July 18, 2010 - Steve Randall

Imagine with me for a moment that you leave here after the service and upon returning home you see a brand new Lexus at the top of your driveway, a gift to you for no reason at all,  wrapped nicely with a bright red bow.  What would you do with it?  Would you leave it just sitting there day after day, year after year?  Or would you let it take you where you needed to go in comfort and safety?  Or imagine that in each of the medicine chests in your home that was a bottle of capsules that not only helped to heal all the maladies that existed but it helped to prevent others as well.  Would those little medicine bottles collect dust in those cabinets or would you be certain to take a capsule each and every day? The reason that I say this is that sitting in each of our homes, is a gift, a medicine to help us through this life.  It is our Bible.  Now I know what you are thinking…

Charleen (voice from the booth)– Oh brother.  Another lecture on reading my Bible.  I…I know I should but I’ve just been so..so…busy lately.  I meant to set aside some time in the mornings…but I’ve had work on my mind.  I used to find the time, but things are so much more demanding these days…work…the kids.  I know Pastor Paul always encourages us to read the Bible and…hey, wait a minute…that isn’t even Pastor Paul up there.  This is like getting a lecture from a substitute teacher!

Now I don’t want this message to be a lecture.  I want to use the time that we have together for encouragement, to talk about the blessings that unfold in our lives through reading the Bible, using the very words of the Bible to do so.  Now, I think that many of us don’t read our Bibles regularly because we just don’t see that they are indeed gifts from God.  We miss the signs that God sends our way.  We are a lot like Dr. Hfuhruhurr, a character played by Steve Martin in the movie, “The Man with 2 Brains”.  In this scene we are about to watch, he is at a shrine that he has made in his home to his deceased wife, asking her if it OK for him to continue in a relationship with Dolores, a character played by Kathleen Turner.

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Like Dr. Hfuhruhurr, we are often times too focused on what WE consider most important, rather than what is most important to God.  So let us consider the question, “What are the most important 12 minutes of the day?”  I will share with you my idea at the end of this message, and I hope that it is similar to what you conclude as well, instead of maybe, “The last 12 minutes of this sermon, and it better get here quickly.”

There are four reasons that I would like to discuss today about why we should read our Bibles regularly, yes even daily.  The first is that God commands it of his children.  Let us read together what the Bible says in Matthew 22:34-39:  

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"  Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

So the first and greatest commandment is to love God completely.  But how are we to love someone if we hardly know them?  How do we humans get to know and love someone?  By spending time together in rich communication.  Remember when you were first dating your spouse?  Or when you were first getting to know your Granddad or that special Aunt or Uncle?  How much you wanted to spend more time together?  That is how God wants us to seek to know him better as well.  The Westminster Catechism answers the question, “What is the Duty that God Requires of Man” with the answer “Obedience to his revealed will.” And Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived said in Ecclesiastes 12:13, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”   So clearly we need know God’s commandments and his will.  So how are we to do that?

The Bible tells us that God reveals himself to us through his Creation, Prayer, and wasn’t that such an incredible sermon by Deb a few weeks ago on prayer? He also reveals himself through Jesus and most importantly through the Bible.  If we are to fulfill the Greatest Commandment and the duty God requires of us, we indeed must read our Bible.  Paul summed this up nicely to Timothy as he was providing him with strong instruction and encouragement in his second letter, let us read that together from 2 Timothy 3:16:

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

What does God-breathed mean? It means that the Bible originated with God. It is his gift to us to reveal himself and what he desires of us. And because what is found in these pages is God-breathed, it has power, real power to change us and to change others.  And it is the place where we find the first-hand picture of who Jesus was, an account of his life, and a record of His teachings.  And this is revealed in both testaments.  Have you ever heard the saying that “The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed?  You see, the Bible is one harmonious message to us.

It also teaches us what is good and right and what is wrong and evil. It teaches us how to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It teaches us what we are and more importantly what we can be. It teaches us of our separation from God and his redemptive plan for us, through his infinite love for us.  The Bible teaches us about who God is, what a real church is, what our purpose in life is.   And if we are to respond to Jesus command to go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation, we have to have a firm grasp of scripture to grow faith in others.

Paul tells us in Romans 10:17, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  Let me pause here for a moment and share something I heard preached by Alistair Begg on a recent Truth for Life broadcast.  He was speaking of the importance of Biblical teaching and shared a story of Billy Graham’s conversion.  You see, Billy Graham was saved in 1934 at a revival meeting in Charlotte, NC led by a great evangelist named Mordecai Ham.  Mordecai Ham was led to Christ in 1924 through an evangelistic campaign of the great preacher Billy Sunday.  Billy Sunday was converted at a street corner meeting led by the great evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman.  J. Wilbur Chapman was converted in the late 1870 as a student at Lake Forest College through the teaching of the great Dwight L. Moody.  Why do I tell you this?  Because you probably don’t know how Dwight L. Moody came to know and love Jesus.  It was none other than the great…Sunday School teacher named Edward Kimball.  If any of us thinks that our Biblical instruction does not matter or make a difference, or gets weary of the commitment that it takes, please remember this story.  Investing our time to know and teach the Bible to the youth at Bethany will have a far reaching impact that we will never know.

And Paul says that all Scripture is useful for rebuking.  What exactly does rebuking look like?  Let’s look at this together.  Being useful for rebuking does not mean that the Bible was designed as a tool to find fault in others, but instead it is to be used to convict us of our own errors.  Hebrews 4:12 says:

“For 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.”

When Paul says that the Scriptures are profitable for rebuking, he is saying that the Bible points out what is wrong in our lives. It shows us what we really are. It shows us what God sees when He looks upon us. It isn’t partial nor does it discriminate.  And when we see what is wrong in our walk with him, the Bible gracefully provides for correcting and training in righteousness.  It tells us what righteous living in the face of God is supposed to look like.  “But isn’t that just completely discouraging?” you may ask.  But no, you see God is a God of love, a love for us that we cannot even measure.  In the pages of the Bible we see men and women just like us going through the same process of making mistakes one time and demonstrating righteousness another.  It shows us that we are no different than the people in the Old and New Testaments in our sinful human condition.  Think of Pastor Paul’s recent sermons on Elijah.  He trusted God and God performed several miracles through him – the feeding of the widow and her son, bringing her son back from the dead and the coup-de-grace, sending fire from heaven in the contest with the priests of Ba’al to show that there is only one God, the God of Israel.  And when he was threatened with death by Jezebel, did he turn to and trust in God for a victory over her?  No, he turned and fled in fear.  But what happened next?  Elijah sought God with a humble heart and God met him and spoke to him with a still, small voice.  He comforted Elijah and let him know what to do next.  Reading the Bible lets us see God work in the lives of the people we meet in his book and it lifts us up in ways that no substitute for the Bible ever could.  That leads me to my second key point:

The Bible is our only true source of hope and encouragement.  I don’t know of anything that provides more life-long encouragement than Jeremiah 29:11-13; let us read that together:

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” 

Imagine, the God of the universe, the creator of all things letting us know that all he wants for us is good, and will protect us when we need him.  And he is willing to meet us in prayer wherever and whenever we call upon him.  Remember from Eric’s wonderful sermon last week, Jairus, wracked with grief, simply called upon Jesus with his whole humble heart.  What did Jesus first do?  Jesus first comforted him with these words, “"Don't be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed." Then he raised his daughter from the dead.

The Bible is full of all of the encouragement that we need, no matter what our circumstances.  God has given it to us to help us and comfort us no matter what we are going through.

Most all of us know the 23^rd Psalm and pray it whenever we are scared, and …it comforts us.  I bet that we could say it together from memory, want to try it?  Let’s do it.

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 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. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.  Amen.”

How awesome is our God?  What comfort, hope and encouragement.  If I went through all the other passages of encouragement like that we would have to order out for dinner.

The third point that I would like to make is that the Bibles that we possess come at a very great price.

I am guessing that most of us never considered that, and in fact, I had not considered this until I joined Bethany, heard Pastor Paul preach and I let the Holy Spirit lead me into small group study, the Men’s ministry, got to know the Burns’ and the McKinney’s the Hobels and the Maynard’s and the Graham’s, and the Dean’s and, well, you know what I mean, I joined Bethany. 

Well, I started to seriously study the Bible for the first time and also seriously study the history of the Church. And what I learned had a very serious impact on how I looked at the Bible that sat on my nightstand.  Think about it, the four gospels that we have come from Matthew, Peter (through John Mark), Paul (through Luke) and John. We know that all of the disciples and Paul were put to death except John, who suffered mightily as well.  Most of the rest of the New Testament was written by martyrs. They gave their lives so that Christianity could spread and the first-hand accounts of the life of Jesus could be recorded and passed on. 

What you may not know is that by 400 AD the scriptures were translated into 500 languages, but by 500 AD they were only permitted in one language by the Catholic Church, Latin.  The world entered the Dark and Middle Ages.  Bibles could only be found in Catholic churches and often chained to the altar, and always in Latin, a language very few spoke or could read.  But just like Ezra, men were called by God to change this.  John Wycliffe was the first to declare the Bible the only source of truth, and began translating the Latin Bible into English in the late 1400’s.  And one of the greatest contributors to Western civilization, William Tyndale was called as well.  It is said that when a local Bishop told Tyndale that he valued the word of the Pope over scripture, Tyndale sternly replied, “I will make it possible for the boy who drives the plow to know as much scripture as you do.”  He became the sole translator of the Bible into English, and printed the first New Testament in 1524, and the majority of the Old Testament in 1533.  In those times it was a capital offense to translate the Bible from Latin or to preach or teach in any other language than Latin, even to one’s own children.  Tyndale was arrested in 1533 and imprisoned for 500 days then burned at the stake.  Men and women were martyred for these same reasons by the thousands over the next decade, many burned at the stake using Tyndale’s English Bibles. This was so widespread that John Foxe published in 1563 a book detailing the accounts of the martyrs of the sixteenth century.  Yes, the Bibles that we possess were made possible by the lives of a great many saints in the service of our Lord.  Knowing this made me think about my nightstand Bible very differently.

Now does anybody remember the question I said I would answer at the beginning of this sermon? Probably not…I’ve been pretty long winded…For those of you who have forgotten, or perhaps you were thinking about where you are getting lunch today, the question I said I would answer is: what are the most important twelve minutes of the day?

Have you ever wondered, how much time does it take to read from Genesis to Revelation?  If you were to read the Bible at a standard guest pulpit speed (slow enough to be heard and understood), the reading time would be seventy-one hours.  If you would break that down into minutes and divide it into 365 days, you could read the entire Bible, cover to cover, in only twelve minutes a day. Is this really too much time to spend growing closer to God? Twelve minutes.

Like you I lead a very busy life with each day crammed from start to finish with way too many things.  Some things I can control, and more than I would like I cannot.  But I have found that if I carve out time in my schedule for reading my Bible, and in a quiet place, it can be done reliably.  Mostly it is early in the morning before everyone wakes up (because I am a morning person), but sometimes it is in the evening and even at work, depending on the day.  And we humans are indeed creatures of habit.  Once we get something established, we stick to it.  Ok, so let’s say we commit to reading our bibles daily.  What should we read each day?  Well, you can read along with the lectionary in the Bell, or you can use a Bible reading guides like this one. You can pick them up at Good Tidings just up the street.

Another thing I would recommend is a good study Bible.  I know a lot of folks in the congregation that have one.   They contain comprehensive information about the entire Bible, each book and chapter. They also contain a treasure of helpful information about the authors, the context when it was written and why.  And finally verse-by-verse explanations about every major passage.   Mine is the John MacArthur Study Bible – it has over 20,000 study notes and a host of other helpful information.  Some others use the Charles Stanley Life Principles Bible, and there are so many others.  In fact in 2010, you can get a Study Bible in every translation, you can get Bibles on DVD, CD, MP3, you name it.  We have today more options to get into the Bible each day than any generation in history.  Think about it, twelve minutes.

That brings me to the fourth and final reason.  The Lord promises that he will bless those who read his Word.  Let us say together Psalm 1:1-3:

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

”What a promise from our infinitely loving God.  A gift that will take us wherever we go in comfort and safety.  A medicine that will prevent and cure all ills.  All for twelve minutes a day. It’s not too late for us to start today. 

Let us pray.  Father, you have promised us through the words of your prophet Isaiah, that “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.  Father, I pray that all of us hearing this message will rededicate ourselves to the study of your word so that we will know your commandments, and your will for us, and we may share it with others that do not know you and as we come to be a blessing to others your blessings will rain down upon us.  In the precious name of your son Jesus Christ we pray.  Amen.