How The Bible Came To Be — Andrew Forrest

Exodus 17:14-16

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” 15 And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, 16 saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

Just as with Passover and manna, we see here again how important remembrance is to the people of God. Moses is instructed to write down, while the memories are fresh, exactly what happened in the victory over the Amalekites. This is the first time that “writing” is referred to in the Bible, and gives us a glimpse into the Bible’s own formation. For some reason, we modern people tend to think of the Bible dropping down from heaven to the church. In fact, it was written down over time after people had an encounter with the Lord. The gospels are a great example of this—the apostles knew Jesus, and then they set down in print what had happened.

When you read the Bible, you are reading what an ordinary person who had an extraordinary encounter wrote down!