“What Does the Bible Have To Do With Me?”
This is an adapted excerpt from Square One, Session 2. Check out the full Square One series here.
Ever since a blurry photo was printed in 1933, people have wondered if a Scottish lake called “Loch Ness” has a sea monster. It’s the kind of mystery that fuels TV shows and supermarket tabloids. As a classic sci-fi show loved to tell us, “The truth is out there!” But we’re not talking about Bigfoot or the Bermuda Triangle. What concerns us are the bigger questions — questions science can’t solve. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? These are the significant questions that should affect how we live.
So, where do we look for answers? Science can’t tell you what your purpose is or what happens after you die. To find meaning, we have to look elsewhere. Is there a God behind everything we see? If so, what’s God like? Aren’t those questions worth pursuing, even if the pursuit leads us to reconsider everything we thought we knew?
Jesus constantly turned to what the prophets wrote in what we now call the Bible. He used its words to answer the big questions people asked him (Matt. 22:23-46) and to overcome temptation in the desert, repeatedly saying, “It is written” (Matt. 4:1-11). To him, the Bible was a source of divine wisdom and practical help.
The Big Idea
The Bible answers our biggest questions about who we are and why we're here. Now, you’ve probably noticed we're looking to the Bible in this study. It’s a misunderstood book, for sure. Some see it as boring or irrelevant, while others view it as a book of suffocating rules. But many have found in it what Jesus saw — a gift from God, full of timeless guidance and answers to questions we can’t answer on our own.
So, what’s your take on the Bible? Have you ever wondered how we got this book? Seeing its backstory helps us understand what kind of book it is.
The story starts with Moses, a man God spoke to “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex. 33:12). God had him write things down — laws, stories, and instructions — to answer our biggest questions. Who is God? Where did we come from? How did things get so messed up? These writings became the Bible’s first five books.
Centuries later, people had tragically lost these writings. Without the book to guide them, they lost their way. But during a restoration of their rundown temple, a young king named Josiah had rediscovered the book in the rubble (2 Kings 22:8). When the king read it, he ripped his clothes in sadness at how far they had drifted. He then led the entire nation to realign itself with the book.
The story didn't end there. God continued to speak through prophets like Jeremiah. When Jeremiah’s scroll, which predicted the kingdom's fall, was read to King Jehoiakim, the king defiantly cut it up and threw it into the fire. But God simply told Jeremiah, “Take another scroll and write on it all the former words” (Jer. 36:28). Despite efforts to destroy it, the message was preserved, and its prophecies came true.
These books, written by different people over hundreds of years, were telling parts of the same, incomplete story. They were full of promises that pointed toward a future king and a new kind of kingdom.
This brings us to the New Testament. After Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, his apostles, like Paul, traveled from town to town. They “reasoned with them from the Scriptures explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Acts 17:2-3). How did people respond? Some “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). They let the ancient writings of the prophets decide what they should believe.
They saw these writings as “Scriptures,” or holy writings, believing God had “breathed” life into them (2 Tim. 3:16) so that they were “living and active” words (Heb. 4:12). Paul and other apostles wrote letters to guide the early Christians. These letters, along with the four Gospels, were collected and assembled into the library of 27 books we call the New Testament, completing the story. That is the Bible we have today — a collection of books with one unified story, preserved by God through the centuries for us.
The Big Question
Are you open to exploring the Bible’s answers for your life? May God help us as we seek to understand the mystery he has revealed (Eph. 3:1-10).