God Has Spoken: The Foundation of Glorious Living

The ability to live for the glory of God is not a behaviour that we are born with. This is something we get from God and it must be conditioned by God. And the Bible is the "only" frame of reference that helps us to live in the way God wants us to live. I don't know if you noticed my emphasis on the word "only". I want to emphasise this "word" because many Christians today speak of God's revelation as something that you can find in feelings, mystical experiences or in the private voice that speaks to us during the day.

This is not a good way of speaking about God's revelation. Why? Because it gives more credibility to our physical organs than the Word of God. For me it's difficult to believe that the God who speaks in Scripture would take us to anything else that is not already in the Bible for evidence of his speech. In the Christian church, we believe that "God has spoken" and this supernatural revelation of God has been communicated to the human writers of the Bible. The Bible is therefore the finished product of God's self-revelation.We should never put our trust in feelings, experience, logic or even "worship-songs" in the place of the Bible. I don't think it's an accident that Psalm 150, the last hymn in the Hebrew Psalter calling us to praise the Lord great enthusiasm is where it is. This Psalm is found at the end of the Psalter. But before we get to this Psalm we have go though Psalm 119 which is the longest in the Psalter. Here we find verse 176 telling us about the importance of the law, the testimonies, the ways, the commands and ordinances of the Lord. The sacred poet is showing us that our spiritual wellbeing and our faithfulness depends on our obedience to the Word of God. Okay. What I want us to do now is to see what Bible say about itself though the words of the authors of the Bible. A passage that we all know and is fundamental for understanding the supernatural character of the Bible is 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

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.

The apostle Paul has been encouraging Timothy to a develop meticulous study of Scripture. And he gives him two reason for doing that. First, all Scripture is "breathed out" by God.Here, the word "all" means "any passage of Scripture" or the "every Scripture". This is a comprehensive statement. And even though Paul never calls his own writings Scripture, Peter clearly regarded them as Scripture. In 2 Peter 3:16 he says:

And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

Peter tells us that he regards the writings of Paul as "Scripture". So he puts them in the same level with the Old Testament. Now Paul also shows us the basis for encouraging Timothy to read Scripture. The Scripture is breathed out by God. 2 Peter 1:21 tells us what this means:

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is the Word of God. This doesn't mean that the sacred book fell from heaven. The Bible came to us through the ministry ofmen who spoke from God by the Holy Spirit.The biblical authors were the instruments of God and what they said was exactly what God wanted them to say and to write. The second reason for serious study of Scripture is the transformative power of the Bible.

The Scripture, says Paul is useful for:

teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The Bible not only gives us information about spiritual things. The Bible changes us to become spiritual people, completely equipped to do what is good in all spheres of life: civil good, moral good and spiritual good. To read the Bible is to be transformed for righteousness.