A Way of Life - God’s Word

With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes. (Psalm 119:10 - 12).

In Luke 24 we read that when Jesus was walking with two disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus that “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.”

Later in that chapter, when Jesus is with His disciples in Jerusalem, He also taught them about how He, the Messiah, is portrayed in the Scriptures.

What is the image in our minds when we read about Jesus teaching from the Scriptures? Is it an image of Jesus and the disciples reading a book? A scroll? Is it the equivalent of what we do as we gather as the church?

A Torah, just the first five books of what we call the Old Testament, likely weighed around 25 pounds and stretched many many feet - imagine what all of the Old Testament scrolls would have been like. Also, consider that they were not mass produced. People did not walk around with Old Testaments the way we can walk around with Bibles.

The disciples must have known the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings well enough to converse in them and about them, and be taught from them - without having the actual scrolls to refer to during their Bible studies. This would have also been true for any other formats in which the Scriptures were produced - you just didn’t walk into a bookstore and purchase the Scriptures.

Which is why I’m reminded of the above passage from Psalm 119 - God’s people are to be a people who hide and treasure the Word of God in their hearts.

And so Paul writes in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

We are to be a people living in God’s Word, with God’s Word living in us. We ought to speak it to one another, sing it to one another, live it with one another.

If our Bibles were taken away tomorrow, would we know the Word of God as the first-century disciples knew the Word of God?

God’s Word should be our language, it should mold our thought patterns, it should shape our desires, it should be our treasure.

God’s Word in Christ should be our way of life in the Way of life.

How are we doing?