Greetings in the
precious and mighty name of our Saviour and Master
Lord Jesus Christ ! HEAR
THE WORD OF GOD
DISCIPLE 3: REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE
We will read the major and minor Old Testament
prophets, and will read the thirteen letters traditionally
attributed to Paul over 32 weeks.
Several themes weave their way through the study:
the call to remember, the call to repentance, the need for renewed
vision (eyes to see, ears to hear),and the place of community. The
prophets and Paul are continually calling hearers and readers back
to their God and to a sense of who they are as a people “set apart.”
The prophets and the community cannot be separated.
The prophets spoke for God, out of the community,
and to the community.
Paul’s experience of the risen Lord, his
relationship to the community head dressed, his Jewish traditions,
and the Greco-Roman culture of his day merged in his writing of the
letters. Paul used the language of his culture tocarry the message
that arose out of his roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and
Judaism.
The
Bible is a very strange book to modern minds. Even
the passages we know very well contain a great
number of oddities and "universals"--themes that
are repeated, the most amazing Creation Week as a
common literary structure in the Bible.
We can
only read by visualisation
of the sound, smell, sight, taste and touches as the
Word embodies.
We can
also use the SOAP
approach as a devotional tool -Scripture
, Observation, Application and Prayer as a
reflection of the lessons, promises, revelation
knowledge of God's word.
The
Bible, the movement from glorious beginning to the
greater glory of the end. It might have looked like
scattered fragments. It shows coherence and
recurring sequences where you might have seen only
randomness and confusion. It gives the world in a
grain of sand, each passage and portion of the
Bible is a lens through which the whole is uniquely
refracted.