What is the Bible and Why Read it - Conrad Sollenberger

What is the Bible? And why read it? Why study it? I asked that question at Bible school, and I guess I didn't really think very far. I just wanted them to think. But I was kind of just suddenly stunned with the answer they gave, and it's the answer that we always, most often, hear. But I'll throw it out. What is the Bible? Maybe someone wants to just say what first thing comes to your mind when someone says, "Well, what is the Bible?"

I would say it's the writings inspired by God. Okay. And the Bible itself pretty much says that. The one that I got most often was the Word of God. And that's kind of, you know, we think of the Bible and the Word of God as synonymous, same thing.

I don't know how many years ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago, I sort of started a mental journey with that term, probably because of just taking a good, fresh look at the beginning of the Gospel of John. And we all know those verses.

And a lot of times when the Scriptures use the Word of God, you can actually put the person of Jesus in there, and it fits very well. Not always. Sometimes I think it does specifically mean this. But there's a lot of times when it's talking about the written Word that it uses the word Scripture. And of course, when it uses the word Scripture, it's not even talking about the same one we have because they didn't have it all. It's talking mostly about the Old Testament.

And so I've proven to myself that over time you can change your mind about something and actually get hit sideways when people, now when people say the Word of God and are talking the Bible, I just take a double take. What?

I'm not sure how good all that is, but I like the challenge that it presents me. What do I think about when I think about the Bible? What do I think about when I think about the Word of God?

So what is the Bible? One of the things that I wanted to do with my class was provide the young people with a framework for thinking about the Bible. Another one was to provide a bit of a navigation system for looking at the Bible. That's a big book.

And it's intimidating to open it and say, "Oh, I'm supposed to know this whole thing." I mean, how many of you know the whole thing? Well, yeah, I'm with you. Another one, which I feel like has become more important for our upcoming generation, not less important for us, but to understand the purpose for reading and studying the Bible.

We have so much information that answers so many of our questions that, "What do we need this for?"

Like Google's pretty much taken over. And you name it, a lot of other things. And then also, I'm not going to talk about this so much today, but another one of my purposes was to provide a method for studying, reading and studying the Bible.

But more than those purposes, one of the goals that I had, that I've kind of taken on for myself as well, is to have an appetite for the Bible. How do you get an appetite for the Bible? That's, in a world like we live in where there's so many desserts, why do you want vegetables? I guess that's how people think of this. It's one of the vegetables that doesn't even taste good when you have all these other things that are so much more exciting.

But I think one of the keys is to understand our need for the Bible. And I think that's where we really need to start. Do I need the Bible? And most people think they don't. They can get through life without it.

And another goal is to have a little bit of confidence. When I open the Bible, I know what to do with it. For many people, I think this is like a, well, most people now aren't in this place, but kind of like one of those newfangled computer tablets. Like, look at, what do I do with this? Where's the on button? And where do I touch? And crazy things happen. And they don't know any more about this, or actually less about this than those kind of things.

Well, what is the Bible? I'm not going to tell you it isn't the Word of God because that would be a lie. But it isn't the complete Word of God. I don't believe anyway. I think there is a whole lot more than is written down that can be considered the Word of God. At least I hope so because I really expect God to speak to me today, not just while I'm reading this, but while I'm visiting with a neighbor, while I'm doing my work. And it's not all going to be in the form of verses that come out of this. There's going to be a lot of other things that God are going to tell me that I think can be considered the Word of God.

But this is, like David said, the inspired, written Word of God. I think everything in here is definitely something God has left for us and told us. On a very rudimentary level, this is a collection of books and writings and letters collected over quite a bit of time of history, divided up into the Old and New Testament, which it's fascinating for me to think about that. And I hope if I have time, I can talk about that a little bit more. And we divide those up. The Old Testament's divided up into the first five books, the Pentateuch, the Torah, whatever you want to call it. The history books, like from Joshua to Esther, have a lot of the history in there.

Poetry books, Job through Song of Solomon, and the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. And then you have the New Testament, which is the four Gospels, the book of Acts, which is a kind of a standalone thing, and then the epistles or the letters of the apostles.

One of the things that has really blessed me as I've allowed myself to think of the Bible as a story is how all of those actually blend together. And it's been a journey for me to just look at the Bible as a complete unit. Matter of fact, as a story.

And as a matter of fact, an interesting story. I used to think of it as a whole bunch of stories, and a lot of them I didn't bother to connect. But the Bible is a story. It's one story.

The definition for a story is basically an event that has a series of actions that have a beginning and an end. And this fits that very well. This is a series of actions that has a distinct beginning and a distinct end.

I would like to just take a moment to contrast that to a term that I hear the Bible referred to sometimes as like an owner's or operator's manual. I'm not going to say it doesn't have any of those qualities, but that certainly saps the life out of it for me if we're just going to look at it as kind of an operator's manual. It becomes, well, like the book I don't read when I buy a lawnmower.

It's kind of like a lot of people face life. I don't really need this. I can pull the cord and we can go. It doesn't always work out like I think it will, but we'll get it figured out as we go.

So like I say, it's not like that it isn't an operator's or owner's manual, but it is so much more than that when you look at it as a story, a specific story. Matter of fact, stories have categories. This one falls in the nonfiction autobiography.

What is an autobiography? Somebody tell me what an autobiography is. You'll hear old enough to know this.

A person who writes their own account of their own life. Uh-huh. Yeah. A person who writes their own account of their own life. That was such an inspiring thought to me that I almost couldn't put it down. This is an autobiography. So now you know who this story is about, right? It's not about Adam. It's not about Noah. It's not about Jonah. It's not about David. It's about God. It is a story about God. It is his story.

And until I was willing or thought of even looking at it that way, it was just a whole bunch of different stories. But when I think about this as God's story, it ties this thing together so tight. You can't pull it apart. You cannot pull it apart. It becomes a unique one story.

And everything in it becomes just real because God is real. If God's the author, he knew everything. So everything in here has to be right. Nothing in here is wrong. It's accurate in its history. All the biographies that it has in there are true.

And there's stuff in those biographies that some of those people didn't even know. Huh? Job. We have a whole part of his story that I don't know if he ever knew. I suppose he does now, maybe. Yeah. And there's things in there that some of them didn't know were coming that we read it, we know.

And the part of it that we often use as an operator or owner's manual, they're actually real. The stuff works because the person who wrote it knew how things work. When you read Proverbs, which is kind of could be like an operator's manual, the stuff in there is going to work because the author made it work that way.

The science in here is accurate. That's been proven over and over again. The history in here is accurate. That's been proven over and over again. And the predictions in here are accurate. That has been proven over and over again. And there's some of them that have yet to happen.

Powerful book. Well, I also want to look at some of the literary elements of a story. I have seven of them listed here that I'll go through quickly that, again, just help me think of the Bible a little differently than I used to. We already talked about the author, okay? And he's writing his own story in here. The setting.

A story has a setting. So what's the setting for this one? Well, that made me stretch my mind a little bit. But the setting is basically time and space. All of time and all of space. It begins with the creation of time and space, and it ends with the end of time and space. So that's the setting.

That'll blow your mind when you start reading in here trying to figure out. So there's a whole lot of settings in here. We can take them all apart and look at the separate ones. But the real setting for this book is all of time and all of space.

The characters. Well, a story usually has a good guy, a bad guy, and then a bunch of other guys. Well, the good guy in here is God, or the Trinity if you want to put God, Son, Holy Spirit in there. That's a good guy.

And the bad guy, when you read in here, it looks like it's us, but it's not really. The bad guy is the devil, Satan. He's the antagonist. He's the one just working against us. He wants to destroy everything God did. So he's the bad guy. So who are we?

Well, we're just little peons in the story, right?

Well, stories have other characters or actors in them that help the thing move along. But the one thing I thought about our role in this, I don't know if you're familiar with the word synergy. It's when you have two things that have a certain amount of energy, and so you put them together, and you wind up with more energy than just the two of them. That's synergy. Well, I kind of like to think of us human beings that God created as synergists in this story.

And I don't think it fits exactly, but the one thing about it is, as human beings, we all have a little bit of energy. And we get older, and it keeps getting less. But in the big scheme of things, you and I don't have much energy at all. So there's a lot of things out there that are bigger than us. As a matter of fact, most things.

So we like to get together in groups to provide more energy. But when we get together ourselves, it's just us. One plus one equals two. One plus one plus one equals three. And as a matter of fact, you ever heard the saying, "Oh, one boy is one boy." You know the rest of it? Two boys is a half boy.

Three boys is no boy. It's kind of the way we are. But what God did with us is he took and created us in this awesome way that we can actually hold his energy. You read it. It's in here. You read the story of David and some of those other people. They did stuff that men aren't supposed to be able to do.

So he made us so that we can take his energy. And if you and I both get his energy together, like Jonathan and his armor bearer, there's a lot of poof there. The Philistines were goners. And it happened over and over again. But the, where do I want? Diabolic side of this is we can also hold energy from the antagonist and create a force that goes against the good force.

Now, I want to make one thing straight. We will never get enough to overcome the good force, but it's the same principle that can happen there. So as humans, I like to think of us as the synergist actors in this story.

And that also makes this story come alive in ways that are just outside of our box. And then, of course, there's accessory actors like the animals, Balaam's donkey, and a whole bunch of other critters that help this story do its thing. The lions and the lion's den.

They're all a part of this amazing story. Another important part of a story is the plot, which is simply the progression of action. And I won't take the time, but it's fun for me to make a timeline of this. And it's really simple, basically. And then you just add all the parts. And you have creation.

And about 2,000 years or so later, you have the exodus. And another 2,000 years, you have Christ coming. And then another 2,000 years, you and me. It's a real simple timeline. And you can fit all this stuff in there that happened meantime. And you begin to see a picture, an interesting picture of God's story. So what's God doing in this whole thing? Matter of fact, there's things in here about the end of the timeline that you and I haven't experienced and that are going to happen.

An important part of a plot is a conflict. So what is the conflict in this story? Well, basically, when you have the protagonist and antagonist, you have the bulk of the conflict. And in this particular story, it's supernatural against supernatural.

And God has designed us to enter into that in some ways I still don't imagine.

There's an interesting part of this for you and I. The conflict mostly is viewed as between man and man. That where a lot of our conflict is. We kind of talked about it. We have the Gentiles and the Jews.

I heard it this morning. I've never heard this before. The Gentiles and the Anabaptists. That was a new one for me. But we have those kinds of conflicts between people. But probably most of us deal with a conflict that's inside ourselves.

And that's an interesting one when it comes to this because we are designed to hold or take in the nature of a bigger being. And we wind up with this big battle. And that's what conversion is all about. Settling that battle and saying, "I'm choosing my creator to fill me with his energy, with his power, with his nature." And we live at peace. That's how we were created. Until we do that, we're going to be at conflict with ourselves and everything around us.

A good story has a theme and a purpose. And this one is no different. If you were to say what you think the theme of this story is, what would you say? I'll open it up. The kingdom of God. Okay.

I won't ask you to elaborate on that because it might take too long, but that's definitely I would like to simplify it a little bit. Bringing heaven to earth. Okay. Bringing heaven to earth. Yeah. I would say that's in here. I'd like to make it even a little simpler than that.

You guys are way too big thinkers for me. Redemption. Okay. Redemption. And I'm just going to take that one and narrow it down a little bit. It's a redemption. And the part I don't know what to do with is why we need to be redeemed. It's because we messed up. But I don't still understand why all that happened. That's part of the story that I'm not even sure is in here.

But God, this whole story is about God redeeming man.

That's it. It's God restoring a relationship that we broke with him. It's a pretty awesome way to look at what happens in here. God's so big. We're so little. Why does it take him so long? It's a very complex story.

There's a lot of things in here that when I read in that, I don't understand. One of them I just came across was Ahab, that horrible, horrible king that killed Naboth. And I don't know if that seems like that was one of the worst things he did.

And then he repented. And God said, "I'm not going to do what I said I was going to in your lifetime." I'm telling you that me looking on, I would have looked at that whole scene and said, "Ahab, you're putting on a big show. This is just nonsense." I mean, you have this whole life of serving bail.

And for one, two, three days, you're running around sackcloth and ashes. It's too late. Not God. Somehow, this whole thing of redemption creates another story that you and I have a little trouble looking at, the big thing. And another one was late. I think I read this morning. There's another king of Israel. The same thing happened.

Started with a J. There's so many of them. I don't remember which one it was. It wasn't Joash. I think it was the one before him. But he's an awful king. It said that he was as bad as Jeroboam, son of Nebat, which was that was kind of the standard for all these kings. They were either a little better than him or worse. But this guy was right up there with them. And he did a little repent thing. And God responded.

I don't get it. That's part of this whole story that goes beyond my ability to understand God's passion or his understanding of redemption.

Another thing that comes out in this, that man is self-destructive. Did you know that all of our destruction is our fault?

There's nobody else to blame for it. Can you blame the devil? Did you know that? We self-destruct. When we turn from God, that's the only thing left for us. And I think that's what God meant when he told Adam, "If you eat of that, you will die."

Adam was going to kill himself. He was going to destroy himself. And you read it. It no more than happened than it the way it went. And God did several things. He stepped in in big ways, like with the flood and Tower of Babel, to put the brakes on this thing.

But it's still true. We still self-destruct. And God wants to redeem us from that path. Two other things that are a little less talked about with stories. One is a tone. And when I was in school, tone was so elusive to me. And I'm not sure I still have it real good. But the way I like to understand the tone of the story is its attitude.

Stories have an attitude. And the attitude is put there by the author. And that was an interesting one for me to ponder on about the Bible. The story has an attitude. And that attitude was put in it by God.

And maybe we'll talk about that a little later if it comes around again. But that's an interesting one for me, to catch the attitude that God has when he writes this story, his autobiography. And his attitude is all through it. It's a little confusing to me sometimes because I don't know what to do with anger and suffering love and all of that in the same story of redemption.

I have trouble putting them together. But it works. It works. You can see it. You can see it happening in here. And the other one is a point of view. A story has a point of view. The author will either write it from his own perspective or a second-person perspective, maybe even a third-person perspective.

And that usually includes how much the reader gets to know.

Some of the more complex stories are written from what we call the all-knowing view, where the reader knows everything the author knows.

It's not quite true. But there's a lot of times we know more than the person that's like Joe. That's probably the prime example. We know more than he knew about what was going on. And I often wonder, why does God do that? I'm not sure.

But the other purpose of the Bible that I'm going to talk about later on is that we get to know who God is. He wrote his autobiography for us so that we get to know who he is. And I think that's why sometimes we know what he knows when the person there didn't know it. Because there's something God wants us to understand about him. And I really think that's the story of Job.

So that's kind of a framework that I like to put out about the Bible. Yeah, there's a lot of things you can learn from it. And there's many people that have used this as a kind of an operator's manual for life. And like I said, it'll work. But if that's all you use it for, you miss, in my mind, 90% of what this Bible was about. Two things. A good story. I think a good story has at least the real stories. They often have a prologue and an epilogue.

A lot of people don't read either one. They just read the story. But if you go in the front, it'll give you a little bit of introduction to the story. And then usually the story's out. After a while, they put an epilogue in. Well, this is what happened.

And this even has that. I consider Genesis 1 the epilogue. That's the story before you and I came on the scene or our ancestors. And the epilogue is revelation. It tells us this is what's going to happen when this is all over. This is what we have to look forward to. I really appreciate that. I'm glad God put those two things in there. It gives a bit of to me, it gives a bit of context or parentheses for what I need to know when I read this book.

Well, why do we study the Bible? For most of us, and I think this is true for everybody, most of us don't read anything unless we have some need that we want met.

So why do people read the funnies?

What need does anyone have that would cause them to read the funnies? I didn't know for a long time. We kind of weren't allowed to read them. And when I did read them, most of them were so stupid, I couldn't figure out whatever.

But there's some people religiously read the funnies every week, just like going to church.

What is it? There's something calling them to that. Actually, they may have created it, but it's there. For me, it's the same reason people smoke cigarettes or that's a little stretch. There may be drink, beer. But we do have a thing in us that wants to kind of get a little bit away from the reality around us that's just too heavy.

And I think the funnies, the comic strips can do that for people. Some of us just simply need to be entertained for a little bit. So those are some of the little needs that I think call us to read things.

So if I was going to overhaul the engine in my car, most of the times I would just take it to the garage and let them do it. But if I was going to do it, I would have to do the same thing they once upon a time did. They had to get something out and figure out, "So what's in here? How do I do this?"

Now, there are some people that can do some pretty complex things, like you and I do it and we unpack a mower or something. Look around and figure out how it works. That one's a little more complex. But I think there are people that can do that to an engine. But it works a whole lot better if you understand your need to figure out how this works and take a look at the directions. I forget what they were called. There's the books you could get. I haven't seen them for a long time because I'm sure it's online. It's big books. Auto Repair Miltons, maybe, or something.

Whenever we have a problem, we will go somewhere to find answers for it. We're designed that way. God made us that way. And do you know why? Because when we face a problem, you know what he wants us to do?

It's all through this book. Every time someone hit a problem, what did God want them to do? And every time they did it, they got answers.

Every time. I've been noticing that this last time I'm going through here. Even when they were as wicked as Ahab, whenever they got to a problem finding that they were going to admit, "I need something here," and they would turn to him, he always responded. Always.

There was one time that I can remember when they turned to him, he responded, but it wasn't what they wanted. He said, "Look." He said, "You guys have been worshiping these idols. Just keep asking them." He said, "You just, that's what you want to do."

But finally, the time came when they got to the end of that, and God always responded. He made us so that when we face a problem, we will turn to something for help. That's how he designed us.

And if I could convince you that this book will solve every problem that you face in life in a way that will make you happy and feel complete and fulfilled like you just always want to feel, if I could convince you of that, you'd read it.

Because that's how people sell books. They convince you that it will solve your problem. I thought about bringing everybody in. I have two books at home. Might be telling them myself. But one of them says, I forget what it starts, but in six minutes, you can become a healthy person. Six minutes a day.

This is for people over 60. I'm not over 60 yet. I'm getting ready.

Okay? In six minutes, actually, it's six minutes twice a day, you can become a healthy person. Matter of fact, it promises that if you are a bedridden person and don't have some really special health issue, like missing legs and those kinds of things, that you can be up and walking doing that in a certain amount of time. I forget if it's a month, that you can be a walking person. Going from bed to walking, six minutes a day.

Or six minutes twice a day. That's an incredible promise. And if I was in bed, I'd be reading that book. No. I'd read it once and I'd get busy. Okay? Do whatever it said. Okay? And it's just simple exercises that target specific things for mobility.

I also have another book at home that says, "Lose weight, have more energy, be happier in 10 days."

Hold it. I can't believe everybody doesn't have that book.

All right?

Those are some amazing claims. And both books, the one book gives you these incredible promises and gives you some counts of people who worked. And the other one just has a whole bunch of testimonies of people that did it and lost weight and had more energy and were happy in 10 days.

Well, this book promises all that stuff. The problem is we don't often accept those promises like we accept them out of a little book like that. Somehow this book's different.

Well, if you and I are willing to accept the fact that we are needy people and that we really, we are going to turn somewhere for help, it's a good start. And this book promises everything that you really want.

It's actually the message of the gospel. One of the things that Paul said, and the other apostles do over and over again, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ."

Okay? So when I pick up a book, if I believe what it says, I'll take it to heart. I'll do something. He says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." I picked up the book because I had a need.

Believe on Jesus Christ that he will meet your need. And he says, "You will be saved. Whatever the problem is, you will find salvation." That's the promise. That's the gospel. Jesus said, "If you seek first God's kingdom, you will have everything you need. All these things will be added to you."

Incredible promise. I still think I don't believe it like he meant it. I still think I try hard to do like we often do. When we're tempted to turn somewhere for help, we think, "Well, I got this." We pull up our pants and put on our boots and pull them clear up to our hips. And we're going to make it. We are going to get through this. I got this. And we keep telling ourselves that every time we get partway through and it doesn't work, "I just need to pull my boots higher, pull my pants higher. I've got this."

We're so much that way. We constantly deny the fact that we want help and need help. And we try to do it on our own.

Get that under your belt and start reading the Bible because it will meet your needs. We need something.

And I have a lot of verses here that talk about the things that the Bible offers to us. I'm just going to list the things that generally it says. One is, it will teach you to fear God. It even says in Deuteronomy, it'll teach the king to fear God. He's supposed to read this book. And back then it wasn't near as big.

Actually, he was supposed to not just read it. I think the king was supposed to copy it. That'll get it. While you're writing it, you can think about what it says.

It gives us wisdom. Okay? And I'm just going to make this comment about wisdom. Wisdom isn't just head knowledge. Wisdom is an action. And this book will give you wisdom. If you do what this book says, you'll be a wise person. Jesus said, "This book testifies of me." Okay? So considering that God and he and the Holy Spirit are the authors of this, if you want to learn about him, read this book. It testifies of him.

He also said it will prevent error. Okay? It keeps you from going off in the wrong direction.

It will make you wise to salvation. It won't just make you a wise person. It will make you wise to salvation. Incredible promises. I like this one. Jesus said, "All scripture must be fulfilled." Anything that's written in here is going to happen. You can count on it. You can bank your life on it. You can bank your bank account on it if you really care to. It will happen.

It also, I think Peter's the one that said, "If you twist this to your own thinking, you will destroy yourself." But it's just more of us destroying ourselves. If we take this and try to make it fit our own ideas, we will be destroyed.

And Revelation says, "The reader is blessed." And for me, the word blessed means you're put in a good position. If you read this, believe it, you are in a good position. So it prepares you for the future. So what is our need? Our basic need is to know God and to think like Jesus.

Those I think are two basic needs. Romans 12, and I like this comment that Jason made while he was up here. He wanted to study with Hebrews. He said for himself it was like his mind was being renewed.

That's what this is for. It is to renew our minds. Our minds have been destroyed by allowing the devil and his lies to be our imagined reality. But if we read this book and we learn to know the author and begin to understand what's happening in this story, it can renew our mind and we can take a look at life as it really was meant to be.

How does Jesus think? I'm going to take a few minutes here just to look at some verses in Matthew just to give us a little bit of a picture. There's a lot of them. The biggest ones are Romans 12 and Philippians 2. Those are familiar passages. But these are some things that Jesus himself said, did. The first one, of course, is Matthew 5, 6, and 7. We call it the Sermon on the Mount. And I'm not going to take time to read it. But you just read the first Beatitudes.

We call them Beatitudes. They are attitudes. Those are Jesus' attitudes. He thinks in those terms. And then he went through and said, "This is what the law said, but I say unto you." So Jesus was taking the law and telling us this is how he thought about it.

And it was actually more than what they were expected to maybe at the time. Take a look at chapter 12, verse 10 of Matthew.

You can go through and pick out a bunch of these. I'm just going to pick some of Matthew. Chapter 12, verse 10 says, "And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand, and they asked him, saying, 'Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?'" That they might accuse him.

They had ulterior motives. But his answer says how he thinks. "What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?" Okay? But he wasn't done thinking.

He went on. "Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Okay? Just a little thing that tells you this is how Jesus thinks. In verse 47 of the same chapter. "Then said one to him, 'Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you.'" Okay? So your immediate family's out here. And Jesus responds and tells us how his mind works. "But he answered and said to the one who told him, 'Who is my mother and who are my brothers?'" Now, that is a weird question, isn't it? So someone would tell me that my brothers and sisters were outside, I'd immediately think, "Steve, Philip, Braxton, Starla.

I know what's going on." He's like, "Who are they?" Weird. But this is how Jesus thinks. "And he stretched his hand toward his disciples and said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers.'" That's still weird. Like, is this guy normal? But he's not done telling us how he's thinking. "For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

So Jesus is thinking way outside our box. But he says, "I have a Father, and if there are any of you that are doing what my Father is telling you, you're my family." That's how Jesus thinks. Take a look at one more. Chapter 18, verse 1. "At that time, the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' And Jesus said, 'Well, of course it's me.'" Wouldn't that have been a logical thing to say?

This is what Jesus said. "Then Jesus called a little child to him and sat him in the midst of them and said, 'Assuredly, I say unto you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.'" It's like you're barely going to be able to get low enough to get in, let alone think about who's the greatest.

So those are just some things that show us how Jesus thinks. And this book is to help train our minds to think like Jesus. The Bible is a book God left to show and tell us how he thinks through all of time. Another one of the things that really blessed me about this story is God doesn't change throughout the story. Sometimes you might even have a key character that goes to a point in the story and he changes.

It doesn't happen in this story. The main character is the same the whole way through. He never changes the way he thinks. That's what's interesting about the Old and New Testament, the difference. And I want to mention that just a little bit. But God's thinking does not change like ours. His thinking is always right. His thinking is always good. His thinking always includes every human being.

Those are some incredible things about God that come out in this book. Jonah, when he was there looking at Nineveh, he was worried about his people back home. And God said, "There's a whole bunch of people here that I have to think about." And Jonah was like, "Skip them, but not God. That's not the way God is."

Can you think about Jesus when you think about buying clothes, buying a car, buying a house? Do you think like Jesus when you're doing that? When you're listening to music, when you're watching videos, can you think like Jesus when you're doing all those everyday things, when you're making evening plans, when you're trying to respect your parents, whether you're still at home or whether you're married and have children? Can you think like Jesus on those things? It's good and right to talk to older people about these things, but don't forget to read your Bible.

God wants to let you know from him what that means. He taught your parents, and definitely, hopefully, they have something to teach you, but he wants to teach you too. Because they're human. They don't know everything he knows.

He knows things about you that your parents don't know about you. He knows things about you that you don't know about you. And he wants to speak into that himself. That's God. David said, "Your laws give me more understanding than all my teachers." David somehow got to understand that when he was tuned into God, he had more information than any other human being was going to give him.

He had the real deal. Why study the Bible? Because we need it. We need to think like Jesus. We need to think like Jesus. Romans 12 has phrases in like, "In honor preferring one another." What's that mean? "Don't think high things, but condescend to men of low estate." What's that mean? How do I do that? Do I do that? Or do I keep fighting to be a little higher and at the same time hold on to these men of low estate? I'm going to pull them up. I don't know. Jesus somehow didn't think like that. He went the whole way down. You read Philippians 2. He was clear up here, and he didn't think that that was something that he deserved to fight to keep.

He gave it up to come down to be, well, he knew what we were like. He knew how we had turned on him. And he knew while he was here what it was going to be like. But he still came down. And he came down and he said, "You have to be lower than a little child." Well, what's lower than a little child than some child molester or some criminal that's murdering children? He went the whole way down and died the death of a murderer. He went to the bottom.

And that's how he thought. Can we somehow get ahold of that and think the same way? We need to think like Jesus. Jesus knew where he was from. John chapter 13 tells us he knew he had come from the Father. He knew he was going back to the Father, and he knew what was in between. And that's why he did everything he did. John is very clear in Jesus having us understand Jesus told his disciples, "I do everything that my Father tells me. Everything. I don't do anything myself." Do I think like that? Or do I pull up my own pants and pull up my own boots and say, "I got this.

Just hang in there, God. I'll let you know if I need you." No, Jesus didn't think that way. Jesus said, "I need my Father all the time."

Now, what about the New Testament? I just want to talk about that difference a little bit. Time is moving on here.

One of the things, if I can find the right page, about the New Testament in contrast to the Old Testament that always kind of puzzled me was the extreme difference in the way God's people related to other people. Okay? So in the Old Testament, you have the Israel nation of Israel.

And they were always, almost, it seemed like, fighting other nations, destroying them. When they take over Canaan, I almost can't handle what it says. I can't picture it. It sounds too much like what happens in the Middle East sometimes. They would go into a city and destroy everybody. It specifically says, "Men, women, maidens, young men, and children." It lists them all. And they slaughtered them. I just keep reading. I don't get it.

I do know that God said they wouldn't go to Canaan until the Canaanites' cup of iniquity was full and all that kind of stuff, and then he was going to judge them. So that's the only thing I can say is God's judging them.

But why? He was a volcano or something. Why human beings that were his people were going around slaughtering everybody? I just don't get it. And you get to the New Testament, and now God's people are the most peaceful people on earth.

What happened? What's the difference? But when I think about the elements of a short story and some of the things we talked about, there's one thing that seems to change in the plot. We still have the same God. We still have the same thought processes.

But in the Old Testament, the centerpiece on earth was God's people. And they were not converted. They weren't Christians. All you have to do is read and know that that just wasn't an option. Read Judges. Farthest thing from Christian you can imagine. Horrible stuff happened. But God was working through them to somehow establish what he wanted.

And he knew that it wasn't going to be like he wanted. The New Testament tells us that. The law didn't produce really what God was looking for. It produced what he wanted, but he had something else coming. Following you to the New Testament, as soon as you start reading the New Testament, there is a drastic change in the plot.

Now the activity on earth centers around one person and only one. It doesn't center around the Jews anymore. It centers around Jesus. And Jesus comes to do what the Old Testament kind of had a picture of. These people were supposed to do what God said, and it was supposed to somehow Hebrews talks about covering their sin. But this man came to take away sin. And now, when Jesus says, "If you do what my Father says, you are my brother and sister," he's talking about family. He's talking about people that are part of his and his Father's family. These other people, it was his nation, and he was doing things with them when they cooperated and even when they didn't.