“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.
“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)
