Gods Love Story

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Games

Questions Only

Surprise Birthday Party

Guide leading a tour through the weirdest museum ever

Interview for a poison food taste tester

Fairy tale characters at a speed dating event

Intro

I hope everyone has had a wonderful week, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about missionaries the last few weeks. Well this week we will be starting a series called Hard Questions, and this series is going to focus on Love, Sex, and we will even talk about our identities as well. Some of you may disagree with what I have to say, but heres the promise I will make to you. I promise to do my best to treat everyone with respect, as I always try to, and I also will as always do my best to make sure everything that I say and teach comes from a Biblical backing. So lets jump right in shall we.

How many of you have ever looked through somebody else’s glasses, or have ever been to the optometrist?

Show picture of optometrist eye chart and glasses machine

If you have ever been to the optometrist you would have seen something like this, this machine helps the Dr to know how strong of a prescription you need for your glasses or contacts. They go through all these different lenses saying better or worse, until they finally get to a set that are almost identical. And I dont know about you but im always nervous Im going to mess it up, and choose the wrong one then be blind until I finally decide to go back to the dr.

But the thing is that when we look through someone elses glasses, or when we look through that machine it changes the way that we see things. And everything can become distorted based on looking through the wrong set of lenses. So thats what we are going to talk about today, is making sure that we are seeing truth through the proper context and through the proper lens.

Because it can be easy to think you are seeing one thing, but in fact seeing something completely different because we arent seeing it accurately.

The lens that we are going to be discussing today, is God’s Word or the Bible. We are going to discuss why its important to use the Bible as the lens to see clearly and accurately what is going on in our lives, as well as the culture around us.

Its Inspired

The first part that we are going to look at is the fact that the Bible is inspired by God. Which basically means that God is the one who orchestrated the writing of the Bible through men.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Bible was written by approximately 40 men who wrote it, and used their own writing styles and personalities, however it was in fact God’s message that they were writing.

It is kind of like the music that our Worship team plays every week. These songs were not written by them, but they do play it in their own style, and with their own abilities. The Bible was written in a very similar way.

Its Inerrant

However the Bible was not only inspired by God, but it is also inerrant. Which is a really big word that means it is without error.

Psalm 18:30 NIV

As for God, his way is perfect: The Lord’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.

Because of the fact that the Bible was inspired by God the original writings of the Bible are perfect just as God is perfect. This is part of why the translation of the Bible that you read matters.

The message translation for instance is not intended to be a perfect translation of the Bible but a paraphrase, so they take a lot of liberty with what the original meanings were.

However we dont just believe that the Bible is without error because it says so. I can stand up here and tell you that 3 +2 equals 4 because I said so all day long. That doesnt make it true.

However there is evidence that backs this claim up.

Manuscript evidence

First we have whats called manuscript evidence. A lot of people claim that we cant trust the Bible because it has changed over the last 2000 years. However when we go back to the earliest copies of the scrolls that we have found we see that the text has not been changed but has actually stayed accurate to the original writings.

Internal Consistency

Another way to prove the inerrancy is to look at if the events within the Bible are accurate. To this day many secular historians treat the Bible as the most accurate history book that they have on record for the time period. The Bible gives very specific historical records, geographical events and genealogies, that have all been tested, and every time it has been tested the Historians agree that the Bible is correct, and any discrepancies that anyone seems to find have been explained by different details being offered by one person than another, Different forms of a name ie Matt instead of Matthew or different calendar system being used by different people. Such as the Chinese new year versus our new year.

External Confirmation

Not only does the Bible provide evidence within itself, it also has evidence througout archeology, history, and other ancient writings all of which also confirm what the Bible says, including details that Jesus was regarded as a wise Jewish teacher, and even the fact that there was an earthquake in Jerusalem the day He was crucified, both of which back up exactly what the Bible says.

So all of these historical notes also give us reason to believe the Bible when its speaking about Spiritual things as well as historical.

It’s in Charge

We can see that the Bible has a lot of information, but it is not just a history book, if you actually read it what you will find is that it is basically the worlds longes love story, as it shows God’s love for each and every one of us, and his desire and willingness to do whatever it takes for us to be able to be with Him.

One of those things that people unfortunately have issues with is setting boundaries and rules, which I know is everyones favorite part, but rules and boundaries are not always bad.

A team of landscape architects conducted a simple study to observe any physical and psychological influences of having a fence around a playground, and how its consequent effects would impact preschool children.

By observing teachers and their students on a playground surrounded by a fence, and on a comparable playground with no fence, the researchers found a striking difference in how the children interacted in the space.

On playgrounds without fences, the children tended to gather around the teacher, and were reluctant to stray far from her view. On playgrounds that were fenced in, however, they ran all around the entire playground, feeling more free to explore.

The researchers concluded that with a boundary, in this case a fence, children felt more at ease to explore the space.

This study shows us that by actually having a fence or a boundary the children felt more freedom to play anywhere they wanted within the fence. The same is true with the Bible. The Bible is not meant to limit us in what we can do, but to set us free to be able to follow God and serve Him however we can within His guidelines.

Deuteronomy 10:12–14 NIV

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.

God gave us these rules because He created us to be with Him, and the Bible is giving us our instructions on how to do that.