Follow Me: Day 3 “How To Follow”

Follow Me: Day 2 “When We Fail to Follow”

Follow Me: Day 1 “Why Follow?”

Trust the New Testament? By the #’s

I was re-watching a presentation given by Dan Wallace, the CEO of The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, on the reliability of the New Testament.  Every time I look at this topic I am increasingly more amazed by the truth the data presents. (Note: the information in this post comes mostly from the presentation linked below, but some of the numbers have been updated according to the CSNTM website’s most recent information).

Let me drop a few numbers here:

-We have just around 5,900 hand-written Greek Manuscripts (the language the NT was written in) containing the New Testament, either in part or in whole.

-We have over 10,000 Latin Manuscripts, one of the 1st languages the NT was translated into.

-We also have somewhere between 5-10 thousand manuscripts of varies other ancient translations such as Syriac, Coptic, etc. That may seem like a large disparity (between 5 and 10 thousand) but the truth is we just are not sure how many there actually are.  We do know that it is no less than 5,000.

Why is this impressive? Because for the average ancient work, we have no more than 20 manuscripts. That is not a typo- 20, a two and a zero, and this is being generous. Homer is the only exception but even Homer’s 600 is a far cry from the 20,000-25,0000. Oh, and that 20+thousand doesn’t even include the quotations from earlier church fathers. We could reproduce the NT several times over just off of their quotes alone.

Oh, and there is one more thing- time.

The earliest, again being generous, copy of any other ancient work comes from over 500 years after the document was originally written, this time including Homer.

For the New Testament we have a fragment, P52 (pictured above) of John from no later than 150 AD, and some papyrologists have dated it as early as 90 AD. That is a mere several decades after the events described took place! We have quite a few manuscripts from the first several centuries as well, some being entire copies of the NT.

This is an unprecedented amount of textual evidence that is entirely unmatched in historical academia.

There is nothing in all of the ancient world that comes even close to having the historical veracity of the New Testament.  If you believe that Julius Caesar existed, than there is no historical grounds for denying the events of the NT. If you believe anything you learned in history about Egypt, Babylon, Rome, or Greece; than it is intellectually obtuse to disbelieve the accounts in the NT. I am not trying to name-call, I am simply stating that if someone denies that the NT, as we have it today, contains what the original authors wrote; they are either ignorant of the information, or coming at the information with a strong bias.

Remember, because of the way the texts were copied-by anyone who could write, and from all over the place geographically-there was never one group in control of the text to make wholesale edits. If someone would have tried to insert a doctrine, or take a doctrine out, it would have been immediately discovered because it wold be the only one of its kind, and when compared to the rest of the manuscripts, it would stand out like the Pope at a cowboy church (I would love to see the expression on the Pope’s face when he sees them baptizing in a water trough filled from the garden hose attached to the stage).

It has been cleverly said that we have a 10,000 piece puzzle with 10,001 pieces. Nothing has been lost from the original autographs so, even though we do not posses the original manuscripts, we can with the utmost confidence trust that we have the word of God as written by the followers of Christ.

This is just the tip of the iceberg because there are textual variants and differences, but again, we have more information than needed, not less.

All this to say: Christian, trust the Bible; non-Christian, trust the Bible.

It contains the Words of Life. No man comes to the Father except by Him who is declared through out all of its pages, that is Jesus Christ; who died and rose so that we may have eternal life and fellowship with God. Something not possible without Him, for He forged in blood the way for the defiled to commune with the Holy.

The words contained inside the Bible our true and this is what these words are for:

“Now Jesus did many other sign in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” John 20:30-31

Here are some additional resources for those interested in going deeper. As always, feel free to ask questions.

Books: The King James Only Controversy by James White

Videos:

 

Also check out Daniel Wallace’s short videos on iTunes U about textual criticism.

 

Take ye, all of it.

I sometimes think chapter and verse divisions where the worst thing that ever happened to the Bible because it is so easy to pick and choose what we want to read in a way that ignores context. For example, I cannot count the amount of times I have heard someone claim passages from John 15 but ignore verses a few lines before or after.

Looking at John 15:12-17 and let’s see if this sounds familiar:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you”

Good so far…

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”

Good, good…

“You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Not as commonly quoted but still good for a poster…

“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends,  for all that I have heard from the my Father I have made known to you.” 

I think most preachers would acknowledge that Jesus is talking to the disciples but that these statements still apply to all believers…

“You did not chose me, but I chose you and appointed you …”

Uh Oh…

“…that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.”

Whew…back to safety…

“These things I commanded you, so that you will love one another.”

Great! Everyone love one another!

So why is it that many churches would attempt exegetical acrobatics to explain why the first part of v.16 does not apply to all believers, but EVERYTHING else in this passage does?

We cannot pick and chose what passages we like based on if they fit into our theology or not. We need to let the Bible determine our theology. This should go without saying but, we cannot pre-determine what our source material should say if we are studying to know what our sources material does says.

And why would you want to skip over this glorious truth? God has chosen us, through no merit of our own, and loved us. He has promised that, though there will be persecution, He will not orphan us (14:18) because He has chosen whom He will adopt (Eph 1:4-5). This is not unfair or unjust. God is under no obligation to extend mercy to anyone, but because He loves He has decided to adopt children, justly deserving punishment, into His kingdom.

So why witness you ask? Well let me ask you the same question-Why do you witness? I would venture to say it is for the same reason. Because “faith come by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” We do not save anyone ourselves, it is purely of work of the Holy Spirit. It is a gift and privilege to be part of the miracle of salvation. This is the method God has chosen to spread His kingdom and His glory.

In parting, here are a few guidelines to follow for proper exegesis: Read each passage carefully. If there is something that gives you pause, ask questions, look at the context and do research; but-most importantly-when you are reading, do not pick and chose what works for your preconceived theology. Scripture is not to be taken piecemeal,  you must “take ye, all of it.”

 

 

 

Believing is not Enough

“Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in Him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue. for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.” John 12:42-43

It is not enough to believe. Many people believe that there is a god of some kind, and many think that all roads lead to Rome-or god in this case. This is in error. It is not enough to believe, nor is it even enough to believe in the right God. There must be a confession. There must be faith.

The men in the passage above belived that Jesus was who He said He was, but they would not confess it. The passages indicates that they had some degree of power or fame or both, but they also had fear. This is what putting ones value in such fickle and temporal things as the glory that comes from men leads to: fear. You may have the glory of men now, but who is to say you will have it tomorrow? You are afraid to be put out of the inner circle of elites. Worse, your are afraid to be put out if the inner circle by the elites, who then will publicly strip you of all you had and held of value.

The blind man in John 9 was not afraid to be put out of the synagogue (though his parents were). He did not know much, in fact, he did not even know who had healed him at first. All he had was a name, for Jesus had sent him to the pool to wash and when he came back, Jesus was nowhere to be found. This did not matter to the blind man. He knew he had been healed and no matter what the pharisees tried to tell him or get him to say, he simply confessed the truth. For this, the pharisees threw him out. But then Jesus shows up and this mans belief and confession are vindicated.

Romans is very clear that one must believe and confess because confession is the mark of faith. It is Christ that saves, through faith. You can believe a fact but to confess that fact as an identity is something else entirely. “Faith is the natural response to seeing God’s faithfulness” (Douglas Wilson). It is not our faith that upholds us, but God’s faithfulness. We simply respond with confession, which does require belief, but not only belief.

Confession is the fruit of faith, not just belief. This is required for Salvation.

The Texts are Boring

Many of us suffer from “dry reading”, but there is a book out there that totally blew my mind when it came to reading the Bible.  Reading the Bible often feels difficult, not enjoyable, and boring. Yet, as Christians we feel guilty about feeling this way so we press on in our un-enthusiatics attempts at establishing a daily reading discipline. We know this is what we are supposed to do yet there is no desire, no passion. This is a major reason John Piper’s ministry has been so impacting on me. Christianity was a duty, not my life, nor my passion. My faith was emotionless and dry, so was reading the Bible, and this is not Biblical Christianity.

Now, before I get hammered by those who reacted to the word “emotion”, let me state clearly that I am NOT an advocate for sensationalism nor emotions as a primary source of motivation or truth. I am a confessional Christian who loves liturgy, loves the historical confessions (Westminster Confession of Faith, Heidelberg Confession, The Beligc Confession, etc) and the creeds (The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, etc). So give me good, grounded, intellectual faith. But!…to model ourselves after the Vulcans with the denial and suppression of emotions is to deny who God is and how he made us. To make a pop-culture reference: The movie Equilibrium built a great plot around the value of emotions (also, it is one of my favorite Christian Bale movies).

So what does this have to do with the Bible being boring?  May I submit that the reason the Bible is “boring” is that because we are ignorant of it. The more I read and learn from the Holy Spirit and other scholars, old and new, the more the Bible becomes a vast treasure trove of links, connections, and depth that I could not have possible seen before. Here is a section from the book, Deep Exegesis by Peter Leithart, that I mentioned blowing me away.

“What is John 9 about? It is story about Jesus. Jesus preforms a sign, revealing himself as the one sent by the Father, as the creator of the new Adams, as the light of the world. He is the Son of Man, the eschatological judge of Daniel 7, who comes into the world to blind those who see and to give sight to the blind.

It is also a story about a blind man healed by Jesus. The blind man has never seen the light of day and spends his pathetic life begging outside the temple. One day, a man named

Jesus stops and talks with his disciples, puts some clay on the blind mans eyes, and sends him off to wash in Siloam. When he returns, he can see, but he cannot see Jesus because Jesus is gone. His neighbors and friends are befuddled but since it is a Sabbath day, they turn to the Pharisees for a legal judgment. The Pharisees interrogate the man and come to a dead end: they do not want to endorse Jesus, but they cannot deny that the man can see. They turn to his parents, but that interview too ends in frustration. When they come back to the man, they try to bully him with threats and unfounded declarations about Jesus’ sinfulness. Something is happening to the man who was once blind. He started out knowing only Jesus’ name, but when the pharisees ask him what he thinks of Jesus, he says that Jesus is a prophet. When they come back for a 2nd interrogation, he has gotten bolder, doggedly pointing to the fact that he can see and asking how a sinner could do such a thing. In his boldness, he turns ironic: “Do you want to be his disciple too?” It is the pharisees again who push him along in his commitment to Jesus: “We are disciples of Moses; you are his disciple.” Finally, they expel him from the synagogue, and as soon as he steps over the threshold Jesus is waiting outside for him. The blind man has deepening sight. He knows Jesus’ name, then confess him as prophet, then confesses he has come from God, and finally confesses him as Lord and Son of God and prostrates himself before Jesus.

Not so obviously, it is also a story of Exodus. Early in, John links Jesus with Moses (1:17), And he tells a story of Jesus preforming signs that correspond in detail with the signs preformed by Moses in Egypt. Moses turns water to blood; Jesus turns water to wine. Moses brings hail and lightening to Egypt, Jesus calms a storm. In Egypt, locust eat all the grain, but Jesus feeds the 5,000. Moses brings darkness to Egypt, while Jesus brings a blind man from darkness to light. The specific plot of John 9 also retells the story of Exodus. Jesus, the prophet greater then Moses, delivers the man from the Egypt of darkness and sends him through the waters. The man enters the wilderness of trial, temptations, and threat, where the leaders of Israel insist that this new Moses cannot be from God, but the blind man is a faithful Joshua or Caleb, who confesses Jesus with boldness in the face of the giants of the land.

Not so obviously, John 9 is also a story of Genesis…Jesus makes clay to make a man new, and reveals himself as the eternal light who’s light came into the world on the first day and who became incarnate in these last days. Jesus is also the Lord who opens the eyes of the blind man, just as Adam and Eves yes where opened at the tree.

It also a story about the pharisees, a story about Israel’s reaction to Jesus, a story about the mans parents, a story about discipleship…” (141-142)

To be sure, Leithart has some…interesting theories, but to his credit, he points out that some of his speculations may be unfounded, but are interesting to tease out.  As Christians, this is ok. There is a difference between meditating on God’s Word that involves speculation, and preaching something as gospel truth. Hopefully this excerpt helps people see that what they read on the surface of the texts is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that lies underneath.

Leithart names his chapters as such :”The Text is a Husk”, “Texts are Events”, “The Text is a Joke”, “Texts are Music” etc. and just pores out knowledge and analogies that, when reading this book, I was so overwhelmed with information and feelings of ineptitude that I just wanted to go into a corner and shrivel up. But it was like a good work out; you hurt during but feel great afterwards. This book showed my that ironically, I had been reading the Bible for years but had not yet even begun to read it.

So how does one start you may ask? Try something easy. When asked how he knew what to preach on Charles Sprugeon said: “I take a text, and make a bee-line for the cross.” So let me encourage you, take a text and see how it points to Christ. Yes, there is danger of eisegesis (reading things into the text that aren’t there, i.e. inserting your own meaning) but the Bible is so Christo-centric that it is fairly easy to see where the Old Testament is pointing to Christ. Here are some examples to get started: Moses as a type of Jesus, or the Tabernacle and it’s foreshadowing of redemption and it’s picturing of Jesus. The Holy of Holies as the throne room of God and how only priests could go in, so when Christ dies and the veil was torn this was establishing believers as the royal priesthood mentioned in Peter, who all have access to the throne.

So just as the “…blind man is being healed by the the Sent One in the pool of sending, and thereby becomes one sent, a type of apostle. He is plunged into the pool “Sent” by the One Sent, immersed in the Sent One’s sending” (102)  so we are sent to understand the Word. So go forth and seek! No longer may the text be boring!

I Would Have Stoned Him Too

 

(Image credit: tylo.com)

Jesus, in John 8, makes declarations that are absolutely damnable…if He were not who He said He was. John 8:48-59 is an incredibly offensive account to the Old Testament adhering  Jews. Christ claimed that “if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death”. They quickly rebuff “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, and the prophets died…are you greater then our father Abraham…and the prophets! Who do you make yourself to be!“.

I try to place myself in the position of these Jews hearing Jesus say these things. They were so taken-a-back in disbelief that the only logical conclusion they could come up with was that  Jesus was possessed by a demon. This was the only explanation that could account for the insanity spewing from His mouth. But Jesus isn’t done yet: “Your Father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

At this point, I recall to mind the times when I have been involved in conversations with people who are just simply impossible. I can easily remember the feelings of being at an absolute loss for how to even respond to that persons incredibly ridiculous thought processes. Words cannot describe the feeling of going up to a brick wall and trying to beat some sense into it with your head (metaphorically speaking of course).  This is what the Jews had to be experiencing. “You are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Some of Jesus’s audience must have been just about foaming at the mouth. But again, the audacious Jesus isn’t done: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am“.

The response by the Jews must have been as involuntary as it was conscious. There must have seemed no other rational way to respond to someone who had just claimed what Jesus had; for Jesus had just claimed to be YHWH.

“So they picked up stones to throw at Him…“. If I would have been a Jew in that time, and someone had just claimed to be God, the most heinous blasphemy there is…I would have stoned Him too.

BUT-it’s only blasphemy if it’s not true. And that was just the thing…Jesus’s claim to divinity was true. Jesus is God; co-equal and co-eternal. This is the consistent testimony of Scripture.

John Calvin and John 6

John Calvin, in his commentary on John, shows how Total Depravity and  Irresistible Grace logically (and obviously theologically) are inseparable. This is what Calvin had to say on the drawing that the Father does in John 6:

“It is not violent, so as to compel men by external force; but still it is a powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit, which makes men willing who formerly were unwilling and reluctant. It is a false and profane assertion, therefore that none are drawn but those who are willing to be drawn, as if man made himself obedient to God by His own efforts; for the willingness with which men follow God is what they have already have from Himself, who has formed their hearts to obey Him.” ~John Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries Vol. XVII)

There is nothing inherent in our hearts that enables us to be drawn to the Father. It is completely His work; this work is a beautiful, glorious, and powerful act of grace. He is not dragging us, kicking and screaming into heaven. Rather, He calls us forth as Lazarus from the tomb, for when He says “Come forth!”, our heart of stone shatters into the dust of the fallen Adam, and a new man is born with a heart of flesh into the New Adam.