Introduction
Today I’d like to spend some time talking about the Bible, the importance of the Word of God in which we place our faith. Our faith is based on the truthfulness of God’s word. There is no substitute for the Bible for no other book is spiritual in nature and must be spiritually discerned or understood.
When I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior over 40 years ago, it was because of the faithfulness of my wife, Dee, who was a Christian before me. She literally prayed me into the Kingdom!
Since she had become a Christian several years before me, I tried to catch up on my understanding of the Bible by reading books about the Bible instead of reading the Word itself. I thought there was a shortcut to understanding God, his character and nature by reading books written by authors who were Christians already. Reading books by other Christian authors was a help to understanding the Bible but in no way could it be a substitute for reading the Bible itself.
One Corinthians chapter 2 (verses 9-16) states that the Bible or the word of God can only be discerned or understood by those who have the Holy Spirit living in them. Having the Holy Spirit means that a person is born-again and has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It is only then that we develop spiritual eyes, spiritual ears, and a spiritual mind to comprehend the things of God. You see the purpose of the Bible is to get to know the author of the Bible… God!
Offer of Free book
Now it may seem that I may be contradicting myself, but I want to offer you a book that I’ve written as a free download that I believe will help you in your understanding of the word of God. The book is called “Seeing The Forest For The Trees”.
My early frustration making sense of the Bible.
I can clearly remember, in the early days of my walk with the Lord, how difficult it was trying to learn all aspects of the Bible, the names of all the characters, the names of all the books, the separation between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Trying to discern if there was a single unifying message that could be found between Genesis and Revelation. The Bible was a complicated puzzle to me, until I recognized the importance of Covenants in the Bible. The word covenant can be used instead of the word testament; therefore, the Old Testament can also be called the Old Covenant, and the New Testament can be called the New Covenant!
When I took the time to understand Covenant Theology, I went from knowing about hundreds of things about the Bible; each fact or truth was like a building block or brick. What I had was like a pile of bricks but when I began to understand the importance of God’s covenants all the isolated “bricks” became a single structure, a building, founded upon Jesus Christ the foundation stone.
As a Pastor and Teacher, I was led to write a book that would help the members of my congregation and then Christians in general grasp the important truth that our God is a Covenant Making and Covenant Keeping God. This single truth helped me put the Bible in its proper perspective, that is a book of Redemption, restoring to God that which was lost back to a loving relationship with our Creator. From beginning to the end, the Bible represents the “Scarlet thread of Redemption!”
The Bible is consistent, understandable, and trustworthy. The purpose of my book is to give context or background to reading and studying the Bible. It is not meant to be exhaustive in scope nor is it meant to be a substitute for reading the Bible. Hopefully, it will provoke your interest and cause you to investigate further into the most important book ever written.
The Bible is a spiritual book
The Bible was never meant to be understood solely by intellectual means because it is a spiritual book, and the most important elements need to be spiritually evaluated. By spiritual I don’t mean in the pious sense of outward religion or rote memorization of Scripture verses but through an honest dialogue with our heavenly Father and the working of His Holy Spirit. The Bible is the most effective way that God can “speak” to us about His love and His healing for our souls.
My Book “Seeing the Forest for the Trees” is meant to help us get to the real issue of what is most important in the Bible and that real issue is redemption. A Biblical definition for redemption is the restoration of a lost humanity back to a personal, open, loving relationship with our Heavenly Father, through the completed work of Jesus Christ and through the agency of His Holy Spirit.
The phrase, “seeing the forest for the trees”, the title of my book, is often used to mean that it is easy to get caught up in all of the details of an issue and miss the “big picture”. It would be like trying to assemble a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the finished puzzle should look like. Many people wouldn’t even want to try to put a puzzle like that together; they would see it as an exercise in futility. This is often how many see the Bible; the complexity of details obscures the purpose of the Bible and therefore it doesn’t seem to make sense. The “trees” are so plentiful that the forest, or the purpose of the Bible, is missed.
There is so much in the Bible to consider. For instance, there are 2 major parts of the Bible- the Old Testament and the New Testament with a total of 66 books. The Old Testament is made up of 39 books and the New Testament has 27 books. Learning the names of the books and the sequence in which they are found is a challenge all by itself. Then each of the books are broken up into chapters and then the chapters are broken up into verses. You can begin to see all the “trees” so to speak.
On top of all these details is the fact that each book is set in a time and place unfamiliar to our times and culture. Added to all those details are the obscure names of hundreds of characters from different eras and lands. When you look at all the details that can be found in the Bible, it is no wonder that so many give up reading it by the time they get to the book of Leviticus, the third book of the Old Testament.
The logical way to begin studying the Bible, as with any book, is at the beginning, but before we begin, we must have the end in mind. For instance, when we pick out a book for personal reading, we tend to pick out a certain genre. It might be non-fiction, mystery, romance, or a biography. What we choose determines what we expect to find in the story. The same thing is true of the Bible. We must ask ourselves what is the predominant message of the Bible in its entirety or put another way, for what purpose was the Bible given to us by the Lord? It is so easy to lose sight of the message because of all the details found in the Bible.
So, what kind of book is the Bible? Why are we reading it? What do we hope to get out of it? Some would say that the Bible is about the history of man’s beginnings. Others would say that the Bible is about wisdom or a guide for living. Still, others would say that the Bible is spiritual in nature. While the Bible is all these things, it is first and foremost a God-inspired book regarding His plan of redemption or salvation for mankind. Redemption from God’s perspective means to save from sin, to recover a lost relationship, to exchange blessings for curses, to pay off a debt, or to fulfill an obligation. From a human perspective, redemption means eternal security.
Human tendency is to look for what you expect to find. What are you looking for? If you look only for history, you will only see history. If you look for a guide to life, you will find that. What you get out of the Bible is colored by your expectations. If you have no idea of the purpose of the Bible, then the Bible will probably not make any sense at all. Many people give-up on reading the most important book in the world simply because they don’t know what they are looking for.
As I have said before the Bible is consistent, understandable, and trustworthy. It is, without doubt, the most influential book in history. The Bible has been translated into virtually every language known and found in every country of the world. For much of the world’s population, the Bible has been the most important wellspring of moral truths. The Bible is the foundation of the 3 most significant religions in the world today: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
My personal hope for you is that as you read this book you will find it informative, interesting, and most of all that it will provide an “anchor” for your soul. That anchor being faith in Jesus Christ and seeing that He really is… “The way, the truth, and the life”.
