Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Explore the Bible for Yourself, Part 1 of 52
IDEA: We must think about ways of studying the Bible because the Bible is the Word of God and because it has influenced western culture throughout history.
PURPOSE: To demonstrate that it's important to think about how to study the Bible, for the listener to realize why Bible study can be difficult.
We're going to spend some time talking about how to study the Bible.
We don't spend much time studying how to study history or geography.
But there is a great deal written about how to study the Bible. Why do we study the Bible at all?
I.We study the Bible because it's the Word of God.
It would be exciting if in every generation God appeared to someone and spoke about the problems of our current century. But God has spoken to people in other centuries, and what they heard and saw has been incorporated into a Book.
If I believe that to be true, then I'd really want to know what God has to say about how life should be lived, why I'm here and where I'm going. The Bible tells us God's will and purposes for us.
II. Evenifyou were not a particularly religious person, you would want to study theBible because of the impact it has had on western civilization.
It has influenced art; virtually every museum has scenes from the Bible.
When Allen Bloom (in The Closing of the American Mind) came to the University of Chicago in the early fifties, he could count on the following two things in the knowledge of his students:
They had a general understanding of the documents that made up American history (the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Gettysburg Address, etc.).
They had a knowledge of the Bible.
Thirty years later, graduates of the University of Chicago who went to Florence, Italy would not be able to understand ninety percent of what they saw because it is based on the Bible and on Greek mythology.
It has also influenced literature.
Authors have assumed the reader will have a knowledge of the Bible. Without that, a great deal of secular literature is shut up to us. Playwrights, poets, and novelists all employ biblical images and phrases in their work.
The Bible itself is great literature. We step back from it as a religious book by any standard of measuring literature, the Bible is great literature.
It has become part of the common expressions of life.
EG: The Good Samaritan, the handwriting on the wall, casting pearls before swine, etc.
The Bible has influenced daily life.
We name our children Andrew, or Peter, or Mary, or Paul, or Anna - these names and many others have biblical origins.
