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July 10 - July 10, 2019
More often than not our experience becomes more credible than our doctrine: this creates the tension in our hearts.
Familiar and devotional texts are good. But when believers ignore much of the Old Testament–the majority of the Bible–they miss the blessing of finding precious nuggets of truth that are just as vital for modern Christians as they were for Old Testament believers. Indeed, that God’s Word is compared to silver and hidden treasures suggests that the prize is not always lying on the surface.
faith is based on objective truth, and it has value only in proportion to the worth of the object of that faith. This is why faith must always supersede and subdue experience.
Man cannot stand as the judge of Scripture; Scripture stands as the judge of man.
By faith we believe in the inspiration of the Bible, and therefore we affirm its authority, infallibility, sufficiency, and effectiveness from cover to cover.
By authority, we mean that it is the absolute standard of truth (matters of faith) and the absolute rule for living (matters of practice).
By infallibility, we mean that the Bible is free from error. Truth is absolute, and all truth has its ultimate source in God, who is Truth and the revealer of truth. Infalliblity extends to every statement of Scripture, including matters of history and science as well as matters of theology. The Bible, therefore, is the standard by which all matters of theology, history, and science are to be judged.
By sufficiency, we mean that the Bible is all we need to direct us in how to know God and please Him.
By effectiveness, we mean that there is an inherent power in God’s Word to accomplish what it says.
The Word of
is the means of grace whereby God communicates the message of the gospel that saves all who believe
The Bible is not what men define it to be; it is what God declares it to be.
Truth is not what we define it to be; it is what God has revealed and declared it to be.
what God means is infinitely more important than how I feel about what He said.
we must have regenerated hearts before we can understand anything God says. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him:
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth [discerns] all things” (I Corinthians 2:14, 15a). Understanding God’s Word depends in great measure on knowing Him.
It is unfair to any writer or speaker to extract statements from here and there and thereby totally misrepresent the intended meaning. If fairness demands caution and care in everyday communication, how much more vital it is to interpret Scripture in its context.
Sometimes the quest for “proof-texts” or the attraction to isolated favorite verses has resulted in interpretations and applications that are far distant from what the original author intended.
Giving attention to the context is only being fa...
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Meditate on what you read.
Whereas worldly meditation seeks to empty the mind of everything, biblical meditation seeks to fill the mind with the Word of God.
Thinking takes time; thinking is work. But thinking time is not wasted time.
Many Christians get nothing from the Bible not because they are ignorant but because they are thoughtless.
this exhibits irreverence toward God...
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concordance, a good Bible dictionary or encyclopedia, an atlas, and a book of systematic theology.
His reference to Moses, the prophets, and the psalms was the Jewish designation for the entire Old Testament, similar to our referring to the New Testament as the Gospels and Epistles. In other words, Christ said that the entirety of the Old Testament spoke about Him.
The Pentateuch, the first five books with all their religious rituals, prepares the way for the Perfect Priest to stand between God and men as the perfect sacrifice for sin. The Historical Books draw attention to the Perfect King, who would come to rule His people and subdue His enemies. The Prophets anticipate the Perfect Prophet, who represents and reveals the only true and living God to man. The Poetical Books put it all together with the Christ as the great theme for worship and praise. What an authoritative clue for interpretation this is! It means that if we read any book of the Old
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Whereas the New Testament centered on the historic Christ, the Old Testament centered on the coming Christ. But they center on the same Christ, from the beginning the only way, the only truth, the only life.
the first step in applying Christ in life is knowing what is true about Christ.
