[This sermon is contributed by Hal Seed of New Song Church in Oceanside, California and of www.PastorMentor.com. Hal is the author of numerous books including The God Questions and The Bible Questions. If you are interested in The Bible Questions Church-wide Campaign, please visit and watch Hal’s video at www.PastorMentor.com.]
How is the Bible Different than Other Books?
The Bible Questions, Part 2
Psalm 119:97-105
Special notes to the pastor/teacher:
1. We’ve placed pictures throughout the sermon. Where these pictures are available on a website, we’ve placed the web address directly under the picture so that you can access it in a format and bandwidth that is best for you.
2. This is the second of six sermons in The Bible Questions Campaign. It’s designed in conjunction with “The Bible Questions” book, which contains daily readings and weekly Bible studies for the Campaign.
Bumper Video: Go to https://vimeo.com/48489274
Good morning and welcome to The Bible Questions everybody! It’s an exciting day because we are going to learn today about the Bible, and the Bible is like no other book ever written.
Last week, in our preview session of The Bible Questions, we said that the Bible is a great gift to us. Lincoln called it “The best gift God ever gave to man”. – Abraham Lincoln
During these next five weeks together, we are going to learn from and about the most important book in all of history. Our learning experience will include sermons every weekend, readings from The Bible Questions book Monday through Friday, and a small group discussion some time during the week with a group of others who are on the adventure with us. – Don’t skip any of this, because the experience is meant to be an integrated experience.
Some of what we’ll cover on weekends will be reviewed in your reading. Repetition is often the key to learning. You learn better and deeper and retain longer what you cover more than once. But much of what we learn here at church will be new, and most of what you read each weekday will be new as well. We’ll even introduce new concepts during your small group time. So soak it all in.
If you miss a sermon, watch it online as soon as possible. If you have to skip a day of reading, invest an extra 12 minutes the next day to absorb the material. Do your best not to miss a small group session, because if you miss, the group’s quality will be diminished without you, and you’ll miss out on the insights and relationships that will happen there.
Are you ready to do some learning today? [Ready]
[Pray] Father, speak to us today. Please do through me what only you can do. Teach us, encourage us, inspire us and change us I pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen!
Take out a Bible and hold it in your hands for a minute. This is the Bible. Bible is a Greek word that means “book.” For 2,000 years, people have thought this book was so important, they never gave it a title, they’ve just called it “the book.”
Turn to someone sitting near you and say this, “The Bible is a book like no other.”
And say, “And you’re going to learn some things today.”
Now, turn in that Bible to Psalm 119:97, p. 438 in the black Bibles under your chairs. Once you’ve found the page, take out your message notes as well.
Patrick Henry said that this book …is a book worth all other books in the world. – Patrick Henry
Charles Dickens said It is the best book that ever was, or ever will be written. – Charles Dickens
Ronald Reagan said Within the covers of… the Bible are all the answers to all the problems that face us today… - Ronald Reagan
Woodrow Wilson said A man has deprived himself of the best there is in the world who has deprived himself of a knowledge of the Bible. – Woodrow Wilson
I want to talk to you today about how the Bible is different from every other book in history.
97 Oh, how I love your law!
I meditate on it all day long.
98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies,
for they are ever with me.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes.
100 I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts.
101 I have kept my feet from every evil path
so that I might obey your word.
102 I have not departed from your laws,
for you yourself have taught me.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 I gain understanding from your precepts;
therefore I hate every wrong path.
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light for my path.
Pretty impressive claims, wouldn’t you agree?
I was a teenager when I picked up the Bible for the first time. I already knew several things about it. I knew that it was it hard to understand. I knew that it was boring and irrelevant. And I knew that it was different than any other book I’d ever touched. – I didn’t know how is different.
But it turned out that, of all the things I thought I knew about the Bible, the only one that was true was that it was different than every other book in the world.
When I finally opened one, I discovered that most of it wasn’t hard to understand. It isn’t boring, and most of the Bible is more relevant to my life than today’s newspaper.
So I want to give you a tour of the Bible today so that you can understand it and find your way around in it, even if you’ve never opened one before.
You’re going to need to write fast today, or you’ll miss some things you wished you remembered later. And men, make sure your wife takes her own notes, because both of you are going to want to keep what you learn and refer back to it in the future.
We’ll start at the basic learning level. [Hold up a Bible.]
A. The Bible’s Composition:
Unlike most other books, the Bible isn’t just one book; it’s a book of books. It’s not a compendium of articles or speeches; it’s actually composed of 66 individual books.
1. It’s the book of books.
The word, “bible” comes from the Greek word, “biblos,” which means, “book”. The Bible has been such an important part of Christian history that those who read it find themselves calling it simply, “The Book”.
2. It was written over a period of 1500 years.
3. On 3 continents. - In 10 different countries.
4. By over 40 different authors.
5. In 3 different languages. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
6. From various walks of life. From kings to doctors, prophets, fisherman, musicians – even an ancient IRS agent wrote one of its books.
And all of this was written
7. With one central theme and storyline from beginning to end. You’ll read about this in chapters 9 and 10 next week.
Turn to the Table of Contents in the front of your Bible, and let me show you how it’s laid out.
B. The Bible’s Structure:
The Bible is one book of 66 books. But it’s also one book of two books. The first 39 books of the Bible are called “The Old Testament,” or “old agreement” God made with people. And the final 27 books, which begin with the life of Jesus, are called, “The New Testament” or “new agreement” God made with people once his son Jesus had given his life for the sin of the world.
Now, for the next five minutes, don’t take notes. Just interact with me. I’ll give you a chance to record it all when we’re through.
The Bible is divided into how many major sections? – Two.
And those two sections are called? - The Old Testament and the New Testament.
Within the Old Testament there are how many books? – 39.
And within the New Testament there are how many books? – 27.
Good, let’s continue.
The Old Testament is divided into three sections: the historical books, the poetical books, and the prophetical books.
There are 17 historical books, 5 poetical books, and 17 prophetical books. – Notice the symmetry? (Don’t write this down, just listen for a minute.)
The 17 historical books can be subdivided into two sections. The first section of the historical books consists of the five books written by Moses and is called the “Pentateuch”. “Penta” is the Greek word for “five,” and “Teuch” is the Hebrew word for “book”. The first section of the historical section is the five books of Moses.
The second section of the historical books has been creatively named, “the other historical books”. So if there are 17 historical books, and 5 of them are the Pentateuch, how many books are in the section called “the other historical books”? – 12.
In the middle of the Old Testament are the five poetical books – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon.
The 17 prophetical books can also be subdivided into two sections. The first section of the prophetical section is called the Major Prophets, and the second section of the prophetical section is called the Minor Prophets. The Major Prophets are called “major” because they had a major message, while the “minor” prophets are called minor because they only contribute minorly to the biblical text. – No, that’s not true.
The Major Prophets are major because they wrote longer books than the Minor Prophets.
Are you with me so far?
Okay, let’s review and get this written down.
There are how many books in the Old Testament?
1. There are 39 books in the Old Testament.
And how can we remember that?
Well, somebody do a quick tally: how many letters are in the word “old”? – 3.
And how many letters are there in the word “testament”? – 9.
Put the 3 with the 9 and you get… 39.
How many books are there in the Old Testament? – 3 and 9 are… 39.
Moving on, how many books are there in the New Testament?
2. There are 27 books in the New Testament.
How can we remember that?
Let’s do another tally: how many letters in the word, “new”? – 3.
And how many letters in the world, “testament”? - still 9.
And what do you get when you multiple 3 x 9? – 27.
We said that the OT is divided into how many sections? – 3.
3. The OT is divided into 3 sections:
And they are called the…
a. Historical
b. Poetical
c. Prophetical
The historical sectional breaks down into two subsections. The first is called…? – The Pentateuch. The second is called…? – The Other Historical Books.
a. Historical
1. The Pentateuch
2. The Other Historical Books
So the historical section has how many books? – 17.
The Pentateuch has how many books? – 5.
And the Other Historical Books has how many? – 12.
a. Historical – 17
1. The Pentateuch - 5
2. The Other Historical Books - 12
The poetical section has 5 books.
b. Poetical – 5
And the prophetical section has 17 books, with 5 Major Prophets and 12 Minor Prophets.
c. Prophetical – 17
1. Major Prophets – 5
2. Minor Prophets – 12
Let’s keep going.
The New Testament is also divided into three sections. The first section is called the historical section again, but the second section is called the “epistles”. The Epistles were the wives of the Apostles. – No, the word Epistle is an old English word for a “letter”. The Epistles were letters written by the Apostles to teach Christians how to live.
The final section of the New Testament is the book of Revelation, which is a prophetic book. So the New Testament breaks down like this:
4. The NT is divided into 3 sections:
a. Historical – 5 (the four gospels which tell the story of the life of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the book of Acts, which tells the story of the founding and spread of the early church.)
The second section is
b. Epistles – 21 (there are 21 of them. 13 of them were written by the Apostle Paul, one was written by Jesus’ half-brother, two were written by the Apostle Peter, three by the Apostle John, and another one of Jesus’ half-brothers wrote the book of Jude. – Guess what his name was? (You got it – Jude.) No one knows for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews. You’ll read about that in the very first chapter of The Bible Questions when you get up and read it tomorrow morning.
And the final section of the NT is:
c. Prophetical – 1 (and one book is found there – the book of Revelation, written by the Apostle John.)
Friends, I have a college degree in Bible, and you now know more about the structure of the Bible than I did when I graduated.
One of the great Bible Questions is, “How do we know that what is in this is anything like what was written so many years ago? After all, the Bible is so old that it’s been copied over and over and over again. Errors have crept in, so we don’t really know what it said or is supposed to say.”
When someone says that, I always hold my tongue, because the first thought that comes into my mind is usually, “baloney”!
Friends, the Bible is incredibly accurate. It’s not like a game of telephone, where you whisper something in my ear and I whisper it to the next person and as the message goes around the circle, it gets garbled and confused.
The Bible is like no other book. And it’s been cared for and copied like no other book in history.
How reliable is the Bible of today, compared to how it was originally written?
3. The Bible’s Reliability:
Let’s start with the New Testament. The New Testament was written in Greek. And when scholars want to make a fresh translation, they don’t look at an English or French or German copy and translate from there. They go back to the original Greek language and re-translate from there.
And how do they know which Greek copies to translate from?
A group called The United Bible Society has catalogued the age, quality, and location of over 5,300 ancient Greek manuscripts, and they update the latest manuscriptic discoveries every 2 or 3 years. Right now the Nestle/Aland UBS Greek New Testament is in its 27th Edition.
http://www.ubs-translations.org/cat/biblical_texts/greek_scriptures_and_reference/new_testament/
Besides those 5,000 Greek manuscripts, we have 10,000 copies of the Latin translation and more than 9,300 copies in other ancient languages—24,000 manuscripts in all. This means that when a scholar or translator wants to determine the most likely wording of the original text, he or she has a mountain of documents he can consult.
Compare the New Testament’s 24,000 copies to the second-best preserved work of history, which is Homer’s Iliad. When someone wants to check the reliability of their translation of the Iliad, they have 643 ancient copies to compare, so no one questions the reliability of the text of the Iliad.
When it comes to the reliability of the text of the New Testament, here’s the scorecard:
a. NT = 24,000 ancient manuscripts
Homer = 643
Demosthenes = 200
Sophocles = 193 and it drops significantly from there. The next most prolific manuscript is
Aristotle = 49
Here’s what that looks like:
The New Testament is the most intellectually verifiable document in history. Its reliability is rivaled by only one other book. Do you know what that might be? – The Old Testament.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with 6 chapters of the book of Daniel written in Aramaic during Daniel’s exile in Babylon. The Old Testament is a Jewish document, and the Jews treated their Scriptures so sacredly that whenever a copy got old and shabby, they burned it in solemn ceremony.
BUT, where New Testament copyists were careful in their work, Old Testament copyists were anal-retentive.
From A.D. 100 to 500, a group called, “The Talmudists” were in charge of the holy text.
b. The Talmudists – A.D. 100 to 500
According to their rules, synagogue scrolls had to be written on specifically prepared skins of clean animals. Each skin had to contain a specific number of columns. Each column had to be between forty-eight and sixty lines, and thirty letters wide. The spacing between consonants, sections and books was precise, measured by hairs or threads. The ink had to be black, from a specific recipe. The transcriber could not deviate from the text in any manner. No word could be written from memory. Each copyist had to wash his body, work in full Jewish dress and not write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink. Their official mandate was, “And should a king address him while writing that name, he must take no notice of him.”
From A.D. 500 to 900, a second group, called the Masoretes oversaw the text.
c. The Masoretes – A.D. 500 to 900
The Masoretes numbered the verses, words and letters of each book and calculated the midpoint of each one. When a scroll was complete, independent sources counted the number of words and syllables forward, backward and from the middle of the text in each direction.
Up until 1947, we didn’t really have a standard by which to measure how accurate these Old Testament copyists were because our oldest copy of the Old Testament was from 900 A.D.
But in March of 1947, a young Bedouin boy named Muhammed edh-Dhib threw a rock into a cave and heard some pottery break. What he found was a group of well-preserved documents that we now call, “The Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Six hundred manuscripts were found, all dating from before the time of Christ. So now we could compare our 900 A.D. document to some 100 B.C. documents and have an accuracy check of 1,000 years.
How did we do?
Dr. Gleason Archer reported that when the scroll of the book of Isaiah was examined, “These proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. The 5% variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations of spelling.” – Dr. Gleason Archer
In concrete terms:
Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters [in the Qumran scroll that differ from the standard Masoretic Text]. Ten of those letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the [meaning]. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word “light,” which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly.
The Bible passes the accuracy test flying colors.
d. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm the OT’s reliability.
When you hold a Bible in your hand, you hold exactly the concepts and ideas that were originally written there.
Which is impressive. But reliability does not insure accuracy. So, just how accurate is the Bible when it comes to subjects we live with every day, subjects, like science and history?
4. The Bible’s Scientific and Historical Accuracy:
Let’s start with science. The Bible is not a scientific textbook. But it does describe how the universe works. Consider the following, and then give it a grade. [If you want to see the reference for these, you can find them on p. 77 of my earlier book, The God Questions.]
What the Bible says: What people thought: What we now know:
Earth is a sphere. Earth is a flat disk. Earth is a sphere.
Number of stars = Number of stars = Number of stars =
more than a billion. 1,100. more than a billion.
Every star is different. All stars are the same. Every star is
different.
Light is in motion. Light is fixed in place. Light is in motion.
Air has weight. Air is weightless. Air has weight.
Winds blow in Winds blow straight. Winds blow in
cyclones. cyclones.
Blood is a source of Sick people must be Blood is a source of
life and healing. bled. life and healing.
[Note: Show all of these on 1-2 PPT slides, and just cover the first 3 or 4 says, “The Bible says…” “People thought…” “Guess what we discovered?...” Then cut it off with, “And the list goes on.”]
Astronomer Robert Jastrow sums it up this way. “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream… he is about to conquer the highest peak [of scientific truth]; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Robert Jastrow, The Intellectuals Speak Out About God
Here’s what I’d say about science:
a. When scientists disagree with the Bible, they are eventually proven wrong.
And how about history? Many people have questions about the Bible’s historical accuracy.
For time’s sake, we’ll just cover two examples.
One is The Hittites. The O.T. makes frequent reference to a people group called The Hittites
For centuries, historians were unable to find a trace of these supposed neighbors of the Israelites. So, they concluded the Hittites never existed. They were a myth cooked up by some biblical authors to make points that couldn’t be substantiated by actual history.
Then, in 1906, an archeological dig confirmed the existence of the Hittite nation. Archeologists even unearthed the capital city of the Hittites and 40 other cities of its empire.
A second example: King Belshazzar. Say “Belshazzar”.
In Daniel chapter 5, the Bible says that a man named Belshazzar was king of Babylon during the Persian invasion. [Note: for a fuller description of this, see my book Future History, chapter 5.]
Common historical understanding said that Nabonidus was king when Persia invaded. Say “Nabonidus”.
Scholars trumpeted this as a blatant inaccuracy. But, in 1956, archeologists unearthed three stones that contained the inscribed information that solved the problem.
In 539 B.C., while Cyrus the Great was laying siege to Babylon, Nabonidus was on a campaign in Northern Arabia. In his absence, he had crowned his son co-regent and king in his place. His son’s name was…? Belshazzar.
Friends, time after time, historians have declared the Bible to be historically inaccurate. Then, they excavate a new site somewhere and find that, lo and behold, their records were incomplete.
Here’s what we can say about history and the Bible:
b. When historians disagree with the Bible, they are eventually proven wrong.
No other book is like that. Because the Bible is a book like no other.
5. No Other Book Has Been More Greatly Anticipated
Last week we learned about the Motilone Indians, who waited for a white man to bring God’s banana stalk.
Another people who were waiting were the Wa people. Say “Wa”.
In the 1890’s, Marcus Young moved his family to the country of Burma, which is now called Myanmar. He was digging a well one day when he noticed some mountain tribesmen starring down into the hole he was in.
The tribesmen asked him, “Have you brought the book of God?”
They then explained that a prophet named Pu Chan had saddled his pony and commanded these men to follow the pony to the white man with the book of God. They gave the pony it’s head and it traveled 200 miles over mountain passes until it stopped at Marcus Young’s well.
Young climbed out of his hole, up the mountain, and led 100,000 Wa to Christ over the next few decades.
No other book could do that, because the Bible is a book like no other.
6. No Other Book Has Been More Greatly Resisted
The Bible has been burned and banished by more people and cultures than any other book. For centuries the only translation of the Bible available to the peoples of Europe was a fourth-century Latin translation called the Vulgate. Only priests and scholars knew Latin, so around the year 1500, William Tyndale decided to translate the Bible into English.
After Tyndale’s Bible was published, the Catholic Church had it burned, and placed a bounty on his head. Tyndale was convicted of heresy and strangled to death. Then they burned his body, just for good measure. Tyndale’s final words were “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes.” Four years later, the king ordered not one but four English translations to be made. All of them were based on Tyndale’s translation.
The Bible is like no other book.
The Bible is the bestselling book of all time. Today it is mass produced in 2,400 languages, selling 25 million copies per year.
It was the first book translated into a foreign language.
It was the first book printed on a printing press.
The first book telegraphed on a telegraph machine.
The first book in outer space.
The first book on the moon.
It’s the most visited book in the world – the Book of Kells, which is an 8th century Irish version of the Bible, is visited every year by 500,000 people at Dublin’s Trinity University Library.
Maybe the most unique thing about the Bible is that people who start to read it find that they never finish reading it. They’ll read its sixty-six books and then begin again. They’ll read one chapter and read it over again the next day.
Maybe even more unique is that when you read it, it read you. It evaluates the thoughts and attitudes of your heart and helps you to see yourself for who you really are.
This is a book like no other.
So, your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to:
Assignment:
1. Get a Bible.
If you don’t have one, we have free copies available at our Information Center.
2. Join a Bible Questions Small Group.
You can register on the sheet in your Program today, or stop by the Small Groups table in the lobby if you need more information. This week our groups will be doing “Study #1,” on p. 176 of The Bible Questions. [Check this against final page numbering.] I think you’ll find it helpful.
3. Pick up a copy of The Bible Questions for each adult and teen in your family.
You won’t get as much out of it if you try to share. The Bible Questions is designed to be read every day for 20 days, and if you have to share, you won’t be able to mark your copy and you may not be able to read it when you want to because someone else is reading it. And we’re all officially starting Monday. Read chapter one Monday, chapter 2 Tuesday, chapter 3 Wednesday, etc. Read five chapters this week, five next week, and five for each of the two weeks after that. If you miss a day Monday-Friday, catch up on Saturday or Sunday.
4. Consider getting 10 copies and using them to invite friends to join us.
Invite your friends to join us next week when we’ll begin reading the book together and meeting in small groups together and the REAL first message of the series begins. – Next week.
If your friends are near, invite them to church and to your group. If your friends are far away, invite them to join us for Church Online at 9:30 Sunday mornings, or to watch the archived version of the message after it posts on Tuesday nights.
And you can help us start a Bible Reading Revolution by tweeting and posting what you’re doing on FB.
Intentions are great, but sometimes we get distracted once we leave this room, so just before I pray, turn to someone next to you and in 10 seconds or less, tell them what you’re going to do about these applications this week.
Pray these words out loud after me:
Lord Jesus,
Start a Bible reading revolution
In me.
Transform me.
Renew my mind.
I give you my life.
Life in me this week.
In Jesus’ name, Amen!
Hal Seed
The Bible Questions Campaign Kit is available at www.pastormentor.com
