WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.280 All four passages. All four passages. 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:13.900 ! And the bit I want to look at is looking at what does communication mean? 00:00:13.900 --> 00:00:16.899 ! We have communication between people. 00:00:16.899 --> 00:00:21.500 ! And sadly, what we tend to find with people when they communicate, 00:00:21.500 --> 00:00:27.500 communication is full of errors and blunders. 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:31.100 And we've seen this at the level of families. 00:00:31.100 --> 00:00:34.700 We've seen it at the level of nations. 00:00:34.700 --> 00:00:40.100 All sorts of human communication goes wrong. 00:00:40.100 --> 00:00:50.600 It's said that World War One began because of a mistaken telegram sent by the Germans to the British. 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:55.000 It had to be translated from German into English. 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:00.600 And the wrong word was put in English into that telegram. 00:01:00.600 --> 00:01:02.800 One that was harsh. 00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:08.099 When actually the original in German was actually very soft. 00:01:08.099 --> 00:01:16.700 So communication is what happens between us as beings and it's not perfect. 00:01:16.700 --> 00:01:25.100 If we look at communication between God and man, things are on a completely different level. 00:01:25.100 --> 00:01:29.100 We have His Word. 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:33.099 He speaks to us through His Word. 00:01:33.099 --> 00:01:45.500 Everything here is measured, carefully thought out, carefully chosen, so that what we read here lands properly in our lives. 00:01:45.500 --> 00:01:57.900 Now the scriptures were written by God using ordinary men, inspiring them by Him who is the Holy Spirit. 00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:08.300 And the scriptures were written probably over a time of 1500 years or even longer. 00:02:08.300 --> 00:02:12.300 The originals, the originals that were written down. 00:02:12.300 --> 00:02:18.700 The Old Testament from Hebrew, with parts of it in Aramaic. 00:02:18.700 --> 00:02:30.700 The New Testament in Greek, with a few tiny parts of it, again in Aramaic. 00:02:30.699 --> 00:02:42.699 The thing is, unless you're a minister trained properly in these languages, we would struggle with Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. 00:02:42.699 --> 00:02:57.699 So, God in His wisdom has encouraged that these scriptures are translated into the languages of every nation on earth. 00:02:57.699 --> 00:03:05.699 And our benefit here, with both English and Gaelic Bibles, is that we've had them now for hundreds of years. 00:03:05.699 --> 00:03:11.699 Hundreds of years. 00:03:11.699 --> 00:03:18.699 Those who translate them do their work prayerfully, carefully. 00:03:18.699 --> 00:03:27.699 And they ask for the same guidance that the Holy Spirit gave to the original authors. 00:03:27.699 --> 00:03:34.699 They ask for His guidance to help them as they translate Bibles into our languages now. 00:03:35.699 --> 00:03:41.699 Now, looking up as to how many languages the Bible has been translated into, 00:03:41.699 --> 00:03:52.699 Wycliffe Bible translators indicate that the full Bible is now available in about 700 languages. 00:03:52.699 --> 00:03:59.699 The New Testament on its own is available in 1,700 languages. 00:03:59.699 --> 00:04:06.699 And for other languages where only a portion of the scriptures have been translated so far, 00:04:06.699 --> 00:04:15.699 If we add the full Bible, the New Testament, now the portions, about 4,000 languages, 00:04:15.699 --> 00:04:23.699 4,000 languages have at least some part of the scriptures translated into them. 00:04:23.699 --> 00:04:34.699 The thing is, when it comes to language, we often tend to think, 00:04:34.699 --> 00:04:40.699 Well, language is about words, and only words. 00:04:40.699 --> 00:04:44.699 But there's much more to language. 00:04:44.699 --> 00:04:54.699 And if we go back to our school days, we were taught that it was important to get our punctuation right. 00:04:54.699 --> 00:05:01.699 So all the full stops and commas, and all those other marks that we have to put in. 00:05:01.699 --> 00:05:04.699 So punctuation has to be correct. 00:05:04.699 --> 00:05:08.699 Otherwise the meaning can be garbled. 00:05:08.699 --> 00:05:18.699 Another thing about language, although we use words, especially with verbs, we need to get the tenses right. 00:05:18.699 --> 00:05:24.699 Now this is not just for English, but it's for all languages. 00:05:24.699 --> 00:05:31.699 Now what I want to do now is go through the four passages we've read, 00:05:31.699 --> 00:05:38.699 and see how important punctuation or tenses are. 00:05:38.699 --> 00:05:44.699 So looking at our first reading, which was in Genesis chapter 3, 00:05:44.699 --> 00:05:56.699 and I said we would look at verse 22. 00:05:56.699 --> 00:06:01.699 From the beginning of verse 22. 00:06:01.699 --> 00:06:03.699 Then the Lord God said, 00:06:03.699 --> 00:06:08.699 Behold, the man has become like one of us, in knowing good and evil. 00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:17.699 Now lest he reach out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. 00:06:17.699 --> 00:06:23.699 Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden, 00:06:23.699 --> 00:06:26.699 to work the ground from which he was taken. 00:06:26.699 --> 00:06:32.699 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, 00:06:32.699 --> 00:06:38.699 and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. 00:06:38.699 --> 00:06:45.699 The punctuation to notice here, in verse 22. 00:06:45.699 --> 00:06:47.699 Do you see what it says? 00:06:47.699 --> 00:06:56.699 Now lest he reach out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. 00:06:56.699 --> 00:06:59.699 Then there's a dash. 00:06:59.699 --> 00:07:08.699 That dash is one of the most important dashes in the whole of history. 00:07:08.699 --> 00:07:15.699 What the translators say is that that sentence should keep going. 00:07:15.699 --> 00:07:24.699 The context is such that God still has something to say, but he stops. 00:07:24.699 --> 00:07:27.699 He stops. 00:07:27.699 --> 00:07:30.699 And you wonder why. 00:07:30.699 --> 00:07:34.699 The thing is God explains it to us here. 00:07:34.699 --> 00:07:40.699 He's fearful of man eating from the tree of life. 00:07:40.699 --> 00:07:43.699 Now let's put it into a context. 00:07:43.699 --> 00:07:51.699 And for those of you who remember Principal Ivor Martin's sermons at the August Communions last year, 00:07:51.699 --> 00:07:57.699 he made great play of this part of scripture. 00:07:57.699 --> 00:08:02.699 And especially in setting the scene to realize that in the garden of Eden, 00:08:02.699 --> 00:08:05.699 right at the center there were two trees side by side. 00:08:05.699 --> 00:08:10.699 The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 00:08:10.699 --> 00:08:16.699 And as Ivor said in his sermon then, this was about choice. 00:08:16.699 --> 00:08:18.699 This was about choice. 00:08:18.699 --> 00:08:23.699 Did man choose life or did he choose death? 00:08:23.699 --> 00:08:26.699 Sadly, he chose death. 00:08:26.699 --> 00:08:34.700 And what God is saying here is, 00:08:34.700 --> 00:08:40.700 now he's talking about man in a fallen state. 00:08:40.700 --> 00:08:45.700 He's talking about man in a fallen state and he is expressing concern 00:08:45.700 --> 00:08:51.700 that man would reach out and eat from the tree of life and live forever. 00:08:51.700 --> 00:09:00.700 And the effect of that was that man would go on living in a fallen state for all eternity 00:09:00.700 --> 00:09:05.700 with no prospect of salvation. 00:09:05.700 --> 00:09:14.700 So that dash highlights the most awful tragedy in human history. 00:09:14.700 --> 00:09:17.700 The translators also say, 00:09:17.700 --> 00:09:21.700 there's something in there whereby God is saying, 00:09:21.700 --> 00:09:23.700 I must act. 00:09:23.700 --> 00:09:26.700 And God acts quickly. 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:32.700 The awful horror of eternal loss, eternal death. 00:09:32.700 --> 00:09:35.700 God steps in. 00:09:35.700 --> 00:09:38.700 And he drives Adam out of the garden. 00:09:38.700 --> 00:09:41.700 Away from the tree of life. 00:09:41.700 --> 00:09:42.700 Away. 00:09:42.700 --> 00:09:48.700 So that dash is vitally important. 00:09:48.700 --> 00:09:51.700 And the way to look at this is, 00:09:51.700 --> 00:09:55.700 this is God communicating with us, 00:09:55.700 --> 00:09:58.700 even though he doesn't speak. 00:09:58.700 --> 00:10:01.700 This is God communicating with us. 00:10:01.700 --> 00:10:11.700 God is one of the key steps in God's rescue mission. 00:10:11.700 --> 00:10:20.700 God reaching out to save us and ultimately save us due to Jesus' finished work on the cross. 00:10:20.700 --> 00:10:22.700 God's rescue mission. 00:10:22.700 --> 00:10:24.700 God's rescue mission. 00:10:24.700 --> 00:10:32.700 We've seen God here create clothes out of skins for Adam and Eve. 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:38.700 He also then, out of kindness, actually drives them out of Eden 00:10:38.700 --> 00:10:41.700 to protect them from eternal death 00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:45.700 that could never be saved from. 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:57.379 So that's why punctuation is important, especially when we are reading God's Word. 00:10:57.379 --> 00:10:59.840 Let's move on now to Mark. 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:03.259 The issue here is a different one. 00:11:03.259 --> 00:11:14.020 It's to do with tenses. 00:11:14.019 --> 00:11:23.399 At its simplest in our languages, the tenses we use are either the past tense, the present 00:11:23.399 --> 00:11:26.399 tense or the future tense. 00:11:26.399 --> 00:11:33.240 Now that might seem a bit too much like going back to school. 00:11:33.240 --> 00:11:39.279 But at its simplest, tenses are about past, present and future. 00:11:39.279 --> 00:11:44.179 The thing is other languages behave differently when it comes to tenses. 00:11:44.179 --> 00:11:50.559 So our first tense, the first passage we're going to look at, and the same issue appears 00:11:50.559 --> 00:11:52.699 in every single passage. 00:11:52.699 --> 00:11:55.659 But it's not obvious in our English Bibles. 00:11:55.659 --> 00:12:07.439 I'd appreciate it if a Gaelic speaker could maybe just tell me how Gaelic expresses this. 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:16.820 Each of the passages we read, if you look closely, they're all in the past tense. 00:12:16.820 --> 00:12:19.560 They're all in the past tense. 00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:25.860 Because that sounds easiest on our ears in English. 00:12:25.860 --> 00:12:32.240 But in the original Greek, they weren't in the past tense, or they're not in the past tense. 00:12:32.240 --> 00:12:38.240 They're in something called, they're called historical presence. 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:45.240 Historical presence. 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:51.580 This happens again and again in the scriptures, but especially in Mark's Gospel. 00:12:51.580 --> 00:12:56.639 You get this very interesting tense. 00:12:56.639 --> 00:13:03.399 Historical present means the incident happened in the past, but it's told to you in the present 00:13:03.399 --> 00:13:04.399 tense. 00:13:04.399 --> 00:13:14.100 Now what happens in Greek when that's happening is that the Greek historical presence has a 00:13:14.100 --> 00:13:22.460 way of seizing the imagination and making what's been described to you extremely vivid and 00:13:22.460 --> 00:13:25.360 with a lot of emotion. 00:13:25.360 --> 00:13:31.440 Something that you don't get when you read things in the past tense. 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:39.139 So the ones I've chosen, I'll highlight where this historical present is used. 00:13:39.139 --> 00:13:50.759 If you look at verse 29 of Mark 8, it's where Jesus asks, but who do you say that I am? 00:13:50.759 --> 00:13:52.879 It then says, Peter answered him. 00:13:52.879 --> 00:13:55.080 That's the past tense. 00:13:55.080 --> 00:13:59.080 You are the Christ. 00:13:59.080 --> 00:14:05.639 Anyone reading an authorised version will know there are actually two verbs there. 00:14:05.639 --> 00:14:13.759 It says in the authorised version, Peter answered him and said, you are the Christ. 00:14:13.759 --> 00:14:19.939 But in the Greek, both of those verbs are historical presence. 00:14:19.939 --> 00:14:27.299 And the idea there is that instead of this being something just told to you, that your imagination 00:14:27.299 --> 00:14:34.120 is seized and you are taken right back to that incident and you're actually watching it and 00:14:34.120 --> 00:14:35.419 you're hearing what's said. 00:14:35.419 --> 00:14:42.639 And it's the difference as large as in modern life between listening to a radio and then switching 00:14:42.639 --> 00:14:47.819 to a high definition TV with perfect sound. 00:14:47.819 --> 00:14:51.059 It's almost that you're in the scene yourself. 00:14:51.059 --> 00:14:54.159 So that's what's happening here. 00:14:54.159 --> 00:14:56.259 You are the Christ. 00:14:56.259 --> 00:14:59.219 You are almost a witness yourself. 00:14:59.219 --> 00:15:05.279 You're pulled into the story. 00:15:05.279 --> 00:15:10.159 The same happens with the transfiguration. 00:15:10.159 --> 00:15:17.659 When Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain, where it says, after six days, 00:15:17.659 --> 00:15:26.419 Jesus took with him, so that's past tense, Peter and James and John and led, that's past tense, 00:15:26.419 --> 00:15:29.719 up a high mountain. 00:15:29.719 --> 00:15:38.719 Those in Greek, although the bit before was in the past tense, this flips to present tense. 00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:47.779 Again, your imagination is being taken and it's as if you're flying there yourself and in your imagination, 00:15:47.779 --> 00:15:52.279 it's not just that someone else is telling you this, you're actually there. 00:15:52.279 --> 00:16:01.240 And then our last reading, the resurrection. 00:16:01.240 --> 00:16:23.360 If we look at verse 6, verse 6 and 7, the setting here is that the women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, 00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:26.419 they have gone to the tomb. 00:16:26.419 --> 00:16:30.700 Everything's in the past tense there. 00:16:30.700 --> 00:16:32.659 They're desperately sad. 00:16:32.659 --> 00:16:33.659 They do something unusual. 00:16:33.659 --> 00:16:41.500 They actually go into the tomb and then are startled to find a young man dressed in white. 00:16:41.500 --> 00:16:54.019 When he speaks, the tense switches, past tense to present tense, and again with that heightened vividness and that emotion. 00:16:54.019 --> 00:17:00.600 And then would read where he says, and he said to them. 00:17:00.600 --> 00:17:07.559 What it actually says is, and he says to them, do not be alarmed. 00:17:07.559 --> 00:17:12.679 Do seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. 00:17:12.679 --> 00:17:14.799 He has risen. 00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:16.279 He's not here. 00:17:16.279 --> 00:17:18.240 See the place where they laid him. 00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:23.839 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he's going before you to Galilee. 00:17:23.839 --> 00:17:28.359 There you will see him just as he told you. 00:17:28.359 --> 00:17:45.479 Now, if you want an easy way to try and work out where these tenses are, I suggest go to the Christian Bookshop on Kenneth Street and ask if you can buy a new American Standard Bible. 00:17:45.480 --> 00:18:01.460 And what they do is, all through the Gospels, but especially Mark, wherever something has been translated in the past tense, they put little asterisks so that you know that actually the original Greek is in the present tense. 00:18:01.460 --> 00:18:26.660 And then if we take our sequence we've had just now, we've read through, if we go from Genesis 3, the punctuation there told us in God's silence about the awful horror of a lost eternity forever. 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:27.660 The awful horror. 00:18:27.660 --> 00:18:28.660 The awful horror. 00:18:28.660 --> 00:18:37.420 That dash is one of the most important dashes in all history. 00:18:37.420 --> 00:18:53.660 And then when we came to the New Testament, instead of reading these things in the past tense with almost too slow a pace to them, Mark's Gospel is high energy. 00:18:53.660 --> 00:18:54.660 It's vivid. 00:18:54.660 --> 00:18:57.660 It's full of emotion. 00:18:57.660 --> 00:19:12.660 Each of the passages we read, Peter's declaration of Christ, the transfiguration, and then the resurrection, all are in the present tense to make it vivid before each of us. 00:19:12.660 --> 00:19:13.660 Vivid. 00:19:13.660 --> 00:19:22.660 I hope that there is something that you can take away from today. 00:19:22.660 --> 00:19:32.660 And if by Saturday, you're still thinking of something from this sermon, even if it was one thing, then that's precious, precious to you. 00:19:32.660 --> 00:19:39.660 Thank you very much for listening. 00:19:39.660 --> 00:19:41.660 And we'll close. 00:19:41.660 --> 00:19:41.660 00:19:41.660 --> 00:19:42.660 desde desde 00:19:42.660 --> 00:19:42.660 00:19:42.660 --> 00:19:42.660 00:19:42.660 --> 00:19:42.660 00:19:42.660 --> 00:19:42.660 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