What Is the Bible?

Journey Through the Bible

CUMC:  7 January 2007

Andy Langford

 Acts 8:26-39

 

 

Now an angel of the Lord said to one of the twelve disciples Philip, AGo south to the road - the desert road - that goes southwest down from Jerusalem to Gaza.@  So Philip started out, and on his way Philip met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasure of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians.  This official had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 

The Holy Spirit told Philip, AGo to that chariot and stay near it.@

Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the official reading Isaiah the prophet.  ADo you understand what you are reading?@  Philip asked.

AHow can I, unless someone explains it to me?@  So the official invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

 

This is the passage of Scripture the man was reading:

 

AHe was led like a sheep to the slaughter,

   and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,

      so he did not open his mouth.

 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. . . .

 His life was taken from the earth.@

 

The official asked Philip, ATell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?@ 

Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

 

As Philip and the official traveled along the road, they came to some water and the official said, ALook, here is water.  What can stand in the way of my being baptized?@  And the man gave orders to stop the chariot. 

Then both Philip and the official went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 

                                                                                                                           Acts 8:26-39 adapted

 

Why would an African official on the back of a chariot heading down a bumpy road be reading the ancient preacher Isaiah?  This official was a successful man, the chief financial officer of his nation, the head of his country's Federal Reserve Bank.  We would expect this financial officer to be reading a financial spreadsheet or the Wall Street Journal.  Instead, this official was reading the Hebrew scriptures.  What was this Ethiopian official seeking?

   

If you are traveling from your home to a place you had never visited, you need a map.  If you are cooking a new food dish, you need a recipe.  Unless you are a man, who does not ever need directions to do anything, we all need assistance to get through life.  Which map, what guidance, which recipe, therefore, do we use if we are looking for God?  The answer for Christians is the Bible.  The Bible is a collection of stories by inquirers about inquirers for inquirers as they journey through life.

 

I remember the first Bible I ever received.  Our children in Bibleville this morning are receiving their own Bibles.  I was in the third grade and slowly learning how to read.  One morning during worship, my home congregation gave each of us our own copy of the Bible.  My new Bible had a red cover, very daring in those days, and black-ink drawings of biblical characters.  I remember holding my Bible carefully and thumbing through the pages throughout the rest of the worship service.

 

Today, there are more Bibles than people in the United States.  There are more Bibles than any other book in the world.  But many people find the Bible a hard book to understand.  The book seems full of AThees@ and AThous.@  Go to Amazon.com and you will find hundreds of different translations.  The places mentioned are far away and the customs seem strange.  And what about all those lists of dead people whose names no one can pronounce?

 

For Christians, however, the Bible provides answers and directions for our most basic spiritual questions.  It is AThe Book,@ our map, instruction sheet, and recipe book.  As we read the Bible in public worship and in our private devotional lives, this book helps us determine our faith and shows us how to live as followers of Jesus.  Christians are truly people of the Bible. 

 

What is the Bible?  The word ABible@ means Abooks@ or Alibrary.@  The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books that span over one thousand years of human history and are set from Italy to Turkey to Israel to Egypt and beyond.  This library includes books of history, law, poetry, prophecy, love letters, international politics, biographies, and short stories.  Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible or parts of the Bible have now been translated into over two thousand languages.  The Bible is the most studied book in the world, and the most misunderstood.  Essentially, the Bible is a book inspired by God and written by people who have experienced God for other people who are also seeking to experience God.

 

The Old Testament, the first part of the Bible, which we will study over these next five months, is Jewish literature written before the birth of Jesus.  The Old Testament includes stories about creation, a great flood, the Jews= escape out of Egypt, David and Goliath, and lots of other dramatic narratives.  We also hear of God establishing special relationships with people like Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, and the people of Israel.  The first part of the Bible also includes songs, poetry, prayers, wise saying, prophecies about a coming liberator, and preachers calling for justice.  This first part of the Bible tells the dramatic story of a chosen and gifted people who lived through some of the most tumultuous periods of world history, from creation to about three hundred years before the birth of Jesus.

 

Come next week to “Walk Thru the Old Testament”

 

In addition, Christians hold the Bible in such high regard because in this book we meet Jesus.  In the New Testament, written during the one hundred years after Jesus, we discover God through the person of Jesus of Nazareth and the response of Jesus= contemporaries.  We will study the New Testament for the last seven months of this year.  The first four books of the New Testament -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- describe Jesus= birth, experiences, miracles, teachings, final days, and resurrection from the dead.  The New Testament books then continue with the history of the early Christian Church, letters to the first congregations, and a description of the climax of history.  Because we believe that Jesus Christ reveals God most clearly, the New Testament is our definitive sacred writing from God because it points women and men to Jesus.

 

The Bible is a key component of what we call the AWord of God.@  We mean by  Athe Word of God@ that God reveals God=s own self in the Bible and still speaks to us through this book.  In the Bible, God=s own words and mighty acts in human history were witnessed, passed along orally, written down, and copied through thousands of years.  The Holy Bible is the Spirit-filled, living, dynamic, ever-unfolding presence of God among us.  In the Bible, God has authoritatively spoken and still speaks to us more clearly than any other way to guide our faith and practice. 

 

But Christians do not worship the Bible.  For us, the AWord of God@ took flesh in Jesus Christ (John 1) and the Holy Spirit continues to speak God=s Word to us in multiple ways such as in preaching.  Christians are careful not to worship the written Word of the Bible, as if God stopped speaking two thousand years ago, but instead use the Bible to help us follow the living Word, Jesus Christ.

 

Do we believe every word in the Bible?  Are all these biblical stories historically accurate?   Christians believe that every word in scripture comes from God and was written down and transmitted by faithful human beings who were in close relationship with God.

 

Yet, sometimes we ask more of the Bible than the Bible is able to provide.  While the Bible describes the universe, it is not a book of science.  While the Bible is placed in history and tells historical facts, it is not a book of history.  While the Bible looks into the future, the Bible is not a book of precise predictions.  While the Bible gives lots of advice, the Bible is not a rule book.  The Bible is not a self-help book nor is it full of quick and easy answers.  Fundamentally, the Bible is a profound mapping of the way to God. 

Let=s look, for example, at the creation story, which Reta will share with us next week.  The first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1, says that God created the universe in six days.  Does the Bible, therefore, mean that God created the world in six, twenty-four hour days?  Are modern scientific understandings of the beginning of the universe false?  Should we reject modern astronomy, physics, biology, anthropology, and paleontology as unsound?  No.  Genesis declares first and foremost that God created everything and called it good.  Genesis was never intended as a scientific explanation of Ahow@ God created the universe; Genesis explains Awho@ created everything and Awhy.@  It may be that God created the universe via the Big Bang and life developed slowly over time; we are still learning how the universe was formed.  But Christians are certain that God was at the beginning, set the universe on a good course that has continued until today, and still watches over and intervenes throughout the universe.   Even Albert Einstein once said: "Conflict between science and religion appears impossible."

 

God created human beings with inquisitive minds, good teachers, and our own set of experiences.  When we read the Bible, we must ask if the reading is reasonable based on everything we know, if collective human wisdom through the centuries proves its worthiness, and then test the Bible against our own experiences.  While the Bible is our final authority, we also ask our best scholars what it means, talk about the Bible with other Christians, and then evaluate scripture by how we have experienced God.

 

Are there contradictions in the Bible?  Does it say one thing in one book and then something else in another book?  The answer is that any library that contains sixty-six different books written in different times by different people in different places and dealing with different situations will at times tell the same truth in different ways.  If no two people ever see one accident in exactly the same way, we should not assume that all the biblical authors experienced God in exactly the same way. 

 

At its heart, there is no contradiction in the Bible.  The Bible fundamentally tells us about the truth of our relationship with God, how God and people meet, ways we fail God, where God=s unfailing love reclaims us, and illustrations of how to live moral lives.  The Bible contains everything we need to know about how we can be in relationship with God. 

 

In other words, the Bible operates not as a science book, history book, or predictor of the future, but like a magnet, a compass, a window, and a key helping us understand God.  God through the Bible draws us to God, points us in the right direction, conveys wisdom to us, opens our eyes to see Jesus, and unlocks the doors of our minds, hearts, and lives.  We cannot know which roads to take in our spiritual journeys without the Bible.

 

The Bible is about real life, moral truths, and our relationship with God.  Here is an example of how the Bible reveals God to us.

 

Once upon a time there was a man named Job.  Job was a good man, who was very rich and had a great family.  But disaster after disaster hit Job.  Through no fault of his own and despite his righteousness, Job got sick, his children died, his property was taken away, and his friends deserted him.  Job, covered with dirt and sores, was reduced to sitting by the side of the road.  In his fragile condition, Job complained to his friends, argued with his wife, and challenged God to tell him why he, a good man, had to suffer.  While his friends told Job that his failures were his own fault and chastised Job for challenging God, God listened to Job.  God spoke with him.  God told Job there were answers to his questions, but that Job would never understand the answers.  By the end of the book, Job still had no clear answer about why he was suffering.  But Job knew that God had not deserted him and Job rejoiced in his new and stronger relationship with God.

 

We all have had Job experiences.  Everyone of us has suffered, many times through no fault of our own.  We get sick, a family member dies, we lose a job, or a relationship ends.  We ask questions and seek answers: Why me?  Why now?  What did I do to deserve this?  Through the biblical book of Job we discover that God is with us in good times and in bad times.  While we will never understand why bad things happen to good people, the Bible encourages us to debate our situation with our friends and God vigorously.  In the midst of pain, challenging God with our toughest questions is appropriate.  Yet, in the end, the Bible is clear:  God never deserts us.  Even if we do not find all the answers we want, God is always there for us.

 

Every biblical story, if we look carefully, illumines our lives, declares to us who God is, and describes how Jesus works in our lives.  As we walk through the Bible, we meet wonderful characters, experience awesome stories, ask profound questions, and hear challenging answers.  The Bible is holy because it is from God and because it is about our relationship to God in the most profound ways.

 

A more contemporary man also discovered Jesus through the Bible.  During the 1960s, Eldridge Cleaver attained notoriety as a leader of the militant Black Panther organization. Arrested for violent crimes and then jailed, after his release from prison Cleaver was involved in a shoot-out with police and fled to Europe for political asylum.  In 1975, still in exile, he went into a deep depression.  Here is Cleaver=s story:

 

AI returned to the Mediterranean Coast [of France] and began thinking of putting an end to [my life] by committing suicide.  I really began to think about that.  I was sitting up on my balcony, one night, . . . - just sitting there.  It was beautiful Mediterranean night B sky, stars, moon hanging there in a sable void.  I was brooding, downcast, at the end of my rope.  I looked up at the moon and saw certain shadows. . . and the shadows became a man in the moon, and I saw a profile of myself (a profile that we had used on posters for the Black Panther Party . . .).  I was already upset and this scared me.  When I saw that image, I started trembling.  It was a shaking that came from deep inside, and it had a threat about it that this mood was getting worse, that I could possibly disintegrate on the scene and fall apart.  As I stared at this image [of myself], it changed, and I saw my former heroes paraded before my eyes.  Here were Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, passing in review B each one appearing for a moment of time, and then dropping out of sight, like fallen heroes.  Finally, at the end of the procession, in dazzling, shimmering light, the image of Jesus Christ appeared.  That was the last straw.

 

AI just crumbled and started crying.  I fell to my knees, grabbing hold of the banister; and in the midst of this shaking and crying the Lord=s Prayer and the 23^rd Psalm came into my mind.  I hadn=t thought about these prayers for years.  I started repeating them, and after a time I gained some control over the trembling and crying.  Then I jumped up and ran to my bookshelf and got the Bible.  It was the family Bible my mother had given to me because I am the oldest boy . . ..  When Kathleen [my wife] left the United States, she brought with her a very small bag, and instead of grabbing the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital, she packed that Bible.  That is the Bible that I grabbed from the shelf that night and in which I turned to the 23^rd Psalm.  I discovered that my memory really had not served me that well.  I got lost somewhere between the Valley of the Shadow of Death and the overflowing cup.  But it was the Bible in which I searched and found that psalm.  I read through it. . . .  Pretty soon the type started swimming before my eyes, and I lay down on the bed and went to sleep. . . . That night I slept the most peaceful sleep I have ever known in my life.  I woke up the next morning with a start, as though someone had touched me, and I could see in my mind the way, all the way back home.@ [Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Fire (Word Books: Waco, 1978), 210-12.] 

 

After this experience, Cleaver returned to the United States, stood trial, and was placed on probation.  The rest of his life was not easy -- he struggled with drugs and violence -- yet he lived the rest of his days until his death in 1998 as a Christian. 

 

This year, I invite you to join this congregation and me as we work our way through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.  Our attempt is to help all learn how to start reading this book?  How can we use the Bible as a map in our relationship with God?  I know that it is hard just to pick the Bible up at random and start reading.

 

The Good News is that in this congregation we will offer a number of ways for you to explore the Bible.  In additional to our regular Sunday School classes, you will see in our congregation charts, pictures, and timelines.  In our worship every week, we will talk extensively about one biblical story.  We have calendars for you to follow along.