A special Book
Several years ago a movie came out called “The Neverending Story”. It was about a young boy named Bastian who wanders into a store one day and gets talking to the owner about a book that the owner is reading. He is told that this book is not like other books. He’s told that this book is special, but when Bastian presses him to explain why, he tells him only that it’s not ‘safe’ like all other stories he might read. Eventually, Bastian’s curiosity gets the better of him and he steals the book and starts to read it. For a while the book is no different than any other. It’s exciting and interesting but no less ‘safe’ than others. But as he reads along he starts to realize that there’s something strange going on. What he discovers is that he is actually one of the characters in the story. The book isn’t just speaking to him, it’s speaking about him. That’s the part that isn’t ‘safe’. What do we do when we realize that you can’t escape the story simply by closing the book?
The power of the Word of God
This is an analogy that can also be used to explain the power of the Word of God. The Bible is not like any other book because it doesn’t just speak to us, it speaks about us, and it speaks in such powerful ways that the truly curious have to read on. Consider the words of the writer to the Hebrews,
“the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb 4:12).
The power of this Word is so penetrating that it divides soul and spirit and is a discerner of the very thoughts and intents of your heart. It is not a ‘safe’ book! Now, consider how complete the Word of God is. Paul says that:
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2Tim 3:16-17).
All Scripture is given by God, the creator and sustainer of the Universe, and all of it is profitable. There is no other book so complete that every word has meaning.
Christadelphians have a very unique perspective on the Word of God because we believe it is the lifeline of faith. The Bible alone is the source of all truth and God has revealed His truth so that the believer can see the plan and purpose of God and conform to His will. Put another way, the Bible is not one of the foods that feeds faith, it is the food of faith, as Paul writes to the Romans “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom 10:17).
Consider the manna in the wilderness. The children of Israel didn’t subsist for 40 years on a variety of foods including manna; they lived on one food alone, manna. An alert Bible student will quickly discover that manna is representative of the Word of God which came down like bread from heaven. We ought not, therefore, to pick and choose what to eat from the Word of God. We must recognize and accept that all Scripture is from God, that it is all part of the one food, and as a result, we are blessed to be able to see wonderful harmonies throughout, that help feed our faith and renew our spirit day by day.
The Word of God is Truth
In the same vein we should appreciate that approaching the Word of God from a critical or ‘prove it to me’ perspective can be as unhelpful as picking and choosing what parts of His word we want to believe. The Word of God does not set out to prove itself in the same way a mathematical proof would. It doesn’t start out with a hypothesis and then lay out a set of ‘proofs’ to verify what it’s suggesting is accurate. Instead, it simply puts forth truth from the source of truth, the Lord God Almighty.
Consider the opening words of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1). There is no explanation of where God came from or what His thought process was in deciding to create the heaven and the earth. He simply spoke and it came into being. Yet man has spent endless hours and money trying to figure out how He did it or even if He did it. At best the word of God today is seen as a ‘possible’ truth; at worst it’s completely thrown out as fiction.
We understand His word is truth and not just a version of the truth, in the same way we understand the bread of life is not just some type of bread. In speaking of both the power and completeness of this book, the Apostle John put it this way:
“I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book“ (Rev 22:18-19).
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a discerning eye; in fact the Lord commends those who do. Paul commends the Bereans by saying:
“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11).
The Bereans were commended by Paul because they ‘searched the scriptures’ to determine if what he was claiming was true. They turned to the Word of God for truth.
Truth can be found in the Word of God, but for those who believe the Word of God it is much more: It is power. Paul expresses this idea as: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:16-17). ‘From faith’ means that God is faithful. His word is truth and can be trusted. ‘To faith’ speaks of those who approach His Word believing in its truth. Only to those who do so will the truth of God’s word reveal itself and transform the individual, as it says ‘The just shall live by faith’.
Unto this day
If we approach the Word of God with the humility of faith, we will find that any and every part of Scripture will offer to us marvelous revelations about God’s truth. Consider again Paul words: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2Tim 3:16-17). Often, we will discover that what seems like the most insignificant word or phrase will be pregnant with meaning, because its very placement has been guided by the hand of God.
One example is the obscure phrase found throughout Scripture, ‘unto this day’. This expression is found 89 times in the King James Version of the Scriptures, yet it often has the appearance of being a complete throw away expression; but we know that there are no throw away phrases in the Word of God!
In 2nd Kings it is expressed this way “So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day” (2Kgs 17:41).
Unto what day? Presumably the author of 2nd Kings was saying that these nations were worshipping in this manner unto the day that he wrote this passage. What day would that be then? You’d need to be an exceptional Bible historian to even get within a stone’s throw of when that day might have been. So how is this profitable information for us?
What the author of 2nd Kings is talking about is the formation of the people who became known as the Samaritans. At this time in 2nd Kings the Assyrians came down and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, so the Israelites were removed and the Assyrians brought in the people of five other conquered nations into the land. But, we are told that these new peoples didn’t fear the Lord, “therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them” (2Kgs 17:25). In response, they sent a message back to the king of Assyria who sent back one of the priests of Israel to teach them how to worship the God of that land:
“Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt… So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.” (2 Kgs 17:29, 41)
The phrase ‘both their children, and their children’s children’ is a iblical phrase that means that each and every succeeding generation continued in that same practice ‘unto this day’. Again, unto what day?
This is actually speaking of a very specific day, a day the one who wrote this passage would have no real understanding about. The only way the true meaning of this phrase comes alive is when the overseeing hand of God provides the fulfillment!
The fulfillment
We find this fulfillment in the New Testament when it says of Jesus that “He must needs go through Samaria” (John 4:4). Remember what we were told in 2nd Kings about the people the Assyrians brought into this area. It says they brought in people from five other nations and that ‘every nation made gods of their own’. It then tells us that they feared the LORD and served their graven images from that day forward. So, you had a mixed religion. You had the gods of these five nations trying to fit together with the one God of Israel.
Now, consider John 4. First of all it tells us that Jesus ‘had’ to go through Samaria — why? We know that Jesus was headed from Judea to Galilee, and we know that Samaria lies directly between the two, but we also know that, despite that fact, the Jews regularly went around Samaria when traveling because they hated the Samaritans. Maybe Jesus and his disciples were in a hurry and didn’t have time to go all the way across the Jordan and up through the area of Decapolis? We know that can’t true because John 4:40 tells us that Jesus stayed there an extra two days at the behest of the Samaritans.
So, why did he “have” to go through Samaria? Because God told him to in the passage in 2nd Kings.
When Jesus arrives in Samaria he meets a woman of Samaria and he asks her for a drink of water. She’s shocked because she knows that Jews and Samaritans don’t talk to each other. But Jesus doesn’t care about such prejudices; instead, he starts to talk to her about the living water that he could provide to her, a water that can spring up ‘into everlasting life’. She says “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw” (John 4:15). Jesus then tells her to go get her husband. When she says that she has no husband Jesus says “Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly” (John 4:17-18).
How does Jesus know that she has had five husbands and the man she’s with is not her husband? Because she is ‘the woman of Samaria’, she represents the Samaria that was formed back in 2nd Kings. That Samaria was made up of five polytheistic religions all married together and one monotheistic religion that could never be married to the others. The Samaritans had all practiced that same religion throughout every generation and as ‘the woman of Samaria’ her life with her five husbands and the one now who is not her husband reflected that false religion ‘unto this day’.
But, on this day Jesus spoke to her about “the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24). And she went back to the others and told them to come meet a man “who told me all things that I ever did.” Then they came and listened to Jesus and believed on him as well saying, “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42).
So, for at least one generation of Samaritans, they did not continue to “fear the LORD and serve their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers” (2Kgs 17:41). Instead, they believed on Jesus because “the Father seeketh such to worship him” (John 4:23).
When the disciples came back and urged Jesus to eat, he said “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” Neither the disciples nor the author of 2nd Kings would have known about this day because it was ‘meat to eat [they] knew not of’. And what did he understand? “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). That’s why ‘had’ to go through Samaria, because the Father had sent Him as part of his great work to take out a people for his name.
We see then that when we approach the word of God ‘from faith to faith’, we can discover things that bring to life the power of transforming spirit of the LORD. You can play it safe and leave this book closed, or you can open it and let it reveal to you things that divide asunder soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and discern the thoughts and intents of your heart, because the Father seeks such to worship him. Are you curious?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One