Origins of the Bible

This is an enormous topic, and it might almost sound more like a lecture, like Nathan said, than actually a sermon tonight.

I definitely think that we have much to be encouraged from and much to learn, though.

I do love history, but I do think that every believer should make an effort to know church history, particularly.

There's much to learn, much to be encouraged by, and much to be exposed.

It actually is something I've been trying to go through with some guys I'm discipling this year.

And I think they've found some really good benefit in it.

But there's going to be a lot of questions that come up tonight.

We definitely don't have time to cover everything.

But we might have to take a little stretch about halfway through this and keep going on.

I'm going to really try to finish before 10, but if I don't, you know, you can come or go, you know, like whatever you need to say.

Just roll with it tonight.

But I want us to start out by saying that God's Word is a gift of grace to us.

We need to learn to treasure the Word.

I think that we're just so used to having 10 copies of it laying around our house,

and we forget that even today there are nations and languages out there that don't have the Word written in their tongue at all.

And it's just a blessing to have this in front of us.

In theology, there's two kinds of revelation that we talk about.

There's something that we call general revelation,

which is basically this idea of like how creation testifies that there is a God and that He is real and that He has made this.

And that's like what we call general revelation.

It talks about that in Romans 1.

It's enough to tell us that God is because He made all these things.

But the sad part is because of sin, general revelation is not enough to save somebody.

We need specific revelation.

And specific revelation is what you're holding in your hand, or hopefully have.

If you don't have it in your hand, you have it somewhere else.

It specifically tells us who God is and who we are, and we must understand those things.

It's God's direct Word to us, and it's for the salvation of our souls so that we can know God and glorify Him again.

But that's why you can go to tribes all over the world in the most remote places, and they understand that there's a God.

They're like, yeah, obviously.

I try to do some stuff with the Cherokee Indians up in North Carolina on the reservation, and I've learned a little bit about their religion, their ancient religion.

And they're like, yeah, there's a Creator who made all of this, and He used to be revered and respected and honored.

And so, like, wherever we go, like, there's general revelation, but we need specific revelation.

That's what the Bible is.

But the whole point is, like, God didn't have to do this.

He could have just left us to ourselves, and we could have just been destroyed.

But He chose to give us His Word, so we've got to learn to see the Bible as grace, like it's something that we didn't deserve that God gave to us.

This is a quote by Martin Luther.

It says,

Oh, how great and glorious a thing it is to have before one the Word of God.

With that we may at all times feel joyous and secure.

We need never be in want of consolation, for we see before us in all its brightness the pure and right way.

He who loses the sight of the Word of God falls into despair.

The voice of heaven no longer sustains Him.

He falls on the disorderly tendency of His heart and world vanity, which lead Him to His own destruction.

Some of us know that to be true.

But the Bible is a gift of grace, and the Bible has a lot to say about itself, which is pretty cool.

The Bible proves itself without any kind of outside attention at all.

It, like, says that it is the Word of God.

And this is some things that I want to have in my life and I want you to have in your life.

But I want us to hunger after the Word of God, like to desire it, to want it, to want to know it, and to understand it and believe it.

Job said,

I have not departed from the command of His lips.

I have treasured the word of His mouth more than my necessary food.

That's awesome.

I'll move on down to the third one.

Oh, how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day.

If you want to look at one psalm that just specifically talks about the Scripture,

Psalm 119 is the largest one in the book, in the whole Bible, actually, the largest chapter in the whole Bible.

It specifically talks about the Word of God and the law of God.

So this is really good to go back and read for all this.

Psalm 119, same psalm of all these.

It says,

I have not turned aside from your ordinances for you yourself have taught me how sweet are your words to my taste.

Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth.

Read and learn to crave and hunger after God's Word.

Something else about your Bible.

You need to understand that this didn't just pop up out of the printing machine one day.

This has been a long process over hundreds and even thousands of years to get the Bible to us.

It's a bloodstained book.

It's something that Charles Spurgeon said.

Remember that our Bible is a bloodstained book.

The blood of martyrs is on the Bible.

The blood of translators and confessors.

The doctrines we preach to you are the doctrines that have been baptized in blood.

Swords have been drawn to slay the confessors of them.

And there is not a truth which has not been sealed by them at the stake or the block.

So like burning or having to be beheaded at the block.

Well, they have not been slain by the hundreds.

And so as we begin to kind of talk through this, some things might be hard to hear.

I understand that, you know, we're going to talk about the Reformation a little bit

and some of the things that happened during the Protestant Reformation,

specifically the English Reformation.

And there's going to be...

I'm aware that some of you may be Roman Catholic or know people that are Roman Catholic.

I have a lot of really close friends that actually are Catholic.

And I plead with them to understand, like, what the Scripture says about salvation

and about the grace of God.

So I don't take this lightly.

So we're going to get to that in a minute.

But we're going to start in the Old Testament and talk about how we got the Old Testament.

It's working pretty good.

All right.

So the background of the Old Testament, written roughly between 1445 B.C. to 424.

That's an estimation.

So it's been in the making for a while.

A whole variety of different kind of authors wrote the Old Testament from all the different kinds you see here.

Prophets, kings, soldiers, poets, shepherds, historians.

So it's not just like one type of God.

This is many different people from many different walks of life that are writing about the same thing.

Languages, mostly Hebrew, probably some Aramaic mixed in.

Hebrew scribes over the centuries have copied down the Scripture.

You should really know a lot about Hebrew scribes.

When they copied down the Old Testament, what they would call Torah or the prophets or the wisdom writings,

as they copied it, they probably did it like on papyrus or whatever.

But if they ever messed up, like just one little bit, let's just say that he wrote a whole scroll

when he's copying Isaiah, for instance.

Even if he was like in the last little crate and he messed it up, like made a bad mark,

he would throw the whole thing away.

It was like a really serious deal.

Like they wanted to make sure that what was being transcribed was exactly what was there and nothing less.

So the canonization of the Old Testament, you know, like a canon is not just talking about a piece of artillery.

We're talking about an accepted number of books into something.

Some of them say, yeah, these are a part of what we believe.

That's like what the canonization is.

Move to this.

Josephus Flavius was a first century Jewish historian.

He was captured by the Romans after Jerusalem was destroyed.

And he eventually became a historian.

He wrote down a lot of stuff that is really beneficial to us today to understand a little bit more about the context.

He even wrote about Jesus.

He wrote about Pilate.

He wrote about John the Baptist, James, the brother of Jesus.

He wrote about all these things.

And he said about Jesus, like, yeah, this guy, something else.

That's kind of like where he says, paraphrase, he said he did all kind of wonderful miracles and amazed people and could have been the Messiah.

He doesn't.

He wasn't.

I don't think he actually believed that.

But this was Josephus.

And this is what he wrote about the Old Testament canon.

All right.

Now, understanding that this guy had knowledge of things that we probably don't have access to today.

He had that tradition passed down to him.

He actually was a Pharisee.

This is what he wrote.

We have not in a numeral multitude of books among us disagreeing from and contradicting one another like the Greeks have.

So he's trying to say that the Greeks are not consistent in their literature.

That's what he's trying to say.

He's trying to say that what we have is exactly what has always been there.

But only 22 books which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly to believe to be divine.

And of them, five belong to Moses.

That's the first five books.

That's the Torah.

Genesis through Genesis, Exodus, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, written by Moses.

Wrote down on what was done in their times in 13 books.

The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for conduct of human life.

So the prophets and the wisdom writings.

If you look in your table of contents, we have more books than 22.

That's only because we split them apart a little bit, like 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles.

We even split Jeremiah and Lamentations.

So it's the same thing.

So what is in the...

I've got to make this distinction.

What the evangelical or Protestant canon would be is what the Hebrews actually considered to be divine.

And they don't...

There's also the Apocrypha.

Some of you have heard of the Apocrypha before that's included in a lot of Roman Catholic Bibles.

Well, we don't have those in the Protestant canon because the Hebrews themselves didn't consider them to be inspired by God.

They're just, like, included in.

And so what you have, most of us have in our Old Testament is exactly what the Hebrews had in there.

So they considered these to be divine and nothing else.

So we kind of, like, followed that idea.

So the Old Testament manuscripts.

There was a problem for the longest time.

The oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts we possess are from 900 A.D.

That's bad.

Why is that bad?

It's because we have tons of prophecies about Christ in the Old Testament, right?

Tons of them.

Particularly Isaiah.

Like the huge book that has a ton of prophecies about Christ.

That would be a problem because it would be easy to say they went back and wrote these things way after Christ ever came.

Just to kind of prove, you know, that He was who He said He was.

So the question is, how could we be so sure of their accurate transmission since before the time of Christ in the first century A.D.?

And that's a really big question.

Which leads us to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

There's actually a picture of them there.

You can go to Israel and actually see them today.

It says they were found around 1947 and they contained copies of all the Old Testament except the book of Esther.

That most date back to 125 B.C.

That's pretty good.

That's a long time ago.

And it was found by a shepherd boy that was kind of looking for a lost sheep up near the Dead Sea in Israel.

That's why they're called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

They had been preserved in excellent condition for 1,900 years.

It's pretty awesome.

And here's something even cooler.

When they took the Dead Sea Scrolls, okay, they date way back B.C.

They took those and laid them right beside the ones that we have from A.D., okay, like the ones that are way after that.

They said the exact same thing.

So there wasn't any difference.

That's pretty awesome.

So even the ones that we have from 900 A.D. didn't contradict the ones that were B.C. at all.

So that just kind of speaks to the testament about the accurate transmission from the Hebrew scribes over the centuries.

They've put down exactly what was there and it hasn't changed at all.

So, really cool.

All right.

Something else I thought I might read to you real fast is something else Joseph said about the scriptures.

It says,

We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own scriptures.

For although such long ages now have passed, no one has ventured either to add, to remove, or to alter a syllable.

And in it is an instinct with every Jew from the day of his birth to regard them as decrees of God, to abide by them, and if need be, cheerfully die for them.

Time and again, here now, the sight has been witness of prisoners, enduring tortures, death in every form in the theaters.

He's talking about like the Roman amphitheaters and Colosseum.

Colosseum wasn't built yet, but rather than utter a single word against the laws and allied documents.

So, main point, it's a big deal to the Hebrews.

Okay?

They weren't going to like mess this up.

So, you can be sure that like what's there is what God has preserved for thousands of years, like a long time.

So, that's our Old Testament.

Moving into the New Testament.

All right.

Background.

Getting around the first century A.D.

All right.

Again, a variety of authors.

Yeah, fishermen, rabbis, tax collectors, physicians, scholars.

One of the greatest testaments about the Bible compared to a lot of other books, like the Koran or anything like that,

is that you have a ton of different authors.

I think it's over 50 different authors that wrote the Bible over a course of a long time, like thousands of years.

And they all tell you the same story.

That's pretty awesome.

There is a God.

He's holy.

He takes sin seriously.

There is a Messiah coming.

The Messiah came.

That's all these guys from all these different backgrounds over a long period of time saying the same thing.

There is a huge testament to the Bible.

So, you don't just have one guy writing things down.

The language is according to Greek and some Aramaic.

So, you should go find the day.

Oh, man, I messed that up.

Backing up.

Sorry.

Oh, man, I'm too still.

This isn't going.

I can't see it.

Okay.

Well, I can tell you where it is.

Oh, well.

I can tell you where it is.

I had a chart that showed the Bible compared to other ancient documents.

Okay.

I'm just going to use one.

I'll tell you all the ones I have there.

Take you on.

Let's just compare it to, like, Homer's Iliad.

Okay.

The earliest copy that we have, we have no original manuscripts from any ancient text.

You shouldn't have that.

We don't have any originals at all.

They're all destroyed because they're really old.

They'll just rot and be no more.

So, there is a time gap between when the originals were written and then the actual copies that we have in our hand today.

For Homer and the Iliad, I want to say it was around, man, I don't want to get it wrong.

It doesn't matter.

I want to say, I think it's around, like, maybe 800 years.

That's a long time gap between the original and the ones that we have today.

So, people don't have a problem with that, you know, because people try to say, well, the Bible, you don't have any original manuscripts.

And you're like, well, there's not any original manuscripts from any ancient text.

And, matter of fact, the Bible has the smallest time gap between the originals and the ones we have today.

I think the largest manuscript or the only manuscript we have that has the largest time gap is 150 years.

That's not that bad.

And then a lot of them date, like, just 70 past, like, when the origins were written at all.

So, they have the smallest time gap.

And I think we have somewhere around 5,400 different manuscripts of the New Testament.

Homer's Iliad, remember, almost like an 800-year difference.

We only have 600 manuscripts.

So, the New Testament has more manuscripts in our hands today that dwarf everything else, more than Caesar's histories, more than anything.

And there's the smallest time gap between the originals and the ones that we have today.

Some people may say, watch the clock.

We don't have any of the originals.

So, how can you know that what we have is exactly what they had?

Because we don't have the originals.

So, it could have gotten messed up.

Here's an analogy for you.

Our U.S. Constitution is in a museum in Washington, D.C.

You can go see it.

I think I saw it when I was in middle school, I think.

You know, like, everybody's seen the movie where Nicolas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence and stuff.

It's probably that same museum.

But, let's just say that somehow, like, that building got blown up.

All right?

And our Constitution was, like, burned.

Like, we don't have it anymore.

Like, the original is gone.

Now, when our government, mostly our government doesn't buy by the Constitution anyway, but this may not say.

Maybe they should.

They're probably saying this is a lot of math.

But, all right, sorry.

I'm ready to go there.

But, if that happened, would our government all of a sudden say, man, we don't know what the Constitution says anymore?

That would be really stupid, wouldn't it?

Why?

Because, like, we've made copies of the original 1,000, 100 times over, right?

And so, we have, like, in our hands, none of them date back to 17.

Uh-oh.

I can't remember.

Doesn't matter.

None of them date back to that time.

But, we have tons of copies of the copy.

Tons of them.

So, we would never really say, you know, that's not, we can't rely on that.

It's the same thing in the New Testament.

We have tons of copies of the copy that have been passed down.

So, we can be sure that, like, what was there is actually what we have.

So, all right.

Now, a lot of people have asked me, hey, you know, the church has kept some books out of the Bible.

That's messed up and wrong.

Not really.

Not if you're a pastor and you're trying to protect God's truth from heresy.

It's not.

So, who decided what stays in and what stays out?

Well, there was a series of councils that met around this time.

Like, the defining one was the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D.

Tons of elders and pastors and bishops from all over North Africa.

At that time, it was still the Roman Empire.

Came to Carthage to talk about it.

And this was their criteria for letting a book in or keeping a book out.

First one.

Whether or not the document was written by an apostle or one in a close association with an apostle.

So, he was either there or he talked to the guy who was there.

And it doesn't go beyond that.

So, you have like Paul who was there.

Matthew who was there.

John who was there.

And then you have a guy like Luke who knew Paul.

Right?

So, that's kind of like how the connection goes.

It's not all kind of information passed down to five or six people.

It's not telephone.

Put it that way.

It's just like either he was there or he talked to the guy who was there.

Secondly, whether or not the document was recognized as authoritative by the early church.

At this time, a lot of the guys, by tradition and acceptance, they would know the early church fathers accepted these books.

They were kind of not cool with these.

They would understand that.

So, it was not that far away.

It seems crazy to us today because we weren't living way back then.

But a lot of that was still around so they would know if it was accepted or not by the earlier church.

Thirdly, whether or not the document was confirmed to the high standards and truths taught already and recognized scripture.

All right.

So, it would be easy to say we know that John is inspired.

You know, he walked with Christ.

He was there.

He saw the resurrected Lord.

So, we know that what is taught here and then also what is taught in the Old Testament teaches us about God.

All right.

So, if we just get some random book and it just kind of says, God's cool with sin.

Jesus didn't die for sin.

So, God's not holy.

He's not going to punish sin.

There's no hell.

We'd be like, huh.

That doesn't conform to what we know is already authoritative.

So, it would be cast out.

So, this is a really, really good criteria, in my opinion.

I don't think I can come up with better criteria.

But that's what you have in your New Testament is what they decided on at this point.

So, obviously, there are certain books that fly around that we reject because they teach wrong things.

They're not accurate.

They're not true.

They are all over the place.

So, let's see.

Let's move into this next part.

All right.

Now, this is what I was talking about a minute ago.

We're going to talk a little bit about the Reformation.

Okay.

Now, the Dark Ages are called the Dark Ages for a reason.

It means that there was just ignorance.

People were not educated.

And they were told what they believed, what they were told by the official church at the time.

And my goal is not to talk a lot about this tonight.

But it just needs to be mentioned.

The papacy didn't just...

The papacy is the Roman church, the Pope.

It didn't just happen overnight.

It was kind of a process.

And for the longest time, though, the church in Rome was a really good organization, actually.

They were really instrumental in combating heresies.

St. Augustine and a lot of earlier church fathers were really big in the church of Rome.

And they actually upheld the Scripture and the Gospel of Grace.

You can go back and read their writings.

They preached the same gospel that we believe today.

But over time, monarchs began to kind of like convert to Christianity, you know.

And a lot of times they would enforce Christianity on their people.

This is what we're going to do.

We're not going to worship these pagan gods anymore.

And this is what we're going to do.

So over time, monarchs began to kind of place certain bishops in a position that would favor them.

And so just slowly there was this transition of the church coming under control of the state.

Okay?

Which was never meant to be that way.

It's always more of a...

The church is its own entity.

It's not ever a part of the state.

And so that's why empires rise and fall, but the church remains.

And it will remain.

It will be the only thing left one day.

But he has something called like a hierarchy in the Roman church.

The pope, cardinals, and bishops.

Only their occupations could honor God at this time.

They taught that every other occupation was secular.

So you couldn't be a teacher.

You couldn't be a farmer.

And you couldn't glorify God and the work you did because it was secular, not sacred.

The pope at this time, still a lot today, hasn't changed too much.

He is the sole interpreter of scripture.

If he says this is what scripture teaches, then this is what you have to believe in a lot of ways.

He's like the official dictator over scripture.

The pope actually means the vicar.

He's called the vicar of Christ.

It means the person who stands in the place of Christ.

Saying that he represents Christ on the earth in a way is what he's trying to say.

And so the church in Rome itself carried equal authority with the Bible on the same level.

All right.

They said that you have to have this in order to know what's right and what's not.

Last week I talked about justification a little bit.

And we'll kind of revisit it here.

But in Roman theology, and even today, this hasn't changed.

That is, it's a, it's a works-based salvation saying that I have to believe the right thing and I have to do the right things.

And at this time, particularly, how salvation would be achieved was through merit.

You had to achieve a certain amount of merit in order to inherit eternal life.

And the number one way you would do this is through the work of penance.

All right.

Now, penance is a sacrament in the Roman church.

And it's more like self-rebasement and devotion.

This performed externally is like a work you do to show your sorrow or your remorse over sin that you've committed.

So this is the Roman idea of penance.

So where does God's grace come in?

God's grace was something that kind of gave you a little bit of help, but it didn't see the work through.

And you had to kind of keep up with the grace of God.

Like, if God gave you a little bit of grace, you needed to kind of make the most out of it and kind of go on to the next stage.

And then he might give you a little more grace.

And it was this process of becoming righteous.

So, as I said last week, a paraphrase of what was taught was God helps those who help themselves.

It's an easy way to help understand their theology when it comes to salvation.

That you have to do for your own.

And if you do, God will help you a little bit.

So, in their system, God would only justify the ungodly when the ungodly had made themselves godly.

Okay?

So they had to, like, get to that point where they were godly.

And then only then would it be right for God to justify them and to give them salvation.

So it was a works-based salvation.

And it still is today.

What we read in Scripture in Romans 4 that it is not about works, but faith alone.

It says that God justifies the ungodly because of the work of Christ and what Christ did on the cross.

So, in regard to salvation, you should know this, though, that the Roman church taught, actually, that no one in this life could actually achieve salvation.

They said that no one could ever gain enough merit in this life to have eternal life.

So, instead of despairing, they kind of put up a safety net for that, which was purgatory.

It's a place that you could go to after death to be purified by hundreds and even thousands of years of torture and pain.

And only then we got to a certain point where you were pure enough, cleansed enough, that you actually could go to heaven.

So, which is, it's not in Scripture anywhere.

This is what a lot of the Reformers at the time were like, where are you guys getting this?

This is just not here.

It was something they made up to kind of, like, that backed up the works-based salvation thing because you would despair if you thought, well, man, there's no way I can do it in this life.

If that's true, then what am I doing even trying?

So, purgatory was your safety net in a way.

Indulgences, pilgrimages, and relics were all things that you could do to cut down your time in purgatory.

Pilgrimages would be like going to Rome or going to Jerusalem, going to a place where a saint is buried.

Indulgences were an official written statement from Rome that absolved you of sin.

It could be like a lot of your sin or it could be all your sin.

And indulgences could be obtained by a financial donation or by a service performed, like going on a crusade.

It would tell a lot of the crusaders, if you go on this crusade, you come back and you survive.

It will give you an indulgence and you'll be absolved of all your sin.

And this is what you even learn in school.

Dr. May of North Georgia talked a lot about this in his crusade class.

So, relics were some kind of object that somebody in the Bible had contact with.

So, this could be like, this was the staff that David used, or this could be the cloak that John the Baptist had.

And if you owned it or you could even look upon, it would cut down time in purgatory.

Indulgences were the thing that really set Martin Luther off years later.

When he went to Rome and he found out that if he just looked and came up and looked at these nails that were supposedly on the cross of Christ,

he could have, I think he said, 500 years off purgatory just for looking at them.

So, it was just kind of a superstition that wasn't anywhere in the Bible.

So, the Inquisition was more like a religious tribunal, if you want to put it that way.

If you disagree with what Rome taught, then you'd be brought before the cardinals and the bishops,

and they would try you.

And if you refused to recant or take back what you said, you usually would be put to death.

So, it was like a religious tribunal that went on throughout the medieval ages.

A lot of us have heard of the Spanish Inquisition before.

That was probably one of the most famous ones in history.

So, in the state of Christendom, that just means where Christianity is,

the majority of the scriptures were in Latin.

The majority of the ones that people had access to were in Latin.

And the Latin Vulgate was really, really common.

So, you've heard people say, like I said earlier, the Bible has some errors in it, right?

But that's what I heard.

Somebody told me that, so I don't know if we can really trust it.

Well, this is where that might actually come in.

A guy named Diderius Erasmus was a brilliant scholar.

Don't really know if he was a believer or not.

I'd like to think he was.

But he was the guy who kind of had it out with Luther later about salvation.

But he wrote a Greek New Testament.

All right?

So, you could go and read the original Greek.

He put one together.

And you could read the Latin right beside it.

And when they did this, he discovered there was a lot of errors in the Latin Vulgate.

And he kind of pointed out the Pope.

He gave that to the Pope again in that Greek New Testament.

The Pope was like, thanks.

Like he's kind of nervous.

It made him really nervous.

Because when people start getting their hands on the Scripture, stuff starts being exposed.

But this is one example of a translation here.

Matthew 4.

Matthew 4.17.

This is reading out of ESV now.

It says,

For that time, Jesus began to preach, saying,

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

So, this is what that says right there in Latin.

The problem is, the Vulgate, you see that one word close right there at the end?

Penitatium.

Penitatium.

It means penance.

It's saying, do penance.

So, basically saying, do a lot of good works.

Abase yourself.

Abase yourself.

Show like some kind of external expression of how much you hate your sin.

Okay?

Which Calvin later pointed out that that's not what God wants.

Remember Psalm 51?

The sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart.

And Erasmus actually translated this, repent or change your mind.

That's what he wrote.

That's what Erasmus was saying.

That's what the Greek says, man.

He's saying like, so it's talking about an inward transformation.

Like you hate your sin out of your heart.

And you understand that it's evil.

It's not just saying, well, I really like my sin.

But if I do this and abase myself, God will be happy.

God is more concerned about the heart than your outward action.

So, that was one error of many in the Latin Vulgate.

So, Rome began to kind of get afraid.

Like, well, if that's messed up, what other parts might be messed up?

So, going on to the sermons and music were Latin.

Now, you understand that like most people in Europe at that time, they didn't understand Latin.

It was just mainly certain elites knew Latin.

And if you went to law school or something like that, you were taught Latin.

And the sermons at this time were not like you'd hear today.

You wouldn't come to a service back then or a mass and hear them teach just right out of the Bible.

You know, doing expository preaching.

Most of their sermons were trivial pursuit and storytelling.

And they followed more of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle rather than what the Bible said.

Just like sadly today, and I hope and I pray that you don't go to a place like this where it's like pop psychology and all the cool stuff today.

It's like kind of taking over.

Tell me five ways to have a good marriage.

Five ways to have a nice day.

And like that's the kind of sermons you hear.

It's more pop psychology than it is the Bible.

It was the same thing back then.

And so that was their sermons and also mystery plays.

This is just, again, just plays that they did to kind of represent things that happened in the Bible.

Stories that you saw in the Bible.

So here's a question.

I asked this question before.

So at this time, during this huge period of time in the Dark Ages and medievalism,

was there anybody who actually taught like the real Scripture and taught the real Gospel during this huge span of time?

Was there just nothing going on?

Which one was it?

And the answer biblically to that is God always has His people somewhere.

And we'll get to that in just a second.

But I wanted to bring this up.

We'll kind of run through this real fast.

Scripture availability.

Most people just didn't have a copy of the Bible at all.

Had no idea.

They were all handwritten.

There were a few copies.

If you had one, it was very, very, very expensive to have.

And the ones that they did have were like locked and secured.

So you just didn't have access to it.

You couldn't just go to Bible Gateway on your computer and look it up.

Nobody had this.

So during this time, was there any kind of preservation?

And the answer is yes.

God always sovereignly has His people and has His Word.

It's what we might call in history isolated torches of light in the dark.

And one of the most well-known groups out there were called the Koldees.

And it means vassals of God.

And there's a huge branch of them in Ireland.

They were called Selde, which was God's sworn ally.

And at this time, they were a monastic order of settlements in Ireland, Scotland, and England.

They taught the gospel that you hear today.

They had access to the original Greek Hebrew.

They preached the gospel by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

There wasn't anything different.

They understood that the Bible was the ultimate authority and not a human being, not a person.

And so, all this was going on.

And now we're going to kind of transition into England a little bit, okay?

Because that's how we get our English Bibles.

Most of us speak English.

So that's what we're going to kind of go for.

But the Reformation was going on all over Europe.

But we're going to start moving that way in just a little while.

John Wycliffe, he called the morning star the Reformation.

He kind of came, he was before Martin Luther.

He was a product of the Codys.

All right?

Like we just looked at.

So he had been taught this stuff.

So he was in England, and he was a professor at Oxford.

He was a very wealthy, prestigious, powerful man.

And he began to teach at his university.

He was kind of one of the first well-known guys to stand up and say,

the Pope and the church in Rome is not God's voice on the earth.

The Bible does.

He was kind of, that was like a crazy idea, you know?

So he was saying, the Scripture is our ultimate authority for everything.

Just like he says right there.

So he began to kind of teach this stuff.

And people would come from all over Europe to Oxford to kind of sit and hear him lecture.

And they'd just be like taking notes like crazy.

And they would take it back to whatever country they were from.

It was like ammunition, basically, just to understand like what the Bible taught.

He eventually translated from the Latin Vulgate into English.

So it was called the Wycliffe Bible.

But he only used the Latin to write to English.

He didn't read.

He didn't understand Greek or Hebrew at the time.

So he's called the Morning Star of the Reformation.

And he was in England.

And when he died, Rome hated him so much that he actually dug up his bones,

burned them, and scattered his ashes so nobody would ever know where he was buried.

So, Reformation does roll around.

Does anybody know what the 31st is this month besides Halloween?

Reformation Day.

Cool.

That's when Martin Luther supposedly nailed the 95 Theses to the door of Edinburgh.

It was October 31st, All Saints Day.

So, post-tenebrous looks.

That means it's a phrase that's used to describe the Reformation.

And it means after darkness, light.

Pretty cool.

Pretty cool phrase.

Because the light of God's Word began to kind of break back into the people.

I mentioned this briefly last week.

The five solos of the Reformation.

These are pillars of what we would believe today that we teach here at Christ's Family.

And these were the key truths that were taught in the Reformation.

And all these are huge.

But basically, I'm going to try to connect them together for you.

That salvation, okay, comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

All right?

By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And the loans are really key because Rome taught, yeah, you're saved by grace, but not grace alone.

Yeah, you're saved by faith, but not faith alone.

It was also up to you to do a lot of the stuff.

The works of righteousness, the penance, taking part in the sacraments, confession to a priest.

All these things were necessary for salvation, but the Reformation said, no, it's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And all of that is to God's glory alone.

And the biggest indictment that a lot of the Reformers had on Rome was that they were trying to steal glory from God in salvation.

All right?

And that's why John and I have been doing this series, because it is in salvation that God has brought the most glory to himself by redeeming man, by sending his son, by showing us grace.

And their biggest indictment was, like, you guys are trying to steal glory from God in salvation.

And it's clear in Scripture that God is the only Savior, and he doesn't share his glory.

He's the only one.

So, to God, along be the glory.

So, so would David Gloria.

Yeah.

And, okay, so, so Rome says, okay, where are you getting all that?

Where are you getting all that?

And they would say, sola scriptura.

Scripture alone is our authority, not, and the church.

It's not unequal authority.

Scripture alone is our authority.

So, that's the five solas.

You should do a study on those sometime on your own.

And so, the reformers' view of sola scriptura stood against the Roman view of Scripture.

Like I said, it was the ultimate authority.

The ultimate say-so.

But what the reformers did teach was they, you don't throw out creeds and confessions and church history altogether.

All right?

Because the gospel has been passed down throughout the centuries.

Okay?

So, what we believe today has been believed throughout the centuries by real believers.

So, it's not like you disconnect yourself from the past.

But you don't put the creeds of the church on equal authority with the Bible.

It's just a helpful way to help understand the Bible.

People have always taught the Scripture.

So, one day, if you just wake up and you say, I'm going to believe this.

And it's a new idea that has never been discovered by any Christians for 2,000 years.

Or has been seen in church history to be heretical, like Arianism, which taught that Jesus was not really God.

Way back when.

In the Council of Nicaea.

It's probably a good idea that you just need to throw away your interpretation, if that's true.

Because there's not any new truth out there.

It's always been the same.

So, the Reformers weren't saying throw away truth.

Or throw away church history.

They were just trying to say that it's not the equal authority with the Bible.

It's just not on the same level.

And they would also say that the Pope is not to interpret Scripture alone.

Every believer has the right to interpret Scripture.

Okay?

And to read it.

And to have it.

And possess it.

But the number one rule that they had for interpretation was this.

It's called Sacra Scriptura Sui Interpretes.

Which means, Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter.

Okay?

So, how do we know what the Bible means?

Because of what the rest of the Bible says about that verse.

The Bible is its own interpreter.

Scripture interprets Scripture.

Scripture.

So, if you want to know what this means, come over here to find out.

You know?

So, how do we know?

And so, what you do is just over studying the Word, you understand that certain doctrines

and certain principles are taught over and over and over again.

Just like about heaven.

Which, Mr. Overton's here.

You ought to hear him talk about heaven sometime.

Like, we look at all these passages that deal with heaven.

And it helps us get a bigger picture about what heaven actually is.

You know?

You say, what does that mean?

You read here and it tells you.

So, Scripture is to be interpreted by Scripture.

What is the rule?

And that's a safeguard against error.

So, that's the Reformers' view of Scripture.

Gutenberg Pring Press.

Okay, we're really getting historical now, aren't we?

But really, God uses everything eventually for good and for His glory.

All things.

So, this made printing and reading materials quicker.

Made reading materials more available to commoners.

And increased the literacy rate.

So, aka, ideas could spread a lot faster.

You know?

So, these things that these scholars like Calvin and Martin Luther are putting out,

they can be easily put in print and sent out to people to read.

They don't have to, like, hand copy everything anymore.

So, big invention.

So, we're about to move into the English Reformation,

but I need to mention two people who had an enormous influence on the English Reformation.

Martin Luther.

When he was asked to recant, you know, his teachings about how salvation is by grace

and the Word of God is the only authority,

he said,

My conscience is held captive to the Word of God.

And he was instrumental.

Like, he was the...

If you think about the Reformation,

most people think about Martin Luther.

Pretty incredible guy.

Not a flawless guy.

He had a lot of serious problems.

He had a lot of serious issues in his life.

He wasn't, like, a perfect guy by any means.

But he just understood...

The thing is, he understood that.

He understood, like, man, I'm a wretched sinner,

and I need the grace of God.

So, that's what he taught.

He eventually translated the Bible into German.

John Calvin.

This guy really blows my mind.

No doubt,

if you go back and look at what this guy did,

he did the work of 20 men in his life.

It's just crazy.

He had an enormous influence on the Reformation in England as well.

He actually wrote a lot of systematic theology.

He took, like...

So, the Reformation,

all these big events going on,

he was actually a scholar who was able to say,

this is what's going on here.

This is what this is really about.

Salvation by grace alone,

through faith alone.

Two things he said.

Really cool.

This is about the Scripture itself.

Let us become submissive to God,

and then He will convey to us by His Word

nothing but sweetness,

nothing but delight.

We owe the Scripture the same reverence

for which we owe to God,

because it has proceeded from Him alone,

and has nothing of man mixed with it.

The experience teaches us

that the highest proof of Scripture

derives in general from the fact

that God in person speaks in it.

Like I was saying earlier,

Scripture proves itself.

It's just...

It's amazing.

It's beautiful.

Anybody need to kind of stand up and stretch?

We've got about 20 more minutes, I think.

I'm trying to move fast.

We don't feel like...

If you're getting kind of like warm and cozy,

you need to move, that's fine.

Wow, what happened?

Do that again.

Oh, well.

It says the English Reformation.

So, that's a picture of England, Scotland.

For those of you who don't know,

Thomas Bilney,

he was kind of like a forgotten figure

in the English Reformation.

He was a scholar,

and like a lot of people,

he got a hold of one of Erasmus'

New Testament,

or Greek New Testaments.

All right?

Now, he had been brought up in Roman theology.

And one night,

he kind of like...

kind of got by himself,

got in a corner,

and started reading this by a candlelight.

And he read 1 Timothy 1.15,

where it says,

or Paul says,

This is a faithful saying,

worthy of all exception,

that Christ Jesus came into the world

to save sinners,

of whom I am chief.

And that just exploded in the world.

He's like,

Wow, Paul is the chief of sinners?

Because Paul is made out by Rome

to be like this sinless,

beautiful,

most, you know,

right under Jesus type guy.

And Paul's like,

I am the chief of sinners.

And Christ came to save sinners.

And that's just something he said

as a result of that.

So imagine that the world you live in,

like right now,

is really common to kind of believe

a certain idea.

And people that say otherwise

are imprisoned or put to death.

And you read something like this,

it just kind of like,

says contrary to what you've always heard.

And you're like,

What do you do?

Well,

Bill and he actually went out

and began to preach the gospel to people.

Preached God's word to people.

When he was cast out of the pulpit,

he began to kind of preach

in the countryside.

Just out in the countryside,

the English countryside.

Eventually he was caught

and he was imprisoned for a year

in the Tower of London.

One of his biggest things

that he rejected

other than, you know,

salvation by works

was the Roman idea

of transubstation.

That's a big word.

It's basically the Eucharist,

like the Lord's Supper.

Rome taught

that when you actually partook

of the Lord's Supper

and you ate the bread

and you drank the wine,

in that moment,

it literally turned into

the blood of Christ

and the body of Christ.

You were like eating him.

And this was a way for you

to have grace in your life.

It was kind of to

take care of Christ

and get their explanation

from that in John

where Jesus says,

He who wants to have

eternal life

must eat my flesh

and drink my blood.

But he was speaking figuratively,

not literally.

So,

which is what the rest

of the Scripture teaches anyway.

So,

have you ever heard,

see if this sounds familiar to you.

In the Roman Eucharist,

they used this phrase,

Hocus Ium Corpus.

And,

that's the Latin for something.

Hocus Ium Corpus Miam.

Alright?

That's where it's saying,

you know,

this is my body,

literally in Latin.

But,

sometimes the priest

that would actually

perform the Roman Eucharist

would like stumble

with the Latin

like they didn't really know

Latin.

They were like,

even like you listening to

somebody speaking their language

and just trying to imitate

what they said

because you didn't really know

the language,

it turned into Hocus Pocus.

That's where you get that from.

It was like this magical thing

that,

and that's what the people

would joke about,

it was like they're magically

turning the wine and the bread

into the body and blood of Christ.

You know,

Hocus Pocus,

that's kind of like

where that actually comes from.

So,

Bill and he rejected that

and it was really common

for most reformers

to reject that idea.

As we would teach it,

it's just symbolic

of the body and blood of Christ.

So,

like I said,

he was in prison

in the Tower of London.

They said,

we're going to release you,

but if we do,

don't come back

and keep preaching.

So,

they released him,

and he went out

and started preaching again.

But eventually,

he knew this was going to cost him.

You know,

he was in prison again

and eventually he was executed.

And,

but this is just one guy

of many,

I thought I would just mention him.

Big Henry.

We've got to talk about Henry.

Definitely,

probably not a Christian,

okay,

but God uses even evil men

to accomplish his purpose.

All right?

His divorce from

Catherine of Oregon.

Okay?

He married Catherine,

which was his brother's widow,

and she had numerous miscarriages

and couldn't produce

like a male heir.

She gave birth to Mary,

a daughter,

and Henry at this time

was really afraid

that anyone might go

into another war of the roses.

That's just

what it was all about.

Like,

who has the right

to inherit the throne of England?

And so he was really worried

about this

and he was upset

because she wasn't giving him

a male heir

like it was all her fault.

You know?

This is just like drama

at its best.

This is like Jerry Springer

back in the Reformation days.

It really is.

So,

he saw a divorce.

He went to the Pope

and he said,

look,

this isn't working out.

I need a male heir.

He pulled some scripture

out of context

out of Leviticus.

I remember he was like,

you can't marry

your brother's wife

and all kinds of stuff.

Not really what I meant.

But,

he thought he was

legitimate

in his need to be divorced.

The Pope refused

for several reasons.

He said,

no, Henry,

and he was mainly afraid,

okay,

because Catherine's nephew

was Charles V,

the Holy Roman Emperor.

He had a lot of power.

Like a lot of power.

And he,

at one time,

before this,

had actually sacked Rome

because the Pope

had defied him.

So,

the Pope's like,

I can't make this happen

because I do.

He's going to come down here

and wipe me out.

That was his fear.

So,

he told,

you know,

Henry,

no go,

man.

Not getting a divorce

from Catherine.

And,

and so,

so,

so Henry comes back

to anywhere

and he's kind of talking

to his,

his homies about it.

And things are not working out.

Hey,

I need to jump ahead

real fast.

So,

he eventually broke up

with Rome.

And,

I need to go back again.

so eventually,

he declared himself.

All the clergy in England

said,

you have the right

to be the head

of the church,

man.

Like,

just as the Pope

is the head

of the church of Rome,

you have the right.

Why shouldn't you

to be the head

of the church of England?

And to split away

from all this nonsense,

you know.

Henry's like,

that's right.

What are they going

to do about it?

I'm a monarch.

I have an army.

I have a navy.

What are they going

to do about it?

They can't,

they can't mess with me.

He was a pretty

powerful guy.

So,

he declared himself,

you know,

this is a piece

out of the act

of supremacy.

He says,

the king's majesty

and rightly is

and ought to be

the only supreme

head in earth

of the church of England.

So,

he declared himself

to be the head

of the church of England.

He broke away

from Rome.

So,

this was huge.

Even though,

you know,

back to that.

Then it got into like,

he has some

wife swap action

going on

numerous times.

But,

normally,

a pope would not

have a problem

with like,

making some accommodations

for a monarch

like Henry.

But,

he was in a

sticky situation.

So,

moving on.

This guy

is an amazing guy.

If you ever get to

read about a person

in church history,

read about this guy.

William Tyndale.

I've heard of

Tyndale House Publishers.

Tyndale was

the guy

who did believe

in like,

the solos

of the Reformation

that were going on.

He was a brilliant guy.

He was a gifted linguist.

He spoke,

he spoke fluently

in French,

German,

Italian,

Latin,

and Spanish.

And he knew

Greek and Hebrew.

So,

this guy

was like,

a really huge instrument

in God's hand,

for sure.

he was hanging out

with like,

a clergyman one day.

I think he was just a priest.

And this priest said,

man,

they're talking about

obeying God's law,

obeying the Pope's law.

And the guy said,

we had better obey

the Pope's law

before we obey

God's law.

And he said,

because the Pope

can kill us, man.

Like,

we need to obey him.

And,

and Tyndale was just like,

are you,

you know,

this is what he said

back to that guy.

I defy the Pope

and all his laws.

And if God

would spare my life

these many years,

I will make it possible

for the boy

who drives the plow

to know as much

scripture as you do.

That's like what

he told the guy.

So,

so he did.

He set out on this,

this journey

to translate

the Bible

into English.

He developed

like a translating strategy

and avoiding detection.

And he was on,

he was hunted

for nine years.

He imagined that

like just going,

living like a nomad,

going from place to place,

translating the Bible.

And he was using,

let's see,

he was using,

I'll go back,

sorry.

He was using Greek

and Hebrew texts,

Latin texts.

He was,

he had all these different

things to use

at his disposal

to come up with

the accurate translation

of the New Testament.

and this is something

that he said,

he was talking about

how Rome has,

Rome wants to like

keep the scripture

away from people.

He said,

they have ordained

that no man

shall look on the scripture

until he be nozzled

in heathen learning

for eight or nine years

and armed with

false principles

with which he can

not understand

the scripture.

So,

they immerse him

so much in Roman

teaching and Roman

doctrine,

but when they get

the scriptures,

they don't,

most of them

can't really see

the difference.

Luther saw the difference

and he said,

this isn't,

this isn't true.

So,

oops,

man,

what I'll do,

all right,

told you,

eventually he finished

the translation

of the New Testament.

He went to Germany

and he met with Luther

and how you say that

is bumps,

kind of sounds,

not worms,

but bumps,

returning,

returned to England

with 6,000 copies

of the New Testament.

Eventually,

he was betrayed

by a friend

for money,

caught,

and he was tried

and he was executed.

And he got on

Henry's bad side

because he told Henry,

sorry,

bro,

scripture just says

that this isn't good

for you to divorce

your wife,

you know?

And so Henry

didn't really,

Henry had it out

for him,

Rome had it out

for him,

but eventually

he was executed

and he was strangled

and then he was

burned at the stake.

What an awesome guy,

like just that desire

to get like the word

of God

in people's hands.

So later on,

a guy named

Miles Coverdell,

he's a really

handsome guy.

Eventually,

Henry decided,

you know what?

to make my break

final with the

Church of Rome,

what we really need

is my own,

our own English Bible

that I oversee

and, you know,

this will be like

our final,

you know,

the final,

the trial breaks

the camel's back

to his day.

So he hired this guy

because he looked bored

and said,

he told him,

you know,

a translator,

what do you use

to translate from?

Look at that,

the Latin Vulgate

and what do you

intend to do

with the New Testament?

He was like,

I can't do a better

job than this guy.

That's kind of

what he was thinking.

So he tried to like

take some from that,

you know,

and so that's like

what he used to translate

and it was called

the Coverdell Bible

and people could come

to inside of,

you know,

the church

and read it.

It was just chained up

so not everybody

had a copy of it yet.

So that was

the Coverdell Bible.

Eventually,

Edward was the successor

to Henry

when Henry died.

He tried to keep

the Church of England

going.

A little bit more.

He wasn't the leader

Henry was

and so when he died,

Henry's first daughter

from Catherine,

Mary Tudor,

became queen

over England

and she was a

really devout

Roman Catholic

and like her mom,

Catherine.

And so she tried

to bring Catholicism

back to England

and she did it,

you know,

militantly,

like arresting people,

imprisoning them,

executing the leaders.

She is recorded

and she burned

around 300

of England's

like top scholars

and theologians

that were

at this time

teaching and

preaching the Word of God.

so,

you know,

it was,

that's where you get

Bloody Mary from,

obviously.

And,

let's see,

moving on here.

This was one guy

named John Rogers

who was a Bible scholar

and translator.

He tried to continue

William Tyndale's

Old Testament

and he had started

and eventually

he was caught

and he refused

to kind of like

throw away

like what he believed

and his phrase

was that

which I have preached

I will seal

in my blood.

And,

so he didn't recant.

He told the people

that were about to kill him

that he would be

praying for them

and praying

for their salvation

so he kind of

held it together

to the very end

so to say.

Eventually,

he was put to death

and this is where

you can go

in England

to see where

that actually happened.

The Geneva Bible.

During this time

when Bloody Mary

was going on

a lot of English

citizens fled

to Geneva,

Switzerland

which was a safe haven

for Protestants

at this time.

And,

that's where

John Calvin was

and a lot of other

awesome reformers

were there

teaching the scripture.

A lot of them

fled there

and eventually

they translated

that made

the Geneva Bible

and they used

Greek and Hebrew

text,

Tyndale's translation

and Miles Coverdale's

translation.

So they had a lot

of different sources

to come up with

a really good

accurate translation.

It was the first

Bible that contained

study notes,

separated chapters

and verses

so that's where

we get that from

is a study Bible.

You can actually

buy them today.

It's really hard

to read

because they don't

speak that kind

of English anymore.

William Shakespeare,

I believe he actually,

he quotes

the Geneva Bible

around 5,000 times

in his plays

and his stories.

The Geneva Bible

was the Bible

that the pilgrims

brought over

to America.

John Bunyan

who wrote

Pilgrim's Progress.

This was all

from the Geneva Bible.

This was the

preface to the

Geneva Bible.

Listen to this.

The Bible is the

light of our past,

the key to the

kingdom of heaven,

our comfort and

affliction,

our shield and sword

against Satan,

the school of all

wisdom,

the mirror in which

we behold God's

face,

the testimony of

his favor,

and the only food

and nourishment

of our souls.

That's an awesome

statement.

about the word.

So,

eventually,

Mary died.

She had no heir

to follow.

And,

back in Henry's

wife's days,

you know,

who came after

Catherine,

was,

anybody know?

There's even a

TV show about

this.

Come on,

guys.

It's not really

that guy.

You shouldn't

watch it.

But,

Anne Boleyn

is who he

married after

Catherine.

And he had

a daughter with

her.

He had her

and her

kind of like

this series

of wives

started going

on.

But,

Elizabeth was

her child.

And,

she assumed

the throne

because she

was the only

other right

to heir,

had any

kind of

royal blood.

And,

she did

lean more

with Protestant

theology.

I don't

really know

if she was,

I mean,

nobody does,

if she was

really a believer

or not.

but,

but,

her main

goal when

she became

queen was,

I'm tired of

us just

killing each

other.

Why can't

we all get

along?

She wanted

to really

bring more

of a national

identity to

England.

And,

so what she

did was she

said,

she made

like some

concessions.

She said,

okay,

we're going

to have,

we're all

going to

break away

from Rome.

That was

called the

act of

uniformity.

We're going

to break

away from

Rome.

We're going

to come

back to

the

Church

of

England.

I'm going

to be

the head

of this.

And,

we're going

to have,

basically,

this is all

paraphrased,

they kept

Protestant

theology.

Also,

really,

it was just

in essence

Calvinism,

which was,

you know,

being taught

from Geneva.

Just summing

up that,

salvation by

grace alone

through faith alone.

But,

they kept

all the pomp

and ritual

and robes

and things

like that

that looked

like the

Roman

mass.

So,

that's why

if you

go to an

Anglican

church today,

that's why

it's really

liturgical

and formal.

That's why

they have

the robes

and things

like that.

So,

this was

the model

we have

in the

Anglican

church today,

the Church

of England.

So,

she authorized

the Geneva

Bible for

the Church

of England.

So,

she's like,

this is going

to be our

Bible so

everybody

can have

a copy.

So,

this was huge.

Her reign

is called

the Golden

Age of

England

because

it went

from a

really

impoverished,

unorganized,

messy country

to almost

a world

power by

the time

of the

rain.

The Spanish

Armada,

all that stuff,

they defeated

Spain.

John Knox

brought the

Reformation

to Scotland.

He has

an awesome

beard.

He outdoes

everybody.

I've

actually

been to

Edinburgh

and I've

been in

the house

that he

lived in

and seen

a lot

of the

what was

that?

That's a

picture of the

Geneva Bible

that I made

at his

house.

It was

kind of cool

to go there.

I saw

some of these

places where

a lot of

people were

martyred and

beheaded

for

believing the

gospel.

Presbyterianism,

that's why

the main

denomination

in Scotland

today is

Presbyterianism.

And,

again,

brought the

Geneva Bible

back and

there's a

law passed

in Scotland

in 1579

requiring every

household

sufficient means

to have a

copy of the

Geneva Bible.

So,

God's word

was like

getting to

the hands

of people.

It was just

an awesome

time.

There's all

kind of other

things to say

about this,

but I'm

going to

move on.

Singing God's

word.

All right?

So,

I understand

people were

just used to

hear Roman

teaching and

it was just

again more

like Plato

and Aristotle

and had all

these songs

they sang

that were

in Latin

that weren't

really biblical

a lot of

them.

So,

the people

in Scotland

were like

we're only

going to

sing

scripture.

That's it.

We're not

going to

sing anything

else.

We're only

going to

sing

scripture.

So,

they wrote

the Scottish

Psalter,

which is

a way

that you

can sing

the songs

out loud.

Now,

I don't

know if

I got this

worked out

less.

Can you

hit that?

Like the

groove

shark thing?

I just

want you

to hear

a piece

of this.

I'll tell

you when

to stop.

This is

Psalm 43

that they

were singing.

It doesn't

work out.

It's okay.

It should

be on there.

I'll

pull it

up on

groove

shark.

It got

closed.

Just type

in Psalms

of Scotland.

Psalms of

Scotland.

Then go

to Psalm

43.

But this

is what it

would have

sounded like.

Kind of.

Minus the

organ.

organ.

But there

is an organ

in this.

I think it's

pretty cool.

They're just

like singing

the scripture.

Any day

now.

I'd probably

be in the