Word Studies

In the last few posts, I talked about Jesus, as "the Word." In future posts, I will show how this "Word" can relate to the "words" of Scripture.

Today, though, I am using "word" in its usual sense.

One of our students gava a good example of identifying important words in what a person is studying.

Here is my reply to his report:

"Criticism" was a good example of a common word used in a specialized way.

Historicity is an example of a word being important because of how frequently it occured.

Veracity may have been a word that was slighlty familiar. Your impresion that it meant, "genuine," seems to me like it could fit.

"Something that is true" is one dictionary definition (veracity. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/veracity (accessed: December 22, 2009).)

When I looked up "genuine," one of the synonyms was "true." (genuine. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genuine (accessed: December 22, 2009).)

So, your guess was pretty good. It was accurate. Just remember the word, "truth," occurs a lot in the definitions too.

When you are studying material with vague or unfamiliar words, a very effective thing to do is to note what you think the word means according to the context of the sentence and see if that idea fits throughout the time of your reading. If it does, great. If not, keep refining your definition or come up with two or more possible meanings based on the context. At the end of your study, compare your guesses with the dictionary. Sometimes you will find an exact match. Most of the time you will find a meaning that is at least close to yours. At other times, you may find you were way off. Still, the discipline of going through this process will cause the word to stick in your mind.

God's Supreme Revelation

God’s Supreme Revelation

I spoke of Jesus, The Word, yesterday. As such, He is God's supreme revelation.

Look at how the writer of Hebrews puts it in chapter 1:

1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
(Hebrews 1:1-4, NKJV)

God revealed Himself in the Living Word, which paves the way for Him to reveal Himself in the written word.

Jesus Is "The Word"

Words, as we know them, are representations of other things. If I say a word, a picture of an object may come to your mind. If I say another word, a picture of an action may come to you mind.

Jesus is the representation of the Father. He said that He and the Father are one. He said that, "if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."

Words are expressions of other things.

The divine Word is the Expresion of the Father, or another way of putting it is to say that the Word is the divine expression of God.

The Word is Jesus because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

That divine Intelligent Designer of the universe is God, and Jesus is the Word, the divine expression of God. In fact, the Word was (and is) God.

Life is given by God. Eternal life is given by God. If we are going to experience eternal life, it will be given to us because God gives it to us. God, the designer, sets all things up according to His plan. Eternal life is what we call Heaven.

The way to Heaven has to be the Designer's way. Since Jesus is the Word, the way to Heaven will be His way.

Jesus is the way to Heaven. Thank God for the divine expression of His Word.

Jesus, The Creator, Was Born

One of the most fascinating things about Christmas is that Jesus, the Creator, was born as a baby.

This just underlies the fact of the Trinity. Jesus was "God in the flesh." In Jesus,"God became man." Those are all true statements.

This fact, though, also refutes the idea of modalism, that indicates that God just exists as one person at a time. If that was the case, who is keeping the universe together when God the Son, Jesus, is a baby? Also, who keeps things running when Jesus is dead?

Modalism implies that you had God acting as God the Father in the Old Testament. Then He acted as the Son while Jesus was on the Earth. Following that, He acted as God the Holy Spirit.

Actually, the three Persons of the Godhead are eternally distinct in subject-object relationship. Yet, they are all of one essence. The Godhead is like this: The Father is God in essence, but the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit in personhood.

Likewise, the Son is God in essence, but the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit in personhood.

In the same manner, the Holy Spirit is God in essence, but the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son in Personhood.

We cannot comprehend some aspects of this because, in our experience, we are used to there being one "being" in a one-to-one correspondence to one "person." For humans, it is one being tied to one person.

In the case of God, we have one "Being," but three "Persons." All of those Persons are, however, one God.

We cannot fully comprehend this, but we can apprehend that this is what the Bible teaches.

When we think of ways to Heaven, we understand that God is the only one who can make such a way, but we cannot remoe the fact that Jesus is God. Therefore, Jesus is the way to Heaven.

Archaeology, the Bible's Friend

Arhaeology has been very useful for conservative Bible scholars. Some statements in the Bible were questioned as to their historical accuracy by liberal scholars. Then, years later the statements were confirmed by archaeological finds.

Roger, here is a story that relates to marriage and parenting. It was sent to my by my friend and former co-worker, Dr. Rober Griffin.

"Some years back as a good father, I bought my only daughter a special Barbie Doll House. Sadly (for me) it arrived in 189 plastic pieces. The instructions said that it could be put together in about "30 minutes or less". It took me most of the night and I was blurry-eyed and out-of-sorts on Christmas morning.

"I'm not vindictive, but after it was all put together, I wrote the company a check, cut it into 189 pieces and mailed it off for THEM to put together in 30 minutes or less."

Course 10 Week 8 Main Posting Area

You may place your comments for week 8 in the comments section below.

Also, you may place your course wrap up here too.

For the course wrap up,
Answer the following questions:
1. What was your course about as a whole? (Try to boil it down to one sentence.)
2. What were the major parts of this course? (How was it organized?)
3. What were some of the important words in this course? (How were they used? What did they seem to mean as used in this writing? List at least three.)
4. What further study would you like to do on this topic, or what did you like best or least about your study this time?

The Reliability of the Gospels

I just wanted to share a little of what Roger was getting from his booK:

"In the Exegetical issues surrounding the Gospels it is noted that the Gospels prove to be divergent in what is included in their own gospel account however when you consider the differences in audiences your learn that each man was speaking and teaching to a slightly different culture, still the events and chronology of them actually harmonize between the gospels. Certainly evidence that the events and recording of them prove true to be actual accounts."

The Word of our God will stand forever!

The Life of Christ

Roger's Book is covering events in the ministry of Christ.

Deacember is a great time of year to focus on Jesus because Christmas, of course, emphasizes His birth.

We realize that what make the birth unique, however, has to do with the divinity of Christ, the incarnation, the sinless life, and the death burial and Resurrection of Christ.

Jesus truly was "God in the flesh." If you had seen Jesus, you had seen the earthly expression of the Father. The Trinity is another reason why the birth of Jesus is important. In Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Jesus' birth is important becuase of the plan of salvation, which was worked out before the foundation of the world.

May the blessings of Christ be yours during this Christmas season and always.

The LOVING Way to a Successful Marriage

In marriage seminars that I conduct, I talk about the LOVING Way to a Successful Marriage: Six Keys to Marital Bliss.

LOVING is an acronym for the following:

Leaving: The Most Important "Move" You Will Make in Your Marriage
Overcoming: The Most Important Commitment You Can Make in Your Marriage
Valuing: The Most Important Attitude You May Have in Your Marriage
Intimacy: The Most Important Connections You Will Make in Your Marriage
Needs: The Most Important Understanding You Will Gain in Your Marriage
Giving: The Most Important Action You Will Perform in Your Marriage

My speaking schedule is posted on The LOVING Way to a Successful Marriage website. You can find it by doing a search for "The Loving Way to a Successful Marriage," or a search for "Six Keys to Marital bliss." If you do go to that website and look at the "fee" section, please look at the next page that talks about special disounts for churches (which means basically that I will come for a free will offering if at least travel and lodging expenses are guaranteed.)

I have used these topics to do marriage counseling with good success. In so doing I met with the couple for eight or nine weeks and covered those six topics in sessions 2-7.

Course 10 Week 7

You may place your comments for week 7 under the "Three-Fourths Done" post.

Three-Fourths Done

It is hard to believe that we are three fourths of the way through this course. I hope your study has been a blessing to you.

Wedding Ministry

In the Rockbridge course, we are discussing ministry that you can have in connection widh the task of performing weddings.

I want to share one of those with you here. (Bro. Roger, you will probably recognize who I am describing.)

A couple of days ago, I described an experience I had in a wedding where the groom used a cigarette lighter to light some of the candles. That was when I met him. (Our church did not have a policy of requiring pre-marital counseling.)

His wife had attended our church off and on for the last couple of years before the wedding. He was a truck driver and not home a lot of weekends. Then he got sick (some type of cancer--possibly related to his years of smoking.) He started attending church. Then he came to join the church. He said he had been saved and baptized (by immersion) earlier in his life, and he attended a Methodist church in those earlier years.

He could no longer drive his truck, and he started attending very regularly. On occasion I talked with him, and he "firmed up" his assurance of salvation. Then he had surgery on his throat. He was on oxygen and carried his tank with him. Still, he bacame more and more regular in church.

One Sunday, he was in church, and one of the ladies in the church was talking to him about his wife who was not there. He carried notepads with him to communicate. He said, "My wife asked me if I was not feeling well." He wrote further that he replied to her like this: "I'm not feeling well. That's why I'm going to church."

A few weeks before he died, our song leader asked if anyone had a request for a congregational song. He raised his hand, and the person next to him told the song leader what song he had picked out. It was, "I'll Tell the World That I'm a Christian." What a testimony that was. He wanted to communicate that assurance even though he could not speak.

I did perform his funeral, and I am thankul for the relationahip we developed and how a ministry developed from a humorous wedding experience.

(Bro. Roger, I am having internet connection problems--wrote this from McDonalds. I will get back on by Monday at least even if I have to take the computer somewhere else to hook up.

We will see you at church tomorrow for Homecoming. I will be preaching at ten o'clock at another church, so we will probably come in a little late.)

Jesus' Gallilean Ministry

This week, we will be studying about the ministry of Jesus in, and around, the area of Gallilee. This is usually divided into two parts, the early ninistry, and the later ministry. We will discuss both.

Course 10 Week 6 Main Posting Area

Please place your comments for week 6 in the comments section below.