All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (ESV)

I am a conspiracy theorist at heart.  I take nothing on face value.  I am one of those people I talked about yesterday: I like hard facts and proof.  Trust does not come easy for me.

But when I look at The Bible, when I see it for exactly what it is… For me, understanding that Scripture not only claims to be God’s Word but absolutely has to be God’s Word is a great faith enabler.  (If you are looking for a great book to bone up on your apologetics or help with understanding the veracity of Scripture and the truth of Who God is, Who Jesus is and that, yes, He is The Way, The Truth and The Life, I would recommend Josh McDowell’s The Evidence That Demands a Verdict, a very insightful tome.)

The Bible is God’s Word to His people. When we’re seeking God, this is the place to start. It is here that He reveals Himself to us.  The collection of 66 books runs as a thematic narrative, It was penned by around 40 different writers – some educated men, some simple shepherds and fishermen, even one who was a reformed Pharisee (Paul, who wrote the largest percentage of the New Testament).

The books that are contained in the Bible were written over the span of around 1500 years, in three different languages (Hebrew, Koine Greek and Aramaic).  When you consider all these facts, then see that the Bible does not contradict itself within these pages, you begin to see there is something indeed quite special about this collection.

For me, one of the factors that shows the Bible’s veracity is it’s cohesion.  Think about it: Moses was a stuttering Israelite raised as an Egyptian royal. David was a shepherd who became king.  Solomon was a king – and the wisest man on earth – who fell in disgrace and foolishness.  Jonah was a hesitant prophet. Matthew was a tax collector (scourge of the earth in Jesus’ day).  Luke was a physician.  Peter and John were simple fishermen.  Now, on top of that, try to imagine a running narrative that holds together, without error or hiccup, being written from 500 AD – the days of Attila the Hun, the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of Mayan Civilization – until now.

There is also the amazing economy of the writing.  There are no wasted words in all of Scripture.  No filler.  No meaningless lines.  It is a collection so rich with wisdom, history, ethics, poetry, prose, prophecies fulfilled and to come, and truth that there is no possible way the Bible is anything short of what it claims to be: the entirely inerrant Word of God, written down by men by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Consider this also: The Bible is God – Existence Himself, Our Heavenly Father – showing Himself to us and defining the terms of His relationship with us.  The Creator of the Universe has given us His Word not for His benefit, but for ours.  But it s for our benefit by God’s terms, not ours.  The wisdom contained within far exceeds the wisdom of man.  The expectations set for us are not those that would be set by sinful, self-serving humans but by a loving, omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (everywhere all the time), eternal God Who reaches out to His people wherever they are, regardless of position or station in life.  From the highest king to the lowest tax collector to the humblest fisherman, He is God.  He loves us.

There is absolutely no way The Bible could be anything less than God’s Word.  It is too enduring, too cohesive, too wise and accurate, to be anything less.  So we better take God at His Word, seek Him in His Word, trust that His Word is true and faithful and worthy.

6  “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; 7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. 9  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10  “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 12  “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13  Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” – Isaiah 55:6-13 (ESV)

To that I can add nothing more. Except a hearty “Amen!”

24 Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him,“Have you believed because you have seen me?Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” – John 20:24-29 (ESV)

Columbus Day is one of my favorite holidays.  Not that I enjoy the celebrations (what celebrations?).  I get a kick out of the fact that our post offices, government and banks take the day off to commemorate the man who did not discover America.  And then there is George Washington and the cherry tree.  “I cannot tell a lie,” the young future general and president is quoted as saying.  History and myth so often intertwine that, over the years, it can be hard to discern the two.

Even Christmas itself is an inaccuracy.  Historians claim that Jesus was, most likely, not born in December, let alone December 25.  The day we celebrate Christmas is, according to some historians, the Christian adoption of Saturnalia, a week-long Roman celebration of the god Saturn that was held from December 17 to 23 each year.

Historians even managed to get the year of Christ’s birth wrong.  Allegedly.  Which is a shame because our calendar is based, in large part, on the year of Jesus’ birth (originally 1 A.D., with all years before marked B.C. [before Christ] and after noted as A.D. [Anno Domini, “the year of our Lord”]).  Historical birth date claims vary.  Some think Herod died in 4 B.C., which would historically place Jesus’ death around 6 B.C.  Some historians try to tie the Star of Bethlehem with certain astounding astronomical anomalies that would date the birth of Jesus as either October of 7 B.C., or June of 2 B.C. – two dates that do not jive with Herod’s 4 B.C. death date.

In the end, does any of this amount to a hill of beans?  We view history from a much different point-of-view than people did 2000 years ago.  We are much more involved in the data – facts, figures, documentation, proof, artifacts, carbon-dating.  In Jesus’ time, the facts were important.  But far more important was the story.  History was recorded with an eye toward getting the meaning right.  It didn’t matter that Matthew may not be chronologically perfect.  He was making a point about Jesus, and the scenes recorded in the Gospels are arranged to make that point.  It doesn’t make them inaccurate or wrong.  It just makes them more narrative.

Humans like assurance.  We need the false sense of security that information provides.  We want to know all the facts, exactly and accurately. Otherwise we will tend to doubt what is being presented to us.  Essentially, we have the same problem Thomas had.  “Unless I see Him with my own two eyes – see the nail holes on His hands and stick my hand in the pierced wound in His side, I will not believe.”  Jesus response: “Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe.”

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, ESV).  And faith – not data – is the base for understanding.  Take a moment and read Hebrews 11 to get a better of grasp of how – and why – it is better to base our beliefs on what God – you know, The Great I AM THAT I AM, Existence Himself – has to say as opposed to what educated humans “discover”.

And God, in His infinite understanding, kindness and mercy – doesn’t just leave us hanging with a simple “trust Me, I am God”.  He gave us His Word.  In the Bible, we are told all we need to know (and we live on a need to know basis).

So, how can we trust the Bible to be right?  Well… it takes faith.  Believing is knowing based on what God says, not what we think we have figured out.  And, as for the trustworthiness of the Bible… well, there’s our cliffhanger.  We’ll pick this up again next time.

In the meantime, if some historian somewhere could just find Jesus’ birth certificate, we could get an awful lot of confusion straightened out.  Or it could just stir the pot even more.

…God is love. 1 John 4:8b (ESV)

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the subject of God’s love.  Honestly, if someone treated me the way I have treated the Lord at certain times in my life, I’d have walked away from that relationship a long, long time ago.  And, right there in those two sentences, the difference between how I “love” and how He loves is illustrated.

God is love.  Apart from God, there is no love.  The reason is that, in and of ourselves, we human beings do not possess the capacity to truly love. Not by God’s definition of the word, that is.

Agapē is a Greek word that literally means “a love feast”.   In the King James Version it is often translated as “charity”.  God’s love is utterly selfless.  Unlike relationships between humans, God has no need of us.  He does not benefit from loving us, the way we benefit from His love for us.  We are truly the benefactors of the One Who does not merely love, but is love.  God’s love is pure.  It is not need based.  It has no conditions.

The apostle Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, illustrated beautifully what love manifest looks like:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. – 1 Corinthians13:4-8 (ESV)

Since we are seeking God, and God is love, I think it would be a good exercise to take the verses above and replace the word “love” with “God”.

God is patient and kind.  “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count lowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, He had every right to destroy the Earth.  But He didn’t.  At least not yet.  God seems to reserve that particular action for when the sin of this world becomes so great that there is no other choice.  With Noah, the Lord waited until there was one righteous family left.

God does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant or rude. Who does God have to boast to?  He is God.  Not one of many, but the One and Only.  He is gracious to us, for we are truly precious in His sight.

God does not insist on His own way.  It’s called free will.  And, sorry Calvinists, we all have it.  It doesn’t mean God’s will won’t be fulfilled (it will be).  But, love can only be reciprocated freely.  Love cannot be forced upon anyone.

God is not irritable or resentful.  When God speaks forcibly, it isn’t because He is grumpy.  When God speaks or acts, it is ultimately for our good.  He shows us great favor, but sometimes that takes the form of correction.  He is our Heavenly Father.  When my son takes off running in a parking lot, or decides jumping off furniture with a cape on trying to be a superhero, or attempts any one of an endless varieties of daredevil stunts that seven year old boys tend to enjoy trying, Dad’s response is generally pretty stern and unpleasant.  I love my child.  I do not want him to get hurt.  And , sometimes, I have to get the message across in strong terms.  It isn’t that I’m grouchy.  It’s the fact that I love my kid so much that I will do whatever I can to protect him, and teach him to make wise decisions.

He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  This one seems fairly obvious, seeing that God is Truth and the One Who defined morality.  Read Exodus or Leviticus sometime.  There are laws God put down that make me think, “Are you kidding?  Someone had to tell them not to do that?”

God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6, ESV).  God created you. He knew you before you were born: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13, ESV).  You cannot sin so great that God will not forgive you.  You cannot run so far that God will not find you.  His love for you – for all of us – is unconditional and pure and entirely without selfish motivation.

God never ends. He always has been, always will be.  He is the Great I AM, Existence Himself.  And He loves each of us with astounding grace, mercy and patience.  He is our Father.  He is love.  And if we want to know what love looks like in the flesh, we need look no further than His Son, Jesus Christ.

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.  – Exodus 3:13-14 (KJV)

If we are going to seek God first in all things, it is a good idea to seek Who He is.  I mean Who He really is.  Because I believe we do not give the Lord the true reverence He deserves.  He is our friend in the sense that, when we follow Him, we are no longer His enemy.  He is not our buddy.  He is no one’s sugar daddy, existing merely to fulfill our every spoiled whim.  And – sorry ladies – regardless of what an awful lot of Christian pop songs may claim, Jesus is not your boyfriend.

Moses met God – as close to face-to-face as humanly possible:

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. – Exodus 3:1-6 (ESV)

I really wish I had used the King James for the above passage because, as everyone knows, when God speaks, He uses King James English.  (That was a humor folks.)

Notice: we are to approach God with awe and respect.  Try to imagine how Moses must have felt, in the burning presence of the Lord.  He didn’t even know how to describe God to the Israelites.  And, it is here (Exodus 3:14) that God reveals exactly Who He is: I AM THAT I AM.

In capital letters.

God does not exist.  He is existence.  We did not create God (although, Lord knows, we’ve tried).  He created us.  God is not an abstraction.  He is real.  Very real.  Very in control.

Now, think about it.  God is immeasurably far and above each of us.  He could have chosen to stay distant, to (as deists believe) create the world, set it spinning on it’s axis, and float away, off to the next project.  And, considering the episode with Adam and Eve and the serpent and the introduction of sin… I mean, honestly, God gave them one command (“Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”) and they couldn’t even do that!  God had every right at that very moment to wipe them all out and start again.

But He didn’t.  Because God – this incomprehensibly massive being (and I struggle to even find words that are sufficient, and obviously fell short) – loves us.  And He chose to make a way for us to be able to have the relationship with Him that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the garden.

So, through His Word, God reveals Himself to us.  The Old Testament is replete with names for God that tell us of His wondrous attributes. Here are a few, from The Blue Letter Bible website:

• El Shaddai (Lord God Almighty)
• El Elyon (The Most High God)
• Adonai (Lord, Master)
• Yahweh (Lord, Jehovah)
• Jehovah Nissi (The Lord My Banner)
• Jehovah-Raah (The Lord My Shepherd)
• Jehovah Rapha (The Lord That Heals)
• Jehovah Shammah (The Lord Is There)
• Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness)
• Jehovah Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Sanctifies You)
• El Olam (The Everlasting God)
• Elohim (God)
• Qanna (Jealous)
• Jehovah Jireh (The Lord Will Provide)
• Jehovah Shalom (The Lord Is Peace)
• Jehovah Sabaoth (The Lord of Hosts)

I once taught a class on the names of God in the Old Testament and, wow… the way God reveals Himself is amazing.  Notice that all of these names show how God relates to us. 

But it is in the New Testament that it all comes together. Jesus was truly the fulfillment of the Old Testament, the Messiah, God incarnate Who came not to offer sacrifice on our behalf, but to be our only acceptable, perfect, substitutionary sacrifice for us.

And, again, none of this is abstraction.  Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection on the third day following is historical fact, not allegory. That puts pay to all the Old Testament promises of a coming Messiah.

And, to put a more personal point on this, we must recognize that God – the Burning Bush that never went out, the Great I AM, Existence Himself, the cause of and reason for everything – is also “Abba, Father”.  Abba is a very personal Aramaic term Jesus used to describe the Father.  It means “papa”.  It is a term of personal affection.

And He is not just Jesus’ Father.  He is our Father, too.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. – Romans 8:14-19 (ESV)

The terms used are Roman legal terms.  We are literally adopted by God as His children.  Put it all together and we see that God is approachable.  We can go to Him – indeed we are expected to do just that – about anything.  But we need to understand the might and awe of our Father and maintain a healthy fear (respect) for Him.  We need to seek God with an understanding of our place and His.  We are on the receiving end of much undeserved love, grace and mercy.

There is one more aspect of God to discuss (only one???), but I have gone on long enough.  Please come back tomorrow, will you?

Study Resources :: The Names of God in the Old Testament. Retrieved from http://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/name_god.cfm

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. – Jude 20-21 (ESV)

Advent has begun.  (I think it actually started yesterday, but…)  And, seeing that advent is a time of seeking Jesus with anticipation and joy, it seems to me the perfect opportunity for a spiritual road trip.  A time of adventure in seeking the Lord.  A time to set aside preconceived notions about God, and see just what His Word has to say.

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness…” (Matthew 6:33a, ESV).  I quote that verse often.  It is the jumping off point for any journey to seek the Lord.  To put the verse in its proper scriptural context, Jesus is saying we need to put the Lord before all – including seeking our own material needs.  Not just comforts.  Not merely wants.

And that’s tough to do.  I’m not so sure that most of us in the western world can truly appreciate what that means.  In fact, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite even bringing up the subject, sitting here in my comfortable warm home with a full belly, surrounded by more than enough comforts, and feeling secure (perhaps falsely) in my life.

I think of people I know who felt secure in their lives, only to have life upend it all – job loss, divorce, illness, the loss of a loved-one, unexpected tragedy…  I think of these people, and the ones who survived with their faith intact were the ones who sought Jesus above the pain, above the loss, above the circumstances.

Seeking God first isn’t just a matter of praying about something I want.  Seeking God means I need to be intentional about putting His Word into action in my life.  It is about being faithful every moment of my life.  It is not about religious obedience – acts I feel compelled to perform – but about heart change, realizing Psalm 37:4 in my life:

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart (ESV).

When I find my joy, contentment and peace in the Lord, it is because He has changed my heart, given me the right desires.  This happens when I diligently, faithfully seek Him first in all things.  This is what loving God is.  When I put Him before all else, I find Him in all things.

It isn’t necessarily easy.  There is more than enough distraction in my life to turn my head away from God.  But I must seek the Lord and His righteousness first and earnestly.  And each day begin anew.