Bible Stories Vs Bible Events

The next time you sit down with one of those books with all the colorful pictures to read some Bible stories to your children or your grandchildren or your great grandchildren, there is one word I want you to add when you're talking about Bible studies.

Because, you see, the Bible is filled with more than stories.

It's filled with events.

We're going to talk about that today.

All right?

So first things first, I gotta say I'm gonna use the word if a lot today.

And the thing I love about my Christians brothers and sisters is some of them get a little flustered when you start saying if.

And I'm going to start off with a weird story.

And that is my very first home I owned.

I did a lot of, you know, projects with that.

And one was my neighbor, who next door was this super fit firefighter guy.

And he talked me into putting up a fence.

But instead of buying, you know, sections of fence, we decided to do it from scratch.

And we're digging the holes and all that stuff.

And in the back left corner of my yard, so right next to a garage, there was just this weird pile of dirt that was taller than everything else, and we could not put any post holes in it.

And so I grabbed a shovel, I grabbed a bunch of stuff, and I started digging through this weird hard section of my yard.

And I found shoes.

Yeah, I found bags of trash.

And apparently at one point, that back corner of my yard was a fire pit.

I found a bunch of bricks in a circle buried, I don't know, three inches in the dirt, where somehow somebody just, I don't know, just threw a bunch of dirt on top of it and kept on going.

And so that's one thing we're going to talk about archeology today, and then the other thing I want to talk about are words.

And so today I kind of hinted, you know, we talk about Bible stories.

Maybe we should kind of remind people we're talking about Bible events because words change and they have different meanings.

Like clue.

The word clue.

For some of you, you're thinking of a board game, but we often say, you know, get a clue.

Well, that used to mean a ball of yarn, because you would use the ball of yarn to kind of draw your way back if you're going through a maze of some sort of the word nice.

Well, that used to mean stupid or ignorant, which brings a whole new light the next time you go, oh, he's so nice.

Because now it means kind.

And so I wanted to know, what do atheists think about the Bible?

And the other Thing we should.

Speaking of words, they're not atheists anymore.

Now they're skeptics and that's fine.

But most non believers, if we want to even go that route, most skeptics would say the Bible was written, edited and compiled by people over centuries, reflecting their beliefs, their politics and their conflicts.

And they usually see it as a mix of myth, legend, law codes, wisdom, sayings, letters and community stories, similar to other ancient religious texts.

But again, when you sit down to read to your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, your nephews, you are reading to your kids, right?

That seems to be lost, but you should.

One of my earliest memories, I don't even remember who it was.

It was somebody in a red and gray flannel shirt was reading to me in my grandmother's bedroom.

That's literally one of my earliest memories.

I believe it was my grandpa, but he died when I was three.

So keep that in mind.

But the bottom line is the Bible happened.

The Bible straight up happened.

And you're like, really?

Well how?

Well, it mentions Jerusalem, it mentions Egypt, it mentions Rome, it mentions Ephesus, better known as Turkey today.

And you're like, okay, Dave, but they could have written about that.

You know, those cities have been around for years.

They could have just made that part of the story.

But for years people thought, yeah, these are just stories because there was no real kind of anything permanent that pointed to Pontius pilate.

And in 1961, they found a limestone block naming Pontius Pilate as the prefect of Judea.

And this was in Latin.

Okay, so what?

Well, that confirms he was a real Roman governor.

And that matches the Gospel description of the man who condemned Jesus.

So keep that in mind.

Then I didn't even really know about this because it's in 2 Kings.

It's the Old Testament.

And I mean, the Old Testament is cool, but there was Hezekiah's tunnel.

And I'm going to butcher a lot of names today.

Siloam, there was an inscription.

So what are you talking about, David?

Well, first things first.

Let's go biblical.

In 2 Kings, verse 20, it says, as for the other events of Hezekiah's reign, all of his achievements and how he made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city.

So it mentions this tunnel.

Well, they found it.

There is a hand cut water tunnel with an ancient Hebrew inscription describing how two teams kind of set out, one from one end and one to the other.

And they did radiocarbon dating which places it around.

Yep, 700 BC right in the timeline of the Bible.

And so 2 Chronicles also mentions King Hezekiah redirecting water into Jerusalem before basically they got taken over.

So same place, same purpose, same period.

It's there.

And so I mentioned the pool of siloam in Isaiah 22:11.

He says, you build a reservoir between two walls for the water of the old pool.

And they found it in 2004.

It's a large step pool unearthed with coins from the Hasmonean.

Hasmonean, yeah, period through Pontius Pilate again and the Jewish revolt, plus a paved street leading up to the Temple Mount, which goes with again, the Bible, where they would talk about going to the pool and then going to the temple.

So it's a fit with John's pool of Siloam and the ritual and the pilgrimage route to the temple in Jesus time.

And this was also the pool where Jesus told the blind man he rubbed mud in his eye.

Which is always kind of weird when you read that story, here's mud in your eye, kid, you know, and then he goes, go wash your face in that pool.

Well, they found it.

Okay.

There's another pool, the pool of Bethsaida.

It's two adjacent pools.

They found this in the 19th century with a dividing wall forming five porches.

And there was a copper scroll that they found and it mentions the House of Two Pools.

And again, it directly support John 5.

It's a detailed description of a pool with five porches.

And many people said, well, that's impossible in the past.

And it's like, nope, it's right there.

And Capernaum, this is really kind of a home base for Jesus ministry.

He did a lot of things there.

And so they found a first century Blackstone synagogue.

Now where do they find it?

Beneath a later marble one.

So they found a church under a church.

Then when you read that, you're like, huh?

To which I go, look, I found a fire pit underneath a bunch of trash, underneath a bunch of shoes, you know, in my yard.

So, yeah, apparently we just build on top of stuff.

And they found this house, just a simple house under this octagonal church with a lot of very early Christian graffiti with Jesus name.

And it had Peter's name on it.

And it fits the Gospel's picture of Capernaum, right?

As again, Jesus base of ministry with a synagogue where he taught and a house basically that they now believe because it also had Peter's name in it.

So they found Peter's mom's house, and that's the one where they cut a hole in it and lowered people down and there's all sorts of graffiti all over it in some sort of language that I don't know.

But they've concluded that, yeah, this was Peter's house.

And what's interesting is there comes a time when it's getting to the end of the Jesus ministry and he's calling out all these cities because here he did all these miracles in that city and it didn't really turn their heart around.

And he says, andrew Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens?

No, you'll go down to Hades.

And that's in Matthew 11:23.

And in 749 A.D. basically an earthquake took that city out and it was deserted for a very, very long time until people came back and they built on it.

And now it's a giant archaeological park.

And so when I go, wait, how do you have a church on top of a church?

Again, little earthquake, you come back, bunch of rubble, just start building on top of stuff.

They didn't have bulldozers back then.

And then another thing people have said is, well, if the Sea of Galilee was this, you know, all these guys are fishermen, how come there's no relics of boats anywhere?

Well, they found one in 1986.

It's a 27 foot wooden boat.

You know, they had to kind of pieces parted together.

They radiocarbon dated it.

So all the scientists are like, well, let's run a test on it.

And again to about 40 AD and it was capable of holding roughly 15 people.

So that confirms the type and the scale of kind of the fishing or the transport boats used on the Sea of Galilee in Jesus area, which matches again that gospel setting.

And there is another, it is a cylinder.

So you remember, you've probably seen in history back in the, I don't know, the 1900s, 1800s, you know, have like a player piano that's like a cylinder.

But they found this in 1879 where Cyrus of Persia decrees the return of the exiled Jews.

It's like right there.

And again it lines with the biblical account of the Babylonian exile and Cyrus allowing the Jews to return.

And this is in Ezra, it's in Isaiah, it's in 2 Chronicles.

They found it.

It's like right there.

And then another one.

This one isn't quite as rock solid, but it does make you go, hmm.

And that is Sodom and Gomorrah.

So in that same kind of region, archaeologists have found two cities that have 30 inches.

So if you are somewhere, if you are not driving, like kind of put your hands out and figure out how many inches is 30.

Yeah, 30 inches of ash.

And they can see where bricks have almost melted.

Bones have just been obliterated.

And there is two cities that have.

As you dig down, you're like all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you got 30 inches of ash.

And they say that to get that kind of just destruction, the temperature would have been around somewhere like 1100 degrees.

And the Bible says it was, you know, all sorts of fire and all sorts of stuff rained from above.

And there also a lot of evidence of a pretty nasty earthquake that took that whole place out.

Okay, now here's the one that I was like, this is interesting.

And that is Jesus in Ezekiel 43.

4.

There are a couple different things here.

It says this is from Ezekiel.

So he's kind of prophesying, right?

He says, the glory of the Lord entered the temple through the gate facing east.

Then the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court.

And.

And the glory of the Lord filled the temple in Zechariah 14:4.

Again, another prophecy says that in the day the Lord comes to fight for Jerusalem, his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives will split in two.

So they're kind of in Jesus when he was on the Mount of Olives, right?

This is in Matthew 24:3.

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and said, when is this stuff going to happen?

What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?

Well, here's the thing.

So all these prophecies are talking about how Jesus is going to come back to the Mount of Olives and he's going to enter through the temple, which you can see if you're on the Mount of Olives, and he's going to come through the east door.

Well, there's a problem.

That entrance has been bricked up.

Yeah.

There was a guy named Sultan Suleiman.

He conquered Jerusalem in 1517.

And he's an Islamic guy, and he had fear of the future Messiah coming because everybody, apparently in the Jewish community, they all know Ezekiel 43.

4 and.

And Zechariah.

So he was a little worried about this specific prophecy.

And he said, all right, I'll fix that.

And he bricked up the east gate.

Like, you go there and you're like, wait, it's just this.

You can see where it was, but now it's just all bricked up.

Well, here's the fun thing.

In 1964, there were a ton of news stories about this.

There was a Jewish crew that wanted to build a hotel on the top of the Mount of Olives.

Well, to do that, you have to get a geological survey.

And so they order it, it gets done.

They're going to build this hotel on the top of this historic mountain.

Well, they discover that there's a fault line, you know, for earthquakes, and it runs right underneath the Mount of Olives.

It is an east to west fault line that runs right from the top of the Mount of Olives right to the east.

And when Jesus returns, he will descend on that mountain.

And I think what's going to happen is the Bible talks about earth and heavens being shaken.

I think that in the fulfillment of this prophecy, the whole valley is just going to do that, and it's just going to have this massive earthquake, and all the stones that good old Sultan Suleiman put in front of that are going to fall right out, and Jesus is going to walk right through that gate and stand on the Temple Mount and like, all right, I told you, and I know some of you might go, yeah, the Bible.

Okay, got it.

But what about Noah's Ark?

And just remember one word.

Nobody's ever found it yet.

And it may just be that it's long rotted away or been reused for lumber.

That doesn't make Genesis 6, 9 less true.

It means the ark did its job and then just returned to dust just like everything else.

So there's plenty of evidence that the Bible is not filled with just stories.

It's filled with events.

All right, Dave, so what?

Well, and this is where, again, if the scripture is true, then every promise about Christ, finished work about forgiveness, about eternal life is solid.

It's not wishful thinking.

You know, doubts about, well, did God really forgive me?

Those shrink because your confidence rests on God's character and promises, not your emotions.

If the Bible is true, then whoever believes in him has eternal life is not just some sort of hallmark sentiment.

It's a legal verdict from the judge of the universe.

If the Bible was fully true, then God's presence in suffering, his.

His sovereignty and the hope of resurrection.

The hope of resurrection are objective realities, not just coping mechanisms.

That gives believers courage in cancer, in grief, in persecution, and even death.

Because their hope rests on the resurrected Christ, not on optimism.

If God's word is entirely trustworthy, Christians aren't guessing their way through questions about sex or money, power, identity, and justice.

They have a standard outside themselves that cuts through the cultural noise and the personal feelings.

Now, what does that do for us well.

It gives us confidence to call sin what God calls sin, without cruelty, of course, but also without compromise.

It gives us freedom from having to reinvent morality every decade according to the trends.

If believers know the Bible is true, then evangelism shifts from well, I'm going to share my religious opinion to testifying about the real events and a real savior.

That awareness produces courage.

I'm not selling a product, I'm bearing witness to reality.

That knowledge pushes Christians away from casual, half hearted discipleship and towards joyful obedience.

Knowing God's ways really do lead to life and repentance that is honest and not just kind of surface level.

If the Bible is 100% true, then our faith is not in vain, our labor is not in vain, our suffering is not meaningless, and our future with Christ is not imaginary.

So when we read Bible stories to our children, be sure to mention that they are more than stories, they are events.

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I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com and we'll see you again real soon with another episode of Feeding My Faith.