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If you’ve got a Bible, I’d invite you to turn to Second Timothy. We’re in chapter three, and if you’re the type that likes to mark up your Bible as we study along together, we’re in a series called Outlasters. And the thought for us is this the world will try to make its mark on you, but God has created you to to make your mark on the world. Last week we looked at what it means to follow God in truth and some of the dangers and pitfalls that we get into as individuals when we attempt to identify truth. And there are those that proclaim a truth that turns out to be false or a lie. And the end of Second Timothy chapter two teaches us, especially in how to embrace and deal with those who might propagate or teach a a truth contrary to the one true God. The reality is, as you begin chapter three, Paul starts his passage with this basis that there are people in this world that have been deceived. Good, smart, would maybe call honest, hard working individuals. And sometimes we’re left looking at the question of how? How could that happen? Or maybe am am I that person? And and how do we walk through and deal with that in life? And how do we become an outlaster? I just want you to think about the significance of what Paul is saying to Timothy throughout this passage. We studied together as it relates to you as a believer.
God calls us into this world to be a part of of a solution. The solution is found in him. What Jesus does in you and through you is is not only eternally important for your life, but it can also impact the lives of those around you. We’re going to see as we start off this chapter together, is that there are plenty of false teachers and teaching going around in the world. But God has selected his people to proclaim his truth. And sometimes we have the tendency to look at the news or society or difficult circumstances around us and recognize there’s something wrong and complain about it, but not really become a part of the solution in that. And Second Timothy is a book about being the solution. About being an outlast, or about realizing in your life what God is doing in you and through you is important as much as false teaching is propagated. So God has given you a mouth to to recognize and glorify the beauty of who he is in this world. Proclaim that truth. And I think in our lives that happens like this every time you show up as a part of God’s community, as God’s community gathers to encourage for the purpose of encouraging people closer to Christ, you’re part of the solution. Every time you take the opportunity to find an area to serve within the church, to proclaim God’s name both in the building and outside of the building, I realize serving the church doesn’t just happen within our walls, but you’re part of the solution.
May every time you open up in search of truth and you’re studying in truth and in God’s Word and seeking his face, you become a part of the solution. Every every time that you engage someone for the cause of Christ, you’re you’re part of the solution. And Paul continues to wrestle with that thought with us. And he begins chapter three with this negative illustration as it relates to, well, that’s scary. Can you go back one as it relates to the life of the believer? He says this, but realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. And in verse five, I’m going to skip on just a few verses from this passage. Counterfeit followers is what he’s talking about. It says they’re holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these. And then verse eight, Paul gives an illustration, just as Janice and Jambres opposed Moses. So these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind rejected in regard to the faith, but they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all. Just as Janice and John Brace folly was also. So Paul is doing something unique about the illustration that he is drawing from is he’s talking about false teaching and false teachers and those who have a form of godliness and deny the power.
Janice and John raise, historically, were the two priests that Moses encountered in the Book of Exodus in chapter seven and chapter eight, when he comes before Pharaoh and he sings the Charlton Heston song Let My People Go. No. Okay, dry crowd today. I’ll come back with better jokes later. But chapter seven, in the book of Exodus, when Moses comes before Pharaoh, the the the miracles that are conducted before Pharaoh with Aaron, Moses throws his staff on the ground and it tells us that the staff becomes a serpent. And so Pharaoh calls his religious leaders into the room Janus and Jambres. And they they conduct the same miraculous happenings. But Moses’s serpent ate their serpent. But again, Moses turns water into to blood, and he causes frogs to appear in abundance. Both Janice and John Bray’s duplicate the miracle. False teaching. Gives the perception of truth. Holding to a form of godliness. But yet denying its power. I think that’s what makes religious teaching attractive to us people. There is a hint of truth in it. And so in acknowledging the hint of truth, maybe not completely seeking it out or understanding the the the extent of what’s being proclaimed, we we see it as good and therefore embrace. Let me tell you how smart nice people get fooled. Religion says this to us as people. We will make you a better person.
Look. Look at all the good we do. And therefore, since we make you a better person and look at all the good we do, that good means we’re right. Therefore it must be true. And that’s the conclusions that we make as individuals. We’re we’re not taught, especially within our society today, how to wrestle with spiritual truth claims. And we dealt with this last week. The thought is that if I have a spiritual feeling, it confirms the truth that I’m living. But in reality, all faiths in the world claim some sort of spiritual connection to the truth they proclaim, and a spiritual connection doesn’t validate one faith over another. What it does is it puts all of them on equal playing fields. But we recognize that all of them can’t be valid because they propagate a different truth. Spiritual experience, the Bible tells us, must be tested. First John four believe not every spirit, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone into the world. And Paul dealt with this thought last week that we looked at together. One thing that a spirit loves to do, if especially if it’s a false spirit, is to give you the perception of truth. That’s what a false spirits about. Second Corinthians. We noted last week in chapter 11, even Satan appears as an angel of light. And the same is true with fruit. Matthew seven. We looked at it together.
A sheep or a wolf can appear in sheep’s clothing, and people even came before Jesus and said, Lord, Lord, do we not cast out demons in your name? Do we not do wonderful works in your names? And Jesus said to them, depart from me, I never knew you. See what we a judge on the outside is fruit. The appearance. It looked good. The sheep. It looks like a sheep. But in reality it’s a wolf. And the person that does good, it may look godly, but it had nothing to do with God. The fruit can be an indication of someone’s life professed in Christ. Let me give you an example today as a believer, when you come and you worship the Lord together with us, if in your life there’s no demonstration of Jesus really owning your life, that the Spirit of God indwelling your life, the question we’d ask ourselves without fruit being made known in your life is do you really know Jesus? But the other side of the coin is just because you claim to do good things, or have done good things in your life, doesn’t mean that you know Jesus. In fact, the condemnation that Jesus gives to the individuals that are doing good is depart from me, you. I never knew you. Meaning the most important things in all of our spiritual lives, no matter how much good that we think that we want to do, and no matter how spiritual we think that we are, the I mean, the jig is up.
We’re all spiritual beings. God created that way. Whether whether you acknowledge it or not, you’re a spiritual being. But what Jesus acknowledges the most important thing about us as spiritual beings is that we know Jesus. God has given the opportunity for us to to know him by paying for our sins that separated us from him. But smart people are fooled into thinking that truth is truth, when in fact it’s not. By looking at the results of things and think, well, it makes me a better person and it looks good. Therefore it must be right. And that’s what Paul is saying with the story of Janice and John Brace. If you look at the illustrations of their lives, they’re they’re able to duplicate the same miracles that Moses performed on behalf of God. So how do we deal with that? What do you do when you come to realize that Janice and John Brace that you’ve been following were really false teaching? As you read the story of Exodus chapter seven and Moses coming before Pharaoh performing these miracles, when you get to chapter eight, you find out that Janice and Jamborees can’t continue to duplicate the miracles. In fact, when when Moses comes and creates these fleas or lice or whatever, these these small insects, Janice. And jamborees at that point no longer can duplicate the miracles that’s being performed by God through Moses.
What do you do when you realize? That what you’ve believed may not be true. I want to encourage us this morning, because we’re going to encounter people that have gone through circumstances like that in their lives. If it’s not you this morning, and I want to encourage you this way, you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Meaning there’s all sorts of ways I’ve seen people respond when they when they realize that the truth they believe actually isn’t truth at all. And they, they could shut down altogether, or they distrust everyone or everything. They get stuck in the past. They can’t move forward. You get depressed. Sometimes you cry, sometimes in response rather than crying. You angry. You. You have the tendency of leaning towards atheism or agnosticism. And they determined because that truth that they have found turned out to be a false, therefore no truth can be found. And some. Some are able to move forward. But for everyone this morning. And no matter the circumstance that we come from, whether you believe you’re right or you’re wrong in all things, what you want to do is lay down a firm foundation in truth. And how do you know what is true? When you study, there is five stages of what is called grief, and a person’s tendency is when, when, when you have something of value that you lose in your life, you grieve over that loss.
I’ve seen people go through the five stages of grief when they lose a loved one. It’s common for this to happen. I think everyone likely goes through it then, and I’ve seen people grieve their belief when they realize they’re losing, losing their belief. They grieve it like a death of a loved one. And these are the stages that you might recognize happens in someone’s life when when they’ve had a Janice and Jamboree’s enter into their world. The first is you go through denial. Some people sometimes don’t even progress through these stages, but these are the five stages. You go. You go through denial. Sometimes you stick your head in the sand. You pretend like what you saw, you didn’t see, or other times you say, you know it’s good enough. Maybe everyone can’t be 100% right or truth can’t be 100% known. So I’ll just deal with it. And. And you live in denial. Second is anger. You get frustrated over the fact that someone did something to you, or you lost something that you considered valuable to you. If you get through the anger, then you begin to bargain. You secretly make deals with God and attempt to postpone the inevitable of what you’ve recognized. And facing the painful reality. Then there’s depression. Dealing. Maybe if we were talking strictly in the arena of truth, dealing with the fact that you’ve spent time investing into this. Can’t believe maybe it happened to you.
And last is acceptance. When you’re ready to move forward and embrace truth. I’m going to say if if maybe you’re that person this morning and you feel like you’re going through these stages in your life. You need permission to act unusual. In comparison to what you would call your regular self. And I’ve seen people that have gone through a Genesis and John Bray’s experience, and this is the typical thing I find that’s been stated to me. Am I crazy? I feel like I’m going crazy. Does it look like I’m going crazy? I just want to say for us as people, maybe. Maybe. But it’s okay. Because now you’ve got the opportunity in having that freedom to wrestle with some things that need to be dealt with. And you should find a safe place in being able to do it in your life to ask questions. Sometimes maybe even feel crazy. And I just want you to know, as a church family this morning, it’s okay. And the deeper you invest and the truth claim, the harder it can be to move through the grief process. And if you’re if you’re going through this this morning. Maybe I should just say. I’m sorry. And we care about you. And we want to encourage you. We want God’s best for you. We don’t want you to believe in anything until you’re ready. But we want to be available to share that truth with you.
And to show you how the foundations firm. That way you don’t feel or have to worry about being duped again. To you who might encounter someone experiencing things like this. Give them freedom. Let him be weird on you. Let him go weird with you. We’ll be there with them. Second Timothy chapter two, and verses 24 and 25 told us exactly how to respond in this way. He says the Lord’s bond servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all able to teach patient when wronged. The attitude that you carry in that circumstance is healing towards individuals that are seeking truth. And Paul gives this illustration of the fact that Janice and Jamborees exist. So let me just tell you this. This world is full of Janice and jamborees, but God reveals his truth to us, that we may find a foundation in him, that the people who know it, the rest of it, could open their mouths and just share it with the world. I love the way Paul advances from here. Because in verse 12 he tells us it’s not easy. He acknowledges our feelings and he’s honest with the circumstance. And he says that just because you find truth now doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. In fact, if, let’s say, the majority of the world believes contrary to you, if you take a stand in this truth, the world might press back against you. And so in verse 12 he says, indeed, all listen to this.
All who desire to live godly in Christ will be persecuted. Now the Greek word all, it’s a crazy word. When you look it up, it means, all right. So it’s to say, maybe as a believer, you look at this, if you feel that your faith hasn’t been a challenge for you to some degree, what is your faith really in? Because what Paul is saying here is that your faith will be a challenge for everyone who believes in Christ. Here’s the joy of this. If your faith does cost you. You can see the genuineness of it. James says, consider all joy, my brethren, when you endure various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Flip it the other way. And I would say it’s not until your faith is tested that you know it can be trusted. There will be trials. But let me throw this thought for you. Um, don’t be the type of person, as Tupac says, that gets Thug Life tattooed on your chest. Okay. What I mean by that is expect persecution. Expect it, but don’t project it, okay? We have a tendency when it comes to faith in our society, because we haven’t been taught how to engage in those conversations. We say the thought that, you know, faith is personal, so we don’t talk about that together. When God created us as spiritual beings, which is the most important thing about us, so we should engage it.
But we have this tendency in society that when when someone engages us in conversations about what we believe now, because we haven’t learned how to really talk about that, we respond one of two ways. We either cower from the big bad wolf. We get this persecution complex. Oh my gosh, he’s talking about my faith. You know, like thug life. Hide, hide, right? Or you get angry. What do you mean? Challenging my faith? The Bible says this. For God has not given us the spirit of fear. But of power and of love and of a sound mind. The truth is, you have no reasons to put up walls. When someone questions your faith and you have no reason to attack them. When someone questions your faith. Really? You should thank him. When someone is curious investigating. I’m not saying they’re physically coming against you or they’re verbally, verbally berating you and attacking you, but when when you engage in a conversation about your faith or faith in general, it gives you the opportunity to stretch your mind, to stretch your understanding of what God has brought forth in truth in this world. It challenges you to go and search and investigate and learn and grow. And Paul’s recognizing it’s going to be a battle. To take a stand in something that might be contrary to your life there. There might be a battle. But don’t worry about putting up walls.
Don’t worry about attacking. God is your defender. Just be his light in this world. If you feel like you get pressed in a way you don’t know the answer, let me tell you, as a church, we’re not afraid of truth. And so we want to pursue it. And so you can say, you know, I don’t I don’t know that answer. But man because you asked I really want to go learn it. And so Paul then begins to lay the foundation, which is the portion of the text I really want to focus on this morning. He says, listen, there, there is lies and there is misconceptions, and there is even things done so crafty that it can trick us into believing it’s truth. But it’s not truth. And when you stand for truth, it may be difficult, but here, here is the foundation of truth. And this is what we learn. Starting in the last week into this week, is that truth is measured outside of ourselves. Because truth was truth before you were you, and your spirit will connect to the truth. God. God tells us that he puts His Spirit in his people, that it may bear forth the truth in our lives, but the foundation of truth was laid outside of ourselves. And so when you come to someone who claims a spiritual experience and another person that claims a spiritual experience, and now they both look validated, you must ask yourself the question, well, what can we measure these two truth claims together? If both claim their spiritual experience and they contradict one another, they’ve got to have a truth claim outside of themselves for which that basis can be determined.
When it comes to Christianity and belief in Christ, the Bible lays for us two foundations. Paul elaborates on one here. When the Bible talks about truth, the Bible identifies Jesus as the way, the truth and the life and the Word of God is truth. I want to tell you real quick about Jesus as a church family. You’ll see from time to time when people when you come and visit our church, we there’s a book that we hand out. There’s actually two. One’s called how, how good is good enough? The other one’s is more than a carpenter. If you want to lay your foundation and the truth claim of Jesus, read more than a carpenter. If we have some out here and you want them, I don’t know if they’re available or not, but if they are out there in stock currently, grab one when you leave there under the first cabinet somewhere. As a matter of fact, will somebody set those out? We’ll just set them out if we have them. You know, at the rummage through the cabinets. Where’s carrot in here, Jared okay, we’ll set them out if we have them. The other the other is the word of God.
And Paul says this, but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of knowing from whom you have learned them. And he goes on, he says in verse 15, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. When Paul lays out the foundation, he simply saying, for us, it’s God’s Word. He uses this word in verse 16, inspired. I want to move through this text very quickly, because I’m going to lay some proof down for what Paul is saying. All Scripture is inspired. This word inspired doesn’t mean the same as what we use it today in our own culture. Like this. When I listen to a great song, I will say, man, that guy was inspired. I mean, he he really he really wrote those words. Well, that connected me in such a way. That’s what we typically mean by inspiration. Shakespeare looked like an inspired writer when when the word inspired is used in scripture, it’s something different than that. The word inspired literally means God breathed. And when you look in different passages of Scripture, it helps us to understand what it means that God breathed in second Peter chapter one, it says, for no prophecy was ever made by the act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit from God.
This is what the word inspiration really points to. It’s a supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit, moving through biblical authors to breathe out his words. Here’s the beauty of it it’s done through their personalities and guaranteeing that what they wrote was accurate and trustworthy. We say verbal, plenary inspired Word of God as the big words we put on it in Christianity. But God’s Word coming through his people by the power of His spirit that he doesn’t he doesn’t make them these these sort of robots to dictate his writing, but rather uses their personality to record for us his words in Scripture. So much so that Jesus even said not one jot or tittle will be done away till all is fulfilled. In Matthew chapter five and verse 18, see, God uses their personalities. And so when you read Scripture, you see things like, uh, David, who was a poet writing in poetry, Solomon, the wisest man to live writing in Proverbs, Luke, a doctor using his intellect to record very precisely in Scripture. God exercises the personality without violating against their personality, to still communicate the beauty of his truth. And I think because God created us in his image, were creative beings.
And so rather than violate that and create them to be some sort of robot and writing his word, he uses the personality because God is glorified in the beauty of our personalities. In acts chapter 727, the same word for moved in second. Peter is used in acts 27 it says this. And when the ship was caught, it caught in it, talking about the winds, a windstorm, and could not face the wind. We gave way to it and let ourselves be driven along. It gives sort of an idea of how the Holy Spirit works. You think of this boat, it’s being pushed in a direction that the guys on the boat can’t control, but the guys on the boat are still active because they realize if they do nothing, this ship is going down. And it’s the same way that God communicates to us the way he wrote through through his people to record his words. Jesus quotes Scripture as authoritative and seeing how the Bible calls it God inspired or God breathed. Jesus quotes in Matthew chapter four when he’s in the temptation in the wilderness, and it says, and the tempter came and said to him, talking to Jesus. And then Jesus responds, but he, he. Jesus answered the tempter of Satan and said, it is written in verse five. Then the devil took him into the holy city. And verse seven Jesus said to him on. On the other hand, it is written, and in verse eight, and the devil took him.
Then Jesus said to him, go, Satan, for it is written, let me just give you some confidence in what Jesus is saying here. When Jesus defeats Satan, Jesus does through by quoting from the Bible. In fact, when you read some other portions of Scripture in Second Peter three, Peter refers to Paul’s writing as Scripture. If you look at the last, the last few lines and talking about Paul, it says, uh, let me just read it also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, talking about Paul, and which are some things hard to understand. So if you ever feel like Paul is hard to understand, so did Peter, which the the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction. So Paul is being referenced here in Peter’s letters and Peter’s saying, Paul’s letters are Scripture as the rest of Scripture in first Timothy five for the Scripture says, This is Paul writing, you shall not muzzle the ox which he is threshing. That’s a quote from Deuteronomy. And the laborer is worthy of his wages. That’s a quote from Luke. Paul is taking both the Old Testament and New Testament, quoting it and calling it Scripture. They received God’s Word as Scripture. And the point of this, the passage is this. When Paul talks about all Scripture being inspired, he says so that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work.
Exactly for what God has called you to in this world. To live for him is found in God’s Word for the direction that you need. Now the question becomes, Paul lays this foundation of what truth is, right? You can be lied to. There are people like Janice and John Bray. Following the truth isn’t easy. Here’s the truth claim or here’s the foundation for your life. It’s found in Second Timothy chapter three, verses 515 to 17. All Scripture is inspired in God breathed. And so we can stop here now and just ask the question. How do you know God’s Word is true? You’re telling me to embrace this? Janice and John Breslin. I mean, who’s to say that? This is true. If you invest your life in this foundation. How do you know? From a personal standpoint. I became very hardened towards God at one point in my life. And I would say I wasn’t a believer at that point. Matter of fact, if I met Christians, um, you saw the worst of me just because I knew you were a Christian. Um, when I started to search for a truth claim in my life to base my life off of. The one topic that I spent the majority of my time on. Was the validity validity of God’s Word. I’ve read thousands of pages as to whether or not this book is true.
To give you a foundation of some of the things that I’ve seen or read. I mean, let me just point to you just some some proof claims and some text claims that what you have this morning is God’s Word Bible is written over 1500 years. Over 40 different authors from three different continents and three different languages from a gamut of lifestyles. Kings wrote. Doctors wrote. Common individuals wrote. Over those 1500 years, 66 individual manuscripts written that we call one book the Bible today and over 1500 years. That book carries one theme from Genesis to Revelation. Look, I can’t even keep a plan going for more than a couple of years. But 1500 years. You see from Genesis chapter three the promise of the coming of Jesus to revelation at the end of the book, the culmination of Jesus reigning as King throughout all eternity. And the theme of the book is one God’s redemption and pursuit of man through Christ for his glory, that we may know him for all eternity. Now, how can a book do that for 1500 years? Keep that theme throughout its pages. I had a friend that I knew wrestled with this question that I wrestled with long ago before I embraced Christ, and he he didn’t want to accept Christ. And and I remember driving the road with him and I asked him, you know what? What is it that keeps you asking the question? If you’ve already determined that you you don’t want to accept them? He said this.
It’s the prophecy. When you look at the Old Testament. The Old Testament had over 300 prophetic statements about what Jesus would do when he came to this world. All the way to the point of how he would be crucified before crucifixion existed. What would happen at the bottom of his cross as he’s crucified? The way the people would treat him, where he would be born, who he would be born by in a virgin birth. In the argument pre 1950 about the prophetic statements about Jesus was that those prophetic statements were written after Jesus. And then they had a problem happen for those who held that view. There was a little discovery called the Dead Sea Scrolls. In those scrolls contained books of the Bible hundreds of years older than Jesus. Isaiah 53 is one of the more powerful verses. One of the older manuscripts they found in the Dead Sea that that really proclaim the specifics of Jesus’s death. And so when I asked him, why is it you keep coming back to Jesus? If you want to reject him, why is it you still wrestle with him? He couldn’t deal with the fact that the Bible, it speaks so specifically about the coming of Christ and manuscripts about Jesus live older than Jesus himself. Prophecy. The historical accuracy. And the geographical accuracy blows me away.
You can get on eBay today and buy biblical artifacts. You know, archaeologists will tell you that less than 10% of the biblical sites have been uncovered in in archaeological history. And yet you can still buy artifacts on eBay. It’s what about this? And just thinking philosophically, it’s ability to read us better than we can read it. No matter how much you feel like you’re in God’s Word and you’re reading God’s Word and you’re understanding God’s Word, there’s something powerful about it that just reads into you and exposes you and reveals what what is lying within your heart and communicates truth to you. Or maybe its endorsement by Christ, who comes along in the in the New Testament, and he declares the the beauty of the Old Testament. So much of Matthew four, he lays it as a foundation. Or what about it’s a power to to to change lives. Or what about the way that leaders were honest in their leading? For instance, kings didn’t share about their their battle losses, about their shortcomings, about their failures. But when you read in history and you see that this didn’t happen, but but you look at the life of David, he’s completely open and exposed. And what God does in his life. And last I would say also the manuscript history. The way it’s been preserved throughout history. And so let me let me couple that with another question. How do you know? The Bible that you hold today has been preserved.
How do you know someone didn’t change it? How do you know? I’ve heard people use the telephone game like one guy in the first century whispers to the second guy in the second century, and the third guy in the third century, and on and on. And here we are, 20, 20 centuries later, and we’ve got God’s word. And, you know, when you play the telephone game in elementary school, it doesn’t work. And I would tell you, if the Bible, if the Bible had been passed down like that, yes, you’re right, but that’s not the way that we received the Bible. I mean, if this is the the first time you heard this, let me give you just some informational thoughts. Today in history, we have over 25,000 manuscripts, handwritten manuscripts of the Bible, over 5000, almost 6000 now are in Greek. They’re still finding them today. The Bible is written in hundreds of languages, so much so that most people estimate around 580. The Bible had been translated in over 500 languages. I’ll tell you why that’s important. Just a minute. In addition to the biblical manuscripts, in addition to all of the languages, we also have early church fathers, their writings, their coatings of Scripture. So much quotes from the early Church fathers like Polycarp, Irenaeus, Ignatius, Papias, Eusebius, Tertullian, so many quotes from these individuals that if we destroyed all of the manuscripts, you have all but eight verses quoted from these early Church fathers.
One of the beautiful things that happened within Scripture because or within history with Scripture, because the Roman Empire had conquered most of, of the the world at that point, or the known world at that point, when they conquered nations, they and brought into this kingdom in Rome people of different dialects and tongues. And so when the Word of God begins to be driven out throughout Rome, it goes into multiple languages, and this preserves it. So this, this protected the Bible, because if someone wanted to come along and pervert a text of Scripture, they would have to learn by 500 AD 500 languages to change. Was an impossibility. In fact, no one in history is recorded as having attempted to do that. What leaders attempted to do in order to get rid of God’s word was simply destroy it. Before Constantine came along and legalized Christianity, there was a ruler just before him called Diocletian, and he’s on record saying his desire was to destroy every copy of God’s Word. And yet today, 25,000 copies remain. Now it’s true. When these people copied God’s Word, there were variants in the copies. Meaning. If you studied these manuscripts today, out of the 25,000 manuscripts that exist, you would find 300,000 variants within those manuscripts. If you were to look at how many pages that is, there’s out of 25,000 copies, that’s 1.3 million pages of manuscripts.
Out of those 1.3 million pages of manuscripts, there are 300,000 variants. And I don’t say errors, I say variants for a particular reason. They call them variants because when people wrote during that time period, sometimes they had to write on, well, they didn’t get a pen and they didn’t get a piece of paper. What they got was papyrus smashed down reeds. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write on a bumpy surface, but sometimes your handwork isn’t as legible, or sometimes you end up doing something to a line that doesn’t look like it should be there. And so you have 300,000 variants in Scripture, between 1.3 million pages of manuscripts, 300,000 variants. That means 99.5 to 99.8% of the text is pure, and there’s a point 2% up to a point 5% where there’s a variant. Out of the 300,000 variants, less less than 2000 are considered significant. 298,000 of those variants are considered spelling errors or a different form of spelling. Let me give you an example. Sometimes when people would write Jesus Christ within those texts, they would flip the name Jesus Christ to Christ Jesus. Sometimes when they would write the name John, some people preferred to spell John, not j o h n, but j o n n. Out of 300,000 variants. All but 0.5% of those variants are eliminated. By simple spelling errors. Or a different form of a spelling of a name or a word. Potato. Potato.
Which leaves you with less than 2000 variations. And this is what the textual criticism is important. People take these manuscripts, 25,000 manuscripts. This is a job in in this world. And they compare okay. And they can see fifth century. There’s this variant. But in the first century it’s not there, second century it’s not there, third century it’s not there. But here, here it is in the fifth century. It becomes apparent when this appeared. When they began to study the variants. This is what a lot of of textual critics have found that when someone’s copying the Bible for themselves, they copied the Bible for themselves. They didn’t think about you in the 20th century or 21st century. Sorry. Dating myself when, when, when they would copy these, these manuscripts, sometimes they get to a passage where they didn’t understand it and guess what they did? That would make a note. They would make a note to help them understand it. That would be a larger variant. And when you compare all these manuscripts, you can see where someone made a note for understanding. And what the original text says. The phone game doesn’t work because you can go back into God’s Word and see it. Why do you have so many translations? I’m going to answer this real quick. Sometimes I’ve heard why so many translations. There’s a bunch of questions I can answer I know and feel free to ask. If you’re in a connection group, take your questions to your connection group this week because we’ll be discussing this.
But why are there so many translations in English then? If God’s Word is you feel like it’s been preserved, right? Well, there’s three types of translations, three types of translations, work that you can do when you translate from a language, you can do word for word, which is difficult to read. Going from Greek to English and trying to duplicate that word for word. You can do. Thought for thought, which takes like a Hebrew idiom or a Greek idiom, and puts it into an English way that we can understand it today. Or you can do a paraphrase. Translations of the Bible that we have today fall somewhere in that gamut. For instance, let me give you an example. In church, behind your seats, you’ll find an NASB Bible. That’s what we use. That’s actually the Bible that’s used, used to found America. It was called the Geneva Bible before it was the NASB. It’s what the pilgrims brought over that’s considered the most wooden literal translation of Scripture to date. Right. And so it is a word for word translation from the Greek text, as best as it can happen. By the way, you can buy an interlinear Bible that will just show you the Greek words if you want to look at that in between what’s called a dynamic or a thought for thought and a and a word for word, King James would be word for word NASB.
The ESV is between dynamic and literal. In the dynamic is the NIV. The thought for thought, paraphrase or the new living is also a dynamic translation. And if you get to the paraphrase, the Living Bible, the message would be considered paraphrases. Those aren’t really translations. They originally were created for children. A dad wrote the Living Bible so his kids could understand God’s Word and gave it to them. It’s a paraphrase, but I’ll just confess I read that sometimes we get to the Old Testament, especially the parts like the genealogy. It keeps me entertained. I say all this to say this for us. As you think of a Truth foundation. I’ll get to that picture. In verse 15. And that from childhood. You have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation. Paul refers to these writings as sacred. They’re wholly. And there’s something special about them. In Christianity, we say God reveals himself generally and God reveals himself specially. God’s word is his special revelation. It is the way to test truth claims in this world. It’s the way God has revealed himself. It is holy and sacred when you take away the lights and the stage and Sunday and being excited and whatever we’re about, let me just tell you what we’re really about. Is the sacredness of this word as it pushes us closer to Christ to know him more.
There are all kinds of people that I would say within history that are that are heroes and what they’ve done. People like John Haas and John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, those are individuals that literally gave their lives so that the Bible could be translated into English. And we could have it today. Losing their lives because of that. And that story even continues today. In the lives of others. Continuing to share God’s Word throughout the world. A few weeks ago, I got introduced to a man named Chad Mankins from the Bruce family. And Chad’s not in this picture. And by the way, they took this picture yesterday, right? I’m just kidding. The little dated, isn’t it? But in this picture isn’t Chad, but in the middle you’ll see Chad’s parents, Dave and Nancy Mankins. In the early 80s into the 90s. They they went to Panama, which is just on the border of of Colombia. They worked to plant a church in a village right on this border and, um, and also work with translation specialists and translating a Bible into the language of the Kuna people. In 1992, some rebels came across the Colombian border and captured not only Chad’s father Dave, but the other two men in the picture. For the next almost ten years, their family hoped and prayed for the safety of these men. Chad even went on to become a missionary himself with New Tribes missions he went to.
Um, I can show you a picture of Chad. He went to Papua New Guinea, which is right on the border with Indonesia. That’s Chad and his wife. And the three kids they’ve adopted from the place are from. In 2001 after they arrived there. Chad, by the way, went to this country to do translation work. So the the people, the Togo people on this island where he lives could have the Bible in their language. Chad finds out shortly after they arrive that his father was in fact had lost his life. In fact, he was taken to the jungle for four years, and in 1996, Chad’s father lost his life. I had Chad. Some of the story of his father so I could just read it. They wrote a few pages on this guy. You think of in life what heroes are. And I’m just sitting there at this table reading this story, just crying like a baby, thinking, man. Chad’s father lost his his his life because he wanted God’s word in people’s hands, because he knew how powerful it was. And Chad, in losing his dad, still goes to a country to give God’s word to people because he knows how powerful it is. And I’m reading this story and I’m weeping like a baby, and my son comes in and I just show him, and I start telling him the story about just how inspiring it is.
And I’m just thinking, son, out of everything dad tells you in life, I just want you to know this. That right there, that is a hero. By the way. The Kuna people. Have a Bible in their language. In fact, it took about 40 years to finish that work. And now in the villages of the Kuna people, where Chad’s father went and gave his life and his and his mother was there, Nancy as well. There’s a thriving church. Because of God’s word. I’m way over. We’re not going to close in songs. This is what I’m gonna tell you. God’s Word. A sacred. We don’t think about it much today, but people have given their lives so that you can hold it, that you can read it, you can know the God whose pages it fills. Jesus wrote his word. By his blood for us. I mean, it’s literally God’s love letter to you. It is sacred. It is holy and it is pure. So I know I didn’t answer every question that we could ask about preservation of Scripture and how to know it’s right. I had to cut short, but. God’s Word is given for you as a testable foundation. Christianity rests on two truths who is Jesus and is God’s Word truth. God has given us an opportunity not to be duped again by Janice and John, but rather embrace the truth and proclaim it to the world to see other people set free.