"Did God Really Say …?” - Key Questions in the Bible

 "Did God Really Say …?” - Key Questions in the Bible

Sunday, January 2, 2022

In a new, fast read-through of the Bible, I’m noting the key questions. I will do a series here on some of those.

The first “Key Question of the Bible” is not asked by God. It is not asked by man seeking for God. The first question in the Bible is asked by the devil (the serpent in the garden, identified clearly in Revelation 12:8 - “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.” It is a question that has been repeated over and over since that disastrous day in the Garden. It is still being asked today: “Did God Really Say … ?”

It would be convenient for us, wouldn’t it, if we could re-frame the words of God in ways that would fit well with our ways of thinking, shaped as they are by our sinful and selfish desires? We would like things to be a certain way, even though, in most cases, if we had it our way, we would actually function as a god, and the God of the Bible would be our servant. So we have a great need to go back to the Book over and over and see what it is that God has actually said.

Did God actually say, “You shall surely die?” Yes, He did. No question. We find it in Genesis 2. We find it in Romans 6:23 - “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Did God actually say that Jesus is the only way to heaven? Yes, He did. John 14:6 says “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

Did God actually say that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that sexual relations belong only within the marriage context? Yes, He did. Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” And Hebrews 13:4 says: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

Some people say, “That doesn’t seem right to me.” It doesn’t matter. God said it. Some people say, “I like to think of God in this way.” Your own thinking doesn’t make it so. God, who cannot lie, has given us His Word, and we need to know what God has said. And, that’s why you are going to spend time reading it this year!