IN THESE TROUBLE-FILLED END OF DAYS--ARE YOU UNDERSTANDING, OBEYING, EXPLAINING & LIVING THE BIBLE?

how to interpret the bible correctly we have the scriptures uh they are in most the languages of the world and soon to be in the rest but just because people have the bible they can come up with the craziest things from it and it's because it's not enough to just have the words what we need to know is how to interpret the bible correctly the the interpretation of the scriptures jesus was very much into as he talked with the religious leaders of his day and the apostle paul who was teaching a whole generation of bible teachers said that you are to rightly divide the scriptures and as he taught timothy he taught him about preaching and about correctly interpreting the scriptures so this evening we're looking at the fifth and and what the others are and and i want you to understand this when you're reading the bible it's much like being alive in 2013. if i just said um oh and i can't use this illustration because i am challenged in sports but whatever the mascot is for the michigan team whether it was state or u of m that beat the new york team in whatever game baseball or whatever it was this weekend if i would have known the mascots was it michigan state or the other one u of m or michigan state okay wolverines so right so if i was talking to you and i said well the wolverines beat the spartans either you would take that literally and you would look up a a forest creature with sharp teeth and a greek citizen of you know roman and and pre-roman times and you would think if you're reading in the bible that is a wolverine bd spartan you could either literally follow those two words or you could know the historic context and that in 2013 wolverines were people that lived in ann arbor and spartans where people lived in east lansing and those were mascots that is an example of interpreting correctly now in i know it's silly and it's sports and everything else but to correctly interpret the scriptures there are laws we call it the the historic grammatical literal interpretation what what does that mean to to rightly divide the word of god to correctly interpret the scriptures so that you don't put into them meaning see that's the danger we have today there are two two methods of working with the bible the they're both greek words the first is isogetical and the second is exegetical ice means into so someone comes to the bible the word of god and they already know what they want it to say and all they do is find verses usually detached and from all different versions of the bible so that they can prove their point and that's called isogetical that is reading into the text whatever you want it to say by the way most cults usually have some verses in their cultic materials and many cults have things like from ecclesiastes because you can get almost anything out of ecclesiastes if you don't understand where it fits and what is going on but exegetical is that you get out of the scriptures what what you have is you're you're expounding what is in the scriptures and you're pulling it out and so biblical interpretations that's proper is not isagenical it's exegetical you start with the word and you pull out of it what the word of god is saying the truth now how do you do that well you you look at the places where remember everything happens somewhere now there you just learned one of the profound truths of biblical archaeology everything happened somewhere and everything happened what sometime see that's that's the two pillars i mean things don't just happen in a vacuum i mean unless it's a light bulb or something i'm talking about human human events happened in places and happened in time and once you you find that ancient place all of a sudden you can assemble this whole concept of biblical geography which we've seen in months past and then you can start forming as i shared a few weeks ago when we were going through the old testament history last july there was a whole bunch of us from calvary that were standing between um the santa scala where luther called up on his knees you know begging for god's forgiveness in rome and on the other side is the lateran where the pope originally used to be seated and between those two places is this looking like the washington monument obelisk which just happens to have been manufactured in egypt in the time period between 1406 and 1446 bc now that is what every archaeologist and even wikipedia says and so you can go to rome and you can sit and you can look at where luther crawled on his knees and you can look at where the pope sits ex cathedra and speaks without any error within romanism and you can look at this obelisk that you know has a historic date on it and you can just look at it and think why did they move a washington monument to rome or you could know enough of biblical history to know that that is exactly 1446 when the exodus occurred and so the pharaoh that built the obelisk that is now standing in front of the lateran and on the other side of the road from the scala that obelisk was made by the man who woke up to his horror when his firstborn son was killed by the death angel during the night and you know it's interesting if you read britannica or wikipedia or national geographic about the one that made that obelisk you know what it says it's interesting in history it's one of the few pharaohs whose whose oldest son did not succeed him but died prematurely i mean that's in history now you know from the book of exodus you know what happened to his son in 1446 and so that's one of the amazing things when you interpret the scriptures if you know from archaeology you know the chronology the bible gives you know where it says it happened you can piece together old testament history well tonight we're in the fifth one how does new testament history impact our understanding of the gospel and so that's what we're looking at this evening the new testament has 27 books that were written during the first century now what's interesting is that the old testament uh was written moses uh probably sometime around the exodus began writing and the old testament writers go all the way through uh to you know malachi somewhere in here so for almost a thousand and ten or eleven years the old testament was written over that time period but the new testament differently was the the first book probably that was written was written sometime you know around 45 a.d and it's the little epistle by the pastor of the first church the real first church you know i love it how you know the first the second to third the fourth wherever you drive all over but the real first church was the first church in jerusalem and it was the church that was born at pentecost and jesus christ earthly brother pastored that church and wrote a letter to them and the people that were scattered and his name was james and it's the epistle of james and that's probably the first epistle written and the second one is close after somewhere 50 51 is when uh paul wrote to the thessalonians now there's some dispute that says maybe galatians was in here but probably not but it depends on whether it's written to the north galatians or the south galatians but probably the the first epistle of paul is first and second thessalonians and so those are when the writing of the new testament began about 15 years after so christ was crucified in 30 and about 45 a.d james writes and the writing goes all the way through sometime around 95 96 which is when john wrote revelation sometime during his exile to patmos by domitian so the new testament is only written over about a 50-year period of time but those 27 books were written during a very specific time in history the first century now you say how does that impact things well it's kind of like wolverines and the spartans all of a sudden when paul says that that i [Music] am wanting to be a fellow struggler with you in his epistles he describes the christian life as assune that means with aganizomai all of a sudden that word agonizimi you start saying wow why did paul tell those people in that 50-year period he was writing in those believers that he wanted to be a fellow or a with struggler well all of a sudden you realize that every roman town had what we call a stadium they called it an agon a-g-o-n and agon is a place of agony where people ran until they dropped and they were in these races and everybody would sit and watch them and paul said the christian life is a whole bunch of us agonizing together running toward jesus christ well all of a sudden that word synagogue needs my which we would have trouble understanding what he's talking about he's talking about an athletic event a race and that's what new testament gospel history does it takes the words from being just words wolverine spartan animal greek and you just you know you're trying to figure out how to make that fit in the sentence to all of a sudden you see the context for the words and that that brings us back to this one which we'll see in the future biblical languages are an incredible tool to interpretation now anybody a child a slave an uneducated first century poor person understood what was being said but the fullness of the implications only come to us when we realize the context the context is king and the context has to do with what was going on in history what it's built upon where which helps you understand the illusions and metaphors and exactly what the time period was like and so this evening let me just show you something that's well you saw this last month remember if if we looked at uh human history the way god does this is what god presents you don't have to agree with it but this is what i should say this is what the bible presents okay the bible presents that about 4 000 years ago adam was created by god and a thousand years later god totally exterminated planet earth with a flood and he's going to exterminate it again with fire at the end but this time he did it with water and a thousand years after the extermination god picked a man to start a nation that were becoming the promised people and their greatest king was a thousand years these are all thousand-year steps in history from the garden of eden to the flood to er the chaldees which last week they just found a monumental structure you know now that babylon is or now that iraq we've spent a few trillion to liberate them they're excavating the whole country and uh they're doing a lot of archaeology and and er of the keldes uh the hometown of abraham happens to be in iraq whatever biblical sites are in iraq are in turkey right ken ken wiest is with us tonight there are more biblical sites in turkey than there are in israel there are more roman sites in turkey than there are in italy and there are more greek sites in turkey than there are in greece what a place to live but they just found a monumental structure in ur last week in iraq which shows everything that the bible was talking about with abraham how how cosmopolitan how advanced they were how idolatrous they were and how commercialized they were and how they traveled and everything else just fascinating so thousand years thousand years thousand years thousand years david was a thousand years before christ most people have trouble with history just think of a shifter and if if if neutral the center you know the the place that's safe where you're not going to go forward or backward is christ you go back a thousand years one click is david two clicks is abraham three is noah and all the way as far back as you can go is adam and then if you go forward it's interesting there are few notable things other than the vikings the monks and bernard of clairvaux a thousand years after christ here we are today two clicks after christ and whenever the lord comes back we know there's a thousand-year time period after that so using that metaphor for history let's look at this little period right here this this is the birth of the church this is christ um if this is 500 you know a.d and a thousand is like this if this is zero then the the church is right here in the first century after the birth of christ and the whole bible is in an only 50-year period of time basically you could look at it like this jesus was and now he really is zero you know he's zero but they changed the calendar you know several times the calendar has changed there's the gregorian calendar that the the whole you know and there's before that the julian calendar in the time of julius caesar's but pope gregory changed the calendar so we've had many calendar fixes because the whole world was on different calendars and everything so jesus was probably born about 4 bc why do we know that because he was born while herod was still alive and herod died between 4 and 6 bc so jesus had to be born while herod was still alive and he was crucified about the year a.d 30. so there's jesus now jesus was born of the virgin mary with no help from joseph but joseph and mary did marry and have children they had seven children to be exact that the bible chronicles here is their oldest son james pastor the first church born sometime after christ church history tells us that he was killed in jerusalem being thrown off the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple by the enraged leadership of the temple because he fearlessly preached like the gospel i mean like the book of james you ever read the book of james there are 108 verses and there are about 54 imperatives i mean almost every other verse is a command he was very to the point and he was the pastor of the first church and you find him in the first church council in acts 15 but they threw him off the pinnacle of the temple in 62 a.d in fact what's interesting is when the romans destroyed the temple and i can show you a picture of it they pushed off the pinnacle was a marked spot it was the highest point and it was actually like this it was this corner of the temple and a priest would stand and they had a little place you'd step up on and he would blow this long trumpet and would announce like the beginning of the sabbath and the beginning of you know passover or whatever well they took him up there and threw him off from there down and what's so interesting is that you can actually stand on that spot it's always a i love studying the book of james and i like going to that spot and thinking that's where he met the lord but he happened to write the first new testament book so there's book 1 of the 27 jude another brother of christ four are named and sisters at least two sisters so that makes a family of seven jude was born after james you know a year or two so about three but he lived until in about 80 a.d and he wrote the epistle that bears his name so there's another book matthew jesus friend from capernaum a tax collector born about the same period of time dies somewhere while paul is uh you know all the apostles were horrifically killed and martyred and it's a whole study of where they went and how far they spread with the gospel but before he died he wrote the first gospel matthew peter who again is from the same time period lived on the sea of galilee probably either paul and peter were killed somewhere between 64 and 67. we know that because nero is gone by 68 and they are martyred before nero commits suicide so it kind of gives us a hard number there's an early and a late date it doesn't matter they were killed in the mid 60s but peter wrote two epistles and then the gospel by mark the second of the gospels was written by a close associate of his john mark and and john mark remember paul got rid of him because he was a quitter and so peter gave him a second after barnabas recovered him peter gives him a second chance and by the way paul takes him back later but peter church history tells us that at the end of his life john mark fearlessly stuck with peter and wrote down his eyewitness account so when you read matthew's account you're reading a cpa version of the gospel he groups everything together if you read matthew he puts all the miracles together and he puts all the parables together he puts all the mysteries together it's not chronological it's the way an accountant would put everything in columns mark mark has endless repetitions of the greek word kai which means and and and he just it's peter peter's talking as fast as he can he can still see it he's saying and jesus did that and jesus did that and then he went over there and then he crossed the sea and then the demons came out man you should have seen that and it looks like a shooting script actually mark has the most events but it's the shortest because peter just hardly takes a breath so there's three more of the books the new testament under the auspices you notice that that james and jude were directly associated with christ matthew one of the disciples peter one of the disciples who oversees mark paul one of the apostles chosen by christ who writes and i put 14 usually it's 13 but i had to put hebrews somewhere and i'm not really stuck on paul writing hebrews except for this the term the just shall live by faith only occurs three times in the new testament and the the first time it occurs is in romans and the second time it occurs it is in hebrews and the third time it occurs it is in galatians and what what it says is roman tells who the just are hebrews tells what faith is and the the book of galatians tells how you're supposed to live and it's interesting that if there's a signature there the just shall live by faith quoting from uh the old testament it looks like the apostle paul is a good candidate for hebrews because he defines the just in romans what faith is in hebrews and how we then should live in galatians so it doesn't matter who wrote hebrews god inspired it but to get all the the books of the bible down paul uh oversaw 13 inspired possibly wrote a 14th his traveling companion luke his physician to be exact was under his oversight as luke would come and go from the book of acts journeys to interview people and write and he wrote what is most likely and i want you to think about this paul spent so much of his time in trouble and at the end he had to come and appear before nero and so you don't just show up in the courts of the greatest man on earth in power he has banks of lawyers and all because rome was run very legally and so paul was in line to appeal to caesar who had all these lawyers that advised him what to do but they didn't just let you show up you had to send your legal brief you had to send your case now think about it traveling with him was one of the most amazing writers of the day luke's gospel is beautiful the the language of it but if you look at luke and acts you find that roman soldiers are never criticized roman so the soldiers are not criticized the rulers are all shown in a favorable light that they even though they beat up paul they did it according to the books and they were good and this this little set of books most likely was the documents that accompanied paul to rome and were given to this palace of lawyers and they digested it and then while nero was doing his thing you know whatever he did they said okay the next guy that's coming it says that this guy from galilee uh who did all these things and one of our guys uh was governor then and he verified you know that he did these things but we killed him but then this guy kept going and he traveled the whole roman empire and he went to every one of our major cities and as far as we can tell he never did anything bad he just was religious and so nero before paul faced nero probably nero got a synopsis of luke and x that's the best way we can understand how paul would have been presented because something some document had to come in front of him and most likely that's why luke and acts are made in such a way and there are a lot of other reasons for this but they actually if you took john out luke and acts fit perfectly because it's a continuation of the same story and and because luke is the third gospel john's the fourth it's between the two but if you picked it up they would just link nicely so paul and peter both uh were executed uh in fact you know if i had enough time i could show you right where peter was executed because there's a marker for it and it was nero's circus nero had a circus now not with clowns and and that a circus was a a chariot racing horse racing place and he put it you know rome is divided by the tiber river and most of the seven hills of rome are here on this side of the tiber river but over here was a big enough space that nero could put this circus and right in the center he put one of those they all liked those obelisks from they were stealing them from egypt so he put one of those right in the middle and guess what it's still there by the way the obelisk only what is all the way around it now is the vatican and so you actually if you ever go to the vatican to saint peter's the obelisk in the center that michelangelo designed marks the spot where paul was crucified uh i mean beheaded outside the city they took him outside the city on the other side of tiber because he was a citizen and they beheaded him and we're not sure where um you know uh peter also the roman catholics say that that uh he was also uh crucified probably in that circus so it's very possible that outside the city both of them but it doesn't matter it's just very interesting that they both died very close together at the same time then the last of the apostles he was very young probably younger you notice he's born after all the rest you know it's progressing this way probably 80 10 john was born that means that that he may have been a teenager during some of his discipling being discipled by christ but he lives over 88 years he writes three epistles a gospel and the book of revelation and if you're adding up there are all the books the new testament all written within the actual writing of them is within about a 50-year period of time um but real quickly in in the few minutes we have left there are two huge events that shaped the new testament gospel history the first is a person and the second is an empire the person was alexander and the empire uh is the roman empire and basically this is what alexander did and just to give you uh this is where alexander was from let's see if i can get something lighter here this is macedonia his dad happened to be the king philip of macedon and so alexander was from macedonia you ever heard of the macedonian call and vision and all that that's part of greece alexander built on what his father did and in rapid succession uh and you know and this is modern day greece he just shot into uh into turkey came down conquered the holy land got egypt went on and went into the heart of parthia and went all the way to india and just more rapid than anyone has ever conquered before in his short little about ten year from when he was 23 to 33 he did all this stuff conquered the world and he actually dies drunk he was in a drinking party there's ectobanna he is by the tigris and euphrates in babylon having a drinking party with his generals and they had this great big one or two gallon thing and they were all who can outdo each other and he drank the thing and went into a fever and got so violently sick that he history tells us that he crawled on his stomach trying to drown himself in the river because gods don't die you know and he was a god and his wife dragged him back and put him in bed good wife you know and he died in bed but when he died his generals took over and basically what's amazing about and i said that the whole new testament is influenced by what alexander did it's because when he swept through here that's the holy land he didn't destroy jerusalem he heard that there was a prophecy about him and the high priest came out and shared and read to him from daniel's prophecy which talks about alexander coming and so alexander spared the holy land jerusalem and when he died basically one of his generals took this area one of his generals took this area one of his generals took this area and the other one took that area and the four divisions of his empire became the the backdrop for the inner testamental period between malachi and matthew but what they did in all these pink areas they made there be one language and it was koine greek and koine became kind of like english has become today it was the universal language and it went far beyond alexander's empire it began to be the language of commerce of travel and of communication the second thing they did is they they they did what is called hellenization they hellenized uh the world and one of the things that hellenization was is they enculturated the world they they started systematic training of language and training schools and they started the return and i think i can illustrate this they did the greek language uh which was very important if galatians 4 verses 4 and 5 say that god sent christ in the fullness of time in the fullness of time god sent forth his son made of a woman made under the law to redeem those that are under the law what is the fullness of time one element is it's the first time since the tower of babel where the majority of the people alive spoke the same language what a time to get the gospel out when it can go and be understood but a second thing that they did is this architecture that began to develop cities unparalleled and i'll just show you what i mean by this because alexander the great hellenized the ancient world and he spread greek culture from greece to india and you know what's right between greece and india the holy land and so it's interesting how much this impacted now remember where we are we're about right there uh 300 bc so here is the cross and the church in christ and right in here is where alexander uh would have lived and so it's 300 years before christ but look look what's going on uh this should ring a bell decapolis that's in the new testament garrosa is also in the new testament or garrison's there are many different ways it comes in but i want to show you what alexander did to the new testament world of the gospel this is what alexander did look at the i mean this is earthquaked and ravaged and people have pillaged and plundered it's still unbelievable the symmetry of greek architecture and the these these columns are going down one of his signatures alexander wanted cities to have a north south and an east-west bisection of the city in order to i mean he was a master he says if we have everybody coming and crossing he said at the center which most often where they met was called by different terms the forum you've all heard of the forum the agura or you might have in in the gospels it says that when jesus was traveling that they laid the people down in the marketplaces now you might think of the flea market you know out you know that's out wherever it is that i go to in kalamazoo or the farmer's market no no this is where they were laying the people look at what these places look like this is the marketplace right here um right here this thing right in the center of all those columns and what you see heading off from the marketplace going right here is the main north south road of town and so that if you came to that spot you would make sure that you would run into everyone and everything that's going on you'd hear the news and you would share the news and it became a centralized method of communication so what what that does the greek you've probably heard it called the greco-roman world the romans by brute force got the rest of the world under what alexander didn't get they got the rest and they went all the way to britain and north africa where he didn't conquer and then they took over all his stuff and extended it and they allowed this language of koine greek and this cultural centerpiece with the main focus of the town being in this marketplace with the cardo and the dukemanas the crossroads coming this is where paul would come and he would preach in one place now i'll show you because i'll never this is another view of this is uh in modern day jordan if you've ever wondered what jordan looks like the hashemite kingdom of jordan in fact i'm a member of the board of the jordan theological seminary that's just down from this in amman and it's it's an amazing repository of biblical uh sites but this is the marketplace and this is the cardo going off of it but what's amazing is and you can't see it very well these are kind of washed out pictures but um usually by that cross piece they put the largest temple in the in the city to zeus or whatever and i'll show you some of the columns of it but this is a close-up and you can imagine people selling their stuff and and um traveling up and down these oh here's the temple and there i circled for you right here the people there are some people and there are people standing right there they're not even as high as my little markers so you can if that's six feet so those things are at least 30 feet high probably a lot a lot taller than that but that's just the entry you notice that there's steps in another level and more beyond that this is the temple at the at the confluence of the roads to artemis and and what the reason i bring that up is that the hellenization of the world made communication and made culture and made architecture all open for the gospel to come but it also made sharing the gospel very difficult because almost everyone but the christians were devout i mean we have a little pluralism in america you know we have hindus and muslims and roman catholics and baptists and jehovah's witnesses and mormons and they followed one god the whole town and so when paul would come and i'm standing in the marketplace with that gigantic temple looming down on us and said that's not true the living and true god created the heavens and earth they would beat him up and and you know get him in the nearest jail and it was a real lesson that you didn't associate with those christians unless you meant business because people were pretty serious in their in their worship of the false gods uh there's a lot of stuff they have baths and all kinds of stuff but now let's get into places jesus was now jesus was near that place but we're not sure that he ever actually went into that city because it's um deep in the dakotas this city is just within a day's ambling of capernaum and it's even closer to nazareth and it's the second city of the decapolis it's called bechan and it's actually named in matthew 4 25 as one of the cities of the decapolis and it's the one that was in in israel and the reason i have the timeline for you here is that in one thousand bc that city had a had a different name it was called schizophrenic because it's where the scythians the russians came all the way down but it was where saul's body was hung a thousand years before christ so this city had been around for a thousand years before christ's time and it was around for 800 years after christ but the great earthquake of 7 750 something totally wiped out in 1800 year history but let me show you how impressive uh this is the two sections this is the part saul was in up here this is the part that down in the roman section that jesus would have seen in the distance you can see the cardo that's the cardo you can see the theater up here uh this whole area is the forum of this city these aren't very good pictures this is the cardo uh if if you can tell from looking at it it's it's um raised in the center because there's a center drain and there's storm sewers this was sewer sewer and there was runoff on the side so they actually had indoor plumbing with sewers that ran out of town plus storm water runoff with all their nice big columns another view of you know the main drag there why i have this one for you is you can't see it very well but right there is the largest temple in town and this is the cardo and this is the ducomanus this is where they crossed and they put the biggest temple in town right there and so it was uh it was quite it was quite a commitment to publicly come to the marketplace and point at christ in the shadow of those temples this is a um amphitheater and and the batshan amphitheater actually saw christians were actually martyred in that amphitheater when the romans destroyed the city of jerusalem in the years that followed they began the whole what you read about in the coliseum you know the whole round up the christians and kill them and many were many hundreds were killed here of the early believers well we go from the greek influence to the roman influence and the roman influence on the new testament world was the legionnaires being everywhere present brought peace and security and peace and security multiplies so that in the time of the apostle paul you could actually go down to a you know a boating company and say hey i'd like to buy passage to spain they go okay it'd be this much and you could you could go from britain and spain to india and into the arabian peninsula all the way up to what we would call the steps of russia and you could be on a roman road and you could know the time schedule and the way the roman roads worked back then that along the road they had a place to water your horse you know every however far you have to go on your horse and there was a place for you to eat and refresh yourself and then after a couple of watering holes and a couple refreshments you could go to an inn and they had maps where it would say to go from the watering hole to the refreshing place you know is six hours and to go the next watering hall is six hours and if you want to travel to the end it's that far and that's how advanced the spread of the roman empire was so that when paul wrote a letter to the philippians that letter could go from his prison wherever he was either in rome or in caesarea and could go to philippi and he knew how long it would take and what road they could go on and that's how advanced because the roman roads were primarily made by the legionnaires as they conquered so the backdrop for all of these these elements of how we got the new testament all 27 of our epistles were written within this greek language greek culture marketplace in the center uh roman peace and safety and roman law kind of world and that brings metaphors that that only you could understand with that for example the word for redemption you know in whom we have redemption even the forgiveness of our sins becomes a word right out of the roman period x ah garadzo is what redemption is and and what is x means out of what is agura it's the marketplace what is x agarazzu mean you would go to the marketplace to buy a slave and so redeeming a slave from slavery became the word jesus picked to describe through the apostle paul our redemption and it all of a sudden takes on a different meaning than redeeming a bottle and getting a dime for it all of a sudden you're talking about a human it was just an object that was owned by a master they had no rights and a new master comes and purchases them and liberates them that's what the gospel says our original master was the devil and he treated us like you know we're just nothing but someone died in our place to pay the price of our redemption and because of our sins not because the devil need to be paid but to pay the the price of righteousness of god's righteousness wrath assuaded by the blood of christ and that picture of being bought out of the slave market of sin is something paul takes from this backdrop this empire in which we live and uh more of that will come when we're uh talking about um the the languages the roman roads i already mentioned that uh just a few other roman things is really fascinating this is not a lego thing this is herod's palace this is an example of what the greek roman world did king herod built this thing this whole bottom here this long object all the way over to there and all this is archaeologically we kind of reconstructed in a model form of what the palace in jerusalem this is where herod was living when a group of men called the magi or we know them as the what the wise men they came to the front gate looking for a king i mean where would you go but to a palace this palace had sleeping quarters for 600 people he could have 600 guests over i mean you ever have you know a musical team and there's six of them how would you like to have 600 that's how big his palace was and he had i mean this is just very lightly done but according to josephus some of the amazing impressive elements that herod built into this but the magi came here looking for a king a king lived there the king wasn't that king he was a baby five miles south but this is where they came but after herod died guess who moves in here pilate i mean wouldn't you pick the biggest house if you're the roman who ruled the world and this is the first stop of where jesus was brought as he was hastily brought in the middle of the night to see herod and herod i mean to see a pilot and pilate says hey we'll have to convene and he moves to his other place which is just over here so jesus probably came here then was shuttled from here over to where uh herod's uh grandson was who wanted to see jesus so jesus was brought here from caiaphas house over there to this palace up to herod and then he goes on to what's called the antonian fortress another view of it it's an impressive structure here's the antonian fortress again another roman influence this is a model of the place right here where these towers are uh where jesus was tried by herod where herod washed his hands where the pi where the soldiers stripped off his clothes scourged him put the crown of thorns on him and gave him the cross to bear now what's interesting is this is the temple this is the holy of holies right there look at that how close they are jesus who was the god that was being worshipped or should have been being worshiped there was rejected and scorned and mocked and scourged and then he carries his cross from here and down this road which we call today all of this today is inside the city and they call that the via dolorosa by the way this is where the pool with five porches is right there it's called the pool bethesda and and that's where uh in chapter five of john's gospel the man was laying there and and uh jesus uh um healed him and it's also where they where the sheep were brought in on the day of passover this is what it looks like at night and we're on time we ran out so uh the the message of bible interpretation is that everything in the bible happened somewhere and it happened not only in a geographic place but it happened inside of a culture which truly like wolverines and spartans you can understand what those two words mean but if you understand within the time period which it was spoken and the context and the culture all of a sudden you don't think of an animal in the woods and a greek you think of two teams and that's one of the principles the principle of new testament gospel history that helps us understand the bible now i have a one minute transition i'm going to turn over to jeff in in a minute but we're going to roll why don't we all stand i've been standing the whole time i feel great but some of you are fading but tonight right after the service by now are going to start uh driving to chicago and then in the morning we're flying out 14 hours to beijing which has got the notoriety of being the most polluted city right now atmosphere in the world and it's jeff said that in times past it was equivalent to smoking a pack a day that's how thick the the air is but also we're in shanghai uh two or three times which also has the h7n9 virus right now which has already killed 20 people so bonnie and i i was going to wear my mask tonight but i didn't want to you know it messed my hair up but what i'm going to do is now that you've stood you can sit down for four minutes and instead of me blathering on because i can talk so much i sat down and gave a testimony of why we're going on this trip and my kids recorded it and they put pictures with it so they illustrated my testimony and when that's done jeff you can take over this april bonnie and i are continuing to follow the lord's call on our lives we again are blessed to serve a group of missionaries church planters and other believers that we've already taught god's word to only not in person but remotely we're going to see and nurture people on the other side of the earth that have become a part of calvary's wider ministry they join us listening watching reading and learning through online media it's my supreme joy to fulfill god's calling to expositionally teach god's word here at calvary with state of the art audio and video capabilities but that privilege has also laid a great burden on my heart we at calvary experience what only six percent of the world's population could ever experience an astounding 94 of the world may never get to sit under the teaching of god's word from a seminary trained pastor and for one who gets to spend the majority of his week in prayerful study and shepherding of christ's flock because they're too remote too poor or they live in those closed cities and villages of the world where no such opportunity exists for the past 35 years i have been fully supported by the prayers and resources of god's people in order to invest the vast majority of my week in shepherding god's people by sifting through every part of god's word by asking his spirit to illumine his word and to empower the communication of his truth that support and prayer produces recorded audio and video bible lesson as well as many pages of expositional bible studies and these teaching bible resources are prepared here in my study and taught every week from calgary's pulpit but they're now accessible free of charge online 24 hours a day seven days a week year round now think of what that means to all of us here at calvary the population of the earth just passed seven billion immortal souls two and a half billion of those are online as of this month never in history has it been possible for us through this local church ministry to touch so many people with the gospel of christ in so many closed unreachable and remote places our mission with global shepherding partners is to take these life-changing truths of god's word that are taught right here at calvary and make them accessible to people from closed nations then these partners with us in the gospel return and serve their local body of believers in places where no missionary could ever go this april we are going and meeting with the first of four specially selected groups of missionaries and now they're gathering to receive face-to-face shepherding and mentoring and to be trained further and deeper in biblical ministry by this targeted on-site training over the past four years the messages from our sanctuary at calvary have been read and listened to watched and understood by these people that represent 185 countries around the world the world is now available to calvary's ministry online our hearts are deeply drawn to minister to these special servants of god especially the ones who are willing and able to be front line missionaries in the 10 40 window that's why we also have accepted more invitations over the next three years from training centers like this one for global partners in east asia in the middle east in southeastern europe in australia and in africa we're partnering with these training centers to launch called and gifted nationals who are preparing to serve in some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth our challenge as a church is to multiply that bible teaching and training to the widest extent we're going to do our part we're sent out on this short term mission trip we want to make christ known with you in every dim and dark corner of the globe please pray as we go for the lord to be magnified through the ministry for his servants to be mobilized and that all of us together can be used for his glory thank you john that was excellent i'd like to ask is bonnie here i'd like to ask the two of you to come if you would i think if you if you caught two pieces of that and john i'm going to ask you eventually john and bonnie i'm going to ask if you'll stand about midway in the center aisle here so that we can be praying for you there's two key things there as john and bonnie go in terms of the ministry that they're doing the first is that they're going to be training trainers and they're going to be pouring into the lives of men and women from around the world they're not north american workers primarily they're primarily workers from around the world nationals from around the world who have been called into ministry and john and bonnie have the opportunity to minister into their lives that they might be multiplied into these places that are so difficult to get into but god has placed these workers there and that that's the model of the kind of thing we long to see happen with each of our partners that we're seeing lives multiplied the second thing that i know is on their heart is that is that we as a congregation see this not simply as something that john and bonnie go off and do but that they're doing this ministry because god has strategically placed them here at calvary and through the ministry here has already begun to touch those places and we're a part of that and they want us to be a part of that through our prayers we're already a part of that in so many ways but to see that we are sending them out from from calvary and the joy that we have of doing that and i believe that most of you if you haven't received it these are uh bulletin inserts that you can you can pick up from any of the bulletins and there's still plenty out back pick these up and be praying for john and bonnie through this and as is typical john has a lot of uh facts and figures there for you how many airplanes they'll be on not quite how many meals they'll be eating on those airplanes but almost everything else but there's tremendous information for you to be praying for them as they're out from april 8th to april 23. and right now i'd like us to be praying and sending them out and you know how we do this and i've placed them right there so those of you that are already in the center you're in a good place but i'd like us to gather around and you don't have to leave this space in front empty the reason they're in the middle and john and bonnie i might even ask you to face each other because people are much more comfortable coming up to your side into your back instead of to the front i've watched people do this and you guys can be praying for each other that way too so if y'all would just stand up and move close to john and bonnie place your hands on them and then of course if you can't get to john and bonnie just come in as close as you can and as we're coming together i know that their ministry is powerless apart from the work of the holy spirit and our part can be as great as anyone else's part as we continue to intercede for them as they travel that the holy spirit would work in power through them so again i want to encourage you not to set this this sheet aside but as we do for each of the teams we send out continue to pray for them and i think we're about in place so let's just come before the lord now father as we have laid our hands on john and bonnie this is symbolic lord of our support as we reach out and uphold them with our prayers but father our prayers if they're just spoken into the into the emptiness mean nothing what makes our prayers sufficient and significant is that you receive them you have invited us to come boldly to the throne of grace and bring our needs and our needs now have to do with our pastor and his wife as you are thrusting them out into a ministry and lord we bring them before you and we ask in the name of jesus that you would be at work in power in and through them in the next several weeks father that you would be as as they teach the word as they meet one on one with with uh john with the brothers bonnie with the sisters and together as they meet with couples as john speaks in in teaching locations and in preaching locations father we ask that your spirit would go before and pray prepare hearts father that you would work in power through them that our brothers and sisters from so many nations would be encouraged and equipped for ministry father that they would go back with just one more piece of equipment for them to serve with lord that they would not only be encouraged in their understanding of the word but in their knowledge of you and you would strengthen them lord that they might minister to the people back in the places that each of these workers come from father we commit to you the details of john and bonnie's travel lord it's our hearts desire that the connections be made easily that luggage actually arrives we want to especially pray for the translated materials that i believe have gone ahead some of what they're carrying lord that the materials would receive to be be received by the students in proper time father that you would maintain john and bonnie's health that they would not be stopped because of weakness physical weakness in their teaching but father even as we bring each one of these before you more than that we pray that you would be preparing their hearts that whatever you bring into their lives they would be responsive to you and allow you to work through them through whatever means that you choose to work through whatever schedules you choose to work through whichever groups they end up with regardless of what the plans are father that they would allow you to work in power through them lord as we send them out would you confirm in each one of our hearts the need to continue to pray for them and uplift them even as you can con lord even as you convince us to be in prayer for our so many other of our partners around the world father would we be faithful to pray for john and bonnie these days we thank you and we praise you that you allow us to have a part in this ministry and we do ask the lord jesus who said upon this rock i will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it lord we pray that you would continue to build your church around the world for your glory and it's in jesus name we pray amen [Music] you

Channel: DTBM

Views: 27,883

Rating: 4.9315314 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, God, Jesus, Christian, teaching, biblical, teach, sermon, trinity, church, lesson, traditional, truth, true, divine, theology, freedom, guilt, testament, pure, interpret, spirit, holy, John, Barnett, christ, father, heaven, hell, doctrine, doctrinal, sinful, forgive, forgiveness, history, teachings, chapters, verses, discover, the book, ministries, dtbm, Dr. Barnett, controversial, repent, helpful, sin, the, book, dr, john, doctor, barnett, training, videos, series, resources, savior, god, jesus, holy land, pilgrimage, spiritual renewal

Id: yLgREGeQ_yM

Length: 62min 49sec (3769 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021