A letter to you.
When I was living at home with my father, he did not need to write to me; but when I left home, then he sent letters to me. So now, man is away from God, and He has sent him a letter. The Bible is this letter. The Holy Spirit wrote it, and God gives us the Spirit to teach us its meaning. God wants to tell us all about His beloved Son, so that we may know the love of God. You remember in Luke 24, Jesus explains to two disciples “from Moses and all the prophets the things concerning Himself,” and in the same chapter He tells His disciples, “that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning Me.” These are the three great divisions of the Old Testament.
A man said to a believer in Christ, “Do you not think the Bible would have been better without those stories, or parts so hard to believe?” “What parts do you mean?” “Oh! such as Jonah being swallowed by a fish. The Christian answered, “Do you believe Jesus to be the Son of God?” “Yes,” said the man. “Well, then you must believe it all, for He said it was true, and that very account of Jonah is a type or figure of Christ’s death and resurrection. ‘As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart, of the earth.’” Matt. 12:4040For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matthew 12:40). A young believer said, in answer to an old doctor who was asking him perplexing questions, “It is easy to believe the whole Bible when you have believed the story of God’s love, and on Jesus as the Son of God.”
The written word (the Bible) and the living word (Jesus) go together, as the Lord said in John 5, “Had ye believed Moses (that is, Genesis to Deuteronomy) ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believed not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?”
Just think, dear children, of this book written by God, through many different penmen, and hundreds of years between some of them, yet all, about the same blessed Person. Men could not write such a book, nor can we understand it, till our eyes are opened by God’s Spirit, as Jesus did for His disciples, in Luke 24, “Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the, scriptures.” If I know the Lord Jesus as my Saviour, the Spirit will teach me of Him, but otherwise I might read it, only as an amusement, or a duty.
McCheyne’s hymn says,
“I oft read with pleasure, to soothe or engage,
Isaiah’s wild measure or John’s simple page;
But e’en when they pictured the blood-sprinkled tree,
Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.”
But after he knew Christ as his Saviour, he said,
“No refuge, no safety in self could I see;
Jehovah Tsidkenu, my Saviour must be.
My terrors all vanished before that sweet name;
My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came,
To drink at the fountain, life-giving and free,
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.”
And may He be all things to my dear young friends who may read this.
A. F.
ML 09/30/1900