“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.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
We just finished our study through the Book of Jonah; I think the story of Jonah has become one of the most challenging stories in the Bible to believe. Even back in 1794, Thomas Paine, author of “The Age of Reason” says that the book of Jonah is “…A fit story for ridicule if it was written to be believed — or of laughter if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow, for if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything.”
Stories like these (the unbelievable ones): Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, Jonah and the Great Fish — these stories are so easily thought of as kid’s stories (and then they become hard to believe). Satan has done such a good job of making some of God’s most incredible miracles seem like fairy tales.
The story of Noah’s Ark is actually an incredibly sad story. Every person Noah and his family ever knew died. Luke 17: 26 says, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” That’s really sad!
Then, there is the story of David and Goliath. It’s not very often that you hear about how David took Goliath’s sword and cut Goliath’s head off with it (after he toppled him with the stone).
We need to remember that these stories aren’t just in our Bibles so that the kids have something to color while we learn about the “real meat” in the grown up room. They are in our Bibles to display the goodness and majesty of God, to show that only He has supernatural authority over the universe. They’re in our Bibles to teach, reprove, correct, and train us in righteousness, so that we may be complete and equipped for every good work. We need to believe the Bible and look at it as a historically accurate book, a library of events that really happened. Because they did.
Believing,
Billy
Posted in A Word from the Pastor