Isaiah 35:3

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0:00 We started out last week looking at what churches and for the next several weeks we're going to go through these core values of story, peace, lineage, and life. And remember that these values emerged from like a conversation amongst us about how do we understand who the cross is, what the cross does, what we encounter when we come to the cross. These four core values have been with us for almost 15 years. I still like them. Is that rain? Sounds great.

0:38 And so the first part is story. We're going to do two weeks on story. We're going to do two weeks on each of them. And the first part of thinking about story is the story of the scriptures. That this is a core value for us, that we feel like the scriptures are really important. And the fact that we call them story helps us think about the way in which it's important or what it means for us or how it functions amongst us. But I just wanted to remind you a little bit about the scriptures.

1:11 You know this is the Jewish Bible and the New Testament, right? And it's an amalgamation for most of us. The Jewish Bible comes from this text that we have called the Masoretic text, which the oldest is maybe the 10th or the 11th century. It's been passed down from one generation to the next. The New Testament, almost all of your New Testament, come from this amalgamation of several different fragments.

1:44 So we don't have a complete old Greek New Testament. We have fragments of different letters and copies that have been pieced together to find the oldest Greek New Testament. I'm just going to keep talking loud. Good luck paying attention. So they landed on the New Testament, right? It was started to be written there in the first century within 10 to 15 years of Jesus' ascension.

2:21 They started writing the letters and the books of the New Testament, making copies of them and passing them around. But it wasn't until like 300 when they started to become the official religion of the Roman Empire where they decided and agreed upon which letters would go into the New Testament or not. So I want you to think about this for a second, the story of Scripture, that the church existed for roughly 300 years without a New Testament.

2:58 And then think about it, they had agreed on the New Testament. Now they started to have copies of it because Constantine wanted to say this is what the church is and this isn't. But then after him, emperors came who persecuted the church again. They had copies of them, but not everybody had copies of them. Mostly only the bishops had actual copy of the Scriptures. And at the time in the Roman Empire, they were probably written in Latin, so they were not originals, they weren't even written in Greek, even though Old Testament, the Jewish Bible portions were written in Latin.

3:34 And when they started to get persecuted again, the bishops would have to turn them over or die and they burned many copies of the Scriptures. So it got, we had much fewer of them and people were protecting them at the pain of death. So the story of Scripture has been important, but not always ubiquitous, right? And even through from the time from the early first and second century, all the way up until the 1500s, the Scriptures were not in any way readily available.

4:11 Or even translated into regular language. So people had to go to special school in order to be able to read the Bible. Most people never read the Bible. Most people couldn't read the Bible. So the idea that you and I, there's a couple things you might take away from that. One is like, there are thousands of years of good Christian people who never read the Bible.

4:50 So if you have trouble with the morning quiet time, it's not a deal breaker. There's another way you could take it, which is, wow, what a gift to be able to be around right now where we have these Scriptures available to us. Where we could engage with them in a way that was so rare in times before.

5:25 Where we might find in them things that most people couldn't explore or consider or study. You can go both ways really. The opportunity and the reality. Of course, the danger with having like a written thing like this is that whether we know what it is.

6:00 Because it's like a, it's a primary document, right? So it's like if you try and read correspondence between two people from another era. If you want to know what they're actually talking about, you've got to know something about that era.

6:31 So the Scriptures are interesting because we don't tend to read anything else like them. I mean, just for, you don't like just pick up and read, you know, the account, what, like Alexander the Great's accounts of his battles. You wouldn't just like pick that up and read it. Most of us. But you might in the morning pick up and read your Scriptures on a regular basis.

7:05 And the danger in there of course is that you forget all the context and suppose it doesn't matter or relate. Or you just forget that it even is relevant. And it's good that we have the Spirit. Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit is our teacher. So you'll get stuff out of reading the Bible completely a contextually. But what I want to remind us is that it doesn't exist a contextually.

7:37 It's a document that emerged from a group of people. You know, there are other sacred texts. A lot of other places and religions and ways of life have sacred texts, right? Like Islam has the Quran. Of course, the Quran is like word for word what God spoke to Muhammad.

8:07 Like this is why you can't translate the Quran into English. You have to leave it in Arabic because it's the actual vocalizations, the sounds that God spoke to Muhammad transcribed and written down. So Islam has a sacred text, the Quran, but it's something different. It literally came down out of heaven to Muhammad. Ours emerged from a group of people describing a story. The Hindus have the uponshads which is like again, like esoteric experience of God, written down into books.

8:46 Mormons have the Book of Mormon, which again was Gabriel speaking to Joseph to write it down. There's nothing like the Christian scriptures. Other places have sacred texts, but they're different from this. They're much more a contextual. Ours is a story.

9:18 It starts with an explanation in the beginning and the way we understand it is that God in the tent of meeting on the Exodus road spoke to Moses and told him how he created the world. Moses wrote it down. Then he merged those early stories with the remembered stories of the people. There was lore of Abram, even of Babel amongst the people.

9:53 Where did we come from? How did we get here? Preserved amongst the people. Once you get through Deuteronomy up into Deuteronomy, you've got present time. Moses is writing about what is God doing among the people there. The parting of the Red Sea, the shaking of Mount Sinai, the making of the tent commandments. You get this story of what's happening. Then it carries through, chronicles and kings are different viewpoints on similar events.

10:27 You get each of the prophets that interlace with those. Then the Psalms, the worship language of our people. Then you have this whole bound set of things that people are using such that they're using it for schooling. So kids are memorizing it. They have a written story about what God has been doing amongst the people. It's lost at one point in the temple. Remember that story where they're digging out a closet and they find the old scriptures?

11:04 Then when Jesus is around teaching, he's pulling out these old prophets and reinterpreting them for people. He's going, you had one meaning, let me bring it into a fuller meaning. The story of our scriptures, God is communicating to people and pulling out meaning from their words over hundreds of years of time. So that these sacred texts have meaning immediately for people.

11:34 Then God is coming back to them recursively and pulling out more and more meaning. So that a prophetic writing in the Old Testament might have three fulfillments. An immediate one, a short term one, an army, a mid term one in Jesus, and a long term one in the second coming. So that these sacred scriptures that are delivered in context to the Holy Spirit is coming back to over and over again, pulling out meaning for the people of God, empowered by the Spirit over a period of time.

12:08 So I'm wanting to first help you see that this thing or the drop down menu on your phone is at the same time very contextual, pragmatic, real, grounded. And like guarded and applied by the divine. There's nothing like it.

12:51 So how should we use it or approach it as a story by Verli? Yeah, we should use it and approach it like a story. I was thinking about this in what way does Jesus? I was trying to imagine like I was like I want to tell these people that we should use the scriptures like a story. Where is a place where Jesus is doing that? That's what I was trying to.

13:25 That's what I tell I approached this morning. How do I find a place where Jesus is using the scriptures like a story? And the first place that came to mind, it's not apparent obviously at first, but remember the story when Jesus is like in a synagogue on Sabbath day, and there's this guy who comes to him and has a withered hand. Remember the story of the guy with the withered hand?

13:55 And he knew that the law keepers of the church were curious if he would heal the withered hand because it was Sabbath. And they were curious always about how to keep the law don't do any work on the Sabbath. Which is a pretty key law.

14:27 Like a year and a half ago we spent a whole Lenten period considering the Sabbath. The law of the Sabbath is like arguably like much broader than any of the other Ten Commandments because it's built into creation. The creation story, the seventh day God rested. And you can see even before they get the Ten Commandments they've got manna and they're not supposed to pick up manna on the seventh day. And nobody box at that so you start to think the habit of the people of God, the people of Israel getting the seventh day off was in the rhythm of their life already before even the Ten Commandments.

15:08 The Pharisees had the notion that if they could get all of Israel to keep the Sabbath perfectly once the Messiah would come. And so they had a lot of science around getting the Sabbath done rightly because he kept not coming and so they thought well you know they must be that we're still working on the Sabbath. And so what constitutes work on the Sabbath? Well I've got to make food so that's not work because I've got to eat. But if I have to walk and carry to get water that might be work it's too far so I should get my water the day before and bring it closer.

15:45 Okay I can maintain a fire but I can't start a fire so when you're approaching Sabbath make sure you've got enough embers and enough wood chopped already because you can keep feeding the fire you just can't start it. You see it's important to figure out the law of the Sabbath because you want to follow the way of God and so when Jesus is at this spot here and the guy with the withered hand comes in and they're all like we've got an important thing he could settle for us. What is work? Can we work on the Sabbath? Jesus blows right past it.

16:23 And doesn't answer it. Just heals the guy's hand. This man made for the Sabbath or Sabbath made for man. I don't know. That's why you're here I thought to clarify. To help us get it right so that we can do it right. So when I was thinking about Jesus teaching the scriptures like a story certainly Jesus could have settled the debate on what constitutes as work that you should abstain from on Sabbath.

17:02 In that case he didn't even enter the debate. He just healed the guy. I thought of another story. I was like where's the time when Jesus treats the scriptures like a story the guy with the withered hand. The next one was the wedding at Kana. Do you remember that story? Jesus has assembled a group of disciples but hasn't done any miracles yet.

17:33 He's at the wedding. The weddings are like week long at least a three day affair. They invite the whole town. They've drunk all their wine already. Not a small amount of wine. They've drunk a lot of wine already. And all the wine is gone. And Jesus' mother comes to him and says hey they're out of wine. Jesus is like what do you want me to do about it?

18:03 I use your imagination. And so he goes and with these servants doesn't explain like wait are we supposed to drink or not? Wait is it okay to be drunk? Wait how much wine is too much wine? Wait are you is this about like the messianic age or is this about your mom?

18:35 Like is this the provision and abundance of God or is this so that people aren't embarrassed? Jesus is like enjoy the wine. And that's it. That's the level of clarity he gives us on very important questions. Can we drink or not drink? When is it okay to drink? How much is too much?

19:06 I mean he could have settled that for us. I'm saying there's one more that came to mind. This one is the kicker for someone who likes to preach. That's me. Remember Jesus is like he has gone through the cross and the tomb. He's resurrected. He's appeared to the women at the tomb. And then like in his resurrected body he does the thing that it seems like he does in these stories where he like jumps in and out of space and time.

19:47 And he goes to these two on the road to Gethsemane. Thank you on the road to Emmaus. Goes to the two on the road to Emmaus. And like at first I would like to know how that happens. But there's no mention or explanation. But okay fine. That's probably I probably wouldn't understand it anyway. But then the story that you get on the road to Emmaus is he explained the whole scriptures to them in a way that it pointed to him so that they saw that the whole story of scripture reaches its culmination in the person of Jesus such that their hearts were on fire.

20:38 Okay that's pretty great. What did you say? What's the sermon that Jesus preaches right after he gets out of the grave? Where is it? They didn't want to write it down. Jesus didn't want to make them remember. The Holy Spirit has been protecting the scriptures through persecution and isolation and translation for thousands of years and they couldn't get us that.

21:12 That's what I'm saying like. Apparently there's something more important than the line between work and rest. Right? Between rule following holiness and debauchery there's something more important than understanding the nuances of theology across the scriptures.

21:46 And each of those what they pass on is the people. The characters. The relationships.

22:17 The scriptures are not a compendium of doctrine and encyclopedia of answers. It's not a cheat code to get the right position on whatever political or theological debate. You won't find it. You'll find stories and parables. You'll find broken people killing each other and cheating on each other and lying to one another.

23:00 It doesn't seem like the scriptures are overly concerned with us having the right answers. One of the preachers that was really formative for me was the pastor that I had in college.

23:32 We were part of his church for like five years and like a weekly bible study also with him. He was a really smart guy. He started, grew up as a Baptist and then went to a Presbyterian seminary and then went to Oxford for a PhD and ended up as an Anglican bishop with a really high church. And I don't remember the context. Not a lot of his sermons stuck with me. I used to tease him that he would preach for 45 minutes or something and meander.

24:14 And so not a lot of his sermons stuck with me. But one always did. I don't remember the context. Just one little section. He was talking about the letters of John, first, second and third John. And he was saying that John's writings between first, second and third John and John's gospel are the last things written in the New Testament. Everything else was written before John's writings. And John was the disciple of Jesus that lived the absolute longest.

24:44 And the church tradition of John was that he did escape Patmos for a little bit and came back to Asia Minor. This is what he was telling us. That he couldn't see. He was blind by then because they had plucked out his eyes when they had sent him to Patmos. And so the vision of the apocalypse, he wrote Revelation, but he had seen that in the spirit, not in reality. So he's like the letters of John, when you read them, you have to imagine an old guy, like 70, 80 years old in a time when people didn't live nearly that long.

25:19 And he couldn't see. And they're bringing him up in front of the people. And when you read first, second and third John, you realize how simplified he gives things, how consistently over and over he says, if you read first John, he says it a bunch. He calls everybody little children because he's older than everyone. If you read his gospel, you realize he doesn't name himself. He just calls himself the one whom Jesus loved. Because he's so enamored with the reality that Jesus loved him.

25:49 And when you read first John, imagine the image that Pastor Ron gave me is that they had to wheel him in because he couldn't walk and so they had him on a cart. And they would bring old John in who couldn't see on a cart and he would say, little children, would you just love one another? You don't even have God, he would say.

26:20 They're debating over the Sabbath and what work is. And he's like, would you just love this guy? They're trying to figure out, can we drink? Is there too much? What's the wine? And he's like, would you just, they're here at this party, would you just take care of them? And they're walking away, they're leaving the party of the resurrected Jesus before Pentecost and they're friends of his.

26:55 And he said, would you just stick with the family? And he goes to get the ones that he loves and brings them back. The scriptures are trying to communicate to you not the rules or the answers, but the character of God. It's a story because in stories you see how people act and when you see how they act you learn about their character.

27:28 And when you learn about the character you get to know them and the scriptures are interested in you getting to know the God. Not the rules or the outline, not how to be right or to be holy, but to move into relationship with the real God, the creator of heaven and earth, the author of life. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Christ and the church for you.

28:04 I thought I needed a verse to prove it to you. In case you didn't believe me. There's lots we can go to. But this one I really like, I don't know why, but it's in Isaiah chapter 35. Remember who Isaiah is, he's a prophet. Before everyone has the spirit of God, God gives his spirit to his people for special so that he can speak to them directly. And so the prophets speak God's word to the people and over generations the spirit comes back and pulls out meaning.

28:41 So this is a significant passage as all the prophetic speeches are. This is Isaiah chapter 35 and God says this to Israel. He said, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart to be strong, fear not, behold, your God will come with vengeance with a recompense of God.

29:20 He will come and save you. You want to know the character of God? God is the one who saves. You want to calm your anxious heart. Strengthen your tired legs. Lift up your weary head and look to the future knowing that wherever you find yourself, whatever you're in, the one who opens the withered hand, who pours out wine generously,

29:52 who goes to get his friends will come to get you as he has in every story through here. The story is a core value for us because we know that in the story we meet the God. And in relationship to the God is the life that we were made for. Let me pray that we would find it in the story today.

30:24 Hey Lord, thank you for this room of people. We know that you love them and have come for them. Teach us what it means that you come for us in story and connect us to this story. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.