Can you build a real house without blueprints? Sure you can throw up a square storage shed maybe without them, but do you not need to have some kind of visual plan of the dimensions, how many rooms, where the rooms go, and so on in order to start building an actual house? I remember when I worked through school with a summer job putting together farm equipment, fertilizer spreaders, tedders, hay mowers and such.
My first day all I saw were a bunch of big metal pieces laying around and some bags of nuts and bolts. If I had been told to get building without any written instructions or at least a machine that had already been put together to go by, there’s no way I could have even begun.
You can have the perfectly prepared property, all the materials and building skills necessary, lots of manpower and money, but if you don’t know what you’re building and why, none of it is of any use. This is why Bible intake is the most important spiritual discipline. The Bible is the primary, and to some degree, the only way that God authentically and decisively communicates with us. Do we love to hear from Him through his word, or do we just want to talk to him.
I was reading about this guy who went to remote third world areas to be a missionary and the first thing he noticed was how much lying, stealing, and immorality was going on in these grass hut churches even amoung the pastors and leaders. He realized that this was because even the pastors didn’t have Bibles. They recycled over and over again the same six sermons based on vague memories of a couple Bible stories, otherwise there was no Bible knowledge at all. This is exactly why we see Paul giving so many instructions to the churches in his letters, there was no New Testament then either.
But the real tragedy is that some western Christians have more Bibles on their shelf at home than some churches have total, yet the biblical awareness is not all that much better. Nothing about Christianity that isn’t in the Bible is necessary, and without the Bible there is nothing about Christianity that is knowable. All we need to know is in there, and there is nothing outside of it that we need to know as far as Christian living goes. The Bible is the blueprint for all that is Christian.
We can’t even imagine church without Bibles today, yet up until about 400 years ago very few people had any kind of Bible other than the priests, and they preached from it in languages that their hearers couldn’t understand. The Biblical church is very new, basically beginning in the 1600’s with the reformation.
All right, we’re talking in this series about building your own individual spiritual house, so let’s get personal about our blueprints. We all have them, do we use them, have we even looked at them to start building? I know most people in this room today have read their Bibles at least to some degree, but I want to just ask you, and have you ponder for a moment, how many hours, or minutes do you spend really reading in your Bible?
You don’t have to raise your hand or answer out loud, I just want you to be aware of this for yourself. And have you viewed all the blueprints, not just the easy ones?
Let me throw some American stats at you, and I should warn you that the US tends to be somewhat more devoted to the Bible than Canada in general.
Bible Ownership
92% of households in America own at least one copy. Of those households that own a Bible, the average number of Bibles is three. This includes not only the homes of practicing Christians but hundreds of thousands of atheists as well.
Bible Reading
Although most Americans own a Bible, use of the Bible varies significantly. In a poll taken by the Gallup Organization in October, 2000, 59% of Americans reported that they read the Bible at least occasionally. This is down from 73% in the 1980s. The percentage of Americans who read the Bible at least once a week is 37%. According to the Barna Research Group, those who read the Bible regularly spend about 52 minutes a week in the scriptures.
Bible Study
When it comes to going beyond merely reading the Bible to actual study of the Bible, the numbers decline sharply. Only one in seven Americans report an involvement that goes beyond just reading the Bible. Fourteen percent of Americans currently belong to a Bible study group. This is down a full one-third from 1990. 7
How about knowledge of the Bible? According to Gallup, "Despite the statistics concerning Bible reading and study, it is apparent that ignorance about its contents is widespread." 8
Here’s his evidence:
-- Only half of adults interviewed nationwide could name any of the four Gospels of the New Testament.
-- Just 37% of those interviewed could name all four Gospels.
-- Only 42% of adults were able to name as many as five of the Ten Commandments correctly.
-- Seven in ten (70%) were able to name the town where Jesus was born, but just 42% could identify him as the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. 9
George Barna has also found that:
-- 12% of adults believe that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc.
-- 75% believe that the Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves. 10
George Lindbeck, a famous Yale theologian, has commented on the decreasing knowledge of scripture from a professor's perspective: "When I first arrived at Yale, even those who came from nonreligious backgrounds knew the Bible better than most of those now who come from churchgoing families."
Now don’t get feeling bad if you’re convicted by these stats, that’s not my intention. Also don’t get too cocky if you look good in comparison to the stats. My intention here is to simply put to you the question? Would you trust a contractor who used blueprints as little as Christians do? What kind of houses do you think they would build? And what kind of community are we building if we are not using the blueprints? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t want us as their spiritual contractors?
Now I think we would all agree that Bible intake is important, whether or not we act on that belief. So I want to give you seven ideas or strategies to make your intake of Scripture more effective and fulfilling.
The first thing you’ve got to do is:
I. Read through the whole Bible
I say this from personal experience. I tried several times to start at the beginning before I became a Christian and it was painful, I never got past Creation. But after I started following Jesus and the Holy Spirit was there to help, reading the whole Bible was a great experience. We watch a movie from beginning to end for a reason don’t we? And we get more from the Bible if we read the whole thing from beginning to end.
The whole story comes together so much better. In fact I am currently reading it from the beginning again because it’s so easy to get caught up in reading the Bible just to prepare sermons. I felt the need to just read it for the sake of reading it again. Already I am noticing things in Exodus that are new to me.
I know this is hard so let me give you a few tips for your first time through if you haven’t done this already or are planning to do it again. You may want to skip the genealogies when reading through the whole Bible, they tend to be momentum stoppers. Not that they aren’t important, but they should be saved for separate in depth study to get the most out them, and believe me, there’s actually good stuff in there if you study them beyond just reading through them.
I would also do the same thing with the Proverbs and the minor prophets. Read through the first four, Isaiah through Daniel completely but leave the others to come back and study after you have read through the New Testament. You’ll get much more out of them.
II. Read at least something every single day
Statistics show that this is very rare amoung Christians. Many of us have devotional books that we read like the Daily Bread, and they’re Ok, but not as a replacement for sitting and prayerfully reading straight from the Bible.
With devotional books we tend to pay more attention to the write up than the Scripture, and you don’t get your own meditation on the passage that you would if you just let it percolate in your own mind.
So even if its only one verse, pray first and read straight from the Bible every day.
III. Hear the word of God regularly
Reading is very different from listening. I would suggest listening to good sermons from the Bible regularly. Obviously coming to church on Sundays is one way, but also listen to some other sermons once in a while.
Also, we tend to be so multimedia these days that it can often be useful to watch the Bible on video or listen to it being read. There are some great word for word videos of the Bible that show the story as the words are spoken. These can really help cement the words into your mind. Use all your senses.
IV. Memorize Scripture (repetition is the only way for me)
I am lousy at intentionally memorizing Scripture. I can tell you that something is in the Bible, but to give it to you word for word or tell you exactly what verses and chapters they are, is very difficult. Emily is much better than I am. The only way I can memorize is to read it so much that I can’t forget it, repetition.
But it sure helps for witnessing, counselling, and overcoming temptation if we have some key Scriptures memorized.
V. Confirmation through Study
It’s not enough to just read through the Bible like a novel, it’s too deep, we must understand what it says and what it means for us. I strongly recommend using a good study Bible or two. The best I have come across are the ESV study Bible, and the NIV Study Bible. All of them give you slightly different commentaries of the passages, but they are quite accurate and often give the range of interpretations for that passage.
These bibles allow you to understand more as you go, and it enriches your experience immensely. They help make the connections between different parts of the Bible that you might not on your own. I’m sure there are other good study Bibles out there, these are just my favourites.
VI. Application through meditation
Only a very select few passages in Scripture give you a clear, culturally relevant application to go out and apply to your life. It’s often only through meditating on the passage, asking questions about it, seeing it in its context, can we draw the application out of it. Often it’s not direct but suggests a principle we are to follow.
Don’t write these down because I have included them in your action plan, but ask questions like, does this text reveal something I should believe about God? Something I should praise or thank, or trust God for? Something I should pray about for myself or others? Something I should have a new attitude about? Something I should make a decision about? Something I should do or stop doing for the sake of Christ, others, or myself?
If we don’t do this, the words kind of just flow through our mind and like every other stimulus we are bombarded with each day, they don’t take hold.
VII. Pray and Respond
Always, always pray before reading the Bible, and before applying what you read. The Holy Spirit is your greatest helper in terms of understanding the mind and therefore the words of God. Just a quick invitation for him to come with you as you read is enough sometimes.
Then pray again, asking those meditation questions and then asking for help in applying the passage. This is where you may get enlightened about specifics for your life. God may bring to mind a person or situation that this passage applies to. It also gives the Sprit a chance to warn you if you are off track in what the text is asking of you.
But the point is, Respond. Reading the Bible without responding to it is not entirely useless, but it greatly reduces the power of God’s word in your life. It’s like reading those books like we all do, that have questions or exercises at the end of the chapters. How often do we skip over those and go to the next chapter because we really just want to read, not actually do anything?
What if we did that with blueprints, read them everyday but never used them to build anything? It wouldn’t make sense.
Notice I preached this sermon without mentioning one passage of Scripture. I have never done that before, and in my mind this isn’t a sermon, it’s a talk. I did that purposely to show you that you can get good information, advice, encouragement without the Bible, but you can’t build a spiritual life without it. It’s not a sermon without it, and it’s not enough to just talk about the Bible.
Get into the Word, use the Word, and start laying your foundation based on the Word. You can’t build a legitimate house that will pass inspection without it. Next time we’ll talk about laying the foundation.
