Is a little knowledge of the history of the Bible a good thing?

I just finished a two week presentation on the History of the English Bible at our regular Wednesday evening Bible study.  More than half the people who attended were from other churches, a fact that is encouraging as evidence of the desire of ordinary people in the pews of our churches to know the history of the book they turn to for answers to the most important questions in life.
The question in the title reflects a quote I found for my presentation from a King James Only partisan who would rather put his faith in a perfect 17th Century translation of the Bible than study the actual history of the transmission of the text down through the centuries.  He contended that we need to take the perfection of the Bible (in his view only the 1611 KJV, the modern versions being of the devil) on faith.  I started my presentation by telling the people who had come to learn about the Bible that in fact they don't have to take it on faith that we have the same words that were written by Moses, David, Luke, and Paul.  The story of the copying and translating of the Bible is a fascinating piece of history in its own right, but it is also an amazing tale of bravery, dedication, and scrupulous scholarship. 
To learn about the history of the Bible is to learn about a human process.  The doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture is the portion of that process that we need to take on faith.  In other words, I believe that when Isaiah, or John, or James was writing Scripture God had a hand in the process.  The words came from men, but were inspired by God, the words reflected the vocabulary and history of those men, but the truths flowing through them were God's.  From that point, when the original autographs, penned by the authors, began to be copied and circulated, the process was not divine, but human.  Errors and mistakes crept in; imagine copying the whole Bible by hand, wouldn't you makes a few mistakes along the way?  But, instead of wrecking our faith in the Bible, this process actually uplifts it.  The copyists mistakes have been preserved.  That's a good thing, it means that the original text is in there too.  When we compare the thousands of copies of the Bible, spread out all around the Roman world and beyond, spanning more than a thousand years, primarily in Greek, but also translated into a half dozen other languages, an amazing thing happens.  The copies agree with each other.  The copying mistakes fall away and become evident, so much so that an agreement of 98% can be made.
Wait a minute, only 98%?  Forget for a moment that the number dwarfs any other ancient document in accuracy of copies, as well as number and age of the copies, is that good enough?  Are we better off pretending that any one particular version of the Bible is perfect?  No, we're not.  The vast majority of the 2% not in agreement are Orthodox statements in and of themselves.  For example, the extra part of I John 5:7-8 that was added by a copyist 1,000 years after John penned the letter.  Is the statement Orthodox?  Clearly, it is a trinitarian statement that we all would agree with.  John would have agree with it, he just didn't write it.  Do we lose the doctrine of the trinity without it?  Of course not.  Any doctrine in the Bible worth fighting for is in the Bible in a lot of places.  Is idolatry bad, um, yeah, the Bible condemns it hundreds of times.  Are we supposed the help the poor, we're told to do so everywhere.  Is Jesus Christ the risen Lord, the Son of God?  The NT is full of confirmation of that teaching, we don't rely on any one verse or phrase to declare it.
The Bible is the most historically accurate and at the same time the most scrutinized document of the ancient world.  It stands up to the assault of any critic who would doubt its accuracy and trounces them with facts.  You don't have to take it on faith that your Bible today is conveying to you the same ideas, thoughts, and truths of the original authors, it is a historical fact far more attested to than anything else we know about human history.  Is it the Word of God?  That's where faith comes in.  A little knowledge of the history of the Bible is a good thing, it will increase your faith in the Word of God.

Sermon Video: Paul and Barnabas part company - Acts 15:30-41

Paul and Barnabas were an amazing team, the work they accomplished for the sake of the Gospel was groundbreaking, but they didn't last.  The friendship and teamwork that they had built together over years of working for the Lord was put to the test not by a difference of opinion about what God wanted them to do, but by the question of who they should bring along to help do it.  When Paul proposed a second missionary trip to visit again the churches from the first, Barnabas was in agreement that this was a task that needed to be done.  The disagreement arose when Barnabas wanted to take along his cousin John Mark and Paul refused to consider including him.  Mark had been a member of the first trip but had for an unknown reason abandoned them mid-way through it.  Whatever that reason was, it left a bad taste in Paul's mouth and he was unwilling to use this mission as a reclamation project.
Well meaning Christian who are trying to serve God can still disagree on how to do it.  We may even agree on the larger goals, see a common path to take to get there, and then still fail to see eye to eye on the details.  It happens, sometimes through our own failures and hang-ups and sometimes simply through seeing things differently.  Barnabas believed in people, he was willing to risk the mission to save one man, much as he had done years before when he stood up for Paul when nobody else would.  Barnabas is trying to win the battle, he's looking at an individual tree.  Paul is looking at the grand vision, the massive task that Jesus has commanded his disciples to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth, he's trying to win the war, looking at the whole forest.  This isn't a question of who is right or who is wrong, they just disagree.
Paul and Barnabas went there separate ways, Barnabas taking Mark along and Paul finding a new partner in Silas.  The question for us today is not how can we prevent disagreements from happening, they're inevitable in an organization full of reformed sinners with limited wisdom, the question is how can we deal with them without destroying that which we all love, Christ's Church, in the process.
There is a positive note to the end of this story, Barnabas was right about Mark.  Later on Paul will write about Mark being a valuable partner in his ministry, someone he can count on.  We serve the God of second chances, and evidently Paul eventually gave Mark one too.

To watch the video, click on the link below:
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Sermon Video: The Council at Jerusalem, Acts 15:1-19

There have been many Church Councils in the past two thousand years, most of the helpful, a few not so much.  The very first of them was held at Jerusalem under the leadership of Jesus' half-brother James over the question of how to include the new gentile believers in Jesus Christ in the Church that was at this point predominately Jewish.  If this first Council not successfully resolved the controversial issue at hand, the Church would have split far sooner than the Great Schism of 1054.
The issue debated at this first Council arose because individual from Judea decided that they needed to go down to Antioch to tell the Gentiles there that, "unless you are circumcised...you cannot be saved."  In other words, unless these gentile believers were willing to follow the whole Law of Moses, their belief in the salvation through Jesus Christ would be insufficient to save them.  This issue had been simmering behind the scenes throughout the first half of Acts, but now it was boiling over.  Paul and Barnabas opposed their message, and the leadership of the Church of Antioch decided to send them, along with other representatives, to Jerusalem to the disciples to resolve the issue.
After much debate, Peter stood up and took the side of the gentiles by proclaiming that God had not only sent him, and others, to them, but had also validated their work by giving the same Holy Spirit to them as he had given to the Jewish believers at Pentecost.  If God had approved their salvation by faith, apart from the Law, who would gainsay God?  In addition, Peter points out the fatal flaw in the argument of those in favor of extending the Law to the gentiles: Nobody is keeping the Law.  The history of God's chosen people is a story of broken promises on the part of the people who failed to keep the Covenant.  If the Jews couldn't keep the Law, "a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear", why would anyone believe that the first chosen people had been saved by anything but God's grace?  Indeed, Peter concludes, "it is through grace...that we are saved, just as they are."
When Peter finishes, Paul and Barnabas add the testimony of their recent successful mission's trip among the gentiles, but the final answer awaits the decision of James.  James, known for his piety and reverence for the Temple, agrees with Peter that this decision has been made by God, as predicted by the Prophets, and thus "we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God."
With that decision the Council at Jerusalem manages to avoid the splintering of the Church along ethnic lines that had been threatening its unity.  Their wisdom speaks to us today as we ask ourselves, how are we hindering the Gospel through our actions or inaction?  What obstacles have we put in the way of the Lost hearing the accepting the Gospel?  Whatever those things may be, we as a Church must rid ourselves of them because the Lost are coming to God by grace, just as we did.

To watch the video, click on the link below:
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Sermon Video: Turn to the Living God - Acts 14:1-20

Is there anything in common between the audience in Lystra that Paul preached to who mistakenly thought him to be a god, and the modern skeptical audience most likely to believe that there is no God?  At first glance there might not seem to be, the world has changed so much, but the humanity that inhabits it still has the same spiritual need.  Paul was mortified that the local responded to his miraculous healing of a lame man by trying to offer a sacrifice to him, so he responded by telling that that he was just a man like them.  It was not to Paul that they needed to turn, but "to the living God, who made heaven and earth".  The kindness of God, who sends rain in its seasons, was the way in which Paul attempted to share the Gospel with this crowd who had mistakenly put their trust in may gods who could not save them.
When talking to an agnostic or atheist in America today, the lack of worship for God, or gods, is not an indication of a lack of worship.  The worship of self has replaced the worship of God for many people, but the need for a relationship with the God who created us is not something that will go away.  On that level, the deep and abiding spiritual need that we all have, our efforts to share the Gospel in America today really aren't that much different than Paul's efforts so very long ago.

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Sermon Video: The Peril of Rejecting God's Grace - Acts 13:40-52

Having just concluded his message of forgiveness of sins through justification in Jesus, Paul now ends his message to the Jews at the synagogue in Pisidian Antionch by warning them to take seriously God's offer lest they fail to heed God's warning as their ancestors had.  Paul quotes the prophet Habakkuk who spoke for God to an unbelieving generation who scoffed at his message.  God's reply concerning his judgment through of his people at the hand of the Babylonians could just as easily have stood in for God's use of a suffering servant instead of a mighty warrior king as his Messiah, "I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you." (Habakkuk 1:5) 
At first, the warning to accept the message from God seems unnecessary.  Paul and Barnabas were invited to speak again on the next Sabbath, and many from the audience spoke with them afterwords as well.  That next Saturday, however, a massive crowd of Gentiles gathered to hear Paul speak.  Rather than being excited to see the grace of God at work among those who did not know him, the leaders of the synagogue were filled with jealousy and turned against Paul.  How sad to see those to whom the grace of God has been offered jealous of God's efforts to save others as well.
Paul then had to choose between his own people and the crowd of anxious Gentiles.  The choice was clear, though it wounded Paul deeply, "We had to speak the word of God to you first.  Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles." (vs. 46)  At this point, Paul is no longer welcome among his own people and they begin to work with the Roman officials to have him expelled from the region.  The Gentile crowd, in contrast, rejoice in God's forgiveness and large numbers of them believe in Jesus.
As Paul and Barnabas move on to Iconium, a final gesture from Paul speaks volumes about the danger of rejecting God's freely offered grace.  Paul, in imitation of Jesus' apostles, shakes the dust off his sandals before leaving to indicate that he no longer bears responsibility for the fate of those he had attempted to save.  God's mercy and loving kindness is vast, but it is not boundless.  His patience is deep, but it will not overlook the rejection of his Son, to reject the Gospel is to reject eternal life, a perilous course indeed.

To watch the video, click on the link below:
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