Tag: God’s Word

Categories
Bible

Bound to the Word of God. (Tied, Restricted, and Restrained.)

Bound means tied up. Binding restraints and restricts. It means we can’t do certain things because we are tied to something else. If you physically tie me — bind me — to my chair, I can’t go for a walk. I can’t drive my car. I can’t go to work. Physically binding me would keep me in one fixed location.photo of a ship tied to the dock - bound

But we can also be bound in other ways. I am bound by my vows to my wife, and therefore I am emotionally, mentally, and physically united to her. She and I chose this binding to each other. We willingly restricted ourselves to each other. I am not able to be tied to another woman nor even to be tempted toward another, unless I loosen the bonds that I chose when I said “I do” to Paige.

So… what are you bound to? The Old Testament prophet Ezra bound himself to God’s Word. And we are also to be bound by God’s Word.

When we become a Christian, we say that the Bible will be the standard by which we are bound. Which means we will be restricted from certain thoughts and actions because of choosing to be tied to the commands within this Book. If you think all this binding sounds restrictive… It is, but it is restrictive for our good.

We have a good Heavenly Father, who has defined what should bind us. He indicates that the binding in marriage of one man to one woman for life is for our good. Paige and I believed that to be true because God said it, but now we have also lived it. This May, we will have experienced the truth of the goodness of this binding for 25 years. We have discovered that God’s Word about binding is definitely true in this area of life.

And God indicates that the binding of ourselves to His Word is always for our good. I want you to believe it because God said it is true. But I also want you to experience it.picture of a Bible - to which we are bound as Christians

At a Pastor’s Conference, Seminary President Al Mohler said:

We are bound by God’s Word.

We are in the midst of a culture that is embracing and accelerating sexual immorality and the whole general environment of immorality. It is becoming institutionalized, and it is celebrating rebellion against the Word of God.

And yet here we are, bound by the Word of God.

Does your congregation know that you as a pastor are bound by Scripture? Do they understand that there are things you must preach simply because God has revealed these things in His Word?

Does your congregation feel bound by Scripture? Do your church members understand that when Scripture speaks, God speaks? And that when God speaks, it is the voice of God? And that they are bound by it?

The Bible is the very Word of God, and it binds me for my benefit.

And as a believer you are also restricted and restrained by Scripture – tied to think, speak, and act in ways that God commands in it.

I hope that you will set your heart to love being bound by God’s Word – because it is a binding that is for your good.

Is there any command(s) from God’s Word that was hard for you to obey at the moment, but now you realize that obeying it was good for you?

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Categories
Christian Living

Good Books versus Great Books. What Else Should I Read?

There are many books out there. Some of them are worthless and just plain bad. But others are good. And some can even be classified as great books. The first one you need to know about is the Most Important Book ever written. You can read about it in my post from earlier this week. But After reading the Most Important Book, what else should you read?

A photo of a wall of books, symbolizing the need for us to read great books
And I thought I had a lot of books!

There is plenty of junk out there to fill your time. If you are going to read, shouldn’t you want to read great books that can have an enormous impact on your thinking and on your life?

Charlie Jones: “You will be the same person you are today in five years but for two things:
1) the people you meet and
2) the books you read.”

So, follow the advice of Henry David Thoreau:
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

There are bad books,
decent books,
good books, and
great books.

However, even if we throw out the bad and decent books, there are still so many good books that we can’t get to them all. Life is too short for me to spend it reading only good books. I want to read the great ones.
So what would those be?

Some great resources from Christianity Today for finding Great Books to consider:
The 100 Christian Books of the Century
The Top 50 Books that Have Shaped Evangelicals
CT’s Yearly Book Award List
These are some great places to start.

I have been going through those first two lists the past few years and have enjoyed reading many of them. Some of my favorites have been:

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Rosalind Rinker, Prayer: Conversing With God
J. I. Packer, Knowing God
Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Catherine Marshall, Christy
Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place
Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial
Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and into the World

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” –Haruki Murakami

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t just read good books (and certainly don’t read bad or decent books).
Go for the great ones.

Read great books, because:
“The things you read will fashion you by slowly conditioning your mind.” –A. W. Tozer

What books have you read would you consider putting into the “great books” category?

Categories
Bible

The Most Important Book You Could Ever Read

The Most Important Book you could ever read is one that has influenced more people over more time than any other book in existence. It has influenced more literature, more morals, and more life-changes than any other book ever written. And of course, you know I am talking about the Bible.

The Bible is the most widely-read book. It is the best-selling book of all time. It remains the best-selling book every year. It has influenced literature, history, and lives. I won’t go into all the reasons for trusting the reliability of the Bible, but many skeptics have done so and have discovered the Bible to be the reliable document that Christianity has claimed it to be for 2000 years. There are many good apologetics websites (and people) that can help guide someone who wants to study more in this area. The ministries of Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, and Ravi Zacharias are all great places to start.
picture of the Bible - the Most Important Book ever written
I’m going to assume that you believe that the Bible is God’s Word to humanity to reveal Himself to us. That makes the Bible the Most Important Book you could ever read. The question is, “Are you spending any time reading this Most Important Book?”

I continue talking about the importance of reading the Bible to people around me, including my church family. But for some people, the idea of delving into the Bible seems a bit daunting.

I’m not quite sure why we have this feeling of inadequacy. Certainly, many of us read multiple novels, autobiographies, and history books over the course of a year. Adding up all the pages for most people will probably exceed the number of pages in the Bible. But perhaps you want a bit more hard data on what it takes to read the Most Important Book …

Well, most of us read at about the same rate that it takes to read out loud. So an audio Bible program that tells us how many hours it lasts will give us the amount of time it takes to speak the entire Bible out loud. The ESV audio Bible is just under 75 hours. An NIV one I saw was just over 79 hours. If we divide these out by 365 days, then that is between 12.3 and 13 minutes per day to read through the whole Bible.

Do you have 13 minutes a day this next year to learn what God has to say to you from His Word?
Do you have 13 minutes a day to read from the Most Important Book ever written?

Or if you haven’t read the New Testament through before, then how about making that your plan for this year? If you would give 5.5 minutes a day, you’d read through the entire New Testament in 6 months!

Isn’t that remarkable? That if you’d commit to six minutes a day, you could read through the entire New Testament twice in a year!

If you have never read the New Testament, it is time to do it. Start today!
And if you have already read the complete New Testament but you haven’t yet completed the whole Bible, then make the commitment to give 13 minutes a day to hear directly from God as you read His Inspired Word!

You won’t be sorry that you spent time studying the Most Important Book ever written.

.

Categories
Bible

How do you know that what you are hearing and being taught is truth?

In my previous post I shared that I had received this question:
How can a person know that what they are hearing and being taught is truth?
I also asked you to consider how you would have responded. But here is the response I sent to them:

My simple answer to your question is this:
Through time in God’s Word studying and meditating on the meaning of the Scriptures.

We can say… “Well many people are reading the Bible and getting different ideas.”
But I would actually disagree with that premise. I believe that a straightforward reading of the scriptures leads a majority of us all to the same place (at least on the major matters).
a photo of the front cover of a Bible, reminding us that truth is within its pages
It would take a lot of linguistic acrobatics to say that the sin of lying, adultery, homosexuality, murder, or theft is okay in God’s eyes. In fact, a straightforward reading of the Word does not leave any room for doubt for any of these issues. It would be difficult to read the New Testament and not be able to say that Jesus loves us and calls us to love others. It would take even more linguistic acrobatics to say that many roads lead to heaven. A straightforward reading of the New Testament does not leave room for any way but one: faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. Any honest reader of the Bible will come to these same clear ideas. That is why we have can have solidarity among denominations among the essentials of the faith, while still having differences regarding church governance and worship style practices.

But what about those things that have changed in church practice, such as dancing or the use of alcohol? Again, I think that by us not taking a straightforward approach to such items, we have come up with differing views at different times. A straightforward approach to the Word does not condemn dancing. David danced before the Lord as they moved the Ark into Jerusalem. A straightforward approach does not condemn drinking, though it clearly does warn against the sin of drunkenness.

A straightforward approach allowed Martin Luther to read the Word and discover that many of the practices by the Catholic Church were not biblically-based. This same honest approach allows me to read the same Word hundreds of years later and agree with a German on the major issues.

So, How do we know? We have to read it for ourselves and allow God to show us His truth. If we are not willing to spend time reading it ourselves, then we will be in danger of being led astray by those who are doing linguistic and intellectual acrobatics to have the Word say what they want it to say. Most Pastors of solid churches, no matter the denomination, are all saying the same things due to a straightforward reading of the Word. When you hear someone who is not… Beware! They very likely will say things that “tickle” the ears and sound good, because doing so makes more of what we do as sinful humans permissible!

Adrian Rogers said, “We don’t need a new and a modern gospel for a new and a modern age. Friend, if it’s new it’s not true.”

Ha! Exactly right – If it’s new, it’s not true. And if it’s true, then it’s not new! It has been in the Bible for about 2000 years or more!

The Bible hasn’t changed since the moment it was penned. The primary understanding of its doctrines also hasn’t changed. The way some do mental acrobatics to change the meaning to fit their sins… that continues to change with the times!

Categories
Bible

Does Reading the Bible Have Any Value?

“Does Reading the Bible Have Any Value?”
  by brian rushing

“They tell us that the Bible is the Word of God… a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. They tell us that we shall find within it the knowledge of God and his will for our lives….

“So we take our Bibles and start to read them… because we really do want to know God. But as we read, we get more and more puzzled. Though fascinated, we are not being fed. Our reading is not helping us; it leaves us bewildered and, if the truth be told, somewhat depressed. We find ourselves wondering whether Bible reading is worth going on with.
photo of person reading the Bible symbolizing the question - does reading the Bible have any value? Is it important?
“It is all intensely interesting, but it all seems very far away. It all belongs to that ancient world, not to this world. We feel that we are, so to speak, on the outside of the Bible world, looking in. We are mere spectators, and that is all. Our unspoken thought is — “Yes, God did all that then, and very wonderful it was for the people involved, but how does it touch us now? We don’t live in the same world.

“How can the record of God’s words and deeds in Bible times, the record of his dealings with Abraham and Moses and David and the rest, help us, who have to live in modern times?”

Have you ever felt like this? Dr. Packer explains exactly how I have felt at times. That as I read God’s Word, I have certainly thought that there were portions of the Bible that were rich and wonderful, but there were also portions that were dry and tedious and puzzling. And many times it got me frustrated and discouraged and therefore I’d just stop reading the Bible.

But what I have learned is two-fold. 1st – Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, one of my favorite quotes about life is about the hard stuff in life: “”It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” (From the movie, “A League of Their Own”). So I’ve learned to press on even in the hard spots of reading God’s Word. And as I do so (with the help of Bible commentary to assist me in difficult spots), I find that it isn’t as hard as I once thought, and even the “puzzling parts” become less tedious.

2nd – I’ve learned that I should come back to the parts that I most enjoy when I start getting frustrated. The four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tell us the story of Jesus. This is our “meat and potatoes” and anytime I start getting bogged down in the Old Testament, instead of allowing my Bible reading to become frustrating or discouraging, I simply stop reading that portion for a while and go back to the “meat and potatoes.” Then after a few days or weeks, I go back to where I left off in the difficult spot, and I have a new attitude about reading it.

The more we read God’s Word – and ALL of God’s Word – the more we understand that it all works together – it is all God’s revealing Himself and His story to us. It should amaze us. It should excite us. It should direct us. It is the most important book ever written. We should give serious attention to it. Yes, there are places where it might seem hard – but as we spend more time with it, we find that we even enjoy the hard parts, because as we study them, we learn more about who our great God is.

Dr. Packer summarizes our lack of attention to the Bible by saying: “It is feared that many today who profess to be Christ’s never learn wisdom, through failure to attend sufficiently to God’s written Word. . . . How long is it since you read right through the Bible? Do you spend as much time with the Bible each day as you do even with the newspaper? What fools some of us are! And we remain fools all our lives, simply because we will not take the trouble to do what has to be done to receive the wisdom which is God’s free gift.”

Take some time today to stop reading all the other stuff beside your chair, on your desk, or on your phone or tablet for a little while, so that you can pick up God’s Word. If you are not sure where to start, go to the gospel book of Mark. It is a fast-paced account of Jesus. Take time to start digesting the very Word of God to you. It truly is worth it!


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)