I stumbled across a book today that I had not opened in a little while. It a really great book called Life as a Vapor by John Piper. This book is full of meditations that set your eyes on heavenly things. It is a real gem.

Anyways, I paged through it and began reading on the section entitled “The Value of Learning History”. This chapter talked about the book of Jude being a clear biblical example and reason for knowing history. I might as well just post word for word what Piper’s words are but that would most likely defeat the purpose of this blog so I will put it in my own words.

In the book of Jude, the writer warns of a specific kind of people who “creep into the church unnoticed” and reap havoc on the body. The writer (Jude) begins to paint a horribly vivid picture of these men comparing them, very boldly, to Sodom and Gomorrah.

He continues, and starts rattling off historical biblical events to compare this new kind of men to.  “Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.” Jude 1:11 Jude speaks very nonchalantly, about these historical events.

Soo, whats Jude doing here? How does he exact the readers to know these events when, at this point in time, there’s no accessible way to read these stories. One can only assume that the attention given to these stories and the exposition of lessons through them was quite prevalent in early churches. Jude fully expects the readers to know and be able to relate these two situations to draw a lesson from them.

Now what does this tell us about our knowledge of scripture and biblical history in our very accessible to bibles age we live in. It very clearly says to me that my standard for biblical knowledge is far too low in light of my confusion when hearing these refrences.

For me I beleive the two lessons I personally am extracting from this are as follows:

1. Ebrace my lack of sufficient knowledge of scripture to motivate growth. I must realize first and formost, that I have a very poor knowledge of scripture and specifically biblical history. Why is that? Most likely that new testement syndrome where the old testement becomes relatively irrelavent because of Christ’s death. Not to say that studying the new testement and even studying it more often then the old is wrong, it si just so common to breeze right over some really meaty stuff back there. I need to motivate myself to enjoy God in these scriptures. I need to read them with Christ’s payment, gospel eyes where I look for God’s awesome and mysterious theme of human history and his foreshadowing of Jesus in these scriptures.
2. I need to realize my pride in rejecting church history thus far arguing “the church has never seen times like these”. Wow! What an arrogant statement. I do believe that each generation of Christians do face unique struggles as the church, I think that based on the lesson given in Jude that the same people and the same situations keep recurring. This is just the finger print of sin. So let us study the history of the church so far. I want to study this history with full eagerness for the Lord to show the good he brought about and the examples to follow while exposing the sad mistakes made by men in church past and the consequences of their sin.

I believe we have some tough issues to face as the new generation inheriting the church. But I gain so much confidence and faith hearing from my parents and other men and women who saw the church deal with very large issues and really bad people in years past.

I have learned much so far by just listening. I hope that I continue in this practice and eagerly read God’s Word, read about Church History, and listen to the older generation’s stories of their experiences being a part of Christ’s bride. I hope that others will join me in this as well.