What's Wrong With the Bible?

Acts 14:6-10

　
You know what’s wrong with the Bible? It’s easy to read it without the emotion of what was happening at the time. Take today’s passage.

"In Lystra there sat a man who was lame. He had been that way from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, ‘Stand up on your feet!’ At that, the man jumped up and began to walk."
On the surface this seems pretty bland but I wonder what the lame man’s back-story is. Let’s assume that he is an adult and we know that he has been lame from birth, which means that in those days he was a beggar.

Very possibly, he was a social and religious outsider. People easily could have talked behind his back wondering what sin he or his parents committed to be condemned with such a terrible punishment.

How do you think he got there to listen to Paul? Someone had to carry him, and not just there, but anyplace he went he was dependent on others – probably his family.

But he was economic dead weight for whoever he lived with. He wasn’t able to be productive in the normal sense of the word and his future was bleak. He lived a life without hope.

Jesus spent much of his time on earth ministering to the hopeless. His first recorded public speech was in the synagogue where he announced who he would focus his ministry on:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
Our God, is the God of the poor, the prisoners, the blind and the oppressed - in a word, the hopeless. But we don’t like to think of ourselves as hopeless.

Listen to how Eugene Peterson puts this verse from the Sermon on the Mount in The Message:

"You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule."
It sounds pretty hopeless. And that’s right where God wants us to be - to recognize that without Him we are hopeless. You know what’s wrong with the Bible? We don’t recognize ourselves in it sometimes.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%2014%3A6-10&version=NIV;MSG
http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Acts.14.6-Acts.14.10