In accordance with God's guidance, Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. The Bible recounts that God, in His mercy, provided for Ishmael and promised to make a great nation from his descendants.

The story of Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah follows a pattern. They begin with the call to rebuild, then opposition, then a fulfillment — or maybe better a “thud” of a fulfillment.

This is what connects all the heroes of faith. They kept believing, but they didn’t receive the thing they were hoping for. They were commended, their faith was right, but it didn’t come to full fruition. It was like hoping for a vacation that you never get to take, but your grandkids do with your life insurance policy.

Seeking justice (for self or others) feels like the task of Sisyphus, endlessly attempting to roll a boulder up the hill. Each little victory is stamped out by a news cycle and a social media algorithm fueled by the negative. Injustice abounds and it feels as if our efforts are like trying to drain the ocean with a leaky thimble.

To have our identity in Christ means that we understand our destination to be the same as Jesus. We understand that His resurrection is our resurrection. What does this mean practically? It means that this world is not our home. The kingdoms of this world are not the driving force behind our life. Rather, the kingdom of God is what drives our actions.

In 2 Chronicles we get right into the action — but just because it is action-packed doesn’t mean we can easily see how it points to Jesus. How does this oft over-looked book in the OT point to Christ?

If we think of prayer as the action where we ask God for stuff, then it might seem a bit unnecessary for Jesus to be praying. After all, He’s God, shouldn’t He be able to do it Himself? Yet, if we consider prayer as simply “talking to God,” then it changes the nature of our question.

We can debate laws and such within our nation when it comes to the receiving of immigrants, how to handle asylum-seekers, and whether or not to provide refuge as a nation. But the Scriptures call us to a certain response as individuals engaging flesh and blood immigrants.

While I’ll still readily acknowledge that those first few chapters of 1 Chronicles are tough sledding, the reality is that the gospel is here as well. It’s far more than a phone book. It isn’t a glorified registry, it’s the word of God. And it, like everywhere else in the Scriptures, points to Jesus.

Not only did Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they also rejected eating from another tree — the tree of life. What if they had eaten from that instead? What is this tree of life? What does it symbolize? 

If you just open your Bible up to Acts 10, this will be a rather confusing section. Why is God so concerned with Peter eating these animals? What does this have anything to do with the good news of Jesus and the spread of the gospel? In some ways, everything.

He’d never owned a car before, but his dad had always told him about the importance of checking the oil. After a long trip, a couple thousand miles away from his destination, he figures he’d better listen to dad’s sage advice. When he checks the oil, he discovers it’s one quart low. Uh-oh.

Now, one thing his dad never covered was what to do if the oil is low. Common sense will tell you that you need to put oil back in. He rushed into the gas station, bought a ridiculously overpriced quart of oil, and proceeded to put the oil back into the car.

But he was having a rough time. He couldn’t find a single funnel that would fit into the narrow dipstick holder. He tried aiming the pouring oil into the slender pipe, but nothing seemed to work. He was baffled as to how to get this oil into his car that he knew it needed. Thankfully, someone noticed his plight and showed him how to unscrew the oil filler cap to add oil into the vehicle.

The issue here is that he had some very good information, but he was also missing something. He couldn’t move away from the idea of putting oil back into the place where it was checked from. It made sense. But this misconception created much consternation.

Misconceptions about the Bible can be similar. We know that we’re supposed to read it, we know it’s a valuable book, we might even know that it is God’s Word given to us. But some of our misconceptions can have us just as confused as a guy trying to put oil into the vehicle through the dipstick.

Here are five common misconceptions about the Bible, with some more information on what the Bible actually is and does.

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Roter Panther

Jesus is showing that forgiveness is at the heart of His new community. One cannot merely offer outward expressions of religiosity. There needed to be real inward transformation. If you hate your brother while you’re worshipping, or trying to pray, then God isn’t going to accept the sham. He’s after the heart. And this is Jesus’ point. 

It’s a tough read. At first glance it feels a bit like going on a long car ride with a Debbie downer. Page after page is filled with expressions of deep pain. At first glance a lament feels out of place in the context of good news. But as we dig deeper, we find that it’s actually the soil from which gospel truth springs.