No Picking & Choosing; James

May the mumbling commence!

God’s Law is not a buffet where you can pick and choose which you will do.  God’s Law is a multiple-course meal where, if you eat a portion of each course, you will find yourself healthy and whole.  Yes, you will find yourself holy – set apart for God.  Read from James chapter two (Peterson’s The Message paraphrase):

You can’t pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God’s law and ignoring others.  (Verse 10)

I don’t know about you, but I grew up a picky eater.  And, now, I have a picky eater on my hands in my nearly five-year-old son.  My mom must be smiling!

Whether or not you grew up a picky eater, everyone likes to pick and choose from God’s Word.  We have favorite passages that we like to stick to because they are comfortable and familiar.  But, if we stick to our comfort, we will never grow. 

That is why a steady diet of Scripture reading that includes all the Scripture is so important.  If we read all of God’s Word, then we are less likely to cling to comfortable passages.  Because there are many passages that are uncomfortable for our ears and eyes.  Think about what Mark Twain once said: “It is not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me but the parts that I do understand.”

If we immerse ourselves in all of God’s Word, then we are less likely to take passages out of context.  You have probably heard it said that you can make the Bible say anything you want it to.  There is a danger in taking Bible passages out of context.

Soon, we will be partaking of the entire multi-course meal that is the Holy Scriptures.  We have one more day in James, and then thirty days in Romans chapters five to eight.  Then we round out the repeated readings with the gospel according to John chapters fourteen through seventeen. 

That’s a total of sixty-one days before we embark on our journey through the entire Bible!  So whet your appetite with these last sixty-one days worth of New Testament reading before we dive into the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures.  Allow both Testaments to inform the other. 

What a wonderful journey!  I never want to stop!

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out