Bible Study Notes

This article is a collections of my notes from a Bible study today, 9/28/14:

• If you sin on accident, or you do something you do not think is sin but it actually is, you are still sinning.
  • Leviticus 4
• Why did God give us all these weird commands?
  • To help us remember him. Deuteronomy 8:11
  • To allow us to demonstrate our love for him. John 14:15
  • To allow us to demonstrate our faith in him. If any of these commandments seem odd, then it requires trust in God's purpose and understanding, rather than our own, to go through with them, find them meaningful, or find them useful. Leaning on God's understanding, rather than our own, is trust and is biblical. Proverbs 3:5
    • If the commandment didn't seem odd, and if it was perfectly obvious that the commandment would be in our interest, it would not be an effective sign of our love for God. Consider the possible command, \"be healthy.\" You proceed to be healthy. Why do you do it? Because you love God, or because it's just a good idea? For the Christian, the honest answer would be, \"both.\" In the case of some of these weird laws, such as the Lev. 4 sin offerings, the very fact that the command is not obviously beneficial makes it a better evidence of our actual love for God and, in that case of the sin offering, our sincere repentance.
    • On a related note, see Sye Ten Bruggencate's presuppositional apologetics which make strong use of the verse in Proverbs. For example, here:
      • How To Answer The Fool
      • Magic Sandwich Show with Eric Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate
      • Sye Ten Bruggencate on The Thinking Atheist Podcast (less edited version)
      • Proof That God Exists Store
  • To make us stronger, better people and to help us live longer. Deuteronomy 11:8-9
  • To bring prosperity. Proverbs 3:1 and 3:33
  • To provide an explicit moral compass, which is universal, for purposes of accountability. If we didn't have any commandments how would we know what God wants and what is right? Yes, the law is written on our hearts, but what if it wasn't written there either? Being written is more explicit and universally applicable than personal perception of the law on our hearts.