A Few Thoughts For Your Tuesday From The Enon Church Of Christ

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Date: Mar 01 2016 4:09 PM

Jesus And His Bible

 It is important that we consider what Jesus said or thought about anybody or anything. The New Testament records ample information to lead us to conclude that our Savior immensely respected the power of God's Word.  Notice these few observations that Jesus made in regard to the Book.

 Jesus viewed the Scriptures as necessary for study and edification.  He chided the religious leaders of His day, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29).  Even as a young boy of twelve He amazed the scholars of Israel with His understanding of the Sacred Writings (Read Luke 2:46,47).

 Jesus relied upon Scripture in His confrontation with Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4).  Three times He resisted temptation, and each time He declared, "It is written."  Jesus often quoted Scripture to confound and rebuke His adversaries.  He would sting His critics with such statements as, "Have you not read?" (Matthew 12:3,5), "Did you never read?" (Matthew 21:42), "Is it not written?" (John 10:34), and "What did Moses command you?".

 Jesus viewed the predictive utterances of the Old Testament prophets as inspired statements which had to be fulfilled.  He commanded Peter to sheath his sword when Judas led a mob to arrest Him (Matthew 26:52-54).  He insisted that He could call an army of angels down from heaven to fight for Him if necessary, but then asked, "How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?"

 Following His crucifixion and resurrection He gave further instructions to His disciples before leaving this earth: "Then He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me" (Luke 24:44).  Our Savior's emphasis is seen by Matthew's and Luke's employment of the Greek word dei; it means "it just has to be, in the very nature of the case."  In Luke 24:46 an even stronger form of this word (edei) is used; the King James Version translates it behooved.  "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer..."  There can be no doubt as to our Lord's high view of Scripture.  He declared that "the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).

 It is also significant that Jesus upheld those parts of the Old Testament record that the modern critic and skeptic have so vehemently rejected.  Harold Hazelip has stated, "After two centuries of Biblical criticism, it almost seems as if He (Jesus) intentionally cited the historical incidents which would be most doubted by men of later times."

 The Lord gave a strong endorsement to these events: the creation of male and female (Matthew 19:4), the flood (Matthew 24:37ff), the destruction of Sodom and the story of Lot's wife (Luke 17).  He believed in the historicity of such Old Testament characters as Abraham (John 7:56), Moses (John 3: 14), David (Mark 2:23-28), Solomon (Matthew 6:29), Elisha and Elijah (Luke 4:25-27), and Jonah (Luke 11:29-32).  If such events and characters are mythical accounts, either [1] Jesus did not know the truth and was therefore not the Master Teacher, or [2] Jesus knew the truth and chose not to teach it, and was therefore a dishonest man.

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