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GOD’S
WORD – FOUNDATION FOR RECONSTRUCTION
Hebrew Bible scroll at
the Western Wall in Jerusalem
What a
precious treasure the Bible is! The Word
of God contains sixty-six books, written
by forty authors, over a period of some
1500 years. This becomes even more
astounding when we realize that all
these authors essentially agree with
each other, although they came from many
different time-frames and walks of life,
from fishermen, to tax collectors, to
shepherds, to kings. The preservation of
the Bible is equally miraculous and
astounding. For instance, in 1947 a
Bedouin boy discovered what came to be
known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Interestingly, many of these scrolls
were handed over to Israel at the
precise time the United Nations was
voting whether of not Israel could
become an independent nation. The
scrolls had lain buried for almost two
thousand years throughout the whole time
Israel was dispersed among the nations.
The discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls gave us a copy
of our Bible that was a thousand years
older than any copy we possessed at that
time. They gave us a complete scroll of
Isaiah, which is now on display at the
Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. They
also gave us fragmented copies of most
other books of the Old Testament. The
Dead Sea Scrolls have done much to
verify the integrity of the Old
Testament, and the Isaiah scroll is much
the same old Isaiah that we have in our
Bibles today.
We cannot help
comparing all this with the Koran,
the holy book of a billion-plus Moslems.
It was written by only one man. There
were no other previous writers to
corroborate his supposed revelation.
There was no stream of revelation
reaching over 1500 years.
Archaeologically speaking, there was no
ancient salvation infrastructure to
support the Moslem faith. This had to be
quickly borrowed from the Jews and
Christians. In fact, one of the very
first acts of the Moslems was to conquer
the Holy Land and build two of their
mosques on the Temple Mount, claiming
the whole area and its rich history as
their very own.
Yes, the Bible
is a fantastic and amazing book. In
previous centuries people greatly valued
the Bible, but in our era it has been
largely spurned and ignored by millions.
However, when we look around us today,
we see lives, families, and nations that
are falling apart. Could this be
precisely because the word of God has
been depreciated, spurned and cast away?
THE WORLD’S VIEW OF "THE
WORD"
It seems
that there are two major things that
have caused the word to be spurned. The
first thing that has surely caused a
cheapening of the word in our time has
been the slow rot of unbelief in the
Bible brought about by hyper-critical
theologians and churchmen. This has been
going on for at least two-hundred years.
We know these processes today as
"higher criticism" and
"form criticism." These
efforts have left us with a Bible minus
most of its supernatural and miraculous
aspects. In short, it has become a book
like most any other book and one that
does not demand our absolute belief and
allegiance.
The second
thing that has caused this cheapening
has been the rapid onset of what has
come to be called the Postmodern
Movement. This movement apparently began
to influence the US around the middle of
the twentieth century, and it hit the
streets soon afterward, particularly in
the 60s. A cardinal belief of
postmodernism is that there is no
universal standard of truth. Therefore,
all truth is relative and one person’s
truth is just as true as another’s.
Thus our presentation of the Bible as
the "everlasting truth of God"
is almost laughable to many postmoderns
today. We probably do not realize how
quickly these attitudes have spread and
how profoundly they have affected us
especially in the US. Even in the early
1990s the researcher, Barna, discovered
that 72 percent of young adults no
longer believed in any standard of
absolute truth.*
We can only
wonder if Paul’s words of Romans 1:25
have at last come true: "They
exchanged the truth of God for a lie,
and worshiped and served created things
rather than the Creator."
GOD’S VIEW OF THE WORD
When we open
the Bible we soon discover that God’s
view of the word is far different than
man’s view. In 1 Peter 1:24-25 we
read: "All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers
of the field; the grass withers and the
flowers fall, but the word of the Lord
stands forever." It might very
well be that Peter has reference here to
the ideas and opinions of philosophers
when he speaks of the "grass"
and "flowers" that wither
away. So we see here that God’s word
is eternal. We see the same thing in
many other places in scripture.
The Bible is a
spiritual treasure. The ancient
sufferer, Job, said: "I have
treasured the words of his mouth more
than my daily bread" (23:12).
Jesus himself said in Mathew 4:4: "Man
does not live on bread alone, but on
every word that comes from the mouth of
God." In 2 Timothy 3:16-17 we
read: "All Scripture is
God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness, so that the man of God
may be thoroughly equipped for every
good work."
We soon
discover that God and his word are in a sense one and the same, and that God
cannot go back on his word. When Jesus
came to this earth he came as the
eternal word of God incarnate, or the
word of God clothed with flesh. We read
about his coming in John 1:1: "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was
God." In verse 14 John adds: "The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling
among us." Jesus came to earth
as the authentic first edition of the
Living Bible. As his disciples followed
him around the Galilee they were daily
experiencing Living Psalms, Living
Proverbs and Living Deuteronomy. One
Jerusalem professor friend summed up the
relationship of Jesus and the word with
this little jingle: "Jesus is the
Word; the Bible is the word about the
Word; preaching is the word about the
word about the Word; and theology is the
word about the word about the word about
the Word."
From the
scripture we know other things about the
word of God. It is not only eternal, but
it is also alive and powerful (Heb.
4:12). How different it is from the
words of the daily newspaper. Newspapers
are soon forgotten, but God’s word
lives on for a thousand generations. My
eldest son once worked on an
agricultural project in Israel. Their
team was given a few precious ancient
seeds to plant in hopes that the wheat
variety of Israel in Bible times could
be restored. These grains were some
three thousand years old. Yet, much to
the amazement of everyone the precious
seeds came up and produced hundreds more
of their kind. The Bible is like that.
Although it looks old, dusty and dead,
it can spring forth and bear much fruit
in our lives.
For instance,
during the last few years a million plus
new immigrants came home to Israel. They
came from the north (former Soviet
states) and from the south (Ethiopia)
just as Isaiah 43:5-6 said they would.
They returned home because of a word
that was some 2700 years old.
In the book of
Genesis we read that God created the
world out of nothing. He literally spoke
the word and all things came into being
(Gen. 1:3,6,9 ff,). It is truly
interesting that in the Hebrew language,
"word" and "thing"
are the same (the Hebrew – da-var).
We know by this that when God speaks
things happen. "Word" and
"things" continue to have a
very close connection today. In Hebrews
1:3 we read: "The Son is the
radiance of God's glory and the exact
representation of his being, sustaining
all things by his powerful word."
Also in
Colossians 1:15-17 we read a similar
thing: "He is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn over all
creation. For by him all things were
created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones
or powers or rulers or authorities; all
things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all
things hold together." How
amazing! Stars, universes, atoms,
mountains, trees are all held together
by Jesus the Word of God. Our hearts
beat because of that word and we also
breathe because of it. Conversely, those
who choose to oppose God are opposed by
his created order. An evil leader by the
name of Sisera once opposed Israel. He
was defeated of course and it was said
of him in Judges 5:20: "From the
heavens the stars fought, from their
courses they fought against Sisera."
GOD WANTS TO REVEAL HIS WORD TO US
As we can
see, those Christians today who believe
the word of God and live by that word
have a special advantage. They are in
harmony with the creation that was
brought about by the word of God.
Sometimes it seems like an almost unfair
advantage. Paul says in Romans 8:28: "And
we know that in all things God works for
the good of those who love him, who have
been called according to his
purpose."
Obviously
the Lord wants his word to be precious
to us and to become a part of the fabric
of our lives. He wants to give each of
us a special revelation of himself and
of his word. Long ago the young child,
Samuel, ministered in the Tabernacle at
Shiloh. In those days the word of God
was scarce and there were few visions (1
Sam. 3:1). Samuel’s situation reminds
us a lot of our day in that the ministry
was greatly polluted and the light had
gone out in God’s house. Yet it
pleased God in those days to speak to
young Samuel. We read that God revealed
his word to Samuel (1 Sam. 3:7 &
21). The result was that Samuel became a
mighty prophet of Israel and was
responsible for the nation’s revival
and victory over its Philistine enemies.
God wants to
reveal his word to each of us just as he
did to young Samuel. In the quietness of
our soul we only need to answer as
Samuel did in 1 Samuel 3:10: "Speak,
for your servant is listening."
-Jim Gerrish
Publication Date, 2009
*Barna Research Group Survey reported in
Christianity Today, October 26, 1992, p.
30
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