The Bible is the Word of God

Your Word, O Lord, is eternal;
it stands firm in the heavens.

Psalm 119: 89 NIV®

Despite remaining a best-selling title around the world,
and being more available than at any other time in world history,
vast numbers of people don’t understand the Bible and therefore don’t know it.
This includes people within the Church, not just those on the outside.
Pew research estimates that less than 30% of Christians in the world
will ever read through the entire Bible.
So what’s the diagnosis for our Bible-reading famine?
How do we encourage Christians to rediscover a closed book?
Part of the problem is that we’ve turned what should be a banquet into fast food.
Philip Yancey says we’ve created an entire culture of Scripture McNuggets
and assumed they were nutritious.
We snack on the Bible when we should be feasting.
The Bible is a gift. The creator’s greatest intention with the Bible is to invite us into its story.
What God wants from us, more than anything else,
is to make the Bible’s great drama of restoration and new life the story of our lives too.
It is a real book, about real people.
God’s Truth will always be God’s Truth, whether believe it or not.
His Word has transforming power.
John Newton lived a wayward life, he became a sailor on a slave ship,
and in due course became a slave trader.
He was converted, gave up his former life, went on to serve God
and wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’.

One well educated African man who later became one of the most influential Bible teachers in our history (Augustine), was greatly offended when he first read the Bible. Instead of a book cultivated and polished in the literary style he admired so much, he found it full of homespun, earthy stories of plain unimportant people—Augustine took one look at what he considered the ‘unspiritual’ quality of so many of its characters and the everydayness of Jesus, and contemptuously abandoned it—years later-When he saw that God entered our lives as a Jewish servant in order to save us from our sins, he started reading the book gratefully and believingly—Suffering and injustice are not purged from the world in which God works and loves and saves. Nothing is glossed over, God works patiently and deeply, but often in hidden ways, in the mess of our humanity and history.—God doesn’t force any of this on us: God’s Word is personal address, inviting, commanding, challenging, rebuking, judging, comforting, directing-but not forcing. Not coercing. We are given space and freedom to enter the conversation. For more than anything else the Bible invites our participation in the work and language of God. As we read, we find that there is a connection between the Word Read and the Word Lived. Everything in the Bible is live-able Many of us find that the most important question we ask is not “What does it mean?” but “How can I live it?” So we read it personally not impersonally— Bible reading is a means of listening to and obeying God.

The Message Study Bible by Eugene Peterson

The Bible includes a total of sixty-six individual books.
Some of these books are personal letters, some are songs, and others are like journals or diaries;
and then there are law codes and histories.
The words of the Bible were breathed by God
and recorded by approximately forty human authors over a period of approximately 1500 years.
As Paul explains to his protégé Timothy,

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

2 Timothy 3: 16

The Old Testament anticipates the coming of Jesus, the Messiah;
and explains his ministry and purpose.
It begins with the books of ancient history-from Genesis to Esther.
Following that section, the books of poetry appear together-from Job to Song of Solomon.
Finally, in the last part of the Old Testament,
we come to the books of prophecy – from Isaiah to Malachi.
These three major sections represent three types of literature
comprising the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament.

The New Testament is set up in a similar way.
The Gospels include the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
and tell the Good News of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
Acts is a book of history, and it covers the establishment of the church.
Then come all the letters,
which are usually divided into the letters of Paul (Romans through Philemon),
and the general letters (Hebrews through Jude).
Finally there’s Revelation, which is a book of prophecy.

Searching the Scriptures by Charles Swindoll

God sent his holy word and it does what only it can do. It tells us the story of Jesus.
Without knowing our Bible, we constantly run the risk of shrinking the story,
or trying to control it so it ends up serving our own predetermined agenda.
The Bible is on a mission to move creation in the direction
of God’s ultimate purposes for the flourishing of life.
This is what it means to say the word of God is alive.
Charles Spurgeon remarked, ‘none of us ever outgrows Holy Scripture;
the Bible widens and deepens with our years.’

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father we come to you this morning asking for your forgiveness.
Some of us have neglected your Word and we are sorry.
We have allowed worldly matters to get in the way
and have used the excuse that we are busy and haven’t got time.
We need to ask ourselves what will be the final authority over our lives:
will it be your Word or the world?

Father God, some of us need to enter the conversation with you,
others need to continue the conversation through reading your Holy Word.
Help us to commit and immerse ourselves in the Bible;
to lose ourselves in it, precisely so that we can find ourselves in it.

Father, help us always to treasure and feed on your Word.
We ask for your wisdom in reading and understanding as you open up your Word to us.
Lord in your mercy; hear our prayer.

Amen

Your Word is a lamp to my feet
and a light for my path.

Psalm 119: 105 NIV®

Lord, thy word abideth,
and our footsteps guideth;
who its truth believeth
light and joy receiveth.

When the storms are o’er us,
and dark clouds before us,
then its light directeth,
and our way protecteth.

Henry Williams Baker (1821–1877)

Glynne Gordon-Carter