When I once visited Las Vegas, I was stunned to hear the slogan,‘If Las Vegas is Sin City, then MGM Grand is the Capitol Building.’

This hotel we were visiting for for a family meal took pride in the sin of sexual immorality, drugs, alcohol, and of course, gambling.

Yet, this week, Las Vegas experienced the effects of another form of sin that showed itself in the largest mass gun killing in US history.

This was a sin in which the people of Las Vegas did not boast.

Rather, the horrific actions that saw 58 deaths and hundreds of injuries has led people to ask the question, “why?”

But no matter how many clues we get into the depraved mind of shooter Stephen Paddock, his actions will not make sense to us unless we understand the reality of sin and human nature.

The Bible tells us that our world is marred by sin.

We live in a ‘fallen’ world, which will always experience pain, suffering, and death.

This means that the sin of Vegas is tragic, yet expected, as we await the final return of Jesus when he will bring an end to the effects of sin.

In the meantime, this shocking display of sin should naturally lead us to stop and reflect upon the reality beyond our normal, everyday life.

Any one of us could have been in the crowd at the Vegas concert, and any one of us could have had our lives ended without any warning.

As we see this extreme display of the effects of sin, we must all make sure that we are ready to face the coming judgement that faces every human, and the one and only solution to that sin and judgement is through the death of Christ Jesus.

For, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans chapter 8 verse 8)

Jodie

(CREDIT: Mathias Appel via Flickr)

Recently I read someone attack a Christian about the Bible, saying, “that’s fine if you want to believe a bunch of goat herders living in tents from 4000 years ago!”

As Christians, our trust in the Bible as the divinely-inspired word of God is increasingly seen as antiquated at best, and dangerously misguided at worst.

As people say, “what could such an ancient text say to us today?”

The question for us is this: how do we defend our belief that it’s God’s word to us today in our modern society, when it was written in a such different time and place?

There is no doubt that our society has changed, but its worth remembering some things haven’t.

Firstly, God hasn’t changed.

God is eternal, and whatever our society thinks of him or his Word, cannot change him.

One of the fundamental characteristics of God is that he is a God who speaks: from speaking creation into being, to revealing who he by sending his Son, the WORD.

God is a God who speaks, and the Bible is where God’s living words are recorded for us.

Secondly, human nature hasn’t changed.

For all our sophistication it’s hard to see how our society has overcome some of its fundamental problems.

The Bible offers an explanation for that: while God is a God who speaks, we are people who do not listen to him.

The Bible is able to penetrate beyond modern appearances to diagnose our real current problems, and prescribe a lasting solution.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the world’s rejection of his word.

But where do we go to convince our friends that it is true, or even ourselves when we are feeling a little shaky about this? We go to the source, the Bible.

Since it really is God’s word to us today, he has the power to speak to us, overcome our doubts and convince us of the truth of his Son.

As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, “Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion!”

Simon Chaplin.