HCC Weekly - July 14th

The One True Author of the Bible

Pastor Rachael

Before I dive into our devotional for this week, I want to take a moment and pray over our children and adults that are going to camp this week and next. Our camp which leaves this week has 6 children and 4 adults and the camp next week has 10 children and 4 adults. Please join me in a short prayer over them.

Jesus, I pray over these children and leaders that are going to summer camp in the next few weeks. I pray for travel mercies as they drive up to Waxahachie. I also pray for protection for them after they arrive. Keep them safe from sunburns, bug bites, and injuries. I pray for the kids to have a deeper relationship with you and I pray that you can speak to the leaders as well. Bless them in the coming weeks. Amen.

I have been reading the book, The Life of Moses by James Montgomery Boice. It is a collection of sermons he wrote based on the life of Moses. Today I would like to share an excerpt from that book with you.

The Bible Has One True Author - God

The Bible comes to us from God. It is more than a merely human book. It contains the characteristics of human books; the various authors put the stamp of their personalities on what they wrote, and their vocabularies differ. But the Bible, having come to us from God, contains the one story that God wants to tell us. One passage, perhaps more than any other in the Bible, makes this point:

All of 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 2:16-17

Sometimes we refer to the Bible as being inspired. Inspired means that God, by His Holy Spirit, breathed into human writers so that they wrote what God wanted. That is true, but it is not what this passage says. This passage does not say that the Bible is the result of God’s breathing into human writers, but that the Bible is the result of the breathing out of God. It is saying that the Bible is God’s Word and is therefore perfect and truthful, as God Himself.

Two important principles of interpretation follow from this. First, the Bible is God’s book from beginning to end, even though it has come to us from human authors. It is a unity. Second, because the Bible is a unity, it will not contradict itself if rightly understood. Sometimes we read portions of the Bible that seem to contradict. We say, "How can this portion go with that one?” But, if we understand it correctly, we see that the Bible tells a consistent story.

This means that the God we find in the first books of the Old Testament is the same God whom we find in the New Testament. Sometimes people say that the God of the Old Testament is a tribal deity, a God of wrath; they say the depictions of God in the Old Testament are unworthy of Him. We will find as we study that this is not true. The God whom we find at the beginning is exactly the same God who is presented to us by the Lord Jesus Christ - a sovereign, holy, and loving God.

The Bible’s unity also means that we are not misinterpreting it but rather interpreting it rightly when we see that the details given for Israel’s worship prefigure the coming ministry of Jesus Christ. What we find in the Tabernacle, the sacrifices, and the plan for construction itself - all point forward to Jesus Christ.

This is what we aim to teach in kids church - that it all points to Jesus; and I pray that you remember that this week.