New Covenant Presbyterian Church
2 Timothy 3:16-17 “The Bible”
October 7, 2018
Listen to this sermon.
We are now in the fourth week of Believe the Story of the Bible to Become Like Jesus. We have discovered that the God we worship is one in essence but three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This God loves us very much. So we know about the God of the Bible, but how do we know this? Well, the only way we could ever know God is if God revealed himself to us. We will get to this, but first, let’s pray.
“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy Heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)
God reveals himself to everyone through creation. The created world we live in is evidence of a creator. And we can learn a lot about a creator by looking at the creation. The world we live in is beautiful. So the creator must be beautiful. The world we live in works under certain laws. So the creator must be a lawgiver.
But the created world is not the only way God reveals himself to us. God is also revealed in the Bible.
The Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, was once an oral history. People remembered and retold the stories of how their ancestors interacted with God. Eventually, these stories were edited and written down. Multiple stories were woven together to form a completed work. And all of this was done under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who guided the process so that it would become the word of God.
Scribes would write using ink on parchment. Dried lambskins were prepared and the Hebrew scriptures were written down. The lambskins were then sewn together and rolled up into a scroll. These scrolls were entrusted to a teacher who would protect them, study them, and preach from them on the Sabbath. We the scrolls wore out they were carefully copies, by hand, unto new lambskins. And the old scrolls were buried.
In the third century before Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek at the great library in Alexandria. The legend is that 70 translators began work and produced identical translations. Therefore this translation is called “the seventy” or “the Septuagint.” The Greek translation of the Hebrews Scriptures, the Septuagint, was the Bible of the early church.
And then something happened. Our triune God sent the Son to earth as a man Jesus of Nazareth. We read this in the first chapter of the Gospel of John:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made…
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The word of God was the Hebrew scriptures. But now everything has changed. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. Our New Testament was written based on the experience of the incarnation of the Son and the coming to earth of the Holy Spirit.
As a result of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection his followers began to write down their reflections. They talked about what Jesus said and did and taught. And they tried to make sense of it, using the Hebrew scriptures as the basis of their thought. These writings were used by the early church and were collected into what we call our New Testament.
The New Testament was written in Greek. This was not the Classical Greek of the poets and philosophers. Nor was it modern Greek spoken today. Rather it was Koine Greek, ordinary every day Greek used by people in the first century as they lived their lives. The New Testament was written on papyrus sheets. We do not have the originals of any of the books. But we have thousands of early copies on papyrus sheets.
Papyrus is a fibrous plant. It would be harvested and dried. Vertical strips would be glued together. Then horizontal strips would be glued and dried. Then they would be glued together, like plywood, to form rigid sheets for writing. New Testament books would be copied unto papyrus sheets and sheets would be bound together by leather straps.
In the fourth century, Emporer Constantine ordered 50 complete Bibles, Old, and New Testament to be produced and be distributed all over the Empire. Several of these still exist and for the basis of most modern translations.
Early in the fifth century, St. Jerome went to Bethlehem where he translated the Hebrew scriptures and Greek New Testament into Latin. The Vulgate was the Bible of the church throughout the Middle Ages.
In the sixteenth century, the Protestant reformers were concerned that so few people could read Jerome’s Latin translations. So they started producing translations in languages people could easily learn to read, their own languages. William Tyndale and John Wycliffe were early pioneers in the translation of the Bible into English.
Today we are using the New Internation Version (2011) translation of the Bible. This is a very good translation. It is based on the top scholarship of ancient texts. But the Presbyterian church does not have an official translation. We believe all translations, although very good, cannot possibly be as good as reading the Bible in its original languages. So all Presbyterian pastors are required to learn Hebrew and Greek and be able to read scripture in its original languages.
And that brings us to today’s scripture.
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Let me tell you my story. 23 years ago this month God spoke to me. This experience transformed my life. My memory of this is as clear today as it was back then. Here is what happened.
I was driving to church one morning as I did every Sunday morning. On the radio, I was listening to Stained Glass Bluegrass with Red Shipley. I loved Christian bluegrass music back then. But I remember turning off the radio. I had some things to tell God.
During the 40 minute drive, I prayed. I asked God why I didn't have a wife and family. I asked God why my business was in trouble. I asked God why he wasn’t blessing me. I went to church every Sunday. I believed in Jesus Christ. I tried to do everything I was supposed to do. But God wasn’t holding up his side of the bargain. So I prayed and I got angrier and angrier the closer I got to church.
Once I was in church and safely seated in the midst of saints I continued to pray. I have no idea what the preacher was talking about. I have no memory of the hymns we sang. But I clearly remember my angry prayers and wondering if it is alright to pray when you are angry.
Then it happened. God spoke to me. It was as clear as if God was speaking into this microphone. But no one else heard I. The world seem to pause as if I had hit the pause button. And God said, “It's in the book.”
I heard these words and reached down to pick up a black pew Bible and began skimming the first part of it. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca were all names I recognized. After all, I did spend 12 years in Presbyterian Sunday School classes as a kid. I recognized the names, but I couldn’t remember the stories. And I didn’t know what they meant. But I had to know what was in this book because my life depended on it.
The next Sunday I was in the Soar Singles Ministry, the first Sunday School class I had attended in decades. The next Wednesday I went to the Wednesnight Night Alive weekly dinner and followed two people I met at Soar into the Bethel Bible Series. Two weeks later I attended my first All Church Retreat at Sandy Cove here in Northeast Maryland.
A year later I was invited to be on the leadership team for the Soar Singles Ministry. And a year after that I became the leader of that group. The next year my pastor invited me to a Bethel Teachers Class. And after teaching Bethel for four years I went to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena California to become a Presbyterian pastor. There God blessed me with everything I had asked for. God gave me a beautiful wife and a vocation to serve the church.
And this my ministry: I want you to experience what I experienced, not God saying something to you, but the transformation that comes about when you are actively engaged with the word of God. That is why I started Bible studies as soon as I got here. I wanted to end the early service in order to pay greater attention to the Christian Education program for adults and children. I want New Covenant to experience a real new covenant.
Jeremiah 31:33“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
Let’s pray. Lord God, we ask you this day that you will write you word on our hearts. Bless us as we study, meditate and pray on your Word. Transform us into your people. This we pray in the name of the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
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