8. Beginner Bible Course: The Bible is not easy to understand. Here's why...

EPISODE 8  The simple Bible overview of…THE BIBLE IS NOT EASY TO UNDERSTAND --THIS SHOULD BE OUR ATTITUDE AS READERS

I asked my students to imagine my wife, Michelle knocking on the door to the classroom. She enters and says students. I've got a great big surprise for you. We're flying you free to Disneyland. She actually does work for an airline. We get on an airplane and let's just say we get blown off course a little, well, actually quite a little. And we end up crash landing in the jungles of new Guinea. The good news is we're all safe and alive. The bad news is we're going to be here for a long, long time. The pygmy tribe takes us in. And after about six months, the pygmy teenagers wave my students and to the jungle for a game, they have a ball it's a lot like capture the flag.

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And after a couple of hours of playing and they take a water drink break in kind of broken pig. English the pygmy teenagers asked my students. So what do you do for fun? Where you come from? One of my students steps forward and tries to explain to them his iPhone. Good luck. The best he can do perhaps is to go down to a stream and get a Palm sized, smooth stone then may be spread some monkey crease on it. So it shines a little bit like a screen. Then stick a few pebbles to that monkey grease and start pushing on the pebbles.

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I asked my students too, imagine the pygmy teenagers looking at him and then at each other as if to say, and they call us savages, can we go back in the jungle and play our game? I then asked my students two prickly questions. The first is, are you more like a pygmy teenager or more like, God, occasionally one of my students will vote. He's more like God than the pygmy teenager to which I will respond. I am so glad you're taking my class, but almost all my students say, you know, I think I'm more like a pygmy teenager than I am. Like then I asked my second question. If you were a God, how would you explain to us Pygmies yourself or how you made the world?

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Or when, how would you explain how you are going to find your lost kids and buy them back or heaven or hell wouldn't the best you could do would be to use some crude metaphors and communicate as best you could in broken language. Before we start reading God's word, I beg you to consider were Pygmies and God in his word is an iPhone. That's not just my opinion, God carrying the prophet. Isaiah, along as he wrote, said this to us, my ways are higher than your ways. Say with the Lord and my thoughts than your thoughts for as high as the heavens are above the earth.

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So are my higher than your ways. And my thoughts higher than your thoughts says the Lord, are we not Pygmies who have found an iPhone? So why would I bring this up before we read the text for two reasons, the first is to say, let's not be lazy. This is an iPhone story about an iPhone. God, and we are Pygmies at best. But the second reason is this. Our attitude. If we believe we are Pygmies, trying to understand God in his word, the iPhone, it should drive us to be humble and teachable.

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We don't have a coroner on the truth. We should be open to hearing the insights of others, thankfully, in this jungle. So we, his beloved children could find our way home. God has left a trail of crumbs that we can understand through scripture, but on most things on our tour, across the landscape of the Bible story throughout the course of our lives, I urge you to have the attitude of the pygmy and be amazed at this iPhone, like God and his word. Speaking of that story, what is the big story of scripture? Could you tell that story to someone in a minute or less?

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I believe you will be able to, after our next wordpicture.