Week 1
Week 1 Video: Can I Trust the Bible?
- One of the most frequent arguments about the reliability of Scripture is the confidence of
Jesus in the Old Testament
- Spoke of the Law
- Writings in the Prophets
- His resurrection indicates God’s approval of his teaching
- Reliable
- Comes from God
- Jesus makes preparation for the unwritten New Testament
- “You are my witnesses”
- “Those who receive your words have received mine”
- “The Holy Spirit will guide you”
- Jesus provided for the unwritten New Testament
- Apostles were the key to the New Testament
- Resurrection is the best argument of reliability
- New Testament reliability
- One dozen separate arguments
- Manuscript Evidence
- Good manuscript report means that what we have is what was written
- Do we have the New Testament as it was written?
- Yes
- Even atheist scholars agree that we have enough to prove it
- New Testament is as good as it gets
- No other ancient world work has as much evidence
- 5800 Greek Manuscripts
- Over 20.000 copies including latin
- Different parts together answer questions
- Early manuscripts
- Nothing is missing
- Authorship
- Four gospels
- Epistles of Paul
- Majority view of scholars
- Mark is the author of Mark
- Peter as main source
- Luke is the author of Luke/Acts
- John wrote John/was a witness
- Each of the four gospels/Acts are believed to have sources
- Luke 1:1-4
- I checked with eye witnesses and I have data
- Matthew has source “M”
- Luke has a source called “L”
- Mark is a passion narrative
- A source from his trial to his empty tomb
- 40 AD at the latest
- Acts
- Sermon summaries
- 1-5
- 10
- 13
- 17
- Luke record snippets of the earliest sermons
- Centers on the death of Jesus
Week 1 Reading: Everyday Bible Study Chp. 1&2, 4&5
Chapter 4
Old Testament Books
- Narrative
- Genesis, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samual, 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronic;es, Ezra,
Nehemiah
- A common mistake made among readers is to interpret these stories to be about
21st century issues
- We MUST understand the historical context of these chapters
- This mistake leads to readers thinking that the promises made in the Old
Testament are for us, and not the Israelites
- Another mistake is seeing these stories as symbolic
- These stories are not meant to be cryptic, mysterious messages that God
has placed in the Bible for us to riddle out
- It is better to look at these stories with a straightforward attitude
- Understand historical settings, characters, and plot first
- Approach an Old Testament story in this way:
- Where does it fit in the entire story of the Bible?
- Allows a sense of context
- Where does the story fit into the Bible theologically?
- Where does the story fit into the landscape of the Old Testament?
- How did God work directly with Israel?
- How can these principles apply to me?
- Law
- Old Testament laws were about relationships
- Leviticus, Deutoronomy, Exodus, and Numbers serve to set up the governance
for two types of relationship
- Horizontal
- How the Israelite people should act in a relationship with others
- Vertical
- Guided the Israelite people to a proper relationship with God
- How to worship and become closer to him
- Study the Old Testament law with the context of the culture
- Pentateuch: The books of the law
- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
- Narrative books in the Pentateuch
- An understanding of the Law comes from an
understanding of how God operated among his
people
- If the Law is an ‘outdated’ part of Christiantiy, why should we study it?
- The Bible is God’s word
- To understand the New Testament, we must understand the Old
Testament
- The character of God in the Old Testament is still relevant today
- The New Testament reapplies the Old Testament law
- The New Testament restates the two greatest commandments.
Love God and love others
- Vertical and Horizontal Law
- Psalms
- Psalms are sacred hymns or prayers
- Psalms is set apart from scripture because they are written to God
- This makes it important to interpret and understand
- Psalms engages the emotions (pathos) and express truths (logos)
- Psalms uses figurative language to make what is being said easier to understand
- “A man who delights in the Lord is like a tree planted by rivers of water”
- What is the value of a tree planted by a river?
- It is fed, and may grow strong
- It grows deep roots that can sustain the tree
- It will grow healthy and fruitful
- Connect the metaphor to the statement
- How is the man who delights in the Lord like a tree planted by a
river?
- Nourished by God’s word
- Healhy in his faith
- Fruitful and successful in his deeds
- Symbolic language is the key to understanding the Psalms
- Wisdom
- Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
- Proverbs is one of the most notable books of the Bible regarding Wisdom
- Considered to be one of the most practical books
- Contains many instances of wise advise to live by
- A mistake made by readers of Proverbs is that they are ‘legally binding’ promises
- “The lazy man is destined for poverty”
- While this statement is generally true, there are some instances
where there are exceptions
- The statements made in Proverbs are nonexauhstive. Their purpose is to guide
you, not to dictate every aspect of your life
- Read the Proverbs together.
- Isolating statements made in Proverbs removes their context and allows
for misinterpretation
- Prophets
- Major and Minor prophet titles are there to separate them by length, not my
importance
- Major Prophets
- Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel
- Minor Prophets
- Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk,
Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
- A better way to categorize these prophets are by preexilic, exilic, and postexilic
- Preexilic
- Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah
- Exilic
- Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel
- Postexilic
- Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
- To understand the prophetic books, you need to understand the prophets.
- Messengers of God
- The message was not always negative. It was a response from God to
the actions of the Israelites
- The prophetic books need to be understood within their historical context
- Unpacking scripture is much easier when one understands what is
happening around it
Chapter 5
How Not to Look at the Bible
- Incorrect View #1: The Bible is Filled with Nothing but Practical Principles for Life
- The Bible does not provide instructions for every detail of life
- There is an assumption that Scripture is supposed to be used as a practical
application for 21st century problems
- The Bible provides practical truths, however it is incorrect to believe that it
ends there
- Christians will miss out on the beaty and truth of the Bible if they do not
look for theological implications
- This perspective fits with the 21st century idea that we are the masters of our
destiny
- It is not outlining the path we must choose to save ourselves
- It is the path God chose to redeem humanity
- The Bible is not solely about how to best navigate this life, it is also about
self-sustaining truths that last for eternity
- Incorrect View #2: The Bible is a List of Rules and Regulations
- The Bible is not a huge rulebook where every verse must be obeyed
- Events in the Bible become checklists for our lives, a long list of
impossible standards we could never achieve that ignores the historical
context surrounding it
- This line of thinking limits the Bible to a handbook. An instruction manual for how
to have the best and most fulfilling life.
- While the Bible does contain rules and instructions for life, these commands are
a warning for believers.
- The rules of the Bible are there to show us how desperate our human condition
is. We will never be able to live up to the standard that God has set out for us
- We cannot be that good for that long
- This view of scripture also negates Christ. If we can follow the rules long enough
to become perfect, then there is no need for the sacrifice that Christ gave
- Finall, this view of scripture has a poor understanding of how God’s redemption
works
- If we are just following rules, there is no need for Christ, and then there is
no need for God’s plan
- Incorrect View #3: The Bible is Book Containing Role Models for My Life
- People who think this way want to pick up the patterns that the characters in the
Bible portray
- The characters in the Bible are sinful. To copy their patterns is to copy
their sins. These people could not have been the ‘role models’ that they
are today had they not been redeemed by God
- This view fails to see what direction Scripture is going. It puts people in
the place of God. Scripture is about the unfolding of God’s plan, and
therefore we should strive to see him in everything that we do
- The Bible’s purpose is to draw our attention to Christ
Monday 08/22/22
How Not to Look at the Bible
- Myth 1: The Bible is a Roadmap for Life
- Myth 2: The Bible is an instruction manual for my life
- High View of man
- Low View of Jesus
- Incenuates that you can become good enough to not need jesus
- Assumes that everything in the bible is an instruction
- Christ’s sacrifice means nothing if we can do it on our own
- “What do I need to do?”
- Not an instruction manual
- Myth 3: Role models and heroes
- People in the bible are idolized and seen as role models, when they are not
meant or portrayed as such
- Scripture points towards Christ, not me
- Biblical figures live in a different context than ours
How to Look at the Bible
- The bible is God’s story
- Rescue
- Redemption
- Restoration
- Birth, dead, and ascencion of Christ
- It is a story of our redemption through the work of Christ
The Bible is…
- Gods’s story
- He is the central character
- God’s Story
- A book of stories woven together to make one unified story
- Starts in a garden and ends in a city
The Bible is God’s story about his plan
- Different characters and application, but all about God
- NOT about characters
- NOT about Me
- Reading the bible means reading the plan of God. We see him work out his will through
the characters seen in the stories of the Bible. Each story serves to push along God’s
plan and point to Christ
Rescue, Redeem, Restore
- Rescue: Unable to save ourselves. We need God to come and drag us out of our sin
(Genesis 3)
- Redeem: Set free by the work of Christ
- Restore: The restoration of the relationship between humanity and God
- We take on the righteousness of Christ, Christ takes on our sin. This happens through
the event of the cross.
- We cannot do this on our own, we need the redemptive power of Christ
- Verses to Know
- Exodus 34:6-7 & Nehemiah 9
- Calamity was their fault
- God was patient, merciful, and gracious for a long time
- God is relational. He wants to maintain the relationship that he has with
sinful people
- Amos 4
- God sets up warning signs
- “I stopped your crops from growing, yet you didnt return to
me…”
- God tries to draw the israelite people to himself,
and yet they do not return to him
God’s Character
- God is deeply relational
- The characteristics of God are that which drive the Old Testament story
- He is loving and compassionate. He is still working towards restoration!
- He is inviting us to love him deeply
Wednesday 08/24/22
The Grand Narrative or the Bible’s Big Story
- Creation
- Fall
- Remption
- New Creation
- Four main “acts” of Scripture
- Know how to categorize each passage into one of these categories
Creation
- Tells the story about God and Humanity
- Only one has a beginning (Humans)
- God does not have a beginning
- Created in his image
- Character introduction
- Tells us how things should be
- “New Creation” will be heavily influenced by how we understand creation
- God is:
- Sovereign
- He is God, no one else is
- He has absolute control
- Not a single circumstance can occur outside his control
- He does what he pleases whenever he wants and in whatever place he
wants
- God can be trusted
- This story would be combatting other gods, and showing that he
has absolute control over all creation
- He is bound in relationship to his people
- The one who has power is protecting and comforting us, not
antagonizing us
- Wise
- God manages the universe in absolute wisdom
- God has perfect perspective: He doesnt just see more, he sees all
- Unsurpised by things that happen
- Knows how to respond and how to dispense his love and
compassion
- Good
- God’s goodness is not a mood
- God’s goodness is continuous
- “Show me your goodness”
- God shows his character
- His character is his goodness
- Human Beings:
- Made in the image of God (imago Dei) (Genesis 1:26-27)
- Crown jewel of God’s creation
- “There is something of him in us
- God’s pronouncement over us is “very good”
- Genesis 1:31
- God creates humanity to reflect his glory throughout creation
- We are given dominion over what God created
- We have the ability to reflect Him in our daily lives
Fall
- To understand the fall, we must understand what it is: Rebellion
- What is rebellion?
- Pushing back
- Its not just about law breaking, its about law making
- We want to replace God’s laws with our own
- Example: We are told to love our neighbors, but we break that law and
add to it
- Adding our own conditions to God’s instructions
- What is sin?
- We ignore God’s voice because we like the sound of our own
- We are driven by what we want to hear, not the instructions that God
gives us
- Isaiah 37
- Hezekiah turned to God instead of trying to fix it on his own
- Even if we are at fault, we must turn to God for help
- Sin is not something we can “fix” by doing better
Redemption
- The story of God’s rescue plan
- God’s plan of redemption is not something that can be prevented
- God’s rescue plan is revealed in Genesis 3 with the promise of Jesus
- “The son of man will crush the head of the snake”
- Everything after Genesis 3 is God working out his part of the plan
- God’s plan is revealed throughout the Old Testament
- Exodus 12: A lamb for the family
- Leviticus 16: A lamb for the nation
- John 1: A lamb for the whole world
- Jesus is at the center of the story
- His appearance as the center of the story attracts and disturbs people
- His message is one of good news, not of good advice. The bible is not a rulebook
- Good advice gives people more to do, good news proclaims freedom
- All has been done and no more is necessary
- We do not bring our “doing” to God, we bring our need
- “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”
New Creation
- Restoration
- This is the city that the story is moving towards
- We are not in heaven forever, there will be a new heaven and a new earth
- Our world may be more connected today, but people are no less homesick
- We have access to so many things online
- We are so interconnected, but we still feel a longing for home
- Revelations 21:1-7
- We are moving to this finality
- At the end of the story, we find our ultimate belonging
- What does Home look like?
- It is with God
- Sadness comes untrue
- Some things will be redeemed by being done away with
- Other things will be redeemed by being repaired and restored
Response
- God is not a part of my story, I am a part of God’s story
- What is my relationship to God: A judge or a father?
- A judge will destroy you, a father will restore you
- Ladder: God is my judge. Therefore, I must be good and work my way up to him
- Cross: God is my father. He works his way down to me in order to bring me back to him
