TXT Recap

Well we just finished our first series for this year at Ethos and I thought that I would do an overview of what we said.  We spent 4 weeks looking at how the Bible is different from any other book ever written.  The Bible does not just contain the words of God it IS the word of God.

The reality is if God never would have chose to reveal himself we never would have discovered him on our own.  God revealed himself in two ways.

                Natural Revelation – Romans 1:20

                Special Revelation – Hebrew 4:12

The foundation of this series was this…That ALL scripture is inspired by God. 

2 Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

2 Peter 1:21, For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

To me I don’t think there is anything more important to a follower of Christ than to be grounded in the word of God.  Outside of God’s himself His word to us is most vital.  Again, we must understand that His word is telling His story of Jesus.  This series was not about just gaining bible knowledge it is about us discovering more of Jesus. 

Jesus said this in John 5:39, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me.”  The bible was written so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and how His life, death and resurrection gives us life.

In the bible we see amazing unity in the scriptures.  The bible is composed of 66 books written by 35-40 different men over a period of 1600 years in three different languages Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek.  Generally speaking these authors did not know each other.  Also, there are over 2000 prophesies that have been historically verified.   This is more than any other religious document

On week three we dealt with the big questions of life.  We dealt with the questions that define our personal worldview.  Now a world view is simply a basic perspective we use to understand the world around us and our experience of it.  The questions I think that mostly define our worldview are:  Where did I come from, Why am I here, How should I live, Where am I going?  These are some questions we all have asked in our life. 

I decided to answer these questions not systematically, but rather to tell the story of the bible in 4 major themes.

CREATION

                Genesis 1:1-2

Genesis 1:26, declares that all of humanity was created in the community of Our Image (The Trinity)

The story of God is a story of Eternal Love!

 FALL

                Genesis 3:1-4

                Genesis 3:15, (the thesis of the entire story is found in this one verse)

We are at war; the bible is not a fairy tale.  The war is against the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness.

REDEMPTION

                We all have deep struggles in our heart and we desperately need a Savior.

                Look at how Paul describes this in Romans 7:18-24

                Jesus says that he has come to heal the broke hearted and to set the captives free.

RESTORATION

                Revelation 1:18

                The tomb is empty…the hero has been brought back to life.

                All of a sudden fear begins to be replaced with hope.

                John 14:1-3

                Revelation 21:5

This week was a powerful week again as we just told the story of God and let this amazing story answer life’s deep questions.

We ended this series asking one question “what does a life look like that is planted in the word?”  The key verses to our last message were:

                James 1:18

                James 1:21

We looked at a verse in John 8:37, where Jesus looked at a group of people and said the issues with you are “my word is not found in you.”  This paints a picture that you can know the word but fail to have it alive and active in your life.  The problem is we snack on the things of culture and then when the feast (God’s word) is set in front of us we are hungry. 

We must begin pray that that our souls begin to crave the Word of God.  Then word through the Holy Spirit will be carried into our dead hearts and then we will experience new life and we see Christ for really who he is…our redeemer.  We will never out grow our need for the good news of forgiveness…eternal life…and God being for you.

Final thoughts

                Get into the Bible…breathe it in as oxygen to your soul

                Read it with passion and begin to accept what it is calling you to

                Ask God to open your heart to receive what you need from it.

So, to me this was a great series for us to start out this year.  I hope that rough notes here help you and me remember the importance of God’s word in our life.