Friday, April 15, 2011

Hope Through Endurance and Encouragement of the Scriptures Part 1

"For everything that was written in the past, was written to teach us, so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope."  Romans 15:44

People who do not place their hope in the promises written in the Bible  often have good reasons.  Many of those reasons stem from bad experiences with Christians who misused the scriptures and used them to hurt, whether intentionally or not.  I have met and love several of these people.  I have misused the scriptures myself....unintentionally.  I have read or heard a clever quote, "God please save me from people with good intentions!"  lol!  I would like to amend this to say, "God please save me from my own good intentions!"  I would like to correct some misconceptions about the Scriptures:

What the Bible is NOT:

1.  It is not a book of rules and regulations.  Yes, there are laws, rules, commandments, admonitions, warnings and the like.  But if we could get to Heaven by a list of rules and regulations, Jesus would not have had to even come to Earth, let alone die.  The rules and regulations were established by our Creator to prove to us that we needed saving.  We could not match the holiness of our Creator.  He longs for fellowship with us, but cannot be in fellowship with the dark nature of our sin.  Paul talks about this in Romans:  "But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.  What shall we say then,?  Is the law sin?  Certainly not!  Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law.  For I would not have known what coveting was if the law had not said, 'Do not covet!'  But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every covetous desire.  For apart from the law, sin is dead"  Romans 7:6-8
     Alcoholics and those who love them understand this whole principle.  A person with a drinking problem who is sober cannot be around those who are still drinking.  A husband who is sober cannot live with a wife who is drinking, as much as he longs to be with her.  There have to be rules, such as:  No drinking!  No alcohol in the house.  No going to bars.  Do those laws keep the wife from drinking?  No.  It is a relationship that will motivate her to change.  Ideally, a relationship with God will bring a lasting change, but even the relationship with her husband and family could motivate her to give up what enslaves her.
     We are all slaves to sin before we have the power of Jesus Christ and the love of God to motivate us to change.  We all find ourselves "doing what we do not want to do".  Only a changed heart and mind can resist old habits and sins.  Only love can motivate us to change.  We cannot preach the Bible only as a book of rules and regulations.  The Bible is a love story given to us by our loving Heavenly Father, who sets boundaries for us and gives us principles that allow us to love Him and be in relationship with Him.  It's not about being good, because none of us is good, in comparison to God....only Jesus.

2.  It is not a proof text to discredit other Christians.  We cannot even prove that the Bible is real.  There is a great deal of scientific and historic truth to prove the Bible, but we are called to live a life of Faith...not sight.
We are mishandling the Bible if we take scriptures out of context and use them to prove others do not have possession of the truth.  The Bible says in John that the world is not big enough to hold a book that would list all of the things Jesus said and did. The Pharisees were guilty of taking the heart out of the law.  God always wanted our hearts, not the adherence to the letter of the law.  Jesus said that the whole law and prophets could be summarized by these two commands:  Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself."  If we Christians really did these things, instead of hitting people over the head with our Bibles and freezing them out with our judgmental stares, we wouldn't be able to build our churches fast enough to hold all of the people.  Jesus said, "The world will know my disciples by their love for one another.", not "The world will know my disciples by how they get every single detail right in their worship services."  Can you imagine first century Christians, climbing through the catacombs, worshiping in secret arguing over the order of worship or what songs that they sang?  Jesus, when he spoke to His disciples right before he was crucified in John 15, said this:   "If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in His love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. My command is this:  Love each other as I have loved you.  No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command."  We often make excuses for not loving one another or people we know who have not yet come to Christ.  No matter who it is, God's command is that we love and sacrifice!  I have heard people say, "I just don't like him/her."  That may be, but if we want to be friends with Jesus, we will find a way.

If we want to have hope of making a difference in this world, we need to take the words of Jesus in the scriptures and rightly incorporate them into our hearts.  There is a hope for this world....it is in the love of God and Jesus.   Our responsibility as Christians is to love as Jesus loved....love every person.  Part Two next post

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