have grown up in Bible churches or whatever, if you really get down to it, have a view of the Bible that erases one hand. And it’s the view of the Bible that I call the golden tablets falling from heaven view, which is essentially that the history and the humans involved in the authorship of the Bible is just kind of incidental.

But for the most part, it was individuals and they got zapped in a Holy Spirit trance or something and they’re just, you know, writing, you know, and it’s just key moments. And then once the 66 books were written, it was put into a nice, you know, cheap pleather bound copy, you know, that kind of thing. And there, and there you go.

And it’s not just that that’s an inadequate view of the Bible. It’s just not true. And people think that like, but I need to believe that to believe that the Bible is God’s word. And I just, that’s just not true.

What the Bible claims about itself, and we’re going to look briefly at a number of key passages is that is a thoroughly human book that speaks God’s words to His people and that God was involved in guiding by His presence and Spirit, the human authors, but there’s no Holy Spirit trance actually described in the Bible. And we’ll, we’ll look at an example of that.

And so here’s just the way I would describe the root issue is that what it means for the Bible to be God’s word is in no way threatened by, or should be scandalized by its complex history that we can trace because it took place in human history, just the opposite. It should give us a growing appreciation for the beauty and power of the Scriptures. You guys with me here with the two hands.

All right. So we’ll come back to this idea as we kind of go through the two questions about the authority and the authenticity of the Bible.

Okay. So this pop, this great pop quiz question, right? I am a professor too, so pop quiz, whatever. There’s no consequences for failing, but whatever. I don’t know. You don’t get to take communion or something like that. I don’t know.

So but this will be useful. It’s a good piece of Bible trivia. Use it at a get together this Friday night or something like that.

WHERE IS THE FIRST PLACE IN THE BIBLE THAT DESCRIBES THE WRITING OF THE BIBLE? Where in the Bible is the writing of the Bible described for the first time?

It’s great… it’s a fun fact to know actually, and it’s not where you would think. It takes place in the book of Exodus chapter 17 and I’m just going to quote an excerpt from it. I’ll put up here on the screen, but you can turn there if you want, cause we’re going to go to Exodus 24 right after this.

So Exodus 17, the Israelites have escaped and been redeemed out of slavery in Egypt through Moses’s leadership and they go through the waters and that whole thing. They sing — the first worship song in the Bible is what people sing after they go through the waters, pass through the waters. And then they’re wandering in the wilderness on their way to Mount Sinai.

And so you have this huge band of escaped refugee slaves wandering in the wilderness. It’s just prime target for plunder, right? And so this group of South Canaanites called the Amalekites comes and they attack the Israelites at Rephidim.

And so here’s the introduction to the story. So Amalekites come and attack the Israelites. Moses said to Joshua, ‘Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. And tomorrow I’m going to stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.’ (Exodus 17:9)

And some of you may know this story. This is the story where Moses goes up and he holds his staff, you know, and as long as this — it’s kind of an odd story actually — as long as he’s holding his hands up with the staff, the Israelites are victorious, but his arms get tired because, you know, he’s an aged man. And so, you know, the two guys have to come and support, you guys know that story? Support his arms.

Okay. This is that story.

After they win the battle, this is what the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write about all of this in a scroll as something to be remembered.’ (Exodus 17:14) And this story is in the Bible, it’s the first instance of writing, somebody writing something that becomes the Bible. Are you guys with me here?

Now, WHAT IS THIS?

This is, we’re telling a story about how God saved His people yet once again. Is this the first time God has saved His people — His covenant people? No, it’s the second time. The first time was out of Egypt and so on.

And how do the Israelites commemorate and retell God’s act of salvation of bringing them out of slavery in Egypt? How do they retell that story? Through a book? Through a meal. A ritual meal, annual meal called what? Called Passover.

So you have already a ritual meal as a way of retelling the story for this great act of salvation.

And now here’s another act of, in God’s grace and love, He saves His people from destruction. And now what we’re doing is we’re going to retell the story by writing it in a scroll. Write it, write it down.

So the purpose is remembering and, —

WHY DID THE BIBLE GET WRITTEN?

Well, we know this much from this first mention of writing in the Bible. It’s about retelling and recounting the great acts of God in history to redeem and to save His people and His world. Are you with me here?

So just what’s the proper conclusion from this first example of writing in the Bible?

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE BIBLE?

It at least has to include this. Retelling a story about how God has acted in history to save and redeem His people. It’s the first time.

Okay, pop quiz, second pop quiz.

WHAT’S THE SECOND MENTION OF WRITING IN THE BIBLE ABOUT WRITING THE BIBLE?

I already said, Exodus 24, just turn seven chapters forward. And if you want to turn there, feel free to go ahead, but it’ll be on the screen as well.

So the Israelites, they’ve come, they survived through the wilderness, they’re at Mount Sinai. And here at Mount Sinai, they’re going to camp out for one year.

And God is going to invite these Israelites into a covenant relationship. And Israelites are going to become this people God’s redeemed out of the nations because He wants to make them a kingdom of what? Some of you know the line, this line, a kingdom of what? A kingdom of priests.

So out of all the rebellious nations who are making this world hell on earth, He redeems one nation, saves them out of all the nations, brings them to this mountain and wants to enter into a covenant relationship with them.

And so part of that covenant relationship is giving them laws — 42 laws they get in this initial conversation on the mountain. It ends up being 613 total in the first five books of the Bible, but just start with 42, ease our way into it.

So they’re at Mount Sinai, and so this is how the story goes, that God invites them into a covenant relationship. If they follow the laws, which are the terms of the covenant, they’ll become priests, these representatives of God’s character to all of the nations. In other words, God calling a covenant people is bound up with God’s mission and purpose to reach the nations to redeem and restore His world.

And so here’s how the story goes. When Moses went and told the people all of the Lord’s words and laws, they all responded with one voice. So yeah, everything the Lord has said, we’re going to do that. Right, right. So eager beavers, right?

So Moses wrote down everything the Lord had said. (Exodus 24:4)

Here we go, second mention of writing in the Bible, writing of the Bible, mentioned in the Bible. So in this case, it’s not a story, is it? It’s about — it’s writing up like the terms of this covenant relationship.

Israel has been rescued. God invites them to say here… I want you all to live this way as a people so that you can become a light to the nations.

Okay, done. We’ll do that. Okay. Let’s write it. It’s like writing up a contract.

Basically what’s happening here. So then Moses got up early the next morning. He built an altar at the foot of the mountain, set up 12 stone pillars representing the 12 tribes of Israel. He sent young Israelite men, offered burnt offerings, sacrificed young bulls, fellowship offerings. We don’t have time to even talk about sacrifice and all what that is all about in the Bible, holy cow. Anyway, let’s just keep going.

All right. Next slide.

So then Moses took half of the blood, he put it in bowls, and then the other half he splashed on the altar. The Bible, you guys. So crazy, right? So, but here we go. It’s the scroll. Here we go.

Then he took the scroll of the covenant, right? The terms of the agreement, and he read it all aloud before the people.

And they responded, oh yeah, we’re going to do all that. Everything what the Lord has said, we’ll obey.

Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, a little gross kind of, and he said, this is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all of these words. There’s a million things to explore here. We can only, I just want to focus on one.

There’s the second mention of the writing of the Bible in the Bible.

The first one was about telling the story of what God has done to redeem and save His people out of His love and His grace.

Here’s the second. And what is this about?

This is about God inviting these people that He’s rescued and saved into a covenant relationship to become this light to the nations by living differently, by living according to the laws of what are going to become the Torah, or these laws of the covenant, that Israel becomes a contrast community to all of the other nations. They become a nation shaped by God’s generosity, by God’s justice, and by God’s character, and so become a beacon here.

And so, well, yeah, we don’t need it on the screen. I just like to have something to point to.

So the whole point is that the Bible, that this second origins of the Bible is that it’s a covenant document. It’s a storytelling document about the covenant.

And so the origins of the Bible are bound up with these two events right here. What’s the meaning of that? The Bible is going to continue to grow and develop throughout the story. But here you go.

Here in these two stories, you get the meaning of the Bible, that it’s a telling the story of what God has done to form a people, a community of people who will enter into this covenant relationship and accept the covenant terms as binding on us, on our behavior, on how we operate as a community and how we live as individuals.

What are we talking about? We’re talking about the authority of the Bible, aren’t we? The origins of the Bible as an authority take place within this story. And this is where the golden tablets view and the only one hand of the drawing, I think really can lead us down a wrong path because here’s how the golden tablets falling from heaven view of the Bible tends to work.

It views the Bible as a divine rule book on here’s what you should do as a human being, here’s what you should not do as a human being so that you can go to the good place and not the bad place after you die, right? That’s basically the view of the Bible in that idea.

And I’m trying to poke fun at it a little bit and I’m sorry if that’s what you believe, but I really think you shouldn’t believe that because it’s not going to help you.

So because is the Bible first and foremost a rule book? What is the first story of the writing of the Bible in the Bible? Is the Bible as what? As telling the story of what God has done to save and redeem His people.

And then when God does give guidance and laws to His people, it’s in the context of a covenant relationship.

And so the authority of the Bible isn’t so much God dropping down a list of rules to all human beings and it’s like I’m going to tell you what to do.

The authority of the Bible is authority that comes after God has saved His people by His grace and He invites them into this relationship and they accept the terms of the covenant. Did you guys see that in the story right there?

So the best analogy that we have to it, and it has the same word in it, is the marriage covenant. We only use the word covenant really anymore these days to describe a marriage. Isn’t that right? What else do we describe as a covenant? If you enter a contract with a business partner, you don’t really call that a covenant. You call it a contract because that’s the word we have for it.

But covenant is this very biblical concept. And so when I married my wife, I uttered these covenant vows of what I would do to care for her, to love her, to give my devotion and my allegiance to providing and so on.

And what am I doing?

I’m entering into this relationship and these vows, the terms of the covenant become binding on me and I accept that as a way that I’m going to change how I live and how I think as I enter into this relationship. And that’s how the Bible presents itself as an authority over God’s people. Are you guys with me here?

This is a different way of framing it than we normally think about it, but that’s how the Bible frames it. Okay.

Now does the origin of the Bible stop there?

No, it’s just getting started actually. And we don’t even have time. This talk is already inadequate right now. We don’t have time to go through the whole history or whatever. Feel free to listen to my crash course that I have online where I get more into it.

But the Bible continues to emerge as God commissions humans, like he commissioned Moses to write. These figures are either priests or prophets, but out of the covenant story of God and Israel, the Bible emerges out of that history.

And Israel, for the most part, why we were laughing when the Israelites said, hey, yeah, we’re going to do all that is because what do the Israelites go on to not do? Any of that, right? Like they failed miserably at the covenant. They’re really, really bad at it.

And so God appoints these figures called prophets who are going — they’re humans and they are going to sometimes speak God’s very like first person God’s speech to the people. But sometimes it’s their own words and God’s words through the prophet and the prophet’s own words become in the books of the prophet, God’s word to His people. The Bible doesn’t view it as separate. It’s either a human word or a divine word. It’s both a human and divine word.

That’s the whole point because it’s about how God is working through humans and through history to create a people through which He’s going to give a light to the nations. You guys with me here?

So fast forward to Jesus and I just want to show how the way Jesus frames things and talks about the Bible, it just fits in exactly with this here.

So Jesus comes onto the scene and He just assumes — it’s what I first noticed when I was reading the stories about Jesus. It’s like He has the Bible memorized. He really, really cares about the Bible. He’s just constantly quoting from it, referring to it as a source of divine speech and authority. Really.

And this is one of the challenges in our kind of contemporary culture is that there’s so much about Jesus that’s compelling and that resonates with so much of our culture that all of His teachings about forgiveness and justice and treatment of the poor and so on. But we kind of conveniently gloss over all of these other things that Jesus says about money and sex and forgiveness and this kind of thing and that like Jesus is constantly quoting from the Bible and says that it’s God’s word and you can’t divide Jesus in half and just get like the part of Jesus I like and then there’s I don’t know what to do with that part. I’m not going to read those parts of Matthew or something like, it doesn’t work like that.

If you’re going to follow Jesus, you have to follow Jesus, not your own remake of Jesus. And so here’s Jesus and He really cares about the Bible. And then here’s what He does.

His whole announcement was about how the kingdom of God is here, that the reign and the rule of God has arrived to rescue His good world from what we have done to the place, essentially. And He does it by beginning a movement of disciples — 12, remember the number 12, right? He starts with a core of 12 and then a huge circle around them.

And it all culminates as many people begin to reject Jesus with this — this night before Jesus is betrayed. And this is the Last Supper story and just trust me, you’ll see where I’m going here. This is from Matthew chapter 26. They’re eating the Last Supper.

Jesus took bread and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples saying, ‘Take, eat, this is My body.’

Then He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, ‘Drink from it all of you. It is My blood of the covenant.’

Anybody? Blood of the covenant? Have you heard this before? He’s quoting from Exodus 24 right there, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

So Jesus sees Himself as bringing about a new moment in the covenant story, that Jesus believes that He’s going to accomplish a New Exodus, a new act of redemption from slavery, not from Rome or from Egypt, and this time from death and sin and the stranglehold of selfishness that we’re all suffering from.

And Jesus ties His coming death to the death of these covenant animals in that ceremony. And He ties what He’s doing as forming a new covenant people, a new people who are going to give their allegiance to follow Jesus. And that new covenant people will then become God’s light to the nations that Israel failed to be. But now this new Israel covenant people is going to succeed at being because Jesus is at its head.

How are you guys doing? I know that’s kind of complicated. Are you with me here?

Jesus — He’s putting Himself in Moses’ place right here. New covenant people.

Now you remember what happened at Mount Sinai. If you have a new covenant, what do you need to clarify the terms of the covenant, right? You need some text to go along here. Did Jesus ever write anything?

Did Jesus ever write anything?

No. What did He give His followers to remember the formation of the new covenant people? He gave us a meal, a ritual meal, something we experience. And so this is what you guys do in your gatherings. We do the same every week at Door of Hope. It’s this moment where we eat the experience, right? We eat the memory of Jesus’ loving self-giving of His life, of His death, and of His resurrection that was for us and for our sins as an act of love and as an act of God’s grace towards us. Amen. I mean that’s the story.

And so Jesus didn’t write anything. He gave us this meal.

But then watch how the gospel according to Matthew ends right here. This is the last sentences of the gospel according to Matthew.

So Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me.’ (Matthew 28:18) Let’s just stop right there.

There’s our word, authority.

Follower of Jesus, why do you accept the Scriptures as the source of God’s authority and guidance in your life? Is your allegiance to a book if you’re a follower of Jesus? Is your allegiance to a book? To who or what is your allegiance?

So Jesus — what do we mean when we say the Bible is authoritative?

What we mean when we say that is Jesus is the risen king. Jesus is the one who was a human on our behalf. He’s the kind of human we’re all called to be but perpetually fail to be. And He eats the consequences of the hell on earth that we have all created.

And because God’s love for our world is so unbreakable and so strong, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is His victory over our sin and death and becomes this source of life and forgiveness and new humanity for our world, right? I mean this is the story that we come around.

Who is the true risen king with authority to tell me, ‘Hey Tim, you’re really bad at being a human being. Like let Me help you with that, right? So I’ll do this for you. You’re forgiven. You’re made new. There’s grace. Let Me guide you in what it actually means to be a truly human being.’ Are you with me here?

Who has the authority to tell me that? Jesus does.

What we mean when we say the Bible is authoritative is we’re talking that Jesus has authority over me and that authority is expressed to me through the Scriptures.

That Jesus’ authority and God’s word is spoken to me through these texts, through these human and divine words.

Now watch how this works here.

So this Jesus’ authority that I accept, when I become His disciple, I become a part of the covenant people. And it’s like the wedding vows. The terms of this relationship are something that I submit to as a disciple of Jesus.

So what exactly am I submitting to?

Look where He goes from here. He says, ‘Therefore go, make disciples of all nations…’ We’re going to form the covenant people… ‘baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…’ There’s initiation into the covenant people, ‘teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you. And surely I’m with you always to the very end of the age.’ (Matthew 28:20)

So they’re teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you.

Did Jesus write anything personally? Do we have the teachings of Jesus anywhere?

Oh yeah, a whole bunch of them. This is called the Four Gospels in the New Testament. So we do.

Jesus forms a new covenant people and then He deputizes the apostles. Think Dukes of Hazzard, the deputy or the sheriff or whatever.

So the whole point is that the apostles become these deputies, these commissioned prophets or we call them apostles, who Jesus tells them to pass on His teachings and then through their own writings, guide the covenant people in what it means to be faithful to this covenant relationship.

And that in that little sentence right there is the origin of what we call the New Testament. These are books connected to the apostles, the people who are standing right there or around like as in Paul the apostle’s case, those who were part of that closest circle and their writings become the way that Jesus’s authority is expressed over His people. How are you guys doing?

Now this is like a theology talk right now and oh sheesh, this is already inadequate and I haven’t even shown you a picture of the Dead Sea Scrolls yet. My, what’s wrong with me?

Whatever, anyway, who cares what’s wrong with me? So a lot of things wrong with me.

So what I’m trying to do is just paint a picture. Why on earth should you accept the Bible as an authority over your life? And it’s not about a book falling from heaven. It’s about God’s continuing involvement in history that He doesn’t abandon us or our world to our own devices and that through the Exodus, through the prophets and ultimately through Jesus, through God joining Himself to humanity in the person of Jesus, I accept Jesus as my authority and I accept the Scriptures as the way Jesus’s authority is expressed to me, and I submit to it in the same way that I submitted myself to my wife and to these wedding vows to be binding on my behavior.

And so viewing the Bible as an authority is not irrational. Like there’s a real reason behind it and I think it’s a really compelling reason not to mention the fact that I’m just not a very good human being. I’m just not very good at it and so this is actually really good news to me that Jesus is my authority. Are you with me here?

So that’s the authority question and I spent most of my time there because if we’re — I mean, I think we’re really honest with ourselves, the struggles that we have with the Bible, many of us, there are intellectual obstacles and I’ll talk about those for a couple minutes about where the manuscripts and so on.

But I think this is the root issue for many, many people who struggle with the idea of the Bible as an authority is it seems so odd and it seems so arbitrary, this ancient book, and I don’t think that it is.

The Bible is born out of history, a history that’s very human and because God’s committed to working with humans, that’s good news for us, and it’s born out of this amazing covenant story that leads to Jesus and His formation of a covenant people.

And so there you go, that’s my, in a nutshell, I think a way to reframe what it means for the Bible to be an authority over us and why it makes sense.

Now does everything Jesus say, does it like, is it good news for me being a child of Western culture when it comes to money and sex, right, and all of these things, like no, it’s going to challenge me to the core and that’s the point.

Coming under the authority of the Scriptures, by which I mean under the authority of Jesus, is trusting that Jesus knows what it means to be a human being better than I do and He knows how to guide me as a maturing, growing follower of Him and also as a human being in a way that I can never do on my own.

And so I bring myself under His authority, His loving, graceful, self-giving love, compassion, grace, Jesus-style authority, and that’s the only kind of authority I would ever want to be under, amen?

So now we have a Bible and here we are 2,000 years later, right? And so you go down to Powell’s, now we’re going to the authenticity question for eight minutes or something like that, so you go down to Powell’s or you open up your phone and there’s all these different translations and so you pick one and it’s like of a passage you love in the Bible and then you go to another translation, you can do this on YouVersion on your phone now, you can read the same passage in multiple translations really easily and you go like, man, it’s really different wording.

And for you it’s like, oh, it’s different translations or whatever, but for a whole bunch of people it’s like, no, dude, it’s people changing the Bible, right? People tampering with and changing, why are all these English translations? You guys know what I’m talking about here.

So how does the Bible section at Powell’s relate to Jesus commissioning the apostles to write and teach everything that Jesus has commanded?

And I’m going to tell the story in a total nutshell, feel free to go listen to the crash course online. The Bible hasn’t been changed and tampered with by all of these people. All of those modern translations that are down in the section of Powell’s are translated from one source — one source for the old Testament and one source for the New Testament. There’s one Bible, not a billion. There’s many translations of the Bible, but there’s one source which are all coming from.

For the Hebrew Bible, let me show you a picture of a jewel of a manuscript called the Leningrad Codex. I have a photographed facsimile version that my wife let me buy. It was on sale for, I won’t tell you how much, but it was on sale for half off and it was still, you know, mortgage the farm or whatever.

Anyway, so it’s a beautiful, it’s one of the crown jewels of the history of the Bible. It’s called the Leningrad Codex. It’s the oldest complete, means all of the pages all in one place manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. It’s not the oldest manuscript, but the oldest all in one place. It dates from 1008 AD.

In the main section, you see text, but do you see all the stuff around the margins? That’s Bible geek stuff going on there, right? That’s the stuff of people like me, but from a thousand years ago who wanted to say like, hey, dear next scribe, you know, hey, this word spelled kind of funny. Here’s a cross reference to the three other times that word appears in the Hebrew language. Don’t misspell it right here. Thank you very much.

But that’s what it’s just all these little notes about spelling and grammar all to help guide the scribes, not change or mess up anything at all. So this is, here you go. That manuscript is the basis for every translation of the Old Testament that is out there in Powell’s or on YouVersion. People haven’t changed the Bible, right?

There it is. I’m showing it to you right now. Now that’s 1000 AD. So we’re still like a thousand years removed. So this is where the Dead Sea Scrolls are so awesome and why I made myself go to school on the other side of the planet for a year because I wanted to see these things and work with them because they’re amazing.

So here’s the oldest of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, dates to around 150 years before Jesus. It’s a section from Exodus. So here we have a chance to reverse engineer the origins of the Bible by a thousand year margin here and compare these scrolls with this thousand year scroll later.

Are they remarkably similar?

Oh yeah. It’s insane. It’s like insane how remarkably similar these manuscripts are. Are there differences? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And that shouldn’t bother you one bit. That shouldn’t bother you one bit at all because is the Bible only a divine book dropped out of heaven? No, it has a human history attached to it.

So here’s what Bible geeks have been doing for the last 200 years. Just look at the next slide here. Here you go.

So this is an edition of the Bible that is the source of all of our modern translations. It’s called the Biblia Hebraica Quinta. So up there is the main text and then you see all that stuff at the bottom there. That’s Bible geeks who have gone through every Dead Sea Scroll, every medieval manuscript, all these ancient translations of the Bible into Aramaic and into Greek, and they’ve collated and compiled every manuscript difference that exists. And there it is in the notes. It’s like reading HTML code or something like that at the bottom, computer code, right? It’s ridiculous.

But you learn how to read. There it is. There it is. There’s all the differences right there.

Because here’s the thing. If the Bible was this boulder dropped into a small pond, it’s the most massive literary event to happen in human history as we know it. And so it goes into this pond and the ripple effects just go out everywhere.

And from the manuscript history of the Bible, we have samples and little snapshots of the ripples from way far out, from really close, like the Dead Sea Scrolls from all these different places or whatever. And so the Bible is not a lost artifact. There’s no secret books of the Bible or things that fell out. We actually have too much of the Bible in terms of the wealth of manuscripts. It’s just insane.

And so are there differences? Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Are some of them significant? Yeah, totally.

Can we map them all and figure out where they came from? Yes. Yeah. This shouldn’t bother you. It’s awesome.

I’m telling you, it’s the most interesting topic in the whole world in my opinion. So it’s awesome, right?

So same for the New Testament. I’ll show you the oldest piece of the New Testament that exists. It’s the next slide. It’s an old little manuscript from the gospel according to John. We’re talking 40 years from the original. It’s remarkable. This makes the hairs on the back of your neck tingle kind of thing, right? It’s amazing.

Like within someone’s actual lifetime, the gospel of John is written. And then this piece of text exists. And we have, oh, it’s insane. We have nearly 6,000 manuscript pieces of evidence from the New Testament. Talk about a boulder thrown into a pond, right?

And so here’s another picture of like a more complete manuscript here from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, all these old papyri found in Egypt. It’s amazing. Okay.

I have to stop talking about that now, but here you go. Let me show you every edition of the New Testament that exists on your shelf at Powell’s. Go to the next, go to the next slide here. There it is. That’s it. It’s called the Nestle Aland 27th edition of the New Testament. There’s the text up there, text out there. And then all the Bible geek stuff happening right down there. And there you go.

I mean, it’s not that, it’s very complicated, but it’s also not that complicated. You guys get what I’m saying here. It’s known.

Is there very human stuff going on in the transmission history of the Bible? Absolutely. And we can trace it because it happened in history. It’s actually because it didn’t drop out of heaven that we can actually know and trace the history.

Are you guys with me here? You wouldn’t want a Bible that dropped out of heaven. Be very suspicious about Bibles that drop out of heaven, you know what I’m saying? Telling you here’s how you should live and what you should do.

But we’re not talking, we’re talking — so let me sum up here, I need to conclude.

We’re talking about a story about a God who is committed to working in and through humans and in human history. We’re talking about a God who will not leave His good world alone until He’s redeemed the place. And so He’s working through humans, forming a human family, entering into a covenant relationship we fail miserably, right? Israel failed miserably at that.

And so it comes together perfectly in the person of Jesus where God and human — divine and human — come together in the person of Jesus and He is the human that we’re all made to be but fail to be. And so He becomes our authority and our guide as a people. And He establishes a community of covenant people called disciples of Jesus.

And so here’s the choice before you. Do you want to accept Jesus as what He’s done for you to being done on your behalf? Will you follow Jesus? And if you’re going to follow Jesus, it’s about submitting myself to the terms of this relationship and those terms are expressed in the story and in the covenant documents of the relationship.

And with this, for me to kind of reach this place of what the Bible is, all of a sudden everything about the Bible’s history just becomes beautiful to me because it’s a part of how God is working through history to just reach screwed-up people like ourselves and that’s good news, man. It’s really good news. Amen.

There’s a whole million things I didn’t talk about and I have to stop talking right now.

But I want to close in a word of prayer and I just, my closing challenge would be to you. If this is an issue for you, there is not one question you’re asking that hasn’t been addressed by a thousand people already. So move towards it, find the resources and don’t let this be an obstacle to you following. Jesus is so amazing and so compelling. This issue should raise no huge obstacle in following Jesus and if anything, it’s the opposite. I think it helps us realize how committed Jesus is to humans in our context and in our actual lives and world. Amen.

For Further Reading:

(Through The Bible) – Exodus – Part 1: Zac Poonen (Transcript)

The New Creation (Part 1): Derek Prince Sermon (Transcript)

The New Creation (Part 2): Derek Prince Sermon (Transcript)

A. W. Tozer Sermon: The Deeper Life (Transcript)

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