We are currently in a message series called Believe. Next week we will look at Worship — but I wanted to point out that these three actions: Worship, Prayer, & Bible Study, really are at the centre of our relationship with God.
Last week we looked at a day in the life of Jesus to see about prayer. I want to do something very similar today, but not as the entire message — just a brief survey of how the bible intersected with Jesus — how we see that Jesus knew the bible and that he understood it.
Our first encounter with the Jesus story is all about the fulfillment of scripture. They way the bible is quoted and used in those early chapters of Matthew and Luke assumes that the author is familiar with both the content and authority of the Bible. Jesus’ encounter with the devil in the temptation narrative is actually a story about misuse of the bible (devil) and proper use of the bible (Jesus). There is a lot more going on in that story — all Jesus’ quotes come from Deuteronomy in the wandering narrative — where Israel — God’s son — lacked faith in God and his promise. Jesus was the obedient and faithful son as he faced his temptation in the desert.
Jesus’ first sermon he takes a scroll and finds his place and reads from Isaiah. There is a sense of familiarity that we see as Jesus reads the scroll. Look at our key bible Text today:
For the word of God is alive 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. Hebrews 4:12, NIV
The more we read about Jesus words and interaction with others the more it becomes obvious that this is exactly how Jesus thought about the bible. We need to learn from him. We need to …
Study the Bible! Experience the change!
Let look at how we can take seriously that the bible is God’s word to us, that it is alive and active and helps us discern the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
First, we need to…
Read it!
If you’ve been coming here for a while, you know this is not an original idea . . . it has been said many, many times before. We need to read God’s word — and I would include listening to God’s word for those who find reading a bit painful or if you have health reasons that make reading difficult. When I say “read it” what I’m really saying is that you need to take what is in the Bible and get it into your head and into your heart. That is the goal. If you are reading it and thinking about baking muffins or balancing your budget you are not achieving the goal even though you are technically reading it.
Just like prayer, Just like worship, Bible study is about God relating to us. It’s not about us. It is not about having more knowledge, it is not about knowing the geography of the Holy Land, it is not about understanding the ancient culture and languages used at that time — all of this helps — but the main point — the most important point — is God speaking into us his wisdom and his ways.
If that is going to happen we need to use a version of the bible that we can understand. It needs to be at our reading level and that’s a very personal decision. The only thing I would say is that it should be a translation and not an all-out paraphrase. In a sense all translation is paraphrase but a version like the NLT or the new NIV are great for studying. For general reading, I have always enjoyed the Good News Bible — but again it’s personal. Find something you will actually enjoy reading.
A few years ago, I bought the TNIV on CDs so I could listen in the car. It has multiple readers and I have enjoyed it very much. When I was in college, I bought a dramatized NIV new testament on cassette tapes — yes for those who thought CD’s were old — I had a cassette tape player. But it was a very powerful reading the NT with multiple voiced parts in the Gospels and Acts — it was excellent. I would listen when I was mowing the lawn or doing household chores. It was amazing.
I still remember the day when I was mowing the lawn trying to think of a passage to preach on for Father’s day and I heard 1Thess 2:11-12.
1 Thessalonians 2:11–12 (NRSV)
11 As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, 12 urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
I was a new dad, I was a new pastor and the weight of having something to say every single week was weighing me down — and then I heard this. It was more than a Father’s day message it was a message to me about my real goals of pastoring. I was letting the burden of a weekly message take my focus when what should have taken my focus was doing all I could to urge and encourage the church to lead a life worthy of God because it is his kingdom and his glory that ultimately mattered. Standing here week after week with something to say is still hard — but it is a lot easier now because God’s word to me that day. And I heard it mowing the lawn because I got a bible on tape. Now you can listen online for free. Bibles are available online for free. Access is easier now. But we still need to take the time and let God speak to us.
Maybe you read the bible but needs some help applying it to your life. Devotional materials can help us take that extra step. The Bible app is free and has lots of devotional materials for us. There are other apps out there as well. Olive Tree has a bible app and lots of free books and materials that can help us apply God’s word to our lives.
Reading the bible is the beginning, reading with devotional helps even better, but if we are going to follow Jesus on this — and really take seriously the message of Hebrews 4:12 — we need to The second thing I would want to …
Go deeper!
We need to go deeper in God’s word. We need to do more than just read it and hear nice stories about other people applying it, we need to actually study God’s word.
Jesus was a carpenter and he knew the Bible. In fact, before we say “that was Jesus, he was the son of God” we need to realize that every Jewish child — from the time they are babies until adolescence are trained in the Bible by their parents and by their community of faith. What we see as extraordinary was actually quite normal for Jewish people. Even today, Jewish children go to Hebrew school after regular school to learn the language of their bible — the same Bible Jesus had in his day and what we now call the Old Testament.
I used to do carpentry. My dad is a carpenter, my grandfather was a carpenter. . .it was a default choice for me. I used to help my dad, work on the jobsite and see how things were done. When I was a kid, I would clean the yard, sweep the floors, stack lumber, organize stuff, all the while watching the others do their work. Later when I worked as an apprentice with my uncle — my dad’s brother — he gave me some great advice. Spend a little more to buy quality tools. If you buy the cheaper stuff, you’ll end up replacing it over and over. I worked with a guy who heard the same advice but he always went for the cheap stuff. Cheap block planes, cheap utility knives, cheap squares — I say all those things in the plural because just like my uncle predicated, he replaced those items repeatedly. But before they broke — they produced bad results. He had to do more work fixing the problems his low-quality tools created. Softer steel used on his block plane would get nicks on it and eventually score the surface of the wood. My Stanley plane never did that. Hard steel, blade stayed sharp, always did what I wanted it to.
The same is true for the tools we use to understand the bible. If we use low-quality tools, we will have a low-quality understanding. A poor understanding will lead us to apply the bible to our lives in ways that God never intended. You can see how that can be a problem. The thing is, when it comes to bible study, high quality tools does not mean expensive or even new — it just means high calibre. The works of John Wesley or Jonathan Edwards are still full of treasures all these years later — even though they are old and even free online. There are great commentaries that are free online. For the person who likes the feel of a paper book — there are lots of bargains on high quality tools.
We also should listen to good teachers of the Bible. They have done their work and they are sharing their harvest of knowledge and wisdom with the church. Tim Keller has free podcast messages. The apologist Ravi Zacharias has free content online. The philosopher and scholar William Lane Craig puts his Sunday school class online — which is more like a university class really — but some people are ready for that level of engagement about biblical ideas. BiblicalTraining.ORG has lots of materials available at the higher end and the internet is teeming with far more content than we could ever listen to in a single lifetime. Pick a good teacher and start listening.
Most importantly, studying God’s word helps us to hear the author. The human author of the text — with their language and culture built into the communication as it is in all communication. But when we see through that, we hear the divine author. We hear the message from God.
Let me give a simple example. The phrase ‘evil eye” in English means a hateful look. If someone gives you the evil eye, it means they are angry with you for some reason. It is our default understanding and we don’t even think about it. But with Jesus, evil eye means nothing like that at all. It means to lack generosity. Jesus uses it in the parable of the laborers to describe the attitude of the all-day workers getting the same pay as the last minute workers — they were stingy whereas the owner was generous. Jesus uses it in a list of sins that eat away our souls in Mk 7:22 and he uses it again in Matt 6:22 just before talking about not being able to serve both God and money. The evil eye is different for Semitic cultures than western culture. Going deeper shows us this.
When we choose to go deeper, we make a decision for life change. The more deeply we understand the Word of God, the more opportunity we create in our lives for God to shape us and steer us. We create more handles for God to grab hold of.
The danger in all of Christian life is ourselves and our subjective thinking. Everything can become “all about me.” Our default is to go into ourselves — to rationalize our behaviour or thinking. The answer to this is going deeper in his word. Doing hard work of study so God’s word is part of your thinking.
First we study the Bible then we let the Bible study us.
At some point need to become teachable people. We need to allow the work of God’s word to happen in us. Let’s look at that key text one more time:
For the word of God is alive 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. Hebrews 4:12, NIV
The danger in all of Christian life is ourselves and our subjective thinking. Everything can become all about us. Maybe you are hurting emotionally. Maybe you have suffered abuse. Maybe you are just learning something about yourself that is ugly and hard to accept. Our default is to go into ourselves and to rationalize our behaviour but we have a choice for a new experience.
The Social Critic, Neil Postman once said that popular culture tells us what we want to hear but God tells us what we need to hear and they are not always the same thing.
Without going deeper in God’s word, by studying it and listening to good teachers, we just go on our own intuition which will lead us to the same experiences of disappointment, creating an itch for something more, something better. God wants something better for us but we will never get there on our own. We need to go deeper with God and part of that is going deeper into his word.
Our goal is to see things from God’s point of view –
“It is a dangerous thing to live your life without a spiritual “plumb line,” or standard, by which you determine right from wrong. God’s Word is that plumb line…God established absolute moral and spiritual laws that we are free to ignore, but we do so at our own peril. These laws are timeless. Culture does not supersede them. Circumstances do not abrogate them. God’s laws are eternal, and they will save you from death if you follow them.” ― Henry T. Blackaby, “Experiencing God Day By Day
Our goal is spiritual transformation
The ultimate goal of knowing God’s word is becoming more like Jesus. Jesus said to the leading Bible scholars of his day:
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39–40, NIV)
This is the great warning Jesus gives to us. For those who love to do Bible Study — it’s meant to lead you to follow Jesus.
If there is one thing we know from watching Jesus at work with his disciples — not just the 12 but Mary, Martha, Lazarus, Zacchaeus and the rest, following Jesus means changed lives.
We look to the Bible but not to get ideas from what people did for God. We look to see what God did in peoples’ lives.” ― Henry T. Blackaby, Hearing God’s Voice
Studying the bible has as its goal to know God better, to hear his voice more clearly, to love him more, and to follow his one and only Son who was sent into this world for us.
We want to study the Bible not so we can just know it but to allow it into our hearts and souls — or as Paul describes it…
18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18, NIV)
God’s word is alive and active