Behold the Word of God

For more than 3,500 years, God has providentially preserved His inspired Word in the 66 books of the Bible. The message preserved in those books provides humanity with all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). In fact, so complete is that message, that it perfectly equips the man of God for all good works (2 Timothy 3:16). Yet, among those who profess to believe that the Bible is God’s Word, it has become a common practice to avoid following certain biblical commands, based on the idea that such commands were specifically for the individuals at the time of the writing, and do not have broader application to those of us who are reading the text in a modern-day setting. The idea, then, is that God is not really talking to us through the Bible today, but was talking only to “those” people “back then.” Jesus had something to say about this very idea. On one memorable occasion, the Sadducees came to Jesus, testing Him with questions pertaining to the resurrection. In their minds, they had concocted an unanswerable scenario. If a woman had seven husbands in this life, they questioned, whose wife would she be in the resurrection? Jesus, knowing their wickedness and their ignorance of the Scripture, explained that “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30). He then said to the Sadducees, “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32, emp. added). Notice that Jesus quoted to the Sadducees a segment of Scripture that was taken from the Pentateuch (Exodus 3:6). The text was written almost 1,500 years before this group of Sadducees even existed. In the text, God was speaking directly to Moses, who had a much different culture than those of the fi rst-century Jews. And yet, even with such a lengthy time span and major cultural differences involved, Jesus stated clearly that God was talking to His fi rst-century audience. We must realize that God speaks to us today through His inspired Word, just as He spoke to the Sadducees almost 2,000 years ago. While it is true that some things in Scripture must be analyzed in their cultural setting, and the division between the Old Testament and New Testament must be recognized, it is extremely dangerous to jettison applicable commands and divine principles based on the idea that they no longer apply to us. Even though our culture may drift far from many of the biblical teachings, those teachings have not changed, and will not change due to ever-waffling cultural trends. Regardless of cultural shifts, it will never be right to jettison God’s applicable commands based on the idea that such commands were solely for someone else in some other time. As the psalmist wrote about God in the long ago, “The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever” (Psalm 119:160). If you want to listen to God speak to you today, read His inspired Word, “which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32).