As we start our journey through the Bible, we need to make sure that we read and study the Bible correctly. I wish I could say I’m surprised by how often I see people quote the Bible, but somehow make it say something that it does not. Whether it’s through ignoring the context of a passage, misunderstanding the language, misapplying a promise, or just plain trying to make the Bible say what we want it to say, many people, including Christians, fail to truly listen to what the Spirit is saying to us in the Word.

During His temptation, Jesus gave us an example of how to use the Word in a spiritual battle. Every time Satan tried to tempt Him to step out of His Father’s will and do something miraculous on His own, Jesus went to the Word and used it to counter the devil. (Side note: Jesus quotes the book of Deuteronomy, a book often neglected in our study today.) He applies it to the situation accurately and authoritatively, and reminds Satan that He is obedient to the Father’s revealed Word.

Satan gets the message, and decides he needs to change his own tactics. In the temptation to make a miraculous splash in Jerusalem, he also quotes Scripture. He goes to a poetic passage in Psalm 91:11-12 and applies it to an attempt to presume on God’s protection. But Satan’s quotation is a little different: he leaves out a connecting “for” at the beginning of verse 11. That connects these verses to the previous section in verses 9-10 that begins, “Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place…” The protection promised (in highly poetic language) is dependent on trust in God, not making a test for Him. Jesus rebuffs Satan’s misapplication with an appropriate quote from Deuteronomy.

Having Scripture ready at hand to face temptation gives a great advantage in standing firm. We should not only read the Word, but commit it to memory and meditate on its meaning. We must ensure that we are applying it correctly, and careful about the context of any verse or passage. We also need to take care that we don’t simply accept a Bible quote as “proof” of what we should do or what we want without carefully studying to make sure that’s what the Bible actually says.

The more time we spend in the Word, the better equipped we will be to recall and use what we are learning in our daily lives. Not only will the Bible help us face temptation, as it did Jesus, but it will help us mature in our faith, grow in our understanding of what the Lord says, and find ways to put it into practice in our lives. Our journey this year should help us grow in all these ways, and in doing so to honor Jesus Christ with our hearts, minds, and service.

Our modern culture often thinks of God’s justice in terms of “fairness.” Fairness is usually viewed from a human perspective, what we might think is fair. Yet the Bible doesn’t tell us that God is fair, but it does say He is just. Here in Genesis 6-7 we see His justice carried out.

Many critics scoff at the idea of a worldwide flood, and try to make it fit some local calamity in the ancient world. There are many flood traditions throughout the world, however, and many scientific observations that are consistent with a huge, cataclysmic flood that affected the entire globe. For the Christian, the idea that God could and would judge the entire world fits into our world view. Not only that, but a worldwide judgment is actually fair. We deserve to be judged for our sin and rebellion against the Lord, and it would be entirely consistent with God’s justice for us to face that judgment.

Despite the focus on judgement here, what we truly see is an outpouring of God’s grace. Everyone deserved judgment; Noah’s righteousness may have stood out among the rest of the inhabitants of the world, but he was not perfect, as the sequel to the story shows. Yet God chose to save Noah and his family from the judgment He poured out on the world through the ark He had Noah build. By listening to the Lord, obeying His commands, and trusting in His promise, Noah was not only saved himself, but also brought his family and the animals of the world through the flood.

Noah is used as an example of faith in the New Testament, a faith that trusted God, acted on what God said, and persevered even when the results weren’t seen right away. It took a century to build the ark, during which Noah warned the people around him of the judgment. They saw the work Noah was doing, probably couldn’t make any sense of it, and I’m sure they talked about the crazy old man and his “boat.” In the face of that, Noah’s faith did not waver, and his faith led him to salvation through the means God supplied.

We live in a world where we can warn people of impending judgment, not of a flood but of eternal doom. To many, maybe most, we seem crazy, and we may find ourselves the object of scorn and mockery for our belief in Jesus. Do we have the kind of faith Noah had, to continue to obey and follow the Lord no matter what is happening around us? The faith to continue to do what God has called us to do, even if we don’t see immediate results? The faith to believe that God’s promised way of salvation is indeed the only way?

As we go through the Bible, let’s keep our eyes open for examples of faith, and remember the ways God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments showed their confidence in Him. Let us develop a faith that isn’t just in words, but in action. Whatever ark God is calling you to build, and however long that takes, keep exercising your faith so that it will grow stronger and that you can show the world what it means to trust in the Lord.

Imagine being one of the Magi in the Nativity story. You have spent your life studying the stars, philosophy, and mystic writings from all over the world. Perhaps you have read some ancient scrolls written by the Babylonian/Persian sage and civil servant Daniel some 500 years ago. Your studies have led you to believe a king is to be born to the Jews in the Roman province of Judea. What do you do with all of this?

We aren’t told in Scripture why the Magi came to honor this new king, only that they did. They showed up in Jerusalem and promptly shook up the royal and spiritual establishment. King Herod was self-conscious about not being an Israelite by descent (he was a descendant of Esau, not Jacob), and the announcement of the Magi would essentially be a slap in the face: “Where is the real king of the Jews?” The message disturbed Herod so much that he would end up killing innocent children to preserve his throne. (This was not out of character, since he killed his own family members if he thought they jeopardized his power.)

Given a lead by the scribes in Jerusalem, and led by the miraculous star, the Magi finally found Jesus and his parents in a house in Bethlehem. Their gifts seem odd for a toddler, but they had prophetic significance: gold for a king, frankincense for a god, myrrh for burial. The Magi left their gifts, worshipped the new king, and returned to their homeland after a warning from an angel. Once they leave the scene, the Bible is silent as to what happened to them. Tradition says they became Christians, but we really don’t know.

We are so familiar with the Magi that we may miss the shocking point of this story. When Jesus was born, only two groups are stated to have come to visit Him, and one was these Magi. This would have startled any good Jewish readers of Matthew’s gospel, which has a very definite Jewish slant, because these visitors weren’t Jews. They were a group of Gentiles, perhaps having some knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures but not Torah-observant, who figured out that the King of the Jews had been born, and who gave Him appropriate honors, while the king of Judah tried to kill Him and the rest of Israel ignored Him.

Jesus came for the sake of all people, Jews and Gentile alike. He came for those who were looking for Him, and for those who were not. He came to save people who were seeking to follow God, and those who were not seen as “God’s people.” As we carry the message of the gospel into our world, we are reminded that it is sometimes those we least expect who are most open to seeing who Jesus is. Our witness is to all the world, and when we preach the gospel we may be surprised at who responds.

Many people begin the New Year by making a list of resolutions. These are promises we make, mostly to ourselves, about how we’re going to improve our lives this year. Popular resolutions include losing weight, getting more exercise, cutting out bad habits, saving more money, and going to church more. Our intentions are good, but we find out pretty quickly that, left to ur own devices, we fail to keep our resolutions for long.

One of the saddest events in the Bible is the one we read about in Genesis 3. Despite only having one “resolution” to keep, Adam and Eve failed to do it. Listening to the lies of the serpent and to each other, relying on their own thinking and wisdom, they disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the forbidden tree.  In an instant, their lives changed dramatically, and their relationship with God was broken.

How different it might have been if Eve and then Adam had waited and gone to God for His wisdom. They needed divine insight and strength to resist Satan and their own desires. Faced with something that looked attractive and promised so much, Adam and Eve trusted their own judgment, and not only harmed themselves, but brought about a broken world.

God wasn’t caught by surprise. He already had a plan in place to restore people to a right relationship with Him through Jesus, the ultimate “offspring” of Eve. He begins to reveal His plan as He speaks with Adam, Eve, and the serpent. Our NT reading for today is actually the beginning of the earthly fulfillment of the coming of the Messiah, with a promise that “he will save his people from their sins”- sins that began in the garden.

As those who are sinners saved by the grace of God, we should resolve to obey His commands and to draw closer to Jesus every day. Through daily time in the Word and in prayer, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are able to do this. It is an opportunity to experience the grace and mercy of the Lord, and to demonstrate our own resolve to follow Him. May our journey through God’s Word this year strengthen our faith, our understanding, and our desire to follow the Lord wherever He may lead us.

January 2: Genesis 4-6; Matthew 2

It’s New Year’s Eve. For many people, it’s a time to think about what they can do in the new year to improve their lives. Maybe it’s diet, exercise, a new job, a new relationship- there are many ways we can try to change our lives.

If you’re here, I hope that one choice you have made is to commit to going all the way through the Bible this year. I’m not here to tell you it will be easy. Not only are there challenging passages, repetitious verses, and a lot of cultural distance we have to overcome, but our physical and emotional state fluctuates day to day. Some days you will be excited to plunge in, while others it may be more work.

I can assure you that if you are serious about God’s Word, there will be many temptations put into your path to discourage you. That’s why I want to do this journey together. When we have brothers and sisters who hold us up and help us with our questions and our commitment, it becomes so much easier to keep at the task. We are all in this together, not just for ourselves but for the glory of Jesus Christ as we gain new understandings into His Word.

So ready? Here’s the first readings (from the schedule mentioned above) for January 1, 2020 (remember, we’re doing an OT and a NT reading each day):

Genesis 1-3; Matthew 1.