Louie Giglio - Savior of the World - Part 1
I saw a film a few months ago that had just inspired me on so many levels. I was reading at the time, the biography of Michelangelo, and so, when I saw the title on the airplane, "The Lost Leonardo" I thought, "I'm interested in that". Clicked on the little description that pops up. And the movie basically tells the story of a piece of art. The piece of art was in an art auction in New Orleans in 2005. And the description of this painting was, "In the time or right after the time of Leonardo," meaning Leonardo Da Vinci. And that would put it at about maybe early 1500s.
And so, as you unfold this documentary film, you're watching along, all of a sudden, you realize these art investor/collectors come to New Orleans, they're looking through the catalogue, they see the description, you know, "After Leonardo," and they're also attached immediately to the painting, and they buy it. They buy this painting for $1,275. The painting is called, "Salvator Mundi" translates, "Savior of the World". Painting looks like this. They were mesmerized by this image. So, they took the painting home, they decided to investigate a little bit further, and as you watch the movie... anybody seen the movie by the way? The Lost Leonardo? Anybody seen the film?
So far, okay, two people. So far, we've gone across three gatherings and the movie's not doing very well. But we can change that. So, as the documentary unfolds, basically, the movie is the process of trying to authenticate the painting, trying to date it and potentially authenticate it. Because as that process unfolds, it's taken to the leading art restorer on the planet in New York. And as people begin to strip off some of the restoration work that's been done and get down underneath the surface and start looking at this piece of art, they begin to ask the question, "Is it maybe not after Leonardo, is it possibly a Leonardo"?
And so, they strip away some of what you would normally see. They take this thing to the Louvre in Paris, at one point, and they are using the highest investigative techniques available to study the painting. And at the end of the painting they come to the conclusion that most likely the Salvador Mundi is a work of Leonardo Da Vinci, making it one of 15 pieces of art in existence by Leonardo, one of them being the Last Supper painting on fresco in Milan, one of them being the Mona Lisa, which is hanging in the Louvre in Paris, France. And so, ultimately, the painting, are you ready for this, is sold in 2017 to someone who definitely believes that it's a Leonardo.
What was originally bought in New Orleans for $1,275, is sold for the highest price ever paid for a piece of art in history, at Christy's auction house in London, 2017, the Salvador Mundi sells for 450 million dollars, to a Saudi Prince. The painting hasn't been seen since the auction but is proportedly hanging on his half a billion-dollar yacht. The savior of the world. What was interesting to me watching the film was, how many times people were saying Salvador Mundi.
So, there are art restorers, art critics, museum curators, there are financial investors, members of the media. This thing became a social media sensation around the globe before the auction at Christy's. And it was amazing to me how many different people in the film were saying, "Salvador Mundi, savior of the world, Salvador, the Mundi, the savior, the savior of the world, Salvador Mundi, savior of the world, savior of the world". We counted it up, 45 times, people say Salvador Mundi or a version of it, and 71 times that name appears in the film. Often times, they'll zoom in because it's a documentary on a New York Times article, and you'll see Salvador Mundi, or a social media post and you'll see Salvador Mundi.
So, across the one hour and thirty-six minutes of this film, seventy-one times, "Savior of the world, savior of the world, savior of the world". And everyone in the film is asking is it a Leonardo Da Vinci? And I'll let you watch the film, and you can come to your own conclusion, but every single person in the movie is asking the same question, is it a Da Vinci? And not one time in the film did anyone ever ask the question is He the savior of the world? It's a 450-million-dollar question apparently, as to whether it's a Da Vinci or not, but far more important, infinitely more important, is the question, is He the savior of the world?
And so, when you watch the film, you'll know, if you want to in the future get a piece of art authenticated, or dated, you'll kinda see how that works out. But what if we were asking today, the far greater question is in fact, He the savior of the world, how would we authenticate that question? How could we come to an answer that you would feel certain about? That you would feel like you could bank on? That you would feel like, "I've got all the information I need to know whether or not I should consider this person the savior of the world"? Because if He is in fact the savior of the world, that would make Him the most important person who has ever walked on planet earth. And it would make Him someone that would demand that all of us do the work and investigate this claim.
So, how do you do that? Well, you could do it by going to the checkout aisle at any store in town. On display just recently, on the shelf, as you're waiting for your time to get your last KitKat, and put that in with the order, was "Life" asking the question, "Who Do You Say That I Am"? Ten years ago, in the same checkout line was Time Magazine, "100 Events That Changed The World". I'm happy to see that Jesus made the cover of the 100 events that changed the world, and really thrilled to let you know, that He makes the list at number 11 of the 100 things that changed the world. And these aren't the only two options, there's another cover here that is asking a question, "Who was He"?
Another cover, 1996, now things are getting a little bit heated on this one, "The Search for Jesus. Some scholars are debunking the gospels". So, people apparently, are asking the question, is He Salvador Mundi? Is He the savior of the world? And not just a few, lots of people are asking the question. So, if you wanna authenticate if He's the savior of the world, you've got some options that you can look to. Or you can go to history, you can go to Josephus, the leading Jewish historian of the time of Jesus. And he writes about Jesus. What would be the value for a Jewish historian to write Jesus Christ and His crucifixion into history, but he's a historian and so, he snapshots Jesus in the moment.
As does Tacitus, a leading Roman historian of the day of Jesus. So, you can go and look into history to find an answer to the question. Or you can look here, to the eyewitness accounts of the gospels in the word of God to answer the question is Jesus in fact, the savior of the world? Now, I know a lot of people from all places on the spectrum of belief come to church on Sunday, on Easter. And so, there may be people in the place today, who would say, "Hey, I would expect you, pastor, to say that we should look at the gospels in the word of God to answer the question, authenticate, is Jesus the savior of the world? But I heard from my literature professor when I was in college, or actually, I was just talking to my co-worker at work the other day, and they were reminding me that the word of God, really isn't that dependable because in fact, hasn't it been changed like many, many times across history"?
I mean, we all have the original manuscripts of the word of God, and so, what was originally breathe by God, would have been copied by people and surely, a lot has been added to it over centuries, and you know, a few things might've been taken out of it overtime, and certain leaders would have bent it a little bit this way for their philosophy, or some ruler would bend it a little bit this way for their particular agenda, right? So, we can't say for sure everything in the word of God is actually what was originally in the word of God. In fact, in the Time Magazine, coming in at number 11, they mention this.
Here's the way this is described, and a lot of this pretty good, in fact, if this was the only thing you ever had to know about Jesus, you would almost get it from this little paragraph right here. Starts out, "There is no doubt that Jesus Christ, is one of the most significant individuals in history. Then it comes down to bottom, remember this is 2010. Today, some 2.2 billion Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah promised in Judaism's Old Testament. The son of God, incarnate as a man, whose suffering and death absolved sins and promised eternal life to those who heed His message. His story is told in the four gospels of the Christian's New Testament, which most scholars regard as true to Christ's message, if not the exact facts of His life".
Had to get that in there. "They record, talking about the gospels, Jesus' divine birth, His teachings, His miracles, His death, and resurrection. And they record His enduring challenge, a radical call to charity that is far easier said, than done, Christians must love their enemies and forgive those who sin against them". So, the gospels, are they really an exact representation of His life? Are they truly the words of Jesus? Can this word be trusted? Well, I think the best way to answer that question is to simply say, yes, this is the most authenticated, ancient document that you will ever hold in your hand. It is the most validated and trustworthy ancient work that you will ever hold, the version of it that you actually have in your hands right now.
Let me show you how this works, let's look back at some other ancient works and see how they stack up with the New Testament. We're gonna begin with Suetonius. I know everybody was hoping when you came to church on Easter that we were going to do some literary history. So, try to contain your enthusiasm as we walk through this, but I think it'll be inspiring if you haven't seen it before. And you could pick a hundred examples, I just chose the few. Suetonius was a Roman historian. I don't know if you've heard of his works, "The Twelve Caesars," or not, but a lot of what we know about Roman history, we know from Suetonius. And so, he was writing in A.D. 75 to 100, which is the time that the New Testament Church was exploding across that part of the world. The earliest copy of any of his work is from A.D 950.
You say, "Well, why is that"? Because all these early works were written on papyrus, and papyrus is not a durable surface. And so, say one of the gospels would have been written on a papyrus, which probably would have dissolved into dust in about 100 years. And so, what would happen was you would have your original, and then someone would copy the original and maybe send that to another person, and that one would get copied, and that one would get copied. And same with the work of the Roman historian, Suetonius, and the earliest copy we have is 950, meaning, there's a 800 year gap from the copy we have to the original. But then you want to ask the question, because we're going to look at these copies so that we can see how close are all these copies to each other to give us the textual purity of this manuscript. And for Suetonius, we have eight existing copies of his work.
Let's go to Tacitus, another Roman historian, who wrote about Jesus and about his followers. He was writing in A.D. 100, the earliest copy 1100 A.D., thousand year gap, we have 20 copies of his work. But let's look at something we have a lot more confidence in and that's the work of Homer. And you may have read "The Iliad" somewhere along the way, it was written in B.C. 900, our earliest copy B.C. 400, a 500 year gap, but look at the copies. Look at the volume of the copies we have, so you can feel confident by the way when you're reading, "The Iliad," you're good. Six hundred and fourty three copies of Homer's work.
So, let's talk about the New Testament for a moment, this contested work, this undermined work, this work that seeds are always sown about of doubt and about the ability for us to test and believe in its veracity. The earliest complete New Testament copy we have 350 A.D., written A.D. 50 to 100. So, look at the approximate time between the earliest copy we have, the Codex Sinaiticus and the time of writing. And then you'd say, "Well, how many manuscripts do we have"? Well, the New Testament was written in Greek, primarily, and it's time that was the language spoken of the people in Jesus' time. And so, the manuscripts, the earliest ones are all written in Greek.
And so, the Greek manuscripts, how many do we have right now? We have 5,800 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek. Now, in Latin, we have also another 10,000 manuscripts and in other languages, Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew, Aramaic, 10,000 more manuscripts. So, over 25,000 copies of the manuscripts of the New Testament. when God was saying, "You can look to the gospels and the word of God". If you're looking for a way to authenticate, the claim that Jesus is savior of the world, He wanted to make sure that you knew that the evidence was overwhelmingly in your favor. We're standing on solid ground.
And you say, "Well, okay, we've got all of these manuscripts then", and you talked about how we compare all the copies to see, "Do they all say the same thing"? The textual purity, according to the textual critics of the New Testament is 99.5 percent. Now you're going to hear different stories if you're listening to the world. There's a book that was very popular recently called, "Misquoting Jesus, Who Changed the Bible and Why". It got a lot of traction, New York Times bestseller list. The writer of it, who is a textual critic, made all the talk shows because of his statement, where he said, "There more copying errors in the manuscripts, than there are words in the New Testament".
And that got so much buzz and so much attention, because everybody wanted to hear the bad news about the New Testament. And so, all the talk shows, that was all of the story. But the true story was, as other textual critics started responding to this work, was that 99.5% of the errors that were being talked about, were simple, stylistic errors, or word order errors. For example, a Greek sentence, the words can go in a lot of different orders, and you could take 20 words and mix them up hundreds of different ways, and have the exact same meaning in Greek. And so, all these errors that were purportedly so overwhelming, were stylistic. And eventually, when the paperback copy of the book came out, there was a tiny, tiny, nod to say, "Well, actually, all these copying errors that I've been talking about in no way changed the meaning of the text".
So, we've got overwhelming volume, we've got overwhelming purity, so that then we can open this word of God and know that what we're holding in our hands is precious. To say it for all of us in Atlanta, Georgia, today, the book is good, y'all. And it invites our investigation. You say, "Well, I'm just kind of waiting, you know, for the other shoe to drop. I'm figuring out eventually, somebody's gonna find Pandora's Box and open it up, and just go, 'Oh, here's all the people that made up Christianity.'" No, it's gonna work the other way around actually, because that's the way it's been working for the last several thousand years.
In 1935, they were working at John Rylands Library in Manchester England, and a guy named Colin was going through a collection of papyri that they had bought from a collector in Egypt. And as he's working through this collection, he finds a little tiny fragment that catches his attention. The fragment is the size of a credit card. But what's on it is absolutely stunning. When he saw this little fragment, he immediately realized that this is something unlike anything I've ever seen before. He sent it to the leading experts in papyri in the world, and they began to study it and try to date this little, tiny fragment. And as they did, they dated it almost to the time of its original writing. And that matters to us today because written on the fragment is the Gospel of John 18.
On one side, part portion of verses 31 to 33, on the backside, written on the other side of the Papyrus, verses 37 and 38. These verses are what we're preaching about and proclaiming today. On this little fragment found from a collection in Egypt, now, in a museum on display in a library in Manchester England. It says this on one side, "Pilate said, 'Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.' 'But we have no right to execute anyone,' they objected. This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death He was going to die. Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked Him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?'"
Now, flip to the other side of the little fragment, "You are a king then," said Pilate. Jesus answered, "You say that I'm a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth, everyone on the side of truth, listens to me.' 'What is truth?' retorted Pilate", and maybe that's the question you're asking today. What is truth? "And with this, he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, 'I find no basis for a charge against Him.'"
Now, this is stunning for several reasons. Number one, The Book of John, the Gospel of John has been dated around 100 A.D, but some think maybe as early as 90 A.D. or slightly earlier than that. But this fragment, the John Rylands papyrus, P52 is the way it's known, this fragment has been dated, by the experts that Colin sent it to on discovery of it, at 150, 100, but one expert dated it at 90 A.D. So, where Salvador Mundi was the period following Leonardo, this fragment is the period, following John, or actually could be contemporaneous with the original manuscript in circulation.
God has preserved a little piece of His word so that you and I today, when we open up this gospel to the Book of John, we know we are on good ground to answer the most important question in the moment, is He the savior of the world? I take us to John 3, a passage of scripture that is incredibly well-known throughout the church and even the reference of it, John 3:16 is known to people outside of the church because they've seen it so many places in culture.
And I want to just set a context today because, you know, I know Tim Tebow, put John 3:16 on his eye patch, and it became, when he did that the first time the most searched item on Google in the world, in that moment during that football game, the most searched thing on planet Earth was John 3:16. It's been held up at signs at sporting events, have you ever been watching the Super Bowl and some guys gotten right in the camera shot, behind the goalpost and he's got John, 3:16 written on a little poster? Or maybe you've seen it on a billboard, or bumper stickers and bracelets, and it's kind of in the mix. But that's not the way John 3:16 started.