Walk Through the Bible

Text for Sermon: I Timothy 1:1-4, 15-17; 2:5-6; 3:14-15; 4:12, 16; 6:11-12

Timothy

In Acts 16 we read about Paul’s second missionary journey through Asia Minor, south central Turkey.

Acts 16:1-4 Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. 2 He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. 3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they went on their way through the cities.

From II Timothy we learn of his upbringing.

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Text for Sermon: II Thessalonians 1:1-4, 6-7, 10-12; 2:13-15; 3:11-13

Introduction.

The last shall be first.

We have come to the last of Paul’s nine letters to churches in the NT.  But it is one of his very first.  Since II Thessalonians deals with the same issues as his first letter to the Thessalonians, it was probably written soon after the first which would make them Paul’s two very earliest writings.

It truly is remarkable that we have these two-thousand-year-old documents so well preserved by the Holy Spirit.  There are very few complete and well-preserved documents of any other secular writings from this time in ancient history.

The New Testament is unique among ancient literature.  There are over 25,000 surviving ancient copies and fragments of manuscripts.  On other ancient literature comes even close.

God is at work here preserving and protecting His Word.  This is His gift to His Church.  This is the trustworthy, eternally true, unchanging truth of the living God.  We should not neglect so great a gift.

Paul is the writer, but the author is the Holy Spirit, which is why we still read it today to our benefit.

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Text for Sermon: 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 3:5-7; 4:1-4; 5:1-2; 5:8; 5:15-18

Introduction.

I have mentioned before that the letters of Paul are arranged in the NT by length, from Romans down to II Thessalonians, and then the three short personal or pastoral epistles at the end.  That is why we have I Timothy after II Thessalonians, even though I Timothy is longer than II Thessalonians.

One thing that gets obscured by arranging the letters in this way is a sense of the flow of Paul’s missionary journeys, of what comes first and then second.

Something we have not spotlighted as we talk about Paul’s letters and the other books of the NT is how historical they are.  They can all be located in time and space and history.  The places are real places you can still visit.  The names are real names of real people, some of whom are identified in secular histories.

The events of the Bible did not take place “once upon a time” or “long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” They happened in this world, in recorded history.  Christianity isn’t “true” in an abstract sense.  King David was a real ancient warrior king.  Jesus turned water into real wine, not just a spiritual metaphor.  Lazarus was a real dead body that came back to real life.  Christianity is a historical reality, with a beginning in Israel.

The core truth of Christianity is not built on abstract truisms or pieties, but history.  It names a specific man—Pontius Pilate—who was a real Roman governor in Judea at a specific point in history.  Every year, millions travel to Israel, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey to see where the events of the Bible took place.

Each year, more discoveries from the ancient world confirm the stories told in Holy Scripture.  The science of archelogy which has been practiced extensively all over the Middle East, Turkey and Greece has never once contradicted anything said in the Bible.  This is real and true.

We know from the historical record of Luke recorded in Acts 17 that during Paul’s second missionary journey he got to western Asia minor, or western Turkey when he received a vision of a man from Macedonia urging Paul to cross over from Asia to Europe, which he did.  After a brief time in Philippi he was chased out by the Jews, so he went southwest to Thessalonica.

Paul was the first known Christian missionary in Europe.  This was the beginning of when Europe would become Christian.

Thessalonica is in northern Greece, in a region called Macedonia.  Thessalonica was then as it is today the second largest city in Greece with a population of over 200,000.  It was an important city in the Roman empire, the capital of Macedonia.  It was the home of Alexander the Great and was named after his the half-sister.

Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica was one of his success stories.  He preached for three weeks in the Jewish synagogue there before getting the left foot of fellowship.  From there he turned to the Gentiles where there was great fruit from his labor.

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Text for Sermon: Colossians 1:1-2; 2:8-10, 13-15; 3:1-4, 12-14

Introduction.

We continue to make our way through Paul’s thirteen letters, arranged in the NT not chronologically but from longest to shortest.  These are not the only letters Paul wrote.  We know of two others written to the church in Corinth and another to the church in Laodicea, though it is possible that reference may be to the letter to the Ephesians.

Colossae was about 100 miles inland to the east of Ephesus, near Laodicea and Hierapolis.  None of the churches in these areas were founded by Paul.

A native from Colossae, Epaphras, first preached the Gospel there and labored diligently in the Lord for them and for Laodicea and Hierapolis.

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Text for Sermon: Philippians 1:1-2; 3:7-11; 4:12-13

Philippi.

Philippi was Paul’s first European city, as he came over from Asia Minor (Turkey) during his second missionary journey, having received a vision from God in a dream.

The church in Philippi was born in the place of prayer and out of prayer.

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Text for Sermon: Ephesians 1:1-6; 2:1-10

Introduction.

Ephesians is the first of what are called Paul’s Prison Epistles.  During his four years of imprisonment, two years in Caesarea and two years in Rome, at the end of his life, Paul wrote at least three letters to churches, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and two to individuals, Philemon; and Timothy, II Timothy.

History has given us some of the greatest literature from prisons.

John Bunyon’s Pilgrims Progress.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s writings.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail.

What kind of letter would you write from prison?

Paul calls himself a prisoner for the Lord and an ambassador in chains, willing to suffer anything for the Gospel.

Paul made a brief visit to Ephesus on his second missionary journey and then stayed three years during his third missionary journey.

Ephesus was the wealthy, prosperous commercial center and crossroads of Asia Minor.  It was the largest city in the Roman province of Asia, a thriving metropolis of between three and six hundred thousand people.

It was most famous for her temple to the great Greek goddess Artemis (Diana).  It was the largest building in the Greek world, four times larger than the Parthenon in Athens.  She was the national deity of the city, the mother goddess even of all of Asia.

The citizens of Ephesus were fanatical about their worship of this goddess.  In Acts 19 we read about Paul’s first visit there and his encounter with the magic arts practiced there and about the riot that started because Paul interfered with this cultic worship.

This was a city as pagan as any large city in the world today.  It was filled with cult worship, temple prostitution, sensuality, secularism, idolatry, unholy alliances and unholy tolerances, sorcery, magic.  It was a dark place.

On his third missionary journey Paul ministered with tears day and night for three years, the longest he spent at one church.

The church Paul established there was strong and was the mother church in Asia Minor.  The first Christians there were very strong, they had to be in the face of such strong opposition.  They followed Jesus at great personal sacrifice (Acts 19:19).

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Text for Sermon: Galatians 1:1-9; 2:15-16, 20-21; 5:22-26

Introduction.

This next weekend will be a great celebration of the 250^th anniversary of our independence from England.  It marks our freedom from the oppressive British rule under King George III and taxation without representation.

Freedom is tremendous gift, often underappreciated because we have enjoyed it for so long and we have no memory of living without freedom.

Can we even image a scenario where a large group of people started lobbying for the US to return to being under the rule of the British monarchy.  Sounds totally crazy, right?

How about another example from closer to our time in history.  In the lifetime of many of us we remember the historic occasion in November 1989 of the fall of the Berlin Wall that divided the German capital into communist East Berlin and free democratic West Berlin.

TV news showed the ecstatic joy in the lives of millions to people as there lives suddenly and dramatically change and they were free from lies, oppression and tyranny, from a total lack of freedom.

Could we conceive of there being a lobby among Germans for a return of communist rule and recreating a divided Germany, East and West German and East and West Berlin?

We hear of countries fighting for their independence, we don’t ever hear of countries fighting to for dependence.

This is effectively what is going on in the region of Galatia in southern Turkey were Paul and Barnabas had planted churches on his first missionary journey.

Judaizers were early sect of Jewish-Christian believers in the first century who insisted that Gentile (non-Jewish) converts to Christianity had to observe the full Law of Moses—especially circumcision and dietary restrictions—to be saved.  They sought to make living under the Mosaic Law and according to Jewish customs a requirement of the Christian faith.

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Text for Sermon: II Corinthians 1:1-7; 3:17-18; 4:5-7; 5:17-21; 12:7-10

Introduction.

Think for a moment of what is your image or perception of a great leader?  What characteristics or qualities would you look for in a great leader?

Now think for a moment of what is your image or perception of a great Christian leader?  What characteristics or qualities would you look for in a great Christian leader?  Did adding the word Christian change your answer?

Is there a difference between the characteristics and qualities of a great president or prime minister or CEO and a great spiritual leader or pastor or elder?

By the world’s standards a great leader is a strong personality, confident, successful, charismatic, articulate, speaks with authority, decisive, popular.  They don’t display signs of weakness or evidence of failures or flaws.  Our culture tells us to play to our strengths, cover your weaknesses.

None of these qualities are necessarily wrong in themselves.  They can be gifts from God.  The problem comes when they become the primary measure of greatness.  Outside appearances can be deceiving, shallow.

The church in Corinth was being divided by opinions about leaders and they were being taken in by strong preferences over personalities and images of success.  They were caught up in the spirit of the age.

Just as the church in America is attracted to celebrity pastors, the Christians in Corinth had a worldly notion of what a leader should be, impressive, forceful, with a strong personality, eloquent, confident, strong.  They admired success.

The church in Corinth had been infiltrated with what Paul called super apostles.

This was creating a public image problem for Paul.  He was being shown up by an up and coming crowd of super apostles.  These guys were real professionals, impressive, trained in rhetoric, masters of public speaking.  They were dynamic, charismatic, with made for TV personalities.  They were the celebrity pastors and conference speakers of the day, well dressed, tanned, they flew first class, they commanded big honorariums and sweet book deals.  They had letters of recommendation.  They boasted and bragged and made Paul look bad.

They used Paul’s physical suffering, humility, and lack of worldly “success” as proof that he was an inadequate or illegitimate apostle.  Various commentators have found clues to suggest Paul may have been short, bald, maybe spoke with a studder, and showed the wear and tear of having been persecuted.  Not an imposing or impressive specimen of a human being.

Paul was fickle, vacillating in his decisions and commitments, he lacked the proper letters of recommendation.  He was a poor speaker and a weakling.

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Text for Sermon: I Corinthians 1:1-3; 10-13; 20-25; 6:18-20

Introduction.

I have chosen to skip over Paul’s letter to the Romans since we have been in Romans in the morning and I plan to do an overview of the book as a conclusion to our Romans series in about a month.

We have come to the large section of the NT called the Epistles, or the Letters.  We have 13 letters by Paul, arranged from longest to shortest, Romans to Philemon.  Then there are 7 general letters, and Revelation as the conclusion.

Letters are best understood by reading them in one sitting, like you would any other letter you receive.  And because they are personal letters from one person written to another person or group, it helps to know the occasion that prompted them to be written.

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Text for Sermon: Acts 1:1-11; 2:1-4

Introduction.

There are about 2.5 billion people who identity as Christian in the world today.  Or about one third of the world’s population, making Christianity the world’s largest religion.  There are around 4-8 million churches in the world, about 400,000 in the US.

How did we get here?  How did Christianity start in a small outpost of the Roman Empire and become a worldwide religion that is still growing and spreading?

How did the church of Jesus Christ grow and become so bold from such humble, small and fearful beginning?  How did it spread to the ends of the earth and turn the world upside down in the process?

If we wanted to trace our spiritual genealogy as a Christian we can all trace our Christian heritage all the way back to Acts.  We can trace our faith family tree all the way back to Peter’s and Paul’s preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles.  God knows the name of the Gentile who became a born-again believer and is our spiritual great great grandfather.

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Text for Sermon: John 1:1-5, 14-18; 3:16-17; 20:30-31

Introduction.

I still remember so well when I surrendered my life to Christ in high school this was the book I was told to read first and I did.  I love the Gospel of John and as they say you don’t forget your first love.  Since then, any time anyone has asked where they should start reading the Bible, I am not alone in saying start with John’s Gospel.  For many new Christians this is the first book of the Bible they read.

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Text for Sermon: Luke 1:1-4; 5:30-31; 19:9-10; 24:46-48

Introduction.

This evening we resume our journey through the books of the Bible and the four Gospels.

I have used the analogy of Route 66 for the 66 books of the Bible.  This past Thursday was the 100^th anniversary of Route 66, the Mother Road.

This road has led us to the unique writings that open the New Testament.  The four Gospels which are objectively true records of the events and words of Jesus’ life on earth.  They tell us what actually happened and what Jesus actually said.

The Gospels declare we live in an open universe.  Heaven has come down and invaded earth, we live in the visited planet.  The Gospels present Jesus in our midst, alive and in person.

As I have said before each Gospel presents a portrait or perspective of Jesus from a slightly different angle, but all four of them (along with the epistles that follow) portray the same recognizable man.  As one writer said, this “makes Jesus a unique figure in world literature: never have so many writers managed to convey the same impression of the same human being over and over again” (Thomas Cahill).