    |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
This study © 1997 by David Humpal
Reading and Understanding the Bible Psalm 119:1-11 1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the
law of the LORD! Mark Twain once said, “People say when they get to heaven, they’ll fly around from cloud to cloud playing a harp; but I don’t see too many people trying to learn how to fly or too many taking harp lessons to get ready for the event.” Many believers say they want to serve God and obey his word, but how many are reading the Bible in order to learn how? The Bible is not just one big book, but actually a collection of 66 smaller books written over a period of at least 1600 years by about 40 different authors. Everything they wrote was inspired by God. Here are what some famous people have said about the Bible. Abraham Lincoln wrote, “I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book.” George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” Here’s what the philosopher Immanuel Kant had to say, which you will probably never hear quoted in any philosophy class, “The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity.” In 1839 Alexander Campbell wrote, “The Bible is to the intellectual and moral world of man what the sun is to the planets in our system,--the fountain and source of light and life, spiritual and eternal. ... The Bible, or the Old and New Testaments, in Hebrew and Greek, contains a full and perfect revelation of God and his will, adapted to man as he now is. It speaks of man as he was, and also as he will hereafter be: but it dwells on man as he is, and as he ought to be....” How Accurate Is the Bible? The laws in the Bible concerning diet, health, cleanliness, and quarantine are 20th Century health science ideas, but they were written 3,400 years ago! Archeology has proven the truth of the Bible. Thompson Chain Reference Bible lists no fewer than 130 archeological discoveries which confirm the Biblical account. There are over 300 predictions in the Old Testament concerning the first coming of the Messiah. These were all fulfilled in Christ. Many of the statements in the Bible concerning science and astronomy have only become accepted by science in the past few centuries, and yet they were written in the Bible thousands of years ago! Aristotle is credited with being the Father of Science about 340 B.C. and yet as Will Durant writes, “Aristotle’s astronomy is a tissue of childish romance.” Compare this to Moses’ astronomy written in 1400 B.C. Some ancient observers believed the moon to be greater than the sun because at times it appears bigger. They accounted for its lack of heat and dim light by assuming it was much farther away than the sun. But Moses in about 1400 B.C. had no such problems. Genesis 1:16 tells us, “Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.” He declares the sun the greater light. Notice also he didn’t call it the greatest light. There are many stars far bigger than the sun, although they are mere pinpoints in our night sky. Up to only a few centuries ago it was believed that the world was flat, but Isaiah about 750 B.C. wrote in Isaiah 40:22, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” Hipparchus, the originator of Greek astronomy, counted a total of 1080 stars about 140 B.C. and proposed that this was the total of all the stars in the universe. This count was still believed to be accurate about 300 years later when Ptolemy put forth his famous planetary theory. We now know that there are at least 100 septillion stars. That’s 1026. But about 600 B.C., 450 years before Hipparchus, this is what Jeremiah wrote in Jeremiah 33:22 (NIV), “I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.” We think of stars as fixed, but in fact they are moving away from each other ever so slowly. For example the two stars at the opposite ends of the Great Dipper are moving in one direction, while all the other stars of the Dipper are moving together in the opposite direction. In the distant future there will no longer be a Great Dipper. Job wrote in Job 38:31 which was written about 1700 B.C., “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?” We now know that Pleiades and Orion are true star groups -- all the stars in the group are moving together through space. Of course Job knew that almost 4000 years ago. Bleeding a person, removing some of their blood for the purpose of removing the sickness, was a common medical practice. In fact in 1799 George Washington died after being bled for a cold. About 1400 B.C. Moses wrote in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood....” Today, science has finally caught up with the Bible. Instead of bleeding people, lives are now being saved by blood transfusions. Up through the 19th Century it was believed by scholars that writing was unknown until well after the time of Moses, but the Bible in Exodus 24:4 states, “And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD....” Scholars scoffed at the Bible as mere legend, but new archaeological discoveries have confirmed that writing was in use in Palestine long before the time of Abraham, about 2000 B.C. The Bible speaks extensively of a strong and fierce nation called the Hittites. Through the 19th Century skeptics said this proved the Bible was full of fables since no such nation ever existed. But earlier in this century discoveries of Ugaritic writing in Ras Shamra have confirmed the existence of the Hittites. They are now considered to be the third-largest ancient world power. Babylon on the Euphrates was one of the most amazing cities in the ancient world. Inside its walls, three hundred feet high and eighty feet thick, were such buildings, towers and gardens as no other metropolis of antiquity. Isaiah 13:19-22 written about 750 B.C., at the height of Babylon’s splendor, prophesied, “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans' pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation; nor will the Arabian pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds make their sheepfolds there. But wild beasts of the desert will lie there, and their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. The hyenas will howl in their citadels, and jackals in their pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.” After about 500 years the once proud city became nothing but a mound of ruins just as Isaiah had prophesied. Four cities of Galilee: Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Tiberias. This is what Jesus said in Matthew 11:21-23, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaem, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.” Tiberias never had any woe pronounced on it. The location of the first three was long a matter of dispute -- they had vanished centuries ago. But Tiberias continues to be a flourishing city in our own time. About 600 B.C. Ezekiel wrote prophecies concerning the twin cities Tyre and Sidon. Ezekiel 26:3-4 tells us Tyre will be destroyed. But Ezekiel 28:21-23 tells us Sidon will have bloodshed, but not be destroyed. 250 years later Alexander the Great destroyed Tyre but spared Sidon. Although Sidon has had a long history of wars and bloodshed, it still stands today. The Bible was written by men who were guided by the Holy Spirit. God allowed the personality of the writer to show through. He did not dictate the words to the author. But everything these men wrote was inspired by God. How Important Is the Bible to God?
What Does the Bible Claim About Itself?
We are Encouraged to Study the Scripture
PROFIT Acrostic Six steps to learning from the Bible -- PROFIT
How the Bible Can Help Us Reading and studying the Bible can be profitable to us. It will help us in many areas of our life. Here are four ways that you can benefit from regular reading of God’s word. 1. It will help you become a better Christian God wrote us an instruction book. It only makes sense that we should spend some time reading it. God created us to live a spiritual life. But in order to do that, we have to learn from his word how he wants us to live our life. The instructions in the Bible will help us to become a better Christian. We will learn about sin and what things to avoid which will pull our spirit down. We will learn what kind of mental outlook to have. We will be taught patience instead of anger. We will learn about thinking of good things instead of dwelling on the negative. We will learn love and compassion instead of harsh intolerance. We will learn humility instead of arrogance. We will discover instructions on how to treat our spouse, how to raise our children, how to treat our family, how to act on the job, how to help others, and how to comfort those who are hurting. We may be surprised to find that God sets high standards for us. And then we find that he provided us a way to be holy and righteous through the price that Jesus paid for us even though we are weak and sinful. We learn how he is there to give us strength in our weakness, give us faith when we doubt, and give us peace when we are in turmoil. As we read and study the Bible, we discover that God is making us a new creation as he helps us reach our full human potential. The Bible is our Instruction Book. 2. It will teach you about God A lot of people have different opinions about God. But if you want to learn what God is really like, you will find out in the pages of the Bible. We learn about the Lord’s mercy and love to us from the Psalms, and we learn about God’s judgement and righteousness from the Prophets. We find out about God’s long-suffering and patience with us from the Gospels, and we learn about his anger against sin from the Books of Moses. We read about God reaching out to save the Gentiles in the Book of Acts, and we read about God judging the Gentile nations in the Book of Revelation. As we read the Bible, we discover someone who will not fit into a convenient human category -- but rather, a complex Deity who does things beyond our human understanding. The more we learn about God, the more we realize how weak and inferior we truly are compared to his eternal majesty. As we learn from scripture, we see one who keeps all the worlds spinning and yet still has time for our smallest problems. As we study the word, we learn of the one who is moving nations and yet still has time for our family. As we read the Bible, we find out about the one who has the vast physical realm of the entire universe under his control, and yet he still has time for our physical problems. As we study scripture, we meet the one whose intellect is so far superior to us that we can barely understand how all his creation functions, and yet he still has time for us when we are suffering mental anguish. Reading the Bible will teach us who God is, and it will teach us also who we are in relation to him. 3. It will give you direction How can a book with parts of it that were written from 2000 to 4000 years ago help us with all our complex, modern problems? If you will read the Book of Proverbs, you will discover that man has not changed that much in the past 3000 years. The Bible is just as relevant to us today as it was when it was written. Even though we have attained some intellectual advancements over the past few thousand years, the sad fact is emotionally and spiritually we are just as prone to weakness as the nation of Israel was so many millennia ago. As we study God’s word, we find direction for our life. Many times the Lord will use his holy word to reveal to us something about our life. It has often happened to me that when I was going through some trial of my faith, I would come upon some portion of the Bible that seemed like it was especially written for me in the very situation that I was in. Those words written so many thousands of years ago would lift up my spirit and give me instructions as to how to get through the difficult time. One of the reasons I think that reading the Bible helps to give direction to our life is the change in our thinking that occurs. As we read God’s word, our priorities change -- our focus on what is truly important shifts. As our priorities are replaced by God’s priorities, we discover new directions that the Lord wants to take us. God’s word is not a hard-to-understand theological treatise. It is a practical, down-to-earth narrative addressing everyday problems of everyday people. There are mighty men of God in the Bible, but we also read about all their weaknesses and failures. How much more does the cry of remorse of Psalm 51 mean to us when we realize what great sins caused David to write this song of repentance! The more we learn about God and what he wants for us, the easier it becomes to discern God’s direction in our life. This understanding only comes from time spent in his word. It doesn’t happen overnight. I have found over the years that the more I learn from scripture, the easier it is to discover God’s direction for me in all areas of my life. I know that you will discover the same thing too. 4. It will comfort you in times of trouble How many of us have gone through a dark time in our life, and then we found Psalm 23:4, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me.” As we looked at those words, we sensed God’s presence in the midst of our despair. The Bible can be a great comfort to us. As Peter acknowledged in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Over the years, as I faced sickness in my body, turmoil in my life, or confusion over the future, I have always found comfort from the Bible. God’s word has a soothing effect on our spirit. He has promised us peace, he has promised us joy, he has promised us an abundant life. We receive those things by spending time in prayer and meditation with God. But we learn about those things by spending time in his word. There have been many times when I was facing a difficulty when God led me to words of comfort in the Bible. I could sense his Spirit ministering to me. He was telling me, See David, I understand what you are going through and I am here to see you through. If you are faithful in your Bible reading, you too will discover that comfort that we can only get as we read from his word. This study on The Importance of the Bible © 1997 by David
Humpal Much of the material on the proofs of the accuracy of the Bible was taken from the book Science Asks--God Answers © 1965 The Moody Bible Institute Psalm 119:1-11 from the Revised Standard Version © 1971, A. J. Holman Company Lincoln and Washington: Halley’s Bible Handbook pg. 18 © 1965, Zondervan Publishing House Kant: Halley’s Bible Handbook pg. 19 © 1965, Zondervan Publishing House Campbell: An Alexander Campbell Reader pg. 79 © 1988, CBP Press John 5:39 from the King James Version 2 Timothy 2:15 from the King James Version |
 |
