At its core, the Bible is God-breathed.
The whole thing.
Not just the inspirational quotes on Christian mugs
Not just the riveting adventures of Biblical characters
Not just the life of Jesus
The. Whole. Thing.
The long records of Jewish law
The shocking stories of scandal in the genealogy of Jesus
The lists of the kings of Israel
There is a reason it is all in the Bible.
It is all important. It is all God-breathed
I would love to remove the stigma that the Old Testament is boring. It makes us want to give up before we even start, and we miss the beauty of the relationship God had with His people.
As Dan Boone puts it in his book Preaching the Story that Shapes Us:
The Bible can be read as dead words like a newspaper... Once I have chosen the words I am interested in and consumed them, I throw them away... Many people read it that way. And most give up somewhere in the middle of Jewish genealogies, Levitical laws or chronicled kings' lives. Boring.
But what if in the genealogies, God is saying "I've been seeking you for a long time, through a long line of people"?
And what if in the Levitical law, God is saying "I've always cared about the way people treat each other"?
And what if in the chronicled kings, God is saying "It matters to me how power is used. Learn from these"?
The Bible is not boring. It is alive and active. But if we come to the living word of God believing it will be boring, that is how we will experience it.
And that would be a shame.
It's okay to admit that reading a long list of names or legal terms is tedious, but challenge yourself to seek God's voice even in the seemingly mundane recounting of Israel and their laws.
Something I did when I was reading the Bible chronologically on the World Race was to trace the lineage of Christ throughout the Old Testament. I referenced the genealogies in Matthew and Luke and highlighted all of the names mentioned. I then had a vested interest in learning about Jesus's extended family, and all of a sudden Kings and Chronicles became fascinating accounts of ancient family drama. Numbers became a beautiful fulfillment of the promise to multiply and bless a great nation.
There are so many lenses through which we can view the Bible and all can inspire and motivate us to live the life we were called to live as the chosen people of God through the faith of our forefathers (and mothers!). But don't do yourself the disservice of reading the Bible through the belief that it is boring and irrelevant, because that's just not true. The Bible is history, poetry, music, philosophy, math, science, social justice, and above all else, love.
God is love, therefore His breath brings life through His love for us.
The word of God is alive and active, sharper than a double-edged sword and there is not a single word that God spoke that is excluded from that.
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