Why Should I No.3 Read the Bible

Psalm 22 verses 1 to 21. God, God, my God, why did you dump me miles from nowhere? Doubled up with pain, I call to God all the day long. No answer, nothing.

I keep at it all night, tossing and turning. And you, are you indifferent, above it all, leaning back on the cushions of Israel's praise? We know you were there for our parents. They cried for your help and you gave it.

They trusted and lived a good life. And here I am, a nothing, an earthworm, something to step on and squash. Everyone pokes fun at me, they make faces at me, they shake their heads.

Let's see how Yahweh handles this one. Since God likes him so much, let him help him. And to think, you were midwife at my birth, setting me at my mother's breast.

When I left the room, you cradled me. Since the moment of birth, you've been my God. Then you moved away and trouble moved in next door.

I need a neighbour. Herds of bulls come at me, the raging bull stampede. Horns lowered, nostrils flaring, like a herd of buffalo on the move.

I'm a bucket, kicked over and spilt. Every joint in my body has been pulled apart. My heart is a blob of melted wax in my gut.

I'm dry as a bone, my tongue black and swollen. They have laid me out for burial in the dirt. Now, packs of wild dogs come at me, thugs gang up on me.

They pin me down, hand and foot, and lock me in a cage. A bag of bones in a cage, stared at by every passerby. They take my wallet and the shirt off my back, and then throw dice for my clothes.

You, Yahweh, don't put off my rescue. Hurry and help me. Don't let them cut my throat.

Don't let these mongrels devour me. If you don't show up soon, I'm done for. Gored by the bulls, meat for the lions.

Father, we thank you for your grace. Grace wondrous, rich, of quality, not purchasable by any human currency, but freely bestowed through Jesus our Lord. Many things you have given.

A world for us to live in. Eyesight for us, the majority, to behold the beauty of nature. Ears and hearing for most of us, to be moved by the marvels of music.

But most of all, Lord, you've given us your Son. And he has given us his Spirit. And by the grace of the Trinity, you have entrusted into our keeping the very oracles of God, the holy scriptures.

We thank you for them, and for the lavishness of your generosity. Amen. Amen.

Let's turn in God's word once more to the book of Psalms. And here is the psalmist in the 119th Psalm, and he's sketching out something of his convictions in life. And he's not an old man.

Some of the psalmists were old. David, in the 37th Psalm, was obviously a pensioner. But it seems as though here's a man in his middle years who looks back upon his earlier years, and in the ninth verse, he puts up a question.

This is Psalm 119. Let's read it together, those verses from that little section. If you've got the NIV, then stay the course with me.

Psalm 119, verse 9. How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands.

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, O Lord. Teach me your decrees.

With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in your precepts. As one rejoices in great riches, I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.

I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your word. Then flip over to the 105th verse, where you find the words.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. Together, just that verse. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

My friend Tom, he actually lives in Cyprus. He used to live in the Lebanon, and he was in charge of the Bible Society of Lebanon, and for a number of reasons he had to quit a rather dangerous situation in the Lebanon some years ago. But never a man to trade one difficult situation for an easy one, he decides to go to Saudi Arabia, where they do not exactly welcome evangelical Christians as they get off the plane with a stack of Bibles under their arms.

But Tom, persistent man that he is, on one occasion finds himself in that land which has the claim that there are no national Christians at all. And he smiles when he listens to that claim on the radio because he's actually been invited into Saudi Arabia by Christians who are Saudi Arabians. They meet secretly, and they want to be taught by a mature man.

He's mature, so he goes. On one occasion, however, he's going by a little village, and from the village itself comes an old man. He's not seen the man before.

My friend Tom, he always takes every opportunity to get the Word of God, particularly into the Middle East, and by the Word of God I mean a Bible. And he's got several Bibles tucked in his knapsack. And this old man comes along, spots Tom, points to him, and not only points to him but points to his knapsack.

And Tom opens his bag and gives this man an Arabic version of the Scriptures. Tom told me that the man took the book, kissed it passionately, and then started to cry. All his years he had wanted a copy of the Scriptures.

He'd heard about the Scriptures through reading the Koran, that is the holy book of the Muslims, which from time to time do make reference to the Scriptures as we know them, the Bible. So here you've got this extraordinary situation of a man weeping with joy only a couple of years ago in Saudi Arabia because my friend Tom has got the Scriptures to him. I wonder to what degree you treasure your Bible.

I wonder to what extent you know how many people, hundreds, probably thousands, have given their lives so that you might have in your possession or certainly within your purchasing power a copy of the Word of God. There was a man who lived some years ago, many years ago actually. He rejoiced in the name of Diocletian.

Diocletian was an emperor, and he lived in the third century. He believed that he was God. There are a number of emperors like that.

He'd been preceded by a guy called Heliogablus, who was as nutty as they come, and I think they'd have turned him down at a mental hospital here today. But these kings, these emperors, they pretended and to some degree they were reckoned to be by their subjects God. Now Diocletian didn't like the idea that the Christian church was so growing in influence that it looked as though his position was in jeopardy, so he made a decree that all the Bibles would have to be burned and that the name of Diocletian and not the name of Jesus Christ would be paramount.

Now I dare say that there's only probably six people here in this audience. I don't insult you, but I guess that only a handful of people will ever have heard of Diocletian, but you have all heard of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the Bible and the Christian message is so important that down the centuries there have been many, many attempts to eradicate the Bible from the face of the earth, many efforts to snuff out the name of Jesus, and yet today the Bible is still the best seller and the name of Jesus is known by more people now than it ever has throughout the whole of history.

Why is it important to honour the Bible? Some years back, Time magazine took a leading article and entitled it, Why Have Two Thousand Years Gone By and God Has Not Yet Spoken? Or, Why Has He Not Spoken for Two Thousand Years? to quote them more accurately. And the fact is that the Time magazine or the editor was revealing his own failure to appreciate that God has spoken, that God is speaking, and as long as the human story continues, God will speak to men and women, and He will speak in three differing ways, the last of which is, along with the second, perhaps more important than the first. I want us to see by the way of some overhead illustrations this evening, the thrust of the points that I want to bring to you, as first of all we look at the question, why should I read the Bible? Why should I read the Bible? And I remind you of what I've just said, that God has chosen to speak to our world through at least three main ways.

And the first way in which God has spoken to us is through the world that He has made. Psalm 8, not Psalm 10, talks about the handiwork of God. If you don't believe in God, the Bible has only one word for you, idiot.

I mean the Bible doesn't pull its punches, it just says that it's only the fool who doesn't believe in God. When I was a schoolteacher trying to persuade young lads in Tottenham that vulgar fractions could look decent if they understood their arithmetic, if they understood their algebra properly, sometimes in my class before I actually went in in the morning, a lad would come and clean the board. Occasionally, he would take the chalk and write something or draw something on the board, especially if I wanted something prepared for being placed on the board, to be placed on the board before my lesson.

Now, my boys weren't the brightest of lads by any means. I mean ours was a blackboard jungle school. But not one of those lads would have been daft enough had he come somewhat late into the classroom and seen the board to come to the conclusion that somehow the chalk had developed an ability to fly through the air and to write letters or to draw a picture.

They knew that if there was writing, there must have been a writer. If there was a drawing, there must have been an artist. And the Bible believes that the majority of people are competent enough to realize that from the world that is, is evidence of God who is behind it.

So, when the Apostle Paul couples his argument with that of the psalmist, as he does in Romans 1 and verse 20, he says that men and women are totally without scuse. If they live in a way which is annoying to God, because not only is there the revelation of God in nature, but every man, every woman has an understanding of what is basically right and wrong. You have a conscience.

And that's another way in which God reveals Himself in some measure to us. But an even more wonderful one is when God sent Jesus into this world and He showed Himself as being more than just an ordinary man. The Bible puts it in John's Gospel in chapter 1 and verse 14, that God became flesh and dwelt amongst us.

On one occasion, one of the friends of Jesus says, look, we've got a problem. You talk a lot about God the Father. If only we'd seen Him.

And Jesus said, I've been so long with you, and you didn't realize that the closeness to me and God is such that, well, you could say, He who has seen me has seen the Father. Jesus comes into the world to fill out the natural revelation that we have of God in nature and in conscience. So, God speaks to us through the world He created and through the Son who He has sent, His Son who eventually died such an awful death on the cross for your sins and for my sins.

But, and this is, of course, the main thrust of our gathering in terms of its emphasis this evening, God has spoken to us through the book that He has given. Thus the psalmist says that God's Word is a light and a lamp. And the Apostle Paul, when he's speaking about the whole of the Bible as he then knew it, the major, indeed, all the books of the Old Testament and the beginning of the circulation of the Gospels and some of the letters, he says all Scripture is God-breathed.

All Scripture has at the back of it, as its authority, permeating it, the breath of God, the inspiration of God. John Wesley was a great man. He founded the Methodist Church.

Of course, you knew that. Actually, the Methodist Church was part of the Anglican Church all the way throughout the years of Wesley's life. It only split from the Anglican Church later on.

Now, Wesley was a wonderful man, a wonderful preacher. He used to move around England on horseback. Sometimes his horse would get sick and he'd pray for his horse.

I mean, he couldn't always get another one. And what do you do? Well, what do you do if your motorcar gets stuck and you're not a mechanic? I know many people who've prayed that their car somehow, in God's grace, will go. Occasionally, it has happened.

Otherwise, they've contacted John Kennard, who doesn't give me any advertising revenues for telling you that Cedar Garage is pretty good. John Wesley, he, on one occasion, was speaking not about his horse. He was speaking about the Bible.

And he says, there is one book where God has revealed himself to the world. There is one book that speaks to my heart. There is one book that feeds my soul.

Oh, give me that book. There is none other like it. Why should I read the Bible? Because it's the way in which God has ensured that you can always tap into His voice.

And hear, therefore, what He is saying. Why should I read the Bible? Let's move on. Not just why read it, but what's in it? What is this book that we call the Bible? Well, it's got 66 books in it.

It's actually a sort of library because it contains two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the Old Testament has got 39 different books in it, beginning at Genesis and finishing at Malachi, and nine times three happens to be 27, which is the number of books in the New Testament, commencing with the Gospels and finishing with that magnificent book, the Revelation. And when you read the Old Testament, you find the most exciting narratives, better plots, better drama, better love stories than the majority of the stuff that you get in English literature today.

Not only is the narrative, but there's poetry, there's psalms that we've already heard, read and dramatically portrayed to us this evening. And beyond that, there are the prophetical books in the Old Testament, which speak incidentally about most remarkable things that have happened in history, but at the time of writing they were future. And as those prophecies were fulfilled, so the Bible began to glow with an inner authority, an inner witness as to its accuracy.

And when you move into the New Testament, you find more or less the same thing. You've got the narratives, the Gospels, they tell you four accounts of the life of Jesus, and they all give a little bit more knowledge, another facet of insight into who He was and what He did and how He lived and what He taught, and the nature of the salvation which He has brought into the world. You go into the Acts of the Apostles, you get more narrative, you get more history, and then you move on and you get the letters, you write letters.

Well, they wrote letters in those days, then they were quite long, and they wrote them by hand, and so you've got the letters of Paul and John and Peter and Jude and so forth, and then you finish up, as I say, with that prophetical book which we call the book of Revelation. And whenever you look in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, you find again that statement made by Paul as he's writing to a young man who's a theological student who also has been his pastoral assistant, Timothy, and Paul says, you know, wherever you go in the Bible, you find that you can only answer the question, how did this book come about? By supplying the conclusion. It came about through God, through God what? Through God using the minds, speaking His Word through men and women, and in such a fashion is the miracle of operation allowed to happen, that what these men and women wrote down is without error as they originally gave it.

As the babe in Mary's womb was without sin, so the Bible, when just in the minds of men and women as it is being written down, is authoritative, without error, and of such a miraculous quality that whether you're reading it in the third century during the persecution of Diocletian, or whether you're back in the eighth century B.C., the times of the old prophets of Hosea and Amos, or whether you're into the Reformation, or whether you're in the twentieth century and you're a twelve-year-old lad whose father's moved from Parkston near Bournemouth and come to Worthing, you will discover that this book has something to say to you. It really is quite remarkable the way in which the Bible speaks to men and women, boys and girls, in the East, in the West, in the first century, in the twentieth century. But let's move on quickly.

Why believe the Bible? One of the great men of the twentieth century is Billy Graham. We thank the Lord for that outstanding man, this great American who has probably preached, or most definitely preached, to more people than any other man who has ever lived. In his seventies, coping with Parkinson's disease, knocked down but not knocked out.

Now, I remember Billy Graham when he was just in his thirties, when he first came to London, to Haringey in North London, and he became very famous because, well, he was always thumping the Bible, and he really didn't impress the Archbishop of Canterbury in those days by being so dogmatic about the Bible. The Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says, and Graham would just pour through his as he walked up and down the rostrum at Haringey, calling British people, Londoners, to repent and to acknowledge that what the Bible says is relevant to London in the 1950s. Well, how do you know that the Bible is relevant? Why believe the Bible? Well, why do you believe anybody? I mean, somebody comes to you this evening and they say, you know, when I came to the tab tonight, I very nearly had an accident.

Somebody pulled out of a driveway and I was just going along, I was keeping the law, I was quite vigilant, but it was a very narrow escape. Why would you believe that? Well, I suggest you believe the person because you knew that that is a man or a woman of integrity. I just pull out an illustration.

It's not particularly important in terms of the illustration, but the principle is the claims that you make. Well, don't you see, this book makes its own claim. You start to read in the New Testament and you discover that when our Lord Jesus is on earth, He quotes no other book but the Old Testament.

Have you observed that about Jesus? You see, John Major will quote many another authority and rightly so. So do all the lecturers and the philosophers and you folks who go to school, your teachers, they're quoting constantly other people. Jesus never did.

He only quoted the Old Testament. And when you read the Old Testament, what do you find as the most repetitive phrase? Thus says the Lord. Thus says the Lord.

It's not the language of debate. It's not the language of the discussion of ITV or BBC. When the Bible speaks, it dogmatizes.

And when Jesus comes onto the earth, He quotes from the Old Testament and occasionally He will add to the Old Testament teaching. And He does so again in a repetitive phrase, which is very revealing. If you work from the authorized version, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Amen, Amen.

This is what Moses says. Now, this is what I say. And throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, whether you're in the historical books or the epistles of the Apostle Paul, you will find that indication that the Bible is presenting itself as a book of facts, as a book to be obeyed.

The Bible makes such a claim for itself, and it has the testimony of Jesus to support it. And what's more, it stood the test of time. The Apostle Paul is in jail, and he writes to that young pastoral assistant, Timothy.

And he says, Timothy, I've not got my freedom anymore. He says, here I am. And Paul was a man of the wide open spaces.

He must often have felt the claustrophobia. You ever read the book of Terry Waite and how he coped in Beirut? Can you imagine a man of six foot eight on one occasion compressed into the space of a deep freezer and taken throughout Beirut and then eventually when released to be in a darkened small room again for a long, long period? Well, Paul had something similar in principle to that experience. And he says, Timothy, I don't have my freedom, but the Word of God is not bound.

The Word of God is not bound. And they really have tried to shackle it down the centuries. I've given you a couple of illustrations.

I could have given you far more. But you see, you cannot cage the Bible. In fact, in one sense, the more persecution there's been, the more attempts there have been to suppress the Bible, the more its message is percolated.

Oh, I can't just demonstrate that to you in terms of history. I can give it to you in terms of modern events. Where has a church grown the most rapidly in the whole history of Christendom? And the answer is in China.

Is a Bible freely available in China? No. Move outside of Peking in Shanghai and the further north you get, the more rare copies of the Bible are. And yet the church is mushroomed.

And it's to the eternal credit of the Far East Broadcasting Corporation that when they beam their message into China from the Philippines, they read the Bible at dictation speed. So that those peasant people in North China can write down the gospels and circulating today in China are handwritten copies of the New Testament. But why if this book is so old-fashioned? Why if it's all old hat? Why has it stood the test of time? Pardon the repetition as far as some of you are concerned, if your memory is good.

Richard Crossman was a great Labour politician. He's brought up in the Brethren Assemblies, but he cut loose of his evangelicalism at an early age in his life. And on one occasion, and he says this in his diaries, on one occasion a parliamentarian from the Socialist Party has died and Michael Foote, he's invited to conduct the funeral.

And Crossman says, I listened to Michael, he was sincere, but what he had to say was so, was so anemic. And I thought to myself, Michael, sit down and let somebody who knows how to do this do it. You see, whatever book you quote from on social philosophy, whatever reference work you try to bring some illumination from, there is no book that speaks to the phenomenon of death like the Bible.

Sit down, Michael, and let somebody who knows what they're talking about speak. I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. There are so many promises in the Word of God which speak to the whole gamut of life from birth to marriage to death. The Bible has stood the test of history, and what's more, it has a continuing impact.

Billy Graham, the world has no argument against a life changed by conversion to Jesus Christ. We thank God there are dozens and dozens of people here in the Taft Sanctuary this evening for whom the message of the Bible that Jesus came into the world to take their sins upon himself so that his righteousness may be credited to their account. Many here could testify to the transforming power that that simple message has had as the Holy Spirit has come into their heart and began that work of transformation.

That's why a young man suffering from dyslexia or something approximating to that can come into the Taft 26, 27 years ago and be so enthused by what he hears that he can do something now that he couldn't do before. He has such a desire to read the Bible. How do you explain that sort of tenacity? Well, the answer is the power that there is in the Word of God, the compelling, attractive power of Jesus and his Word.

So finally, how to read the Bible. How do you read it? Well, you could do what John Wimber did when he first confessed Jesus as Lord. He bought himself a brand-new authorized version of the Bible because he thought that everybody read black-covered authorized versions of the Bible, and he opened it up, and by chance it fell open at Ezekiel.

Well, you can read through Ezekiel for starters if you like, but it's not the book that most of us would advise a young convert to read straightaway, though it does contain some wonderful things. Read your Bible systematically. Read your Bible perhaps with the help of Scripture notes.

There are some on display, or you can order some in the foyer as you leave this evening. God always does things in a tidy manner, and that's how we should approach his book. That's how we should handle it.

Whatever scheme, whatever program helps you, stick to it and chew over the good that there is in this book. Read it prayerfully. You see, it was the Holy Spirit who wrote it, and you can contact him through prayer.

And the Bible is a unique book because it only reveals its secrets to those who know the author. That's why when Paul's writing to the Corinthians, he talks about carnally-minded people and spiritually-minded. By spiritually-minded, he doesn't mean that they're saints in terms of never done anything wrong.

He doesn't mean that they're great theologians in terms of being educated. He means that these are people who have come to the Lord, and they've confessed Jesus as Savior, and they're praying for the empowering of the Holy Ghost to help them to understand what they're reading. And there's nothing more wonderful than coming to a grasp of truth for yourself as you read the Word of God.

And then, finally, in the advice I give, read it contextually. Read just what the immediate passage has to say in order to interpret a verse. Don't try the lucky dip method.

When I was a lad, I was telling them this at the Frontiers Conference on Thursday. When I was a lad, they had a sort of evangelical equivalent to a box of chocolates. It was known as a promise box.

Some of you know what the promise boxes were. They looked like the honeycomb of a beehive, and each little scroll, when you pulled it out, contained a promise. And you got all the sugary promises of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, and what you did was you took one out and you read it, and that was your promise for the day.

Well, it was all right as far as it went, but it didn't go very far. Because, you see, the difficulty there is that you miss the context. I never did find in the promise box the statement, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

I mean, there were certain statements of Scripture that never got into the promise box, and you shouldn't have a promise box mentality. You cannot only read the Bible for yourself. Sometimes you have to read it against yourself, when it corrects you, when it exposes what is wrong in your life.

So read it contextually, maybe a chapter or so a day. Read it thoughtfully, read it prayerfully, read it on your knees, read it systematically, but read the Bible. And you will discover, as I conclude this evening, with the words of Charles Spurgeon, that God's word is like the wheat in the hands of an Egyptian mummy.

It had laid there for thousands of years, but men took that seed and sowed it, and the bearded wheat, that Spurgeonic language, the old rain, which has now become so common in our land, sprung up. So you take one of the promises of Scripture, 2,000 years old, and as it's planted in your heart and knows the blessing of the Spirit, it springs up and it brings forth fruit. So if you take the promise, if you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

The promise in this book, it can germinate, come to fruition in your life. Get the Bible, read the Bible, stay within the parameters of the Bible, and appreciate what Ian Land, who would have made a preacher any day, appreciate what he said when he made the analogy that the Bible is a manufacturer's instructions. God wants you to get the best out of life, and you do so by staying within the confines of the teaching of this book.

Why read the Bible? Because there's nothing else quite like it. Let's go to an old hymn. Standing on the promises of Christ my King, through eternal ages let his praises ring.

It's not in the supplement, it's not in mission praise. We dug it out from the archives, we blew off the cobwebs, and hopefully we've got it coming up on the overheads, and friends who are down on the extremes of the church here, let Gammage kindly pull off a music copy. Standing on the promises of Christ my King, through eternal ages let his praises ring.

Now Evelyn was playing this when she was a little girl, weren't you dear? Could you just play the melody through for us? Just to remind some of us who are a little younger. How many know it? That sorts the geriatrics out from the rest of them. Right, members of the Darby and Joan Club and everyone else, let's stand, and let's enjoy singing this.

Standing on the promises of Christ my King, through eternal ages let his praises ring. Standing on the promises of Christ my King. for Graham Kendrick and Chris Bowater.

You know, some of these old days, they really used to hammer these hymns out and thank God for the, seriously, for the testimony of the church and for the uncompromising message of the evangel, anchored to the rock, geared to the times. We're glad for what's new, but we're also grateful for the old trusted paths and the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. Next Sunday, we're going to enjoy coming around the table of the Lord, particularly on Sunday evenings, though not exclusively.

We're gonna be emphasizing our work amongst young people on Sunday night, and Nick Turnbull will be speaking about his vision for himself, individually, I'm not so sure how he'll handle it, but I'm sure he'll bring in his vision for our youngsters. And our vision as people who want to be the best for God. So be with us next Sunday.

Take notes and news, it gives you some great information to pray through on the third page. And Pam Hinderwill will give anyone information in regard to Bible reading notes that might help you as you attend to your own study of God's word. Now let's pray.

Father, we thank you for a good evening spent together. Praise you for fun. Praise you for the most serious aspects of this time.

Thank you because you're a good God, a faithful God. You speak to us, and whether we're young or whether we're old, you love us. Those of us who are older, we thank you for memory lane, for your faithfulness in the past.

And we covet for these young people your blessings to be upon them. Keep them from all the snares that there are in this life. Keep them looking unto Jesus, and discovering that within the old book and its prescription, there is the greatest of happinesses for them to enter into and experience constantly.

So may the blessings of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest and remain with you always. Amen. Good night, God bless.

God bless.