Genesis 1:1 The Beginning
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Revelation 22:18-21 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
I suspect everyone is fairly familiar with the calling of a Code 99. We have been exposed to enough “Doctor Shows” on television to appreciate that this is an announcement over the public address system of a hospital indicating a cardiac arrest. Effective heart action has ceased and unless the heart is restarted, irreparable damage to the body begins. The brain requires a constant supply of sugar and oxygen to function. A cessation for as little as four minutes jeopardizes life. A code team must respond promptly if the patient is to be given anS opportunity to survive.
The Church of Jesus Christ is in a crisis situation. Numbers are falling and opponents question its relevance for the modern world. This is not a new occurrence but has been going on since shortly after the 2nd World War. The society upheaval in this country and in the Western World that occurred in the 1960s has questioned all things traditional.
Morals, practices and absolute truth itself have come under question. As disciples of Jesus, we have come face to face with the reality that our children that are eager to learn of Jesus now are likely to change dramatically in the next decade. When free to make their decisions as teenagers about being active in church worship, they may drop out, as have 90% of their peers. This is our call to arms. The question is “how shall we fight this?”
Knowledge is obtained by the accumulation of information. Wisdom is the application of this information in a Godly directed manner. We are all here for purpose. We are to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Simply, this world and life are not about us but are about God. God desires us to be in fellowship with Him as His created. The most important task of life is to comprehend this and to recognize how this is to be accomplished. This is where the Bible comes in. We need to understand its composition as well as its uniqueness if we are to guide our young people through the crisis that they and we face during the coming decade. It is imperative that they comprehend that they have eternal souls and that God desires theyS live in His presence once this earthly life ceases. They as well as we must comprehend that although God loves us enough to die for us, He is also Holy and must be approached with great care. So we will fully understand God’s nature, He has provided us with a revelation of Himself. Since God is so different from anything else that we experience in this life, He has provided a literary work that tells us about Himself. Man for several reasons is unable to correctly discover God’s true characteristics, therefore God has revealed Himself by the Bible.
Bible simply means book. It is a unique book written over a period of 1600 years. The composite is composed of 66 individual books written by over 40 different authors. Some of the authors are known such as Isaiah who lived hundreds of years before Jesus of Nazareth, but the authorship of Hebrews is unclear and debated. The opening and completion of this vast literary work begins and ends with God. This is key in understanding this book and its contents. God is central and we are secondary. This life is about God and our relationship to Him and not focused on us.
Our Protestant Bible is composed of two divisions that we refer to as the Old and New Testaments. The Old contains 39 books written between 1500 and 400 BC beginning with Genesis and concluding with Malachi. These literary works were revealed to the descendants of Abraham who was God’s chosen to provide a people to keep and maintain these scriptures and to provide a Savior for mankind. These books contained in this Testament were required to meet certain criteria and in so doing were accepted as being canon. Canon means that each met certain standards. The New Testament was written within the first century AD after the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth into heaven.
God called the authors of both divisions to this task for no one sought this responsibility. The content of the Hebrew Scripture is made up of history, wisdom literature, poetry, music and wise sayings. Contained therein are predictions, prophetic utterances about the future, many of which focus on an individual called the Messiah. The Messiah of the Old Testament and the Christ of the New Testament refer to the same individual. He simply is the Anointed of God. Many of the predictions of the Old Testaments have been fulfilled and are easy to see and understand. Those of the New are sometimes debated since some have yet to be fulfilled. The New Testament deals with this Messiah.
The Bible takes the form of a revelation (an unfolding) and its content from start to finish direct us to the understanding that it is Spiritually inspired. The content, theme, and general sense stays on theme although the authors (human) were quite diverse and not all knew one another personally. The concept of inspiration is critical to understanding the Bible’s merit. Each individual author was inspired in a unique way. His spiritual inspiration was for his literary work and not his style. The beautiful poetry of the Book of Isaiah
(Isaiah 53:13- 1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.)
contrasts greatly with the somewhat mystical Ezekiel.
(Ezekiel 1:10-14 – 10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. Their wings were spread out upward; each had two wings, one touching the wing of another creature on either side, and two wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.)
You see God’s hand in the selection of these men when we view the reluctant Moses, who authors Genesis through Deuteronomy and the belligerent Saul, who post conversion is responsible for a major portion of the New Testament under the name of Paul.
Critical to our understanding is that God’s revelation of Himself to us is essential. If we attempt to find and comprehend God on our own, we always distort the image of God. As followers of Jesus, we must know and understand the witness of the Bible. It is the true guide in all crisis situations.
