“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” (Colossians 3:16)
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”
When I was 14, I took my Religious Studies O Level a year early. That meant I was the last year to do O Level before it became GCSE. It was on Mark’s Gospel and it was a great exam. A third of the marks were for interpretation and two thirds of the marks, 66%, was for retelling the stories. My school worked out that if they made us all learn Mark’s Gospel off by heart, we only needed four more percent to get an A grade. So when I was roughly you guys age [point to the teens] I learnt a large chunk of the bible off by heart. I have never regretted it.
The great fourth century preacher St John Chrysostom says “The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books but that we should engrave them on our hearts”
“The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should shut them in books but that we should engrave them on our hearts”
Many of you will know and love the hymn “Tell out my soul the glory of the Lord”. That’s a version of Mary’s song in Luke Chapter one (Luke 1:46-55). There are many things that are special about that song. It’s the very first praise song in the New Testament - which means for those of you who love praise and worship, Mary is your patron saint. But there’s another thing that is special about it. Although when Mary sings it, it is spontaneous, it is full of Scripture, full of bible. It’s just bursting with quotes and allusions to the Old Testament. How come? Because as a bible-believing Christian Mary had learnt large chunks of the Old Testament off by heart. The words of the Scriptures have become so much a part of her that when she bursts into spontaneous song, without her even having to think about it, those bible words just flow off her lips.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all knew our bibles that well?
“Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly”
“The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should shut them in books but that we should engrave them on our hearts”
Now I don’t know about you, but I like a nice glass of wine with my meal. Some Christians like the 12th century Dominican Humbert of Romans, have compared the bible to wine. Humbert says - “Some wines are weak and have no effect on you, but the word of God is strong wine … and it gets you drunk”
“Some wines are weak and have no effect on you, but the word of God is strong wine … and it gets you drunk” The bible is powerful life changing stuff.
For much of the twentieth century the communists banned the bible in Eastern Europe. Even though the Quran says that the bible is one of God’s Holy Books, in many Muslim Countries the bible is banned. Yet, however hard you try it is very hard to ban the bible
Our reading from Nehemiah comes when for three generations the Babylonians had the Israelites in exile and sought to suppress their faith. After 70 years Cyrus the Persian conquered the Babylonians and let the Israelites go home. And here in Nehemiah 8:1-12 they get their bible back- you hear the emotional effect it had on them, first they burst into tears, then they burst into rejoicing because of God’s word.
It’s very hard to ban the bible. As Jesus says “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matt 24:35)
Communists tried to ban the bible. Communism fell. The bible is still there.
The bible is powerful life changing stuff.It was said that when the Christian missionaries in Nanking, Japan, gave New Testaments to the Japanese soldiers, one Japanese official came to the missionaries and said, “Please don’t give our men anymore New Testaments, for when they read this book, it takes the fight out of them.” {illustration on this site by Steve Shepperd}
Read the bible and it will change you.
So how should we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly? There are many things we can do, but here are three.
1)read it daily.
Get a bible with nowt taken out - with all the books including the ones some Christians call the apocrypha. Back in AD90 at the council of Jamnia the Pharisees cut certain books out of Old Testament and for historical reasons at the Reformation certain denominations accidentally adopted the Pharisees shorter Old Testament rather than the bible that Jesus and Paul knew. So make sure you get a bible with nowt taken out - with all the books including the Apocrypha.
Get a translation you can understand. Christians like Tyndale died to get the bible into a language people understood. Politicians tried to stop people getting the bible in their own language because they were afraid of the bible.“Some wines are weak and have no effect on you, but the word of God is strong wine..”
So make sure you get a translation you can understand. If you are someone who reads Shakespeare in your spare time, by all means read the King James Version. But for most of us, you are probably better off having the bible in a modern translation.
[for each translation mentioned hold them up]
The version we use in Church is the NRSV - it’s not the most readable version but it is the most accurate.
A very readable version is the Message - which doesn’t just translate the words, it translates the metaphors and images in modern metaphors and and up to date images.
One of the most popular versions is the New International Version, but it doesn’t include the Apocrypha, so if you get that you need another translation to supply the missing books.
So perhaps you will want the New Jerusalem Bible or the Good News Bible.
Find a translation you are comfortable with.
Don’t try to read it through from Genesis to Revelation, because you will get bogged down in Leviticus. Start with something like Luke’s Gospel, then perhaps move on to Paul’s letters, then to some of the stories in the Old Testament, then the psalms and books like the Wisdom of Solomon or Proverbs. Leave the law passages like Leviticus and Deuteronomy until you are quite comfortable.
Read it daily.
2)Learn it. Like Mary with those words she learnt that became the first praise song. Like me as a teenager learning it for my exam. Like Christians in China who only have one bible for a whole church, so they have to pass it round and learn chunks. Learn it.
3) Read it together.
1 Corinthians 12 describes us, the Church, as a body who need each other. That applies to reading the bible too. Currently we have three groups - Gladys’s group that meets every second Thursday daytime in the link. Patty’s group that meets every second Thursday evening in the link, and the Beer and Bible Study group I lead that meets most Thursdays in the Blackhorse pub.
In the Beer and Bible Study group we have been reading 1 and 2 Corinthians. Reading it together helps us actually apply it to our real lives. Maybe Hal or Danielle or Jodie will talk about how a particular passage relates to this situation in their workplace or with that difficult colleague and I sit there and think “o yes, that makes me see that bible passage in a new way - and o yes, that’s how that applies to my life”
We know the current three homegroups don’t meet everyone’s needs, and the PCC are committed to making it easier to be part of a small group. So we have a questionaire - we are circulating it for the first time today and we are going to keep making it available over the next month - to get as much feedback as possible from you so we can know how to improve our small groups - and make it as easy as possible to join.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly”
To get the most out of the bible,
Read it each day
Learn bits of the bible
Read it together.
