Utica Baptist Church, Utica, Mississippi

  "Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens."

Psalm 119:89

Two landlubbers were at sea for the first time. Looking out over the ocean, one said, "That's the most water I have ever seen." The other replied, "Yes, and that's just the top of it."

 When we gaze at the wonders of Scripture, we may be in awe as was the first guy above. We read Psalm 23 and enjoy its wonderful treasures and comfort. But let us remember that we could never completely understand everything about Him or His love. What we experience, what we see, “is just the top of it.”

Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas is the only diamond-producing site in the world open to the public. About once a month, park rangers plow a 37 1/2 acre field to bring diamonds to the top, so visitors can just walk along and pick them up. Or if they bring their own equipment, they can dig down to see if there are some still below the surface. And if you find one, you get to keep it!

God's Word can be compared to that diamond field. Some of the gems are lying right on top of the ground. They are easy to spot and pick up. Others are to be found only after a lot of digging and searching out. We read in Psalm 119:62, "I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil."

God's Word can withstand the most careful scrutiny and examination. In fact, many of the wonders of Scripture can be found only after careful scholarship. The very process of examination can open up new insights into His truth that we may have previously overlooked.

Never should it be used as a weapon to hurt or control others. Never should we search its sacred pages for support of a habit, attitude or lifestyle we've adopted, looking for an excuse to continue. The Bible says what it says.

William Gladstone called it an "impregnable rock." Roy Smith wrote, "More people are troubled by what is plain in Scripture than by what is obscure."

Obey what you do understand. Commit the rest of it to God. He can handle it.
--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com

A recent article on www.abcnews.go.com was entitled, “Kristin Chenoweth: Christian and Gay Rights Supporter.” The article explains how she is comfortable talking about her Christian faith and her support for homosexual rights: “I read my Bible and I pray and all of that. I really do,” she told the gay-interest publication. “But at the same time, I don’t think being gay is a sin. Period.”

Chenoweth grew up in Oklahoma’s Bible belt and says that her grandmother is her inspiration. She describes a friend of hers growing up who was homosexual: “I asked my Grandma Chenoweth, ‘How can it be that he’s going to hell? I just don’t think that correct.’ And she said, ‘Well, Kris, I read the Bible like I eat fish: I take the meat, and it serves me well, but I don’t choke on the bone.’”

(You can read the entire article at http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2011/09/kristin-chenoweth-christian-and-gay-rights-supporter/)

It seems that we live in a day when people of all walks of life—even people in the Bible Belt—take what they like out of the Bible and toss out what they don’t like. We like words such as “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” but stop up our eyes when we hear other words from the Bible such as “Repent!” Grandmother Chenoweth’s words, “I read the Bible like I eat fish: I take the meat, and it serves me well, but I don’t choke on the bone” may sound good and sensible until you look a little closer.

The real problem is that we should never “read the Bible like” we eat anything. We should read it as God’s Word. And to say that we can toss out what we consider to be “bone” while swallowing what we consider to be “meat” is problematic, because who determines what is “meat” or “bone”?

Suppose I like that new vehicle you just bought, and I decide I don’t like it that the Bible says I’m not supposed to steal. Is that a bone that I can toss out? Or when the Bible tells me that I am to love my enemies—do I choke on that one?

Or do I see that ALL of God’s Word is exactly that—His Word? Do I recognize the Bible as being 100% God’s Word to us today? If I don’t, then the entirety of God’s Word is in question, because who decides which is true and which is not? I don’t have that right. You don’t have that right. Nor does anyone else we know. We either accept all of it as truth—“meat”—or none of it.

A. W. Tozer addressed this once by saying, “If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience.”

In this day of darkness, let us as faithful believers in Christ not be guilty of dissecting God’s Word and throwing out any part of it that makes us uncomfortable or with which we happen to disagree. Let us stand firmly under the banner which proclaims without apology that the Bible is God’s Holy Word—even the parts we don’t like. If the Bible calls it sin, then it's sin. Regardless of what some celebrity says.

--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com

In the tenth chapter of Joshua, the Israelites had gone to battle against a confederacy of Amorite kings to defend the Gibeonites. Joshua realized at one point in the battle that the day was going to end before the victory was complete, so he simply asked God to make the sun stand still. And the Bible tells us at the end of verse thirteen that “The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.”

Many have attempted to explain what happened that day. Some have said that Joshua was just confused, or that this was mere poetic expression, or even that what actually happened was that the sky was cloudy, so it wasn’t as hot. It’s kind of baffling the lengths people will go to sometimes to explain away the miracles of the Bible.

We need to be careful, in our attempts to understand this event, that we don’t say something that the Bible doesn’t say. So understanding that, let me tell you that my faith is a pretty simple faith, and if the Bible says that the sun stood still so the Israelites could complete the victory, then I believe it. My curiosity leads me to read about it and wonder if it happened this way or that way, but in the end, I believe it happened exactly the way the Bible says it did.

Now before you scoff, let me point out to you that perhaps you already believe other things that are just as fantastic: God creating the universe by speaking it into existence; God speaking to Moses from a bush that burned and yet was not consumed; the Red Sea parting so the Israelites could cross over on dry ground; Naaman, healed of leprosy; Mary, giving birth, though she was a virgin; Lazarus, raised from the dead; the blind, seeing; the deaf, hearing; the lame, walking. And if you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead after three days, and if you believe that our sins can be washed away and we can be made clean and whole, you already believe something far more incredible than what we read about in Joshua 10.

And here’s why: God is certainly able to do what He wants with the universe He spoke into existence. Our own knowledge is too limited for us to say with certainty that He could not make the earth stop in its rotation. Both day and night belong to Him, as we read in Psalm 74:16-17, “The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter.”  So why could He not command them? We read in Genesis that God commanded the sun and moon to shine, and even when—if we truly believe that, why would we be tripped up when we read in Joshua 10 that God commanded them not to move?
--Rocky Henriques

  Several years ago, Yorkshire miner John Thompson set out to build a fish pond in his back yard. He planned it to be three feet by three feet, but he ended up with a hole 17 feet wide and six feet deep. As he began to dig, he discovered that buried right there in that little section of his backyard were twenty bed frames, a washing machine, railroad ties, porcelain ornaments, women's clothes, the skeleton of a dog, and a dead parakeet in a box. Everything but the kitchen sink? No, actually, he found two of them!

There was even a four-door car with 73,000 miles on it. The car still worked (!) but the body fell apart when they tried to pull it out of the hole with a tractor. A neighbor said that the previous owner of the property "liked to dig holes." John Thompson was quoted as saying, "I'm not digging any deeper. God knows what I'd find if I did."

Sadly, that is the attitude many people have about the Word of God. We may have had a little project that caused us to do a little digging in God's Word, at least for a short while, anyway. But then we started pulling out of that rich mine of God's Word things we didn't intend to find! So we stopped digging.

And we say, "The Bible? Well, I don't really understand it. It's too hard to comprehend in places. I don't really like some of what I read there. Some of it is okay, I guess, because it comforts me and gives me strength. But there are places that are just too difficult to understand. Jesus asks us to do some things which are impossible, such as loving our enemies." And on and on we go.

To be honest, sometimes we stop digging in God's Word because we already know what we will find: God's Word will contradict some habit or lifestyle we have chosen, and we will find ourselves under conviction. Take it from someone who has been under conviction many times--it is not a pleasant place to be, and the longer we resist, the more unpleasant it becomes.

Yes, there are some things about God's Word we may never know. Yet we are short-changing ourselves by not living out God's Word in our lives. We are neglecting the important concepts of God's Word that can change our lives to make us more like Christ, to give us more joy and meaning than we've ever thought possible.

So start digging! You won't find the kitchen sink, but you may find something much more valuable--the incredible love of our Savior.

--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com