Day 297

Jeremiah 50:11-51:14, 2 Timothy 3:1-17, Psalms 119:89-96

So here it is, the reason that we are doing all of this:

“All scripture is God breathed and is useful for …”

Originally some people thought that God wrote the Bible himself, then we understood that certain people were inspired by God to do it and then we actually started to find that some more people than we first thought were inspired by God to write it. Throughout all of this “who wrote what” debate, what actually became important was not who put pen to paper but that fact that it was inspired by God, spoken to them in visions and dreams and so on.

The idea that the Bible is God breathed is perhaps an important one. I preached recently on the Holy Spirit and the fact that the Greek/Hebrew translations were for “wind” or “breath”, because it was by the Holy Spirit that God ministered to the people who eventually put the words down, so this idea of breath is really quit significant.

So why are we spending a whole year immersed in the Bible, because it was breathed by God through the Holy Spirit, and by the Holy Spirit it is opened up to us today.

We perhaps need to concentrate less on who wrote the words and more about the ink that was used.  The message of the Bible is Grace and for us Grace is written in the blood of Christ. The message of the Bible is relevant to us today because of the death of Christ on the cross that brings us life and forgiveness. That message is written by God, on our hearts in blood. That is the thing that is important.