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Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak
peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him
in their hearts. Psalm 85:8 (NRSV)
I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak
peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn
again to folly. Psalm 85:8 (KJV)
God began working His work of saving grace in my heart and life
before I was born. Who can say how many steps the Lord
takes to save us in the generations before we ever come to be
born, to speak, or to know anything about the gospel message?
We do know that God chose us in Christ Jesus before the
foundations of the world, that He sent His only Son into the
world some two thousand years ago to live, to speak, and to die
for the sins of the whole world. God does nothing in haste
or part way. The Lord is able to lay down a million
billion years of preparatory work or to do the same kind of
preparation in less than a blink of the eye (as when Jesus
turned water into wine). So it is not always easy to
examine evidences and come up with the exact answer of how long
a time anything really takes.
But I know that God was at work in me long before I came to
really know Him through faith in Jesus Christ. I can look
back now and see His mighty hand doing this and preventing that.
With humans hindsight is always better than foresight. We
know now what the weather was really like yesterday.
The Lord saved me when I was 17. I had joined a
gospel-preaching church when I was 10, got baptized and all
that. And the Lord really had been dealing with me at that
time. But I did things my way, not in simple obedience and
open surrender, and that made all the difference in the world.
Don't misunderstand me, I do not think there are any particular
special rites or steps a person must take in order to be saved.
One must believe God. That mush is certain from Scripture.
But while some must walk a thousand miles to find a church or
gospel preacher, and some must be ready to be baptized when they
first bow the knee to confess Christ, others must only believe
in their hearts, and they are born again. Eternal life
comes to us as a free gift whenever we trust in Christ Jesus.
Yet Paul (who was Saul) was struck blind in the road, Naaman had
to dip in Jordan seven times, and Nicodemus had to make up his
mind. That very last part, I suppose, we all must do.
We must make up our minds what we will believe about God and
about His promised Savior.
Abram (we all know him as Abraham these days) had to believe
what God told him. The Lord did not tell Abram about a
baby that would one day be born to a virgin girl and placed in a
manger. God did not give Abram the story of Jesus' life
(so far as we know, anyway), or tell Abram how Jesus would die
on a cross for the sins of the world. He simply told Abram
that he was going to have plenty of descendants, so many that
they would one day be as the very stars of heaven in number.
And Abram simply believed what God said. That what it says
in Genesis 15:6 (in any Bible version you prefer).
Abram believed God and the Lord counted it back to Abram as
righteousness. If you are brand new to Bible teaching,
that was a very big deal. That is salvation, eternal life,
white robes in heaven — everything.
The Scripture from Psalm 85 that I quoted above is presented in
two different English translations. These days there seems
to be a lot of worry over which Bible translation is used for
serious study or prayerful reading. And I'm sure that it
does make a difference. But there are people who make the
differences much bigger than they really are. Some try to
judge whether a person can even be truly Christian if they are
reading the "wrong" Bible. Such ideas about the Bible
prove that Pharisees and Sadducees are still among us. In
other words, we will always be easily tripped up by religion and
our own religious traditions if we are not careful.
Why all the fuss?
There are occasional differences in Bible interpretation based,
in part, on
different Bible translations. And some translations give
more weight or value to one group of ancient Scripture
manuscripts over others. It's a long story. But I don't
spend a lot of time worrying over which translation is really
God's Word. It's
obvious to me that all of the Bible belongs to me, as a gift of
God's grace. The Latin Vulgate is a strong tradition in
the early church, as
is the Greek Old Testament used by many Jewish people in the
centuries leading up to the birth of the Christian church. And the Hebrew
(or Aramaic) manuscripts obviously have great value in any Old
Testament study, since we all
consider them to be closest of all to the original writings of
the prophets and their scribes.
For English speaking people, the Greek Received Text, pulled
together from the Majority Texts, was the very foundation of
Protestant New Testament translations for a long time.
Many wonderful and widely accepted English New Testaments are
based on it. But it is not the only Greek New Testament
accepted by scholars. Some manuscript portions have been
found that appear to be older and possibly more in line with the
very original texts written by the apostles themselves.
All of this means that there are some passages in our English
Bible that read differently from translation to translation.
The passage from Psalm 85 above is a good example. One is
based more on the Hebrew text and one on the ancient Greek
version of the Old Testament Scriptures. The more
traditional English versions have been based on the Greek
version, just as many of the apostles' own comments and quotes
were based on the same Greek version.
Personally, I am delighted to have both versions of the passage.
There is no doubt in my mind that both are clearly God's Word.
Both are to be taken to heart because they have both been given
to this generation (and many earlier generations) by the grace
of God. The Lord makes no mistakes. He is not sloppy
in His providential care over the written Word of God.
While I may not grasp all the reasons for this or that variation
in ancient Scriptural translations and manuscript traditions, I
do know that whatever God has permitted is, in fact, the will of
God.
I am often blessed by the work of God in Jeremiah the prophet.
God called and used this man to speak to his own generation, and
to many, many generations that have followed. Jeremiah
suffered many things for his faithfulness to utter the Word when
it was not popular to do so. Judah was in serious trouble
with the Lord, and God's message was one of certain judgment.
On one occasion, the message of God through Jeremiah, recorded
in a scroll, was taken and read in the presence of the king.
As the message was being read aloud, the scroll was cut and
burned, until the entire thing was destroyed. But that did
not stop the Lord or the prophet. God told Jeremiah to
write it all down again. Jeremiah once again had his
scribe write as he dictated the message. And, according to
Jeremiah 36:32, many similar words were added. The message
only grew when the enemy tried to destroy it.
A reading of the book of Jeremiah seems to support the story,
because it is not as organized as we might expect, and some bits
are repeated, as though they were inserted out of context.
The picture I get is clear. Jeremiah would record the
messages of the Lord whenever God spoke to him. And over
the years, Jeremiah's collection of notes and bits of messages
grew into quite a pile. He decided at one point to
organize everything and hired Baruch, a capable scribe, to write
down the message as he dictated it. It probably took some
time, and a lot of work. When the original document was
destroyed by the king, the second document was likely done under
less perfect conditions. But it is the second scroll, and
not the first, that the Lord wanted the world to have — in part,
because it includes details that were left out before.
God makes no mistakes. His work is never done shoddily or
half way. He is never neglectful or hasty in the unfolding
of His plans. God controls the details and the results to
an extent that we cannot understand. And especially with
regard to the Holy Bible, He is always faithful to give what is
needed, nothing more and nothing less.
Let no one discourage you when it comes to accepting and
believing the Bible. A great many human beings, not to
mention other creatures of darkness, have tried to destroy the
message of God or to remove it from us in various ways.
The very first act of evil in human history was the serpent that
God had not given an accurate message. The results of that
first lie and the foolishness of Adam in accepting it are still
evident in every human heart. No good ever comes from
rejecting the truth of God. May we now be as Abram of old.
May we take God at His word and believe what He says, and may we
act on it in genuine faith. We and our children will
benefit from such trusting obedience.
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