Video Transcript: Lesson 1 Exploring Further

Video: Lesson 1 Exploring Further

Hi, I'm David Feddes, and we're exploring further in lesson one of Christian basics about the Bible. The material is written by Dr. Ed Roels and I David Faddes, the provost of Christian leaders Institute and presenting this material on behalf of Dr Roels, along with some comments of my own here and there. 

Question 1: What difference would it make in your life if you did not have a Bible or know what the Bible teaches?

For most of us, life would be very different. We would not know where we came from, where we are going, or how we should be living in order to honor and please God. We would not have the peace and joy that come from knowing Jesus. We would not have the comfort of knowing that God loves us, cares for us, forgives us, understands our weaknesses, and is preparing an eternal home for us in glory. We would not have the blessing of knowing how God wants us to live or what he wants us to do. We would basically be wandering in a broken world with few trustworthy guidelines for the present and very little hope for the future.

There is a quote in Proverbs four of the Bible it says the way of the wicked is like deep darkness they do not know what makes them stumble, and the Bible often uses that image of darkness of not being able to see without the help of God's light. And that's what it's like to live, if we didn't have the Bible. 

Question 2: Why is it important that we can trust what the Bible says?

If we cannot trust what the Bible says, we will continue to live in confusion and uncertainty. There would be no authoritative answer for any of our questions. We would always wonder whether our own thoughts and ideas are right or wrong. And we would have no sure way to judge or evaluate the thoughts and ideas of others. We would continue to live day after day wondering whether our thoughts and ideas were really true or simply the product of our own desires and imagination. 

Question 3: In what ways does the Old Testament help us understand the New Testament?

The Old Testament gives us the story of creation, the story of man’s falls into sin, God’s first promises of redemption, and the history of God’s people during the centuries before the coming of Jesus. The Old Testament gives us a clear picture of humanity’s sinful nature and inability to earn or merit salvation and forgiveness by keeping the laws God gave to his people. It gives us a very clear presentation of human weakness and God’s greatness, man’s unfaithfulness, and God’s faithfulness. Without the Old Testament, we could not fully understand our sinfulness and our inability to obtain salvation on our own, nor could we as fully understand the majesty, power, mercy, and grace of God. Jesus was born into the family line of the Old Testament figures such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel), Judah and David. Jesus fulfilled the wonderful promises God made to Adam at the dawn of human history, and he also met all the demands and requirements God presented in the Old Testament hundreds of years before. It is impossible to fully understand who Jesus was, why he came, and what he did unless we also know at least some of the teachings of the Old Testament.

Jesus was born to the people of Israel and God had been working in a special way among the people of Israel for many centuries, and he had been preparing the way for the coming of his son. And we too by reading that Old Testament, have our hearts better prepared to understand and receive Jesus, God. Psalm. 

Question 4: Are the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible more trustworthy or more important than other parts of the Bible?

No. In some Bibles the words of Jesus are printed in red letters to set these words apart from others. And in some ways that may be helpful. To know what Jesus said and taught can be very helpful. However, it’s important to remember that EVERY word in the Bible has been inspired by the Holy Spirit and is therefore trustworthy. At the same time, it’s also important to recognize that some passages in the Bible are more significant than others in helping us learn the way of salvation and helping us learn how God wants us to live. For example, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 and Paul’s teachings in Romans 12 are much more helpful for teaching us God’s will for our lives than some other passages are.

 We should never say any passage of the Bible is unimportant, or not worth reading. But we should also recognize that some parts of the Bible are more central (John 3: 16) For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life is a supremely important and central verse, if we read a different verse about the camp of Israel moving from one place to sucka. We may read that as part of the historical narrative, but it's more important to remember John 3: 16 than certain other portions of the Bible. Having said that we should read the whole Bible, we should not consider the Red-Letter Words of Jesus, more reliable than other portions of the Bible. At the same time, recognize that those that are very central passages pointing us clearly to Jesus himself and to His will for us are just vitally central portions of the Scripture, 

Question 5: What is meant by “progressive revelation”? 

“Progressive revelation” is the term used to describe the fact that God gradually gave people new information concerning himself and his laws and his plan of salvation. The information which he gave at every point was true and trustworthy, but later on he often gave additional information about himself, his will, his plans, and his purposes. So, for example, people in Old Testament times did not know that the God they served was a Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit. Neither did they know that God would someday come to this earth in the form of a man (Jesus) who would die on the cross for the sins of the world. And they did not understand that someday both Jews and non-Jews would have an equal status before God as they were joined together in Jesus Christ. Because the Bible contains progressive revelation on many subjects, we should be very careful not to read an early passage in the Bible as God’s final and complete revelation on a subject. 

We should also always read the Bible in light of the full revelation that we have in the coming of Jesus, and with the completion of the New Testament, and when we talk about progressive revelation, let's remember that God's revelation is not progressing beyond Jesus and beyond the pages of the Bible, in the revelation of Jesus and the completion of the writing of the New Testament, God has given his full and complete and authoritative revelation of Himself with all that we need to know in order to have salvation in Jesus Christ. 

Question 6: Since the Bible is a very old book, shouldn’t we look to newer books for better and more accurate information about God and the world?

The fact that the Bible is very old is actually something positive and not negative. In spite of the fact that the Bible has existed for so many years, it continues to be printed and translated and sold around the world in very large numbers. This by itself is an indication that the Bible is a most unusual book and worthy of careful study. Though there are some people who may reject it, the Bible still is the most influential book in the world. It continues to be a source of comfort, challenge, inspiration, information and life-changing power. It does not claim to be a textbook on science or mathematics or other subjects of that kind, but it does teach eternal truths about God, salvation, and the way to eternal life. We should be careful not to use the Bible as a textbook on subjects (such as science) which we can explore ourselves, but we should recognize that the Bible goes beyond science to reveal that God is the creator and sustainer of our incredible world filled with all its marvels and mysteries.

And when we say that the Bible is not a textbook, that doesn't mean that it's wrong about science, or that it's wrong when it comments on mathematical matters. It just means that that's not the main stuff that it's intended to teach about, and it's not intended to just be a book that tells us all the history of everything that ever happened. Its history is very selective on important aspects of what God's revealing about the history that it reveals is accurate history, the things that it says about the physical world are true about the physical world. So, it's not a science textbook, but it is accurate when it talks about physical things when it talks about historical matters. 

Question 7: What is the strongest reason for believing what the Bible says?

 In the main lesson, we read 10 reasons to believe. There are many strong reasons, but the most important reason is that the Holy Spirit impresses on your mind and heart that the Bible is truly the Word of God.

 I've had friends from other countries, I have a friend from Japan who is now as a ministry and as a broadcaster of the gospel, he got to know the Bible by reading his sister's Japanese language Bible. When she was studying English literature, and so she had the Bible for one of her courses and he just thought, sitting on a shelf, and he read it through nine times in about seven months’ time and said he had never read anything like it. And he came to know God's love, he said there was so much he didn't understand because there was nobody to explain it to him, but he knew that God is personal that God is real, that God is allowed. 

Have a friend from Russia, who was given a Bible by a friend during the time when Russia was still officially atheistic when it was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and he was given a copy of the book of Luke to read and while he was reading that copy of the book of Luke on a train ride. He just heard the voice of God as he read about the life of Jesus Christ, heard the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it grabbed him. That is the most important reason for believing what the Bible says when you read the Bible and God the Holy Spirit just overwhelms you with a sense of this is God speaking, this was God acting and now he's communicating.

Question 8: is it confusing or is it helpful to have more than one translation of the Bible in your language? 

Well, since no single translation is absolutely perfect, there are advantages in reading the Bible in different versions. Some early versions were not done especially well, so these older versions can be corrected by new and more accurate versions. Further, language changes somewhat over the years, so an older version may contain language which is no longer used among the common people and will not be easily understood. In addition, by reading a different version, students may be led to look at a passage in a new way which they had not thought of before. They may also find that a strictly literal translation does not always helpfully represent the original text. For example, because each language has figures of speech of one kind or another, a strictly literal translation could be misleading. On the other hand, by having only one version of the Bible in a given language, everyone has the advantage of learning and memorizing and quoting exactly the same words. And that can be a very significant benefit!

So, there are benefits and there's a downside to having quite a few different translations available. The fact is that in the English language, there are several excellent translations that you can benefit from enormously, and it's probably unwise to take just one translation. The all the others are bad, and they're not in the Word of God. The work on English translations has been very good. The Bible has been translated in excellent form into other languages around the world as well. 

Question 9: What is the best way to respond to people who believe and teach the Bible has been changed and corrupted over the years?

Perhaps the best way to respond is to begin by asking them some questions. For example: (1) Why do you believe that the Bible has been changed or corrupted? (2) Who do you think made the changes? (3) Why did these people decide to make these changes? (4) When were the alleged changes made? (5) What happened to the original manuscripts of the Bible? (6) What proof do you have that the alleged changes were made? (If the originals no longer exist, how do we know that the Bible has been changed or corrupted?)
There are differences in some of the thousands of Bible manuscripts in existence. Most of these, however, are very minor and of little significance. Besides, most scholars who have made it their primary work to study the ancient Bible manuscripts agree that we can be very confident that there is nothing in the original Bible manuscripts that has been lost—even though we no longer have the originals themselves. Without any legitimate doubt, the Bible is extremely accurate and completely trustworthy. 

There's a whole science of the study of Bible Manuscripts called textual criticism, and is able to determine with very high accuracy, what the originals, said one of the great archaeological finds in the history of the world was the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls up to that point, the oldest manuscripts that we have some Old Testament books were from 1000 years after Jesus and so people might be tempted to say, oh, things could have just changed over that period of time that they will test it was copied. So, when they found the dead sea scrolls which dated to 100 years before the time of Jesus, and then compare them to what's often called the mass theoretic texts of the Hebrew Old Testament from 1000 years after Jesus. 

They found there was almost no difference whatsoever. And they have complete scrolls, for instance in the book of Isaiah, and others. and so, we have a very excellent basis of comparison, the various scrolls that we find that the Bible has been preserved accurate the charge that it's been corrupted or that it wasn't preserved accurately usually comes from somebody with an axe to grind. For instance, some in Islam will claim that the Bible was originally inspired but corruptions crept in, then they need to say that because they realize that on some very deep points. The Bible which is much older than the Quran disagrees with teachings in the Quran about Jesus being the Son of God, about Jesus dying for our sins, and in order to deal with the fact that Muhammad himself said that the old the New Testament were written, and were inspired they say, Well, okay, maybe they were inspired but you can't believe what they say anymore because they got corrupted, there is no manuscript evidence that it was corrupted whatsoever. They want to believe that Jesus was not the Son of God, that he did not die for the sins of the world. And so, they say the manuscripts must have been corrupted, if they don't say what we want them to say, we find the similar things I could mention in other ways, but there is absolutely no manuscript evidence that anybody deliberately changed the Bible, and there is no basis for denying the accuracy, or the preservation of God's word.

 Question 10: What are some of the most fruitful ways to study the Bible and learn what it teaches and learn what it teaches?

 Oh, this is a very, very important question, because you can have a great doctrine of the Bible and say it's the word of God. It contains no errors, and for some people I could remove seven books from the Bible, and they would never notice because they don't open their Bible often enough to notice. So, they have a doctrine of scripture that says it's God's word, but they don't read it very often. So, what are some of the most fruitful ways to study the Bible, and learn what it teaches, we should read a portion of the Bible every day. We should try to find a time and place to read the Bible, where we will not be interrupted. We should ask the Holy Spirit, the author of the Bible. To help us understand what we read, we should if possible, memorize, at least something each time we read the Bible clip things to memory, and then meditate on them. We should immediately seek to put into practice the truth that we have learned.

We should seek to share what we've read or learned with someone else. And we should read the Bible systematically and not just jump from one part of the Bible to another. For example, we might choose to read through an entire book of the Bible before going on to other parts of the Bible, it's good, sometimes to read your favorite passages or to go here and there and enjoy portions, but to get the benefit of the Bible, you also just need to read whole books one chapter after another after another to get the full message of that book and then to read the whole Bible, we should read something from both Old and New Testaments, on a regular basis, we should read from different parts of the Bible, such as Psalms, Proverbs The Gospel accounts. The epistles, the historical books on a regular basis, rather than just spending most of our Bible reading time in just one part of the Bible.

 We should seek to read with understanding, rather than simply spending time reading the Bible without understanding that you might get into a healthy habit of reading the Bible in the sense that you do it every day but after a while you're doing it just to put your time in and you've got this duty and say Well, got to read the Bible so yeah, raise your way through chapter shut it and say okay I did my Bible reading for the day. We need to read it understanding. In this connection, we may wish to read a Bible Commentary if it's available or a study Bible which some of the best study Bibles are like a whole Bible Commentary with all the valuable information to help clarify the Bible's teaching, so we may wish to read a Bible Commentary or a study Bible if we have one to help us understand what we're reading, Or if we don't have access to a commentary, we might choose to ask someone else to help us understand what we've read, and in connection with that we should also listen to preach the Messages from pastors who have studied the Bible very carefully and are now proclaiming the fruits of their careful study of the Bible. 

We should also make a definite effort to put into practice the truths that we have read rather than simply reading them, and then forgetting them. It can be helpful to write down in our own words, some of the truths we have learned through our reading of the day. And so, in the practice of journaling, you can write down what you were reading what things God caused you to meditate on as you were reading that, and then best of all, do something about it. Trust God more deeply praise in more joyfully, Obey Him more faithfully, go out and take action based on things that you have read in the Bible, and more and more, you'll find that the Bible is sinking deep into your heart and transforming your heart, that it's taking shape in your life, and changing the way you live. God did not just give us the Bible as something to put on a shelf, but it's something to be read. And not even just as something to be read, but as a life to be embraced from him, and then a life to be lived for Him. The Bible is the living Word of the living God.