What Is In The Bible

The Lord has given us His Word to read for many reasons; the main reason is to teach us how we should live. He wants each of us to live a godly life and to be more like Christ. How could we live like Jesus if we weren't given instructions?

Some people don't believe the Old Testament is meant for today. Well, when God gave His Son to the world to die for our sins is when some things of the Old Testament weren't supposed to be used such as sacrifices. Jesus became our perfect sacrifice for sin so now we don't have to offer sacrifices. Jesus is the only one that died for sin but He Himself had no sin.

Some of my daily reading is in the Old Testament and when I really get into the reading and the studying of it there is so much to learn. Take Genesis for instance, it tells us about our beginning. The creation of the earth and all that is in this beautiful earth. We are told how the life of human beings began. It has the first lie ever told, the serpent lying to Eve and the fall of humankind. It is mentioned in this Book about God's promised plan of redemption for the world. It tells of the upcoming victory for humankind and God over Satan. Then there was jealousy, Cain killed Abel because of his jealousy. In Genesis we learn what jealousy can do to a person so it was from the very beginning in the Bible God has begun to tell us things we need to know. Genesis has so much more in it for us to read.

Exodus is an exciting Book to read. It gives us a record of the historical and redemptive acts where God delivered Israel out of Egypt. Israel is His chosen nation and there was a revelation concerning God's covenant with Israel. This is the Book telling us about God parting the Red Sea so His people could escape from the Egyptians that were after them. The Ten Commandments were given to Moses. It tells us about what happened to His people when they disobeyed. The same happens even today so we actually know how important obedience is to God, we should learn from this. The Book of Exodus ends with the finishing of the tabernacle and God's glory filling it.

Leviticus is another interesting book to read. It is about atonement and holiness. It tells about God's provision for redemption from sin and the alienation between God and people that has resulted from sin. The atonement for sin was the sacrifice of animals which was temporary atonement but we have Jesus which was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. God told the people they should be holy as He is holy. This means we should live lives of purity and obedience. This should be in our daily lives not just when we want to be.

The Book of Solomon is so interesting. It is about joy and dignity of human love in marriage. It is a book in the Bible exclusively dealing with the unique love of a bride and bridegroom, describing the courtship and married love. Different images and descriptive language reveal the emotion, power, and beauty of idealistic and married love, these being considered pure and faithful in the times of the Bible. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every marriage was as pure and faithful?

The Old Testament is neither obsolete nor boring, in fact in is exciting and we learn so much from it.

The lives of the people in the Bible aren't really that much different than ours, we just have more modern equipment. When you read the Bible you can actually see the similarity of the two. What people do today are the same things they did back then. I have thought we were more intellectual but we aren't.

When you read in the Old Testament and see how they built things and made things out of gold and silver with their hands and the type of tools they had perhaps they were able to do better than we do, we have machines that make so many of our things. It is amazing how they would do things.

When building the temple of God, God told them how to do it and they could remember just how He wanted things done. The measurements of everything were perfect and when the temple was done it was gorgeous.

We have the Bible so we know things about how the earth and everything in it was made and created, how the people were, how God wants us to live, He wants us to love Him as He loves us, He wants us to be obedient to Him, and showing us what happens when we aren't obedient. God doesn't want us to sin but because of His love for us He has made a way for us to be forgiven through His Son Jesus Christ. There is so much in the Bible and it is exciting to read to find all these things that God wants us to know.

I pray you enjoy reading the Word as much as I do.

May you always know the love, joy, and peace of the Lord!