A well-written book leaves its readers hanging at the end of most chapters. This way you can’t put the book down. You gotta know what happens next, so you keep on reading.
When the individual books of the Bible were written, and before they were all collected into one volume, there were no chapter divisions. Consequently, people kept on reading whether or not they were left hanging. Or, they simply stopped. Have you ever read through all 66 books of the Bible at one sitting? How about just the Psalms or Isaiah or the Revelation?
Chapter divisions and verse identifications weren’t added for an entire millennium after the New Testament had been completed – and for the reason of ease in locating specific passages.
The passage we ended with last Sunday left us hanging. The Apostle Paul had just bared his soul by unveiling his innermost frustration. His mind ceaselessly played this spiritual tug-of-war between wanting to do right, yet choosing to do wrong. He cried out in utter exasperation, “Oh, what a miserable man I am! Can anybody save me from myself?”
Please come this Sunday, or tune in with our livestream via our church Facebook page, to pick up from where we were left hanging. We will begin to answer Paul’s dilemma in the sermon I’ve entitled, “From Punishment to Power.”