The Bible speaks of a God that throughout the history of Humankind has been making himself known. He longs for us to know him. He has chosen, in his infinite wisdom, to use the Scriptures as the means through which that knowledge of God is mediated to us. We get to know him as we turn the pages of the book to discover His ways, His will, His desires, and His heartbeat for this world. However, to know someone isn’t simply “knowing about” someone. To know someone is to have an experiential relationship with that someone. Therefore, the Bible is less about filling our heads with a lot of helpful and interesting information and more about setting the stage for an encounter with the Author of all existence.
To open the Bible is to heed the invitation to step into the presence of the God who hung the stars in the sky and boundaried the oceans. It is to abide in the presence of the One who has consistently rescued the broken, stood on the side of the defenseless, toppled the powerful, and given himself completely to the rescue of His beloved children.
When we heed the invitation to encounter, we recognize it is like none other. Each and every encounter with God in the Scriptures is transformative. When we head to the Bible anticipating an encounter, each page, each reading sets the stage for something to happen. Our lives are caught up in the story of God. God meets us there. When we are met by God, we walk away different. I often tell people, “If reading the Scriptures merely produces knowledge about God and has no impact on your character, who you are as you stand before God, you are doing it wrong.”
The object of reading Scripture is not to become “smarter” but to become more “holy.”
Do me a favor…
Go to chapter 1 of Genesis. That’s the first book of the Bible. Read verses 26 and 27. What do you see there? Did you notice that the we were originally created to reflect the Image of God in this world? We were created to represent God. However, the Bible teaches us that the image of God in us was corrupted and perverted through our sin and rebelliousness. BUT GOD…(This is something you need to get used to in the Bible. There are many “But God” moments.) BUT GOD…cares too much about his image to leave it tarnished. Therefore, God has been at work throughout the history of humankind to restore HIS image in HIS people. Through Scripture, we encounter the character of this God…so that…our character can be transformed to more adequately and faithfully represent HIS.
Let’s give this a try…
Today let’s read the 2nd chapter of Luke. A little background might help here. Luke 2 seeks to anchor the birth of Jesus to specific location at a specific historic moment. But it’s the announcement to the shepherds I want to focus on. In the 1st century Middle Eastern world, shepherds were extremely low class citizens. The fell very low on the social ladder. They spent days on end driving their flocks of sheep throughout the countryside. They weren’t often socially adept, smelled bad, and were often disregarded. BUT GOD…chooses this unlikely crew to receive the announcement that Jesus, the hope of the world, was to be born in Bethlehem. Ok…here’s the questions…
1.) What does it say about the character of God that He would make time for and entrust something so important to a group of left-out, disregarded shepherds?
2.) What does that mean about the way in which we understand our character? Think about that in light of how we are called to treat the left-outs and disregarded?
For a little extra fun, compare the context of this announcement with song that Jesus’ mother Mary sings in chapter 1 that you read yesterday. What did you discover there?
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