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Sure thing 

1 Peter 1 v 22–2 v 3

A salesman calls at the door offering to replace all your windows for free. The doctor looks seriously into your eyes as he tells you the results of your test. Whose word do you trust? 

I wonder how many years it will be before people look back to the ‘old days’ at the beginning of the 21st century and laugh at the way we believed the kind of world view the media churned out. And yet now people look at you as if you are mad if you dare to suggest God’s words in the Bible are a safer guide... 


New is true? 

Read 1 Peter 1 v 24

Peter isn’t ashamed to quote words that were already 700 years old when he wrote. Now you can add on another 2,000. But they’re as fresh as today’s bread from the baker’s. Every day humans fade and die, and their ideas get buried with them. And every day is a new testimony to the unchanging truth of God’s words. Everything God has said has proved true; everything God has said is still proving true. 
 

TIME OUT
 

  • What are we doing to God’s unchanging truth if we tweak it to ‘bring it up to date’? 

  • In practice, what can we do to help ourselves rely on God’s truth when all the pressure is to go with what everyone else is saying? 

 

Old is dead?

Read v 22, 23

  • What is Peter’s argument in these verses? 
     

You see just how new God’s ancient word is? Peter is saying that God’s word is the key to living a life of genuine love towards others. It’s not that it simply contains truth which will help us love one another—it’s actually alive in us if we’ve been born anew through it! God’s living word is giving us life and love as we trust and obey what He says. So of course we will be hungry for what gives us life... 

 

The Bible—boring? 

Read 2 v 1-3

At last we find words that we can rely on, answers that satisfy, truth that never shifts ground, promises that will certainly be kept. And a sign that God is at work in us is that we are hungry for it. Like wailing newborn babies crying out in distress until we are happily and contendedly feeding on God’s life-sustaining truth. Is that you? Or do you still have a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude to reading the Bible. If so, it might say more about you than the book in your hands…

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