Spiritual Disciplines: Bible Reading
January 27, 2008
Psalm 119:1-8
This folder I am holding in my hand contains some of the cards, notes, and letters Debbie has given me since the time we met, until even recently. She has given me permission to read some of a letter she wrote to me before we were married. I keep it in my wallet, so wherever I go, this note from Debbie goes with me. As you can see, it is not in the best of shape, because it is ripped, words are missing, but the meaning has never gone away.
Debbie wrote, “ . . . .”
Love letters are wonderful to receive. To have someone who loves you, write you a note, a letter, a song, a word of encouragement, even a word of caution, done with love, moves us to action. Today we are going to talk about a book which was written to you and I. It was written for one reason, God loves you and He wants you to know as much about Him as you are willing to take in. So, God led men to write down the words which are contained in this book, which we call the Bible.
Today we embark on our 3rd step of our journey through spiritual disciplines and will focus on reading the Bible.
Remember, the purpose of Spiritual Disciplines is the total transformation of you and I. Spiritual Disciplines aim at replacing old destructive habits of thought and actions with new life-giving habits. The hope is that at the end of this series, we will be better equipped to intentionally grow closer to Jesus and become more Christ-like.
I really struggled with choosing a passage of scripture for today’s message. Because there are so many amazing passages which speak about the importance of reading the Bible and using the Word of God to help us in this life.
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, having 176 verses. It is also an acrostic Psalm. In other words, it is written alphabetically according to the Hebrew alphabet. So there are 22 sections of 8 verses each. In every section, there is a discussion about the importance of the Word of God. The psalmist uses words such as LAWS, STATUTES, and COMMANDS as he refers to the Bible.
The Psalmist begins this great Psalm by stating ~
1 Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD. 2 Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. (119:1-2)
You see, when we seek to walk and live our lives according to the ways God wants us to live our lives, we will find blessings. We find blessings even in the midst of difficult times because we have this connection to God, we connect with God in many different ways, yet a main connection comes through His word. It comes back to the image of Jesus being the vine and we are the branches. In the same sense, the Bible is the Vine which gives us life giving nurturance, and as the branches, we drink in all this life we can from God.
Also notice an important caveat in verse 2. It is a caveat which occurs over and over again throughout the Bible. And as we learn to read the Bible and take in all that God has for us, we need to see these points and reflect upon what it means for us. God wants us to move toward Him, He wants us to give our whole self to Him. So in verse 2 we read, “Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart.” Take this in folks, because the Psalmist tells us two basic things happen . . .
Firstly, blessed are those who keep God’s statutes AND
Secondly, seek Him with all their heart.
You see, God does not just want us to have this great head knowledge, He does not want us to memorize the Bible, but have no ability to apply it in our lives. I have met many people who could quote Scripture left and right, but they had no ability to apply the Scripture to real life. Isn’t that what much of the problem was with the Pharisees. They knew the law backwards and forwards, but they used it to their advantage and to the disadvantage of others.
Much of what we do in life comes out of our heart. Remember the words in Proverbs 4:23, “guard your hearts, for it is the wellspring of life.” In other words, all of life flows out of your hearts, so guard your heart and protect it . . . and the greatest way to protect your heart and lead your heart in the right direction is to fill it with the right things, the Word of God.
So, this second part of verse 2 tells us to SEEK God with all of our heart. This is where Bible study is so vital, notice who is doing the seeking? WE ARE!!
So, God is telling us we are blessed when we follow His directions for life which are found in the Bible and we are blessed because we seek Him with the center of our being.
Regarding Bible reading, Donald Whitney states, “No spiritual discipline is more important than the intake of God’s Word. Nothing can substitute for it. There simply is no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture.”
Yet, if many of us were to be honest, we struggle with reading the Bible. We spend hours watching television, playing video games, and doing all types of activities, and deep down we think, we should read the Bible, but we don’t. We tell ourselves, ‘I’ll do it later, I’ll make time later today or tomorrow, or maybe on Monday I can start my Bible reading. Or I have no idea where to start. Do I start with the Old Testament, or simply open up the Bible and hope it’s a passage which makes sense, or do I start in the New Testament?
Those types of questions are going to be discussed tonight. Tonight will be part sermon / part open discussion. I want to help make the Bible come as alive for you as I possibly can.
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The first and most important question I want to answer is - “What does reading the Bible do for any of us?”
The first and most important benefit from Bible reading is that reading the Bible reveals God to us.
Since we cannot just pick up the telephone and give God a call and say, ‘describe yourself to me’ as we read the Bible, we learn more about God’s nature. In essence, as we read this love letter or love book from God, we end up falling more and more in love with God, and are drawn closer to Him; which leads us to have a greater desire to please Him; and bring Him glory and honor.
I believe we fall more in love with God, because God chooses to be vulnerable with us. As someone is willing to be vulnerable with you, you also begin to become more vulnerable with them and grow closer to them in your relationship. So, God not only tells us about Himself, He especially tells us and teaches us about His Son, Jesus, explaining to us the very reason Jesus came to earth, because of our sinfulness. But that is not the end of the story, for God reminds us in John 3:16-17 that He loves us so much, that He did not send Jesus to condemn us, but to save us from our sinfulness so we could have life everlasting . . . a life with God, forever.
But more than that, God tells us how to meet and know Jesus, how to become a believer in Jesus, and how Jesus died on the cross, as our substitute, so we could find forgiveness. And even though Jesus died, was resurrected and ascended to heaven, He has sent the Holy Spirit to be with us until we return to God.
The Bible tells us the story about God’s creativity in the act of creation, He tells us about His love for the people of Israel and their redemption. He gives us the moral, ethical and Biblical laws which we are to follow in our lives. The laws inform us how we have broken them and moved away from God, yet the Bible does not end with defeat, because God teaches us how to confess our sinfulness and find His grace which overwhelms us.
Scripture teaches us about living our lives in a manner which pleases God, and of course, brings encouragement and joy to others. We learn how to live life in a way which is constructive and not destructive.
None of this eternally essential information can be found anywhere else except the Bible. Therefore, if we would know God, and be godly, we must know the word of God - intimately.
The writer of Hebrews helps us understand that “the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
Oftentimes people think the Bible is just some old, ancient book that does not need to be read, that it has no relevance in our lives. The truth is really the opposite. The Word of God is alive, and is active in our lives, if only we allow it to take hold. I can’t tell you how many times I have read the Bible, and as I am reading a section I have read many times before, the passage literally sounds brand new to me. It’s as if I never read it before. That is because on I needed this verse and God was making it come alive, as never before in my life. Those are times when we just need to stop and gain an understanding of what God wants us to do. Ever have that happen to you? When that happens it’s a reminder that God’s word is alive and active, and is penetrating deep into us.
Some other things the Bible does for us:
The Word of God Equips us by teaching and instructing us to live our lives in a manner which brings glory to God, and at the same time gives us a greater sense of direction and purpose. The great passage from Paul to Timothy tells us this as Paul wrote, 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. You see, God’s desire is to equip us to fulfill our life’s calling.
And this is where we learn God has a great strategic plan for us. It is so cool how God works . . . God wants us to be thoroughly equipped and he equips us with spiritual gifts so that as we spoke about last week, you use your spiritual gifts to serve God. And God seeks to help us in all aspects of our lives, so we can serve, but when we serve to know we are fully equipped by Him.
The Word of God Cleanses us. We can remain pure when we keep the Word of God in our hearts and live according to God’s instructions. This way we do not sin against God (Psalm 119:9, 11) We also learn in one of the great passages from 1 John 1:9 ~ “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins AND purify us from all unrighteousness.”
As part of our learning, remember that AND. So, 2 things happen in this passage, the first and note that it starts with the word IF . . . if we confess our sins. It is a propositional statement, one of those if . . . then statements. So, if we do this, then God, because He is faithful and just, will forgive us of our sins AND at the same time He will PURIFY us which means we are made innocent, blameless, unstained with guilt. Isn’t that a great image. But we don’t know about this passage until someone tells us, or until we read it in God’s Word.
We can also read David’s prayer of repentance for his affair with Bathsheba in Psalm 51:7 and hear his prayer, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” What a great image from David to help us in our time of repentance with God, asking to be made whiter than snow.
The Word of God also Feeds us and Deepens our Faith. Just as we eat to stay physically healthy, we need to read the Bible to stay spiritually healthy. As we read the Bible and learn how we should live our lives, we find ourselves changing more and more into the image of God.
In Romans 12:2, Paul wrote, 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
We become transformed, changed by God, and we become a different person, a new person, a better person, and that old person is gone. We must take the action, we must be willing to do the work, to admit that we need to be changed, so that we can become more like Christ.
In one of the great passages, in 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul wrote ~
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Isn’t that an amazing statement from God. When you are a believer in Jesus, the old person, that mean, self-centered, self-righteous, you fill in the blanks, that person is gone and in replace of that old person, a new person arrives. Now catch the end of this passage from Paul. It is great ~ ~ ~
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
If you never read the Bible, you would not have read passages like these. They are fantastic because they describe for us more about God’s nature and God’s love for us and it makes all the difference for us.
Lastly, The Word of God Guides and Leads us. Many times when we have difficult decisions to make, we find the Bible gives us just the right answer at just the right time. We learn about Christ being our Shepherd, who calls us by name, wanting to lead us, to bring us to His final destination.
Think of the great Psalm 23 ~
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Just stop and consider how God tells us He is leading us. And Jesus picks up on this in John 10 when He calls Himself the Good Shepherd.
Okay, I’m just getting started, but I feel like I am filling you and filling you and maybe overflowing your tanks.
I want to end with these final thoughts - - - on a very practical nature . . .
Ask yourself the “SO WHAT” question. When you read the Bible, ask so what, what does God want me to take from this passage? This is the application point of Scripture.
Does God want you to - - -
STOP something
START something
BELIEVE something
CONFESS
PRAY
GIVE THANKS
COMMUNICATE TO SOMEONE.
Open the book, open God’s love letter to you, know Him intimately, and celebrate God’s love and grace to you.
