Crash Course: The Bible

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Crash Course.

This is a little mini podcast that's designed to help you get caught up to speed, get the gist of some concepts that are part of our faith.

If you're a Jesus follower, someone who's even sort of thinking about that, seeking answers about that, we're we're trying to cover the basics on a lot of big concepts.

A lot of times what happens is we start to follow Jesus, we become a Christian, and that's awesome, and we're excited, but maybe we just don't really understand everything.

And so when we hear other Christians talk or we hear certain concepts talked about on a Sunday in church or even in a worship song or whatever, we're like, I sort of get the meaning of that, but it's kind of hazy.

And and you just need someone to get you caught up to speed, just a crash course.

Um, we're in no way saying that we're covering the totality of all thoughts about these concepts.

That would take, I mean, forever because it's been 2,000 years and people are still writing books about them.

Um we're just trying to get the gist of it, and so that's why we do this.

Uh I'm joined right now by the most physically attractive person that I've ever done a podcast with, I might add.

You are so much prettier than Scott Case.

Like, and I don't even care if Scott listens to this and hears me say it, I'll say it, I'll say I'd say it to his face.

I'd say it right to his face.

You got nothing on Megan.

Um Megan's my wife, but uh, and I'm not saying that out of obligation.

I always used to say that we're kind of like salsa, me and you.

You're hot, and I'm chunky.

So our powers combined.

We're really good salsa.

Really good salsa.

Okay.

Um, so what we're gonna talk about on this episode is a little thing called the Bible.

Okay.

What in the world is the Bible?

Yeah.

Why is it such a big deal, right?

Yeah, I mean, uh there's obviously a lot of different directions we can go with this, but but here's the truth.

Anytime someone becomes a Christian, uh really early on, someone's going to tell them, and this is good advice, hey, you should start reading the Bible.

Right.

Like, open up the Bible.

But it's not a book like most books.

No, it's not.

And so, and it it wasn't written like most books.

Right.

And so people can get kind of confused, I think, especially early on, because you're like, what do you do with a book?

Well, you open a page one, right?

And you start to read, and you read all the way through, and it tells it tells a story.

Right.

Um and I have read the Bible that way, um, but the the Bible is is different than like a novel or something that you'd be used to reading.

Right.

So let's start here.

The what I would say is the Bible is a collection of writings.

Yes, that's yeah, that's accurate.

It is a book, but it's a book that has been compiled from multiple authors uh through several different generations, right?

Uh time periods.

I mean, when you when you look at the oldest, the oldest writings in the Bible, I mean, you're talking, you know, a thousand plus years before Jesus.

And the New Testament, obviously, is much later.

I mean, more than a thousand years before Jesus, but but my you've got a lot of different times, places, right.

Things have have changed culturally, and and I would even add different types of writings.

Sure.

I mean, um, if you kind of pick okay, have you ever read like um an anthology or like where a bunch of different like poets have written something and and it might all be on the same topic?

You know, you might have a poetry anthology on love, but each poem is gonna sound different, it's written by a different author.

So you can kind of think of the Bible that way.

It is somewhat chronological, but not entirely chronological.

Right.

Um, so Yeah, if you if you're reading the Old Testament, for example, you'll read, you know, a a book like uh First and Second Kings, for example.

Right.

And then later, later there's First and Second Chronicles, which sort of retell a lot of those stories, but from a different vantage point.

And then you have the song, yeah.

It it it can get kind of tricky, but the way um the Bible has been put together is it's in two main parts.

And that's the first thing to understand that there's two main parts of the Bible.

One is called the Old Testament, and it's old.

It is, it is old, and one is called the New Testament, and it's also old, but it's newer than the old newer than the old.

Um and the main divider between the Old Testament and the New Testament is Jesus.

So the Old Testament is um the Bible as it was written before Jesus, and the New Testament is the stories of Jesus and the church afterwards.

Um and I guess before saying any of that really, to understand the Bible itself is a document that God wrote through people.

Okay, so talk about that.

So God wrote it through people.

What do you mean?

Well, no, but but I mean that's something that because one of the cr one of the critiques you'll hear people say is, well, it's just people wrote, it's their perspective.

Yes, and the truth is people did write it.

Absolutely.

And you do see their perspective in their writing.

Um when you say God wrote it through people, it doesn't mean those people fell into a trance, woke up the next day and went, Wow, I wrote a lot last night.

I don't know what I have no idea how that happened.

Like I wasn't there.

Right.

Um but it is clear through the Bible that God inspired people, the Holy Spirit inspired people to write down God's words.

So you're going to get some some writers are very brief, and when the Holy Spirit spoke to them and told them what to write, they wrote it very brief.

Um some people the Holy Spirit spoke to them and they wrote it out with all the details involved.

Um, but it's all Holy Spirit inspired, it's all God breathed.

I love that that phrase God breathed.

Um because if you think about if you felt or heard the breath of God, one person might describe it one way, one person might describe it another way.

Doesn't change that it was the breath of God.

So if God breathed this to people and they wrote it down, it's a very important and special thing because you're getting the actual words of God.

Right.

But if you're gonna open it up and read it, the logistics is that there's an old testament part and Jesus came and there's a new testament part.

Um so um that helps when you're reading.

Yeah.

Um you might be like if you start at the beginning of the Bible and read, you're like, I know Jesus is a part of this, but I'm not seeing his name anywhere.

Right.

Because he doesn't appear till Matthew when you get to the New Testament.

Right.

And and I mean there's so many different things we could talk about with the Bible.

Um and so I I don't necessarily even want to try to lay it all out in this in this podcast.

Um but I think what what I would say is the the entire Bible is useful.

Yeah.

And I'm actually quoting the Bible when I'm saying that, but you know, the all all of God's word is is useful.

And I think it's a really cool word to to describe the Bible with.

Um so I guess God knew what he was doing when he when he put that word in there.

But but but here's here's what's where why I say that.

I'll hear people say things sometimes like, I'm trying to read the Bible, it's boring.

Okay.

Well, some of it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, like some like if you read the book of Numbers, Leviticus, boring.

Yeah, it can be a little bit of some of those books again, there's a lot of different kinds of literature in the Bible.

You have poems in the Bible.

Right, and that's that's what I was gonna say, that the the first five books of the Bible kind of lay out the beginning of everything.

Right.

Right.

But then you have books of like history that are recording historical events, um, you have books of poetry, you have books that are like the book of Ruth.

It's like a little short story inserted.

Self-contained, yeah, Esther, it's kind of a self-contained start-finish.

Other books, it's not quite like that.

Right.

Um and and so what I would tell someone who's starting to read the Bible is how you have to understand first and foremost that not every book of the Bible was written for the same purpose.

Right.

Um great example would be the New Testament.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, most of the New Testament, so the New Testament, you you have the Gospels, sure.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and each of those tells the story of Jesus.

Right, from like eyewitness accounts.

Yeah, because again, if something happens, if you were somewhere and some big thing happened and you had five friends with you, and you asked those five friends later to tell the story of what happened, they would get different perspectives.

You they would have different perspectives, and there'd be details that some saw that the others didn't.

So some people will sometimes like to look at like minor differences.

And by the way, we're talking like minor differences between what Mark says, what John says, or what mainly what Mark and Matthew, Mark, and Luke will say, and then go, Oh, this is a contradiction.

Well, it's not a contradiction, it's a complete picture when you put it together.

Right.

And then you have John, which is another one of the gospels, but it's it's very different in terms of some of the stories that it tells.

Well, why?

Well, that's because John was Jesus' best friend.

Right.

And you were writing to different people.

Like um, Matthew was really his passion was to let all of the Jews know who Jesus was.

So he brings up a lot of like prophecy and and trying to prove to the Jews who Jesus was.

Mark is writing to the Romans.

The Romans were uh really valued that succinct to the poor.

Yeah, Mark uses the words like it's a ton, he'll he'll use the words and immediately.

Yeah, he's like, and then this happened.

Yeah, and so Mark writes like that.

Luke was a doctor.

Um, if you want to know about the physical miracles of Jesus, Luke records every detail because as a doctor watching that he would have been noticing those things, and then John was Jesus' best friend, and it's basically like reading John's diary.

Right.

So you have all of these things that play into how God breathed to these people.

Right.

And so the gospel is a great example of it, like you know, uh specifically Matthew and uh and John were disciples of Jesus.

Luke and Mark were not, but they were early followers of Jesus and they were very close friends with and companions of Jesus' earlier followers.

So sometimes they're telling stories that they got through them.

Right.

Um, but you know, John again is Jesus' best friend.

If I asked your best friend to talk about you, and then I asked a bunch of your other friends to talk about you, your best friend's gonna have stories the others don't.

Right.

Absolutely.

And so knowing some of those things is helpful, but then like the rest, most of the rest of the New Testament are letters written to specific people, specific churches, mostly written by by Paul, um, but some other guys too, Peter and James and others.

But you know, Paul is writing letters to churches generally dealing with specific issues and problems that are happening in those churches.

So we those letters, you know, we call those books of the Bible, but they're really not books.

They're they were letters and they were written to people about issues, and we only get to see half the conversation, so we have to infer and and all that.

And so sometimes, again, you'll open it up and you'll be like, Why is this talking about meat sacrificed to idols?

What in the world?

Well, because to that to that culture in that place, that was actually a big deal, right?

And that may not directly apply to us, so sometimes we'll read that stuff and go like, ah, this isn't well, but there's a principle behind it that that does apply.

And so sometimes you have to pull some of that stuff, stuff out.

Um, but I would just say to someone that the Bible's useful.

Right.

And what especially if you can kind of grab a hold of what's the what was the purpose of this of this writing, what was it trying to is it a history?

You know, histories aren't necessarily always supposed to be like fun, because the it is it but some of those are amazing.

I mean like I know the stories of like the prophets and you read that stuff and and and it's just recording the events that happened, but you read these events and in it you see something of the character of God.

In it you learn more about what God was doing through these people.

And it and that's to me what's amazing about the Bible is is from beginning to end, however you want to read it, however you want to go through learning scripture, you have God revealing himself to his people in a variety of ways, through a variety of voices, and uh by reading the Bible you learn so much of God's voice.

Absolutely.

And that's one of the reasons I think it's very, very, very important for people who follow Jesus to read God's word because learning what God sounds like is really important.

Um learning what God values is really important.

Learning what people in their faith have done and what God has done through them is inspiring and challenging and and uh the Bible talks about in Hebrews being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, by all of these saints and all of these believers, and that our faith can grow through that.

And as followers of Jesus, we need our faith to grow.

And the Bible will increase your faith because it it's not only written to the people that it was written to, right, it was written to you.

Oh, and and and and I think on that note I would say that the Bible's so okay, the Bible is useful.

Yeah.

Uh it's it really is amazing.

The Bible is unique.

Um there's never been a document in the history of the world that has been as attacked um and scrutinized as the Bible.

Right.

Never.

There there have been great lengths in many cultures and many times to to get rid of the Bible.

Um and yet God's word has endured.

It's endured.

And it's endured because it's because it's real, because it's living and breathing and it's valuable.

I mean, I I love the fact that there are nations in this world that that it's still in this world, there are nations where it is illegal to to to have a Bible like Scent or or to buy a Bible.

Um well, if it's if it's a useless, powerless document.

Right, why would that matter?

Why does it matter?

You know what I mean?

If it's just some some work of fiction, but it gives people hope because it shows people who they are in God's eyes, and it shows people that they have worth and they have value, that they're the children of God, and that the God of the universe wants to work through them and empower them to do great things in life.

And there's places in the world that are where there's oppression, and oppressors do not want the oppressed to have hope and and the power and power, right?

So the Bible is is unique.

I would also say that the Bible is incredibly reliable, and don't really have time to get into all the details of that.

But a lot of people would say, well, the Bible, you know, it's just, I mean, it's got it's got errors and mistakes, it's just made up.

It's like, oh, there's a ton of stuff in there that's just garbage, like and say that very passively.

What would you say to someone like that?

Well, I would say that it's one, it's not true.

Um, the Bible has been attacked over many years, and people are still attacking it, and people still say these things didn't happen.

But but the more we dig into um things that people think are you know so fantastical and the earth covered with water, like seriously, really, there was a whole white worldwide flood in a boat, and the boat was saved.

Well, now that we have satellite pictures of Mount Ararat, it kind of looks like there's a boat there.

Like the more we learn about things, the more the Bible has been proven.

Now, are there things in the Bible that are out of this world?

And I how would that even happen?

It doesn't sound possible.

Absolutely, because we have a God who does not live in this world, who does things that are impossible, right?

So if you go into reading the Bible going, well, that doesn't seem true, that doesn't seem right, that doesn't seem like that could really happen, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Because we have a God that can do things that don't seem like they should happen.

Right.

And and I mean I'll also So it is a book that records the miraculous, and you get you've got to handle that.

I mean, a few things I'll I'll pound to that.

So you mentioned a satellite image of Matt Ararat, and I don't know if if Noah's I I've seen some of those pictures, and sometimes I just want to say, like, sometimes there are people out there who are like, look, here's a pictures of Noah's arch, this proves it.

And I okay, I don't know.

Here's what I do know though.

Like, I don't know if that yeah, I haven't seen that picture, and I don't know if that's doctored, I don't know, whatever.

Right.

I don't really care because here's here's the thing.

Um okay, like in the book of Isaiah, the Bible says that God sits above the circle of the earth.

Right.

And to him its inhabitants are are like grasshoppers, like like small, because he's big.

Okay, so the word circle in the in the Hebrew language that that was written in, it it means sphere.

And that was written, oh, a thousand-ish years before Jesus.

Right.

So, you know, about twenty four hundred years before the earth being round was scientifically accepted.

Yeah.

Um, you know, there there's places in the Bible where it says the blood that flows through my veins which gives me life, you know.

Right.

Okay.

So the life of the flesh is in the blood.

The life of the flesh and the blood.

Yeah.

And and like they were still bleeding people a couple hundred years ago.

Yeah.

Um here's kind of sanitary laws in the Old Testament are incredibly in the Old Testament, God's giving instructions to the nation of Israel about how to prepare food and and like how to how to remove waste and how to wash their hands.

At a time in history where no human being on the planet knew what a germ was.

Right.

And sanitation, even in like ancient Egypt, it was the most civilized place in the world.

If you study the sanitation of ancient Egypt, there's a reason a lot of people died at like age 20.

Right.

And yet God's having them make soap.

Right.

You know, and like he's telling them take some lie and all this.

It's like literally a recipe for soap in the Bible.

The diet that God prescribed the Israelites to eat, it's like still to this day one of the healthiest diets you can eat.

Right.

You know, like you don't have to.

The risk of infection in your food would have been so low.

Because God's culturally, it would have been really hot.

Like it would have been clear.

And this was stuff that was literally thousands of years before anything scientific.

So there's so much of that.

Even something like the Big Bang Theory.

Um detail, but before the Big Bang Theory, every scientist worth their salt believed that the earth had always existed.

Yeah.

That it there was that it never it was always was, kind of like how we see God.

So the fact that the Bible begins with the phrase in the beginning, that was just laughed at.

Right.

Then the Big Bang Theory takes hold in like the 1940s, and all of science now says, okay, spark a beginning.

There was a beginning.

Right.

We have evidence to prove that.

We don't think God did it, but in the beginning something happened.

Well, yeah, we in the beginning, like that, literally a huge change happened in the scientific community that lined up really closely with the words of the Well, the idea of God separating the the waters from the waters and the fact that we have an atmosphere and and you can look at all of that stuff, but you can look up the Hittites, you can look up the way the walls are shared.

There's so much, there's so many of those things.

And and look, by the way, I'm not attacking science.

I love science because science, the more we scripture, right, the more we study, the more we find out.

But the truth is if you follow Jesus, if you want to open your Bible and read it, what I would suggest doing is kind of letting all of that stuff go.

That stuff's fun to study, but for me, the real um value of the Bible comes when I open it up and I say, God, show me something.

And then I read until he shows me something.

Yeah.

And what he shows me is usually very deeply personal, and just for me, I um the other day, just as a a side note the other day, I was reading and I actually didn't even know what to read.

So I kind of popped my Bible open um to Proverbs uh or Psalms, I can't remember now, and I was reading, and God said that spiritual discipline is more important than physical discipline, and I needed that verse for later on in the day.

And he knew that when I came to him that morning.

And so don't be intimidated by the Bible, don't be confused, don't look at it and go, that's really old.

I don't really understand it, I don't know what to do with it.

Open it up, open it up to the Psalms, open it up to one of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, read about Jesus' life.

Open it up to one of Paul's letters to the churches.

There will be something in there for you that day.

There will be, and I'll say this too, and we'll close.

There's also a lot of great resources out there to help you get started.

Um, the His Hands Mobile app, by the way, we we have a lot of those resources linked on the learn section.

Um there's a Bible on our app with a reading plan if you want to start reading.

Uh there's one I'll just throw out there because I think it's it's probably at the time of our recording the best I've ever seen.

Um it's a group called the Bible Project.

They've got a ton, they're amazing.

They have a ton of videos on YouTube.

They're these beautifully illustrated, interesting, really artistically well done videos that if you're reading, if you want to read a book of the Bible, look at the Bible Project on YouTube, and they have a video that will set up that book of the Bible, tell you what it's about, when it was written, what's going on, really makes it accessible.

There's a lot of resources out there, so take advantage of it.

But the Bible's powerful, it speaks, it challenges, it sharpens.

And you learn God's voice.

You learn God's voice through it.

So many of the times He's spoken to me, he speaks his word.

Yeah.

So that's the Bible.

This was a little bit longer of an episode, but I mean, we're talking about the Bible.

It's a big thing, and I think 20 minutes is pretty pretty good for that.

So thanks for listening, and we will talk to you guys later on another episode of Crash Course.