Yesterday I wrote about how to make Bible study fascinating. Picking up on that theme I have a couple more suggestions. Much of the Bible was written to minister to people of ancient times. Superstition was rampant in those days and most people were agricultural. Jesus and others used powerful parables to make points and they also use something I describe as “relational imagery”. That is a term I made up, but it describes certain parts of the Bible perfectly for me.
Instead of describing something with a flood of words, real life examples for which people can easily relate were used. Jesus said, “The harvest is bountiful, but the workers are few”. He was relating to people in agricultural imagery that they could easily understand as He told them of the need for more people to spread the Gospel and that those who engaged in it would receive a nice harvest for themselves in exchange for their effort.
So as we read the Bible we should look for these relational imagery illustrations of points being made. Peter saw Jesus walking on water and wanted to do it too. Jesus told him to come to Him and he was doing fine right up until the time he took his eyes off Jesus and began looking around at the wind and the waves instead; it was at that point that he started to sink like a rock.
Hmmm…That one’s not too difficult to understand; like the old Gospel song says it’s best to: “Keep your eyes upon Jesus”.
That may be easy, but there are others that confound the mind. Did you ever wonder about the flood of Noah’s day lasting for forty days and the Jews wandering in the desert forty years?
What was significant about this? I can think of one thing; the entire world, save Noah and his family, perished in that flood. And not one Jew that was originally led out of Egypt entered the Promised Land; they all died out during the forty years of wandering and only their children entered.
What did they have in common? Did they take their eye off God with their stiff necked disobedience?
Jesus was in the desert forty days prior to beginning His ministry. He did not succumb to the temptation even when satan offered Him the entire world and He was in His weakened state and was hungry and thirsty.
At the end of His ministry and after He was crucified and had been resurrected He appeared to various witnesses for forty days before ascending into heaven. Hmmm… Come to think of it Moses was on the mountain receiving the Word of God for forty days; Jonah forewarned Nineveh for forty days; Elijah ran for his life for forty days; Ezekiel was punished for forty days; spies searched out the land of Canaan for forty days.
And then there is this concerning the end of time in Matthew 24:15: Jesus said, “When you shall see the abomination [idol] of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place [Jerusalem Temple site], (whoever reads this, let him understand) Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains. . . for then shall be Great Tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no nor ever shall be. And except those [40] days should be shortened, there should be no flesh saved: but for the elect’s sake those [40] days shall be shortened,” (I added the brackets.)
I mean what is up with forty days?
These questions and others are posed by our Creator for a definite purpose. God does not do anything by accident. To me it is fascinating, intriguing, mesmerizing, enthralling, spellbinding, and pretty darn cool to see things like this and to try and understand what God is telling me. When I have an “aha” moment and God enllightens me a little, (or a lot), it is super cool.
The Bible is God’s communiqué with the world. He speaks to those who are willing to listen. If we are uneducated like those people in ancient times or if you are the most brilliant intellectual, not to worry we can all readily receive God’s message in terms that we will relish.
Unfortunately though, we cannot absorb God’s word through osmosis. We need to open up the Bible and read it. The Bible is fun to read and can be utterly fascinating. It is an amazing thing to be able to communicate with our Holy God in such a manner.
Keep your eye on Jesus and “be still and listen and you will know that He is God”. We are instructed to seek His righteousness and not our own and the only way to understand His take on right from wrong versus our flawed view of things is to read His Bible.
Romans 10:3
“For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God”