Reflection: Biblical Teaching

In our Holy Habits home-groups, we are starting on the topic of Biblical Teaching. At the time of Acts 2, none of the New Testament books had been written, so they were being taught by the Apostles and this teaching was later written down in the pages of the New Testament.

Much of this teaching explained how the Old Testament was pointing to God’s Messiah and how Jesus fulfilled the prophesies.

Jesus himself read from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth and claimed that He was the fulfillment of it (Luke 4:21).

This would have been dynamite to the Jews. All through the gospels, you can see the excitement building with its climax in the Acts as people became convinced of Jesus’s identity as God’s promised Messiah, and the church spread like wildfire, despite ferocious opposition.

Why should we place so much importance on Biblical Teaching, rather than on church tradition and authority, on our own spiritual experiences, or on our own unassisted reasoning?

It is because it tells people what they need, but do not want to hear.

How many attempts have there been to discredit, twist or soften the words of the Bible, so as to avoid the conclusion that we each of us need the forgiveness of sins that only God can grant through the barbaric means of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross? Do we ourselves soften the teaching, because we are afraid of making ourselves unpopular or ridiculous? We would never have come up with teaching like that on our own.

The Bible is precious treasure, and we need to be on a lifelong quest to learn its secrets. It is how we come to know God and receive life from Him.
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Kevin Haigh