Feast One Hundred Forty-six

Processing...

I am something of a slow processor, so as I continue to mull over yesterday's sermon, I keep coming back to one point. When discussing why it is so easy for people to believe lies about the Bible (that it is unreliable etc.), Devin pointed out that, if the Bible is the Word of God, then it puts demands on us. Rather than accept that burden, it is often easier to dismiss the source of the burden.

CS Lewis wrote:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

The same is true with the Word. We can say it is unreliable, we can ignore history, but we cannot pick and choose to which standards we will hold fast. The facts are there, the evidence is clear, and through the centuries, God has preserved His Word.