Last Sunday after service, a young man came up to me and after introducing himself said, ‘if there was one thing you could recommend to do on a daily basis that would help me in my spiritual walk and help me grow in God, what would it be?’
Without a second’s worth of hesitation, I looked him in the eyes and said, ‘read your Bible every day!’ I spent most of yesterday contemplating my answer to the young man, thinking on the reasons I would have given him if he would have pressed the issue and asked ‘why’, and today I want to discuss the eight reasons I thought of for reading our Bibles on a daily basis.
The first reason we should read our Bibles every day is because it makes us wise for salvation.
2 Timothy 3:14-15, “But as for you, continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
I’ve said it before in different contexts, and I’ll say it again, our knowledge of God is limited by our knowledge of His word. There is a reason God gave us the Bible, and that is to know it and live it. As Paul writes to Timothy he reminds him that from childhood he had known the Holy Scriptures, and because he had known them, they were as an anchor for his faith, making him wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
There are a lot of assumptions in today’s churches, men making up doctrine as they go along, because their faith is not anchored in the Word of God, and because they are not diligent in the study thereof. After hearing him preach, the Bereans would go home and study the scriptures to see if what Paul had said, lined up with the Word. They realized the importance of biblical teaching, they realized the importance of biblical doctrine, and were diligent in making sure that they received nothing that was not making them wise for salvation. It would be well for us to learn from the Bereans and be diligent in our study of God’s Word, because if you know the Word of God, you will instantly discern the deception when you hear it. If we are ignorant of the Word however, if something sounds good, we just take it at face value, accept it, and run with it like a relay runner having received the baton.
I realize that to some I might be sounding like a broken record by now, I realize that to some it might seem like I’m beating a dead horse, but we need to get back to the simplicity of the Gospel, and be diligent in our study of it. Rather than comb the internet to see what various apologetics ministries are saying concerning a certain teaching or doctrine, we ought to know the Word of God well enough to know off hand if what we’ve heard is truth or fallacy.
The second reason we should read our Bibles every day, is because those who are ignorant of Scripture remain in darkness.
There are consequences to not knowing the scriptures, there are consequences to not knowing what the Word of God says, and the consequence of ignorance when it comes to God’s Word, is perpetual darkness.
There was a moment during Christ’s ministry on earth when some Sadducees who did not believe in resurrection came to confront Jesus and presented Him with a convoluted hypothetical situation wherein seven brothers would eventually be married to the same woman, asking which of the seven would be her husband in the resurrection. Christ’s answer was nothing more than Scripture, but before giving His answer he called the Sadducees deceived because they neither knew the Scriptures nor the power of God.
Matthew 22:29-32, “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
These men were Sadducees, members of a priestly, aristocratic order, and they ought to have known better. It was their ignorance of Scripture that kept them in the darkness they believed to be light, going so far as to confront Jesus and attempt to discredit Him. When men are ignorant of the Scriptures it is often that they consider the darkness they are in to be light, going so far as to deny the Christ, and make it their life’s mission to discredit Him.
The third reason we should read our Bibles every day, is because the Word of God, the Bible, is a lamp unto our feet, and a light to our path.
Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.”
I don’t believe it’s an accident that the longest chapter in the Bible, namely Psalm 119, is also an acrostic, or a poem in praise of the Scriptures. This Psalm contains some of the most beautiful words ever written regarding the Scriptures, and one can discern the psalmist’s heart by the way in which he approaches them. ‘I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statues; I will not forget your word.’
The only way in which we will not forget God’s Word, is by daily reading it, meditating upon it and consuming it. The psalmist knew the importance of knowing, and remembering, meditating, and living the word of God, realizing that absent the word, he would be as a blind man stumbling in the darkness with no way to know when that last and fatal step would take him over the edge of the precipice. God’s word is a lamp to our feet, and light to our path, it is by the Word that we see the path we must walk, and it is the word that keeps us from stumbling or going off course.
The fourth reason we should read our Bibles every day, is because it is a light that shines in a dark place.
When we have the Word in our hearts, it shines forth in the darkness of this present world; it is as a beacon, and a lighthouse to those who are stumbling in the darkness looking for a way out. If we do not have the Word of God in our hearts, then we have no light, and cry out as we might ‘come to the light, come to the light’ those in darkness will see no light in us.
2 Peter 1:19-21, “We also have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
Isaiah 60:1-3, “Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you. The gentiles shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”
A deep darkness covers the people, it extends beyond the borders of this nation to the whole of the earth, and the only way by which we will be able to reach those who are in the darkness is to let the light of His Word shine bright. Gentiles and kings alike will come to the brightness of the light, they will be drawn to the hope and the peace and the joy that it contains if we possess it and live in accordance with its statutes.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
that's really cool. Thanks for that. I find though.. that's it's actually really hard to read the bible every day. I want to do it, and I know it's the MOST important thing ever!! but I just can't seem to do it! Is there any help I can get out there? to do with this..
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