This is an enormous topic, and it might almost sound more like a lecture, like Nathan said, than actually a sermon tonight.
I definitely think that we have much to be encouraged from and much to learn, though.
I do love history, but I do think that every believer should make an effort to know church history, particularly.
There's much to learn, much to be encouraged by, and much to be exposed.
It actually is something I've been trying to go through with some guys I'm discipling this year.
And I think they've found some really good benefit in it.
But there's going to be a lot of questions that come up tonight.
We definitely don't have time to cover everything.
But we might have to take a little stretch about halfway through this and keep going on.
I'm going to really try to finish before 10, but if I don't, you know, you can come or go, you know, like whatever you need to say.
Just roll with it tonight.
But I want us to start out by saying that God's Word is a gift of grace to us.
We need to learn to treasure the Word.
I think that we're just so used to having 10 copies of it laying around our house,
and we forget that even today there are nations and languages out there that don't have the Word written in their tongue at all.
And it's just a blessing to have this in front of us.
In theology, there's two kinds of revelation that we talk about.
There's something that we call general revelation,
which is basically this idea of like how creation testifies that there is a God and that He is real and that He has made this.
And that's like what we call general revelation.
It talks about that in Romans 1.
It's enough to tell us that God is because He made all these things.
But the sad part is because of sin, general revelation is not enough to save somebody.
We need specific revelation.
And specific revelation is what you're holding in your hand, or hopefully have.
If you don't have it in your hand, you have it somewhere else.
It specifically tells us who God is and who we are, and we must understand those things.
It's God's direct Word to us, and it's for the salvation of our souls so that we can know God and glorify Him again.
But that's why you can go to tribes all over the world in the most remote places, and they understand that there's a God.
They're like, yeah, obviously.
I try to do some stuff with the Cherokee Indians up in North Carolina on the reservation, and I've learned a little bit about their religion, their ancient religion.
And they're like, yeah, there's a Creator who made all of this, and He used to be revered and respected and honored.
And so, like, wherever we go, like, there's general revelation, but we need specific revelation.
That's what the Bible is.
But the whole point is, like, God didn't have to do this.
He could have just left us to ourselves, and we could have just been destroyed.
But He chose to give us His Word, so we've got to learn to see the Bible as grace, like it's something that we didn't deserve that God gave to us.
This is a quote by Martin Luther.
It says,
Oh, how great and glorious a thing it is to have before one the Word of God.
With that 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.
He who loses the sight of the Word of God falls into despair.
The voice of heaven no longer sustains Him.
He falls on the disorderly tendency of His heart and world vanity, which lead Him to His own destruction.
Some of us know that to be true.
But the Bible is a gift of grace, and the Bible has a lot to say about itself, which is pretty cool.
The Bible proves itself without any kind of outside attention at all.
It, like, says that it is the Word of God.
And this is some things that I want to have in my life and I want you to have in your life.
But I want us to hunger after the Word of God, like to desire it, to want it, to want to know it, and to understand it and believe it.
Job said,
I have not departed from the command of His lips.
I have treasured the word of His mouth more than my necessary food.
That's awesome.
I'll move on down to the third one.
Oh, how I love your law.
It is my meditation all the day.
If you want to look at one psalm that just specifically talks about the Scripture,
Psalm 119 is the largest one in the book, in the whole Bible, actually, the largest chapter in the whole Bible.
It specifically talks about the Word of God and the law of God.
So this is really good to go back and read for all this.
Psalm 119, same psalm of all these.
It says,
I have not turned aside from your ordinances for you yourself have taught me how sweet are your words to my taste.
Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
Read and learn to crave and hunger after God's Word.
Something else about your Bible.
You need to understand that this didn't just pop up out of the printing machine one day.
This has been a long process over hundreds and even thousands of years to get the Bible to us.
It's a bloodstained book.
It's something that Charles Spurgeon said.
Remember that our Bible is a bloodstained book.
The blood of martyrs is on the Bible.
The blood of translators and confessors.
The doctrines we preach to you are the doctrines that have been baptized in blood.
Swords have been drawn to slay the confessors of them.
And there is not a truth which has not been sealed by them at the stake or the block.
So like burning or having to be beheaded at the block.
Well, they have not been slain by the hundreds.
And so as we begin to kind of talk through this, some things might be hard to hear.
I understand that, you know, we're going to talk about the Reformation a little bit
and some of the things that happened during the Protestant Reformation,
specifically the English Reformation.
And there's going to be...
I'm aware that some of you may be Roman Catholic or know people that are Roman Catholic.
I have a lot of really close friends that actually are Catholic.
And I plead with them to understand, like, what the Scripture says about salvation
and about the grace of God.
So I don't take this lightly.
So we're going to get to that in a minute.
But we're going to start in the Old Testament and talk about how we got the Old Testament.
It's working pretty good.
All right.
So the background of the Old Testament, written roughly between 1445 B.C. to 424.
That's an estimation.
So it's been in the making for a while.
A whole variety of different kind of authors wrote the Old Testament from all the different kinds you see here.
Prophets, kings, soldiers, poets, shepherds, historians.
So it's not just like one type of God.
This is many different people from many different walks of life that are writing about the same thing.
Languages, mostly Hebrew, probably some Aramaic mixed in.
Hebrew scribes over the centuries have copied down the Scripture.
You should really know a lot about Hebrew scribes.
When they copied down the Old Testament, what they would call Torah or the prophets or the wisdom writings,
as they copied it, they probably did it like on papyrus or whatever.
But if they ever messed up, like just one little bit, let's just say that he wrote a whole scroll
when he's copying Isaiah, for instance.
Even if he was like in the last little crate and he messed it up, like made a bad mark,
he would throw the whole thing away.
It was like a really serious deal.
Like they wanted to make sure that what was being transcribed was exactly what was there and nothing less.
So the canonization of the Old Testament, you know, like a canon is not just talking about a piece of artillery.
We're talking about an accepted number of books into something.
Some of them say, yeah, these are a part of what we believe.
That's like what the canonization is.
Move to this.
Josephus Flavius was a first century Jewish historian.
He was captured by the Romans after Jerusalem was destroyed.
And he eventually became a historian.
He wrote down a lot of stuff that is really beneficial to us today to understand a little bit more about the context.
He even wrote about Jesus.
He wrote about Pilate.
He wrote about John the Baptist, James, the brother of Jesus.
He wrote about all these things.
And he said about Jesus, like, yeah, this guy, something else.
That's kind of like where he says, paraphrase, he said he did all kind of wonderful miracles and amazed people and could have been the Messiah.
He doesn't.
He wasn't.
I don't think he actually believed that.
But this was Josephus.
And this is what he wrote about the Old Testament canon.
All right.
Now, understanding that this guy had knowledge of things that we probably don't have access to today.
He had that tradition passed down to him.
He actually was a Pharisee.
This is what he wrote.
We have not in a numeral multitude of books among us disagreeing from and contradicting one another like the Greeks have.
So he's trying to say that the Greeks are not consistent in their literature.
That's what he's trying to say.
He's trying to say that what we have is exactly what has always been there.
But only 22 books which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly to believe to be divine.
And of them, five belong to Moses.
That's the first five books.
That's the Torah.
Genesis through Genesis, Exodus, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, written by Moses.
Wrote down on what was done in their times in 13 books.
The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for conduct of human life.
So the prophets and the wisdom writings.
If you look in your table of contents, we have more books than 22.
That's only because we split them apart a little bit, like 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles.
We even split Jeremiah and Lamentations.
So it's the same thing.
So what is in the...
I've got to make this distinction.
What the evangelical or Protestant canon would be is what the Hebrews actually considered to be divine.
And they don't...
There's also the Apocrypha.
Some of you have heard of the Apocrypha before that's included in a lot of Roman Catholic Bibles.
Well, we don't have those in the Protestant canon because the Hebrews themselves didn't consider them to be inspired by God.
They're just, like, included in.
And so what you have, most of us have in our Old Testament is exactly what the Hebrews had in there.
So they considered these to be divine and nothing else.
So we kind of, like, followed that idea.
So the Old Testament manuscripts.
There was a problem for the longest time.
The oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts we possess are from 900 A.D.
That's bad.
Why is that bad?
It's because we have tons of prophecies about Christ in the Old Testament, right?
Tons of them.
Particularly Isaiah.
Like the huge book that has a ton of prophecies about Christ.
That would be a problem because it would be easy to say they went back and wrote these things way after Christ ever came.
Just to kind of prove, you know, that He was who He said He was.
So the question is, how could we be so sure of their accurate transmission since before the time of Christ in the first century A.D.?
And that's a really big question.
Which leads us to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
There's actually a picture of them there.
You can go to Israel and actually see them today.
It says they were found around 1947 and they contained copies of all the Old Testament except the book of Esther.
That most date back to 125 B.C.
That's pretty good.
That's a long time ago.
And it was found by a shepherd boy that was kind of looking for a lost sheep up near the Dead Sea in Israel.
That's why they're called the Dead Sea Scrolls.
They had been preserved in excellent condition for 1,900 years.
It's pretty awesome.
And here's something even cooler.
When they took the Dead Sea Scrolls, okay, they date way back B.C.
They took those and laid them right beside the ones that we have from A.D., okay, like the ones that are way after that.
They said the exact same thing.
So there wasn't any difference.
That's pretty awesome.
So even the ones that we have from 900 A.D. didn't contradict the ones that were B.C. at all.
So that just kind of speaks to the testament about the accurate transmission from the Hebrew scribes over the centuries.
They've put down exactly what was there and it hasn't changed at all.
So, really cool.
All right.
Something else I thought I might read to you real fast is something else Joseph said about the scriptures.
It says,
We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own scriptures.
For although such long ages now have passed, no one has ventured either to add, to remove, or to alter a syllable.
And in it is an 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.
Time and again, here now, the sight has been witness of prisoners, enduring tortures, death in every form in the theaters.
He's talking about like the Roman amphitheaters and Colosseum.
Colosseum wasn't built yet, but rather than utter a single word against the laws and allied documents.
So, main point, it's a big deal to the Hebrews.
Okay?
They weren't going to like mess this up.
So, you can be sure that like what's there is what God has preserved for thousands of years, like a long time.
So, that's our Old Testament.
Moving into the New Testament.
All right.
Background.
Getting around the first century A.D.
All right.
Again, a variety of authors.
Yeah, fishermen, rabbis, tax collectors, physicians, scholars.
One of the greatest testaments about the Bible compared to a lot of other books, like the Koran or anything like that,
is that you have a ton of different authors.
I think it's over 50 different authors that wrote the Bible over a course of a long time, like thousands of years.
And they all tell you the same story.
That's pretty awesome.
There is a God.
He's holy.
He takes sin seriously.
There is a Messiah coming.
The Messiah came.
That's all these guys from all these different backgrounds over a long period of time saying the same thing.
There is a huge testament to the Bible.
So, you don't just have one guy writing things down.
The language is according to Greek and some Aramaic.
So, you should go find the day.
Oh, man, I messed that up.
Backing up.
Sorry.
Oh, man, I'm too still.
This isn't going.
I can't see it.
Okay.
Well, I can tell you where it is.
Oh, well.
I can tell you where it is.
I had a chart that showed the Bible compared to other ancient documents.
Okay.
I'm just going to use one.
I'll tell you all the ones I have there.
Take you on.
Let's just compare it to, like, Homer's Iliad.
Okay.
The earliest copy that we have, we have no original manuscripts from any ancient text.
You shouldn't have that.
We don't have any originals at all.
They're all destroyed because they're really old.
They'll just rot and be no more.
So, there is a time gap between when the originals were written and then the actual copies that we have in our hand today.
For Homer and the Iliad, I want to say it was around, man, I don't want to get it wrong.
It doesn't matter.
I want to say, I think it's around, like, maybe 800 years.
That's a long time gap between the original and the ones that we have today.
So, people don't have a problem with that, you know, because people try to say, well, the Bible, you don't have any original manuscripts.
And you're like, well, there's not any original manuscripts from any ancient text.
And, matter of fact, the Bible has the smallest time gap between the originals and the ones we have today.
I think the largest manuscript or the only manuscript we have that has the largest time gap is 150 years.
That's not that bad.
And then a lot of them date, like, just 70 past, like, when the origins were written at all.
So, they have the smallest time gap.
And I think we have somewhere around 5,400 different manuscripts of the New Testament.
Homer's Iliad, remember, almost like an 800-year difference.
We only have 600 manuscripts.
So, the New Testament has more manuscripts in our hands today that dwarf everything else, more than Caesar's histories, more than anything.
And there's the smallest time gap between the originals and the ones that we have today.
Some people may say, watch the clock.
We don't have any of the originals.
So, how can you know that what we have is exactly what they had?
Because we don't have the originals.
So, it could have gotten messed up.
Here's an analogy for you.
Our U.S. Constitution is in a museum in Washington, D.C.
You can go see it.
I think I saw it when I was in middle school, I think.
You know, like, everybody's seen the movie where Nicolas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence and stuff.
It's probably that same museum.
But, let's just say that somehow, like, that building got blown up.
All right?
And our Constitution was, like, burned.
Like, we don't have it anymore.
Like, the original is gone.
Now, when our government, mostly our government doesn't buy by the Constitution anyway, but this may not say.
Maybe they should.
They're probably saying this is a lot of math.
But, all right, sorry.
I'm ready to go there.
But, if that happened, would our government all of a sudden say, man, we don't know what the Constitution says anymore?
That would be really stupid, wouldn't it?
Why?
Because, like, we've made copies of the original 1,000, 100 times over, right?
And so, we have, like, in our hands, none of them date back to 17.
Uh-oh.
I can't remember.
Doesn't matter.
None of them date back to that time.
But, we have tons of copies of the copy.
Tons of them.
So, we would never really say, you know, that's not, we can't rely on that.
It's the same thing in the New Testament.
We have tons of copies of the copy that have been passed down.
So, we can be sure that, like, what was there is actually what we have.
So, all right.
Now, a lot of people have asked me, hey, you know, the church has kept some books out of the Bible.
That's messed up and wrong.
Not really.
Not if you're a pastor and you're trying to protect God's truth from heresy.
It's not.
So, who decided what stays in and what stays out?
Well, there was a series of councils that met around this time.
Like, the defining one was the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D.
Tons of elders and pastors and bishops from all over North Africa.
At that time, it was still the Roman Empire.
Came to Carthage to talk about it.
And this was their criteria for letting a book in or keeping a book out.
First one.
Whether or not the document was written by an apostle or one in a close association with an apostle.
So, he was either there or he talked to the guy who was there.
And it doesn't go beyond that.
So, you have like Paul who was there.
Matthew who was there.
John who was there.
And then you have a guy like Luke who knew Paul.
Right?
So, that's kind of like how the connection goes.
It's not all kind of information passed down to five or six people.
It's not telephone.
Put it that way.
It's just like either he was there or he talked to the guy who was there.
Secondly, whether or not the document was recognized as authoritative by the early church.
At this time, a lot of the guys, by tradition and acceptance, they would know the early church fathers accepted these books.
They were kind of not cool with these.
They would understand that.
So, it was not that far away.
It seems crazy to us today because we weren't living way back then.
But a lot of that was still around so they would know if it was accepted or not by the earlier church.
Thirdly, whether or not the document was confirmed to the high standards and truths taught already and recognized scripture.
All right.
So, it would be easy to say we know that John is inspired.
You know, he walked with Christ.
He was there.
He saw the resurrected Lord.
So, we know that what is taught here and then also what is taught in the Old Testament teaches us about God.
All right.
So, if we just get some random book and it just kind of says, God's cool with sin.
Jesus didn't die for sin.
So, God's not holy.
He's not going to punish sin.
There's no hell.
We'd be like, huh.
That doesn't conform to what we know is already authoritative.
So, it would be cast out.
So, this is a really, really good criteria, in my opinion.
I don't think I can come up with better criteria.
But that's what you have in your New Testament is what they decided on at this point.
So, obviously, there are certain books that fly around that we reject because they teach wrong things.
They're not accurate.
They're not true.
They are all over the place.
So, let's see.
Let's move into this next part.
All right.
Now, this is what I was talking about a minute ago.
We're going to talk a little bit about the Reformation.
Okay.
Now, the Dark Ages are called the Dark Ages for a reason.
It means that there was just ignorance.
People were not educated.
And they were told what they believed, what they were told by the official church at the time.
And my goal is not to talk a lot about this tonight.
But it just needs to be mentioned.
The papacy didn't just...
The papacy is the Roman church, the Pope.
It didn't just happen overnight.
It was kind of a process.
And for the longest time, though, the church in Rome was a really good organization, actually.
They were really instrumental in combating heresies.
St. Augustine and a lot of earlier church fathers were really big in the church of Rome.
And they actually upheld the Scripture and the Gospel of Grace.
You can go back and read their writings.
They preached the same gospel that we believe today.
But over time, monarchs began to kind of like convert to Christianity, you know.
And a lot of times they would enforce Christianity on their people.
This is what we're going to do.
We're not going to worship these pagan gods anymore.
And this is what we're going to do.
So over time, monarchs began to kind of place certain bishops in a position that would favor them.
And so just slowly there was this transition of the church coming under control of the state.
Okay?
Which was never meant to be that way.
It's always more of a...
The church is its own entity.
It's not ever a part of the state.
And so that's why empires rise and fall, but the church remains.
And it will remain.
It will be the only thing left one day.
But he has something called like a hierarchy in the Roman church.
The pope, cardinals, and bishops.
Only their occupations could honor God at this time.
They taught that every other occupation was secular.
So you couldn't be a teacher.
You couldn't be a farmer.
And you couldn't glorify God and the work you did because it was secular, not sacred.
The pope at this time, still a lot today, hasn't changed too much.
He is the sole interpreter of scripture.
If he says this is what scripture teaches, then this is what you have to believe in a lot of ways.
He's like the official dictator over scripture.
The pope actually means the vicar.
He's called the vicar of Christ.
It means the person who stands in the place of Christ.
Saying that he represents Christ on the earth in a way is what he's trying to say.
And so the church in Rome itself carried equal authority with the Bible on the same level.
All right.
They said that you have to have this in order to know what's right and what's not.
Last week I talked about justification a little bit.
And we'll kind of revisit it here.
But in Roman theology, and even today, this hasn't changed.
That is, it's a, it's a works-based salvation saying that I have to believe the right thing and I have to do the right things.
And at this time, particularly, how salvation would be achieved was through merit.
You had to achieve a certain amount of merit in order to inherit eternal life.
And the number one way you would do this is through the work of penance.
All right.
Now, penance is a sacrament in the Roman church.
And it's more like self-rebasement and devotion.
This performed externally is like a work you do to show your sorrow or your remorse over sin that you've committed.
So this is the Roman idea of penance.
So where does God's grace come in?
God's grace was something that kind of gave you a little bit of help, but it didn't see the work through.
And you had to kind of keep up with the grace of God.
Like, if God gave you a little bit of grace, you needed to kind of make the most out of it and kind of go on to the next stage.
And then he might give you a little more grace.
And it was this process of becoming righteous.
So, as I said last week, a paraphrase of what was taught was God helps those who help themselves.
It's an easy way to help understand their theology when it comes to salvation.
That you have to do for your own.
And if you do, God will help you a little bit.
So, in their system, God would only justify the ungodly when the ungodly had made themselves godly.
Okay?
So they had to, like, get to that point where they were godly.
And then only then would it be right for God to justify them and to give them salvation.
So it was a works-based salvation.
And it still is today.
What we read in Scripture in Romans 4 that it is not about works, but faith alone.
It says that God justifies the ungodly because of the work of Christ and what Christ did on the cross.
So, in regard to salvation, you should know this, though, that the Roman church taught, actually, that no one in this life could actually achieve salvation.
They said that no one could ever gain enough merit in this life to have eternal life.
So, instead of despairing, they kind of put up a safety net for that, which was purgatory.
It's a place that you could go to after death to be purified by hundreds and even thousands of years of torture and pain.
And only then we got to a certain point where you were pure enough, cleansed enough, that you actually could go to heaven.
So, which is, it's not in Scripture anywhere.
This is what a lot of the Reformers at the time were like, where are you guys getting this?
This is just not here.
It was something they made up to kind of, like, that backed up the works-based salvation thing because you would despair if you thought, well, man, there's no way I can do it in this life.
If that's true, then what am I doing even trying?
So, purgatory was your safety net in a way.
Indulgences, pilgrimages, and relics were all things that you could do to cut down your time in purgatory.
Pilgrimages would be like going to Rome or going to Jerusalem, going to a place where a saint is buried.
Indulgences were an official written statement from Rome that absolved you of sin.
It could be like a lot of your sin or it could be all your sin.
And indulgences could be obtained by a financial donation or by a service performed, like going on a crusade.
It would tell a lot of the crusaders, if you go on this crusade, you come back and you survive.
It will give you an indulgence and you'll be absolved of all your sin.
And this is what you even learn in school.
Dr. May of North Georgia talked a lot about this in his crusade class.
So, relics were some kind of object that somebody in the Bible had contact with.
So, this could be like, this was the staff that David used, or this could be the cloak that John the Baptist had.
And if you owned it or you could even look upon, it would cut down time in purgatory.
Indulgences were the thing that really set Martin Luther off years later.
When he went to Rome and he found out that if he just looked and came up and looked at these nails that were supposedly on the cross of Christ,
he could have, I think he said, 500 years off purgatory just for looking at them.
So, it was just kind of a superstition that wasn't anywhere in the Bible.
So, the Inquisition was more like a religious tribunal, if you want to put it that way.
If you disagree with what Rome taught, then you'd be brought before the cardinals and the bishops,
and they would try you.
And if you refused to recant or take back what you said, you usually would be put to death.
So, it was like a religious tribunal that went on throughout the medieval ages.
A lot of us have heard of the Spanish Inquisition before.
That was probably one of the most famous ones in history.
So, in the state of Christendom, that just means where Christianity is,
the majority of the scriptures were in Latin.
The majority of the ones that people had access to were in Latin.
And the Latin Vulgate was really, really common.
So, you've heard people say, like I said earlier, the Bible has some errors in it, right?
But that's what I heard.
Somebody told me that, so I don't know if we can really trust it.
Well, this is where that might actually come in.
A guy named Diderius Erasmus was a brilliant scholar.
Don't really know if he was a believer or not.
I'd like to think he was.
But he was the guy who kind of had it out with Luther later about salvation.
But he wrote a Greek New Testament.
All right?
So, you could go and read the original Greek.
He put one together.
And you could read the Latin right beside it.
And when they did this, he discovered there was a lot of errors in the Latin Vulgate.
And he kind of pointed out the Pope.
He gave that to the Pope again in that Greek New Testament.
The Pope was like, thanks.
Like he's kind of nervous.
It made him really nervous.
Because when people start getting their hands on the Scripture, stuff starts being exposed.
But this is one example of a translation here.
Matthew 4.
Matthew 4.17.
This is reading out of ESV now.
It says,
For that time, Jesus began to preach, saying,
Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.
So, this is what that says right there in Latin.
The problem is, the Vulgate, you see that one word close right there at the end?
Penitatium.
It means penance.
It's saying, do penance.
So, basically saying, do a lot of good works.
Abase yourself.
Show like some kind of external expression of how much you hate your sin.
Okay?
Which Calvin later pointed out that that's not what God wants.
Remember Psalm 51?
The sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart.
And Erasmus actually translated this, repent or change your mind.
That's what he wrote.
That's what Erasmus was saying.
That's what the Greek says, man.
He's saying like, so it's talking about an inward transformation.
Like you hate your sin out of your heart.
And you understand that it's evil.
It's not just saying, well, I really like my sin.
But if I do this and abase myself, God will be happy.
God is more concerned about the heart than your outward action.
So, that was one error of many in the Latin Vulgate.
So, Rome began to kind of get afraid.
Like, well, if that's messed up, what other parts might be messed up?
So, going on to the sermons and music were Latin.
Now, you understand that like most people in Europe at that time, they didn't understand Latin.
It was just mainly certain elites knew Latin.
And if you went to law school or something like that, you were taught Latin.
And the sermons at this time were not like you'd hear today.
You wouldn't come to a service back then or a mass and hear them teach just right out of the Bible.
You know, doing expository preaching.
Most of their sermons were trivial pursuit and storytelling.
And they followed more of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle rather than what the Bible said.
Just like sadly today, and I hope and I pray that you don't go to a place like this where it's like pop psychology and all the cool stuff today.
It's like kind of taking over.
Tell me five ways to have a good marriage.
Five ways to have a nice day.
And like that's the kind of sermons you hear.
It's more pop psychology than it is the Bible.
It was the same thing back then.
And so that was their sermons and also mystery plays.
This is just, again, just plays that they did to kind of represent things that happened in the Bible.
Stories that you saw in the Bible.
So here's a question.
I asked this question before.
So at this time, during this huge period of time in the Dark Ages and medievalism,
was there anybody who actually taught like the real Scripture and taught the real Gospel during this huge span of time?
Was there just nothing going on?
Which one was it?
And the answer biblically to that is God always has His people somewhere.
And we'll get to that in just a second.
But I wanted to bring this up.
We'll kind of run through this real fast.
Scripture availability.
Most people just didn't have a copy of the Bible at all.
Had no idea.
They were all handwritten.
There were a few copies.
If you had one, it was very, very, very expensive to have.
And the ones that they did have were like locked and secured.
So you just didn't have access to it.
You couldn't just go to Bible Gateway on your computer and look it up.
Nobody had this.
So during this time, was there any kind of preservation?
And the answer is yes.
God always sovereignly has His people and has His Word.
It's what we might call in history isolated torches of light in the dark.
And one of the most well-known groups out there were called the Koldees.
And it means vassals of God.
And there's a huge branch of them in Ireland.
They were called Selde, which was God's sworn ally.
And at this time, they were a monastic order of settlements in Ireland, Scotland, and England.
They taught the gospel that you hear today.
They had access to the original Greek Hebrew.
They preached the gospel by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
There wasn't anything different.
They understood that the Bible was the ultimate authority and not a human being, not a person.
And so, all this was going on.
And now we're going to kind of transition into England a little bit, okay?
Because that's how we get our English Bibles.
Most of us speak English.
So that's what we're going to kind of go for.
But the Reformation was going on all over Europe.
But we're going to start moving that way in just a little while.
John Wycliffe, he called the morning star the Reformation.
He kind of came, he was before Martin Luther.
He was a product of the Codys.
All right?
Like we just looked at.
So he had been taught this stuff.
So he was in England, and he was a professor at Oxford.
He was a very wealthy, prestigious, powerful man.
And he began to teach at his university.
He was kind of one of the first well-known guys to stand up and say,
the Pope and the church in Rome is not God's voice on the earth.
The Bible does.
He was kind of, that was like a crazy idea, you know?
So he was saying, the Scripture is our ultimate authority for everything.
Just like he says right there.
So he began to kind of teach this stuff.
And people would come from all over Europe to Oxford to kind of sit and hear him lecture.
And they'd just be like taking notes like crazy.
And they would take it back to whatever country they were from.
It was like ammunition, basically, just to understand like what the Bible taught.
He eventually translated from the Latin Vulgate into English.
So it was called the Wycliffe Bible.
But he only used the Latin to write to English.
He didn't read.
He didn't understand Greek or Hebrew at the time.
So he's called the Morning Star of the Reformation.
And he was in England.
And when he died, Rome hated him so much that he actually dug up his bones,
burned them, and scattered his ashes so nobody would ever know where he was buried.
So, Reformation does roll around.
Does anybody know what the 31st is this month besides Halloween?
Reformation Day.
Cool.
That's when Martin Luther supposedly nailed the 95 Theses to the door of Edinburgh.
It was October 31st, All Saints Day.
So, post-tenebrous looks.
That means it's a phrase that's used to describe the Reformation.
And it means after darkness, light.
Pretty cool.
Pretty cool phrase.
Because the light of God's Word began to kind of break back into the people.
I mentioned this briefly last week.
The five solos of the Reformation.
These are pillars of what we would believe today that we teach here at Christ's Family.
And these were the key truths that were taught in the Reformation.
And all these are huge.
But basically, I'm going to try to connect them together for you.
That salvation, okay, comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
All right?
By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
And the loans are really key because Rome taught, yeah, you're saved by grace, but not grace alone.
Yeah, you're saved by faith, but not faith alone.
It was also up to you to do a lot of the stuff.
The works of righteousness, the penance, taking part in the sacraments, confession to a priest.
All these things were necessary for salvation, but the Reformation said, no, it's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
And all of that is to God's glory alone.
And the biggest indictment that a lot of the Reformers had on Rome was that they were trying to steal glory from God in salvation.
All right?
And that's why John and I have been doing this series, because it is in salvation that God has brought the most glory to himself by redeeming man, by sending his son, by showing us grace.
And their biggest indictment was, like, you guys are trying to steal glory from God in salvation.
And it's clear in Scripture that God is the only Savior, and he doesn't share his glory.
He's the only one.
So, to God, along be the glory.
So, so would David Gloria.
Yeah.
And, okay, so, so Rome says, okay, where are you getting all that?
Where are you getting all that?
And they would say, sola scriptura.
Scripture alone is our authority, not, and the church.
It's not unequal authority.
Scripture alone is our authority.
So, that's the five solas.
You should do a study on those sometime on your own.
And so, the reformers' view of sola scriptura stood against the Roman view of Scripture.
Like I said, it was the ultimate authority.
The ultimate say-so.
But what the reformers did teach was they, you don't throw out creeds and confessions and church history altogether.
All right?
Because the gospel has been passed down throughout the centuries.
Okay?
So, what we believe today has been believed throughout the centuries by real believers.
So, it's not like you disconnect yourself from the past.
But you don't put the creeds of the church on equal authority with the Bible.
It's just a helpful way to help understand the Bible.
People have always taught the Scripture.
So, one day, if you just wake up and you say, I'm going to believe this.
And it's a new idea that has never been discovered by any Christians for 2,000 years.
Or has been seen in church history to be heretical, like Arianism, which taught that Jesus was not really God.
Way back when.
In the Council of Nicaea.
It's probably a good idea that you just need to throw away your interpretation, if that's true.
Because there's not any new truth out there.
It's always been the same.
So, the Reformers weren't saying throw away truth.
Or throw away church history.
They were just trying to say that it's not the equal authority with the Bible.
It's just not on the same level.
And they would also say that the Pope is not to interpret Scripture alone.
Every believer has the right to interpret Scripture.
Okay?
And to read it.
And to have it.
And possess it.
But the number one rule that they had for interpretation was this.
It's called Sacra Scriptura Sui Interpretes.
Which means, Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter.
Okay?
So, how do we know what the Bible means?
Because of what the rest of the Bible says about that verse.
The Bible is its own interpreter.
Scripture interprets Scripture.
Scripture.
So, if you want to know what this means, come over here to find out.
You know?
So, how do we know?
And so, what you do is just over studying the Word, you understand that certain doctrines
and certain principles are taught over and over and over again.
Just like about heaven.
Which, Mr. Overton's here.
You ought to hear him talk about heaven sometime.
Like, we look at all these passages that deal with heaven.
And it helps us get a bigger picture about what heaven actually is.
You know?
You say, what does that mean?
You read here and it tells you.
So, Scripture is to be interpreted by Scripture.
What is the rule?
And that's a safeguard against error.
So, that's the Reformers' view of Scripture.
Gutenberg Pring Press.
Okay, we're really getting historical now, aren't we?
But really, God uses everything eventually for good and for His glory.
All things.
So, this made printing and reading materials quicker.
Made reading materials more available to commoners.
And increased the literacy rate.
So, aka, ideas could spread a lot faster.
You know?
So, these things that these scholars like Calvin and Martin Luther are putting out,
they can be easily put in print and sent out to people to read.
They don't have to, like, hand copy everything anymore.
So, big invention.
So, we're about to move into the English Reformation,
but I need to mention two people who had an enormous influence on the English Reformation.
Martin Luther.
When he was asked to recant, you know, his teachings about how salvation is by grace
and the Word of God is the only authority,
he said,
My conscience is held captive to the Word of God.
And he was instrumental.
Like, he was the...
If you think about the Reformation,
most people think about Martin Luther.
Pretty incredible guy.
Not a flawless guy.
He had a lot of serious problems.
He had a lot of serious issues in his life.
He wasn't, like, a perfect guy by any means.
But he just understood...
The thing is, he understood that.
He understood, like, man, I'm a wretched sinner,
and I need the grace of God.
So, that's what he taught.
He eventually translated the Bible into German.
John Calvin.
This guy really blows my mind.
No doubt,
if you go back and look at what this guy did,
he did the work of 20 men in his life.
It's just crazy.
He had an enormous influence on the Reformation in England as well.
He actually wrote a lot of systematic theology.
He took, like...
So, the Reformation,
all these big events going on,
he was actually a scholar who was able to say,
this is what's going on here.
This is what this is really about.
Salvation by grace alone,
through faith alone.
Two things he said.
Really cool.
This is about the Scripture itself.
Let us become submissive to God,
and then He will convey to us by His Word
nothing but sweetness,
nothing but delight.
We owe the Scripture the same reverence
for which we owe to God,
because it has proceeded from Him alone,
and has nothing of man mixed with it.
The experience teaches us
that the highest proof of Scripture
derives in general from the fact
that God in person speaks in it.
Like I was saying earlier,
Scripture proves itself.
It's just...
It's amazing.
It's beautiful.
Anybody need to kind of stand up and stretch?
We've got about 20 more minutes, I think.
I'm trying to move fast.
We don't feel like...
If you're getting kind of like warm and cozy,
you need to move, that's fine.
Wow, what happened?
Do that again.
Oh, well.
It says the English Reformation.
So, that's a picture of England, Scotland.
For those of you who don't know,
Thomas Bilney,
he was kind of like a forgotten figure
in the English Reformation.
He was a scholar,
and like a lot of people,
he got a hold of one of Erasmus'
New Testament,
or Greek New Testaments.
All right?
Now, he had been brought up in Roman theology.
And one night,
he kind of like...
kind of got by himself,
got in a corner,
and started reading this by a candlelight.
And he read 1 Timothy 1.15,
where it says,
or Paul says,
This is a faithful saying,
worthy of all exception,
that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners,
of whom I am chief.
And that just exploded in the world.
He's like,
Wow, Paul is the chief of sinners?
Because Paul is made out by Rome
to be like this sinless,
beautiful,
most, you know,
right under Jesus type guy.
And Paul's like,
I am the chief of sinners.
And Christ came to save sinners.
And that's just something he said
as a result of that.
So imagine that the world you live in,
like right now,
is really common to kind of believe
a certain idea.
And people that say otherwise
are imprisoned or put to death.
And you read something like this,
it just kind of like,
says contrary to what you've always heard.
And you're like,
What do you do?
Well,
Bill and he actually went out
and began to preach the gospel to people.
Preached God's word to people.
When he was cast out of the pulpit,
he began to kind of preach
in the countryside.
Just out in the countryside,
the English countryside.
Eventually he was caught
and he was imprisoned for a year
in the Tower of London.
One of his biggest things
that he rejected
other than, you know,
salvation by works
was the Roman idea
of transubstation.
That's a big word.
It's basically the Eucharist,
like the Lord's Supper.
Rome taught
that when you actually partook
of the Lord's Supper
and you ate the bread
and you drank the wine,
in that moment,
it literally turned into
the blood of Christ
and the body of Christ.
You were like eating him.
And this was a way for you
to have grace in your life.
It was kind of to
take care of Christ
and get their explanation
from that in John
where Jesus says,
He who wants to have
eternal life
must eat my flesh
and drink my blood.
But he was speaking figuratively,
not literally.
So,
which is what the rest
of the Scripture teaches anyway.
So,
have you ever heard,
see if this sounds familiar to you.
In the Roman Eucharist,
they used this phrase,
Hocus Ium Corpus.
And,
that's the Latin for something.
Hocus Ium Corpus Miam.
Alright?
That's where it's saying,
you know,
this is my body,
literally in Latin.
But,
sometimes the priest
that would actually
perform the Roman Eucharist
would like stumble
with the Latin
like they didn't really know
Latin.
They were like,
even like you listening to
somebody speaking their language
and just trying to imitate
what they said
because you didn't really know
the language,
it turned into Hocus Pocus.
That's where you get that from.
It was like this magical thing
that,
and that's what the people
would joke about,
it was like they're magically
turning the wine and the bread
into the body and blood of Christ.
You know,
Hocus Pocus,
that's kind of like
where that actually comes from.
So,
Bill and he rejected that
and it was really common
for most reformers
to reject that idea.
As we would teach it,
it's just symbolic
of the body and blood of Christ.
So,
like I said,
he was in prison
in the Tower of London.
They said,
we're going to release you,
but if we do,
don't come back
and keep preaching.
So,
they released him,
and he went out
and started preaching again.
But eventually,
he knew this was going to cost him.
You know,
he was in prison again
and eventually he was executed.
And,
but this is just one guy
of many,
I thought I would just mention him.
Big Henry.
We've got to talk about Henry.
Definitely,
probably not a Christian,
okay,
but God uses even evil men
to accomplish his purpose.
All right?
His divorce from
Catherine of Oregon.
Okay?
He married Catherine,
which was his brother's widow,
and she had numerous miscarriages
and couldn't produce
like a male heir.
She gave birth to Mary,
a daughter,
and Henry at this time
was really afraid
that anyone might go
into another war of the roses.
That's just
what it was all about.
Like,
who has the right
to inherit the throne of England?
And so he was really worried
about this
and he was upset
because she wasn't giving him
a male heir
like it was all her fault.
You know?
This is just like drama
at its best.
This is like Jerry Springer
back in the Reformation days.
It really is.
So,
he saw a divorce.
He went to the Pope
and he said,
look,
this isn't working out.
I need a male heir.
He pulled some scripture
out of context
out of Leviticus.
I remember he was like,
you can't marry
your brother's wife
and all kinds of stuff.
Not really what I meant.
But,
he thought he was
legitimate
in his need to be divorced.
The Pope refused
for several reasons.
He said,
no, Henry,
and he was mainly afraid,
okay,
because Catherine's nephew
was Charles V,
the Holy Roman Emperor.
He had a lot of power.
Like a lot of power.
And he,
at one time,
before this,
had actually sacked Rome
because the Pope
had defied him.
So,
the Pope's like,
I can't make this happen
because I do.
He's going to come down here
and wipe me out.
That was his fear.
So,
he told,
you know,
Henry,
no go,
man.
Not getting a divorce
from Catherine.
And,
and so,
so,
so Henry comes back
to anywhere
and he's kind of talking
to his,
his homies about it.
And things are not working out.
Hey,
I need to jump ahead
real fast.
So,
he eventually broke up
with Rome.
And,
I need to go back again.
so eventually,
he declared himself.
All the clergy in England
said,
you have the right
to be the head
of the church,
man.
Like,
just as the Pope
is the head
of the church of Rome,
you have the right.
Why shouldn't you
to be the head
of the church of England?
And to split away
from all this nonsense,
you know.
Henry's like,
that's right.
What are they going
to do about it?
I'm a monarch.
I have an army.
I have a navy.
What are they going
to do about it?
They can't,
they can't mess with me.
He was a pretty
powerful guy.
So,
he declared himself,
you know,
this is a piece
out of the act
of supremacy.
He says,
the king's majesty
and rightly is
and ought to be
the only supreme
head in earth
of the church of England.
So,
he declared himself
to be the head
of the church of England.
He broke away
from Rome.
So,
this was huge.
Even though,
you know,
back to that.
Then it got into like,
he has some
wife swap action
going on
numerous times.
But,
normally,
a pope would not
have a problem
with like,
making some accommodations
for a monarch
like Henry.
But,
he was in a
sticky situation.
So,
moving on.
This guy
is an amazing guy.
If you ever get to
read about a person
in church history,
read about this guy.
William Tyndale.
I've heard of
Tyndale House Publishers.
Tyndale was
the guy
who did believe
in like,
the solos
of the Reformation
that were going on.
He was a brilliant guy.
He was a gifted linguist.
He spoke,
he spoke fluently
in French,
German,
Italian,
Latin,
and Spanish.
And he knew
Greek and Hebrew.
So,
this guy
was like,
a really huge instrument
in God's hand,
for sure.
he was hanging out
with like,
a clergyman one day.
I think he was just a priest.
And this priest said,
man,
they're talking about
obeying God's law,
obeying the Pope's law.
And the guy said,
we had better obey
the Pope's law
before we obey
God's law.
And he said,
because the Pope
can kill us, man.
Like,
we need to obey him.
And,
and Tyndale was just like,
are you,
you know,
this is what he said
back to that guy.
I defy the Pope
and all his laws.
And if God
would spare my life
these many years,
I will make it possible
for the boy
who drives the plow
to know as much
scripture as you do.
That's like what
he told the guy.
So,
so he did.
He set out on this,
this journey
to translate
the Bible
into English.
He developed
like a translating strategy
and avoiding detection.
And he was on,
he was hunted
for nine years.
He imagined that
like just going,
living like a nomad,
going from place to place,
translating the Bible.
And he was using,
let's see,
he was using,
I'll go back,
sorry.
He was using Greek
and Hebrew texts,
Latin texts.
He was,
he had all these different
things to use
at his disposal
to come up with
the accurate translation
of the New Testament.
and this is something
that he said,
he was talking about
how Rome has,
Rome wants to like
keep the scripture
away from people.
He said,
they have ordained
that no man
shall look on the scripture
until he be nozzled
in heathen learning
for eight or nine years
and armed with
false principles
with which he can
not understand
the scripture.
So,
they immerse him
so much in Roman
teaching and Roman
doctrine,
but when they get
the scriptures,
they don't,
most of them
can't really see
the difference.
Luther saw the difference
and he said,
this isn't,
this isn't true.
So,
oops,
man,
what I'll do,
all right,
told you,
eventually he finished
the translation
of the New Testament.
He went to Germany
and he met with Luther
and how you say that
is bumps,
kind of sounds,
not worms,
but bumps,
returning,
returned to England
with 6,000 copies
of the New Testament.
Eventually,
he was betrayed
by a friend
for money,
caught,
and he was tried
and he was executed.
And he got on
Henry's bad side
because he told Henry,
sorry,
bro,
scripture just says
that this isn't good
for you to divorce
your wife,
you know?
And so Henry
didn't really,
Henry had it out
for him,
Rome had it out
for him,
but eventually
he was executed
and he was strangled
and then he was
burned at the stake.
What an awesome guy,
like just that desire
to get like the word
of God
in people's hands.
So later on,
a guy named
Miles Coverdell,
he's a really
handsome guy.
Eventually,
Henry decided,
you know what?
to make my break
final with the
Church of Rome,
what we really need
is my own,
our own English Bible
that I oversee
and, you know,
this will be like
our final,
you know,
the final,
the trial breaks
the camel's back
to his day.
So he hired this guy
because he looked bored
and said,
he told him,
you know,
a translator,
what do you use
to translate from?
Look at that,
the Latin Vulgate
and what do you
intend to do
with the New Testament?
He was like,
I can't do a better
job than this guy.
That's kind of
what he was thinking.
So he tried to like
take some from that,
you know,
and so that's like
what he used to translate
and it was called
the Coverdell Bible
and people could come
to inside of,
you know,
the church
and read it.
It was just chained up
so not everybody
had a copy of it yet.
So that was
the Coverdell Bible.
Eventually,
Edward was the successor
to Henry
when Henry died.
He tried to keep
the Church of England
going.
A little bit more.
He wasn't the leader
Henry was
and so when he died,
Henry's first daughter
from Catherine,
Mary Tudor,
became queen
over England
and she was a
really devout
Roman Catholic
and like her mom,
Catherine.
And so she tried
to bring Catholicism
back to England
and she did it,
you know,
militantly,
like arresting people,
imprisoning them,
executing the leaders.
She is recorded
and she burned
around 300
of England's
like top scholars
and theologians
that were
at this time
teaching and
preaching the Word of God.
so,
you know,
it was,
that's where you get
Bloody Mary from,
obviously.
And,
let's see,
moving on here.
This was one guy
named John Rogers
who was a Bible scholar
and translator.
He tried to continue
William Tyndale's
Old Testament
and he had started
and eventually
he was caught
and he refused
to kind of like
throw away
like what he believed
and his phrase
was that
which I have preached
I will seal
in my blood.
And,
so he didn't recant.
He told the people
that were about to kill him
that he would be
praying for them
and praying
for their salvation
so he kind of
held it together
to the very end
so to say.
Eventually,
he was put to death
and this is where
you can go
in England
to see where
that actually happened.
The Geneva Bible.
During this time
when Bloody Mary
was going on
a lot of English
citizens fled
to Geneva,
Switzerland
which was a safe haven
for Protestants
at this time.
And,
that's where
John Calvin was
and a lot of other
awesome reformers
were there
teaching the scripture.
A lot of them
fled there
and eventually
they translated
that made
the Geneva Bible
and they used
Greek and Hebrew
text,
Tyndale's translation
and Miles Coverdale's
translation.
So they had a lot
of different sources
to come up with
a really good
accurate translation.
It was the first
Bible that contained
study notes,
separated chapters
and verses
so that's where
we get that from
is a study Bible.
You can actually
buy them today.
It's really hard
to read
because they don't
speak that kind
of English anymore.
William Shakespeare,
I believe he actually,
he quotes
the Geneva Bible
around 5,000 times
in his plays
and his stories.
The Geneva Bible
was the Bible
that the pilgrims
brought over
to America.
John Bunyan
who wrote
Pilgrim's Progress.
This was all
from the Geneva Bible.
This was the
preface to the
Geneva Bible.
Listen to this.
The Bible is the
light of our past,
the key to 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.
That's an awesome
statement.
about the word.
So,
eventually,
Mary died.
She had no heir
to follow.
And,
back in Henry's
wife's days,
you know,
who came after
Catherine,
was,
anybody know?
There's even a
TV show about
this.
Come on,
guys.
It's not really
that guy.
You shouldn't
watch it.
But,
Anne Boleyn
is who he
married after
Catherine.
And he had
a daughter with
her.
He had her
and her
kind of like
this series
of wives
started going
on.
But,
Elizabeth was
her child.
And,
she assumed
the throne
because she
was the only
other right
to heir,
had any
kind of
royal blood.
And,
she did
lean more
with Protestant
theology.
I don't
really know
if she was,
I mean,
nobody does,
if she was
really a believer
or not.
but,
her main
goal when
she became
queen was,
I'm tired of
us just
killing each
other.
Why can't
we all get
along?
She wanted
to really
bring more
of a national
identity to
England.
And,
so what she
did was she
said,
she made
like some
concessions.
She said,
okay,
we're going
to have,
we're all
going to
break away
from Rome.
That was
called the
act of
uniformity.
We're going
to break
away from
Rome.
We're going
to come
back to
the
Church
of
England.
I'm going
to be
the head
of this.
And,
we're going
to have,
basically,
this is all
paraphrased,
they kept
Protestant
theology.
Also,
really,
it was just
in essence
Calvinism,
which was,
you know,
being taught
from Geneva.
Just summing
up that,
salvation by
grace alone
through faith alone.
But,
they kept
all the pomp
and ritual
and robes
and things
like that
that looked
like the
Roman
mass.
So,
that's why
if you
go to an
Anglican
church today,
that's why
it's really
liturgical
and formal.
That's why
they have
the robes
and things
like that.
So,
this was
the model
we have
in the
Anglican
church today,
the Church
of England.
So,
she authorized
the Geneva
Bible for
the Church
of England.
So,
she's like,
this is going
to be our
Bible so
everybody
can have
a copy.
So,
this was huge.
Her reign
is called
the Golden
Age of
England
because
it went
from a
really
impoverished,
unorganized,
messy country
to almost
a world
power by
the time
of the
rain.
The Spanish
Armada,
all that stuff,
they defeated
Spain.
John Knox
brought the
Reformation
to Scotland.
He has
an awesome
beard.
He outdoes
everybody.
I've
actually
been to
Edinburgh
and I've
been in
the house
that he
lived in
and seen
a lot
of the
what was
that?
That's a
picture of the
Geneva Bible
that I made
at his
house.
It was
kind of cool
to go there.
I saw
some of these
places where
a lot of
people were
martyred and
beheaded
for
believing the
gospel.
Presbyterianism,
that's why
the main
denomination
in Scotland
today is
Presbyterianism.
And,
again,
brought the
Geneva Bible
back and
there's a
law passed
in Scotland
in 1579
requiring every
household
sufficient means
to have a
copy of the
Geneva Bible.
So,
God's word
was like
getting to
the hands
of people.
It was just
an awesome
time.
There's all
kind of other
things to say
about this,
but I'm
going to
move on.
Singing God's
word.
All right?
So,
I understand
people were
just used to
hear Roman
teaching and
it was just
again more
like Plato
and Aristotle
and had all
these songs
they sang
that were
in Latin
that weren't
really biblical
a lot of
them.
So,
the people
in Scotland
were like
we're only
going to
sing
scripture.
That's it.
We're not
going to
sing anything
else.
We're only
going to
sing
scripture.
So,
they wrote
the Scottish
Psalter,
which is
a way
that you
can sing
the songs
out loud.
Now,
I don't
know if
I got this
worked out
less.
Can you
hit that?
Like the
groove
shark thing?
I just
want you
to hear
a piece
of this.
I'll tell
you when
to stop.
This is
Psalm 43
that they
were singing.
It doesn't
work out.
It's okay.
It should
be on there.
I'll
pull it
up on
groove
shark.
It got
closed.
Just type
in Psalms
of Scotland.
Psalms of
Scotland.
Then go
to Psalm
43.
But this
is what it
would have
sounded like.
Kind of.
Minus the
organ.
But there
is an organ
in this.
I think it's
pretty cool.
They're just
like singing
the scripture.
Any day
now.
I'd probably
be in the
highlands.
Probably not
down in
Edinburgh
though.
Yeah.
That would
be cool.
I like
bagpipes.
I thought
I'd wear
my kilt
tonight.
I thought
y'all
be so
distracted.
You can't
hear it
that way.
a
bagpipes.
There's a lot that we need to do.
Yeah, we'll move on.
That's kind of like what it sounded like.
It was just them singing, you know, God's Word out loud.
Really cool.
I mean, a new idea, you know, to them.
Puritans, you can't leave them out of this.
Awesome guys.
Guys who really understood the Bible like you would not believe.
They're actually called, historically, the physicians of the soul.
Like they understood the Scripture is how we live life.
And if you have an issue, the Scripture is the answer, not this or that.
The Word of God must be a rule and square whereby we are to frame and fashion all our actions according to the direction received thanks.
We must do the things we do or leave them undone.
So, he had the word Puritan from the idea that there were a sect in England that thought there was too much that looked like Rome.
In the Anglican Church.
And they said that, you know, we want all that gone.
We want anything that looks like Rome to be there.
And the English Civil War, the Cavalier and the Roundheads.
The Puritans were like in the Roundhead branch.
The Cavaliers were Charles I.
I don't get into all that.
Sorry.
But the Puritans were really huge on the Word.
I'll go and definitely read some of them.
King James.
The Bible that Jesus himself wrote, which a lot of people think that.
How did this come about?
Eventually, James I came from Scotland because there wasn't a legitimate heir from the throne of England.
And he was the closest they had.
So, he actually became the king of England.
And over time, some of his counselors began to say,
Hey, man, the Geneva Bible over here, it says that Christ is the head of the church.
Not the king.
Not the queen.
Not anybody.
No earthly figure is the head of the church at all.
Only Christ is.
So, that diminishes your power, big boy.
That's kind of what they told him.
And he was like, oh, man.
That's not good.
I don't want to be able to have some authority around here.
So, he commissioned this translation.
Which is not a bad translation.
50 scholars translated from Greek and Hebrew texts in the Geneva Bible.
But nearly 80% of King James is taken out of the Geneva Bible.
So, I hate to break it to a lot of people up here in Appalachia,
but the King James is not the first English translation that ever came out.
But it's a really good Bible.
You notice it doesn't have any study notes.
Right?
It just has, like, cross-references, but no study notes like the Geneva Bible did.
So, King James Bible.
Let's move on.
So, God has a plan that he's working out and is being really successful at
to get his word into the hands of every nation.
Okay?
And to hear the gospel preached in every tongue, no matter where it is.
And it's our call, our duty, our joy, like, to take them to God's word,
no matter where they are.
So, whenever you sit down and read the word and act like you know, like, where it came from.
There's a lot more to say about all of this.
But I just thought these would be some helpful things for you to look at,
for us to look at together and to know.
We're past 10 o'clock.
I understand that.
But we don't have anything else after this.
So, I'm going to pray for us.
Next week, come back.
Swan Dog up here.
Dale Swanson is going to come and teach.
He's going to teach about adoption.
What it means to be adopted into God's family.
So, come back and hear him next week.
It'll be really good.
If it's not, he just won't teach again.
So, let me pray for us.
Holy Father, we are grateful for the word that is in our hands.
Your word that has been spoken down, passed down throughout hundreds of years.
And that many men have died to get into our hands.
And, Lord, how often we neglect and take for granted and just don't think it's of that importance to have the Scripture in our hands.
I pray that, as Joshua said, that we would meditate upon it day and night.
That we would do all things in it.
That we would learn to just love your Scripture.
See it as the means by which you have given us to know you, to walk with you, to be saved.
It has everything we need in it, Lord.
It tells us who you are.
It tells us who we are.
And our need for your grace.
It points to Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross, Lord.
And this all brings us to a head.
That the consummation will go and going to come for us.
And that we're going to be with you in eternity.
To abide in your presence forever.
Lord, just help us to treasure your word.
We love you.
We give you praise.
In Christ's name.
Amen.
Thank you.