I grew up in the church and accepted Christ at a young age. My parents and grandparents were very involved in the church and I was there every time the doors were open. I can even remember more than once that I wanted to stay home to watch the “Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights, but we had to go to church. I was in the youth group and even on the quiz team – a quiz competition based on the Bible. Through high school, I had adopted my family’s faith but I had not personalized it. My answer to why I believed was “because that’s what I was taught.” And because of that, in my later college years and right after college, I began to question and drift away. I didn’t know why I believed, so I basically stopped believing. I wouldn’t say I became an atheist. I had seen too much to believe for sure that there was no God, but I was definitely an agnostic – meaning I just didn’t know or didn’t care. If there was a God, I didn’t think he was knowable or that he really cared about me. But during that time I had family and some very good friends praying for me. So I never totally walked away from God.
So that’s why today I want to share some reasons with you why you should be reading the Bible. If you are a Christian, it is our source of truth. If you are a seeker, then it is where you can start to find answers. It should be a basic habit for every Christian – read the Bible and pray. But not everyone does.
Now, my disclaimer is that these are probably not all of the reasons or maybe not even what you might consider the best reasons. But hopefully, they are enough to get you interested and maybe start reading. I chose 3 reasons then I’ll close with a few tips on how you can get started reading the Bible.
Reason number 1 – The Bible is an incredibly unique, important, and influential book.
I think this reason should be interesting even if you are not a Christian. The other reasons will carry more deep spiritual relevance, but let’s start with just looking at some Bible facts. If you are a Bible scholar, then you know a lot of this, but for the rest of us, let’s get some basic facts down. To be honest, I’ve been reading the Bible for a few decades and I still had to look up some of this to check my memory. I’m going to go through several facts – they’ll be up on the screen and I can even post them on FaceBook later, but I want to make sure we all get a sense of what this book is and where it came from.
First, the Bible is divided into 2 parts – the old testament with 39 books, and the new testament with 27 books for a total of 66 books.
Old Testament:
1. 39 books written by about 30-40 authors
2. First 5 books are believed to be written down by Moses around 1500 BC 3. Last book was written around 450 BC
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4. A lot of the old testament is the history of the people that became the nation of Israel and the laws and rules handed down by Moses
5. Also includes poetry and prophecy (messages from God)
6. Originally written mostly in Hebrew with a few books being written in Aramaic New Testament:
1. 27 books by about 9 different authors
2. Written after Jesus’ life on earth between about 50 AD and 90 AD 3. The first 5 books are about the life of Jesus and the history of the early church
4. The rest of the New Testament is letters to individuals, churches, or people groups.
5. Originally written in Koine (common) Greek
Now, so what…. I shared all of that for this reason.
Is there any other book in the world that has a story like that?
Is there any other book that even comes close?
Over 40 authors, written over the course of about 1600 years, the book we read today was first widely accepted by about 200 AD and made official by about 400 AD. And we still read it today almost 2000 years after the last book was written.
It is also the most popular book in history. There have been billions of copies printed – 2 billion gifted by the Gideons alone – and there are about 100 million copies printed every year! Even all of the works of Shakespeare combined total between 2 and 4 billion copies. Now we live in the digital age. A lot of us carry several versions of the Bible in our pockets. YouVersion claimed to have 2000 versions of the Bible in almost 1400 languages with over 500 million installs!
John says:
In the beginning, the Word already existed.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. – John 1:1-3
What does that mean? John is referring to Jesus as “The Word”… So Jesus is the Word… and the Word is Jesus… and the Word was present at the moment of creation…
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The Word of God has been present on this earth since the very beginning!
And it continues to be active and relevant in our lives today. It has influenced democratic forms of government, laws, and justice systems. It has influenced art and culture. Artists like Rembrandt, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and even Donatello – so all of the ninja turtles. It is illegal to own in over 50 countries with punishments ranging from
prison to death! If it isn’t important, why is it illegal? Doesn’t it make sense that something that prolific and influential across history is something we should pay attention to? I could go on, but let’s move on to the next reason.
Reason number 2 – God wants to have a personal relationship with you. How can you do that if you don’t know who He is?
So first, what does that mean – “personal relationship?” The meaning of that might vary somewhat from person to person, but I’ll share what it means to me. I’ll go back to my story. I grew up hearing all of the Bible stories. I had the books of the Bible memorized, I memorized John 3:16, and a few other verses – at least long enough to get the prize for that week. But I hadn’t made it part of my life. It was a thing I did on Sunday. Jesus was a character in a story, not someone who I even thought about the other 6 days of the week.
I believe a “personal relationship” means that you know what Jesus means to you personally and you have reasons that are based on both personal experience and your personal studies for believing. When I hear someone say “I’m a Christian because my parents were Christians.”, that’s not a personal relationship. Because of my family, I did have some personal experiences, but without the context of the Bible, they didn’t really connect.
So, I touched on this point earlier, but it is important to understand that the Bible is the Word of God. Written by human hands but inspired by God through the Holy Spirit. Peter says:
Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God. – Peter 1:20-21
God uses the Bible to speak to us today. If we want to know more about God and make our faith a personal faith then we need to be reading the Bible every day. Timothy says:
All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in 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. – Timothy 3:16-17
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If you want personal faith, get to know who God is, what his character is like, and understand his love for his creation, then we need to read about it. And the best place to do that is the Bible.
Reason number 3 – How can you know the truth if you don’t seek it? In the Book of John:
Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:31-32
I hear a lot today about “my truth” and “your truth”. I hate to break it to you, but there is only one truth and that’s God’s truth.
How do I make sure “my truth” is aligned with God’s truth?
… Do you just “feel” like that is what God would do or say? Do you trust your feelings – because they never change, right? Do you trust someone else to tell you what the truth is? Maybe just google it! The internet knows everything and is never wrong, right?
Proverbs is pretty blunt about it:
There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. – Proverbs 14:12
We all love Kent. I think he’s a great preacher and I love to listen to his sermons. Sorry Kent, but I don’t put my faith in Kent or his words. If Kent says something that seems contrary to what I read in the Bible, I’m not going to take his word for it. I’m going to the Bible as my final source of truth. We should do that with any preacher or teacher.
In the book of Acts, there is a great example of this. Paul and Silas went to a town called Berea and started preaching to the Jewish people there. They listened, but they didn’t just take their word, they searched the scriptures.
That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas to Berea. When they arrived there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men. – Acts 17:10-12
Now this would have been the Jewish scriptures or what we call the old testament at the time since this would have been before most or all of the new testament was written. But the principle is the same.
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The word of God is our source of truth.
We have to be careful to not let the world change or misinterpret what the Bible says or means. In Luke Jesus was talking about not making money more important than God. The Pharisees laughed at him.
Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God. – Luke 16:15
What the world honors and what God honors are not the same thing. The only way to know the difference is to read God’s word. He tells us what is important.
Finally, to wrap it all up, I felt like I needed to give you all a few tips on how to get started reading the Bible. This is not by any means an exhaustive list. Maybe I will start posting on Harmony’s community page and share these so people can add their suggestions. But this is a good start.
How to get started reading the Bible:
1. Start with the Gospels plus Acts – the first 5 books of the New Testament 2. Don’t start with the Old Testament or Revelation, but don’t skip it either. 3. Spend a few minutes praying for guidance as you read and study
4. Find a version that is comfortable for you – YouVersion lets you try out several for free – if you like easy reading try NLT; if you’re more analytical try NKJV or ESV.
5. If you want to get a little more explanation of the text, consider using a study Bible or find a commentary resource
6. Find a time and place you can read without interruptions and make it a habit. Have a plan – 1-2 chapters per day or a reading plan. Again, YouVersion is a great resource that has several reading plans. And you can listen to some versions.
7. Consider taking notes or journaling. This is for you so you can be as simple or complicated as you’d like. No wrong answer.
So, back to my story… How did someone who was pretty much an agnostic end up as an elder for the last 10 years and standing up here preaching this morning?
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After college, I got married and started having kids. That has a way of making you take a long hard look at who you are, who you want to be, and more importantly what kind of father you want to be. So, I decided to start digging into the Bible to see what I could find and see if I really did believe or not. As I read and studied, asked questions, and looked for answers for myself, that’s when my faith became real and personal. Why is it that someone like me never really “got it” until I started to get into the Word?… It’s because I had not understood how it all fit together and had never connected with the messages in the Word. Before I started reading and studying, they were just words out of context.
Why do we all struggle with making time to read God’s Word when it has the power to turn someone’s life around as it did me?… Why do we try to figure out the answers for ourselves without using the second greatest gift God gave us after his son Jesus – and actually according to John, they are the same!?
The Bible has the answers!
Now there are some questions that I will probably never get an answer to until I get to sit with Jesus in eternity and ask them, but the questions that matter most here and now on this earth – the answers are in here! You just have to look.
Let’s pray.
