Back to Basics #3: The Bible

Once you begin following Jesus (salvation), you want to talk to him (prayer). Next comes engaging his written word (the Bible). This week we looked at:

1. What the Bible is
2. How we got the Bible
3. What to do with the Bible

Since the Mac we use to record the messages had a full hard drive, I’ll summarize what we looked at below.

1. What the Bible Is

In order to understand what the Bible is, we started by looking at what it isn’t. The Bible is not:

• An ammunition cache: a place where you mine for scriptures to rip out of context and throw at your verbal sparring partners.
• A Chicken-Soup for the Soul style inspirational book: if you take a serious look at the whole Bible, you’ll find enough sex and violence to make any churchgoer hyperventilate.
• A technical manual: we don’t slice-and-dice God’s Word to make lists and bullet-points.
• A text book: Do a YouTube search on “The Bible”, and most of the videos are concerned with fighting evolutionists. That is so far from the purpose of scripture it’s almost funny!
• A Christian horoscope: we’re not meant to open the book at random and plunk our fingers down for life advice.

No, the Bible is much more than these modern perversions. The Bible’s a diverse library that spans at least two millennia. It’s contents tell the story of God’s determined effort to reestablish contact with his estranged creation. That story, then, becomes a sword to challenge the worldview of his renegade creatures.

2. How we Got the Bible

Scripture is incarnational. On the one hand, it’s entirely God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). On the other hand, there are very distinct human voices in the text. These treatises, biographies, prophecies, and letters have been carefully copied and preserved throughout the ages. We now have thousands of manuscript fragments that allow us to reconstruct with remarkable accuracy the original text. As a believer, I also know the Spirit of God had a hand in its preservation.

There has been some talk lately about other gospels and scriptures that were covered up by the hierarchy of the church to remain in power. I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to read the “scriptures” in question. They sound a lot more like second century gnostic constructs than first century Judaism.

3. What to Do with the Bible

In short: read it. The church has developed a way of reading scripture known as the lectio divina. This way of reading has four movements:

1. lectio: Read scripture slowly, repeatedly, and thoughtfully.
2. meditatio: Meditate on what you’ve read. Use your imagination to immerse yourself in the divine drama.
3. oratio: Pray about what you’ve read. Imagine you attended a book-club meeting where the author showed up to answer your questions. We have the Spirit of the author’s Son present in our hearts to enlighten us as we read.
4. contemplatio: Don’t rush away from reading. Take time to rest in the love of God.

Once you’ve devoured scripture like this, there’s only one thing left: just do it! (But that’s next week’s message.)

To wrap this message up, the Bible’s not like any other book you’ll ever encounter. We don’t lay out God’s Word on our mental operating tables to “get something out of it”.

We’re the ones on the table.