11-3-2024

Good Morning All,

      John 20:30; “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

    People don’t write letters like they used to.  This is really unfortunate for many reasons.  One reason is that we are losing our ability to express ourselves with the written language. We may text in some combination of acronyms and shorthand words, but we no longer take the time to craft a letter which conveys our deepest thoughts and feelings to be shared with someone whom we love or trust. 

    The second reason that it is a sad event is that personal letters and diaries are among the best resources for historians to determine what life was like.  Oh, there are many official documents but those are written by people who have a stake in what others believe.  The king will always want his subjects to hear how brave and wise he is. Much of our knowledge of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War comes from the letters that soldiers wrote home to their loved ones.  Yet today we don’t often write so we often do not give a clear explanation of what we are trying to communicate.  In our feeble attempts we fail.  That is not the case in our verse for today.

    The Apostle John is very specific about why he wrote his Gospel and epistles.  The Holy Spirit is telling us the whole purpose, not only of John’s Gospel, but the entire Bible.  Why are we told some things but not others?  Why are there apparent “blanks” in Scriptures?  Why don’t we hear about Jesus between the ages of 13 and 30?  What about all the people who appear briefly in the narratives but then just as quickly disappear?  The answer to these questions is in our verse “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” 

     The Bible is God’s way of revealing to us how we are saved.  It is not designed to be the entire historical compendium; rather it contains information about our salvation.  From Adam and Eve and the fall into sin through Jesus’ glorious return in the Revelation of John, the central message is the Gospel of Jesus.  As we look at each book of the Bible, we can see the Gospel of Jesus and his atoning sacrifice.  Sometimes it is foreshadowed like with Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac (his only son) or flat out prophesied, “he was wounded for our transgressions” but it always points to our need for a Savior and who that Savior is.

      God reveals this plan to us in the Bible.  There are many things about God which are not revealed to us; things we accept by faith.  Yet our salvation is clearly explained so that we may believe and by believing have eternal life.

Dear Father, your grace is wondrously poured out on us daily.  Without it we are lost.  Give us the power of your Spirit and the faith to hold onto our hope of salvation.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret