READING THE BIBLE FOR LIFE CHANGE
Isaac Butterworth
October 31, 2010
Hebrews 4:12-13 (NIV)
12 For the word of God is living 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. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
I didn’t always go to church; in fact, I didn’t start attending anywhere regularly until I was in the ninth grade. But I wasn’t exactly a stranger to church. Occasionally, this friend or that one would invite me to go to Sunday School.
I remember one time -- I must have been in about the fourth grade -- this kid at school asked me to go with him. He said I should bring my Bible, which didn’t seem to me to be an unreasonable request. The only problem was, I wasn’t even sure I had a Bible. So I asked my mother about it. She said we did, but she wasn’t sure where it was. We searched around for it, and when we found it, I could see that it was in pretty sorry shape. It was not an expensive Bible, and so it hadn’t weathered our treatment of it very well. The pages were yellowed and somewhat brittle, and the cover, which I think was actually paper, was made to look like leather. And it was in disrepair. The binding had come loose in places, and, on the whole, this particular volume of the Good Book looked like it needed to be on life support!
But that’s the Bible we had, and it’s the one I took. I remember sitting in the small circle of fourth-grade boys, all uncomfortably dressed in their Sunday best. Whenever the teacher asked us to look something up in our Bibles, I had to be careful with mine. It required very delicate handling. And still, every time I opened it, a small piece of it seemed to fall to the floor at my feet. By the time the hour was over, I had quite a little pile of holy clutter beneath my chair! I still find myself hoping that no one else noticed.
As you can tell, the Bible did not play a very big role in my childhood. Our family had a Bible, but we seldom opened it or read it.
As you can imagine, that has changed. I now own several Bibles, and I find my nose in one at least every day. But with all my familiarity with the Scriptures, there is still the chance that they will have as little impact on my life as they did when I was a fourth grader.
Think about it: The Bible is available to us in multiple English translations and in almost countless editions. Why, you and I can go to just about any store that sells books, and there will shelves and shelves of Bibles. There’ll be the old King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the New International Version, and who knows what all. You can get Bibles in large print, in compact size, with or without marginal helps. You can get study Bibles, devotional Bibles, specialty Bibles, Bibles for moms, for dads, for students, for recovering alcoholics, for just about any life station you can think of. And, you know what? You don’t even have to go to the store. You can get the Bible free on the internet.
But the fact remains. Even with the Bible’s accessibility, even with its availability, there is still the chance that it will have little impact on our lives.
Why is that? You know what I think? I think it’s because we read the Bible with the wrong goal in mind. We read the Bible like we read any other book. We read it for information. But the Bible is screaming to be read not just to inform us but to form us! So often, we come at the Bible and try to master it. And what we should be seeking is to let it master us! We fill our heads with its knowledge, but we don’t fill our lives with its power! We can name its characters, but we fail to let it develop our character. We take notes, but we don’t take note. We read it, but we avoid being read by it. We interpret it, but we don’t want it to interpret us. We exalt it, but we don’t embody it. We have it, but it doesn’t have us.
So, is there a way to read the Bible with a different goal in mind? Is there a way to read it for life change? Can we read it not simply to be informed but to be formed by its message?
In the book of Hebrews, we are told that ‘the word of God is living 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.’
You see, here is a Bible that reads us! Here is a Bible that interprets us! And that’s what God wants when we take the Bible in our hands and open up its pages. He wants us also to open up our hearts. In fact, the Bible is screaming to be read not just to inform us but to form us!
Howard Hendricks has a book entitled Living by the Book, and, in it, he talks about the purpose of reading the Bible. He says, ‘The Bible was not written to satisfy your curiosity but to help you conform to Christ’s image. Not to make you a smarter sinner but to make you like the Savior. Not to fill your head with a collection of biblical facts but to transform your life’ (p. 19).
Did you hear that last part? ‘To transform your life.’ Everything God is doing in your life and mine is directed toward one goal and one goal only, and that is to conform us to the image of Christ. And that ought to be our goal. We ought to be cooperating with God in this great endeavor. This, after all, is what we have been calling ‘our true vocation:’ to be like Jesus. That’s why we do anything we do. That’s why we go to church. That’s why we pray. That’s why we read the Bible.
But, listen to this: That’s also why, when we’re not in church, when we’re not in prayer, when we’re not reading the Bible -- when we’re at home, or on the job, or out in the community -- that’s why we choose one course of action over another; that’s why we treat people one way and not another; that’s why we embrace one set of priorities and not another. Because we know that everything we do -- at every moment of life -- either moves us in the direction of being conformed to the image of Christ or moves us the other way.
It’s great to know Bible facts. The more of them you know, the better you can understand the Bible. It’s great to have Bible knowledge; the Bible’s message is going to be clearer if you do. But knowing the facts, covering the material, getting the knowledge down, mastering the information -- that’s not the point! The point is a transforming encounter with God, so that, in those moments when you’re not reading the Bible or doing anything else that you may consider to be religious -- in that moment, at the office, in the classroom, on the playing field, at home -- in that moment, when your Bible’s on the shelf or wherever you left it last, its message is operative in you as it shapes your desires, as it molds your intentions, as it forms your attitudes, as it fashions your thoughts, forges your behavior, and determines your action. It is not just informing you; it’s forming you.
For the Scriptures to do this -- for the Bible to bring about the transformation of our lives, for it to make us more like Christ -- we have to let it do its work of penetrating us, like the sharp, double-edged sword that it is. And we have to let it cut away at us at those very points in our lives where we are unlike Christ. The Bible slices into our inmost being and, like a surgeon’s scalpel, skillfully exposes those places where we nurse greed and envy and anger and discontent, where we hide our false motives, our self-centered disposition, and our self-indulgent, self-seeking inclinations.
But the Bible probes us not merely by informing us of our distressing condition but by inviting us -- summoning us, calling to us -- to abandon ourselves to God in order to be formed into the image of Christ. The Bible is screaming to be read not just to inform us but to form us!
How can we read the Bible the way it wants to be read? How can we read it for life change?
Years ago, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, laid out what he called his ‘guidelines’ for reading Scripture. I suppose it would be all right -- don’t you? -- for us Presbyterians to consider the possibility that we might learn something from Wesley? His language, as you can imagine, was slightly archaic, so I have tried to put his instructions in more contemporary terms. Here are Wesley’s three ‘guidelines’ with a little of my commentary added in.
First, read the Bible daily, and, as you do, try to read it unhindered by either outward or inward distractions. Outward distractions, of course, would be things like a blaring television set, a noisy environment, or trying to read the Scriptures when there are demands on you to do something else. Inward distractions include things like the problems and burdens of your day-to-day life that put pressure on you. If you can, it’s good to try to set your worries and your busyness aside for a time. It might be a good idea to structure a time each day into your schedule when you know you won’t be disturbed. You know better than anyone else when that might be. But read the Bible every day.
Second, read it through in an orderly, consistent fashion. There are numerous Bible reading plans available. The Presbyterian Church, USA, has one online and you can log onto it at gamc.pcusa.org/devotion. There’s a very helpful book entitled The One Year Bible, and you can pick it up in almost any book store. Some editions of the Bible even have a reading plan included in the text. But use a plan.
Third, and most important, read the Bible with the intention to know and do God’s will. This is where the Bible cuts away at our self-deception. This is where the sharp, double-edged sword divides the truth in us from the falsehood we find there. As you read, ask yourself, ‘What in my life is now being exposed as un-Christlike? And what am I going to do about it...today?’ We need to be ready to do God’s will immediately, no matter what God’s will may be. If we hesitate at this point, all we’ll get from reading the Bible is some interesting information. But if we let the Bible do surgery on us, we’ll find ourselves becoming more and more like Christ. The Bible is screaming to be read this way -- not just to inform us but to form us.
The Bible reveals that God has set in motion a new order of being, and this new order has been accomplished in and by Christ. When Jesus emerged from the tomb on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion on Friday, he not only conquered death. He conquered all the deadly things, all the entanglements, great and small, that drag us down into our own little living hells. The Bible, like a sharp, double-edged sword, cuts all that away. Everything we read in its pages portray for us -- if we but have the eyes to see it -- the possibility of living day by day in the light of that first Easter dawn.
I noticed this week that Pepsi has a new marketing campaign called ‘Refresh Everything.’ It made me think: the Bible’s campaign is similar but better. We might call it ‘Renew Everything.’ That’s what God’s living, active Word wants to do in our lives. It is screaming to be read not just to inform us but to form us! It can change our lives if we’ll just let it.
