Can We Trust The Bible

Right. So like I said, we are going to

be over the next what over this term, we are going to be going

through some of the questions that people have sent in.

And today I I'm going to be going through a question which I

loved that came in and at some of these, just just to note some

of these questions, we are we are going to answer everyone's

question who sent a question in. But some of them they may not be

worded exactly how you wrote them because a few people asked

the same kind of question. So they've just been kind of

rephrased into an encompass all question.

And today, to kick off our series, our very first question

is, can we trust the Bible? Which I think is really, really

key because as, as a church, we've just gone through our

foundations, our, our, our values.

And we've looked at that through the, the lens of a lifeboat.

And our very first value is that we are about, we have a church

that is built upon the truth that we find in scripture.

I mean, this is this is our value statement from our

website. It says we are building a church

rooted in the unchanging truth of Jesus Christ and his word.

This truth rescues us from death, frees us from the power

of sin, and transforms us daily. It is the foundation on which we

stand, the message we proclaim, and the hope we offer to our

community and the world's. Now that sounds great.

I think it does anyway. But it means absolutely nothing

if, if This is why I've got a few Bibles with you, by the way,

I just went around last night and grabbed a few.

This is why, This is why this is so key, Because if we can't

trust this, we can't trust what we've got in our hands or on our

phones, then what are we building upon?

We've got nothing to build upon. We have to be able to trust what

we've got, what the Bible. And so there's so many good

questions that come in on, do we, can we trust the Bible?

Questions like how did we actually get the Bible?

I mean, did how did, how did we get this, this leather bound

thing that many of us might have at home?

How, how was, how do we know that it's just not made-up?

How do we, how do we actually know that what we have written

down in here is the same As for example, the Apostle Paul wrote

2000 years ago? How do we know?

Because there's, you know, if those of you, you know who, who

listen to Muslim apologetics, one of their first thing to go

to is the Bible you've got is not the same.

Muhammad knew what the Bible was, but you don't.

But how do we, how do we and we, you know, we instantly might go,

well, that's rubbish. But how do we know that that's

rubbish? Did some of you may have heard

this? No.

Did the there was a council, and we'll talk about in a second if

you've never heard of it, but there was a council of church

leaders and Emperor Constantine in the year 325 at Nicaea.

And some of you have been, some of you have listened to The

History Channel and on History Channel, they've told you they

are at that council. There was a tonne of there was a

tonne of gospels, a load of literature that could have been

in the Bible. But then they chose the ones

that that made it, that made Jesus seem how we we see him.

They kind of dismissed loads and they chose others.

That's not true either. But how do we know that's not

true? Now?

How, how are we meant to read it?

How are we meant to understand it?

Well, let's get into it. So very simply, the Bible, the

Bible, the word we have for Bible, it comes from the Latin

word tabiblia. And for those of you who grew up

in Latin speaking languages, Romance languages and Romania,

Italy, Spain, France, you all know that Bibliotheque or that's

kind of that, that that sort of word, it means library, it means

the books. And that's because this is not

just one book, it is a collection of 66 books that were

written over a period of 1600 years, by over 3 / 3 different

continents, by over 40 different authors, in three different

languages. And the amazing thing is that

even though it it's 66 books, 1600 years, three different

continents, over 40 authors, 3 languages, it wonderfully tells

a cohesive story of God, of Yahweh's pursuit of rebellious

humanity. So how did we get this Bible?

How did we get the Bible? How, how did it, how did it

form? Well, if you open up your

Bibles, you will notice that a massive, the biggest proportion

of it is, is that's about the next one, that one that's Old

Testament and that's New Testament and the biggest.

So let's start with the, with the Old Testament.

So how did we get the Old Testament?

Well, the Old Testament is what we would call the Hebrew Bible.

It's the, the Hebrews, they would call it the the Jewish

people, they'd call it the Tanakh, which is an acronym for

Torah, Neveim and Ketuveim. And here we go.

Here's those 44, sorry, three books that make up the, the

Torah and the books from our Old Testament, how they fit into

those 3 categories. And the beautiful thing of this.

And now you might notice if you know your contents page of your

Old Testament, you'll notice that it's in a slightly

different order. It goes Torah, no Genesis,

Deuteronomy, then it goes prophets, Joshua down to the

minor prophets. And then it goes the ketamine

Psalms down to Chronicles. And that's a slightly different

order that you will have on your contents page in your, in your

Bibles. And the reason for that is

because the Jewish write the Jewish writers, the Jewish

scholars, when they were putting the, the Torah together, when

they were collecting these, these scrolls together, they

were putting them to an, in an order.

They, they thought about the order that they wanted to put

them in. We get this, we get, we get this

with the Psalms. I don't know if anyone's ever

noticed this in the in the Psalms, but the Psalms is

made-up of five books and but they're not in chronological

order. They're not like this Psalm was

written 1st and then Psalm 150 was written last.

That's not how it works. You'll get this.

You get, I can't remember what number it is, but you get part

way through it and at the end of a certain Psalm that goes thus

end the Psalms of David. A few Psalms later it goes a

Psalm of David because it's not in order.

It's not doesn't it's not meant to be chronological order.

The Psalms are written so that Psalm 3, it is meant to help you

read Psalm 4 and Psalm 4 helps you read Psalm 5 and so on.

And this is how they writ, how they ordered the scrolls so that

you, you, you, they build on one another and they tell this

amazing story of how God in the beginning, he chose a people,

how he, he, he decided, he chose Adam and Eve.

And he said that he wanted to through them fill his glory into

the entire world, but they failed.

So we started with Noah and he fails.

And then he grabs Abraham and Sarah.

And it becomes very clear very quickly, as you read on through

the scrolls that people aren't able to fulfil this amazing

mission that God has given them. And it as we get through, as we,

as we get to the end of the prophets, we start to see, oh,

it's not going to be us actually, we need a leader, we

need a king, we need a saviour. We need someone who can come and

make everything right, who can unite the world, who can bring

God's glory to the entire world. So then we read through the

Ketabine and we get to Chronicles.

And you read the, you read Chronicles and you realise the

world needs a king, the world needs a saviour.

But he never came. He didn't come.

It's an unfinished story. We get to the end.

It's an unfinished story. The the, the, the Messiah hasn't

come. And what's worse is this is his

chosen people, the Kingdom of Israel.

They are scattered to the four corners of the world.

There are useless bunch who are nowhere.

And God said, God said it was through them.

He was going to bring his chosen one, but but they're scattered.

They're in exile, but there is a little bit of hope.

The last few lines of Chronicle tell us that King Cyrus of, of

Persia, he, he puts this edict out to say the Jewish people

who've been in captivity in Babylon can go home and that in

it ends. Then 400 years pass and this

Jewish preacher, rabbi from from Nazareth starts going around

saying things like this. In Matthew 5, he says, do not

think that I have come to abolish the law and the

prophets. That's the, the make up of all,

all the Torah. Don't think I've come to abolish

it. I've not come to abolish them.

I have come to fulfil them. The Torah, that's the Torah, the

Tanakh, it, it is unfinished. 400 years later, Jesus comes on

the scene and says I have come to complete it.

I've come to bring an ending to it.

And we, we read, we read, we have the gospels that make up

our New Testament. The gospels are details,

detailed accounts of of eyewitnesses who saw what Jesus

did, how he was bringing about a completion to the Torah.

We read read the book of Acts, which is a historical account of

what the first believers did in response to how Jesus taught

lived, died, was rose again. And then we have the the letters

that we we call them epistles, which tell which explain to us

how we are to live in light of the truth of Jesus Christ.

And now, like I said, some have tried to say that these, these

books that we have in the Bible, these books we have in the New

Testament, especially that they are, they're a hand picked bunch

of, of books that that there were many, many others.

And at Nicaea in 325 people, just the, the goes there, they

picked the ones that made Jesus sound like how we want him to

sound. And they disregarded a load of

others. And like I said, that is

complete rubbish. It's not true.

And the reason why it's not true is because the books that we

have in our New Testament today, as soon as they were written,

the other churches recognise them as Scripture.

We read this in two Peter. So Peter the the guy who was in

the inner circle, the guy who Jesus told to lead his church

that he writes this. He says bear in mind that the

Lord's patience means salvation. Just as other our other brother

dear Paul, he's talking about the apostle Paul who wrote loads

of those letters in our New Testament wrote wrote with you

with wisdom that God gave him. He's saying that he's saying

that the writings that Paul has written the Ephesians,

Colossians, Philippians and so on, they are inspired by God.

He writes in the same way in all his letters, speaking to their

speaking in them. Of these matters.

His letters contain some things that are hard to understand,

which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do other

scriptures. So Peter, living at the same

time, has Paul. What this shows is that Paul's

letter to the Ephesians, for example, it didn't just go to

the Ephesians church, it made its way around.

It was copied and sent to all the churches of the 1st century

and Peter gets hold of these letters and he says these are

just the same. He, Peter puts them on the same

level as Isaiah, as Jeremiah, as Genesis, as Exodus.

He says these are scripture you see, and that was not the case

for others. See there were other books.

By the time you got to Nicaea 325 you got you.

There were other books. There was the the Gospel of

Thomas, the Gospel of of Judas and the Gospel of Mary to name

name some. But unlike the biblical books

that we have in our Bible now, and here's the list of our New

Testament. A The church never recognised

them as Scripture from the beginning.

B All these books, if you can see that where you are, I'm

going to send it my slides out for everyone.

But you see there all of the books that we have in our New

Testament were written within the 1st 1st century.

The the very the very latest that are the the most critical

people believe some of our letters were written in our New

Testament was was 1995 AD. The books that other people from

The History Channel, whatever are trying to say should be in

our Bible as well who were disowned like Thomas or

whatever. They weren't written for another

hundred 200 years. They were not eyewitness

accounts. See for the early church to

include letters scripture in our New Testament, they had to meet

three criteria. First written during the

Apostolic age, that's the 1st century.

So they are either written by an apostle or they were written by

a friend of an apostle like Luke or, or an apostle approved it.

So it was during their lifetime. Obviously, these fake gospels

weren't. They did not contradict #2 they

did not contradict the Hebrew Bible, which many of these fake

gospels do. And thirdly, they were widely

accepted by the entire church, which some of the which many of

these fake ones or all these fake ones weren't so a nice

seer. Unlike what The History Channel

might tell you, they didn't go, we're not having them, we're

having them. What they just did was these are

the ones we've had for for 200 years.

These are our scriptures. They just affirmed what everyone

already knew. So that's how we got our New

Testament. And if you open up any, any

Bible that you many of you've got at home, these are the books

you will have in it, the books of the Tanakh for our Old

Testament. And these are the books of our

New Testament. But some of you who grew up

Catholic, who grew up going to Catholic Church, anyone.

Yeah, I know there's a few others who maybe aren't here

today, but yeah, who grew up Orthodox yet.

Now you may know this and other others in here may not know

this, but if you grew up Catholic or you grew up

Orthodox, there are more books in your Bible.

There are more books than we have there.

See, we have, we have 27 books in our New Testament and 39

books in our Old Testament. But if you grew up Orthodox or

you grew up Catholic, there's a few more.

There's a few more. So why and how and why don't we

in our Protestant Bibles have them as well?

Well, for the last 2000 years, the whole unified Church has

recognised that the 27 books of the New Testament that are in

every one of our Bibles and the 39 books of the Old Testament

that every one of us has in our Bibles, which Jewish people will

have in their Tanakh are inspired by the Holy Spirit.

They are from gods. But like I said, if you're

Catholic, Orthodox, you have a few more.

And to explain why we have to go back to the, to the 1st and 2nd

century BC. This is a, this is a example.

See for in our Protestant Bibles, we have 39 books in our

Old Testament. In a Catholic Bible, there's

this 39, but then a few more, which they call the Dutro Canon.

And then if you're Orthodox, well, they have another section,

which I can't pronounce that word, but I'll let you, you try,

try and read it. It's, it's, it's Greek and it

means the writings, the things we read.

And you see that they have even more books.

And the way that we explain, we explain that is we have to go

back to the the 2nd and 1st century BC before Christ.

You see, our Bibles end, Malachi, or if you're, if you've

got a Jewish Bible, they end with Chronicles.

But after the Jewish people, they return, they're let go by

Persia. The world soon turns Greek.

Anyone heard of Alexander the Great?

He conquered within his lifetime pretty much the whole of Europe

and Asia, and during his time he everyone then therefore spoke

Greek like English today. Greek was the world language.

Everyone spoke Greek. And so because the Jews, because

they so treasured their scriptures and they wanted

people to be able to read their scriptures, they wanted

everyone, they wanted every town to have a synagogue where the

scriptures were read. But they knew that a lot of the

world didn't speak Hebrew anymore.

They only spoke Greek. So a group of 70 scholars,

Jewish scholars got together and they started translating the,

the, the Tanakh and also some other important books to them

into Greek. And they collected these, these

writings together and they called them the Septuagint.

And what they did is they, they not only added the Tanakh, they

also added other books. Like up there we've got Tobit,

Judith, we've got a bit more, it says there's Book of Esther, but

they add a bit to it. There's, there's Wisdom of

Solomon and Syriac in Baruch and Maccabees.

They, they, they bring these in and now these were really

important pieces of writing for them, but they were never

classed as Scripture. What they wanted was they wanted

their fellow Jews who spoke Greek to know their history, to

know about them. They wanted to give them a

greater wealth of writings than just the holy inspired

Scriptures. And actually when Fast forward a

few 100 years to a guy named Jerome, he was commissioned by

the Western Church to translate all the scriptures into Latin

because when he was around the Western world, the European

world, everyone spoke Latin. So he was commissioned by the

church to translate the scriptures into Latin.

And he had he got hold of a Septuagint and he started

translating from Greek into Latin.

But because he was a smart guy, he, he was reading through some

of these things. And as he's translating, I mean,

it took him 20-3 years, by the way.

I mean a long, long time. I mean, he didn't have Google,

he didn't have AI. He had nothing like that.

It was just him and a Greek and Hebrew dictionary just going

through word by word, translating it into, into Latin.

And, and as he was going through it, he reckoned he he realised

that some of the writings that he was translating.

Were only a couple of 100 years old that were from the 1st and

2nd century. He, he realised that when he was

translating Genesis, for example, that that was that was

that he, he could take 1000 years from that and and it was

and he also, he knew that it was trans, it was from Hebrew.

But then he got these other books like Baruch or Syriac and

he was like, oh, the writing style.

I can tell this was never written in Hebrew.

This was actually always written in Greek and it is only a couple

of 100 years old. And So what he did is he, he

took the Tanakh and he translated that into Latin.

But the other books he wasn't comfortable about translating

because he was told to translate the Bible and he didn't really

want to translate the others, but the church had told him, we

want you to translate everything.

So he did. But what he did is he translated

the Tanakh, he translated the old, the New Testament letters,

and then he translated the other books that he had a tobit down

to Two Maccabees. And he put them in a different

section, a different section called the apocrypha, which

means hidden or secret things because he didn't really know

what they were about, but he was told to translate them.

So as a dutiful Christian, a loyal to the Pope, that's what

he did. And actually it wasn't until the

16th century that the word Apocrypha got replaced by

Jutrecannon because the Catholic Church at the after the

Reformation, the Catholic Church saw the Apocrypha and they

decided actually there are some doctrines that you find in the,

in the Apocrypha, in the Juto cannon that aren't anywhere

else. See, the Catholic Church, by

this time, they've made a lot of money off of charging people to

pray for people who are dead to do indulgences and things like

that. And that's not anywhere in

scripture, but you can allude to it in some of the books like

Maccabees that that might be there.

So they decided, OK, these are really important now and people

are starting to question Scripture.

So therefore we're moving these from Apocrypha from Hidden from

Secret Things to Dutra Canon, which just means the second

Canon. The, the we're saying these are

scripture, the Orthodox Church. Now the reason why they have

even more is because the Septuagint, it wasn't a leather

bound book. It was a collection of scrolls

held together and it was written in the East.

And what happened is the, the further W you went, some of the

less important ones just got lost.

And so they, they just, they lost to some along the way.

So by the time Jerome gets hold of a Septuagint, he's just got

less to work with. But the Greeks and the Orthodox,

they have far more and. But what's really important is,

is that in the Orthodox Church, whilst these are in their Bible,

they are not considered scripture.

They are just considered. They're called the books we read

because they're good. They see them as good books for

us to read, for us to know. But the they are not Scripture.

They will look at them and look at it with interest.

But if, if for example, Ezra contradicts something in Baruch,

well, they'll take what Ezra says and they'll, they'll, they

downgrade the others. So they're not Scripture.

And then in the 1500s in the Protestant Revolution, Martin

Luther, John Calvin, Stingley, they built the Reformation upon

Scripture being everything script.

We live by Scripture and scripture alone.

So therefore what they did is they went back to the Hebrew

Bible and they said, well, these other books in red, they're not

in the Hebrew Bible. So, so we don't confuse people,

we're going to get rid of them. We're going to get rid of them.

We're not going to have them because only Scripture we base

our word, our work on. So should we read them these

books in red, these these second ones?

I think so. I think they're great.

They're brilliant. If you if you want an idea of

how the how the Jewish believers in Jesus time, how they, how

they got their, their, their doctrine and how they believed

about angels and demons and stuff.

I mean, the book of Tobit is a brilliant book about, about

demons, about about angels. It's it's a great book.

You know, I was reading the other day.

I was reading the the first book of it's not up there, but the

first book of, of Enoch. And in the first section, it's

called the book of the watchers. And there's just an amazing bit

of writing, just of worship, describing the ancient of days,

the king of glory and how what the Messiah will be like when he

comes. And it was just like, this is

wonderful. This is just like like reading

some of our songs by Phil Wickermore, who whoever you

know, it's brilliant. So yeah, I think we should read

them, but they are not Scripture.

They're useful, but they're not Scripture.

So that's how we've got our Bible.

That's why we've not got some some books in it that if you had

a Catholic Bible or whatever they've got in it.

But how do we know that it's the same?

How do we know if we open up this, and we have just opened up

here to Two Corinthians, how do I know what I read here?

If I was able to transport back in time and give this to Paul,

how do I know if he was able to speak English?

He'd go, yeah, yeah, that's what I wrote.

Yeah. Yeah, I wrote that.

How do I know that? Actually, scholars are 100%

certain that it is correct. Why?

Because they have the original writing that Paul made.

No, they don't. They've been lost, but they are

100% certain that what we have in our Bible is the same as what

Paul and the other writers wrote due to something called textual

criticism. Now I just want to explain that

to you. OK, Say I haven't got my phone

on me, but I want everyone in here to have a piece of a piece

of writing from me. I want a page.

I'm going to write a page. And I want everyone to have

that. Not only do I want everyone here

to have that, but I want everyone who's part of our

church, who's not here today, who's on holiday sunning

themselves or whatever. I want them.

I want them to have it as well. And I can't go.

I can't type it out and push send.

All right, so I'm going to write one out because I don't really

like writing, but I'm going to write one out.

And I'm going to give one to Andrea.

And then Andrea's going to copy two more, and she's going to

give one to Katie, who's going to go and give one to Josiah.

And then they are going to copy what they've just been given.

And they're going to copy so that everyone in their rows got

it. Then they're going to pass it on

behind everyone in their row until we get to the back.

And then those in the back are going to copy out again so that

those who aren't here can have one.

Now we all, we all leave. And unfortunately, the, the,

the, the writing I gave to Andrea gets lost.

We don't know where it's gone. How on earth can we tell what I

wrote? Now, what's even more

complicated is that as as everyone's copying out now

Amanda, she gets her copy and she's asked to make a copy.

And as she's writing out, she misses a comma and passes out

onto someone. So someone has got a copy

without a comma in it. Pete gets completely distracted

and misses out on an entire line.

So if you get one that Pete copied, you're missing a line.

Lizzie gets 1. And Lizzie looks at what I've

written and she thinks he's not explained that very well.

So she she adds a bit in. She adds another line in that

says that it just doesn't change it.

She just writes a bit in to explain.

This is what Ben meant. You weren't here.

Ben meant this. OK.

And that gets passed on. How on earth are we going to

know with the original gone, what was I wrote?

Well, let's pretend that 100 surviving copies are left.

Of those 100 surviving copies you grab, gather them all

together. Two of them are missing some

punctuation, which makes it a bit difficult to read.

Four of them don't seem to have a line in it that others have

in, and four more have a bit extra in it which others don't

have. How on earth are you going to

tell what I actually wrote? You gather them all together and

this is what they do. They gather them all together

and they're able to say, OK, those went that way.

And there's there's a bit missing on some of them.

There's a bit extra on some of them.

But actually the whole bit with the big volume of 100, it

creates a system of cheques and balances where you're able to

see this is what we know was originally written.

Now we don't just have 100 copies of the first range back

to the first couple of centuries.

In fact, we have 5800 Greek copies that date back to 25 to

50 years after they were originally written, counting all

and remember, some of these were translated into Greek, some were

put into to Syriacs, some were into into Coptics, some into

Latin. With all of them for the 1st 250

years, we have 24,000 copies. That is how they know.

That is how they know that it is accurate, that it is correct.

And see, look, the earliest, the earliest copy piece of it's a

piece of John is, is dated carbon dated to the year 125,

just just a few years after the writer of John was was meant to

have written it. I mean, look, look at that.

We've got Homer's Iliad. We are, we are certain that what

Homer wrote we have now, but we only have 2000 copies of that or

just under. And it, the earliest copy we

have was almost was 500 years after he wrote it.

I mean, Julius Caesar's wars we've got, we, we believe that

what we have is right, but the time gap between the earliest

copy is 1000 years and we only have 250 of them in total.

That is how amazing the Bible stacks up compared to other

historical evidence. And you know what?

Even though the evidence is overwhelming that what we have

in our Bibles is exactly what was written down 2000 years ago,

our Bible scholars, those who go to the original text and

translate them into English so that we can read it, are so

concerned that we can trust what we are reading that they do

things like this. I don't know if anyone's ever

seen this. Let's read it.

I never usually put the verse numbers up there, but you'll see

why it's in. In John chapter 5 it says

John 5 · chapter mention

sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish

festivals. Now they're in Jerusalem near

the sheep gate there there was a pool which in Aramaic is called

Besada. This is verse 2 and which is

some which is surrounded by 5 covered colonnades.

Verse 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie the

blind, the lame, the paralysed verse 4 there is no verse 4.

Now this what they this then it has a footnote in your Bibles

and it will say some manuscripts include the story of the Angel

coming down, dipping its wings in in the water and and the

first one in gets healed. Now when the reason why it's

there is because when when not Tolkien the wrong person.

When when Tyndale of different T Tolkien did not write write

interpreted the Bible. When Tyndale interpreted the the

first Bible into English, the manuscripts that he was copying

from that he was translating from had verse 4.

Then, especially in the 20th century, there was a massive

discovery of loads of different scrolls dating back thousands of

years, and they found in them there wasn't.

Everything else was exactly the same, but verse 4 wasn't there.

So what they believe has happened is they've had a Lizzy,

they've had someone who has read it and gone.

Well, no one knows. I know why people used to gather

round the sheep gate, but no one else does.

So I'm just going to add in this was because this is what they

believed and then they did it. It didn't change the meaning or

anything, but because our Bible scholars want us to be 100%

confident that what we have is true, they put it as a footnote.

So we know, so we can say that should give it not give us less

confidence. That should give us more

confidence that everything that we read is true.

You see, we, we, we, we have to, we have to look.

We've looked at the creation of the Bible.

We've looked at how why we have the Old Testament, how it is,

how we have the New Testament, how it is, why we've not got

other books. We've also looked at the extent

that scholars today go to to make sure that we can have

absolute confidence. So when you're Muslim or your JW

or your Mormon friends says your Bible's not accurate, you can

say no, no, it is, it is, it is 100% accurate.

But what's the takeaway? What's the big point of looking

at this? Well, actually the big point of

looking at this is we need to read it.

If we can trust it, there's no point going, yeah, I can trust

that. But never look at it like Andrew

was saying, Katie was saying, there's no point.

It's point saying God wants to hear our prayers and we don't

pray. We are cooled to read this

Bible. I mean, it's amazing.

It's amazing. Everywhere the church spreads.

When the church spread in the early centuries across the known

world, everywhere it went, schools popped up.

People learn to write. I mean, we take it as a, as a,

as an integral right that, that we all should be able to learn

to, to read and write and have an education.

That's not the case across the entire world.

There are many people across the world who've never learned to

read and write. Actually, there's languages

across the world that don't even have a written language.

And that's because the church as it expanded was so intentional

and making sure we could read, we could write.

It is not an integral right that we could should all have been

educated, but the church made it a right because it wanted every

single person to be able to read a Bible.

It wanted every single person to be able to understand, to have

one in their hand and read it. That's why whereas Satan was so

against as languages moved on the Bible being translated into

English, Tyndale, he fought and he fought and he fought to get

the Bible translated into English.

But but the, the we, we the God desires for us to be able to

read it in our own language. That's why trusts like the, the

charities like the Witcliffe Trust, their mission is to

translate the Bible into every language on planet earth so that

everyone can have a Bible that they can read.

Now that sounds hard enough, but there are, there are amazing

videos on, on YouTube that you can watch where some places they

go, the people can't read and write to start with.

Now, how do you translate a Bible into a, into a nation's

written language when they don't even have a written language to

start with? So they, they do more.

They go to these places, they spend time with them.

They they, they start putting their sounds, their words into,

into letters and teaching them how to read their own language

so that that they can write a Bible in that language.

They are so determined to it because because God desires us

to have it, that we can read it, that we can have it and and

there are there are to come back up.

There are so many Bibles that we can have.

I just went round last night and grabbed a few from from our

house and there are so many. I mean, this is I actually

forgot my preaching Bible after all of that.

I mean, this is so heavy. That's why I keep putting it

down. But you know, there's so many,

you know, this is this is this is one of Jen's devotional

Bibles. This is a I've got a youth Bible

here. I've got a, a, a, a, a study

Bible. That is the what is this one?

This is new American standard. This was my first a study Bible,

a an NIV and and this is a, a chronological Bible in the in a

new King James. And we have so many Bibles.

We have so many Bibles. They all say the same thing, but

wonderfully what they do is we have a plethora of of different

ways that they are interpreted. We have word for word.

So this is, this is, this is my, this is my new American

standard. This is word for word.

It means that this is really accurate.

But for those of you who speak more than one language, you know

that it is grammatically, it is impossible to translate one

language into another because we speak in different orders.

We put things differently in a sentence.

But this one tries to do that. And so you read it out loud,

it's horrible. It's horrible to read out loud,

but it's really actually, if you want to know exactly what was

said, you, you, you, this is my go to.

But there are others like the The Message Bible, which are the

complete opposite to that. They are phrase for phrase.

So most Bibles that you were open, they'll say verse one,

verse 2, verse 3, verse 4, The Message Bible will go, here's

verses 1 to 10. And it's basically what it's

doing. It's not, it's not changing the

Scriptures. It's just going, this is what

verse one to 10 says. And we're going to, rather than

doing it word for word, we're just going to tell you what that

is. And so it's less word for word,

but it is still accurate. And they have different,

different uses the, the NESB or the the King James Bible.

You might use that for Bible study for word studies.

The the message or the new Living translation, they're

brilliant. I know that Andrew's read The

Message sometimes on a Sunday because it gives us a different

perspective. It says the same thing but just

in a different way and it kind of can hit home better.

Personally, on a Sunday, I always tend to read the NIV

because it's kind of that middle of the roads on and at home.

I I will read also the the ESP, the English standard version.

Which one should you read? Which one should you read?

Read the one that you'll read. Jen, give me your Bible.

This is Jen's Bible. OK, Now it says big letters on

the front, ESV. But it doesn't matter what what

interpretation it is what you can see.

Well, the first thing that strikes you is it's a well read

Bible. Yeah, it's got, it's got got

duct tape all the way down the side holding it together.

And that's it's Bible. I mean, I like a beautiful

looking Bible. I like a black leather, you

know, leather and gold leaf and all that stuff.

But that doesn't matter if it's just going on your bookshelf to

look at. God didn't providentially keep

his word and have thousands of people translate it so it could

get to your door so that you just went, oh, that looks

lovely. I just like looking at that.

No, no, no, he got it said you grab hold of it and you read it.

And So what if a page tears? So watch of it.

It doesn't. If the the gold leaf rubs off or

it doesn't look quite as nice anymore.

That's not what it's for. It's for us to read and get into

US. See, every time, every time we

open up the pages of this book, we're we're submitting ourselves

to God and we're saying, God speak to me.

God speak to me through your words.

Every time we read it, we're allowing God to speak to us.

And like Paul said, sometimes you'll read it and you'll be

like, I don't know what that was talking about.

That was hard work. Sometimes you'll read it and

it'll send you to sleep. Let's be honest.

And sometimes you'll read it and God will speak to you.

You know, I, I, I, I don't know if you do, but I do a, I've got

a Bible plan which I go through. I've currently got one at the

moment, which is, which is really slow pace.

It's, it's the Bible in three years.

None of this Bible in a year nonsense.

Because I find that sometimes you end up reading 6 chapters

and you have no idea what you just read because you're just

going to plough through it because you've got 15 minutes

and you need to get through it as quickly as possible to make

sure you've ticked as you've done today.

But I've got this, this Bible in three years.

It's just just one chapter or a bit of a chapter every single

day. And do you know what?

Sometimes, like I said, I don't hear anything, but sometimes God

speaks to me. And let me encourage you, if you

pick up the Bible and you read it and you're like, I didn't get

anything out of that, read it for a year, every single day.

And I promise you God will speak to you.

And you may say, but what if he only speaks to me once once in a

year? Hearing from God because you

read his words is worth it. Isn't that worth it?

Now? I expect it to be a lot more,

but what I'm saying is the weight, the value of God's word

of him speaking to us is worth only hearing for it once.

Think of Abraham, what was it he heard from God?

And then was it Like, I can't remember off the top of my head

now, but it was a long time until God spoke to him again.

It was decades until God spoke to him again, but he lived off

that first encounter church. We have the privilege of not

going years of not going week to week when someone can read us

scripture, but she every single day of reading his words and

letting God speak to us. So let's do that.

Let's be a people of his words. I'm going to pray, I'm going to

pray and then I'll let then we can go home.

But Lord Jesus, I I want to thank you for your Bible.

Lord Jesus, I thank you that providentially over the last

several thousand years, you have kept your word for us.

Lord Jesus, I want to thank you for the thousands of people who

have copied, who have, who have, who have, who have given

themselves to copying your words to, to translating your word so

that we can have it in English, so that we don't need to learn a

foreign language to be able to understand it.

Lord Jesus, I want to thank you for those who lived and those

who died so that we could have access to your word.

Lord Jesus, I want to thank you that it is easy.

We can go to a bookshop, we can go to Amazon right now and we

can order a, a, a whole number of Bibles.

Lord Jesus, I, I thank you for that privilege, Lord Jesus, but

I pray that we obey a people who persevere in your word, Lord

God, who read it, who get it into us, who aren't discouraged

when we, when we find a bit that's boring or we've, we've

read it 4 times already and we fell asleep every single Time,

Lord Jesus. But Lord God, you would, you

would give us the, the ability to, to stick in there, Lord God.

And as we do that, we would hear from you as, as, as Peter, as,

as Paul says to Timothy, that your word is useful.

It's useful for correction, Lord Jesus, it is useful for drawing

us closer to you. It's useful to, for showing us

how you desire us to live. So, Lord God, make us a people

of your Word. Amen.

Amen.