At
Church this morning, our pastor spoke on the first Letter to the Corinthian
Church in our Bibles, and he made the point that the city of Corinth then, as
bad as it was, was in reality no worse than any big city in the world today,
including our own city of Melbourne.
After the service I told him that I had also
preached from this book/letter about 12 months ago and made the same point
about Corinth then, being no worse than Melbourne now. I then went on to say that if the Bible was
written today, the stories would be exactly the same, only the names would be
different. I then used the illustration of the old TV cop show of the 50’s
which always prefaced each show with: "Ladies and gentlemen: the story you
are about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the
innocent."
To which the pastor replied along the lines, that
that it was a great illustration, and one he might use one day, but not with
the 6pm group tonight. Asked to explain, he reminded me that this was the youth
service and that most of them wouldn’t know what Dragnet was!
Anyway, later, thinking about the connection
of the sameness of the stories in the Bible when written and the situations
today everywhere, I couldn’t help wondering that if the Bible had been written
in our time, where we would all fit in, particularly within a common story like
that in the Book of Acts, as recorded from chapter four, verse thirty six to
Chapter 5, verse eleven. Do read the passage for yourself and ask yourself, if
this story was written today, whose name would your name replace in this story?
Ananias/Sapphira? Or Barnabas?
This way of reading the bible may sound
strange to you, but in reality, should be the way we all read our Bibles. Not
as an ancient history book, or even as a more ancient text book, but as a
current living book that relates directly to the life of each and every one of
us today.
So in closing now, how are you going to read
the word of God now? As it should be read? Or are you just going to continue to
ignore it and its personal message to you and your life?
The choice is yours, so please choose wisely.
