What is the Bible? (Part 1)

This was prompted through William, a thought that he had on some things that Ronnie was talking about in the last episode and specifically about the onion, which I think Ronnie will get to peel back the layers of. You like see what I did

It could be because we feel like our efforts are better suited in other places. But yeah, I think one of the things we discussed specifically in the politics episode, and you can correct me if you didn't feel this way but I kind of felt like one of the main things we. Kind of discussed was that in politics specifically it might be better to not engage much at all And it just kind of brought up a question in my mind of like, okay as christians. How do we discern?

I'm gonna i'm gonna step into this sinful arena. I'm gonna step into this difficult place and i'm gonna bring jesus there and i'm gonna bring the light of christ into that Versus i'm not engaging at all. So do you have any thoughts about that?

You can overreact to those things just like you can with discussions about the Bible and religion. There's lots of subjects we can run from because we're reacting against the way people did that rather than against the subject itself. But This is a matter of conscience. The way, though, that we have to go at that is we start with Jesus as our model.

We look at our Bible examples of people following Jesus as our examples, Paul being the one we have the most information about, but certainly we see the original apostles in their context with Jesus, and some things about the early church in society in the book of Acts, and then some little bits and pieces in the letters about that. And then you've got Revelation, which very much is talking about the church in the world it was in.

And you look at how God has dealt with The world when he divided the people and ultimately into these principalities that these sons of God are these powerful beings that again, he calls Elohim in Psalm 82, again, divine beings, not Yahweh, not creator, but they're called God's Elohim.

You know, there was a lot going on, and when you look at these references through the Old Testament about the other gods he was not talking about gods that were equal to God, but he's talking about these powerful divine beings that are active. They're contending with, you see, these depictions of, Michael fighting against these beings we read about the Prince of Persia holding up the great warrior Archangel. These are very powerful beings. And this is real.

This is not superhero, Spider Man kind of movie stuff. This is real. And we can see this in our society when we see such darkness among some people groups and such ugliness that goes on. So I don't. I don't think humanity up until the last generations have really questioned that there were gods over nations. It was more often than not in the ancient world, they would they would follow their god into these wars. And so you see the whole, it starts with Babel, Babylon.

And this, and it, Babylon becomes a figure, a power figure of the world. And these ancient powers, Egypt becomes one of those too. That, and we see God using those countries to shape his people in the middle of this, which is, I think Paul is getting at that in, in First Corinthians 2, when he's talking about these things were kept secret so that God could carry out his purpose, just like he used Pharaoh to carry out his purpose.

He used Nebuchadnezzar to carry out his purpose, but that didn't mean he fixed everything. That didn't mean he overthrew them. He could have squashed them, but he did not. And the question is why not? Because it didn't fit within his purpose. He has a bigger purpose that he's bringing about, and that's the narrative of the Scripture. So that God's people have never been affected by politics that's part of our story in the Bible.

And then when you look at the early church and its interactions with the powers that be in Israel. which were primarily political. Herod was certainly not any kind of a biblical Jewish king. He was a corrupt, sly fox. He just was, you know, trying to take hold of the kingdom. But Jesus didn't overthrow him. We don't even see an encounter that Jesus initiated. What Jesus did was built the kingdom of God in the midst of it.

And so whatever we feel we need to do, there's a conscientiousness about what we might feel like God's calling us to do. Moses was raised in the Pharaoh's house, a new Pharaoh, you know. Had come along and so Moses was sent back to the Pharaoh and we see this encounter. That's risky business for Moses and Aaron to do what they did with that man. He could have had their head chopped off easily, thrown them in the dungeon, but he didn't. Why didn't he? I can only assume God was. Doing his deal.

So I don't mean to say we don't interact because we're forced to. We can't ignore our administrations back and forth in our society and our role in that. So I think that I think of it in terms of, I, I was trying to think when you asked the question, I would have to go back and look, but When Jesus prayed for the disciples in John 17, one of the things he prayed was that he was sending them into the world but they wouldn't, they, they wouldn't be of it.

And it seems like one of the older trans translations was that they would be in the world, but not of it. I may be not, that may be a summary and not a quote, but that. It resonated with me because in my early, earliest church experience, there was a little bit of, you know, modern day monk mentality in the sense of, you know, the more sectarian you get you know, you're just, you're not supposed to be with anybody. I mean, I remember being told avoid all appearance of evil.

So, you know, you couldn't go to another church that we didn't agree with because people would think you supported that. Literally I was told that by occasionally the people you hang out with, then, you know, you hang out with people that, you know, get drunk and party and mess around and people are going to think you support that. And you know, as I begin to process this, number one, I just thought if I went to church with somebody else, you know, I don't.

No, many people would think that I supported that. I don't, I just don't, I didn't think that way. I, but the same with you look at Jesus going to these socials that these people were having, they could have thought he was a self righteous Pharisee. They called him a drunkard and a glutton because he hung out with people, so, so should Christians go to parties where people are drinking and we know many of them are going to get drunk?

I've been to several because there were people that I was trying to befriend and reach out to were having these parties. It's like, I don't even drink, but I always made sure I went earlier because I just, that way I could be there. And then leave a little earlier before some of the other stuff got started. And so politics is that way. I mean, we're Americans. There's a lot of people that see us as corrupt hypocrites, greedy, self centered people, just because we're Americans.

Are we supposed to leave America? Where are you going to go? Humans are going to think that. So this thing about politics, it's you are going to automatically be in the world. I do believe these powerful spiritual forces of evil, they go, pardon me, say evil goes where power grows. Of course they're going to be involved in that. That's why I think the farther up the food chain you get in politics, the stronger the evil that's trying to influence that is.

And it's just galling what we see at that level. I mean, not just in America, but all over the world. It's like, how do these people do this? How could you do that? So I think each person has to pray about this, talk to people that know them, and then follow their convictions and their conscience. The problem is, it's rare is the person that I've ever seen that would say I'm going to go do this or that and be a light to them. That they're not.

More affected by that in the end than the people they're trying to affect. And that's a generalization. So I would say whatever you do, you need to have other godly people kind of in it with you. Two of you at least that are involved and then and be very measured in that. And ask yourself, what are you trying to do and what's reasonable that you can do? Because again, I'm going to come back to say one on one's how it's done.

Our best influence in the end is going to come down to the influence at the character level we can have on people. Because again, you can, if your character is really godly, you can be in some pretty rough context and not within your self sin. I've never been a drinker or partier. I could go have a quiet time at a bar. I'm not tempted to get into any of that. But there are other things I wouldn't want. To be around because we all have our temptations. So that's not going to be my deal.

But and I have gone to bars a few times. To sit and talk to some people, because I had some people that were a couple of times that were getting into some really bad stuff there. And I just, they were shocked when I walked in and went and sat with them. And you know, just said, Hey, what are you doing? You know, because I cared about them. Wasn't being condemning or mean. Even then, and that was a long time ago. William, I think that I try to vote.

But again, how much do you want to get involved? You look at our elections. How much time should we invest in studying every school board candidate? And even if you read a little bit about them, how much would you really know about who they really are? So you're going to have to go meet all of them. Then you've got scores of candidates and things. And before long, you've spent hundreds of hours on these political things and you've not prayed much at all about it.

So I. I just think we have to be very careful, William, and I, because I think prayer is the most we can do. I do think Christians need to be heard, in a sense, because the politicians care about what Christians as a In general thing, because they're trying to get votes. So if they know what's a big deal to us, they're going to at least moderate some of their positions or else they know that they're not going to get those votes. So we can definitely influence just in a political way by.

But I think this, you know, saying mean things and yelling and screaming and all that. I just that's not the way Christ did think. I just think that, you know. You just need to live and learn and think about what you're doing. But as I said before, the political parties as they exist are inherently sinful. They're divisive. They're, you know, they just divide against each other and fight and they're slanderous against each other. You know, so you have to be careful.

I could not be a member of a political party, my conviction. But with that said, I can't vote for either party and feel great about it. I mean, we just had a president that, I mean, lots of really smelly stuff going on around him that just gave blanket immunities to all of his family, him, all these people. It's like. You know, to me, that's just an admission of it, but they're saying he's going to do it to protect them from the next one. What's the next one?

Remember when they were in and all the stinky smelly stuff that was going on? So if I say i'm really for this one and he's it's like What did I just say? For what? For these ugly comments? For these derogatory things that are said? For this arrogance? And I can't say I support that person. To me, it has always been the lesser of two evils. And that's just the truth. But who among us would I want to vote to be president? Are any of us qualified?

You know, it's just this thing that's happened and it's And God lets it happen. I just think each person has to really follow their conscience, but the big deal is we've got to be about the mission of Christ and kingdom building. And as ambassadors of the kingdom, in the truest sense, we don't get involved in civilian affairs in the sense that we're participating as one of them. We're in it, but we're not of it. We're representing the kingdom of God's interest.

Whatever party we're dealing with, whatever issue we're dealing with, we're representing the interest of God as ambassadors of the kingdom that reigns supreme above it all. Is that easy? No, it's not. But it's the right question. So, and then we have to be gentle with each other and our judgments. Back to eating meat offered to idols one man can, one man can't.

I don't have to say you don't love God because you're not going to this protest or because you're not supporting this candidate or you're not getting on Facebook and making such and such post and for or against. That's just rancor and I don't think that's the spirit of Christ. You know, Jesus, he stayed on his mission and he dealt with all of those forces as he encountered them. I don't think Jesus went looking for demons.

There's some, this spiritual warfare kind of movement that's going on that it's like we're kind of, we're going to go fight the demons. That's not even what Jesus did. They're there. They're going to contend with you, but that's not our mission. God will fix that in the end. We have to deal with them as they come. Jesus dealt with them as they came. So that's the deal.

So, you know, both which we think of theologically, but I also think of them scientifically. I think to do science right is to do theology. We're studying the creator and how he thinks, how he does things, what his nature's like. And I, to me, that's huge. So it's those concentric circles that I don't know, William. I couldn't tell you. I didn't see somebody draw this one time. I don't, that's the lifelong pastor stuff.

It's like, my gosh, I've sat through so many classes, read so many books, looked up so many things, preach so many sermons. I just don't claim any originality for anything. I do accept responsibility for it. I am a person with a mind to sort things, parse things out, and I have a mind to synthesize lots of ideas into some, you know, these practical things.

And so many things we do are Ultimately, these, each of them, a synthesis of a whole lot of ideas, not just things I've learned, but things I've learned from you guys and the churches we come from and the questions we have and the suggestions we have, it becomes this, you know, it's the church of God, the way he does it. But so yeah, these concentric circles are pushing back against some of the old hermeneutics.

Which we'll talk about in a minute that came about so but that is the way I interpret scripture

Where's that in the Bible where it's just this kind of like. Okay. Basically this rule book mentality of like the Bible exists to teach you what to do and what not to do. So that's one example. I think another one is just, you know, I never heard anybody discuss context when it came to the Bible. There was never any conversation about. What was going on in the literary style of what we were reading or who wrote something or when it was written It was all very much. Here's this thing.

Here's a verse that talks about this thing. So here we go and Yeah, so so As I got older and began to read more and more of the Bible and primarily in college, started to listen to sermons from different churches or dive into different denominations and their different beliefs and things. Yeah, I was just pretty shocked to, to find a different approach, a much different approach, at least in what I felt just to the Bible in general.

And so I wanted, yeah, I just wanted to have a conversation about how we got, how you got to the place growing up in a fundamentalist church of Christ, how you got to the place with the scripture where you wanted. To approach it differently, or where you learned to approach it differently, and why, um, and then just kind of talk about what that's looked like for you, and And maybe even have more conversation about how you passed that along to all of us.

So, does that kind of sound, does that make, everything make sense, and,

I, my whole life was just really down on top of me that whole second year of college. I moved in by myself. It just continued. I was carrying this weight on me. That was just my deal. I mean, again, from the outside, people wouldn't have seen that. I was just like every other, I was probably 20 at that time. And just, you know, you put on your mask in the morning and you go out and you do your deal and trying to think about it, but I did it night.

And I did when I was by myself, but when I started the church, I was just looking for life answers, but in that I was going to church, the church of Christ really focused on the Bible and how it was put together and the primary steps to being saved. They called it the plan of salvation. The correct way to do church. You know, to a lesser degree into the things that I, as a 20 year old guy was dealing with, nobody talked about it.

You know, I just laugh when we, most young people are thinking about girls and guys and sex and trying to figure out how to tame this beast that lives in us thinking about the future and how do we. What are we going to do and how are we going to do it? And there's pressure coming down on us to make a decision at 16, what I'm going to do with for the rest of my life and where am I going to college? Yada. And it's like, my gosh, it's just a whole new first world problems that we have.

But what I found as I was reading the Bible was There were passages that meant a lot to me that weren't being talked about, like the one that really turned me. Here's the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God and keep his commandments. This is your whole purpose. And it's like, Oh. You know, for me as a pragmatist, that's just, okay, if that's true, and I wasn't sure it was not that I disagreed with it. I was just at that stage of my life questioning everything.

And I was skeptical for my own reasons, as we all are to some degree. But there were scriptures like Proverbs 30, verse five, every word of God proves true. It's like, you know, just thinking about then trying to think about the word of God, but when you read the Bible, most of the words you're reading are not God talking. I mean, like I say, I, the first try to time I read through it really a second half of Exodus just, I think I slogged my way through it, Leviticus.

I just died there and I went to the New Testament. Yeah. I just. It was so foreign to me and I'm thinking, what does this have to do with anything I'm dealing with, you know, it's just, it just aroused so many more questions. You know, I was God going out to meet Moses to kill him. It's like, oh my gosh, I don't, I've already got a lot of questions. I don't even know how to study that. When I went to Jesus, it made a lot of sense. And I really fell in love with scripture, not all the rules.

The ones that I loved were what I would call the inspiring scriptures. I fell in love with Jesus, not the biographical stuff about Jesus, but just the way he dealt with people, the way he talked to people, the way the Sermon on the Mount was certainly enthralling to me because it really does kind of lay out the teachings of Christ. So I was very much that way. And I really did counsel myself through scriptures a lot. Again, that's not, that was not coming from really so much.

My church a lot of that was just coming from me even reading You know like barclays commentary somebody that had a more It, those are more devotional readings than they are commentaries. They're not even called a commentary, they're called daily readings, but they were very helpful to me in how to think about scripture. And it meant a lot to me because it really wasn't dealing with the rules, it was dealing with the meanings.

So, I really, I was taught Pattern Theology it made sense, but I hadn't read the whole scripture.

How do we interpret things? It ultimately, predominantly kind of came down to how to read and interpret sacred writings, because there are hermeneutics in Islam and other religions, but there's the whole branch of Christianity, Christian hermeneutics, is how do we read these ancient scriptures? How do we think about them? How do we interpret them?

But pattern theology was you go through the New Testament, you look for that, and you, Ultimately, you basically turn the New Testament back into a law. You reduce it back to these basic things that we have to do to be saved. That's why when you look at churches statement of faith, so much of it, what they're talking, what they're putting there is we think these are the fundamentals. We think these are the things you have to believe or practice in order to be right with God.

Now, the fundamentalists took that, you know, to the extreme, but they didn't invent it. Fundamentalism grew out of that. So, That was what I was taught. The more I read the scripture and the more I applied the scripture, the more power I had to say, wait, I've read these verses. I've read every verse of the Bible. I've read lots of use. I've got, I'm going to weigh in on this.

Went back to his, I think it was his apartment, I think it was out of the dorms at that point. And started reading, just flipped open to Matthew and started in the, you know, the first chapter of Matthew and started reading through it. And he said, it just felt like something significantly changed in his life. Like, in those moments That there was this huge shift and kind of breaking of problems and addiction and different things in his life.

And he said he, by the time he got to the the attitudes that he was just weeping, like this was in the course of just a few, you know, a few hours and then walked over went to the kitchen, poured out all his beer and like started this relationship with God. And then sometime later, six months later, nine months later he got connected with somebody on campus and like his life has been completely different ever since.

Can you think of other stories like that of people that you've met along the way where you know, their life was a certain way, maybe just a couple. I don't think we have to spend a ton of time on this. I was just, as you were explaining that and the impact the Bible. Had on you I thought of him yesterday saying that and just kind of this, you know Meteor that kind of hit his life and completely changed things for the good. Are there any stories like that?

kind of stand out to you, I know i'm putting you on the spot

And so, you know, I think that's the deal, John, is God meets different people in different places. For some people, they're sitting in a Bible class. For some people, they're at church. For some people, they're listening to a song on the radio. For some people they're desperate and they get their Bible. For me, I went to church. It's all I knew how to do. And I'm sitting there and this preacher's preaching.

And the next thing I know I'm walking down the aisle, really just committing myself, I'm going to go to church for a year. It's all I knew how to do. I didn't even know where you got a Bible. Now that's changed in society, this guy did, but yeah, I've seen lots of people in lots of different places you know, from the guy that gave me the Elmer Gantry book, he was a Mensa guy. I mean, 145, 150 IQ, complete geek, you know, a really neat guy.

But he had never been around intelligent Christians in his mind that would engage him at a more intellectual level. And so he met one of our guys and he, but he wanted to talk about it. And he, they brought him to me and he was just kind of shocked when he found out I had a degree in chemistry, I don't, all my degrees are secular. And then I would discuss that with him, that I understood atheism and why people wouldn't believe. Um, and he became a Christian.

And when he brought me that Elmer Gantry book, he wrote in the front, thanks for being unto me. He won as It's Andrew Pingilly and Andrew Pingilly is this little Methodist pastor that's sincere. He really has a little bit row. He shows up twice and disappears

Well, the whole AA 12 steps come out of the Sermon on the Mount. You know, I mean, he was reading what really drove these early alcoholics to take these principles and apply them to their addiction. But we're all addicted to something. We're addicted to ourselves. We're addicted to our pleasures. Whatever they are, that's where we get our dopamine surge. But the problem with that is, in the world, you just need more of all of that. The first time is great. The second time is not as good.

The third time you need a whole lot more. Whether it's drugs or food or pleasure, we just, we're looking for the next big deal. But it's never the same. Going to Disney World, it's never going to be the same as the first time you went as a kid. You just can't get there, you know, and all those experiences and some of that is helpful in that it drives us to grow in certain things and so forth in our marriages and our love for our mates.

That's part of that process of bonding that God uses to bond us. So, John, I, thinking about specific people, that would be a harder thing, but yes, I mean, I hear, I've heard stories through the years of people that, you know, just woke up in the middle of the night and decided they needed to go to church and showed up somewhere.

Yeah, God's always working, but God meets people where they are, whether it's just your, the roommate that talks to you, the person on your sports team, the, it's just the right person, the right time, the right situation, and God gets your attention. Jesus, when he talked to Zacchaeus in Jericho, caught him right at the right moment because that story is just. It's very abrupt. He jumps down and repents. It's like, there, there obviously is some kind of backstory.

I know that's a big conversation, specifically how the Bible came to be and all that, but will you just talk about what it is and how it, how we got it?

That governed every facet of Jewish life as a theocracy, as a God ruled society. Always pointed to the next chapter in all of this, that another prophet was coming, Moses said in Deuteronomy, a bigger prophet, a more important prophet. And then, of course, the writings. What are often called the books of poetry. They're the books of writings. It's Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.

They are this very much an expressive literature of Israel that was expressing the experiences that people were having. The psalms were somewhat the hymnal of Israel. They wrote these psalms and they would chant these things or some kind of a cantor would, you know, put a tune to a song, but it was nothing nearly as sophisticated as what we're experiencing in church today. But nonetheless, it was music and they would speak it to each other.

Even in the early church, they would have a line or two and Groups would repeat them to each other and they would sing them to each other and that was just a part of the deal Families would do that. I grew up in a family that we sang at home That's kind of a lost thing in most families and it's just not what we do but the Then there were the prophets, and those are the last books, the last 17 books are called the prophets.

Those were the kind of national preachers of Israel that were speaking into the culture, as well as some of the surrounding cultures, these messages from God, and in that often foretelling what was to come. And that's why we see a lot of the prophecies about Jesus from Isaiah.

As he was kind of tying together the demise of Israel and what was happening there as, you know, the northern part of that had been already captured and just were being occupied by Assyria and Babylon was, had overthrown Assyria and was closing in on Jerusalem, which was the sacred city for them. where their temple was. And, you know, how can this be? How can God let this happen? And Isaiah was saying, they're not going to take it right now.

But he gives this picture of this new Jerusalem stuff and this weeping prophet, the Isaiah 53, and describes Jesus and the great invitation of Isaiah 55 that God gives. And just so many of the metaphors that flow into the New Testament are just quoted over and over. But again Transcribed They did what most people do. We always kind of, we're self centric. And so everything applies to us. We can't, we just can't do that.

It's like, you know, the quote unquote end times eschatology in the new Testament, everybody through the ages, there's always been a large group of people that interpreted that as during their time. They would take those kinds of really metaphorical images that God gave. And then saying that yeah, the end times have started after Jesus left. They're called the last days in Hebrew. So it's not like it's We've been in the last days the whole time, but we want to interpret it that way.

So along come the apostles, along comes Jesus, along comes John the Baptist, the first quote unquote prophet in 400 years to Israel. And I mean, he looks like and acts like Elijah. He's a wild man. Elijah was that way. These guys were not spiffed up, fancy city preachers. God didn't work that way. That's not how God usually works. And that's how humans work. So anyway, John the Baptist comes on to announce the coming of Jesus and the quote unquote prepare the way for Christ.

When you go read about John the Baptist, you're saying, how the heck did he prepare the way of Christ? The prophecy, he was going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children was they're saying the fathers of Israel to the coming generations, probably, but that's not what said. That's an interpretation of that. How did John the Baptist do any of that?

When the leaders from Jerusalem came out, he rebuked them, called them a den of snakes and sent them back pack and he wouldn't even baptize them. It's like, Oh, okay you know, and then he insulted Herod and ended up getting his head cut off. So, how did he prepare the way of Christ? That's the question you need to answer, because it's saying God does not work the way men do.

It's Isaiah 55. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. When you see people doing all of God's stuff in ways that really make sense to humans, you're probably already off. God doesn't work that way. He really makes the wisdom of men look stupid. That's why he goes and calls these, you know, these guys he called these apostles that didn't fit the mold of leaders. I think sometimes we, we don't give them enough credit.

We act like they're just complete idiots, but they weren't, they just weren't from the right place. They didn't speak the right language. They didn't go to the right college. But when you look at what they did for Jesus, you're saying, oh no, these were not goofballs. They were raw stones that Jesus was going to shape. And that's where most of us come from, is just, we're unlikely.

And we have to be very careful about these human situa institutions and systems we put in place that produce a certain kind of product over and over. Because you can't do the things of God in the ways of men. So you're gonna be a, you're gonna tick people off. But we're supposed to make everybody happy. I've not been that person. I wasn't trying to tick people off, but you just speak the truth. You ask questions, you say, I don't see that. This doesn't look like Jesus.

The powers that be won't like that because you need to just I literally had an elder tell me one time, and this is what really drove me out of all of that old stuff. This is one of the things he said, Ronnie, you need to quit thinking so much and start imitating. He said those words to me and later said he didn't. He did. I was just shocked. Was it a Freudian slip on his part? Maybe. But he said it because I remember because it was so shocking that there's a long back story to that.

So the Bible came about as these apostles came on the scene. It's the way God works. It's just pretty organic. There never emerges in the scripture this story about how the Old Testament's coming about. It came about through the nation. These are the people of God. It was messy. It was, but it was not reflecting the glory of Israel. It was reflecting that God is able to work through the imperfect and even the ungodly. That's what the Bible is about.

But we want to create a narrative that makes us look good. No, that's what I said in one of our previous ones. When did Israel do God's will? When did they have a stretch of doing good, but God still brought about Jesus through them and he said, you're going to reject him and they did. He knew Israel was going to be a bunch of complainers and they were. But he still led them. He still, so is that God's a failure? No, God succeeded in everything he was doing. He knew humans were gonna fall.

He was crucified from the foundation of the world. He planned to die for our sins. This was a, an existential trap in creation to destroy evil. Whatever else is happening before creation, evil existed in the heavenly realms. There was rebellion and what's gonna happen after it's not gonna be an either.

He's gonna ball it up So the New Testament came about rather organically the four Gospels were read first Again, ironically the one that started writing was the one Apostles that didn't walk with Jesus when he was here It was Paul Saul of Tarsus that encountered Jesus post resurrection and he wrote the most books of the Bible. The one that wrote the most words of the Bible was Luke, and he wasn't with Jesus when he was here. And you say that doesn't make sense.

Does it make sense that Jesus didn't write a single book? He could have dictated it. Maybe he did. Maybe he wrote the whole Old Testament. Maybe he drove the writing of it. Because that's what John is saying. He takes the story of Jesus back to creation. Genesis starts, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. John starts, his letter, I mean his gospel in John 1, In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God.

And then he goes on down in verse 14 and said, and the word became flesh and live for a while a month. And we have beheld his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth. You know, so there's what we're beginning to learn is the angel of the Lord in the old Testament. I think about it as Jesus. I'm saying it because we're referring to an angelic being.

I could say him and as this emanation from God, because he was speaking for God and he was called God sometime. Sometimes he's called the angel of the Lord. That just means a messenger of God, which Jesus was certainly a messenger of God. Jesus was an apostle. Jesus was a disciple of God. But God is everything he calls us to be. So the New Testament arises really organically and it ultimately was a production of the church.

But we lead people to believe that the Bible is the word of God, like it dropped out of heaven, published. That's not how it came about. That's never been the way God's worked in creation. He's worked very differently. God's ways are not our ways. And so our New Testament arose from the church and the church has not, still does not agree every book that ought to be in it.

And they would, and that brought people to question the Bible because the church was saying we believe in the infallibility of the scripture. My question is which ones, who are you trusting that these are the right scriptures? Because the Apocrypha was put in, and then it was taken out, and then the Catholics put it back in, and the Protestants didn't have it in there. And books like Hebrews, it took them a long time to get approved, to be put in there.

Most of them, they were circulated in little, you know, scrolls. A gospel here, a gospel there. Luke and Acts was probably circulated together because Luke wrote both of those. One about Jesus life and then the second part about how the church spread from Jerusalem up to Rome. But that was his experience. He met Paul. You'll see Luke appear halfway into Acts and suddenly he's there. He's a disciple that came about through Paul and learned from Paul.

So our New Testament is very organic in its origin. And so, you know, when we think about the Bible is the word of God, honestly we just think it's just, and then you start reading and it doesn't sound like God. But you're not supposed to say that because that's irreverent. Oh, we worship. That's the problem with the evangelical church movement is we worship the Bible.

That's why you were asking about these kids that are coming in these kids that in relationship with, I need to read my Bible more. And I asked the question, what did people do? For the centuries, they didn't have access to a Bible. The Jews didn't have access to their Bible. They went to the synagogue, they heard readings, whatever was being read. If they had questions, they could go to the synagogue leader or, you know, a rabbi, if they could get to them and ask a question.

The teachers of the law that you read about in the New Testament. The early church, what we read in Acts, they were devoted to the apostles teaching. Why? Because there was no New Testament. They were just telling people what Jesus had said. But they became disciples and gave their whole lives to God through the words of the apostles. They took them at their word. But why? Because the apostles were rooting everything they said in what these Jews knew to be true from the Old Testament.

They were showing them that Jesus was the fulfillment of the messianic promise. And the commoners were the ones that were willing to listen to it. The people in power, not so much because they would lose their power. They were rooted in ancient Israel in the way they did things. And they had built it to keep the power structure in place. But the commoners, you they were starving anyway. They were not treated well. The Jews never did well.

Micah told them, he has shown you what the Lord requires to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with God. They still, when Jesus came along, he said the same thing. You tithe mint and dill and cumin, but you neglect the weight of your matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. They still weren't doing it. Why? Because they were corrupted by evil, and they were using the things of God to support themselves.

So our Bible is this narrative about how God works through an evil, fallen world, and how in that He works through evil, fallen people. Fallen people to show his glory. He chose through the church to make his wisdom known to the principalities and powers. He's making, we are his sermon to these evil beings, the church. What's the point? We're so good. No, we're so bad. We're so bad. We've never been good. When has the church ever been good? We can't agree. We can't agree on the basics.

We fuss and we argue and we fight and the things that are big to God, like love one another as I've loved you. We never get to that because we've got to argue about the fundamentals and who's right about, you know, this and that. And we just don't even have directive. Our New Testament is not written that way. And I like, what really struck me, the scripture that turned me from fundamentalism is Romans 7. 6.

And it simply says, Paul said, so we serve in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way of the written code. All of, all these old formulas of the old way of the written code. And it just causes stumbling. It convicts us over and over of sin. And you can't keep it. They couldn't keep the old law. We can't keep the New Testament as a law. You want to be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. Okay. Let's just start right there. We're all failures. So give up, let's go home.

But that's not the basis of salvation. God is good. And we are to be a proclamation, as he says in, as Paul writes in Ephesians 2, 6, he is raised us with him and seated us with him in the heavenlies, the heavenly realms that in the coming ages, he might demonstrate the incomparable riches of his grace expressed through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. And when we get that we finally just submit God is good. None of us are all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We're all deserving of eternal destruction, every one of us. But this, you know, as Romans 6, 23 says, the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And that's, you know, so our New Testament is this very organic collection of scriptures that's just reflected. thing. And I do believe God guided it. And I don't believe inspiration is simply somebody sitting down writing something. I believe there were scribes.

I believe they were dictating. I believe there were multiple people. I think Timothy helped Paul with some of his letters. He said he did. I think they, they did that. I think the scribes were of God. These people were very devoted to keeping the scriptures alive. I think they probably corrected some mistakes, some things that didn't read right. I do.

But why could it only be that Paul, who was inspired, but wrote something that was not very readable, was more inspired than a scribe that could take what he said and make it readable? Why would that, why could the scribe not be inspired? He's not an apostle. Was Timothy an apostle? Oh he was with Paul. You see where we go down this road. It's just this rabbit trail that leads nowhere. And again, even with the translations today. But the final step of inspiration is in each one of us.

It's 1 Corinthians 2. He's given us his spirit so that we can understand. You know, these, the scripture Is these things of God are spiritually discern the mind without the spirit can accept them. So the spirit even has to, in the end, help us understand what's God really saying. That's part of the onion thing. It's serving in the new way of the spirit.

Those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God, not those who are led by some fabricated law that we deduced from the New Testament. God's searching our hearts and saying, what's William up to? What are you doing? What what are you doing, John? What are you really trying to do? Who's this about here? And once you finally figure it out, you go, Oh, it's about God. And then there's this glorious freedom. I don't have to work my way to heaven.

I don't have to be right about everything. I have to be right about the right thing. Jesus is Lord and he's good. And I believe him. And I know that I am not very good at keeping any of it. Some days I'm really stinky, you know. And so, so the Bible is just this word Bible is just a moniker that was labeled to this whole collection of Old New Testament. It's just Biblos, which means the book. And each of these books are individual books. And they're categories. It's not a single narrative.

First five books of the Old Testament, they put together, they call the books of Lara, the Torah, the Pentateuch. The second, the 12 that follow them are books of history. And they're just a history of Israel. And they're mainly a horror story. of how bad Israel did it trying to do God's will.

And then you've got the writings and, you know, the Proverbs say things that it's like, I mean, if you don't kind of stop and think you take them as some kind of law, raise up a child in the way he should go. And when he's old, he will not depart from it. That's just an utter law. And if your kid doesn't go well, you didn't do right. Then God didn't do right. If you're going to interpret that way, I don't think that's supposed to be used that way.

I think there's a spiritual interpretation that it's a generalization and it's encouraging. Yes. You know, we're going to do this, but We're not going to do it. We don't get to be perfect parents, but I could go on some of those proverbs, you know, about beating your son. In context, that's a different time and place. I think you beat your kid today. You're going to get beaten. So it's that doesn't work anymore. In our society.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't discipline our children, so we have to be careful with this literalism that fundamental fundamentalism attempts to do, and they're terrible at it because you can't, you cannot literally obey everything the New Testament said, because you can have women shout up in church and then have them pray and prophesy. You can't do both of those things. And there's quite a few of those things. We can't be saved by faith and be saved by works because the scripture says both.

Which is it? You've got to spend a little bit of time to say in context what each of those is saying. But you can't, you're going to have to make some spiritual interpretations. You can't literalize them. So the Bible's put together, why that way, the old Testament prophets, many people, they quote the old Testament prophets. Like they're talking to the 21st century church. They were talking to ancient Jews. Be careful about thinking those prophecies are about us. That's dangerous.

The New Testament, you got four Gospels, there are four accounts of Jesus they don't always even agree. There's some things they don't agree on. There's no substantial disagreement that changes the meaning of anything. They're human disagreements. Were there two men standing there or three? You know, did Judas go hang himself or did he go out and his guts fall out? Oh, they said it's both. He was hanging there and his guts fell out. That, that is an odd thing for one or the other not to mention.

Now, where did they get that? Did God dictate it wrong? Did God not know exactly what happened to Judas? But that's not what it's written for. That's, it's not that kind of book, but we put it there and that's put us up in front of the world to their criticism because we say the complete inspiration with God wrote it. Everything's true. Okay. Then in the book of Acts, it just so happened coincidentally that all of these major incidents were exactly round numbers.

Exactly 3, 000 people got baptized. Is that not amazing that exactly 3, 000 people got baptized? What's literal? God knew. He dictated it, right? You know, in the Gospels, there's exactly 5, 000 people in that crowd that got fed. There was another 4, 000. Now the Bible, there's places it gives specific numbers. But things are rounded off. Nobody expected it to be that way. That's not the point. So anyway, our Bible is just this very organic book. The New Testament, we've got the four gospels.

We've got the book of Acts. It doesn't record everything the apostles did. It records basically what Paul did a little bit about, you know, Peter, James, and John, and a little bit about the Jerusalem church. The rest of it was how. The gospel got to the West world. It doesn't tell about Thomas going to India. It doesn't tell how the gospel went on down in the church spread into Africa, North Africa, such that one of the, the pillar churches was down in Alexandria.

They had the best library, the Christian library there got burned up, but they were, there was a robust church in Africa. And you know, it is believed that Thomas got martyred in India. By the Hindus. So, you know, and I, that's in Chennai where Sukumar is. So, you know, we saw that, you know, there's a, the Catholics have built a church up there and a shrine. So anyway, we just don't get that. And then you've got these letters written by a cadre of people. Same thing.

It wasn't agreed which letters ought to be in there. And so some were in, some were out, they were back in, they were back out, and eventually the churches consensed on which ones they would accept. But the church did that, and Jesus had told them, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. I think we have a responsibility to do that.

But when we try to split hairs with the scripture, we do damage to it because we quit serving in the new way of the spirit and we start trying to serve in the letter of the law. And our Bible is not written that way, even the Old Testament. It doesn't give us everything. It's just hard to know how to do stuff. But there are some very specific things, but we don't even relate to it. So, the Bible is this very organic book about how God has worked through imperfect people.

That his will can be seen through it. But when Jesus came along, the Jews worshiped. In fact, at the synagogue, they would start their service. They would bring the Torah out, and they would walk around with the scrolls and everybody would stand in honor of it because it really they worshiped that. And that's why they got lost. God got lost in that, just like today in so many of our churches. We worship the Bible, and God's lost in that. He's incidental to it.

And if that sounds, you know, extreme, I don't know what else to say. Because even in the churches that claim to be rigorous about it, some of those very churches are the ones they're mean, they're unfriendly, they're dogmatic, they're divisive, they're hateful. And it's like, wait, where is Jesus in that? You know, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom, and some of those are the most cultic sectarian groups, and there's no freedom at all. It's fear. That's all you got is fear.

You've got to constantly be trying to live up to some, you know, arbitrary interpretation of some scripture and we get in trouble. But the scripture was not written that way. Jesus came to the Pharisees again. Their whole education was the basics primary school. They learned to read and write from reading that. The books of the law, and they memorized them as best they could.

They memorized them and at each stage, the ones that would go through what we would see as high school had memorized the whole Old Testament. I can't even imagine, but that's they didn't have science and math. They just did that all day long. And yet Jesus said to them in that text that begins about in Matthew 5 35, he's challenging these very people and he's saying, his word is not in you. God's word is not in you. These are the people that have seen the miracles.

But he says, his word is not in you. And then he said, you search the scriptures because you think it's in them that you have eternal life, but you won't come to me. To have life. That's where the concentric circles come from. We've got to use the Bible to help us come to Him. And that's just the deal. And the Jews made that mistake. I think the churches are making that mistake today. That's why people have to quote unquote go to church to get their fix.

We're supposed to be going to church to build up the body. Not to get our fix and be told how right we are in our religion. the different views of Scripture, William, there's a whole wing of society that just believes the Bible is just one more kind of religious book.

But everybody, if everybody's got their head buried in the sand, everything looks like sand. And, you know, it's just this deal, and everybody thinks of course it looks like sand. We've all got our heads in it. I could use a worse illustration, but,

We just were going on what somebody said that was not very educated in it, and we were basing our faith in our scholars. Not in the scripture, not in the spirit of God. So we were relying on the right, the King James version of the Bible. My gosh, it was authorized by a corrupt King of England. It wasn't, but that was the authorized version. It sounded really official and who authorized it? You thought God did.

And you've got, I mean, I grew up listening to old twangy Oklahoma people, which I was, reading King James English and then praying in it. These old country people just praying, we thank thee God. And it's like, thee? Who uses that? But it was like, it was this kind of holy language. No, it's just old English. I mean, middle English, you know, later English, actually. The It's just a lot of this stuff, William, just really gets us messed up, but that kind of stuff.

And that's why you see in the evangelical movement, people are going to go look at the statements of faith and make sure that somebody says, we believe the Bible is infallible and inherent and complete. And it's like why we're in the Bible, does God command people? To do that, we're not supposed to be judgmental and condemning. We're not supposed to be divided. We're certainly not supposed to be arrogant and self righteous about all of it. We're supposed to be very loving.

But we just ignore that stuff and we're right because we believe the right. That's just Pharisee ism resurrected into Christianity. And that's what Jesus hated. And that's why I said before, we, our churches, we read Jesus addressing the church at Laodicea and the seven churches of Asia in Revelation 3, saying the thing he hates is lukewarmness. Be hot or be cold. Because you're lukewarm, you make me want to vomit. And that's literally what he said, I'm going to vomit you out.

But our churches have mastered the art of producing lukewarmers. And if you try to get people to be super zealous for Jesus, then, oh my gosh, there's something wrong. You're judgmental and you're mean and you're this. No, I'm just telling people, this is what Jesus says we do to follow him. All I'm doing is saying what Jesus said. I have been called a heretic. For simply quoting scripture, literally more than once I said, I just quoted a scripture.

Yeah. But what you're saying about it is heresy. I didn't say anything about it. I quoted it, but that's how close minded. And that's what the Jews did when the reading of the law, it was like a veil came over them. It was, they were darkened by it. And that's the same with the reading of the Bible. It's just a veil over a lot of Christians eyes, and they worship the Bible. I love the Bible. You guys know how much I love Scripture.

How much of it I have written inside of me, how much I can quote it. It has saved me because it's led me to God, but I didn't start there. You know, I was zealous. I was a Pharisee sometime. I didn't mean to be, but I was like Saul. I was just doing what I was taught. I was arguing these arguments. I was saying these things and. Gosh, I just don't want to go there because it makes me really sad. And it's like, but I did the best I knew how, you know, I got here as soon as I could.

And it has been so costly, you know, and people and what people think, and you just can't explain everything, qualify everything. And the church can be just so horrendously unmerciful and judgmental and you just kind of go on down the road. It's like, you know, somebody back from one of my ministries that I just, I mean, I just got hammered over racial issues. This person recently, what she said we just heard that you were having Rach racial reconciliation classes.

Number one, that expression is absolutely new. Nobody used the term racial reconciliation back in the 1970. So we're gaslighting a little bit here, but. I had an outreach to black kids on that all white campus in an all white town, you know, still in the middle of the civil rights first round of it in the 70s. A black guy walked up and looked in our student center through the glass doors and my wife saw him. And I'm sure he looked in, it was all white people.

We were having a, we were having a dinner, which we would have for the college students. I had gone to one of our supporting churches to speak. I wasn't even there that night, but Tana was there and he turned to leave and she went out and got Rob Daniels. Rob Daniels, one of the sweetest, neatest guys ever, and became one of my dear friends. That's how the blacks started coming. I didn't go out and think, I'm going to go reach black people.

God taught me about black people my freshman year through Leon Douglas, but that was, again, not a part of some brilliant search on my part. I was curious. I was just trying to learn. That's all. And he would talk to me. But and through that, our ministry became very integrated in this very non integrated city. And I just caught hell over it. Got accused of all this stuff. And it's just, you know, all I was trying to do was just do ministry. That's it.

I was just trying to help people and every place I've been, I've caught some of that. It's just like, why do we have to do this? Because I didn't the second year it came down that because I told. One of the ministers, not Brent Adams, I want to make sure I say that, a minister that I just didn't see this non instrumental music thing. I just think God's going to condemn people for being unloving way before he's going to worry about a piano. And I didn't, I just, I didn't preach it.

I didn't share it with anybody else, but he went around and whispered that I wasn't sound on instrumental music. You would have thought I said, God is a devil. I don't, that just, Oh, that was huge. And it's just like, that was everywhere I was. There was stuff like that. So anyway, I'm way off. So I'll stop right there and just let y'all ask a follow on.

I mean, it was post World War II, baby boomers coming out, trying to, you know, Christianity was really coming of age in America. It was declaring its independence from Europe. There's just a whole lot of social and cultural transition, national transition going on. As it always is to some degree, but that's my world. Like I say, there was nothing beautiful or scientific or glorious about my search. I was just a desperate guy that was confused and I didn't know which way was up.

And I'm a person that sorts things out, but I didn't have any data to sort it out with. I didn't know. I didn't know what was normal. I didn't know what the scriptures taught. I didn't know what really we believed. I just knew a little, these remnants of what I'd learned as a kid. And that was just more little fragments of thoughts. And then my dad's, you know, preaching, my dad was the preaching is unbeliever that you would have ever known.

Cause he's, Oh, it says in the Bible and you know, after I got to know the Bible, most of it was just him, you know, saying it to make his point, but it really didn't say it, I'm a skeptical of all of it, but I did what I do as I, you guys know me, I. If I think it's important, I'm going for it and I'm going to, I'm going to do well at it to whatever degree I think we need to, but the important things I'm going to give my best to. I did that with my family.

I've done that with church, but so I threw myself into learning scripture. I went to every class I could go to I read what I could read, I went to conferences. I very quickly started, they would have a couple of years, a couple of times a year they would have a gospel meeting, and they would bring in a special speaker from another church. I would volunteer to take them to lunch or dinner. And so I could. Ask questions.

Every conference I went to, I would try to talk to preachers that were there, speakers that I thought were good, and I would school them people. A lot of it, you know, I was learning from argumentation. We were trying to make our points with friends, and so we were back and forth with Baptists and Pentecostals and Methodists, and we're all stupid, you know, but we were hearing messages that they were hearing.

I was hearing in our church and while we would still contend about that, we would realize we kind of got whipped sometimes and we really didn't have good scriptures. And I would go in, I would try to rearm myself. And that's when I would ask questions about verses. And then I would look at those verses and then they really don't say that. Those aren't very good verses. Do we have anything better? And we didn't. And it's like, that's weak. So I was honest enough to do that.

I was also learning about discipleship and trying to help people and trying to explain the scripture to a lot of people that were just like me, that never, they knew anything about it. They knew enough to be dangerous. And that was it. And all of these things were informing my walk and just what was going on with me. I was also, I started, I'd already started going to counseling off and on for my own inner junk, because again, the church was not a therapeutic community.

That was kind of a side thing you did. We didn't talk about that kind of stuff at church or in our groups, but we had an elder Would do counseling and it was good. I mean, it was, for me, it was, yeah, he's the first person I really told some of the junk in my life. He's the one that found me a counselor down in Sherman because I didn't want anybody to know I was going counseling. He didn't do that.

So I would sneak off down there after work, you know, and drive to Sherman and go to this counseling, but I was messed up. And I, nobody, I never really helped me. Nobody to talk about it. Even he couldn't help me because again, that's what he did. He was a pharmacist. He was a sweet man. That's why I went to him. Did so much for me, but So I was going to counselors. I was doing things. I had family that weren't from my particular denomination. We'd talk about that stuff.

So it was just kind of all around. It was I don't know. It was a lot of stuff, but there was no big scientific I'm doing this great research in the libraries. It was messy.

It was just trying to Slogged through all this and each step of the way the ministries I associated with there were just things that really bothered me I'd always been a referential learner I would watch what people were doing and because that's how I grew up watching my siblings do stuff And then I would kind of improvise from that. I still do that. So very quickly I just realized there were problems in the way we use scripture. There were problems in what we believed about the scripture.

Just getting honest. It's like we're telling people stuff. It's like, what are we doing here? That's not, I don't even believe that. So there were a lot, there were more and more things I couldn't say to people. I just didn't talk about it. I just wanted to lead people to Jesus. So I can tell you bonafide all the way back to Duran, I was teaching people about Jesus. And that's what I knew that was central and it was becoming more central in Colorado.

I've had that reflected back to me over and over. There was still some of that ruled stuff in there for sure. That's all I knew. But each step of the way I was shedding that stuff. And I had to go down that discipling movement road because again, it's what I knew. And it was the thing closest to what I believed about what ministry should be. But I got down where they were going and I thought, no, this is not it. This is an authoritarian cultic kind of way of doing things in Jesus didn't even do.

And he could have. But he didn't. And so I left it all, you know, so then I came back here, eventually started over. God sent me back to the church of Christ. And I was very frank with them at that point, that I was not that anymore. I was non denominated. I didn't really belong anywhere in my mind. I mean, I don't fit anywhere. Not because I couldn't fit, but because every church had their own little shape. The cost of fellowship is you got to be shaped like this.

You got to believe these things. And you, it didn't take long to listen to their code and learn that. So what their deal was. And by that time I was quite astute. I didn't, God didn't let me go to seminary. He made it clear he was going to train me his own way. And he did for what I do, I'm not. a theologian by those standards. I wanted to be, I would have loved to have had a master of divinity or a doctor. I could have done all that. God didn't want me to.

I'm convinced that's what he led me to do. And he wanted me to be this dirt road guy that I'm his deal. I'm a God deal and all my glorious, my inglorious imperfection. This is what God did and I'll give him the credit and that's that he saved me. I'm not here because I'm good. I'm here because God is good. So that's what I wanted. I want a relationship with, and you just kept getting institution. And I was already non institutional.

I didn't like the way organizations did stuff and I became increasingly frustrated with institutional church and how everybody wanted to control something, let's get something so we can control it and we can take credit for it. I just, that just didn't seem godly. So I really looked at scripture and that's where the concentric circles came down. Cause when you read the Bible, it. Paul's letters sound like Paul writing. They don't sound like God writing.

Now, there are some things he says that sound like God is moving him. Very. There's other things that they're framing things. He's just talking about things going on. All the writers were kind of that way. It was like, this is kind of necessary. Backstory to get us to this sermon, you know, Matthew's got five main blocks of teaching and there's this other stuff, but the gospel writers were not biographers. They were using biographical information about Jesus to make a point.

Nobody in that time expected that I told stories. Nobody was going to go fact check anybody. It's like You know, that's not how it works, but we want to read it in 21st century fact checking mode and then judge it that way. I mean, You're the fool in that. That's the way it's written. It's like trying to judge Shakespeare by some modern Poetic principles.

I mean, he's just one of the most famous Men ever in that field and you think you're gonna sit here by your modern standards and criticize him We'll wait and see where your name is in about 2, 000 years and see how you're doing But I don't so that's where I came from.

But I just this idea you don't come to me You know to find life in this whole my science background looking at creation trying to correlate the Bible and Creation and faith and just all of these other things that feed into that where how does the church and the church is? Work in that, other people, the Holy Spirit, prayer, all of that was just swirling inside of me as I tried to synthesize this into something as a pastor I could shepherd with.

And those concentric circles came down, the outer circle is we see people. We see people that were writing it. We have lots of times we have names. Something we don't even know. It said that Moses wrote the first five books. How did Moses know what happened in creation? Did God tell him that too? We assume he did. Did God tell him to write, you write down Moses. You're the most humble man alive. It's like, I don't think so. I think some scribe put that in.

And, but does it change the meaning of any of it? No. The whole point is you can't keep this and you better get over yourselves, but this is the best you try. You'll have the best shot at being a decent nation. And they didn't and they weren't. And so that's what happened. So you read these and it was written to people. It mentions, you know, specific people. Good, bad, ugly. Who are these people and what am I supposed to do with that?

And then, it's written in these cultures that are foreign to us. The veils and all this stuff they're talking about, it's like, women and what, I mean these women were bought and sold like cattle. What are we supposed to do with that? Propagate that? And that bothered me. Because it just didn't look like Jesus. And that's where more and more Jesus was becoming the interpretive benchmark for me, that we need to read every scripture table of contents to maps through the eyes of Jesus.

And I don't think Jesus was very concerned about your table of contents and he lived on those maps and he's not particularly concerned about that because we don't know what the heck was going on mostly. And we just kind of, somebody drew him. And that changes everything. You know, it's this attitude of Christ. I've talked about us doing one. We begin to see things through the eyes of Christ, but you can only do that the more you get to know him, but you get to know about him through scripture.

You do not get to know Jesus through the scripture. You get to know about him. You get to know him through experience, creation and the things around us, other Christians and the church. Amen. The experiences he brings our way, the blessings, the discipline. It's everywhere we look. You develop a relationship with God in life, not by reading the Bible. So I, that's where the culture and then even the religion, because we're trying to, what's Cain and Abel offering sacrifices?

What does that have to do with that? The Corinthian church. You know, we don't even know mostly what they were doing, but how are we supposed to imitate the Corinthian church? They were a bad example, but they're the most description we have of what they were doing in church. So should we try to do what they did, but not how they did it? Is that what we're supposed to do? And so we're going to nail all that down like we've got some prescription and we just don't.

So what is it telling us about God? The first thing is that God chose to work to a fallen imperfect world to show his glory, to inform the spiritual powers that were in rebellion and to ultimately destroy evil with them. That's what he chose to do. And that's our story. And we just put our faith in Jesus. We just put our faith in God. God's that good. He's just that good. And that's where we put our faith. So that's why when we read the Bible, yes, you've got to see who is Paul? What's he doing?

Who is this Timothy guy that's helping him with a couple of these things? Who are these people he's talking about? Who is this church? Where are they? What do they got going on? What's their story? And thankfully we do have. You know, scholars and theologians that have dug up a lot of that stuff. But even if they didn't guys, I don't think that God stakes our salvation on us being theologians. If he did, what did people do that couldn't even read?

Now, I do believe God's going to hold us accountable, but so much of our scholarship has not made us better Christians. It's made us worse. We take pride in ourselves. So the goal of the scripture is to read, peel back each layer so that we see what's kind of their culture and what's, you know, feeding into this, what was going on in their kind of religious situation, what other religions were impacting them.

That's when we talk about the Gnostic philosophy as it kind of came down from Greece and was infiltrating. everything through the Hellenistic culture that they had planted. That's just part of the religion part I'm talking about. You just need to know that's being addressed.

Even the gospel of John is taking on cause he's written it to the church to defend Jesus against Some of these new notions that were being concocted by the Gnostic Gospels and what they were trying to say to make Jesus compatible with what they already believed. But you don't do that. He doesn't mix with that. I don't know. Does that help?

It's a very common experience. You read some Genesis. You roll through Exodus. About halfway through Exodus, you start going, Oh man, it's This, the narrative's fading a little bit and now I'm a little stuck. Then you open Leviticus and it's like, I don't even, I can't keep doing this. I guess what I'm getting at is, what would your encouragement be to someone listening to this who doesn't have a great relationship with the Bible, doesn't have experience reading it?

And that can be practical, it can be more encouragement. Man, what would you say to someone in that situation,

What would prompt them to do this? They risked their lives over this. They gave their lives for it. Why? Why is John, why is this such a big deal? He's the only one that was not martyred, as far as we know, of the original apostles. You know? And why would he do this? What's he trying to say?

To the ages to come once he trying to say to the church of that day and once he's saying to us today About Jesus and once Paul saying is he really is processing in this letter He wrote to the church at Ephesus maybe It was just ended up in Ephesus, maybe it was written to all the churches and it was circulated and it ended up in Ephesus because it really doesn't give a lot of reference to anything in Ephesus but with that said, it's nobody really debates that Paul wrote it.

It has a companion book that he sent to the Colossians that has a lot of some of the same kinds of things in it. What's he saying about, what does this mean? To be, to live in Christ, which is equated with the church, to be in Christ was to be part of his body, which is his church. And try to listen, you know, to the emotion of it, to the feeling of it, to the spirit of it, and don't get caught up into the biographics yet, because you can go back and do that. Listen to what's being said.

These are real people. That it gave everything for this, you know, that's why when people listen, I've given everything to this. I don't have anything else. Oh, why? Why did I dedicate my whole family? None of my kids are doctors or lawyers or rich people. I'm not rich. I live the church still supports me. I have to work. I'm 72. I couldn't retire on what I have. I don't care. You know, I don't care. That's of no consequence to me. That's what God led me to do, and I don't regret it. One iota.

So, why? Why would I do that? What's the undercurrent? It's when you listen to me, it's because God really is real, and He's really good. Jesus really is Lord, you know, it's just real to me. That's why Paul at the very end of his life could say, Oh, at everybody abandoned me, but Christ stood right by my side. And that's why he could die satisfied saying, I have finished the course. I've kept the faith, finished the race, I'm done. And therefore there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.

He believed that. He said, I know. In whom I have believed and I am confident that he is able to deliver what he has promised me on that. That's what I believe. And I look at the way the world lives. I don't want to be a selfish, greedy, power monger, trying to impress people, trying to be all this or that. I don't want to be that. I want to help people. I want to help the least. I want to be in a position to care about people nobody else cares about.

You know, I got a text from one of the guys you would know the other day and said, Dad, I've been really sick. I've been in the hospital and I don't have enough money to make it to my next paycheck. I didn't get paid very much. You could help me a little bit. I delight in helping those people. I know he called me from the hospital, got an abscess and he was very sick, but he just lives like so many people. He's trying really hard. You know, that's what I want to do.

I don't, the things the world has, I know what that is and I don't want any part of it. So yeah, read those letters that way and just look at what was John trying to tell us about Jesus? How did he experience him? Because Jesus is just as real today. John is the one that recorded Jesus saying, if anyone has my teaching and obeys them, my father will love them and we will come and make our home with them. John said that. He believed that. I believe that.

I believe Jesus does live with me and in me. Again, not because I'm good, I'm some super, I'm not. I'm damaged, I struggle every day with so many things. Like I say, before you guys got here, I was just feeling very anxious. Tan is not feeling very good. You know, we're going to MD Anderson next week to get these scans. And it's just, it feels like we're standing at the, you know, the end of a gun barrel.

Wife's life is on the, but I was feeling that way, but you know, God does come to me and reminds me, I got this. I gave her to you. And when it's time, I'll take her from you. Or I'll take you from her. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. And I'm reminded of those words. My sheep hear my voice and they listen to me. And those sweet words of Jesus come back. You know, do not let your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. My father's house are many rooms.

If it weren't so, I would tell you. I'm going to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare it, I will come back and get you, so that where I am, there you may be also. Lord, how can we know the way? You know the way. I am the way, the truth and the lie. No one comes to the Father but by me. Oh Lord, show us the Father and that'll be enough. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. That's why I read John.

And you see what Hebrews 1. 3 calls the exact representation of the bearer of the glory and truth and grace of God. And you listen to him talk to people not in just sweetsie terms. He asked a man that had been paralyzed for 38 years, dude, do you want to get well? And the guy said, why don't you put me into that pool over there that he thought could heal him? And he said, Hey, get up and walk. I mean, it seems kind of rude. It seems brusque, and sometimes he did that with people.

And then you've just got this woman caught in adultery, and he's saying no. Where did everybody go lady? Where are your accusers? She said, Oh, they're all gone. And he said, lady, I don't accuse you. And Jesus was the one that had the right to, he said, just stop it. Stop living this way. Why? Because he needed a truth. No, because it was destroying her. This was bad. This is not helpful. It's not the way of God. And again, Ephesians are so many beautiful lines.

You know, just this idea that you may know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you can be filled to the measure of the fullness. That's a deal. The whole deal is you get God back. And it's just the next step in it. And it's the step to the final step. Then I shall know, even as I'm fully known, no more faith, no more hope. I'm living in it. I'm there. And that's what I think is going to happen. That's what I believe. That's all I got, William.