Why Bible Study is Vital to the Christian Life
"Consider the one thing [in]this world which you and I can touch that has 'eternity' written into its fabric. It's the Word of God. Every time I take a Bible in hand, I hold eternity, because the life-force inherent in that Word exceeds all time and space: 'Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Word shall not pass away.'" (Jack Hayford) Without the Bible, the entire Christian message is lost. Without Bible study, the Christian life is wasted. The Bible reveals God's Person (Father, Son, and Spirit) and His attributes (Love, Just, Mercy, Grace, Truth, etc). It reveals Him as Creator of the universe and all life. It describes His relationship with mankind throughout history, and explains His plans and purposes for our lives. Yet a lot of confusion exists today about the Bible. According to a 1996 Barna survey, 42% of Americans say they believe the Bible is the literal word of God. Yet almost half of Americans believe the Bible is too hard for them to understand, so they seldom read it. And only around 12% claim to do daily Bible study (Barna, 2001). Clearly there is a discrepancy between what we say we believe and our true beliefs as demonstrated by our actions. What's that old saying? "Your actions speak louder than your words." So the question we want to ask today is this: "Why is Bible Study Vital To The Christian Life?"
2 Timothy 3:15-17 "You have been taught the Holy scriptures since childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong with our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work."
CHRISTIANS SHOULD STUDY THE BIBLE BECAUSE OF WHAT THE BIBLE IS.
Before we can understand Bible study, we must clarify what the word "Bible" means. There are lots of books out there with the word "Bible" in the title that have nothing to do with what we're talking about. For example, we have "The Shooter's Bible," "The Freshwater Fisherman's Bible," "The Golfer's Bible," "The Cooking Bible," "The Crystal Bible," "The Soup Bible," "The House Cleaning Bible," "The Fireworks Bible," and even "The Speed Bag Bible." Obviously, these books are not what we're talking about.
So let's go back to real basics: What is the Bible? The word "Bible" means a book or collection of books regarded as authoritative on a topic. Books like The Shooter's Bible and The Fireworks Bible use the word Bible in the title to claim that they're the standard authority on that particular topic. I recently read about a newspaper claim, "If your religion is sports, then our newspaper is your Bible."
No other book is more authoritative on the topic of the Christian faith than the Christian Bible. The Christian Bible is a collection of 66 different books divided into two sections (Old and New Testaments) written by over 40 different authors over a span of 1,500 years in three different languages, yet it presents a unified message of God's plan and purpose for humanity. Thirty-nine books make up the Old Testament, which was written between 1,500 BC and 400 BC, starting with the book of Genesis and ending with the Malachi. The Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Bible contain the same 39 books, though they're listed in different order.
(The Roman Catholic church also includes 15 other writings in their Old Testament called the Apocrypha which means "hidden books." The Roman Catholic church added these books in their Old Testament about 500 years ago at the Council of Trent, but for the first twelve hundred years of official "Bibledom "the Apocrypha was considered good devotional literature, but not part of the Bible).
The 27 books that make up the New Testament were written over a 50 year span, and they deal with Jesus Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection, the beginning of the Christian church, and instruction about how to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is written primarily in Hebrew, with a little Aramaic, and the New Testament is written exclusively in Greek. Amazingly these diverse authors present a unified portrait of God's plans and purposes for our world.
The Bible contains history, poetry, humor, prophecy, romance, letters, biographies, songs, journals, advice, laws and stories. So the Bible is an entire library of different kinds of literature. The Bible was also the first book ever printed on Gutenburg's printing press; it’s the best selling book of all time; and portions have been translated into over 1,946 different languages. So when we say "Bible," we're talking about these 66 books that have been the foundation for the Christian faith since its very beginnings.
Americans are "Bible rich." We have over 30 different English translations of the Bible available to us. I use the New King James and the New International Versions of the Bible, though there’s also the King James Version, the New American Standard Bible, the New Living Translation, the New Century Version, and so on. Twenty-four percent of Americans own at least five Bibles. I very quickly counted 29 in my study while preparing this message.
Now that brings me back to the original question: "Why Is Bible Study Vital To The Christian Life?" Let's look at some key concepts based on 2 Timothy 3:16.
1. BIBLE STUDY IS VITAL TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BECAUSE THE BIBLE IS RELEVANT TO ALL OF LIFE. (2 Timothy 3:16)
Let's look at what the Bible says about itself. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV).
The word "scripture" means "sacred writings." Other religions have their own sacred writings; Islam has the Koran, Mormonism has The Book of Mormon, and Hinduism has the Bhagavad-Gita. The Bible is the Christian faith’s sacred writings--or Scripture.
These sacred writings are said to be "God breathed." Now some English translations render this word "inspired by God," but that's not totally accurate because the word "inspired" means breathed into, as if God looked at all the different religious books in the world and then chose to "breathe into" the Bible. But this word means to breathe out rather than in, and that makes the focus of this word on God's breath being the source or origin of the Bible. What Paul is saying here is that the fundamental characteristic of scripture--what makes these writings sacred writings--is the fact that God breathed them out, that they have their ultimate origin with God Himself.
Now this fundamental characteristic of being God-breathed makes the Bible "useful." This word means "practical," and "beneficial." I think the word "relevant" captures the meaning here; because of the Bible’s source, it has practical relevance for our lives. Thus, Bible study is as vital to the Christian life as breathing is the human life.
The Bible's relevance is seen in four areas: Teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Teaching focuses on the Bible giving us instruction in living life. Now this assumes that we come to the Bible as learners, because only learners can be taught. This instruction or teaching isn't just about heavenly things, it's also about practical things like being a good spouse or parent, loaning money, starting a business, and so on. Rebuking sounds kind of harsh, but really it just means confronting our wrong ideas about life. This assumes that all of us carry around misconceptions and distortions about God, ourselves, and life that need to be changed. For instance if I measure success in life by how much money a person has, but the Bible measures success by a person's faithfulness to God, then my criteria for success has been skewed, and thus is rebuked by the Bible, and I need to change my definition to conform to God's definition. Correction is similar to rebuking, but it focuses in on behavior instead of beliefs. This assumes that all of us sometimes lose our way in life. The truth is we all wander off the course God has for us and end up roaming around in circles. The Bible corrects us by showing us the err of our ways, and how to get back on course with where God wants us to go. Finally, training in righteousness focuses on the Bible's role in helping us live the kind of lives that please God. This assumes that a life of integrity doesn't come naturally to us and that we need help to live the kind of life of integrity we want to live. The Bible trains us how to live a life of integrity.
All of this results in being thoroughly equipped to live a spiritually vital life with God. Bible study provides us with the equipment we need. It’s been said that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, Bible study provides us with a complete spiritual toolbox to live a full and rich spiritual life of devotion to Jesus Christ.
So then our first key concept is this; SINCE GOD GAVE US THE ENTIRE BIBLE, ALL OF ITS TEACHINGS ARE RELEVANT FOR OUR LIVES.
Once my wife Cheri and I went to Harper's Ferry in MD, not only a Civil War battle site, but also a quaint little river town with many antique shops. One particular shop was filled with old books. One of the books caught my eye, so I took it out to look at it. The book was obviously faded, old and worn on the outside. Yet as I opened it I found that the pages were white and pristine on the inside and had obviously NEVER been opened. Many Bibles are like that: they're used as table decorations, family heirlooms, or a kind of good luck charm. Yet the Bible was meant to be an open book, a studied book, a book with incredible relevance to the ordinary details of our daily lives. As a Chaplain in the Army, I gave away over 20,000 Bibles to soldiers and foreign nationals. I found that in times of deployment and combat, soldiers were eager to find out what God's Word had to say about life, both here and in the hereafter. It was easy to get a Bible study going anywhere soldiers congregated. In times of crisis, the bible suddenly became relevant to their lives. They would suddenly "come to" about what I was constantly preaching to them back home "on post," that the bible is always, ALWAYS relevant to our lives! Thankfully, many of those soldiers became Christians through our witness, and bible study became a regular part of their lives, even after the deployment or combat "crisis" was over. Others were already Christians, but hadn't discovered the relevance and importance of God's Word and Bible study until they found themselves "in harm's way." Through Bible studies and interactions with Chaplains and other Christians, many soldiers learned what ALL Christians need to learn. It doesn't take a crisis in life to make the Bible relevant, it already is relevant, we just need to get out of the way and allow it to speak to our life situation. BIBLE STUDY IS VITAL TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BECAUSE THE BIBLE IS RELEVANT TO ALL OF LIFE.
2. BIBLE STUDY IS VITAL TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BECAUSE GOD'S VOICE IS COMMUNICATED TO US THROUGH BIBLE STUDY, AND WE SHOULD THEREFORE LISTEN TO ITS MESSAGE. (2 Peter 1:20-21)
At this point many people are skeptical, and they protest, "But everyone has their own interpretation of the Bible." This would be true if we treated the Bible as an encyclopedia of disconnected thoughts and ideas. It's easy to take one or two verses and make them say anything you want them to say. Two classic examples immediately come to mind. The first is the alcoholic whose favorite out of context verse is Paul telling sick Timothy, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake." The second is the guy who wanted to know God’s will for his life, so he opened the Bible randomly and read the verse that says, "Judas went and hanged himself." Then he closed the Bible, opened it again to a verse that said, "Now go and do likewise." If that's the way we treat the Bible, then everyone does have their own interpretation of what it says.
This is where 2 Peter 1:20-21 applies: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (NIV).
Here we're introduced to another term for the Bible, the word "prophecy." We think of prophecy as predictions about the future, but biblically prophecy refers to God revealing things that we couldn't figure out on our own. Future events could be included in that, but the focus of prophecy is God revealing himself to man.
The bottom line is that we can't make the Bible say whatever we want it to say, whether we are the readers or the original authors. The Words are God's, spoken through the Holy Spirit. This verse is warning us not to read our own ideas into the Bible or to force our own interpretations on it, but to take the Bible on its own terms, because the ultimate origin and author of the Bible is God. God initiated the process of giving us the Bible, not the human authors, and although the human authors did write the words, they were spokesmen of God.
The word "carried along" in v. 21 is a sailing term that was used in Greek to describe the wind blowing into a sail, which "carries along" the sailboat. The human authors were consciously involved in the writing process--they weren't robots, we can even detect their own unique writing style--but behind the process God "carried them along" to ensure that the end result would be what God wanted to say.
Which leads us to our second key concept; BIBLE STUDY IS VITAL TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BECAUSE GOD'S VOICE IS COMMUNICATED TO US THROUGH BIBLE STUDY, AND WE SHOULD THEREFORE LISTEN TO ITS MESSAGE Simply put, SINCE GOD HAS SPOKEN THROUGH THE BIBLE, IT IS IMPORTANT FOR US TO LISTEN TO ITS MESSAGE.
For 2000 years the Christian faith has affirmed that God has spoken through the Bible. Our role as readers then is to hear the message of the Bible, not to read into it what we think it ought to say or to use isolated parts of the Bible to justify our own ideas and actions. Before the civil war people who believed in slavery tried to justify their sin by quoting bits and pieces from the Bible. They used the Bible selectively, trying to rationalize their involvement in slavery. They refused to let the Bible speak for itself. Whenever we try to read our own ideas into the Bible we put ourselves in danger of missing God's voice and hearing our own voice instead.
3. BIBLE STUDY IS VITAL TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BECAUSE THE BIBLE IS OUR STANDARD (John 17:17)
John 17 has Jesus’ prayer before his arrest: "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth" (John 17:17NIV).
Now what exactly is truth anyway? Truth is whatever corresponds to the facts, something that matches the way things really are. So a truthful statement is a statement that corresponds to reality.
A key characteristic of the Bible is its truthfulness. Let's think about this logically. God is the author of the Bible, which we've established is "God Breathed." One of God's many attributes is Truth. In fact, the Bible establishes that God and Jesus are one (John 10) and Jesus says "I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life. (John 14). So, if God is truthful, then the Bible must be truthful. By saying that the Bible is truthful, we're saying that the Bible tells us the way things really are, that it accurately describes reality.
Here’s the key concept. SINCE GOD HAS REVEALED HIS TRUTH TO US IN THE BIBLE, IT IS OUR FINAL STANDARD FOR TRUTH.
Not all churches today believe that God has revealed His truth to us in the Bible. Some churches reject this idea completely, and claim that although we can personally experience God in the Bible, there's no real truth to find there. Others believe that the Bible has truth in it but that it also has mistakes in it, so it's up to us as readers to sift the truthful statements from the mistakes, which of course makes the reader the ultimate authority instead of the Bible.
Whenever people tell me that the Bible is full of contradictions I ask them which contradiction bothers them the most. Undoubtedly there are some difficult passages in the Bible, but a careful reader can see how these passages can be harmonized, and at no place does the Bible contradict the findings of modern science or history. Our commitment to the truthfulness of the Bible--that there are no errors or mistakes--is part of what makes us evangelical Christians and Churches.
It's important to clarify that this conviction only applies to what the Bible itself affirms to be true. The Bible is a historical book, and as the Bible tells us historical stories, some of the characters in those stories say things that aren't true. The Bible tells us in the book of Job, for example, that Satan claimed the only reason Job served God was because God had blessed Job. Now it would be foolish to say that because that statement is in the Bible, it's true. The statement may be recorded in the Bible, but the Bible is not affirming that statement as being truthful. But wherever the Bible itself affirms something as true, that's where Christians historically have believed God has revealed His truth. That makes the Bible a Christian's final standard on what's true.
Please don't get me wrong. There are lots of things that are true in life that the Bible doesn't tell us about. The Bible doesn't tell us how to change a flat tire or how to cure the measles. It doesn’t tell us how to build a home or how to master calculus. We know these other things through experience, reasoning, science, and so forth. So there are other sources of truth in the world, and let's face it, all truth is ultimately God's truth. The Bible's focus is telling us the truth we need in order to have a relationship with God and to understand God's purposes. This is truth we could never discover through science or experience. The Bible touches on areas of science and history, and when it does speak to these issues it does so truthfully, but it wasn't written to be a science book. Its purpose is to reveal truth about knowing God and God's ways.
So the Bible is the Christian's ultimate standard for what is true. Just like a ruler is the standard for measuring an inch, so the Bible is the Christians ultimate standard for measuring truth.
4. BIBLE STUDY IS VITAL TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BECAUSE THE BIBLE TRANSFORMS US (Hebrews 4:12)
Although the Bible reveals God's truth to us, its primary purpose is not merely to educate us. Look at Hebrews 4:12, "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 (NIV).
Along with "scripture and "prophecy" we're introduced to another description of the Bible as "the word of God" or "God's word." Even though our Bibles are printed with ink on pages, the author of Hebrews says that somehow God's word is also living and active. This means that there is a dynamic energy at work whenever a person reads the Bible, that somehow the living God is actively working in and through the words of the Bible to impact the reader's life. This makes the Bible different from any other book.
The Bible is described as a sharp double edged sword, which focuses on its ability to penetrate our lives. The Bible has no blunt edge, but every part of it is sharp enough to pierce into our lives with its message. Soul and spirit, joints and marrow, focuses on the Bible's ability to penetrate our defenses and the very core of our personality, where our true self is. There, at the core of our personality, the Bible evaluates and discerns our inner thoughts and motives, sifting through our intentions and ideas. WOW! Lemme say that backwards – WOW!
Our final key concept is this; SINCE GOD WORKS IN OUR LIVES THROUGH THE BIBLE, IT IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION.
Just as a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly, God works through the Bible to transform us into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ who wholeheartedly love and serve God and others.
You see, the Christian faith is not merely a set of ideas. Being a Christian is not just about spouting off doctrines or reciting creeds. Being a Christian is first and foremost about a personal love relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. This love relationship is a life transforming one, because a person can't encounter Jesus Christ without being radically changed. One of my favorite sayings is "Whenever you come into the presence of God, you are FOREVER changed." Being a Christian isn't merely accepting certain facts about God or about the Bible, it's becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, a devoted disciple of Jesus, as we seek to live lives of passionate devotion to Christ. I meet many people who have right ideas about God, who intellectually accept Jesus as being God's Son, who believe that the Bible is God's word, but have never entered into a personal love relationship with Jesus through faith. All these doctrines will do them no good, because the Christian faith is not merely about being informed, it's about being TRANSFORMED. Once we enter into a relationship with God through Christ, the Bible is God's primary means of changing us.
God certainly isn't limited to Bible study, because He also changes us through many other things, like worship, through suffering or prayer, and through interactions with other Christians, to name a few. But Bible study is essential and central to our transformation into the image of Christ. It's also a primary means God uses to penetrate our defenses, to invade our hearts with His truth, and to sort out our thoughts, intentions, and motives, so He can reveal Himself as the One and only true and Living God of the universe.
We've defined what the Bible is, we've affirmed that Christians believe God "breathed" the Bible, we've asserted that God speaks to us through Bible study, that God reveals His truth to us through Bible study, and that God works in our lives to change us through Bible study.
It is told that the great preacher D.L. Moody said, “I prayed for faith and thought that some day it would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith didn’t seem to come. One day I read in Romans that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” I had up to this time, closed my Bible and prayed for faith. Now I opened my Bible and began to study and faith has been growing ever since.” Bottom line; if you don’t want to be transformed by Bible study, don't read and study the Bible.
For most of us, I suspect, the real struggle comes in actually living as if we believe this is true, by actually seeking the relevance of the Bible for the problems we face, by actually listening to the Bible's message, by actually holding up the standard of truth in the Bible, and finally, by actually allowing God to transform us through Bible study and our interactions with God and His Word.