Life 3: Connecting with Jesus through the Bible
January 26, 2012
We are in the midst of a series that we have simply titled LIFE. I believe that all of us have a deep desire to truly live. Not merely exist but to really experience life to the full. Like Peter, I am convinced that only Jesus offers the words of eternal life. In this series we are looking at how we can connect with Jesus and the Life that he offers.
On Sunday January 22, we looked at how Jesus sustains, nourishes and gives us life through the Bible. The people of God through the centuries have known that God gives life to them as they interact with the Bible. The Bible for the people of God is not just a collection of words on a page, they are way to connect with the Living God who stands behind the words. As the people connect with these words they find that they are actually connecting with the Living God and with life:
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
Deuteronomy 30
They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Deuteronomy 32:47
Jesus conveys very much the same idea when he rebuffs the temptation to turn the stones to bread: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
The Word of God sustains and brings us life. God has given us this gift so that we might experience life through connection with him. People of Jesus’ day were prone to forget this and I’m afraid at times so are we.
We looked at example of another gift that God gave, the Sabbath, as a metaphor with what can happen to the Bible. God gave the command to keep the Sabbath as a part of the Ten Commandments. God gave this command so that people would enter into a rest and remember that God sustains their life. God intended the Sabbath to bring life to people. By Jesus day all sorts of additional baggage and verbiage had fastened onto the Sabbath. The Sabbath becomes a major point of contention between Jesus and the religious leaders. Jesus heals a man by spitting on the ground and making mud and their response is not joy that the man is healed, instead they criticize Jesus for breaking the Sabbath. In a similar argument over the Sabbath, Jesus tells the religious leaders something crucially important: “Sabbath was made for humanity, and not humanity for the Sabbath.” In other words God did not think up the idea of Sabbath and some rules that must be kept on that day and then make people who could keep the Sabbath. Rather God made people and gave them the life giving command to rest and know that He is God.
Similarly God has given us the gift of the Bible, so that we might connect with him and experience the life that only he offers. We can get in this weird spot where we think the Bible was made to make us smart, or to help us keep rules or perhaps even worse we read it to make God happy. When we start to think like this we are worshipping a lesser God of our own making. Let’s put it this way God didn’t write the Bible and then think “This is a really good book! I need to make some people to read it.” Rather God made people and gave them the Bible to point him back to themselves so that they might experience life.
In another argument with religious leaders Jesus says that the whole point of the Bible is him, and pointing people to him so that they might have life:
39You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
John 5:39-40
May we be the people who receive God’s gift of the Bible and connect with Jesus through it so that we might experience the Life only he offers.
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