a 13 week preaching series on why we embrace Scripture along the Seven Mile Road

September through December, 2oo8

Christians have always been a people of the Book.

At the core of our faith is this belief, this assurance, that God has spoken, and that His voice has been captured in a unique way on the pages of Scripture. The Bible is redemptive revelation, a permanent record of the grace and glory of God in the Gospel. It is the very Word of God, written.

Interestingly, Scripture is a central element of the story of the 7 Mile Road itself. When Jesus revealed the glories of the Gospel to his disciples there, he did it by opening His Bible. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Jesus Himself understood His Bible to be redemptive revelation, the voice of God, captured in written form, speaking for all to hear the truth of the Gospel.

We at 7 Mile Road long to be a people whose teaching and identity, and whose very lives, take shape under the Godly authority of inspired Scripture. We read the Bible, sing the Bible, pray the Bible, meditate on the Bible, preach the Bible, and seek to have the Bible be our ultimate guide for faith and practice. The Scriptures are our source of hope, joy, peace, and life.

Such a high view of Scripture has come under withering attack in our culture. Critics would say that we remain purposefully oblivious to new understandings of textual criticism, linguistic hermeneutics and cultural limitations, and that any honest intellectual inquiry into the origin and nature of the Bible would lead us to abandon this idea that there is anything divine or authoritative about the Bible at all. All of us, to some degree, struggle with the kinds of issues. We often ask... why do we embrace Scripture the way we do?

And so for the next 13 weeks we’ll be considering answers to that question. We have complied this guide to prepare you for the journey we are going to take together. Included are texts and themes for each message
and questions that you can be asking as you prepare to listen.

This series has been exhausting to prepare, but, we hope, worth it. We have been prayerful that we will preach with both courage and humility, and that when we’re done you will never look at your Bible the same way again.

Your pastors, Matthew Kruse and Ajay Thomas