There are no wasted words in scripture. At least, I’m not having
much luck finding any.
The apostle John says that if everything Jesus did were
written down, the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Sanctified hyperbole? Maybe. But what is
certain is that we’d need tractor trailers to carry our Bibles to church and bigger
doors on our buildings. Much bigger. Add a few more unnecessary details to our
Old Testaments, and we’d have to leave them at home. Except of course that our
homes would not be big enough, and we couldn’t afford to own all the volumes.
The Holy Spirit is not just the world’s greatest-ever
writer, he is also the world’s greatest-ever editor. We get exactly what we
need and no more. No detail is frivolous.