The Bible is filled with great truths. Actually, it is great truth. I want to share with you some great Biblical truths that are so profound that they stand out, and make a difference in the way we live and the way we look at God. I think that you will agree that these are four of the greatest truths in the Bible.
John 4:24: "God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him I spirit and truth." This is the greatest theological truth. It was Jesus’ answer to the “woman at the well” in John 4, pertaining to the correct place to worship. Jesus pointed out to her that, since God is Spirit, He can be worshipped anywhere. There are certainly places that are more conducive to worship than others, but God actually can be worshipped wherever we are. Of course, we worship Him in church, but we should also worship Him individually and as families. Wherever and whenever we worship God, it should be done in spirit and in truth. True worship is in keeping with God’s nature, which is spirit. It is also in keeping with truth as we know it in Jesus Christ. Keep in mind, however, that it is important that we “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together,” as we are reminded of in Hebrews 10:25. Matthew 7:12: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.”This is the greatest sociological truth. We call it the “Golden Rule.” It simply states that we should treat others as we want to be treated. We are to speak to others as we want to be spoken to. We could make many more applications of this great truth, but suffice it to say that this world would be a better place if we practiced this verse each day. In fact, churches would be better places if we Christians practiced this with each other. Imagine how much better our lives would be if we personally practiced this great sociological truth. Matthew 22:37-39: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind….and thy neighbor as thyself.” This is the greatest practical truth. First, we are to love God with all of our hearts. This means that we should love God/Jesus with all that is in us. Do we really love God this much? We know that we should, but do we really love Him emotionally, spiritually and mentally? Second, we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Jesus said, “the second is like unto it….” This means that it is ultimately important that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Do we really love other people that much? (Something to pray about, isn’t it?) John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” This is the greatest evangelistic truth. John 3:16 has been called “the gospel in a nutshell.” It tells us everything that a person needs to know in order to be saved. It tells us that God loves us. We know this but we need to know that love is the catalyst for our salvation. It tells us that, in His love, God sent His Son to save us. Without Jesus, we would all be doomed to eternity without God. It tells us how to be saved. We are saved by believing in Jesus, i.e., that we trust our lives and our eternal salvation to Jesus. It tells us that if we believe in Jesus, we will not perish. What a great truth. These four great truths should challenge us to live for Jesus daily, and to be thankful for all that God has done for us. Bro. Joe
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“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17. That the man of God may be perfect (complete, mature) thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 is the most complete definition of scripture that we have. We cannot divorce the scriptures, or Bible, from anything that has to do with the Christian life. We cannot say, “I believe in the Bible…..but.” The Bible is al-important and in this text Paul tells us why. First, the Bible is given by inspiration of God. There is a theological argument about what this means, but one thing is unmistakable: The Bible is a God-breathed document that stands alone in its authority in our lives. There are a lot of good Christian books, but not a one of them is inspired as the Bible was inspired. The apostle Peter made this clear in 2 Peter 1:20-21: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. 21. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” Second, the Bible is the only seed-bed of doctrine. I know that there are many doctrines that genuine Christians disagree on, but there is one Bible doctrine that has to stand undisputed in all Christian circles, and that is the doctrine of Christ. We can disagree about a lot of things, but we can’t disagree about Jesus. It is Bible doctrine that God’s Son came to earth from heaven, born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died as a perfect sacrifice on the cross for the sins of all mankind, arose on the third day and after forty days ascended to the right hand of the Father. When any group gets away from the centrality of Christ to the teachings of some man or woman, they have gotten away from the Bible. Third, the Bible has authority in the lives of Christians. It is from the Bible that reproof for our sins comes. People cannot define sin to their own liking, and when they err from the teachings of the Bible on sin, they are reproved by it. For example, there is no question in the Bible that adultery is a sin. It is never seen in a good light in the Bible. Adultery has already been assigned as sin by the Bible and we can’t change that to suit our own ideas of morality. (That goes for all of the other sins condemned in the Bible.) It is the Bible that corrects us about our behavior as to whether it is sin or not. It is not a popular stance today, but if the Bible condemns our behavior, we should stand corrected and cease that behavior. I must add that we all are subject to this correction for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." We should be as concerned about correcting our own sinful behavior as we are the sinful behavior of others. It is also written here that it is the Bible that instructs us in righteousness. The righteousness that is portrayed in the Bible is not just concerned with what we don’t do, but about what we do as well. There are sins of commission (what we do) and sins of omission (what we do not do). Therefore, the Bible tells us when we do good and when we do not do good. Fourth, the man (in the generic sense, meaning male and female) of God matures based on the Bible. A Christian cannot claim maturity if he or she does not read and study the Bible. Furthermore, we are prepared to do “good works” based on the word of God. One good example is when Jesus washed His disciple’s feet in John 13 to illustrate Christian humility for them. Surely if Jesus humbled Himself to do a good work, surely we must as well. We became Christians in order to do the good works of God on this earth in order to win people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is what I mean by "the Importance of Scripture.” Bro. Joe “Is not my word like a fire? Saith the Lord.”
This text was written in reference to false prophesies that were being uttered in Jeremiah’s day. The words of the false prophets were meaningless and bereft of power. The false prophets were merely saying what the people wanted them to say. Their words had no fire in them, whereas Jeremiah’s prophesies were like a fire. When the word of God is truly preached, it will be like a fire. John Wesley once told the preachers of his day that if they wanted to set the world on fire, they had to get on fire themselves and the people would come and watch them burn. This is still true today. Fire consumes everything in its path. I remember seeing a movie years ago that was warning against the danger of forest fires. A man threw a lighted cigarette out of his car window. The cigarette landed in dry leaves and began to burn. The fire did not go out until it had destroyed miles and miles of crops, houses, and anything else that was in its way. The fire of sin is like this. It needs to be replaced by the fire of God’s word. It is a beautiful thing to see the fire of God’s word cut loose in a church. It has a tendency to change people’s lives for the better. We need to set Bible fires loose in our homes, our churches, our schools, and our nation and watch it burn. This leads me to a second point on this matter. Fire also purifies. The fire of God’s word is not like the fire that burns up houses and crops. It is like a fire that purifies and cleans things up. When God’s fire sweeps through churches, homes, schools and communities, it does not destroy, but it builds up what needs to be built up and cleans up what needs to be cleaned. Let’s take for example a man whose whole life has been wasted on profligate living. Just use your imagination and you can picture what the sins of this man would be. One day a Christian witnesses to him, he sees the light, listens to the Holy Spirit and accepts Christ as Savior. He begins to take the word of God seriously, and the fire of that word begins to burn out all of the old dross and the person becomes a new man, or new woman. Without the fire of God’s word, this would not happen. The world is in dire need of the fire of God’s word today. To a lot of people, probably the majority of people, sin is no longer seen as sin. If over 50% of the people say that something is no longer sin, then it is no longer sin. I call this “morality by polls.” The Bible calls sin, sin and thus it will ever be. I want you to understand though that the Bible is not just hard on the more visible sins. It covers all sins. These would include false pride and self-righteousness. Jesus was the hardest on the Pharisees whose prevailing sin was self-righteousness. The fire of the word of God will help us to clean sin out of our lives. In order for a fire to take hold someone has to light it. This is why it is so important for God’s people to read, study, and digest the word of God. Are you starting a fire? Bro. Joe “Is not my word....like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces"
God has a hammer and it is His word. The good news is that He has put this hammer into our hands. When we sing “if I had a hammer,” we don’t need to look far for the hammer. A lot of you reading this article are probably like me, you have a lot of Bibles at your house in several different translations. If people don’t have that hammer today, it is not the fault of Bible publishers. When you go into any Christian bookstore, there will usually be several shelves of Bibles in all of the various English translations. There will also be a wealth of study Bibles with the notes of famous Christians in the margins. We don’t need to wonder what we would do if we had a hammer. We might need to wonder what in the world we are doing with this hammer, and of what use is it if we don’t pick it up and use it? Jeremiah wrote: “Is not my word….like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.” A hammer can be used to break things as mentioned in the text. When we think of a hammer, we probably think of a claw hammer, or a ball peen hammer. Right now I’m thinking of a seventy-five pound air hammer. When I was on the work crew at Norman College back in 1961, Mr. Parks, our boss, introduced me to this hammer. The concrete floor that we were breaking up could not have been done by a claw or ball peen hammer or even a sledge hammer. It took this air hammer to do it. When I picture God’s word as being a hammer that breaks things up, I think of that seventy-five pound air hammer. I think of that particular type of hammer, not just because it could break up some serious rock, but because you had to let it do the work. If you try to do the work for the air hammer, it will throw you all over the room, as one of my buddies found out. If we will heed the Bible and its teachings in our lives, the Holy Spirit who inspired it will work its power in our lives. We don’t need to add to it, it has all we need to build our lives on. A hammer can also be used to build or fix things. I do not own a lot of tools, because I am not much of a repairman, but I do own a hammer because a hammer is just needed to fix so many things. The hammer of God’s word can be used to fix anything that needs to be done. I want to give a couple of examples of what I mean. We need the hammer of God’s word to build positive relationships in our families. It is said that “the family that prays together stays together.” We can add that “the family that reads the Bible together stays together.” This applies to our relationships to people that we encounter in daily life, at work, or play or wherever. It definitely applies to building positive relationships in our churches. The Bible could cure a lot of church problems if we would just pay attention to what it says. We need the hammer of the word of God to build and fix things in our lives. It is true that all of us “have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” This doesn’t mean however that we should give up, because God has given us His word to help us overcome sin in our lives. We need to use the hammer of God’s word to smash the things that are wrong in our lives and to build, or repair, the things that should be right in our lives. We need the hammer of the word of God to fix things in our society. The trouble is that today the Bible cannot be used, or seen, in public places. We need a return to the word of God as part of our society. By that I do not mean the various books of the various religions or sects. I mean the Holy Bible that we have in our homes. When the word of God is preached, taught and lived it can break the things that need to be broken, build the things that need to be built, and fix the things that need to be fixed. But you actually have to use it - if you get my drift. Bro. Joe “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
The word of God is important in our lives and for our lives. The word of God, as we know it, is the Bible. There might be a word that comes from God apart from the Bible, but if it is a word from God it will surely agree with the Bible. I’m never impressed with visions that people have that do not have their essence in the Bible. Psalm 119 is a tribute to the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses was the scripture that they had at the time this psalm was written. Psalm 119:11 is a reminder to us that we need to read and study the word of God, but more than that it tells us to make it part of ourselves. Notice that the psalmist wrote, “Thy word have I hid in my heart…” This means that when we read the Bible, we are to internalize it. I think that means that we are to digest it in our minds, hearts and souls, as the the food that we eat is digested in our bodies. The food that we eat is absorbed into our bodies, providing nutrition to help our bodies grow stronger and healthier. That is why we need to be careful what we put into our bodies, because if we eat too much “junk food” it will be absorbed into our bodies and will not give us the nutrition that we need. We need to be careful also that we do not put too much “junk food” into our hearts, minds and souls. What we digest makes a difference in the quality of our lives both physically and spiritually. There is a lot of “junk food” out there waiting for us to take it in to damage our minds, hearts and souls. This makes it all the more important for us to spend time in the word of God and to digest it into our minds, hearts and souls. This means that we should not just give the Bible a cursory read, but we are to read it carefully and prayerfully, meditating and reflecting on it. In this way we will hide God’s word in our hearts, minds and souls: “that we might not sin against (God).” This principle is powerfully illustrated in Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is quick (alive), and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” When we read and study the word of God it becomes part of us much as the food that we eat becomes a part of us. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God goes to work in us, giving us new spiritual insight and that it adds to our spiritual growth. The word of God challenges us to live better lives and to be better people. Digesting the word of God does not make us judgmental and self-righteous, but it does make us more aware of our need for God’s righteousness. My belief is that we need to digest the word of God in order to love people as Jesus has commanded us. We need to digest the word of God in order to meet the temptations that we are bound to face. It is important for us to note that when Jesus was tempted by Satan in Matthew 4, that He defended Himself with the word of God. For example, when Satan tempted Jesus to turn stone into bread in order to satisfy His hunger, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3: “It is written, ‘man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." If Jesus defended Himself with God’s word, it is certainly important that we do the same. One more point that needs to be made in our study of the word of God is that we need to learn to love it and delight in it. In Psalm 119:47, the psalmist wrote: “And I will delight in thy commandments, which I have loved.” Some parts of the Bible are more “delightful” than others, but it is all God’s word. We need to learn to delight in it, not because it is always entertaining, but because it is good for us to read it, and simply because it is God’s message to us. We are never told that we should be entertained by the Bible, but that we are to be influenced by it. We love the word of God because it is, after all, the word of God. There is no greater resource on this earth that can help us in our relationship with God. Bro. Joe “When therefore (Jesus) was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them: And they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus said.”
After Jesus’ resurrection, His disciples believed what He had previously told them about it, and they believed the scriptures – the Bible. They realized afresh and anew that the Bible had a place in their lives. The Bible should have a place in the life of every Christian. It is our source book. There are many good Christian books on the market, but none should take the place of the Bible. Let me illustrate what I mean: The Bible has a place in the hands of a Christian. We need to take the Bible in our hands and read it every day. We should set aside a time each day to read and study the Bible. We should read it systematically. We should begin at chapter one of a book and read through to the end. Of course there are times when we will read a verse here and a verse there, but this should not be all that we do. The Bible has a message, and we can’t get the message by just skipping around in it. We should read it through. It is not too much to ask a Christian to at least read the New Testament through every year. There are 260 chapters in the New Testament; therefore, we can read it through in 260 days if we read just one chapter a day. Ideally, we should read through the whole Bible every year. The Bible has a place in the head of a Christian. We need to know what’s in the Bible and what the real message of the Bible is. It is a book of redemption ultimately through Jesus Christ. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses tell us that most of their converts in the south are Southern Baptists. If those Southern Baptists knew the Bible, they would not believe those doctrines. We need an intellectual grasp of scripture. This does not mean that we have to be intellectual to understand it. It means that the message of the Bible should be part of our thought processes. We really need to think about what we read in the Bible. The Bible has a place in the heart of a Christian. We should internalize what we read in the Bible. Its message should be in our hearts, our emotions, indeed, in our souls. Just as the food that we eat becomes part of us, what we read becomes a part of us. If we never read the Bible, or only read it sporadically, it will not become part of whom and what we are. Life’s decisions are made from the head and the heart. If the Bible is to help us make decisions, it should be in our heads and hearts. We should take the Bible seriously enough that its message becomes a part of our decision making processes. If it is not in our hearts, we will not believe it or practice it. We should be emotional about the Bible. It should make us laugh and cry. It should make us stop and think about our lives and cause us to change what needs changing in our lives. We should be emotional enough about the Bible to share its message about Jesus with other people. After all, Jesus is the main focus of the Bible. I do not consider myself an expert on the Bible. I am a student of the Bible. I read it through every year and learn something new almost every day. I do not write this to brag, but to get you to see that if I can read it through, you can too. Pick up your Bible, read it, think about and believe it in your heart. Bro. Joe “The entrance of thy words giveth light: it giveth understanding to the simple.”
I agree that there are many difficult passages in the Bible, but the overall message of the Bible is simple. In a sense, God is revealed to us as a mystery in the Bible, but as the Bible progresses His nature becomes clearer and comes to a sharp focus in Jesus. I have found the real message of the Bible to be simple. I want to share some ways the Bible reveals a simple message. The Bible reveals a simple message of God’s love and care for people. In the Old Testament, from Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to Moses and Israel, the love and care of God is revealed. A good example is found in Exodus 3:7-8a: “And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters for I know their sorrows, and am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.” The greatest example is that the love and care of God is revealed in the New Testament with the coming of Jesus. Observe the simple message given in John 1:1 and 1:14: “In the beginning was the word (Jesus) and the word was with God and the word was God. 14. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.” It is impossible to explain the grace that made this possible, but the message of it is plain and simple. It simply happened because of God’s love and care for people. Of course, we cannot omit the simplest message of all from John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” With this positive message the Bible also has a simple message about the wrath of God against sin. Romans 1:18a: “For the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Romans 5:9 simply reveal how we can avoid God’s wrath: “Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him (Jesus).” The Bible reveals a simple message of salvation for lost humanity. When Adam and Eve sinned, their close relationship with God was broken. If one looks at the total message of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, he sees God at work putting that relationship back together. This is the major point of the Bible. How did God repair this broken relationship? He did not do it through the law of Moses. Paul explained this in Galatians 3:24-25: ‘wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” God did it through sending His own Son to die for us, rise from the grave, ascend unto the Father, intercede for us and send His Holy Spirit to dwell in us when we believe in Him. Further, Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19: “Therefore if a (person) be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): old things are passed away: behold all things are become new. 18. And all things are of God, Who hath reconciled us to Himself, and hath given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19. To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself…” We can argue about the finer points of scripture. In fact, we will argue about them, but the messages of salvation and reconciliation are plain, simple and unmistakable. The message is simple in order that all people, from the simplest to the most intellectual, might know that they can be saved and reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. Amen! Hallelujah! Bro. Joe “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” NIV
In our text Paul was defending his ministry to the Corinthian church. There were many in the Corinthian church that were critical of Paul. They did not like his preaching style. They did not think that he was a genuine apostle, because he had not been with the original twelve. They thought that he was “bold” in his letters, but “timid” when he was with them. Paul hinted in this passage that when he came to visit them, they would find out how “timid” he was. He warned them that the weapons that he would use would not be weapons of the world. His weapons had “divine power to demolish strongholds.” Paul did not name those weapons, so what you will get in this article is what I think those weapons were. I want you to realize that this is my opinion, but I think that you will agree that these virtues are weapons that we can use in spiritual warfare. (Paul gives a description of the Christian’s armor in Ephesians 5, but most of them are defensive, except for the “sword.” I think that these weapons that I will list would be involved in our armor.) The first weapon that we have as Christians is Holy Spirit power. In Ephesians 5:17, Paul mentioned “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” The Holy Spirit serves as our weapon against strongholds in at least two ways. One is that when we are saved, we are given the Holy Spirit to work inside of us to lead, guide and teach us. We have His presence every day to help us combat evil. Another way is that the Holy Spirit inspired the word of God, which we have to prepare us for the battles that we will face in the world. Have you ever wondered why godless people want to ban the Bible? It is because they know that God’s word has the power of the Holy Spirit and they want to keep it out of our hands, heads and hearts. Miss Doris Knight was a missionary to China during the Japanese takeover and was there when the communists took over. She was retired and a member of the first church I pastored. When Miss Doris knew that the Bible would be banned, she began to memorize massive amounts of scripture. Her sister told me that she had seen her pretend to read from her Bible, but she was really quoting it. She did this because she knew that the word of God is the sword of the Spirit, and she would need it in case her Bible was taken away from her. We could not face the evils of the world without the Holy Spirit. The second weapon that we have as Christians is our faith in Jesus Christ. We should never underestimate the power of faith to defeat the evils of the world. Jesus said that if we have faith as small as a mustard seed, we can remove mountains. We grow in faith in measure, that is, we grow in faith as we live in it daily. But the faith that we have is the same weapon that Paul, Peter and the other great Christians in the New Testament and in Christian history had. We activate that faith when we digest the word of God and when we pray. Prayer could actually be classified as another weapon, but faith and prayer work together in our lives. I have found that when I have gone through difficult times in my life that my faith was strengthened by taking everything to God in prayer. Faith and prayer bring the power of God to bear in our lives. Paul pointed this out in one of my favorite passages, Philippians 4:6-7: “Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your requests known unto God. 7. And the peace which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” That is a great example of faith and prayer working together. If you are a believer, you have these weapons. Use them!!! Bro. Joe “Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: 2. And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith. 3. But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.”
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