Holy Scriptures

Longing for the Word

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Christians are persons who no longer seek their salvation, their deliverance, their justification in themselves, but in Jesus Christ alone. They know that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces them guilty, even when they feel nothing of their own guilt, and that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces them free and righteous even when they feel nothing of their own righteousness…

Because they daily hunger and thirst for righteousness, they long for the redeeming Word again and again. It can only come from the outside. In themselves they are destitute and dead. Help must come from the outside; and it has come and comes daily and anew in the Word of Jesus Christ, bringing us redemption, righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. But God put this Word into the mouth of human beings so that it may be passed on to others. When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other people. God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings. Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

One question: when last did you long for the word of God? When did you last hunger and thirst for Scripture?

These are questions not meant to guilt you into picking up your Bible, but to gauge where you and I are spiritually. I know for me if the Bible is the last thought in my mind when I have some down time, it means that I am in a spiritually vulnerable place.

May God grant each of us a desire for His word that outweighs all other appetites, even physical ones, so that we can search the pages of His word and find Him there.

Amen.

 

Something New I Learned About Passover

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Even at my ripe old age, I can still learn a thing or two.

As Jesus and His disciples prepared for Passover in the final week of His life, Jesus must have realized the symbolism of the meal was about to be realized. The bread was His body broken and the wine was His blood shed.

During the Passover meal, the bread is broken and the larger piece of it is hidden away in a linen cloth until the very end of the meal. And as you and I know, Jesus fulfilled the symbolism of the breaking of the bread by His death on the cross, from which He was taken, wrapped in a linen cloth, and “hidden” in a tomb for three days.

It’s amazing how knowing the cultural and historical background to the Bible so often immensely enriches the meaning of the Bible itself. I don’t claim to know even half of what the original hearers and readers of the New Testament would have understood when they read the words of writers like Paul and Mark and Luke and John.

I’m thankful that you don’t have to be a scholar with a Ph.D to read the Bible. Thanks to the doctrine of revelation, anyone can read God’s Word and understand the gist of what God is telling His people through His Holy Scriptures.

I’ve read through the Bible more than once. In fact, I’ve read through several different translations over the past few years. I don’t say that to brag, but to say that even now I will see something in the pages of the Bible that I hadn’t seen before. A passage that I had previously not paid much attention to will hit me in a new way that makes me pause.

That’s what it means when they say the Bible is living and active. It still speaks, no matter how many times or in how many different ways you read it and study it and memorize it and learn it. Even if you’re a slow learner like me.