All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
- 2 Peter 1:20-21
All your words are true;
all your righteous laws are eternal.
- Psalm 119:160
Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
- John 17:17
This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
- 1 Corinthians 2:13
“6. By the Holy Scriptures, also, God the Creator is known. We ought to consider what these Scriptures are ; that they are true, and have proceeded from the Spirit of God ; which is proved by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, by the efficacy and antiquity of the Scriptures, by the certainty of the Prophecies, by the miraculous preservation of the Law, by the calling and writings of the Apostles, by the consent of the Church, and by the steadfastness of the martyrs, whence it is evident that all the principles of piety are overthrown by those fanatics who, laying aside the Scripture, fly to revelations.”
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Aphorisms
John Calvin did not write these aphorisms. They are a summarization of what he wrote in Institutes of the Christian Religion. There are 100 aphorisms. I will at least go for a few of them while I look through my library for another book.
It is critical that we study the Bible. These days there are a lot of churches that say that they believe in Jesus. But is the Jesus they believe in the One that is described in the Bible?
Often, not so much, not that anyone gets it exactly right.
I had a pastor say that you cannot be saved by good theology, but I believe that if you water down the Gospel you can lead people away from salvation with poor theology. And what the pastor was saying, at least in part is that theology is in the intellectual realm, where God has to reside in our hearts.
The biggest problem that we have today and it has been going on since the beginning to some extent is that we have our cookie cutter idea of who God is and who Jesus is. This is absurd in that God is infinite and no cookie cutter can contain Him, but as we read the Scriptures, we see something that is uncomfortable. If we skip over it, or worse reject it, we are losing an important lesson. God makes us uncomfortable because our view is in error. Skipping over it or rejecting that part of the Bible diminished our view of God and we lose the chance of making our God bigger. We limit God to our way of thinking and then we wonder why our plans fail.
With failed plans, we lose even more of God. Could it be that our plan failed because we did not understand that our plan did not fit into God’s plan? Maybe because we failed to understand who God is?
Reading the Bible and having Bible study with people who are not afraid to challenge us are important ways in growing as a Christian.
And that word “growing” is an odd word. Often we grow as a Christian by understanding that God is bigger and we are smaller, yet He loves us deeply.
If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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