proving the bible

Sometimes we get anxious about sharing our faith with people because we think we have to know everything about the Bible or that we have to prove that the Bible is true. The fact of the matter is, we don’t have to worry about that, because you really can’t prove that the Bible is true anyway!

You can’t prove that the Bible is true, but you can tell people the message of the Bible, and that can truly change their life. The life-changing message of God’s Law and Gospel in Jesus Christ is what people need to hear, so that is what we need to focus on.

We can’t logically reason some one into the faith, so we don’t need to start by trying to prove that the Bible is true. Think about it – we don’t believe in Jesus because we believe in the Bible. We believe in the Bible because we believe in Jesus! I’m not saved by my belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, I’m saved by my belief in Jesus!

So don’t start your outreach to someone by trying to prove the Bible – start by simply sharing the message of the Gospel that is found in the Bible.

“Let me tell you a story – a story about a people who were deeply flawed, and desperately in need of salvation, and a God who loved them and sent someone to save them.”

the hidden god

Does it sometimes seem to you as if God is hidden? Well, you're not alone. Many people, including some of the greatest theologians in history, have struggled with this question. The Latin phrase is "deus absconditus".

Martin Luther speaks of this hiddenness of God in his Heidelberg Disputation of 1518. He says that God is hidden in suffering and in the cross, and can only be known through the proclamation of the crucified Christ. As fallen creatures we can't really understand or comprehend the hidden God, but we can know and believe in the revealed God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ. 

So yes, God has in a sense hidden Himself from our sight. But He has done so in order to be found where and when He desires to be found, though the church's proclamation of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament.

your church may not be a church...

Your church may not be a church if....

- You never hear the word "sin" there.

- You hear the word "sin," but only briefly or redefined as "mistakes."

- You can't remember when you last heard the name of Jesus in a message.

- The Easter Sunday message isn't about the resurrection but "new opportunities" in your life.

- On the other sundays, the message is about how great you are.

- There are more videos than prayers.

- People don't sing during "worship," but watch.

- The pastors' chief responsibilities are things foreign to Scripture.

- There is more money budgeted for advertising than for mission.

- Most of the groups are oriented around sports or leisure, not study or service.

- You always feel comfortable there.


(from the gospel driven church)

invisible things

(Rich Mullins was one of my favorite singer-songwriters before he died in a car accident in 1997. He was an authentic Christian, a great musician, and a true poet. I recently found some articles he wrote for Release Magazine in the 1990's. Here is one entitled "Invisible Things" ....)

And there are invisible things. Like the light behind the earth that casts a shadow of it, a shadow we call night ... like the sap that runs with some wildness of life in the veins of trees that we see as dead ... like the impulse behind the act ... like the silence inaudible behind the noise...

Like all the beyond - too great to be fit into the lenses of our high-powered telescopes and microscopes, as close to us as the ocean is to fish, too present to be discovered (or even discoverable), a thing of which we are a part and apart from which we cannot be ourselves - invisible things...

Things cut off from our senses like Eden was barred from our first ancestors - guarded, hedged in and away, things of the Spirit - angels, the will of God, God Himself, His Kingdom (the place where His Spirit lives and reigns), love ... things we dream of and imagine that we remember, things we parrot and kill in that parroting - things we yearn for and curse and deny and yearn for again in spite of ourselves - as if a part of our true selves belonged to a true world and not the one our lesser selves have settled in and surrendered to ... or would surrender to if not for the persistence of those invisible things...

Those things that the visible world hang from, point to, cannot quite reach, cannot quite escape. And just when our smug, agnostic loneliness settles into some comfortable, almost manageable despair, something that goes "bump" in the night or "whir" in our hearts sweeps us up out of the numbness and into that longing, that anger, that unquenchable hope that we would just as well live without, if only life was possible without it...

If only life was not part of those invisible things - winds moving leaves, temperatures that we can measure, that affect the world, pasts, futures ... invisible things.

He is the image of the invisible God. He is incomprehensible to our western minds - as He was to eastern ones. He came from that beyond that no human mind as visited. When we try to squeeze Him into our systems of thought, He vanishes - He slips through our grasp and then reappears and (in so many words) says, "No man takes My life from Me. No man forces his will on Me. I am not yours to handle and cheapen. You are Mine to love and make holy."

In Him the fullness of the Godhead dwells. In Him all things are held together. In Him we see what love is - that it originates in God and is energized by Him.

And so, we thank God for all we see. For beauty and for the miracle of sight, for music and wonder of hearing, for warmth and the sense of touch. But we thank Him more for Christ, without whom we would be deaf, insensitive and blind to the invisible things, and there are ... invisible things...

(Rich Mullins, Release Magazine article, November 1994)

sweat

I've been sweating alot lately. Mowing the grass in 100 degree heat will do that to you. I've gone through several shirts and multiple bottles of water. I'm hoping my wife will still speak to me after doing all of my laundry. Anyway, all of this heat, humidity, and sweating has gotten me thinking....

Did Jesus have to deal with this? I mean after all, He did live in the hot, dry land of Palestine. Maybe they don't have the humidity we do here, but it still must have been hot, especially since they had to wear robes around everywhere. 

Well, whether he sweat much or not in His first 30 years of life is not really of much consequence. But what IS important is the sweating He underwent on our behalf during the last few hours of His earthly life, while He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest and crucifixion. Luke writes in His Gospel that Jesus “being in anguish, prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” 

Though many have written this detail off as merely symbolic, there is solid scientific evidence that shows this is a real possibility. Although rare, this medical condition is well-known, and there have been cases of it. The clinical term is “hematohidrosis.” Around the sweat glands there are multiple blood vessels. Under pressure or great stress the vessels constrict, and then as the anxiety passes the blood vessels dilate and rupture. The blood goes into the sweat glands and is pushed to the surface - coming out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat.

We know Jesus had the weight of the world on His shoulders at that time. The pressure and stress He was experiencing had to be unbelievable. As olives from the trees in the Garden of Gethsemane were pressed to make olive oil, Jesus was being pressed and crushed for us and for our salvation, and it came out as blood mixed with sweat. He was whipped and beaten for us in our place, and then went on to die on the cross the next day for our sins and the sins of all the world.

You know, now that I think about it, maybe my excessive sweating is not that big of a deal after all.

a "god's eye view"

James Dive, an Australian artist, has recreated scenes from the Bible such as the parting of the Red Sea to show what they would have looked like from space. The 'God's eye view' re-enacts moments including Noah's Ark in the floods and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as seen from a satellite. Dive spent more than three months painstakingly researching the Biblical locations on Google Earth, and then combined them on a computer with 3D models of elements from the religious text.