March 7, 20102 Timothy 3:14-17
Matthew 5:17-39
The Bible is the most famous, most diverse, most difficult, most profound, most challenging, most acclaimed, most criticized, and most powerful book ever written. More people in the world read the Bible than any other book in the history of the universe.
Yet even so, we read the Bible with a mixture of fear and hope, faith and doubt, understanding and confusion. Some of this great mixture of biblical experience comes from the complexity of the Bible itself, and some of it comes from our misunderstandings of what the Bible is and how it still works today. In the next 15 minutes or so, I want to talk about 5 basic characteristics of the Bible that may help us understand it and reclaim its power in our lives today in the 21st century world.
Sometimes, when we look at the Bible we can feel completely overwhelmed by its complexity and its cultural distance from our world. For many people, even for many Christians, it is hard to see any significant connection between those words written in far away worlds and our life in our world today.
However, the Bible is absolutely NECESSARY for us as Christians. In fact, it is non-negotiable for all who want to follow Jesus. The Bible is one of God’s key tools in accomplishing God’s mission in our world. God intends for the Bible to shape us and to guide us into his mission. N. T. Wright summarizes it like this: “To be a Christian while not letting the Bible do all the things it is capable of, through you and in you, is like trying to play the piano with your fingers tied together.”1
Second, the Bible is ALIVE. The book of Hebrews explains, “For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our inner-most thoughts and desires” (Hebrews 4:12). The Bible is not a dead book filled with dead words about people and times long dead. The Bible lives. It has power. It takes action in our world and in our hearts.
But why? How? It is filled with the Spirit of God. Paul explained to Timothy that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). The original Greek phrase here is “God-breathed.” All Scripture is “God-breathed.” We can get a feeling for what this means by going all the way back to the creation story: “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” (Genesis 2:7). The man was a lifeless body. Then God breathed the breath or spirit of life, and he became a living being capable of action and thought and passion.
Mere words on a page have no power. Words are dead things. They record thought or action, but they are not alive in themselves. But the Bible is different. Somehow God breathes his Spirit into the words of the Bible, and they come to life. They are able to take action in our world. They challenge us. They correct us. They guide us. They cut past the layers of our persona and reveal the depths of our hearts. The Bible shows us who we really are and helps us become who God really wants us to be.
Third, the Bible is DIVERSE. The Bible is like a huge mosaic that comes together to form the greatest picture of all time. The Bible was written and edited by dozens (maybe hundreds) of authors over a span of almost two thousand years. It has a wide variety of styles of writing and also a wide variety of perspectives. This is part of what makes reading the Bible so frustrating sometimes. Sometimes its authors seem to disagree with each other.
One of the clearest examples is in Proverbs chapter 26. Verse 4 reads: “Don’t answer fools when they speak foolishly, or you will be just like them.” Verse 5 (the very next verse) reads: “Answer fools when they speak foolishly, or they will think they are really wise.” What we have here is a collection of two different perspectives on how to deal with foolish people. Each perspective has an element of truth in it, so the author or editor included both.
What we see here on a small scale is repeated on a broad scale throughout the Bible. The book of Job and the book of Deuteronomy vary radically on the problem of evil and suffering. The writings of Paul and the letter of James sometimes put very different emphases on the role of faith and works. Most challenging of all, Jesus seems to be at odds with much of the Old Testament. Jesus uses some parts of the Bible to reinterpret other parts of the Bible. Jesus rejects many of the Old Testament laws as obsolete or beside the point in his more advanced world. Jesus says the creation story about God’s intentions for the man and woman is a deeper part of the Bible than the part where Moses says that divorce is OK as long as it is done legally. (See Matthew 19:1-9.)
The result for us is that the Bible seems to be diverse in spiritual or authoritative depth. The depth of the Bible looks kind of like the side view of the ocean floor. Some parts seem to have more moral or theological depth or weight than others parts. So the deeper parts reinterpret the other parts.
This is the most challenging part of reading the Bible. Sometimes it’s really hard to understand how the different perspectives and angles and depths of the Bible work together. Thankfully, the next characteristic of the Bible really helps with sorting all of this out.
The Bible is STORY. The Bible tells a great story from the dawn of creation to beyond the end of the world. The different parts and perspectives of the Bible all come together as part of this grand narrative. And the grand narrative, the over-arching story of the Bible, is our best interpretive lens for understanding varying parts and perspectives of the Bible.
The story the Bible gives us is like an incomplete five act play. We have the full (or almost full) script for acts 1, 2, and 3. We have an outline for act 5, the final act. But act 4 is missing. Act 4 is now - the present age, and we are the actors on the stage of life. Our job is to immerse ourselves in the story God is telling, so that we can faithfully act our parts to bring the story to the final scene God has outlined. We read and we study acts 1, 2, and 3. We look closely at our world and how the story of Act 4 has taken shape over the past 2,000 years, and we imagine together what faithful actors would do or say to move God’s story forward toward the outline we see for act 5. We pray and listen and meditate and try to hear God’s directions for how to move and how to act.
But we are faithfully committed to the story. We do not want to act beyond the story God has given us. We can clearly see that some actions would take the story away from its goal. They would be distracting and destructive for the story God is building. As we go deeply into the story, we are able to see the major themes which must continue on and the minor themes which need to fade away so that the story may reach its conclusion. The story shapes and guides our lives as we live within it.
This leads us to our last point. The Bible is HOMELESS. In a way, the Bible - this book - is wandering around the world looking for a home. The Word of God contained in these pages is homeless. Paper and ink are not a home for the Word of God. Leather binding cannot contain the message of God to the world.
When John was beginning the story of Jesus, he said, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [or home] among us” (John 1:14). Jesus was the living Word of God.
The Word of God is still trying to become flesh, to become human and make his home in our hearts and lives. Paul prayed, “May the Word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16).
The Word of God as a book is really just a step on the journey to the Word of God enfleshed in people. We put flesh to the story of God. We make it real. God makes it live by making it live in us.
The Bible is NECESSARY.
The Bible is ALIVE.
The Bible is DIVERSE.
The Bible is STORY.
The Bible is HOMELESS.
This diverse, living story stands at our doors and knocks. (See Revelation 3:20.) The Word of God asks for entrance into our lives. The Word of God wants to be rewritten into the story of our lives. The Word of God wants to be retold in our actions and words. The Bible is homeless standing outside the door of your life. Well you let it in? Will you let it take root in your heart? Will you let the Bible live in you and retell its story in your own life? If you will, this will surely change the world!
Isaiah 55:10-11
10 “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry.
11 It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.
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