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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Tim Hebbert.
Gary Hashley
Well, good morning and welcome to another edition of Ask the Pastor. Tim, when it comes to our Ask the Pastor Times, and I don't know if these just came from Russ or if these came in from other people, but one of them is simply, "What is the Bible?" So that's going to be our topic for the next, almost 15 minutes that we're going to spend together. My thought goes immediately to the first verse of the book of Hebrews, Tim. Where we read, "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke." That is what the Bible is all about, and that is that God spoke. You think about it. God could have created the heavens and the earth. He could have started all spinning, put people and animals and all the things here, and then distanced Himself and then looked down upon us and said, "okay, figure it out. Figure out who I am. Figure out how you got here. Figure out why there's a standard of right and wrong, even in your hearts, even without the Bible. Figure it out." And I'm so glad He didn't leave us to simply figure it out, but that God spoke. Now, He speaks through creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. You just look around and say, "this couldn't have just gotten here all by itself." So you look and say, "there must be a God and God must be wanting us to know Him." But He also spoke with various specific ways in the past. He has spoken audibly to different ones. In the Old Testament in particular, sometimes it was a sign or a wonder or a miracle by which He shared something about Himself. Sometimes an angel would speak. Sometimes they would cast lots to make a decision. The Year of Uthumam(?) in the Old Testament with the high priest. Somehow, whatever those were, they were a way which God would speak and reveal Himself. There were those who had dreams, visions. Jesus came. That's what Hebrews says, "In these days, He'd spoken by His son." But what we're going to talk about today is the fact that we have the Bible that God chose to give us, in written form, the things we need to know while we're here. I've often said, "the Bible is everything God wants us to know written down so we can read it and understand it." So yes, it's important to know, what is the Bible? So Tim, jump in here.
Tim Hebbert
Well, I've got three things written down, and we'll just ping pong back and forth. But the first one I have is, I believe that the written word is a living, breathing, spiritual organism. Everyone knows the scripture 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is breathed out of the mouth of God and profitable for teaching. For reprove, for correction, for training and righteousness that the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work." You can't be completely equipped for every good work unless you know what the word of God says. But I got to thinking about this earlier today, Gary. It's very similar to what God does in Genesis with Adam. He forms him out of dirt and he breathes the breath of life into him. He breathed his own substance into Adam to create man. So in the Holy Scripture, what we have written down that God's given us, He's breathed that same substance, that same life affirming, life giving, spiritualness into that. And so, most of us out there, if we've read this, read the Bible on a fairly regular basis, have all encountered a moment. When I'm reading a passage that I've read dozens and dozens of times, on this particular day the scripture speaks to me in a different way than it has in the past. That's not my brain making that up. That's the word of God, having the authority God's given. It has authority in our life because it's not man's words. That's where we get into contradiction with the culture that says, "well, it's flawed because men wrote it." No. Men wrote it down, but God wrote it.
Gary Hashley
Yeah. Peter talks about, "Holy men of God spoke as they were born along by the Holy Spirit." God had a message for us and He wanted to make sure we got it accurately. So there were about 40 different men, it appears, that were used over a period of 1500 or 1600 years, that spoke for God and ended up writing it down for God. And though they used their vocabulary; they used their thoughts in some ways, their experiences. In some ways, what they ended up writing was exactly what God wanted written in that original, in the theological terms, the original autographs. Or the original copy that which Moses wrote down, that which Isaiah wrote down, that Daniel wrote down that which Peter wrote down. Now it's divided into two parts. Your Bible has an Old Testament or old covenant and a New Testament, a new covenant. The Old Testament dealing mainly with the people of Israel and how God through them would bring a savior to us. The New Testament, covering the time that Jesus was here and then the time after he ascended back to heaven in those early days of the church where God is continuing to reveal Himself. And you have to understand, the Bible came to us progressively. We didn't get it all in one full swoop. They had the books of Moses. Then they had the poetic books of the Psalms and Proverbs, and they had the historical books. They had the prophetic books. And then we get the gospels, the four accounts of the life of Jesus from four different guys, four different perspectives. All still the spirit guiding them. And then you get the rest of it, the epistles, and then you get the end. You get the Book of Revelation. But the Bible is God showing us, teaching us, writing down for us the things He wants us to know. And the scripture you quoted, all scriptures given by inspiration of God. So the books of Moses are inspired. The books of history are inspired. The books of poetry are inspired. The books of prophecy are inspired. The gospels, the epistles, even the apoctalyptic Revelation is inspired by God. He wants us to know what's there.
Tim Hebbert
So here's the exciting part. It's inspired and it's written down by man, but what separates our Bible from any other holy book is Jesus. So, and not to pick on other religions, but when Muhammad wrote down the Koran, he's calling it a divine revelation from Allah that he writes down. Joseph Smith, in the Mormon faith, he writes down the revelation he supposedly was given. But with the Bible, John 1:1, here's where it changes. The living expression, the living revelation stepped into earth. For me the scripture, the holy scripture, the Bible is the written revelation of the living revelation. That's exactly what John 1 says to us. "In the beginning was the word," capital W. Or in the Greek, the lagos, the living expression. It's what separates holy scripture away from every other book that's ever been written in any other religious form. It's written about Jesus by Jesus for Jesus. I get people telling me things that they disagree with, where I'm at culturally. "Well, Jesus never said that." And maybe he didn't say it in the gospels, but I have a standard answer to that. "Yeah, he did. It's called the Bible." If it's in the Bible, it's done through His divine purpose for us in life.
Gary Hashley
And if it were up to you and I to imagine who God is, and what He's like. To come to a conclusion in our own thinking and our own reasoning, how is one saved? How does one get to heaven? We'd come up with any number of possibilities, because there's a number of ideas out there. How do you know what's true? That's what I love about the Bible, because the Bible is God's word to us. This is the truth. Jesus said he was the way, the truth and the life. But he also said to the Father, "Thy word is truth. And so many people, "my truth, your truth, his truth, her truth." I want to know, what is the truth? We used to teach a song to boys and girls years ago. I think Child Evangelism Fellowship is the ones who published it. "I have a precious book. It's the word of God. It's the only book that God has given. When I read, God speaks to me. I see Christ and Calvary the wonderful word of God." Satan is against everything God is for and for everything God is against. And so, when God has given us His word, Satan doesn't want His word. He wants it out of our schools. He wants it out of our houses of Congress. He wants it out of our courtrooms. He wants it out of our lives. Why? Because he knows this is the truth that changes lives. And we have it here written down for us. And like we were talking earlier, we need it all. I heard one person say that the Bible is like a prescription the doctor gives you and on it, it will say, "take all of it. Not just the parts you like." Not just the easy parts, but read it for what it is. I had a gentleman tell me years ago, "Pastor Gary, I read the Bible from cover to cover once." And I said, "well then, do it again. And do it again." My pattern is, I sit down every morning and I read five chapters because I like to get big chunks of the word of God. Then I study it out in smaller pieces. But I want to know what God says from cover to cover. And we need more than---and I don't want to pick on the daily bread. We need more than a verse or two, and then a story and a poem. We really need to dig into the word of God.
Tim Hebbert
Well, we were talking about this before we went on the air that, and I can't remember her name, but read a book here recently and the writer had spent a lot of time in Israel studying the culture. And she said, one of the big differences between the way the Middle Eastern culture approaches and the way that the Western culture approaches scripture is, she said, "in the Middle East, they devour God's word. They read God's word for a single purpose, and that is to encounter Him." We have a tendency, through our smaller devotions, in our country to go through a couple of scriptures and try to farm out a little nugget that helps us get through the day. And so, what happens if we're not careful is, instead of the scripture being about God, the scripture starts to become about us. And I want to throw one thing at you, before I give it back to you, Gary. This is the other thing for me. The scripture is where I learn what God's voice sounds like. I believe God does speak to us. It's not like in the Old Testament when he spoke to those, but because even through the early times of the church, the writers of the New Testament, He's revealing everything to them. He still reveals things, but He's revealing things in my life about me today. But if I don't read His scripture, if I don't read His word, I'm not going to know what His voice sounds like. But when I read the scripture and He speaks to me through the scripture, I know what His voice sounds like. So that when He comes and says, "Tim, I need you to work on this." When I get that feeling, I know it's God's voice speaking to me. I love this scripture that Jesus said in John 10, "my own sheep will hear my voice, and I know each one and they will follow me."
Gary Hashley
And it is so important that we commit ourselves to the fact that the truth is in God's word and that we need to know it, because God's will never contradicts God's word. I had a gal tell me one time that God had told her to leave her husband and to marry the guy she worked next to at the little factory that she was employed at. And I said, "no, He didn't." "Yes He did." I said, "no, He didn't." She said, "yes, He did." And I said, "no, He didn't, because God's will never contradicts God's word." So we know God's will from what we read in the Bible today. People are trying to rewrite it. They're trying to make culture fit into the Bible instead of letting the Bible change culture. And so, yes, the Bible is God's truth for us today. Jesus said it will never fail. It will never fade. It will never be removed from our lives. "While the earth remains, not one jotter, one tittle will pass from the law." So yes, the Bible is really the most important book ever that you can get your hands on. And if you're not reading your Bible every day, you need to do that.