Brigham Bryant was just a ten year old school boy, but in 2002, he discovered an ancient treasure. He had long admired the dusty painting hanging behind the librarian’s desk at his Connecticut school. It had hung there for seventy years without much notice, but Brigham’s curiosity led to the discovery of this ancient treasure.
One day he told his father about this painting that he loved. The description piqued his father’s interest. He went to see it for himself. Although dark and dingy from years of neglect, Brigham’s father discovered it to be a masterpiece by Walter Craine.
This fixture in the school library, ignored by most who visited, turned out to be worth over a million dollars. (April 16, 2002 - source: Reuters/Rense.com)
That story reminds me of the discoveries on the “Antique Roadshow”. Have you seen this PBS hit, which features everyday people who ask experts to determine the value of their family heirlooms? “This bowl has been in my family for generations. My grandmother brought it with her when she immigrated from Europe.” The expert examines the glazing, the shape, the markings on the bottom and then pronounces its value. “This is no ordinary bowl. It’s worth one thousand dollars!”
Makes you want to dig through your kitchen cabinets and find out if you have any ancient treasures hiding there. Let me give you some advice. If your bowls say “Rubbermaid” on the bottom, they are not ancient treasures.
You may not have valuable antiques in your living room or masterpieces hanging on your walls, but each of you has an invaluable ancient treasure. It’s on your book shelves, or lying on your bedside table. It’s probably lying beside you right now. Go ahead and pick it up- that Bible of yours. It doesn’t matter if it’s paperback or leather bound, written in King James English or the language of the streets. Your Bible is a priceless ancient treasure and you should feel honored to possess it.
The word Bible is from the Greek word for “book”. It was the common word for all written documents, but it soon came to refer to THE BOOK- the Holy Scriptures that have been cherished by millions throughout history. What makes this book so special, so revered? Because this book was authored by God himself. Paul told Timothy that “all Scripture is inspired.” (2 Timothy 3:16). We may use the word “inspired” to refer to any great work of art or literature, but the word Paul used means “God breathed”. Those thin pages filled with print represent the very words of God, his message, breathed out for our reading.
It all began on Mount Sinai. That’s where humanity first received a written record of God’s will. Those ancient words began with ten simple commandments. “I should be your only God. You should not worship any man made gods. Don’t misuse my name. Keep my Sabbath holy. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t covet the possessions of others.” Those stone tablets were written in God’s own handwriting, but the commandments bore the markings of the very heart of our Creator.
The recent conflict over the monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama courthouse testifies to the power of those words. No other statue would have stirred the hearts of so many. No other words have fostered such devotion. No other words have displayed such power.
But the real power of those words are seen in the way they have shaped human nature. In World War II, US soldiers marched onto a Pacific Island as the Japanese retreated. The natives there came out to greet the soldiers, carrying their Bibles with them. When one of the locals approached one soldier, holding out his Bible, the soldier said, “We’ve outgrown that sort of thing.” The native said, “You ought to be glad we haven’t. If it weren’t for this book, we would be eating you now.”
From the deepest jungles of Africa to the urban landscape of our biggest cities, people measure right and wrong based on these ancient words. The very structure of society is held together by a shared understanding of right and wrong. Sociologists may say these come from human nature and an inbred desire to survive and prosper, but we know the truth. We hold murderers accountable, punish thieves, show respect and expect it in return because God revealed these ancient truths to us. And even though we don’t always live up to these high ideals, our basic sense of right and wrong ties back to the words on those two stone tablets. The very words printed in your Bibles.
Those words were so precious that throughout history, Godly men and women have continued to call people back to those ancient truths. Many of these were called prophets- God’s mouthpieces, announcing His message to people through many generations. Peter said these men never expressed their own opinions, but were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak the very words of God (2 Peter 1:21). What an awesome responsibility that was. Nowhere is that better seen than when God called Isaiah to speak for him. Read the story from the ancient words in your Bibles.
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke” (Is 6:1-4).
The sight of the powerful presence of the Lord shook Isaiah to the core. “Woe to me!” he cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:5)
Then the Lord asked a startling question. “Who will go for us?” Think about that for a few minutes. The maker of Heaven and earth asks someone to go speak for him. That’s when Isaiah spoke up. “Here I am. Send me.” And God did. In fact the book of Isaiah in your Bibles is God’s message to his troubled people, urging them to stop their sinful living- warning them of the hard times that await them if they didn’t - and finally comforting them with a message of hope after they were defeated by neighboring nations. Those ancient words were not spoken to just one people at one time in history. They were spoken for all to read and learn. They announced the coming Messiah seven hundred years before he was born in Bethlehem’s manger. They announced his suffering on the cross, the sword in his side, his death as the ultimate sacrifice. The pages of your Bibles may have been printed in this new century, but they are the ancient words of God’s spokesmen dating back three thousand years. Words first written down three thousand years ago, but as relevant today as they were when first put down on parchment.
All of those ancient words point to one event in human history - the presence of God in flesh and blood - Jesus the Christ. He called men like Matthew the tax collector, and John, a Galilean fisherman and his friend Peter. These average Joe’s, sometimes less than average, became the greatest messengers of all time, carrying the good news of Jesus to a blind and lost world. And although they first spread that message orally, they soon decided that this message needed to be recorded for future generations as well. So Peter shared his memoirs with Mark who wrote them down. And Matthew recorded his story too. Luke never met Jesus, but interviewed the eye witnesses and recorded his gospel for a friend named Theophilus. And last of all, John, as an old man, shared the story of his time with Jesus to a generation who could only imagine what it was like to walk with God’s Son.
The gospels that begin your New Testament are not fables or exaggerated accounts written hundreds of years after Jesus walked this planet. They are ancient words of eye witnesses who heard Jesus preach the words, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”. They saw him bring sanity to the demon possessed man in the graveyard, and sight to the man born in blindness. They were the ones who watched Lazarus walk out of that tomb after being dead three days, and they saw Jesus suddenly appear in a locked room, still wearing the wounds of death on his hands and in his side. Thousands of books have been written about Jesus - some to praise him, others to criticize. But none are the words of people who have looked into his eyes and touched his hands. None ever heard the inflection in his voice or saw his smile. Only the testimony of these four men - only these gospels- these ancient words speak with that authority. And you posses that treasure in the Bibles you hold in your hands today.
And we haven’t even looked at the great writings of Paul. A belated eye witness of the resurrected Jesus and chosen spokesman for God. He wrote with confidence, knowing that the words he penned were given to him by God’s Spirit. In fact, he told the Christians at Thessalonica that they accepted his message, “ not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13) Paul felt humbled by his calling as God’s mouthpiece and was driven by that responsibility.
He knew how precious God’s message was to people. His words were just a part of that ongoing message that began with those stone tablets on Mt. Sinai. And to be a vessel for those words, to hold them and read them, and to share them – there is no greater mission in life. In fact, as Paul suffered in the dungeons in Rome during his final imprisonment, awaiting his death and disheartened by the many who deserted him in tough times, Paul writes to Timothy, asking him to come to see him quickly. He tells Timothy to bring the coat he left in Troas (the nights must have been cold in that underground prison). And he makes sure Timothy brings one more thing - the parchments. Don’t forget my Scriptures. I need to read God’s words of hope. I need to hear his promises, to remember his faithfulness, to see his love in print. These are the same ancient words you read when you open the pages of your Bible. The word’s Paul yearned for as he saw his death approaching.
They are the words people have treasured throughout history - some at the cost of their very lives. It’s hard for us to imagine a time when owning a Bible was a crime punishable by death, but ancient graves are filled with bodies of people who were executed because they refused to give up their ancient words. Bishop Felix served God during the reign of Diocletian, emperor of Rome. It was 303 A.D. when Diocletian decided he had had enough of this Christian movement and committed to destroy it by first eradicating it’s holy writings. All Christian Scriptures were ordered to be handed over to the authorities for destruction. When they local officials came to Felix, he refused to hand them over. He was arrested and shipped off to Rome. History records that on August 30, 303 A.D. Bishop Felix, “with pious obstinance laid down his life rather than surrender his gospels.” (Theology for Ordinary People, Shelley, p. 34.)
Would anyone sacrifice so much for a book today? But the Bible is no ordinary book. It’s an ancient treasure, so precious that men and women gave their lives so that you and I could freely own several copies of what was once contraband material. Even in our era, people from super powers and simple villages are threatened with death if they own a Bible, and many pay the ultimate price because they see those ancient words are the only source of hope. Before you toss that Bible aside, think about how much it cost others.
Those treasured words are mass produced today on huge presses. They’re bound by high speed machines and mass marketed in Wal-Mart. They appear on cards and bumper stickers, in power point presentations and on web sites, instantly available across the globe by people searching to hear God’s message. But it wasn’t so easy to posses a Bible. In the ancient times, copies were hand written and skillfully trained men served as scribes- the ancient Xerox machines, producing copies at a snail’s pace that were worth their weight in gold.
These copyist were so dedicated to their task that they tried to assure that all copies were exact duplicates of the originals. The scribes were highly skilled men who apprenticed under expert transcribers of the text. A scribe did not copy sentence for sentence or even word for word. He copied letter for letter. Their exactness can be seen in Jesus’ statement that there’s a greater chance of heaven and earth passing away than for the smallest stroke of a pen - a single comma or period - to be eradicated from the Scriptures (Luke 16:17). It was that kind of precision that was expected from the scribes.
If a page had 288 words in it, the copy had to have 288 words. These scribes knew exactly how many letters were in each of the books of Scripture. (There are 78,064 letters in the book of Genesis). They knew how many of each letter appeared in a book. They knew the letter that marked the exact center of a book and each of these tests much match exactly from copy to original. If they did not, the copy that took weeks to complete was destroyed and a new copy was begun.
The greatest example of this is seen in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These ancient writings were penned one hundred years before the time of Christ and stored in jars near the Dead Sea. Discovered in 1947, they represented the greatest biblical discovery of the century. Until their discovery, the oldest manuscripts of Old Testament Scriptures only dated back to 900 A.D. Now scholars possessed copies of some Old Testament books that were 1000 years older. Many wondered how much would be different. How much changed over a thousand years of copying? How many errors would now be discovered and corrected? They began to compare their book of Isaiah to the newly discovered copy 1000 years older and discovered that only one word in the whole book differed between the two manuscripts. One word over one thousand years.
There is no more carefully studied ancient book in all of history. None other has such a well established record. There are only 643 ancient copies of Homer’s Iliad. There are over 15,000 ancient copies of the New Testament Scriptures. Each has been carefully studied, tested, compared, and verified, all to make sure that the Scriptures in your laps today represents as accurately as possible the very words of God expressed through the original authors. What you have is truly an ancient treasure.
But the translation of these words into English has been a relatively recent accomplishment. We cannot imagine not having the Bible in our native language. There are more Bibles printed in English than in any other language in the world today, but until 1536, there were no English Bibles. Not only were there no English Bibles, but the Roman Catholic church was opposed to translating the Bible into English. For a variety of reasons, they wanted the Bible to remain in Latin. This served to keep the words of God out of the hands of the common people. Although few could read, even those who could read could not read the treasured words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
All that ended with the courageous work of William Tyndale, who produced the first Bible in the English language. Upon it’s completion, he said, ““I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God’s Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches, might be given me." You would think that such an accomplishment was cause for celebration. Instead, it caused Tyndale’s death. He was burned at the stake for making God’s ancient words available to the masses.
The pretty gold edged pages of your leather Bibles have been purchased by the blood of people like Isaiah the prophet, and Matthew the apostle. Like Paul the evangelist and Felix the shepherd. And like William Tyndale the translator, as well as hundreds and thousands of others who have worked to enlighten people across this world to the ancient words of our Creator and Savior. The Psalmists says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path . . . Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart” (Ps 119:105, 111) . The truth of this statement has lead many to pay the ultimate sacrifice so that you could open your Bibles here today.
It’s been translated in over 2000 languages. It’s served to overthrow ruthless governments, sparked mass migrations across oceans, and more than once changed the course of history. Many have tried to destroy it, but it has outlasted all of it’s attackers. It is the eternal word of God, the greatest story ever told, the ancient treasure we all possess and the message of hope that grounds our lives. It’s the Bible like you’ve never seen it before - a precious treasure, just waiting for you to dust it off and open it up. Why don’t you discover it anew today.
