What is the Bible? | The Bible For Grown-Ups

Welcome to Trinity Sermons.

Here at Trinity Church Streetsville, we want to share with you sermons that inspire and

encourage you in your faith journey as together we are learning to love Jesus, live like Jesus,

and lead others to Jesus.

Today we are continuing our sermon series, The Bible for Grown-Ups, and we will dive

deep into what the Bible is not, but more so where the Bible actually is.

We hope you enjoy this sermon.

God bless.

A reading from the Gospel of John chapter 5 beginning at verse 16.

John 5 · chapter mention

The Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

In his defense, Jesus said to them, very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes

him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from

death to life.

Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice

of the Son of God and those who hear will live.

But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form nor does his word dwell in you, for

you do not believe the one he sent.

You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life.

These are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to

have life.

This is the word of the Lord.

Last week we started a brand new teaching series and it was called, yes it was called,

The Bible for Grown-Ups.

And we got started by asking the question, where does the Bible come from?

And it's an important question to ask because when we're little, when we're children, we

probably don't care where the Bible came from.

We're more interested in the stories that are in the Bible.

But as we get older, then all of a sudden we need more than just the stories in the Bible.

We also need to know the story of the Bible as in where did the Bible come from?

That's really, really important.

So that's what we talked about last week.

If you by chance happened to miss last week's service or last week's message, you can always

catch up.

You can visit our YouTube channel or visit our website.

We even have discussion questions to go along with each and every sermon that we cover.

But today what we're going to do is we are going to put the clutch down and we are going

to switch gears.

Cars don't have clutches.

Some of the kids are like, what's a clutch?

We're going to switch gears.

And today we are going to talk about a different question.

Now that question is going to be, what is the Bible?

What is the Bible?

Now that's a really interesting question.

And I would actually like you to think that through yourself for about 20 seconds.

I want to invite you to turn to somebody beside you and for 20 seconds just ask each

other this question.

If someone asked you, what is the Bible?

And it doesn't matter if you like the Bible, you don't like the Bible.

If you read the Bible, if you haven't read the Bible, that doesn't matter.

What's a good definition of the Bible?

What is the Bible?

Ready?

Three, two, one, go.

I want to say if I could just bring you back now, if I could just get you to come back.

I have heard over my time lots of different answers for what is the Bible.

I've heard this one that the Bible is a guidebook for life.

It shows you how to live your life, takes you where you want to go.

Just read it and it'll point you in the right direction.

That's good.

I've heard that the Bible is an encyclopedia of truth in that whatever you need to know,

do you need to know something about money?

You need to know something about love?

You need to know something about sex or whatever?

Just flip to the right page in the Bible and you'll find it.

It's there and you can just find it like an encyclopedia.

I've heard other people say the Bible is a love letter.

Billy Graham used to say the Bible is God's love letter to humankind.

Maybe that's how you define what the Bible is.

Other people say, no, the Bible is actually an allegory.

What I mean by that is you don't just read the words of the Bible.

You have to read for the hidden symbols and the deeper meaning underneath the words of

the Bible.

The Bible is this allegory.

Or some people, and maybe this was a teacher at high school taught you this or you went

to university and a teacher said that the Bible is just ancient literature akin to other

stuff that was written by Plato or Aristotle or Homer or something like that.

Or perhaps you've even had someone tell you that the Bible is actually really valuable

as an artifact.

It just tells us about what was happening during a certain period of time.

And especially if you want to know what a bunch of ancient Hebrew men thought about God,

then yeah, it's a good idea to study the Bible.

Now, there's a lot of other answers to the question, what is the Bible?

You probably just shared a bunch of different answers to what is the Bible.

But it is really, really important that we get this question right.

And here is why.

Because if we don't know what the Bible is, then we will turn it in to something that

it isn't.

And when we start to use the Bible for something that it isn't, then all of a sudden we can

abuse it.

We can misuse it to our own ends and to our own advantage.

I'm going to give you a little example.

But when we were kids, we came across this recipe for how to make your own dog treats.

And it said, you know, you have to mix bacon fat with like peanut butter and gravy.

Put some old gravy and flour in there and a bit of dog food from a can.

And you mix it all up and you baked it in the oven and then you brought it out.

So we made these dog treats.

We had a dog.

And then my grandpa, who lived with us, was out doing chores.

And he walked into the house while these dog treats were cooling on the counter.

And he picked one up and he just took a bite of it.

And we're like, grandpa, don't eat it.

It's dog food.

But it was too late.

He had already eaten it and he was already spitting it out.

Here's what happened.

He thought it was one thing, but it was something completely different.

And the same is true of the Bible.

If we open the Bible and start reading it, thinking that it is one thing, then it might

leave a very bad taste in our mouth.

So what is the Bible?

What is the Bible?

Well, the best definition I've come across for the Bible is actually from an organization

called the Bible Project.

If you go to thebibleproject.com, they've got all sorts of videos and resources to help

people engage with the Bible.

I strongly encourage you to visit that sometime during this series.

All the resources are completely free.

But at the Bible Project, they've come up with this definition of the Bible.

I don't think you can beat it.

The Bible is a library of writings that are both divine and human that together tell a

unified story which leads us to Jesus.

Why don't we just say that one together?

Because this is a really important definition.

Let's say it.

The Bible is a library of writings that are both divine and human that together tell a

unified story which leads us to Jesus.

I put that definition in four parts because I want to look at those four pieces this morning

as we try to figure out what the Bible is.

Let's start with this.

The Bible is a library.

You might say, no, no, no, the Bible is not a library.

The Bible is a book.

The Bible is not a book.

The Bible is not a book.

Now the word Bible actually comes from the Latin word biblia, which means book.

But actually inside the Bible, the Bible never refers to itself as a book, which begs the

question is the word Bible unbiblical?

What does that mean?

Now it's no wonder though that we think the Bible is a book because look, Gutenberg invented

a printing press and he jammed all these things together and now we carry this thing around

and yes, it looks like a what?

It looks like a book, right?

But actually it's not a book.

It's a library of writings.

Now to help us understand this, I thought I'd let you know that this week our staff decided

to take a trip down to the local library, streets of the library.

We didn't have any work to do.

We only really work on Sundays.

So we were just saying let's go down, let's do some reading.

And so we went down to the library.

It was very interesting to see how the different staff gravitated toward different genre of

reading.

And so, you may not know this one now that she's a major mathematician.

So she was ready to read a math book, some kind of math textbook.

Then Grace felt like digging into a little bit of history.

So she found a book about World War I and she was reading that, a history book.

And then Sally, Sally's always a one for a good biography.

So she found this biography on Michelle Obama.

And then Elizabeth, I guess she was hungry maybe or something, but she came across a

cookbook and started reading through it.

And then I was wondering what was going on in the news.

So I grabbed a copy of the newspaper and then Liz, our stewardship director, she was feeling

poetic.

She grabbed a copy of Shakespeare's poetry.

True to form, Libby found a legal book about the criminal code and she was going through

some of the finer points of the criminal code.

So it was a legal textbook.

And then we couldn't even find Alex.

He had gone downstairs to the children's section where he found a copy of the Chronicles

of Narnia and that's where he was reading.

But the point is, you come to a library, very different than you come to a book.

When you come to a book, it's usually all one genre, right?

This is a novel or this is a memoir or this is a cookbook or it's a textbook or something

like that.

It's a library, a library has it all.

And you have to read each type of literature different according to the genre that it is.

You don't read, I mean, Elizabeth wasn't reading the cookbook the same way that Libby was reading

the legal book and Alex wasn't reading the line the witch and the wardrobe the same way

that Sally was reading the biography of Michelle Obama, right?

The Bible's filled with different types of literature, different types of writing.

There is biography.

There is legal writing.

There is history.

There is poetry.

There is prophecy.

There is census data.

There are genealogical records.

There are letters that you can't read it all the same way and so many problems emerge when

we try to read the Bible as if it were all the same genre, but it's not.

It's written by different people, different contexts, even different languages and we have

to understand all that.

I found this author who had written a book.

The book was called Don't Read the Bible Literally, but Literarily, meaning we need to read the

Bible according to its genre, right?

According to what the author was actually trying to get across in that particular part

of the Bible.

Now some people here might say, Rob, I take issue with that.

I always read the Bible literally.

I'm a Bible literalist.

And I would actually say, I don't think any of us truly are biblically speaking literalists.

For example, here's a few test cases.

This is from Isaiah 55-12, where we read, the mountains and hills will burst into song

before you and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Now is this to be taken literally?

Literally are the mountains going to form mouths and start singing?

Are the trees literally going to grow hands like Lord of the Rings style and start clapping

their hands?

I think all of us would say, no, this is a metaphor.

This is a metaphor saying that when God becomes king of all the world, then even all creation

is going to, in a way, celebrate that moment.

We don't read that literally.

You don't read that that much.

Now, here's another test case.

I'm going to throw another one at you.

This is from 1 Thessalonians 4-17.

There are Paul writes, after that, we who are still alive and left will be caught up together

with them in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air.

Some of you might be familiar with this passage, but the idea is that when Jesus returns, what's

going to happen is all of the true believers, according to one interpretation, we are going

to be swept up into the sky because Jesus is going to come from the heavens, from the

sky.

We are going to meet Jesus in the sky, and then we are going to turn around with Jesus

and we are going to head back to heaven where we'll live with him forever and everybody

else gets left behind.

You're familiar with the left behind books.

They're in the library somewhere.

I'm not sure under what section they would be.

Maybe they're for sale in the front where they give away the books, but that's what happens.

That's what one interpretation.

But actually, if you read this historically speaking, understanding where Paul was and

what he was talking about, then many scholars today say, no, no, no.

What he's doing is he's alluding to how sometimes when a dignitary would come to a town, what

would happen is the citizens of that town would say, hey, the king is here and they

would run out and line the streets and welcome the king as he arrives and then not go off

to some other place with the king.

No, come back to the town, come back to the city with the king to celebrate his presence.

So you see, that's a very different interpretation.

So you can't, I don't think in this case, just read this literally.

You have to know the context.

You have to know the history of what's going on there.

Okay?

Now, here's another one.

Genesis 1 to 11.

Most scholars agree that when you read Genesis 1 to 11, it's a different kind of writing

there than when you start picking it up in Genesis 12 and on.

So in Genesis 1 to 11, we have the six days of creation.

We have Adam and Eve.

We have the serpent in the garden.

We have the flood.

We have the tower of Babel and so on.

And then in verse, in chapter 12, we start to hear about this guy named Abraham, who

was called by God and God led him on a journey and all the purpose of his life and his family

and it goes on from there.

So when you come to Genesis 1 to 11, what is the question that you need to ask?

Is the first question to ask, well, was there literally six 24-hour days that God created

the earth?

Was the flood a global flood or a local flood?

Was it really just Adam and Eve?

Are those that, is the world really just 10,000 years old?

Are those the questions we should start when we come to Genesis 1 to 11?

I would say no.

The first question to ask is rather what kind of literature am I reading here?

And it's really important because something that you're reading can be really, really

true and yet not literally true.

You saw a picture of Alex downstairs in the library.

He was reading the lie and the witch and the wardrobe.

Is the lie and the witch and the wardrobe literally true?

No, it is not.

There's no such thing as centaurs or fawns or niads or talking lions.

Yet ask anyone who's read the lie and the witch and the wardrobe and they will say that in

those pages there is deep, deep truth.

Many scholars aren't even sure quite how to read Genesis 1 to 11.

What is it we're reading here?

Is it history?

Is it myth?

Is it allegory?

Is it a parable?

Poetry?

What is it?

My point is even if it's not literal truth, it still tells us something that is really

true like who we are and who God is and what God is like and what the world was created

for.

And all those other types of questions we first need to be asking whenever we come to the

Bible because remember the Bible is not a book.

It is a library full of different genres, different types of literature that are all

deeply true even when they're not literally true.

Okay, that's the first point.

The Bible, the Bible is a library.

Let's go on to the second part of that definition.

Secondly, the Bible is both divine and human.

Okay, what does that mean?

Well, let's start with the divine part.

By divine we mean that behind every word and phrase and paragraph in the Bible, God

is there.

God is behind it.

The Bible is inspired, the scriptures say, not inspired like a Tony Robbins motivational

pep talk to get you inspired, but inspired as if to say that, well, like these were

God's words to us.

Peter writes this.

He says for prophecy and maybe to substitute in there the Bible or scripture.

It never had its origins in human will, but prophets, and you might substitute in their

Bible writers, the authors, but the authors though human spoke from God as they were carried

along by the Holy Spirit.

Or as one of my favorite scholars, NT Wright said, he said, inspiration is a shorthand way

of talking about the belief that by his spirit, God guided the very different writers and

editors so that the books they produced were and get this, they were the books that God

intended his people to have tomorrow morning.

If you get up when you get up to read your Bible, you are reading the books God intended

you to have.

You are reading the words God intended you to have in that way.

It is very truly God's word.

And yet it's also King David's word and it's Jeremiah's word and it's Peter's word and

it's Paul's word, right?

Because it's divine and human.

There's a famous painting actually was destroyed during World War II by Caravaggio called St.

Matthew and the Angel.

And in the painting it shows an angel whispering in St. Matthew's ear as if to dictate to St.

Matthew what he should be writing down as he wrote the Bible.

Now it's actually interesting because some religions I believe think that their holy

books came to them that way.

I think Islam would say that this is kind of how it happened.

And I also think Mormonism, Mormons believe the Book of Mormon was like verbally dictated

but it's really, really important to know that the Bible and Christians have never

said this about the Bible.

Instead, Christians believe that God is always working through free, flawed, intelligent human

beings.

And as they wrote, God was not working them like a puppet and God was not whispering in

their ear.

As they wrote, God said, I'm not going to erase your personality.

I'm not going to take away your culture.

I'm not going to erase your vocabulary or your worldview or whatever.

Instead, God collaborated with human beings to create the Scriptures.

And so Paul writes very differently than Ezekiel would write.

Ezekiel would write in a wild and flammable.

And Mark writes very differently.

Mark is very efficient in short and to the point and so on.

So you see when God inspired the writers of the Bible, he gave them tons and tons of latitude

and freedom to be human.

And that humaneness comes through the Scriptures, which means we don't need to hide the fact

that there are human fingerprints all over the Bible.

Rather that is something that we should celebrate.

And you see this everywhere you look in the Bible if you read properly.

For example, take this one, for example, this is all taken from 1 Corinthians, Paul's

letter to the church in Corinth.

He begins the letter by saying, Paul to the people of Corinth.

So who is writing this?

He's saying it's me, it's Paul.

Paul's writing, I'm Paul.

I'm the one writing this.

And then in chapter seven, he says, I give this command, but then he corrects himself,

oh, it's actually not I who gives this command.

It's the Lord who's giving this command.

So we're like, okay, so what Paul is saying right now is actually not coming from Paul.

This is actually Paul giving us what God is saying.

And then two verses later he says, and to the rest of you, I say this, but then he says,

no, this time it's me, this time it's me talking, and it's not the Lord.

So you see this, Paul's not even trying to hide this tension, that the Bible is this

mix of human and divine sources.

And obviously the best way to understand this tension is probably to look to Jesus himself.

Jesus is both fully God and he's fully human.

He's not just God pretending to be human, and he's not human with a little bit of a divine

spark in him.

No Christians have always understood that he is, he's not either or.

He is fully God and fully human.

And the same way the Bible is both divine and human at the same time.

It is on the one hand from the spirit of God, breathed out by God, and on the other hand,

it's Paul and it's Mark and it's Jeremiah and Isaiah and so on.

So there you have it.

So far we've got this.

The Bible is one, a library, two, the Bible is both human and divine.

Now let's talk about the third point of that great definition we received.

The third point is the Bible tells a unified story, unified story.

Now I'm not going to say too much about this, but I will just point out this little pie

chart that I found.

It shows all the major types of literature found in the Bible.

And as you can see, 60% of the Bible is history or narrative.

So yeah, there's poetry there and there's wisdom literature and apocalyptic literature

and prophecy and letters and so on.

But most of the Bible is a story.

And even more than this, you have to understand that the Bible is telling an overarching

story.

This great narrative arc moves through the Bible from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

Walter Brueggemann, he said this, he said, the Bible is a complex tapestry of voices

and genres.

Yet, this is a really important yet, through it all runs a unified narrative.

The story of God's relentless pursuit of relationship with humanity.

That sounds like God's love letter there the way he's writing it.

It's important that we learn to read the Bible as a story.

Human beings love stories.

Stories get our attention and they evoke our imagination.

Like we're made for stories, right?

And the Bible tells the greatest story ever.

Another guy I came across this week, John Mark Comer, said there's another really good

reason why you should read the Bible as a story.

And that's because if you read the Bible as a story, it helps deal with some of the apparent

contradictions that you might find in the Bible.

Here's what I mean.

Let's say you were reading the Bible and you turn back to the book of Leviticus.

And you see here in Leviticus, there's a whole bunch of laws that say you shouldn't eat this

food, you shouldn't eat this food, and you shouldn't wear these clothes, and you shouldn't

wear these clothes.

You might say, oh, interesting, it says here that we shouldn't eat these food, and we

shouldn't wear these clothes.

But over here, and then he turns to the New Testament and says, but over here, it says

that we can eat any food we want, and we can wear any clothes that we want, and so on.

See, so, huh, do you see the contradiction?

The Bible says this over here, it says this over here.

And if you read the Bible as if it's an encyclopedia, you're going to run into all those contradictions

over and over and over again.

But the way you have to understand this is it's a story.

And there were, here in the early part of the story, there were these food laws that

were really important for that part of the story.

At that point in the story, God's people needed to remain distinct and they needed to remain

separate so that their identity as God's people could be formed and not influenced by the cultures

around them.

That was that part of the story.

But now we're in a different part of the story.

The part of the story says we're supposed to go out and we're supposed to take the good

news of Jesus to the world around us and not remain all kind of separate and isolated.

We're in this part of the story.

And here in Mississauga, 2024, we're definitely not in that part of the story.

We're in another part of the story yet.

So if we read the Bible as a bunch of disconnected little pieces, you're always going to run

into saying this doesn't match that and that doesn't match that.

But if you read the Bible as a story, it's going to help you see how God is working through

history and actually how God is still working today and Jesus is still working today.

That brings us to the fourth point.

That brings us to the very fourth point here.

Let me back up one slide there.

The Bible leads us to Jesus.

It's a library, human divine, tells a story, but that story leads us to Jesus.

That does not mean when you open your Bible on every page, you are going to see Jesus'

name on every page.

But what it does mean is that in every page, in every chapter, in every paragraph, there

is something pointing us forward to Jesus.

Here's a fun fact.

You probably heard many people call the Bible the Word of God.

But you know, the Bible rarely refers to itself as the Word of God.

Instead, do you know what the Bible is talking about when it refers to the Word of God?

Yeah, that's right.

Jesus.

For example, when John begins his gospel and he says, in the beginning was the Word, he

doesn't mean in the beginning was the Bible, he means in the beginning was Jesus.

That's what the Word means.

In other places in the Bible, when you see the Word of God, it's not just referring to

Jesus, but it's referring to the gospel of Jesus, to the story of Jesus, to the good

news of Jesus.

So for example, when Paul writes this to Timothy, hey, Timothy, preach the Word in season and

out of season.

Is he saying, Timothy, preach the Bible in season and out of season?

Actually, in context, no.

Nothing wrong with preaching the Bible.

But what Paul is saying here is preach the good news of Jesus, whether it's favorable

or unfavorable circumstance for you.

Or how about this one?

This is one of the most popular ones that people use to talk about the Bible, the Word

of God.

Right?

Hebrews 4, we read that the Word of God is alive and it's active and it's sharper than

any double-edged sword.

Is this talking about the Bible?

Is the Bible alive?

The Bible is amazing, but it's not alive.

The Bible has words about life, but it's not alive.

Only Jesus, the true Word of God is alive.

Jesus is the Word.

The message of Jesus is the Word.

And it's important to get this straight because it can happen that some people elevate the

Bible so high that they actually worship the Bible more than they would worship Jesus.

And we want people to get excited about the Bible.

That's what this whole series is about.

But don't let it warp into bibliography, right?

We don't worship the Bible.

We worship Jesus Christ.

And He's the one to whom the whole Bible is pointing.

We heard this read for us this morning.

Jesus said to a bunch of Pharisees, He said, you guys are studying the Scriptures diligently

because you think in them you have eternal life.

And these are the very Scriptures that testify about me.

Jesus is talking to religious leaders, people who knew their Bible better than you know

your Bible and better than I know my Bible.

He's speaking to people with a very high view of the Bible.

But you see, He's saying, you don't understand the plot of the Bible.

You don't understand what the Bible is pointing to.

And maybe you've got, here's the thing, maybe you've come across people who know their Bible.

Man on man do they know their Bible, but they do not seem like kind people.

They seem cruel and cold and they seem kind of angry all the time.

And do you know why that happens?

It happens because you can know your Bible and not know Jesus.

You can study it and read it and memorize it and still not be anything like Jesus.

In fact, that's one of the worst things that could happen.

It's to become this snooty, mean, cold, unfeeling, but highly educated student of the Bible.

But then our lives look nothing like Jesus.

So what I'm saying is it's not enough to know the Bible.

It's not enough to believe the Bible.

It's not even enough to say the Bible is sacred and highly revered or holy or inspired.

The Bible is amazing, but it cannot give you life.

Only Jesus, to whom the Bible points, can give you life.

So what is the Bible?

It's a library.

Secondly, the Bible is both human and divine.

The Bible tells a unified story and most importantly, the Bible leads us to Jesus.

So if you take last week, now we know where the Bible came from.

If you take this week, now we know what the Bible is.

And once we've gotten that far, then finally we'll be able to see what it is that the Bible

does.

What is the Bible for?

But that is going to be our topic for next week.

And we're going to pick it up there.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

And we hope that you learned a little more about the Bible.

Today's sermon was taken from the April 14, 2024 service at Trinity Church Streetsville

in Mississauga, Ontario.