For the past few weeks I have been working on our sermon series for next year, Genesis. As I am going through how we will teach it, many things strike me I didn’t even notice the last time I taught through it. It brings me back to the understanding that we, as God’s people, must be those who are constantly immersed in His scriptures.
We are told that He breathes out the scriptures.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
We are also told that God’s words are alive.
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
The reason we can come back to the same scriptures we have read a hundred times before, and still learn new things, is that His scriptures are alive. In Genesis 2:7 we learn that man only has life because God breathed into Him. God’s breath IS life. That same vibrant life we have is also found in the scriptures.
Over the next couple weeks, on Element’s blog, we will briefly (and I do mean briefly) look at what the scriptures are to do for us and why it is so important to study them…and re-study them.
Ultimately, we read the scriptures because they are all about Jesus. God breathes out the scriptures, but they are not the life we are looking for…Jesus is the life we need. John 5:39 Jesus says to the religious leaders who forgot this essential truth, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me… The scriptures point to Him, so in the effort to know the scriptures we should never lose sight of Jesus, the one the scriptures are about.