Scripture: A Gift of Grace

[0:00] If you have a Bible, just look down at it for a second and just think what exactly is it and how did it get in your hand tonight?!

[0:30] What is the Bible? Next week, Daniel is going to talk about a topic we call Bibliology. It means like what does the Bible tell us about itself, which is really cool.

[0:41] We don't make up stuff about the Bible. The Bible actually tells us what it means and what it's for and etc. So it will be kind of a follow-up from this. But just think about this though.

[0:52] What you have in your hands didn't just get there. Remember, it's been a long, long process of even thousands of years to actually make it into your hand.

[1:04] And there's a lot of countries, nations, languages even today that don't actually have anything what you have in your hand. And so we're going to talk tonight just about how the Bible is a gift of grace.

[1:16] It's grace. It's something that we don't deserve at all, but God has richly lavished it on us. So just roll ahead. Yeah. Most people...

[1:29] How many of you actually like to read, be honest? Like to read. I should have said, how many don't like to read? Wow, that's what I thought. No one was going to say that. But, man, there definitely is like a trend these days where it's actually cool to actually not read.

[1:46] Anybody ever picked up on that? Like it's like you say you read books, you just automatically kind of sound like nerdy. But we need to learn that reading is a gift.

[1:58] It used to mean a lot more than it would now. And we need to take advantage of this. We need to dive into the Word. And I hope that just even coming here and hearing the Word taught and et cetera is going to give you a desire to dive into God's Word even more.

[2:14] So let's just talk just briefly about what the Bible's not. Some misconceptions about what it is. It's not a lucky charm.

[2:25] It's not a magic eight ball where you just need a quick answer to something. And you look and just pick some random verse out and then you start rolling. That's not what it is. It's not a lucky charm.

[2:36] You don't read it to get something you want. A boyfriend, a girlfriend, a car, money. It's not something you go to for those things. And it's not just going to have an answer that just pops up to you to any random question.

[2:51] It's not those things. It's also not an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a textbook, something like that. It's much more than that. It doesn't just have just random facts and information.

[3:01] It has something a lot more important. And a big one is it's not a big misconception. It's just an outdated book. Like it's not relevant to us today.

[3:12] And nothing could be more untrue. And the Bible speaks very clearly. It's timeless. Even an example of the Proverbs are filled with daily wisdom about how to live your life, which can apply to anybody today.

[3:27] So let's say really quickly, just some things the Bible is not. But let's go into what the Bible is. So what is the Bible? It's God's book.

[3:39] If you want just a simple definition without a long explanation, I'll just give it to you. It's the Bible is God's written revelation of himself and his mighty deeds.

[3:52] The Bible is God's written revelation of himself and his mighty deeds. It contains the knowledge of, the true knowledge, I'd say, of the living God. It's in this book.

[4:05] So does the Bible actually claim to be God's word? Yeah. Over 2,000 times you'll hear the phrase, the word of God, throughout scripture. As if it was like him actually saying it.

[4:17] And it appears 40 times in the New Testament alone, the word of God. And thus says the Lord, you know, a lot of the times in the Old Testament as the prophets spoke.

[4:29] So if you're still in 2 Timothy, just look at just a part of this. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 says, All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

[4:55] So all scripture, it says, not just parts of it, is, some of your translations might say inspired, which is not necessarily a bad way of saying it.

[5:06] It can cause some confusion, though. So what the word really is for inspired is God-breathed. Theophanoustos is where you get your word pneumonia or pneumatic from.

[5:21] And it's only used here, not in the rest of the scripture and nowhere else in classical Greek is it used. It's only used right here as if Paul was like being very specific about what he meant.

[5:32] He wanted to show you that the word of God had a divine origin. So he puts those words together. It's breathed out by God. It affirms that it is God who gave us his divine origin.

[5:45] So in scripture, though, the person of God and the word of God are used, are interrelated, they're interchangeable. So much so that what is true about God's character is also true about his word.

[5:59] God is truthful. He's not a liar. So when he speaks, he's not dispensing nonsense. It's true, powerful, and relevant stuff. And if God wrote it, then it also is without error because God does not make error.

[6:13] And so one word that you're going to talk about maybe later is, Daniel may revisit this next week, but the word inherently, we believe in something called the inerrancy of scripture.

[6:26] And what it doesn't mean is that here it says Jesus had a purple robe and here it says Jesus had a red robe. Contradiction. Now, that's not what it means.

[6:38] It means that ever since the term was invented for the Bible, inerrancy has meant that the Bible is true in its message and what it's trying to say is consistent throughout the whole thing.

[6:50] That's what it means. It means that God's word is true and consistent in what it's saying. Not that little random things that really don't change the point of the message at all.

[7:03] That's not what it means. So, God is true, perfect, and reliable, and therefore His word is. So, flip just quickly over to 2 Peter.

[7:14] Let's look at something there real fast. As I'm looking at this, I'm trying to think of some things that kind of not include. But 2 Peter 1, verse 19.

[7:32] Let's just start there. I might just start at the beginning, but let's just start at 19. He says, What he's saying here is God's word didn't come about by some man just saying, I want to speak for God today.

[8:16] He just began talking, and then it happened. It was God that moved them, not by the will of man, but God spoke through them. And so, when we say that Scripture is inspired, which we were talking about just a minute ago.

[8:27] All Scripture is breathed out by God. Have you ever heard anybody say, God inspired me to write this song? God inspired me to write this book? Or have you ever heard that kind of phrase from people?

[8:40] There's a level of truth to that. Maybe God did. But at the same time, there are certain levels of inspiration. And no one is as inspired as the Bible writers themselves when God communicated what He wanted them to put down in words.

[8:58] And what it doesn't mean also, inspiration of Scripture, doesn't mean that God is like, someone's just going about their business during the day, and then He just like takes them over, and they just mechanically just write something down.

[9:13] God did it in such a cool way to where He used their own personalities, their own experiences, their own vocabulary, their own writing style. You have so many different writing styles in the Bible, which we'll look at a little later.

[9:26] It says they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and that He used even their personalities and such to put out what He wanted on paper in Scripture.

[9:38] So there definitely is mystery that abounds as to how He did that. But I know a lot of you might say, man, if I could have just seen the Red Sea part, or seen Christ risen from the dead, I would have a lot more faith than just having this book in my hand.

[9:54] And go back and look. Maybe you can start at verse 16, where we are in 2 Peter, just read that later. But Peter is like, we saw Christ in all His glory on the holy mountain, the transfiguration.

[10:08] But then later on he says, but we have something now that's even better than that. We can look back now and see how all those things were coming together into a bigger story. They couldn't see that.

[10:19] They didn't know how the stuff that they were writing was going to fit into the overall bigger picture. So it's a blessing, it's a grace to have the Scripture. And could go on and on about it.

[10:32] But basically just remember those things, the inspiration of the Scripture. That God Himself spoke through men, put it down on paper, what He wanted them to say. God created the heavens and the earth by the power of His Word.

[10:46] He definitely can get what He wants into a book. He's not in heaven saying, man, Paul messed it up. Or I tried to get this in there and they forgot. He's not that kind of a God.

[10:59] He'd be very angry. And we'd be experiencing His anger if that was the case. So, on to some fun stuff for sure. How do we actually get the Bible?

[11:10] Like, what was the process? Some of you might have been here in the last few years where I'd probably lecture for an hour and a half on all that. We're not going to go over all that tonight. We're going to just revisit some of it.

[11:23] So, how do we get the Bible? Let's start. Wait a minute. I can't remember how I did this. Go on. Oh yeah, let's just read this. This is something that Martin Luther said, talking about how the Bible is grace to us.

[11:37] Oh, how great and glorious a thing it is to have before one the Word of God. With it we may at all times feel joyous and secure. We need never be in want of consolation, for we see before us in all its brightness the pure and right way.

[11:54] He who loses sight of the Word of God falls into despair. However, the voice of heaven no longer sustains him and he follows only the disorderly tendency of his own heart and the world, world vanity, which lead him to destruction.

[12:09] Scripture tells you not to follow your heart. It says that your heart is deceitful. I can definitely speak for myself that my heart is lied to me. I need like a more sure guide for life and to know God.

[12:23] So, go on, John. Sorry. All right. Books of the Old Testament. How did you get... Why is the Old Testament the Old Testament? Go ahead. Oh, that's funky writing.

[12:33] Sorry. It's a change of font when I move it to what that is. But this is how the Old Testament is broken up. You get the books of the Law, the Torah, the Instruction, Genesis through Deuteronomy, the History books, Joshua through Esther, books of poetry and wisdom, Job through Song of Songs, and then the writings of the Prophets.

[12:58] That's how it's broken up. Go ahead and flip to your table of contents if you know where that is. Just use it in the front of your Bible. Some of you might be new Christians and like, don't ever be ashamed to be like, table of contents.

[13:15] We see you turn to the table of contents. So, it's okay. Go ahead and go to the next slide. Okay. So, the background. So, when were these things written?

[13:27] Okay. Roughly between 1445 B.C. to 14... Or, excuse me, 424 B.C. Huge span of time. And the authors, unlike a lot of other sacred books out there like the Book of Mormon or the Koran, etc., the Bible has a lot of different writers from different time periods and from different walks of life.

[13:54] Really cool. And there are prophets, kings, soldiers, poets, shepherds, historians. You have different men writing in different ways. Really cool.

[14:05] So, just think about it. Some of you are very poetic and artsy. Like, God communicated truth to you. Some of you don't like any of that. Just tell me what it means. And there's... You have the law. Men wrote that way.

[14:17] Just clearly what they meant. So, the main language, yep, Hebrew. Maybe some Aramaic thrown in there. Something about the Hebrew scribes really quickly.

[14:28] Hebrew scribes were pretty incredible. All they would do is just copy the scripture. Copy the scrolls. And they cared about it so much.

[14:41] It was so sacred that even if they just... Let's say that they were at the end of a scroll of papyrus or whatever and they messed up. Like, they made like a little glitch or they spelled something wrong.

[14:53] They'd rip the whole thing up and throw it away. Like, it was that serious of a deal to them. So, you can be sure that, like, what we have is what was there. They didn't change it as time went on.

[15:04] So, the canonization of the Old Testament. The canon doesn't mean a big piece of artillery. It means like a collection of books, accepted number of books into something.

[15:16] So, go on to the next one. Really quickly, there is... This is Josephus Flavius. He was captured by Titus in around 70 A.D.

[15:28] When Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed, burnt to the ground by the Romans, as Christ prophesied about. And he was a Pharisee, but he was taken to Rome as a prisoner.

[15:40] He actually was allowed to write. And so, in the first century... So, he had access to information that we don't now. And this is what he said about the Old Testament scriptures.

[15:51] For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, like the Greeks have.

[16:02] So, he's, like, making fun of, like, the ancient writings of the Greeks and how they don't really connect or make sense at all. But only 22 books, which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be divine.

[16:16] And of them, five belong to Moses, verse 5, which contain his laws. The prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was done in their times in 13 books.

[16:29] And the remaining four books contain hymns to God, precepts, and conduct for human life. So, you may think, we have more. Look at your table of contents. There's more than, you know, 22 books.

[16:43] And the reason we do that is we break up books where they wouldn't have. We say, like, 1st, 2nd Samuel, 1st, 2nd Kings, 1st, 2nd Chronicles, etc. So, also note, there are some Bibles out there.

[17:00] The Roman Catholics have this included in their official canon. A group of books called the Apocrypha. And the reason that we don't include those in the Protestant canon is because they're not named anywhere else in Hebrew tradition.

[17:19] They're not cited as those books divinely inspired by God. Even in the Hebrew Bible today, those books aren't included. And no New Testament writer, apostle, Jesus himself, they never quoted from it at all.

[17:34] And so that's a really big deal. And they have some value, but we just don't put them on the same level as what we have divinely inspired here. So, next slide.

[17:46] So, what about the Old Testament manuscripts? We had a problem for a long time because one of the oldest New Testament manuscripts was 900 A.D.

[17:58] That's bad, you know, because we have prophecies and things like that that talk about Christ's coming. So, it could be just all a scam, right? So, how do we know about this?

[18:10] And we need to know, how was it accurately translated since before the first century? We need to know that. So, God provided a really cool way.

[18:21] Go to the next slide. Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 discovered in the caves of Qumran near the Dead Sea. And they contained books from the Old Testament, all of them except for Esther.

[18:35] And a lot of them date back to 125 B.C. Really cool. So, even cooler, you can take the ones that date that far back and you can lay them right beside the ones that date 900 A.D.

[18:49] They say the same thing, the exact same thing. It's really cool. So, it shows you how seriously they took the transmission. So, they've been preserved for that long, 1900 years.

[19:03] This is Josephus again. They didn't play games with the Scriptures. It was very, very serious to them. He says, We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures.

[19:16] For although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, to remove, or alter a syllable. And it's instinct with every Jew from the day of his birth to regard them as decrees of God, to abide by them, and if need be, cheerfully die for them.

[19:35] Time and again near now pass, The site has been witness of prisoners, enduring tortures, death in every form in the theaters, rather than utter a single word against the laws and allied documents.

[19:47] So, what he said about this is think about Rome. They were seeing guys killed in the arenas. The Colosseum wasn't built at this time. It actually was built by Jewish slaves that happened after this conquest.

[20:01] But they were being put to death, and they would not back down from the Scriptures. So, take them very seriously. Go on to the next slide. That's the Old Testament.

[20:12] Let's get to the New. Okay. They date around the first century A.D. Again, a variety of authors. You have fishermen, rabbis, tax collectors, scholars, physicians.

[20:27] I mean, really cool. The language, Koine Greek, and some Aramaic, maybe here and there. That was the language. So, I go on.

[20:38] That's how it's broken up. The history books, letters of Paul, and then letters from other apostles. This is a cool chart. Don't lose yourself in all the stuff.

[20:52] But what this is basically trying to say is, you ever had someone say, well, you don't have any of the original New Testament documents. So, like, what's the point? You don't really know that what's there was actually there.

[21:05] So, they just kind of want to cast it aside. The problem with their argument is that we don't have any, you know, original copies of any ancient writing at all.

[21:18] They're written on materials that decay and rot and have been destroyed. So, but look at this, though. We'll just do one example. Most of you have heard of, at least, like the Iliad, Homer's Iliad.

[21:31] It was written in 800 B.C. A long time ago. The earliest copies of it that we actually have in our hands today are from 400 B.C.

[21:44] There's a 400-year gap. See that from the originals and the ones that we actually have? And then there's the total number of copies we have from all different time periods.

[21:57] 643, sorry, I need glasses. So, then go down to the New Testament at the bottom, written between 50 and 100 A.D. The New Testament has the smallest time gaps between the originals and the ones we have now, and we have 5,366 different fragments and pieces and whole books of the New Testament.

[22:22] So, if you're going to throw that away, you've got to throw it all away. It just doesn't work that way. So, really cool. We have, like, the biggest collection of writings of all ancient documents, more than Plato or anything else.

[22:35] So, go ahead, John. So, how do we get the New Testament? You hear people say, well, the church left certain books out, so I had that talk with a guy the other day and didn't even know what he was talking about.

[22:50] And so, how do we know that? Some tricky church councils leave out certain books. Well, the answer is, darn right they did. There's a course like Wrong Teaching out there and Heresy that really tried to corrupt the Gospel.

[23:07] So, there are several councils that discuss this, but the last one was Council of Carthurs, 397 A.D. Carthurs was in Northern Africa.

[23:19] And this was the criteria they used. And so, all motives aside, I couldn't personally come up with better criteria for why we have what we have.

[23:32] The first one was whether or not the document was written by an apostle or one in close association with an apostle. So, he was either Peter writing it or he talked to Peter.

[23:46] It wasn't he said that he said that he said. It was first or second hand and that was it. Pretty cool. So, there's a lot of books that don't meet that. So, we don't really include it.

[23:58] Secondly, whether or not the document was recognized as authoritative by the early church. So, there was, while the apostles were writing these books, they would be aware if certain other writings were being taught that were not true and that were corrupted.

[24:18] And so, they would have kept them down. I said, these are the books that we include. Peter actually writes about Paul and says, our brother Paul wrote to you about these same things I'm writing to you about.

[24:31] Maybe it all kind of put together. Then, thirdly, whether or not the document conformed, let's put it right now, yeah, to the highest standards and truths taught by already recognized Scripture.

[24:44] So, we can say, we know that these are good. Okay, we know that the Old Testament, you know, these are consistent. We know that the Gospel of John, Matthew, etc.

[24:55] And we know that they teach the same things over thousands of years. They all teach the same thing, that there's this God who is holy and righteous and graceful and that man is sinful and is in need of a Savior, taught over thousands of years.

[25:11] So, does it go against what we already know to be true? And then they would exclude it if it was. So, really good. That's how you got the New Testament that is in front of you.

[25:22] Good stuff. Next. I don't have time to get into all this, I don't think. But, remember the Latin, okay?

[25:36] Sola, scriptura, it means Scripture alone. And during the time of the Reformation, and arguably the end of the 1400s and the 1500s, Martin Luther, John Wyclef, etc.

[25:49] The Roman Church taught that an infallible book needs an infallible interpreter. And he's the only one that can interpret it.

[26:00] And that was the Pope, the vicar of Christ, the one who stands in the place of Christ. And so, they stood against that. And they said, no, the Bible is the final and ultimate authority.

[26:12] And if we want to know what the Bible means, we look at what the Bible says about a certain topic. We don't, we don't, basically, Scripture is its own interpreter.

[26:23] Scripture interprets Scripture. And then finally, yeah, balance of Scripture and historical interpretation. So, they didn't totally throw aside, like what, of, like the method of historical interpretation.

[26:38] If that was true, none of us would believe anything that was taught way back when. So, you have to kind of weigh things as to what the Church has always taught. If you come up with a new idea or a new thought that's escaped the mind of every believer for the last 2,000 years, you know, and then you look back and it's kind of been taught by different heretics throughout the history of the Church, then it's a good chance that you probably need to, like, can your interpretation.

[27:06] Probably. Probably. A good example of that, a long time ago, around the 400 AD, something like that, there was a guy who taught, a name of Arius, who taught that Jesus is not God.

[27:20] He was just another creation. Sound familiar? It's the same thing that Jehovah Witnesses and other groups teach today. It's not anything new at all. It's the same thing in different form.

[27:32] So, yeah, Soda Scriptura, the most refreshing drink on the planet. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, man. Last year, I lectured on each one of these people. We're not going to do that.

[27:43] But these people were all instrumental in getting us the English translations that you have. John Wakeliff, William Tyndale, he was the first one to really translate from the original Greek and Hebrew and Latin text.

[27:57] John Knox, Scottish reformer, great beards back then, incredible beards. Then, monarchs, that also played a very instrumental role.

[28:10] Whether they're believers or not, quite debatable. Maybe we'll be surprised. See Henry eating the turkey leg in heaven. Maybe. Maybe not.

[28:21] But they were both instrumental and kind of saying, at least to Rome, no, like we're going to have our own Bible for our people in the common tongue.

[28:32] And they made it law. So, all those people were instrumental in bringing us English translations. Go ahead. One translation, particularly, was the Geneva Bible.

[28:46] Really, really cool. The Geneva Bible came in 560. That's before the King James Bible. So, King James Bible, not a bad translation, but it wasn't the first English translation.

[29:01] So, the people with the signs, you know, in the King James only. Just the language that Jesus spoke in kind of thing. It's, at the beginning of the preface of the Geneva Bible, awesome words.

[29:16] It says, the Bible is the light to our paths, the key of the kingdom of heaven, our comfort and affliction, our shield and sword against Satan, the school of all wisdom, the mirror in which we behold God's face, the testimony of his favor, and the only food and nourishment of our souls.

[29:36] Really awesome. That was written by people who were exiled from England during the reign of Bloody Mary after Henry had passed away. So, it had study notes, chapter breaks, it's quoted by Shakespeare, it was the Bible of the pilgrims that came over.

[29:54] Really awesome translation. That's actually a picture I made of the Geneva Bible in Scotland. It's pretty cool. Next. English Bible translations.

[30:06] Okay. Here we go. So, I'm going to try not to hate on anybody's translation tonight, but there's basically four kinds of English translations.

[30:18] The first is what's called the formal equivalent. And that means they tried to like get the closest English word that would correspond to either the Greek or the Hebrew. It's more of a word for word translation.

[30:32] Literal, if you want to call it that. The most literal we can be in the English translation. And that's example, so you see it over here to the left, word for word.

[30:44] Intelnir means like the Greek below. So that's why it's there. But then, the most literal English translation is the New American Standard Bible. And right over from that is ESV, English Standard Version.

[31:02] Gosh. Then, even the King James Version is a literal. But, we have more resources available to us today to come up with a better, more accurate translations than the limited resources translators had in the past.

[31:17] The dynamic equivalent is, example, that is NIV. That means that the translators look at the Greek or Hebrew and they say, what are they, what's the idea?

[31:28] Like, what are they trying to say here? What's the thought they're trying to communicate? And then they wrote it out. So, it's not, definitely not bad. It has value.

[31:40] But, NIV is an example of that. And then, then you have the paraphrases. New Living Translation, the message, and, I'll say this to you, because I do believe that even the Trent, the guys who wrote this, would tell you that this isn't the Bible.

[32:03] They would say this is a paraphrase. It's just kind of talking about things that went on. You can't really get into a, there's some passage in the Bible you need to look at like the most literal you can to understand it because you can't paraphrase it in today's English.

[32:18] It needs to be understood where it was. But, as our culture becomes more and more illiterate and we don't read anymore, et cetera, translation is going to get dumber and dumber further down the road.

[32:31] And, so, if you don't have a literal numeric standard or ESV or something, I recommend you buy one just to read alongside, just to, just to follow.

[32:43] So, next, oh yeah, I don't know why I put that in there. I thought it was funny. Yes, we typically use the ESV here.

[32:57] Next, next slide. man, I had a cool thing prepared for this. I don't know if I have time. Anyway, I grew up in the 80s.

[33:10] I actually remember the latter part of the 80s. I was born in 82, but I remember the latter 80s. A big movie that I actually still own. I actually watched it a few months ago just for laughs.

[33:23] Neverending Story. Who's seen that movie? Okay, I don't feel stupid anymore. Good stuff, but it's about this little boy named Bastion who's kind of going through a rough time in life and he's being chased by these bullies that are hating on him and he runs into a bookstore and he meets this cool dude that looks kind of creepy and then has a conversation with him and he's reading a book called Neverending Story and he kind of like sneaks it out and he's like, I'll return your book later after I read it.

[33:56] And then he goes to school and he actually goes up to the school attic and he starts reading the book. He reads the rest of the day and through the night actually so he just couldn't back off of it.

[34:07] Pretty cool. But he was told by the guy at the bookstore this book is not safe for you to read. Like, you'll see what I mean if he was to read it.

[34:18] So he begins reading it. It's about this magical world called Fantasia and he goes on into it. But anyways, what ends up happening is that as he reads it he finds that the book is like talking about him.

[34:32] It's speaking to him. He's actually one of the characters inside of the book and he's kind of freaking out at different parts like, whoa, how did they know that about me as he read on?

[34:45] And he was kind of drawn further and further into it and then eventually he's brought into the story as one of the characters at the very end. Pretty cool part. Anyway. And so on not to sound cheesy or make a cool connection here but the Bible is not a fake book.

[35:06] It's that actually happens when you read the Bible. You'll see that it's talking about you and talking to you. You'll be like, man, that's me. Like, I'm like that. One of the biggest things that we know is that the Bible is not myth and it's not just legend because people are actually like real people.

[35:24] They have real problems and serious, nasty things they get into. They're not made out to be invincible characters at all and the only one that's, the only character that is invincible is God himself.

[35:38] So that's what happens. We read the Bible. We see that, man, we see how sinful we are. We see the need for redemption. We see the need of a Savior and it'll move you and stir you like no other book.

[35:53] And so much so that as you start reading it, you may not want to put it down and it is literally like a never-ending story. It'll go on and on through eternity.

[36:05] Really cool. So why should we read the Bible real quickly? Why study it? I'll go back. Sorry. John, Kyle, yeah.

[36:17] first of all, turn to John 17 real fast. Why should we study it?

[36:35] First off, to know who God is. And no better person to tell us about God than God himself. He doesn't really care what you think about him.

[36:47] he is a certain way. He's not going to change. And so really cool here. John 17 this is Jesus praying.

[36:58] He says, When Jesus has spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son. The Son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to whom all you have given him.

[37:16] So, look at that. He's like talking about eternal life here. He says, And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

[37:26] So, the good news of the gospel is not just we all get to go to heaven and have a mansion in heaven. The gospel is that we're brought back to God. And without that, you don't have a gospel and you're believing a false gospel.

[37:41] God is the good news of the gospel that we're brought back into relationship with him and can glorify him again like we could not do before that. So, to know God, that's the ultimate goal of the Bible.

[37:55] Secondly, to know ourselves. And like I was saying a minute ago, as Bastion was reading that book, he was being drawn into it and he thought, this is about me.

[38:08] This book is speaking to me. And as you do that, you're going to really see who you are in light of who God is. And see that you're really not all that and God is everything.

[38:23] He is glorious and we're not. And we're in need of him and he's graciously provided all we've needed to be brought back to him through Christ. So, Psalm 139, some of you turned there, but I'll just read it.

[38:36] Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting. Really cool.

[38:48] So, to know ourselves. Thirdly, to bring us eternal joy. This is part of the gospel. It says, it says, in Jeremiah 15, 16, your words were found, talking to God, your words were found and I ate them.

[39:06] And your words became to me a joy and delight of my heart. For I am called by your name, O Lord, O God of hosts. And in the Psalms, it also says that in God's presence there is fullness of joy, joy, and at his right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

[39:24] Forevermore. So, it's not just something that you have and it ends like the pleasure here. So, to know God is to have eternal joy, to have hope and peace. So, go ahead for the next slide.

[39:40] So, God has a goal and a purpose that he will achieve to get his word into the hands of all the nations and every tribe, language, and tongue. And he will do it.

[39:51] He promises that he will do it. He'll get the truth of his word to the hearts of people all around the world. And so, I was going to just mention one other thing that I forgot that I just breezed over that I thought I would.

[40:09] This is going to be like in your group time. We're speaking about the inerrancy of scripture and how scripture is without error. What we mean by that also is that we're saying that the original manuscripts are completely without error.

[40:25] And so, you might say, well, what about our English translations then? Do they have errors in them? And I guess this is a good example of that. I didn't come up with this on my own.

[40:37] But, like, we all could go to Washington, D.C. right now, go to a museum, and see, like the Constitution, like the original Constitution, or Declaration of Independence, or whatever.

[40:49] We can see it right there. That's the original document. But let's say that a fire happens and it gets burned up. You know, would we, at that point, go into a panic and say, we don't know what the Constitution says anymore?

[41:06] Like, would that be a true reality? No. Well, the government doesn't obey the Constitution anyway, typically. Sorry. But, they would do good to you. It would be out of a lot of messes that we're in.

[41:18] But, anyway, because why? Because we have copies of copies of the copy of the copy. The same thing. And that's the way it is with the Scripture. We have, we can be sure that 99.9% of what we see is what was intended to be there.

[41:36] Really cool. So, let's just close in prayer. I know there's a lot more to say. I was trying to cram some stuff together. Then, Alex and Rishi can go ahead and come up.

[41:49] Let's go.