Prof. John Lennox leads us in a journey through the wondrous story of Scripture

hello everybody abraham lincoln once said i believe the bible is the best gift god has ever given to man all the good from the savior of the world has communicated to us through this book god's word permeates our culture it has inspired some of our greatest works of literature such as milton's paradise lost or john bunyan's pilgrim's progress in the visual arts the bible has inspired many of the greatest achievements the adoration of the magi by rubens the ceiling of the sistine chapel and the statue of david by michelangelo as for music think of box and matthew's passion and handles messiah the bible has inspired poetry songs and hymns for generations throughout history its own songs 185 of them and all have carried men and women through the best and worst of times and the greatest of trials they still do much of our law traces its roots in biblical teaching like the ten commandments copies of which are still to be found on the walls of old parish churches here in england where they were put to remind citizens of the importance of the bible to the maintenance of moral and social cohesion bible teaching has given us universities and institutions of education government and law it led to the setting up of hospitals hospices and medicare it generated social reforms the abolition of slavery the setting up of trades unions and legislation and human rights and the stewardship of the environment it has also given us modern science as c.s lewis said men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a legislator samuel taylor coleridge summed it up by saying for more than a thousand years the bible has gone hand in hand with civilization science law in short with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species always supporting and often leading the way what is it about the word of god that gives it such immense authority and power a hindu expert at world religions once said to the theologian and missionary to india leslie knew begin i can't understand why you missionaries present the bible to us in india as a book of religion it isn't a book of religion and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in india we don't need any more i find in your bible a unique interpretation of universal history the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race and therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history that is unique there is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it the famous philosopher emmanuel kant said that there are three main questions that concern humanity what can i know what must i do and what can i hope for the word of god answers all three its interpretation of history and of the human person is not only unique it is also true because it is god's interpretation mediated through human authors the word of god is truth that illuminates it gives us light on the meaning of life your word is a lamp to my fate and a light to my path the unfolding of your words gives light it imparts understanding to the simple said the psalmist not only that but the word has the power to transform lives in his famous prayer in john 17 for his disciples protection the lord jesus himself said sanctify them by the truth your word is truth the word also functions as a mighty sword it cuts through the stuff that clogs up our lives it gets to our hearts and consciousness and alerts us to what is in them so that if needs be we can repent of it and seek forgiveness for the word of god is alive and active says hebrews sharper than any double-edged sword it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart but we cannot leave it there we are all to take that sword into our hands and go out to fulfill christ's great commission to our rootless disorientated lost world says paul take the helmet of salvation of the sword of the spirit which is the word of god we won't do that you know unless we know that word and of confidence in it i have that confidence for the wonder of the word is that it gives us a story a big story into which our lives can fit and find the meaning purpose and fulfillment that all of us desire now science and i'm a scientist is very good at telling us what we're made of only the word of god tells us what we were made for that purpose is breathtaking of christ we read all things were created through him and for him that includes you and me first and foremost the bible is god's word about himself it reveals him as eternal personal powerful loving and unique unlike the pantheon of warring gods of the ancient world he is without rival he is the supreme lord of creation there is one and only one true god i see god's story in the bible as a powerful drama in seven acts it is the greatest story ever told so let's look at those acts the first of them begins with the mind-bending statement in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth in the beginning god when i got married over 50 years ago the minister gave sally and me those four words as a foundation for all of life's beginnings that they consciously involve god for god and his word are the only stable rock on which to build our lives for more than 50 years now that word has been a guiding light on our path god created the heavens and the earth the universe did not come to be through unguided natural processes god spoke the creative word that packed all the necessary energy and information to build a world it is explained to us dramatically as a sequence of speech acts each introduced by the phrase and god said the pinnacle of the sequence is reached when god said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so god created man in his own image in the image of god he created them male and female he created them the heavens declare god's glory but only humans are made in god's image jordan peterson regards this as the cornerstone of civilization that we neglected our peril it gives us a unique value and dignity and has left a huge legacy in our culture yet there is more the final and god said is this and god said to them he has endowed men and women with a wonderful capacity of relating to him through intelligible speech we can hear his word we ourselves conform words we can speak and even gloriously sing our words to him by contrast the atheist universe is deaf to our words and our singing it has nothing to say to us it is eternally dumb this biblical teaching about creation is not only facts to be believed it is a powerful message to be proclaimed and defended to a secular world the fact that we can do science and describe nature in the language of mathematics the fact that life involves a genetic code written in a chemical language and the fact that we can ourselves use words to communicate confirms that there is a divine intelligence the word behind it all god saw that his magnificent creation was good in the beginning god but god is also involved in the rest of the story in the second act of the biblical drama god commissioned adam and eve to act as his stewards of the world to develop and enjoy it and fellowship with him he told them that they were free to eat all of the trees in the garden except for one the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the day they ate of that tree they would die now that tells us that god had given us human creatures the marvelous freedom and ability to say yes or no i say marvelous it is a wonderful capacity since if we didn't have it we would be incapable not only of morality but of love and all that is valuable in human relationships we would be mere robots blindly obeying what we were programmed to do our lives without real responsibility or moral significance sadly this deterministic view is common in our world today particularly but alas not only among atheist thinkers it devalues humanity by reducing us to machines a very risky move since machines are expendable there was an enemy of god in the garden who misrepresented and attacked god's word by saying did god really say now because god's word is the most precious thing we possess it is precisely there for we also today will experience the fiercest attacks a lot of them directed against the authenticity and reliability of that word and the question did god really say soon becomes did god really do did god really create the universe did god really make human beings in his image did god really raise jesus from the dead will god really bring jesus back again just can't really expect us to believe all that stuff does god actually exist the enemy will do anything to shatter our confidence in the word and so we need to immerse ourselves in it to show ourselves approved to god the whitey serpent deceived the first humans into imagining that god did not want them to realize their full potential it said god knows that in the day you eat you will be as gods knowing good and evil human pride and desire motivated the use of their precious gift of freedom to disobey the word of god in an instant their world grew dark and threatening as sin rushed into it with all its devastating consequences too late they discovered that the knowledge of good and evil gained in that way was not the kind of knowledge you wanted at all it wrecked their fellowship of god damaged the whole of creation and eventually led to death i am aware that this narrative is fiercely resisted in our culture by those who think that morality is subjective and relative an attitude that at the end may lead not a freedom but totalitarian catastrophe in the meantime so goes the big story of the bible the river of humanity spread through the earth with sparks of light here and there but there was a steady collapse into violence idolatry and polytheism humanity lost the concept of the one true god and god judged the world that had rejected him by a flood only righteous noah and his family were saved in the ark since the damage was originally done by disobedience to god's word the way back to god is going to involve learning to trust and obey that word and so we come to act three you should be as god said the serpent of the first act the third act now picks up that idea by telling us about a group of engineers in mesopotamia trying to use their technology to build a tower to heaven that ancient desire is being revived today by people like israeli historian yuval noah harari in his best seller homo deus the man who is a god he argues that we can solve the problem of physical death we can upgrade humans by biological engineering and artificial intelligence we can turn them into gods the word of god tells us that this project is doomed just as the babel project failed to reach god so also will harare's project fail to make gods in any

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Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020