introduced before the hymn on the solid rock, quoting Jesus that anyone who listens to his teaching and follows it is wise like a person who builds on solid rock
1 “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged.
2 For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.
3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye?
4 Or how will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye;’ and behold, the beam is in your own eye?
5 You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.
6 “Don’t give that which is holy to the dogs, neither throw your pearls before the pigs, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
7 “Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you.
8 For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened.
9 Or who is there among you, who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
10 Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent?
11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
12 Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.
13 “Enter in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter in by it.
14 How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.
16 By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?
17 Even so, every good tree produces good fruit; but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit.
18 A good tree can’t produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit.
19 Every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down, and thrown into the fire.
20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
22 Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’
23 Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’
24 “Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock.
25 The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it didn’t fall, for it was founded on the rock.
26 Everyone who hears these words of mine, and doesn’t do them will be like a foolish man, who built his house on the sand.
27 The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching,
29 for he taught them with authority, and not like the scribes.
cited as the basis for Tyndale's belief that the king is in charge of temporal earthly matters
1 Let every soul be in subjection to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those who exist are ordained by God.
2 Therefore he who resists the authority, withstands the ordinance of God; and those who withstand will receive to themselves judgment.
3 For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Do you desire to have no fear of the authority? Do that which is good, and you will have praise from the same,
4 for he is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid, for he doesn’t bear the sword in vain; for he is a servant of God, an avenger for wrath to him who does evil.
5 Therefore you need to be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience’ sake.
6 For this reason you also pay taxes, for they are servants of God’s service, attending continually on this very thing.
7 Therefore give everyone what you owe: if you owe taxes, pay taxes; if customs, then customs; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other commandments there are, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
10 Love doesn’t harm a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
11 Do this, knowing the time, that it is already time for you to awaken out of sleep, for salvation is now nearer to us than when we first believed.
12 The night is far gone, and the day is near. Let’s therefore throw off the deeds of darkness, and let’s put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk properly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts.
cited as the verse that Matthew Rogers's marginal notes went beyond, about dealing with a wife as the weaker vessel
7 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; that your prayers may not be hindered.
quoted at length about God's word going out and not returning empty, accomplishing what He desires
1 “Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doesn’t satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in richness.
3 Turn your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your soul will live: and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples.
5 Behold, you shall call a nation that you don’t know; and a nation that didn’t know you shall run to you, because of Yahweh your God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he has glorified you.”
6 Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says Yahweh.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain comes down and the snow from the sky, and doesn’t return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
11 so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do.
12 For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace. The mountains and the hills will break out before you into singing; and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn the cypress tree will come up; and instead of the brier the myrtle tree will come up: and it will make a name for Yahweh, for an everlasting sign that will not be cut off.”
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Pastor Ray walked the congregation through the long and often costly history of getting the Bible into the hands of ordinary people in their own language. The thread running through the whole message was that God's word belongs to everyone, and that humility before it is what allows it to do its work.
What was said
The story starts with Jerome in the late 300s, translating from Greek and Hebrew into Latin because Latin was the common tongue of the day. That translation, the Latin Vulgate, served its purpose. But as centuries passed, Latin became the language of the clergy and the educated, and less than one percent of ordinary people could read it. When local church councils in southern France and Spain moved to prohibit Bible reading in any other language, and burned both books and people who possessed them, the gap between God's word and God's people grew into something that demanded a response.
John Wycliffe was that response in England. Convinced that people needed the scriptures in their own language, he translated from the Latin Vulgate into old English in the 1380s, working by hand with a few helpers. The official church chronicle, ten years after his death, called him a son of the old serpent for doing it. The Council of Constance eventually ordered his bones dug up and burned. Even dead, he was considered that dangerous. Yet more Wycliffe manuscripts survive than any other medieval English writing, which Pastor Ray took as plain evidence that the people of God hunger for the word of God.
William Tyndale carried that work further, translating from the original Greek rather than from the Latin, and speaking eight languages well enough to do it carefully. He was eventually strangled and burned at the stake in Antwerp in 1536. His last recorded words were a prayer that the Lord would open the king of England's eyes. Miles Coverdale finished the work Tyndale had started, and in 1539 the Great Bible became the first authorized English version, chained to pulpits across England because people kept stealing it.
The King James Version of 1611 came out of a conference called by King James I, who stripped out the partisans on both sides and set 48 scholars to work in six companies, each section checked repeatedly within each company and then passed to the next. The rules they worked under required fidelity to the best Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts available, and demanded that scholars not slant the translation to favor any position. The translators themselves, in the preface to the 1611 edition, invited future revision as scholarship improved. Pastor Ray pointed to that humility as the reason the translation lasted as long as it did.
From the English Revised Version in 1885 through the New American Standard, the New International Version, the English Standard Version, and on to the Message and the Christian Standard Bible, each translation represents a community of scholars trying to bring the text faithfully to the readers of their own time. Pastor Ray walked through the distinctive character of each one without dismissing any of them, noting that a paraphrase led someone dear to him to faith in Christ in the fifth grade, while a more formally faithful translation is what he preaches from on Sunday mornings.
The reason he preached this history at all, he said, was to make the case that humility before the text is what the whole story has been about. Every time a translator bent the text toward power or convenience, it caused harm. Every time a translator knelt before the text and let it say what it says, something good happened. He closed with Isaiah 55, where God says his word will not return to him empty but will accomplish what he sent it out to do, and called that a promise worth trusting.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages
in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
Pastor Ray described Wycliffe as believing that 'humility before God's word will change us, but pride before God's word changes the Bible.' What does that distinction look like in your own reading of scripture?
Throughout the history Pastor Ray traced, people in positions of power repeatedly tried to control who could access the Bible. How do you think easy access to scripture affects the way you take it seriously, or maybe take it for granted?
Alright. Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. I love that there's life just in, among our church that we we visit and we mix and we mingle. Would you stand with me?
I'd love to I'd love to worship in song together. Here's an encouraging word from Psalm 89 to lead us in a worship. It says, Lord, you're mighty and your faithfulness, it surrounds you. You rule over the surging sea. The heavens and the earth are yours.
Catch this part. Here's us. Blessed are those who hear the joyful call to worship for they will walk in the light of your presence. Will you join us in singing at your name?
Alone. Don't want like our God. There is no one like our God. We will praise you. Praise you.
There's no one like our God. We will say we will say, there is no one like our God. We will praise you. Praise you. And Jesus is our God.
We will this praise Yahweh Yahweh.
So the announcements. Is this thing on black? It says it's on up here. What's going on? Hey.
Our last installment of the super exciting happy happy Good Times budgeting workshop is happening this Tuesday. There have been a couple of these already. And if you wanted to schedule one in a special one, Nick is right there carrying a computer around, waving his hand. That's the guy to talk to. This will be the third installment of this, and it is about getting a handle on finances, I think, mainly, and that's what's happening.
Tuesday night, six to eight, right here, first b. Owana, what's happening with Owana?
Yep. Tomorrow's a big, big night for Owana because we only have two more club nights, but tomorrow is the Owana store night. So that's a big deal. And then also TNT, it's a workshop for their derby cars. So an important night for Awana tomorrow, 05:45.
Workshop for Derby cars and Awana store. You don't wanna miss that. So this is happening. Also, there's a volunteer recognition party that's happening May 5. That's next week already.
Wow. Cinco de Mayo. Alright. It's 12:30PM. So this is for volunteers for Awana next week after the service plan on coming to a little gathering.
Felix and Guadalupe are gonna make a big Mexican meal for us. Bring your families. If you'd like to sign up to be a volunteer for the connect hour, you can call Addy. 690-3892 is her number. And there are several spots that are, available for that, if you wanna do The men's study at lunchtime on Thursdays is 11:55 in the Fellowship Hall.
That is going well. We're working our way through first Peter. And I think we're getting close to the end of first Peter one or finished one last week. Starting two, there's still plenty of information left. So come on.
Come and go as needed, but it'll be over at 01:00. Vacation Bible school is happening. First b, June 24 through the twenty seventh. That's pre k up through sixth grade. You can sign up online at firstbeachaxson.org, or you can sign up here.
There should be sign up sheets out in the back. The theme this year is hometown Nazareth, where Jesus was a kid. That ought to be fun. And there's a decorating meeting today in between services, in the Youth Room, 10:30. That is with Amy Jordan, I believe.
There'll be a potluck. Some of you all probably don't know Jean. Jean's been here for a long time, on on this earth. She's 96. But she's also been here in Jackson for a long time, but she's moving soon.
And we want to send her off well. So May 17 at 05:30 in the fellowship hall. No gifts, but we're we're gonna just have a kind of a big potluck for Jean DeMarsh. There's a congregational meeting also next week between services. There are a few changes in the constitution.
Some of it is formatting, but we're trying to get it squared away. So if you'd like, there are copies available in the church office, and you can know what you're getting into before you come in. But between services, there'll vote on those changes. And hey, this is a new one. Church cleanup happened in kind of a spring cleaning.
May 18, there will be pizza involved being provided. Volunteers needed of all skill levels. You can see that up there with the picture. It is a fun time. Historically, that has been a great time to get together.
So as many of us as can, come out. Many hands make for light work, and we'll do a church cleanup and a few of the projects that are hanging around, that have been hanging around for some time. And I think that's the last announcement. Anybody else have anything that I've skipped? I missed?
No? We've got a baptism today. It's not a basketball practice. We do have baptism today, and I'm looking forward to that. We're gonna do it just before the sermon.
So the kids are gonna stay up here, okay, until after the baptism, and there's a guest speaker too. But would you stand with us, and we're gonna sing a few more songs. Old faithful? That's coming. We'll we'll do that just before the sermon.
I'm gonna go change clothes during Brenda's time. How about that? There are a thousand hallelujahs at least. So God Almighty, would you give us the conscious thoughts of everything that we are thankful for? Would you give us a conscious recognition of where all of that comes from?
In Jesus name, we ask that you'd bless our minds, our minds to remember. And Lord, that we wouldn't get caught up in anything that would pull us away from you. In Jesus name, we ask you to draw us close as we reach out for you. Amen.
Whales for the rocks cry out to worship. Praise the Lord. Praise to the Lord, to the lamb, to the king of
Can I just add a scripture to that song? Why are we singing this? Psalm 100. Shout with joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the joy worship the Lord with gladness.
With gladness. Come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It's he who made us and we are his. We're his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Lord, thank you for creating us, for knowing us. God, you've created us to to know you back, to love you back. Thank you for being our good shepherd, Lord, and leading us beside quiet waters and green pastures. Thank you Lord for wanting the very best. You have our very best interests in mind.
Amen. An old hymn, you'll recognize this one, but from Matthew seven Jesus said, anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. When darkness fails his lovely face, I rest on his is sinking sand.
Oh, yeah. Shall come with trumpet sound. Oh, may I then in him be found, dressed I see the king of glory coming on the clouds with fire. Shames. A older I am for your kingdom's cause as I walk from earth into eternity.
You can have a seat here for a moment. This is the the worship through giving part of the service. I'll invite the ushers to come forward, and we're gonna sing called act justly, love mercy, walk humbly. And if that sounds familiar, it's right from Micah six eight. And what does the Lord require from us?
Have you ever asked yourself that question? God, what would you want from me? And it's this, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Before we sing,
Ray, may I ask you to pray?
God, thank you for this beautiful group that you have brought together. We're gathered in your name, Lord. Some of us enthusiastically, some of us maybe half heartedly. I pray, Lord, that you would draw us all into the sweet spot of your love, that we recognize that we are loved by almighty God. Lord God almighty, I I pray that we would dwell on that, that we would think about that, and we would think how awesome it is.
In Jesus name, we ask, Lord, that you would use us, use this offering, that you would use us as carriers of your amazing grace, that we would be able to look outward into the community and see people that are hurting and meet their needs, not just their temporal needs. But, Lord, with our lives, with our words, that you would draw people into communion with you, that you draw people into relationship with you. We pray that we would be surrendered before you to do whatever it is that you lead. In Jesus' name, I'm thankful, humbled and thankful that your message is easy enough for a child to understand and still awesome enough that an adult can think about it for the rest of our lives and never reach the end of it. Your infinite mercy and grace are astounding.
In your name, we pray and ask for you to do your will and your way among us and through us this morning. Amen.
Well, it all comes down to this. Are you required on me? I love my neighbor
Lainie Abel is here to be baptized. And here she is. And she is a Nawana gal, and she's a Sunday school gal, and she is a precious daughter of king, and I get overwhelmed with this. Usually, I just pass by and bonk her on the head. Walking down the hall, that is my custom.
But I had a chance to sit and speak to her for a while, and she has a deep understanding of the salvation that is provided in Christ and in Christ alone. And so, did you wanna say anything besides being baptized? Okay. Alright. Alright.
Well, come on in. Of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, upon the profession of your faith, I'm gonna baptize you as my sister in the name of the father, and the son, and the Holy Spirit. Hey. And now, what a segue. I'm gonna invite up Brenda from Old Faithful Christian Ranch, and she and she was at old she's been at Old Faithful Christian Ranch quite a while.
Actually, I came out as an intern to this church, and the last week that I was the intern for the summer, somebody called and said, hey, there was a pastor that had to bail on us, and somebody in your church recommended you do it. Now I had done eight messages over the course of the summer, and they scared me to death each time, but I had a week to prepare between. They told me, you've got eight messages to do between Friday noon and Monday noon. I cried between. But Brenda was one of that very much encouraged me and every pastor since and every child since, and so I'm gonna let her tell what she needs to tell while I go change.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Well, hello. Good morning. It is so wonderful to be here with you, and I'm so glad I was here for a baptism. Just makes my heart sing. I love kids.
So as Ray said, I am the program director at Old Faithful Christian Ranch, which is an island park, and we have long known First Baptist, and we love you guys. It's so wonderful to be here with you. And so I'm just gonna share a little bit about the camp. How many people are familiar with Old Faithful Christian Ranch? Oh, lots of you.
Wonderful. Well, then this will not be news to you, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about our camp. We started twenty eight years ago up in Island Park. We're 40 acres. It's a it's a pretty small little little camp, and over the years, God grew it from a bunch of trees and dirt into a facility that can have a 125 campers plus staff up there at one time.
And so we love kids. It's a huge part of what we do. In the month of July, we run camps for those who are in third grade right now going into fourth grade, so fourth grade up through graduated seniors. So, if they graduate this year, they can come to camp. We run four weeks, so we'll have senior high, junior high, middle school, and junior camp, and during that time, we wanna make sure that we're having a ton of fun with the kids, and that we're sharing with them the love of Jesus.
And so during camp, we'll have chapel twice a day, so in the morning and evening, we do devotion time, same morning and evening, and then at Campfire, our staff have an opportunity to show their testimony, which is such an impactful thing with kids to see, this is what God can do in my life, and so it's such a beautiful thing. And then, we're having conversation with the kids all throughout the week and we're doing all sorts of crazy stuff. If you've ever been to camp, you know camp gets weird, like we just do weird things. One of the kids' favorite games at camp is called SNOT and it's a version of capture the flag involving face paint and a giant stuffed octopus, and they just love it. It's fantastic.
But we have basketball, and dodgeball, and hiking, and canoeing, and tubing, and a 200 foot water slide, and all sorts of fun stuff. We're gonna be doing games as cabins, and games all together with all 120 kids. It's gonna be a lot of fun, and so during that time, our staff are gonna be interacting with these campers. We have over 80 staff who come in the month of July. Most of those are volunteers.
They come for one week, and they might help in the kitchen or do maintenance, or they might be cabin leaders, or like Ray, they'll come up and speak. We have speakers from local churches who come up, and they're gonna focus in on the word of God and making it applicable to the age group that's there. And so this year, our theme is clear the king's highway, and the verses Isaiah 40 verse three, which says, a voice cry in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Last year, we had 25 campers who gave their life to Christ for the very first time at camp, and we had 233 campers that rededicated their lives in the month of July, and this is what they reported to us. That's out of 367 kids, which means two thirds of our campers said, I love Jesus already, and I want to love him more.
And so this year, we really wanna focus in on how do we help these campers prepare for the return of Jesus? How do we how do we walk with them as they're removing obstacles from their lives and getting ready for Jesus in their life? And so that's what we're gonna be doing. And so OFCR, what we like to do at camp is we really wanna give the kids an opportunity to get away from distractions. We are a camp that doesn't allow cell phones, so our staff doesn't have phones, our camp our cabin leaders, I mean, and our campers don't.
They put them away for the week, and honestly, the senior hires struggle a little bit, and the junior hires schoolers with putting their phones away, but it's such a beautiful thing because the first day, they're a little twitchy, you know, and then they calm down and they're like, what is that noise? And we're like, you mean the birds singing in the trees? They're like, is that what that is? Like, they just Sometimes they forget what it's like to just be quiet, and then because their phone's down, they actually talk to one another, and they build lifelong relationships. I have friends that I made my very first year as a camper that I'm still in contact with now as an adult, and that God had has used those relationships to encourage my life and my ministry as the program director at camp.
And so, if you have campers that are interested in coming to camp, I would encourage you to grab one of these blue brochures. They're on the back table. This has all the information. Our camp is very affordable. It's $200 for the week, that includes room and board and everything that they need.
We wanna keep it as affordable as possible. This just covers the expenses so that your kids can come. If you are struggling even to make that, we have scholarships available. We will never turn a camper away because of finances. We want your kids to be able to come and be ministered to at camp.
So please grab one of these if your camper is interested. We have a $10 discount if you register before May 15, and so that's coming up pretty quick. So if you wanna register before that, and then registration will close two weeks prior to your kid's week of camp. So that's the information on that. Now, one of the things I wanted to share about is if you're like, hey, I'm not really a kid person, or I don't have kids, but I would love to come up and help.
Or if you have kids that are of that age and you wanna come serve, we need your help. As I said, we have over 80 people that come to camp, and we're about halfway there on staffing. And so if you're thinking, I would love to be a cabin leader, then please sign up. Grab a staff brochure, that's this green one here, and there's a staff application process, background checks, all that fun stuff. And so you will come up.
If you wanna help in the kitchen, if you wanna do maintenance, if you wanna help on program or do music or be a nurse, we have so many different avenues available. If you wanna serve Jesus at camp, we'll find a home for you. We'll find a place for you to come up and serve. We do have some paid positions if you wanna come for more than one week, and so if you're in that, you can just ask me, I'll be in the back afterwards. And if you're thinking, kids, I don't wanna go to camp, but you still wanna be involved, you can donate to the camp, you can donate to the scholarship fund.
We had 107 kids who needed financial aid last year, and so it's a huge need. If you wanna donate to the scholarship fund, myself and Cassie Snooks, director, are both missionary support, so you could support us, or you could just donate to the general fund of the camp to help keep it going, because the camp is private or we're self owned, but there's over 50 churches involved with this tiny little camp in Island Park, and so it's those donations that make it possible for us to continue to love on these kids. So you could donate, there's a wish list of things that you could purchase for the camp if you'd like. And all that to say, if you wanted more information, go to our website, ask me. And then some of you who may have noticed that there are a bunch of little flamingos on the table in the back.
I'm a little obsessed with pink flamingos. It's a long story and I don't have that kind of time, but the kids know that flamingos, we just use a lot of them at camp. And so if you're thinking, I might wanna go serve at camp, might wanna send my kid, I might wanna donate, grab a flamingo and be in prayer for the camp. Put it in your pocket, stick it on your dash, put it in your window, whatever, and just every time you see it, think about the camp. The ministry that's going on there is so crucial.
These campers need the love of Jesus. They need people to come alongside them and put their arms around them and love on them, and so if you wanna be involved, please grab a flamingo. If have you a camper that wants to go to camp, grab a flamingo. I've got hundreds of them. So, grab a flamingo, stick them in your pocket, and please grab me after the service if you have any questions.
And, thank you so much for the opportunity to come and share with you today. Thanks.
Thank you, Brenda. Now, it's time for children's church. And up here, is this thing on? Can you hear me? Up here, it's a little different this Sunday.
We've been going through the New Testament for twelve years. Twelve years and we finished a couple weeks ago. I went back around to pick up something about repentance, which I think is really good. But this week, we're gonna do a bit of a history lesson. I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, we will end on scripture.
But I wanna kinda make a case for the Bible. The Bible in English in particular. So if you speak another as your mother tongue, this is not necessarily your history, but most of the histories of the different translations of the Bible follow the same path. Here we are, whirlwind black and white chronological analysis of the primary source documents pertaining to the history of the holy Bible in English. In English, Eusebius Hieronymus Sofrenus, that does not look like English.
It's not. This guy was born in Italy, Geralamo, we call him Jerome. Saint Jerome, if you grew up in a Catholic context or another context where you called him Saint Jerome. Saint Jerome, it's not English yet. Okay?
This is early. So this is from an early young Ray McDaniel, a sketch. Standing in one of the duormos in Italy, this is a sketch of Saint Jerome. And that's the actual. It was done by Bernini.
It's beautiful. It's in one of the chapels off the side of the Duomo in Siena. Saint Jerome is remembered because from Greek and Hebrew text, the best available text in his day, he was because of his elevated linguistic skills, he was asked by Damasus Damasus to translate from the Greek and Hebrew text and he did that. And what we have as the product of that is the Latin Vulgate. What it means is it's in the vulgar tongue, the common tongue of the people.
So in four zero five AD, we had Greek and Hebrew text translated into Latin, which is what people spoke at the time. Are you with me so far? We got a lot to cover. 12/29, that's a big jump from 04/2005 to 12/29. Well, in between there were the dark ages.
Christianity definitely spread in between there and whenever you have a movement happen, unfortunately, there are barnacles that get attached to the big boat and there are other ways of thinking about the boat, and so you have heresy that crops up. That happened in the first three centuries. It happened with the Gnostics, the ones who felt that spirit was it and body was not it. Spirit is good, flesh is bad. In a way, that's true, but it's not the Gnostic way.
They felt you could do whatever you wanted to with your body because it's really spirit that matters. That's not true, that's not good, it wasn't true. When they did this, part of this was to try to quash out that heresy, part of it. So the Latin Vulgate, so that everybody can understand it because Latin was the language at the time that spread the furthest because of what? The Roman Empire.
So the Latin Vulgate, so that everybody could be on the same page, literally, that's the way we go. And they decided this is the Bible. This is how we're going to present it. In 12/29, there was a heresy that was called the Albigensians. Albigensians, it a newer version of the Gnostic heresy.
This is in Southern France. So in the Council of Toulouse, which was a local council, it wasn't a wide thing where the whole church where it came down from Rome, it was just a local one, they were trying to stamp out a heresy called Albigensianism. Okay. So the Albigensians Have you met an Albigensian? It worked.
Okay. They pretty effectively stamped out the Albigensian movement. In Southern France is where this started. What they declared was that you should not read the Bible in anything except for what we've all agreed on, the Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate is the text.
If you don't understand Latin, learn Latin. Okay? That's hard for people who are just working folks. So it in 12/29, less than 1% of the people spoke Latin. Actually, I look around this room, we have a greater percentage of that, the folks that understand Latin in this room.
Okay? But only 1% and they're usually the clergy or the rich or the very well educated. And so, Council of Toulouse, Southern France, just a few years later, 12/29 to 1234, five years later, more heresy in order to quash heresy. And I should have done a disclaimer at the beginning. I've been raised Southern Baptist my whole life, technically American Baptist Church right here where you're sitting.
We have I have heard history my whole life from a very protestant standpoint, but as I read as an adult, I'm less likely to bash anybody. I believe that it was out of a pure heart to try to control heresy to begin with. But the problem is, if you're trying to control heresy and power is associated with you controlling the information, then there's a problem. And so, we always say sunlight is the best disinfectant. What is the problem of people being able to understand the Bible in their own language?
Well, they could go anyway. That is what God has done when he delivered the law to Moses. When he delivered the 10 commandments, he wrote it, finger of God wrote it in a language they could understand. Moses came down and shared with the people. Jesus spoke in the language of the people.
He shared the Old Testament in the language of the people. Council of Tarragona is in Spain. The Spanish inquisition said that if you have the Bible in your own language, in that time, Spanish, obviously old Spanish, that is against the rules. You cannot have the Bible in your own language. You cannot read it in your own language.
You don't get to do that. So they burned any copies that they found and the holders of those copies. They either jailed or burned. It was a huge deal. So, that's 12/29 and 1234, again, local, not huge, not from the top down, but that was the line.
And if it went up the line, yes, we need to control heresy, yes, we need to keep it in the family, yes, we need to keep it in Latin, it was very important. John Wycliffe, English, old English writer. He wrote in old English, and he said, it does not make sense for people not to be able to understand this in their own language. Same arguments I just used for his arguments. He was sincere, he was a very learned linguist, and little black and white image of him.
His early version of the Bible, he started with the New Testament, that's generally the case. People start with the Greek and go from there. Started and he works through his early version. This is one guy working not completely alone, had a couple of guys helping him. But Wycliffe's early version was handwritten.
It's 1382. Gutenberg's printing press wouldn't be complete until 1455. So he didn't have a way of printing it. Wycliffe does from the Latin Vulgate, not from the Greek and the Hebrew. He was still trusting that this is a decent translation.
He starts from Latin Vulgate, which is agreed upon. That's the agreed upon text and so he starts with that and he translates from Latin into old English. And people are starting to read it and starting to understand. So when I say the first whole Bible, the whole Bible at that time, they put the apocryphal books in there too. The apocryphal books, nobody has ever said they were canon.
It's not really canon. If you ask the Catholic church today, they don't think that they're canon. If you ask the Jews, they're not canon. They're books of history. They were books to be read in private.
So Wycliffe's early version was the whole thing. Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha. That's a lot for a guy to be working on with a couple of friends. He was so convinced that people needed to know this in their own language that he did this and tried to distribute it, translated from the Latin Vulgate, but it takes a copyist to do that. You have to copy it over and over by hand.
Have you ever tried to write just like Philippians? It takes a long time to write and to be accurate too. And so, he gets his early version done. He dies actually. He died New Year's Eve of 1384, standing up, doing mass.
So he was still in, but he's trying to create change from the inside. Purvi was his buddy that was helping him and he made a revision. He had permission, even his request and insistence to keep on revising and to correct it as greater scholarship would allow. Okay? So at the time, it's the 13 hundreds.
They have the text that they have, they have access to them, they're able to do that. But Purvey's revision was made from the Latin Vulgate too. So this is not from the Greek and Hebrew, but from the Latin. You're thinking, wow, we're already getting off. It's two languages.
You always lose something in translation. We still have the Greek and Hebrew text. As they're going through, they're looking for them. Out of and this is amazing actually. We have about a 170 handwritten Wycliffe manuscripts that are remaining.
Most of them are the later version. They're the later one with the revisions because it was a better Bible and because they burned the rest of them. So there's an angry quote. I want you to see it as I read it. This pestilence, this is ten years after his death.
Okay? He dies New Year's Eve at 1384, so right at 1385. And in 1395, the church chronicle, official church chronicle said, this pestilence and wretched John Wycliffe, that son of the old serpent, How dare he? Endeavoring by every means to attack the very faith and the sacred doctrine of holy church. Do you hear how tradition has built up?
He translated from Latin into English, the gospel. How dare he? It's angry. Indeed, all of the scriptures that Christ gave to the clergy and the doctors of the church. Who did Christ give it to?
Fishermen, tax collectors, you, me. But this was the rub. This is the difference. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, but even meager power starts to convince you that I mean, if you get in this position up here standing up every Sunday, it feels like I'm just I can steer this boat. That is not true.
I I believe what Wycliffe believed that the Bible should be our text. Humility before God's word will change us. Pride before God's word changes the Bible and that's not cool. That Christ gave to the clergy and the doctors of the church, so that by his means it has become his being John Wickliffe. So that Wickliffe's means it has become vulgar and more open to layman.
09/04/2005, they put it into the vulgar tongue on purpose, so that people could understand it. So that by his means, it's become vulgar and more open to layman and women who can read than it usually is to quite learn it clergy of good intelligence. He made it easy to understand. How dare he? And so, the pearl of the gospel, indeed, the scriptures in total is scattered abroad and trodden underfoot by swine.
They don't have the means to understand the preciousness of it. They don't know how to understand it. Oh, that was ten years after he died. That's a hot button. He's not even here to write anymore, defend himself, anything else.
Third senator of Oxford, the Constitutions of Oxford made the decision. At 1384, New Year's Eve is when he dies, in the third senate of Oxford, they decided that Wycliffe, had been buried next to the church, like everybody is buried next to the church, since he was a heretic, his bones should be dug up and burned as a heretic and put to rest his ashes outside of holy ground. So the constitution of Oxford also in fourteen o eight forbade the making or the reading of any portion of scripture in English on penalty of forfeiting your life and your goods. But in spite of this, there are more Wycliffe manuscripts than any other English medieval writing, indicating the hunger of the people. People the people of God want the word of God.
So that's one of the pages from a fourteenth century copy. It's handwritten, pretty neat for handwritten. But it's still forbidden in fourteen o eight. We're getting on up here, aren't we? They burned his books and the Council of Constance.
This is what I was talking about. This order that was confirmed by Pope Martin the fifth. Council of Constance orders his body to be dug up. They actually did it in 1428. So that guy, not just his books, but his bones.
Then they dumped him in the river, so they spread out. They didn't even want him in one place. And then in 1455, so from fourteen o eight to 1455, we've got a yearning for, but a prohibition on the Bible. I'm glad I was born when I was born. The Gutenberg print press, boy, that changes everything.
It was the mass media of the day. It can be used for good, it can be used for ill. The first book that was printed was the Bible in Latin because that's the official. Even though only 1% spoke it, now all of us have the same copy of it. We're literally again on the same pages.
So the first book printed was the Bible in Latin. So 1455 to 1516. If you know anything about history, the reformation is just getting going right now. Now, there have been others in in what was then Bohemia, Jan Hus, and there have been others first wave folks that were cut down pretty easily. Erasmus decides he is going to compile in one place and have printed and distributed.
The Greek and the Hebrews, so he did the Greek New Testament in 1516 and that was huge. So compiled the Greek, skipped over the Latin, got back to the original text, same text that had been used by by it's hard to believe, but it is. The same text that had been used by Jerome in the late three hundreds and early four hundreds, and he compiled the Textus Receptus, the Greek, and then he went on to do from the Hebrew also the whole Bible. But 1516, the Greek New Testament came out, Erasmus by Hans Holbein the younger. That's in the Louvre in Paris.
You will be pressed to find a picture of Erasmus that does not have him writing. He is translating all the time. His motto as the renaissance, even the renaissance humanists at the time was, Fontes, Ad Fontes, go back to the sources. So he went to the best sources that he could get and he compiles the Greek New Testament. Martin Luther and Tyndale would both use this as the basis for their German and English translations of the Bible.
So now, they're going back to Greek and Hebrew good manuscripts. So that fifteen twenty six, that's his new testament, but it's from Greek this time. There were some things that were different about the translation from Latin and Greek. I I just got a raised eyebrow from three people in the room like, that's an understatement. There were some things that were different.
Jerome, I believe, was sincere in his translation, although he was not the scholar that Erasmus was. So translation has gotten better, not worse. This was argued for a long time, now it's pretty much agreed. Tyndale. Tyndale knew eight languages.
He's amazing. He's just amazing. If you read about this guy, he had a real depth of conviction and he spoke eight languages very very well. And he studied all the time. He was honest, if a little cantankerous.
So he was honest, but he did not mind telling the truth. And in a day where it's illegal to even have the Bible in your own language, people don't always want to hear the truth if it's convicting them of error and that's what he was doing. But he even he said, after he finishes his translation, he says exhorting instantly right now and beseeching all of those who are better seen in tongues. That's a little bit of humility. Better in tongues than I, if they're better linguist than I, if they have better copies in the spirit of meekness, please do take this and amend it as necessary.
Please do. I don't want for God's word to suffer because of my ignorance or my blind spots. So it is their duty to do so. What he saw was that power was not listening to his request. Now, if you're sitting here and you're just going, yeah, that Catholic church is so evil and they're so wrong.
Give that a rest. Please, please, don't let the Catholic church of the time, who was selling indulgences and having some problems, be confused with the Catholic church of today. This is the closest we've been in five hundred years. Don't mess it up. Okay?
Seriously. In 1528, Tyndale wrote, the obedience of a Christian man. The obedience of a Christian man. It's, I don't know, 40 pages long. It's a little tract and he was saying that we should be humble before scripture and we should act on that humility if Jesus says to love one another, we need to be doing it.
He also says when it says congregation, it means congregation, the people of God, not just the folks in charge. And so, he put this forth and Henry the eighth got a hold of it. Henry the eighth wanted a divorce. Oh, you've all heard this story too. From his first wife, Catherine of Aragorn, who was also related to one of his relatives.
He should not have married her in the first place, but he got special dispensation from the official church to marry her. So that was against the rules. Right? But, nope, you can do it. Can you?
No. Not really. Biblically, no. You shouldn't have. And Henry, after having miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage, he believed that God was punishing him because he asked for a special dispensation and the church gave it to him.
So he says, the church was corrupt for giving it to me in the first place. That started to see I believe that he was sincere in that because after suffering for some time, he believed that what he had done was the problem. What he had asked for, he should not have asked for and the punishment of God. That's what he believed. I don't think it's great theology, but that's what he believed.
It was a sincere crisis of faith. And he read this and he said, you know what? That's right. I should be in charge. I shouldn't have to ask them for anything.
The Roman church. So the act of supremacy. That's six years later, but the act of supremacy says that nobody in England can ask anybody outside of England anything that the king except for the king. The king is the supreme ruler of the church and the land and that meant that the Catholic priests, everybody, bishops, everybody that lived in England could not ask the pope. So the act of supremacy basically says, I'm the one that's in charge.
Oh, another thing about power. And this is why in this day, we can look back and say, people are looking for the rules that most fit them. Wait a second. In our day, what are people looking for? The rules that most fit their own whim.
But scripture, you cannot monkey with. Fifteen thirty five. So fifteen thirty four is act of supremacy. Fifteen thirty five, the king says, yeah, Englishman, Miles Coverdale, friend and helper to Tyndale, you should finish the Bible. Keep on working on it.
So they did the whole within Apocrypha. He put the Apocrypha together at the end of the Old Testament right in the middle. If you open a Catholic Bible today though, that's where it's gonna be. That's the norm. Nearly every Apocryphal Bible since then has done it.
Coverdale's Bible, 1535. It was sanctioned by the king after the act of supremacy. Oh, Tyndale's last words. Tyndale, by the way, had to run from England to get out of the way because he disagreed about him remarrying. He didn't think that was right.
He didn't think he did think that the king ought to be in charge of the land because the king's in charge of the land in Romans 14, Romans 13. There's there's no doubt about king being in charge of the temporal earth, but he didn't think that he knew best in spiritual matters. Believed in the priesthood of the believer. His last words from Fox's Book of the Martyrs depicts him being tied to the stake where he would be burned for heresy, the heresy of translating the scriptures or running afoul of the king. And I strangled him against the post and burned his body, and what was coming out of his mouth is that, Lord, oak the king of England's eyes.
That's what he wanted is for the king to see clearly that the scriptures needed to be available. So 1536, he's burned at stake, has a heretic, but by authorities in Antwerp. He wasn't even in England. There was some collusion there. It's it's stated that the king may have even tried to free him, but didn't work.
He's in Antwerp, not in England, so he didn't really have any say. 1537, John Rogers came out with a Bible, this is terrible, that was like Coverdale's Bible except for it had marginal notes. If you look, it might be the first life application study Bible. Except it became known as the wife Peter's Bible because his marginal notes really didn't go along with scripture. First Peter three seven says, to deal with your wife as the weaker vessel.
It does not say, convince her. It went further than that. It's awful. That one had to go. Fifteen thirty nine, the great Bible.
This one was the first one that was sanctioned by the king and considered to be the authorized version. We're going print enough of them to put them in every pulpit in the whole land. We are not going to disagree about what is Bible. So, it was nicknamed this because they were huge. It was like 11 by It was a tabloid sized, poster sized piece, they were on the pulpits in England.
11 by 16 and a half was just the pages, and the cover is bigger than that, and it's about this thick. It was huge, but they had to chain them to the pulpit to keep them from being stolen. It was a good translation, not bad. Almost totally Tyndale, just a few percent not. They called it the chained Bible because it was chained to the pulpits to keep people from stealing it.
It's a coffee table book. You could use it as a coffee table. This was the first authorized version. We're in 1516, I always already passed out. 1560 is Geneva Bible.
Some of y'all have a Geneva Bible translation in here and I know it because you tell me about it. It's way Calvinistic, there's a definite reform stance to it. This is the Bible of the Puritans and the Mayflower Pilgrims. These are the folks that wanted to separate, not just from the Catholic church, but from any English version that included anything like bishops and overseers and hierarchy. So this is very very Calvinistic.
John Calvin in Switzerland, exile, writes this one or mainly manages this one. In the preface and the to the reader portions of the sixteen eleven King James version, which we're working towards, the translator almost always quotes from this Bible, the Geneva Bible. Fifteen sixty eight, the bishop's Bible. So wait a second, fifteen sixty is swinging over here. No, none of that.
Absolutely none of that. So we got to do something about that. So in fifteen sixty eight, the bishop's Bible. How many times have I walked past back and forth on this stage? It's either legalism or license.
It's either high church or low church individual. It's like that, and history is the plumb line of theology. God won't allow for it to swing beyond before it starts swinging back. Now, we still have human responsibility. And if you get a chance to translate the Bible, translate it properly.
Translate it where you go with maybe the more difficult reading for me. What is the range of meaning of that word? I'm convicted by this end of it. Don't swing over here and convict it like this so it clears you from all responsibility. Okay?
The bishop's Bible basically set up the high church. This is probably the worst translation of the time, but it was the authorized version. There are people who would argue with me about it, but there are not many of them. The second authorized version was in the Elizabethan area, that's Elizabeth. She is surrounded by faith and charity, means she is what?
Hope. She's the hope for all that is good and righteous. The virgin queen, Elizabeth, bishop's Bible, wanted to maintain everything intact just like it was. 1582, the Catholic English language. Wait a second.
What happened in between 12/24, 1239? And then in 1582, finally, they were like, okay, you can have it in English. We're not as worried about that. People are we're hemorrhaging. People are going to where they can find the word.
And so, Catholic English language New Testament. Based on the Vulgate, they didn't want to go back to Greek and Hebrew and that's okay. Old Testament and the part of it came later. 16 o nine, sixteen ten, if you know history, King James version comes out in 1611. Sixteen eleven is preceded though by seven years of scholarship, eight years of scholarship.
In sixteen o three, the Puritans had grown pretty strong And as far as they were one tenth of the pulpits in England were were with Puritans as the pastors. They believed in getting people the word in their own language, they believed in ministering in their own language, they believed in although they most many of them still did the Latin mass, they still they did gather and study the Bible together. In April sixteen o three, when James the sixth of Scotland becomes James the first of England, They signed off on a letter about a tenth of the clergyman in England and they asked for reform in the church of England, church of England. From Henry eighth, we've got the church of England separate from the Catholic church, active supremacy said the king's in charge. So they go to the king and say, would you please give us a Bible?
Would you please help with this situation? The bishop's Bible is really a problem. So they're asking for this. So he calls a conference. He didn't even let the Puritans in the room.
They're the ones who asked for it. He didn't even let them in the room. He gathered the bishops, he gathered other people with interest, and he didn't let the Puritans in till the second day. And the whole time in the first session, he played the puritan. He maybe said devil's advocate.
He played the puritan to the bishops and said, but it says this, but it says this. And James was kind of a smart aleck. That wasn't his only drawback. He was a smart aleck though. And so he was constantly throwing obstacles up for the people that were in the room.
Then the Puritans came in the room. He got rid of the lunatic fringe on both sides. Oh, really? He wanted people who could work together. Unity was what God charged him with.
Unity. And so he said, that's ridiculous. You know that's ridiculous. You go away, you don't get to make translation. And that's ridiculous, and you know it is.
He's a pretty good language student himself. By the way, his mother's Catholic, he was raised by Presbyterians in Scotland, but he had a Puritans that worked in the house. And he, in his own language study, was pretty wide in his understanding and he could argue either side and he loved to do that. He played the Puritan. By resolution, they started out at the beginning and said the rules were going to be drawn up for a new translation of the Bible, the archbishop of Canterbury and the king, and they set 15 rules.
Now, I'm not gonna tell you all of them, just the ones that are funny or important. The crux of them was this will be a scholarly undertaking. We're gonna access the best Greek and Hebrew text that we have. We are going to be shooting for a Bible that we all agree on. Unity, common ground.
It has to say what it says and the language of it in English has to say what it says. But you have to agree that that's what it says. Partisanship was to take a back seat to true scholarship. Don't make it favorable to you. Take in humility, take the more difficult reading and we will meet in the middle where God's word works.
By the rules, they were kind of slanted. The king was head of the church and he had been king of Scotland. He said, I won't allow any of that Presbyterian nonsense. So you all know what that means. Scotland fought all the time.
Scotland was known for fighting. My people, they're Scottish. We're brought over wherever there's a war that needs to be fought, they bring the Scots in to fight it, you know. But that's what he was saying with that. It was a wink and a nod.
Suggestions were made for all of the earlier versions. He said, don't pay attention to that Geneva Bible. They did anyway and in their preface, they had the Geneva Bible at the beginning. So from sixteen o four to 1611, they labored together. There were six companies of scholars.
There were nine per company. 48 guys worked on it and six of those were leading them administratively. They worked on it individually at first. So six guys in a group, they divvy up their section and do it and then each of those six guys had to go through that section and check it. You ever been in a class where they said, now hand your paper to your neighbor?
They did that but it was five extra times. I mean, four extra times. So six people checking within the company, then they took them from that company and gave them to the next company. And they all checked over all of it. That's why it took them so long.
But they got out of it a very good translation. Consensus was important and fidelity to the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew text. So they released it in 1611, and I think this is funny. It was mixed reviews. It lasted for three hundred and fifty years.
It's still a standard. A lot of you all still carry it. But there was one Hebrew scholar who said, I would rather be rent to pieces by wild horses than had my part in the urging of such a wretched version of the Bible on the poor people. Maybe he was just mad they didn't ask him to translate it. What I'm seeing in this So the puritans, including many of the translators, they continued to use the Geneva version unauthorized, but they Out of a matter of conscience, they believed it.
The reform folks still used that for years from the pulpits of England. This is the third authorized version. It's the last one, usually most people think of as the authorized version. It remained the standard text because it was a good translation where we have to humble ourselves before the text and not slant it to our favor. This is the whole reason that I'm preaching this message of history.
We have to before scripture be humble and allow it to bend us rather than in pride, think we know better and bend it. Are you with me? Okay. This is the longest I've gone in a long time. The translators note in the beginning of the 1611, the reason I started this study in seminary was because I had a few friends who were King James only and that's a that's a rough position to hold.
Okay. It explains the position of the Church of England as opposed to the Church of Rome as it pertains to scriptural availability. We believe it should be available for people to understand their own language. It's full of information about what they did but it says, please do revise this as future scholarship gets better. It's not the end of everything, it is a noble effort.
So all the way up from 1611 to 1885 before we had another real revision, that was English Revised. They wanted to adapt King James to the present state of vocabulary. They wanted like conversation used to mean something different than conversation means now. It was confusing, so they wanted for it to be understandable to the readers. Again, great.
These are the guys that did it. We have a record. We know what they believed. We know what they were pushing and it was fidelity to the text, is good. The first American Standard Version was in nineteen o one and it uses only the only real difference in this one and what came before King James was it uses the word Jehovah instead of the Lord.
Okay. 1971, now we're into our lifetime, my lifetime. I was born in 1971. Big time for Bible translation, the new American Standard Bible came out. And what I like about it, the reason I use it, is because it retains Greek conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, which is not the way we speak.
By the way, King James does the same thing and that's not the way they spoke either. It was fidelity to the text that was really important. I am very strong on fidelity to the text, that's why I use this one. 71, it comes out also in 1971, the living Bible came out. The living Bible was a paraphrase.
Nobody said it was a translation, it was so that you can understand it, so that you can read it as a story. I love the living Bible because that's one that someone very near and dear to me read all the way through in the fifth grade and became a Christian. Just read the Bible. So whether it's absolute fidelity to the text or a paraphrase, God is able to use his word if we're humble before it. Living Bible was paraphrased.
There it is. New international version comes out '78. It came out '73 New Testament, 78 the whole Bible. This was an international group of scholars that got together that wanted to agree and be able to translate this into all languages. In our day, English is the lingua franca like Latin was in their day.
Like, it became English is that now. So the the committee that did this is doing this but for every other nation too. In 1982, the New King James came out. I like the New King James. My pastor always used King James, but when you go to school and you say thee and thou, it just doesn't make any sense.
This just removed the these and thous and put you and y'alls, you know, there. So I liked the New King James. My aunt Laura gave me this in 1985. And that's the one that I typically use. Those are both New King James that I use as my Bible until I started preaching it.
And when I started preaching it, I swapped over the New American Standard because it sounds the most like I speak except for those conjunctions, and the conjunctions should give you a road map. People have been asking for this for some time. 1996, the New Living Translation. So the living Bible was a paraphrase, it was easy to read, but it was all over the place. The new living was to be a translation and it's a good translation.
My Greek professor did acts for the new living translation and then he was checked by various people and committees. 2001, English standard version came out. That is a good translation, really good translation. My truck Bible is an English standard version. It fits right up under the tape deck, know.
It's good. It's a good translation. It is conservative. It is conservative because there was a group of scholars that felt like it was leaning towards the left, so they wanted to lean back to the right. If you'll read the notes in the front of your Bible to the reader, it'll help you understand what it was.
New International Version said they wanted a fourth grader to be able to read and understand every bit of it. Okay. English Standard Version said, don't want to let it slide the way that our culture is sliding away from tradition, we want to bring it back. That was their stated purpose. 2002, the message, again, paraphrase, like Eugene It's by Eugene Peterson who is a pastor.
His heart was that he wanted for people to understand the overarching message of the Bible. It's a dynamic equivalence translation. And that is one that if you're feeling like, I just don't get this, you can get paragraph by paragraph from Eugene Peterson. It'll be a very pastoral slant. It's not perfect.
He didn't claim it was. It's the message. It's a paraphrase. 2017, Southern Baptist came out with the Holman Christian Standard Bible and then they dropped Holman for some reason. It's the Christian Standard Bible, but that's the Southern Baptist version.
It's a good version. No no problems. If you are wondering about your version of the Bible and you wanna ask me about it, I'll tell you all about it. I love this stuff, obviously. But what I wanna say is God has a way of using his word for anyone who is humble before it.
Isaiah 55 says this, for just as the rain and the snow come down from heaven. Can I get an amen? Just keeps on coming, doesn't it? But you know what? The grass out there is green enough, isn't it?
Just as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and they do not return without watering the earth and making it produce and sprout, and providing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will my word be which goes out of my mouth. I'm going to protect it and I'm going to use it and everything I sent it out to do is going to happen. It will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the purpose for which I sent it. God wants for you to understand his word, God wants for you to apply his word in humility and he will use it for his purposes. Amen.
So, would you stand with us? We are gonna sing. And I would just sing the doxology but I think this word from this song helps too. So here we're going to sing one more.
I believe every word that you say. I believe there's scars in your hands. That your goodness is good without it. You'll never change. And I will tell all your wonders, sing of grace.
And always, always. I believe you come in the clouds. I believe you were here even now. In your presence, I know there's power and power to say. And I will tell of your wonders, you always will be God again and you were and you are you always will be God Yes.
You always will be God. That will tell of your wonders, sing of your grace. The God of creation knows me by name. The Lord is faithful. Yesterday, now,
Amen. The beginning part of that portion I just read from Isaiah fifty five six says, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he's near. Let the wicked one abandon his way and the unrighteous person his thoughts and let him return to the Lord for he will have compassion on him. Reach out to God.
Ask him to show you the way and he will. And to our God for he will abundantly pardon for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. Lord, would you give us your eyes to see? Would you give us our ears to understand?
And would you give us your heart, Lord? We want to bow ourselves in humility before your word and come away more like Christ. Amen.
