Making the Most of Daily Bible Study

Sermon Transcript

Yeah, we got a two-week series we’re going to put in between our regularly scheduled exegesis and exposition of the book of Romans, which we will get back to. Very exciting series coming up. But for a couple of weeks, what I wanted to do is get back to the basics here. Good time for us every now and then to step back and just get back to the basics.

So that’s what we’re going to do. It’s going to feel a little different than your normal sermon from me. Maybe not quite as different as last week’s, but this one is going to be something I’d love for you to bear with me on this morning.

And to start, I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Hebrews chapter 5. Hebrews chapter 5, one of the classic texts where the Bible is presented to us as analogous to food. Hmm, that’s good, food. I mean, it is no surprise that God likens the Bible to food. It works on so many levels. It really is a great analogy, because after all, who doesn’t like food?

Well, I’ll tell you who doesn’t like food. Dead people don’t like food. They sit around all day and don’t eat a thing. Week after week, in that box, they don’t have an appetite for it at all. They never belly up to the table and have any meals, those dead people.

But you living people, I hear you have a pretty decent appetite. You’re eating all the time. I hear that you’re eating every day. Some of you eat multiple times a day, and you just have an innate appetite for food. That’s what you have because you’re alive.

Likewise, in the Bible, this analogy works on this level in particular, that if you are spiritually alive, you have an appetite for the Word. If you’re spiritually dead, your relationship with the Bible is, well, non-existent. I mean, it really is not a real relationship with the Word. You don’t really have an appetite for it. You may endure a few sermons here and there, but there’s not something innate driving you to partake of God’s Word on a regular basis.

And I get that. And you may say, well, that’s the case, Pastor Mike, and real Christians have an appetite for the Word. Well, you never need to preach messages like this. Why would you need to get back to the basics and talk about, you know, partaking of God’s Word if we have an appetite for it? Great question. It’s a great question.

Because a lot like your biological appetite, you don’t always eat as you should. Am I right about that? And some of you are constantly reminding us. Thank you very much. We don’t need to hear that all the time. But as your spiritual dietician, we need to eat better. Because you may have new life in Christ. You’ve repented of your sins. You put your trust in Christ. You want the Word of God. But unfortunately, we can become poor eaters. We can have a lazy appetite. We can spend more time eating, oh, there’s no such thing as junk food, but let’s just call it, well, with this passage, milk. You just want to eat the easy stuff, and you don’t have an appetite for good homemade meals with biblical vegetables, steamed biblical broccoli.

Writer of Hebrews points out that problem as he’s about to get into a conversation about Melchizedek. Drop down to verse 11, and he’s got a lot to say about Melchizedek, but that’s, you know, that’s the green beans of the Bible there, Melchizedek. Most people skip it. And it’s hard to explain to them. They’re turning their nose up at it because they’ve become dull of hearing. Do you see that in verse 11?

Wish they didn’t translate it that way because over in the next chapter, he translates it “lazy,” because that’s what the word means. You’ve just become sluggish hearers. You’ve become kind of lethargic eaters. You’re not ambitious. You’re not applying yourself here in the eating task. Now, you have an appetite, but you’re going after the easy stuff all the time.

By this time, verse 12 says, though by this time you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. Now, God revealed some things, and you just want to stick with the basics. You need milk and not solid food, because you’re not even fully ingesting all the milk you should get.

For everyone who lives on milk, great analogy, is—now here’s the truth, good bracketed phrase here—is unskilled in the word of righteousness. Should feel some level of conviction for some of us here. How skilled—that’s a great word—how skilled are you in the word of righteousness? That’s a great question.

Isn’t that what we’re exhorted to be? I mean, Paul told Timothy, “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). That means someone is good at getting around in the Word. They understand it. They handle it well. They’re skilled in the word of righteousness.

And if you’re not skilled in the word of righteousness, well, then here’s your description, bottom of verse 13: you’re a child. Since you’re a child, you’re just not there yet. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained. They can get into the Word. They can discern. They can see it by constant practice. There’s the thing. If you don’t imbibe, if you don’t drink of, if you don’t eat of God’s Word constantly, you’re never going to grow up. If you’re not taking in God’s Word consistently, regularly, constant practice. But those who have that, well, then they can distinguish good and evil. They can sort things out. They’re the wise people among us because they are skilled in the word of righteousness.

This week I want to talk about your relationship with God’s Word. Next week I want to talk about your prayer life. Both of these can bring guilt to our hearts. That’s not my intention, though it may serve a useful role in this discussion. It really is about encouraging you to move forward, to make it more of a priority, to make the time, to get involved in God’s Word regularly.

So let me help you first by taking a step way back and asking a very fundamental question about why it’s so important for us. I mean, because that really didn’t tell us why. So let’s ask that question. A little different now.

We Need to Know Why the Bible Is Essential

Let’s just put the title up here first. Number one on your outline, if you’ve taken notes, if you are taking notes, there’s a worksheet there in your worship packet. Jot this down: we need to know why the Bible is essential. Why is the Bible so essential?

Okay, and let’s just step back as far as we possibly can. And to find our answer, let’s go to James chapter 4. You’re in Hebrews. The very next book is James. Hebrews, James chapter 4. I want you to drop down to verse 12, and there’s a phrase there that, if you run over it too fast, you’ll miss it. But you’ve got to slow down and read what James is saying here, and it gives us the answer to this question. Why is this so important?

And the context here is him talking about how we relate to one another, and we’re quick to pass snap judgments on each other, and he stops in the middle of this discussion, and he says something very basic, very fundamental. It’s really as fundamental as it can get in pondering anything theological or philosophical, and he says this. He says, “There is only”—verse 12—“there is only one”—first word to circle—“lawgiver and judge.” He’s lawgiver and judge.

See, the most fundamental presupposition of theism is that there is a God. And the second presupposition of Christianity is that God has revealed Himself. As the very respected, now deceased, Christian philosopher used to put it, the title of one of his books, He Is There and Not Silent, right? There is a God and He has spoken. Francis Schaeffer wrote it that way, loved to put it that way, and posit the foundation of the Christian faith, that we believe there is a God, the most fundamental tenet of theism, and that as Christians, we believe He’s revealed Himself in God’s Word. There is a lawgiver and a judge.

He has given information, and He will keep us accountable for the information He’s given us. He gives the data, and now He holds us accountable for the data. He gave us a book, and it’s clearly different than the rest of the quote-unquote “holy books”—sidebar. If you need more on that, and I’m a bonehead for not putting it on the back of your worksheet, but there’s 15 hours of lecture, which is never going to sell this. There is a great, gripping, riveting series of messages. Is that better? Sign me up for that.

And I entitled the series, The Origins of the Bible. And it wasn’t too long ago that I did this series on Thursday nights, and it’s where we roll up our sleeves and we go back to the very basics of what, you know, let’s start at the beginning. Is this book any different than any others? How did it come to be? The Origins of the Bible. It’s all free. It’s off of our website. You can track your way to it, Origins of the Bible. It’s 12 parts, 90-minute messages, and they will all take you from looking at this as objectively as we possibly can to arriving at the conclusion that this book is indeed different than the rest.

And if it is, then it is the rules, the information, the data about God from God, and it has expectations of what He expects of you, including the gospel and how it all works. This is His Word, and then He will keep you accountable for it. Lawgiver and judge. He’s given the information, and He’ll keep us accountable for the information.

This is only echoing Isaiah 33. It’s what James brings up. It’s familiar Old Testament truth, New Testament reiterated truth, and it’s critical. And it kind of reminds me, those two words, of my childhood.

I was a latchkey kid, which kids today don’t even know what that means. But those of you looking at me, smiling ever so slightly, we were latchkey kids, right? We knew what that was. That means you came with a latchkey or you had a key in your pocket or attached to your belt loop, and it was the key to the house because both mom and dad worked. So from 3:15 to 5:30, you had a key to the house and you were self-governed for a few hours, right? And you and your brother or your sister or your brothers and sisters, you kind of had the house to yourself.

And we were self-governed, although we weren’t really self-governed, because when we came home at least and threw our books down there on the couch, there was always a note right there on the corner of our yellow kitchen table that started with “Boys” and ended with “Mom.” And for that day, there was always some surprise there of things that Mom expected us to do, self-governed children from 3:15 to 5:30. “Here’s what I want from you today. Here’s what is expected.”

Now at 5:30, I knew this. There would be an accountability, a judgment of sorts that was based solely on the note. And my mom actually did end up adjudicating disputes for the city of Long Beach, L.A. Bar Association, and she was married to a guy who came home with a big gun on his hip. He was a cop. You think you had a tough childhood? Judge and cop for parents? Didn’t get away with much in our house.

And so here I had, at the bottom of the note, the authority of my parents telling me what to do while you’re kind of on your own to figure out those hours. But when it came time to come home, I knew, you know, if I said, “Well, I didn’t have time to read the note,” you think that one went over? No.

“Well, you know what? My brother said it really wasn’t worth reading. He said it was confusing. You wouldn’t understand it. So you don’t need to bother.” Or he said, “You know, I know Mom said today you got to cut the grass before she gets home, but I know that Mom is a loving Mom, and she’d want you, if you feel led, to play football instead of cut the grass. I know her ultimate goal is your happiness. So she’d very much understand if you played football this afternoon instead of cut the grass.”

I could listen all I want to my dumb brother about his opinions about the note, or I could recognize that 5:30 was coming, and, you know, adjudicator and enforcer would be in my presence to point to the note and say, “How did that go?”

See, He is God, the lawgiver and the judge. If that’s true, see, this book needs to be really important to us. I need to pay attention to what it says. God has revealed Himself. He’s told us what He requires and expects of us. And to ignore it is not an option for those that believe that God is the lawgiver and judge.

There’s two ways we can look at the book. Turn with me to Jeremiah 23. It is essential. And to admit that it’s essential is one thing, but to treat it as though it’s essential is another.

Jeremiah chapter 23 will posit for us two ways to respond to God and what He requires of us. I’ve said this a lot lately throughout Romans, but you can either feel your way through it, which is all the rage today. Someone just sent me another picture of one of the prominent pastors in our country, best-selling author, and he had some biblical statements up over his shoulder, and his whole response is, “I’m not feeling that,” right? “I don’t get that. I don’t think that’s the way God is.” And yet everything he said was biblical on the screen, but he doesn’t—he’s not feeling that, see?

So he’s feeling his way through perceiving who God is and what God requires. That’s option one. Or you can actually read your way through what God requires. Looking at it objectively, taking it carefully, extracting its meaning, which is possible—or you say it’s not. That wouldn’t work with my parents’ note either. “Well, Mom, you know, that wasn’t my interpretation of what you said.” That doesn’t work, right? Mom’s going to say, “I wrote it. It was pretty clear.”

I love that when people say, “Well, you can make the Bible say whatever you want.” I’ll turn to passages like, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” “Hey, read that. What does that mean to you?” Right? How many ways are there to interpret passages like that?

Like Mark Twain used to say, “It’s not the things in the Bible I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the things in the Bible that I do understand that bother me.” I mean, that is the reality. There is a book that God has written. It is very clear. And oh, there are some things that are hard to understand.

But we need to recognize that we can either look at it, objectively understand it, and live by it, or you can feel your way through it and just assume you know what God thinks. That was the problem in Jeremiah’s day, and it’s nothing new. It’s all on the ebb-and-flow peak right now of the flow in our culture, and people are living this way.

And in verse number 9, he says, let’s talk about those prophets and the people leading people to think in a particular way. And he says, when it comes to the prophets of our day, Jeremiah says in his day, 23:9—is that where I turned you? “My heart is broken within me,” Jeremiah says. “All my bones shake. I’m like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine.” Why are you staggering about? Why are you so frustrated, and, you know, you look like Fred Sanford, you know, grabbing his chest? You can’t even stand up.

Anybody get that line? Nobody? TV Land, is it still going on? Forget it. Sometimes I’m all alone up here. Staggering. Why? What’s wrong with you?

Look what he says. He’s looking around. He’s seeing what’s going on in his day. He says, “Because of the Lord and because of His holy words. For the land”—here’s the explanation—“is full of adulterers.” Now, see, that doesn’t bother people that are feeling their way through the will of God. But it bothers Jeremiah because he thinks about the Lord, who He is, and His holy words, and he says, “Wait a minute. No one seems to care about adultery anymore.” Have you noticed that?

I mean, you can add a long list of things that our culture doesn’t care about. They sing about it. It’s all the rage. Hey, it’s all presented to us as a virtue, and the Bible presents it as sin. And he says, “I’m like a drunken man staggering about. I can’t even think about the disparity between what I see as acceptable behavior and what God’s Word says. I’m out of my mind on this one.”

Drop down here to verse 16. God takes the microphone and He says, “Let me talk about the prophets a little bit.”

“Thus says the Lord of hosts,” Jeremiah 23:16: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. Oh, it’ll be fine. God understands. Play football if you want. It’s cool. He’s a loving God.” Where do they get that stuff?

“They speak visions”—here it comes, bracket this one off—“of their own minds.” Where are they getting this information about God? It’s coming from their own head. They don’t get it from the mouth of the Lord. They’re not going to prophecy. They’re not looking at what God has inscribed by the holy prophets. They’re not doing that. They’re feeling it.

“They continually say to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘Oh, it shall be well with you’; and to everyone who follows stubbornly his own heart they say, ‘Oh, no disaster will come upon you. It’s fine. God’s loving.’ For who among them”—these prophets following their own visceral feelings about God—“has stood in the council of the Lord to see and to hear His Word, or who has paid attention to His Word and listened?” No one’s going back to what I’ve said. You’re ignoring it.

Now, when Jeremiah thinks about his culture, and he thinks of the holy words of God, he trembles at that. When the average person in the pulpit in the 6th century BC was talking about God, they were talking about God based on what they perceived God to be.

Now, some people still use this book, and they say they’re students of the Bible or preachers of the Bible, but their opinions about all of this are based on what they feel. We’ve got to get past what we feel. You’re going to make up your own God? Good luck with that. But there is a God who exists. He has revealed Himself. I need to adapt my thoughts to the Word. I cannot interpret God in light of my feelings. I need to start interpreting my feelings in light of God’s Word.

And I’ve got to recognize it’s about what God has said, not about what I feel. You’ve got to know that the Bible is essential. Therefore, we have to treat it as essential. And we have to get into it, and we need to work hard at trying to grasp and understand what He has said in the Word.

Because the pundits will come and go, the commentators, the preachers, the prophets, the opinionated folks are going to come and go. But as Isaiah 40 says, verse number 8, “The word of the Lord will stand forever.” That note is not going away on the kitchen table. We’ve got to pay attention to it, and it’s important that we do that.

Adjust Your Expectations

Secondly, okay, I know it’s essential. I see that. I better pay attention to it. I believe there’s a God. He has revealed Himself. It’s not about what I feel about living life or what I think. I need to let my thoughts be shaped by this book. I need truth to come from this. It is the final arbiter of what is right and wrong, what is true, what God requires, what God expects.

Okay, great. Before you get into thinking about a renewed passion for Bible study, I want to, number two, adjust your expectations. You need to adjust your expectations, because it will be better than you think and worse than you think. There are parts of it that will be far better than you think it’s going to be, and there are parts of it that will be far worse.

Now, this next little section, I won’t spend long on it, but point number two here is going to feel a lot like those weight loss commercials, you know, where flabby Fred gets on the left side of your screen and he’s just a big lard and his belly’s over his thing, you know, and they are never smiling in those pictures. I guess they’re never happy when they’re that fat, but they’re like—and they snap the photo. And then the line gets drawn, and a little, you know, whatever they’re selling, the powder or the disc or the workout program, and then he’s over here and he’s like transformed. He’s got washboard abs and he’s bronze and he’s tan and he’s happy and he’s, you know, he looks great. And they do it with the flabby girls too, right? Frumpy gal over here, and then she’s in her bikini, it’s yellow, and she’s “hmmm,” right?

Now here’s the thing. We sit back, “Pass the Cheez-Its and the remote control.” We’re watching the commercial, and you kind of have a mixed feeling about all this. But here’s the deal. In reality, you don’t understand, really, for that person who’s gone from frumpy Fred to chiseled, you know, Fred, you don’t understand really how good that must be for him. I mean, we can kind of imagine it, but how great it would be, really. And then you also don’t know how hard it is, right? I mean, we try to imagine, but to live it is tough.

So I want to start with the before and after photos. Let me give you the after photo. Turn to Psalm 19. If you become skilled in the word of righteousness, if you learn to rightly handle the word of truth, if it becomes something by constant practice that your mind is bathed in and you really begin to, as the New Testament says, have the word of Christ richly dwell in you, okay, it’s going to be good. You’re not going to be the same person you are right now. If you step it up, there’s a lot of benefits here.

Let me just start, verses 7 through 11 of Psalm 19. Verse 7: “The law of the Lord”—it’s perfect. Now you start getting skilled in a perfect document, and by that I mean, here is God’s thoughts on paper. You get deft in handling it. You bathe your mind in it. You start to think the way you think. Here’s what it’s going to do: “reviving the soul.” That’s what the Word of God does. It is reviving to your very person. You’re going to feel differently.

“The testimony of the Lord,” middle of verse 7, “is sure, making wise the simple.” You really get the sure Word of God bouncing around your mind. You get to really extract from the Word, from Genesis to Revelation, all that it’s starting to say and becoming the way in which you think. The Bible says people go, “That guy’s wise.” There will be some wisdom that you never thought you had because you’re just going to be reiterating the truth of God’s Word.

And I find that all the time. Sometimes I’ll say something and people say, “Wow, that’s ingenious,” and I’m thinking, “All I’m doing is paraphrasing, you know, a part of Scripture.” If you get it in your mind, there is wisdom that then will exude from who you are.

Verse 8: “The precepts of the Lord”—they’re right. They are. They’re the way, they’re the kind of—that’s the New Testament equivalent of teleos. They are—they fit just right. And it is appropriate in every way. Therefore, it “rejoices the heart.” You’re going to say, “Wow.” You’re going to have a perspective on things that’s right, which is where he goes next.

“The commandment of the Lord”—it’s pure. And you get that commandment of God in your mind, and it really is bathed in that, then your eyes are open to all kinds of things. You have clarity on how you view this world like you never have before. Revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes.

Then he says a few more things about it. It’s clean, “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” “The rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.” And if that’s the case, “they are more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold.” And in a day like today, when gold is all the thing, at 1,500 bucks an ounce, I mean, wow, the most precious metal on the planet. “And sweeter also than honey,” it’s going to be good to your life, and the refreshment you get from it is going to be better than candy. I mean, that’s the candy of the day, “drippings of the honeycomb.” “Moreover, by them your servant is warned.” You’re going to stay out of some ditches you wouldn’t otherwise stay out of. “In keeping them there is great reward.” You’re going to find things popping up in your life, on the after photo, where you’re going to say, “Wow, life is really good now that the Word of God has become a priority, constant use. I’m skilled now in the word of righteousness.”

That’s a good thing. But like the weight loss commercials, to get from here to here, what you’re not seeing is all the work that’s involved.

You don’t need to turn there unless you want to, right next door, but Proverbs chapter 2, verses 1 through 5—Proverbs chapter 2, verses 1 through 5—very next book in the Bible, makes it clear that if you’re going to get this knowledge of God, it’s going to be hard. It is going to be a struggle. It is more work than you think it is. Bible study is not easy.

It is God’s will—well, let’s put it in the terms of Proverbs. Later in the book he says, “It is God’s glory to conceal a matter, and it is a king’s glory to extract it or uncover it, to discover it.” God has put treasure in the Scripture.

If you have turned there, many of you have, I heard the pages turning. He says in verses 1 through 5 of Proverbs 2: “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commands within you, making your ear attentive to wisdom”—you’re straining to hear it—“and inclining your heart to understanding”—“I want to get it. Yes, if you call out for insight and you raise your voice for understanding”—you’ve got to really want it—“if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure”—and that’s never just right there on the surface—“then you’ll understand the fear of the Lord, and then you’ll find the knowledge of God.”

I mean, this is going to be work. And speaking of work, I rattled off 2 Timothy 2:15: “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a…” What’s the next word? A what? “Workman.” And that’s not a guy behind a desk with a tie and a leather satchel. The “workman,” the Greek word he chooses for that, is the day laborer, the worker in the field, the guy getting sunburned with the sore back who’s out there picking the harvest. This is hard labor. “A workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

You want to handle the Word, you want to be skilled in the word of righteousness, you want to be trained in constant practice to have your discernment razor sharp? Well, it’s going to be hard. Not to mention that we’re dealing with an old document, are we not? I mean, this is not written in English and delivered through, you know, the Orange County Register editorial room. This is a 2,000-year-old New Testament written in Koine Greek. That’s tough. There’s a lot of things about the idioms and the language and the illustrations and the analogies. Some are hard to get. And an Old Testament that dates back to 1445 BC through 400 BC. That’s tough. A thousand years of history there in Hebrew. That’s going to take—I mean, there’s some historical distance here that we’re going to need to bridge. It won’t always be easy.

So adjust your expectations. It is a great payoff, but it’s a lot of work to get there. And then let me say this. No one ever brings this up, but once you get there, it’s not going to be everything you thought it was.

What? Once you get there, it won’t be everything you thought it was. I mean, it is not really the end-all. Let me quote this for you. You know it, but if you want to jot it down, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 9 through 12. First Corinthians 13:9–12, Paul’s talking about how great some things are in the Christian life, and then he says this. He says, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part.” In other words, we don’t know everything, and even our prophetic statements and our New Testament epistles, they don’t give us the whole picture.

And he compares what it’s going to be with the difference between childhood and adulthood. He said, “When I was a child,” I mean, it was all these little things. “And then when I became an adult, I put away childish things and I was mature.” And then he says this: “We now see [God] through this glass dimly, but then we’ll see Him face to face.”

This is an author of the New Testament saying, “Now, this long-distance relationship that is in many ways the information mediated through written documents, once you get skilled in the word of righteousness, you’re still going to say, ‘Doesn’t totally satisfy.’” He says, “But then we’re going to see Him face to face.” He says, “Then we’re going to know Him as fully as He knows us.”

Now, think about that. Does God have any problem understanding you? You don’t understand you, but He understands you. Totally. He has no problem with that. But how well do we understand Him? What if we master the Bible? How well will we understand Him? Well, you’ll understand Him better than you understand Him now, but you’ll still not understand Him the way you’re going to understand Him a minute after you die. Then you’re going to understand Him in a whole new way, because you’re going to see Him face to face. And the kind of mediatorial relationship we have through written documents, it’s not going to be necessary. It’s going to be a different kind of relationship, because now we see through a glass dimly.

All I’m saying is, recognize— I guess it’s like saying, frumpy Fred becomes chiseled Fred. Chiseled Fred still has problems, right? This is not the end-all. But it is a lot better than being frumpy Fred or ignorant Igor—I don’t know, I was making that up at this point, but you know what I’m saying. Whatever your knowledge of the Word is right now, it’ll be a lot better if you crank that up a few notches. But in the end you’re still going to have questions that aren’t going to be answered.

Just to throw it out, Deuteronomy 29:29 is an easy reference to remember, but it says, “The secret things belong to the Lord.” There are things He didn’t tell us. “But the things that He’s revealed belong to us and our children forever.” We’ve got the Word of God that doesn’t answer all the questions. You’re still going to have nagging questions. I’ll do the Q&As all the time, and even though I’ve worked hard to understand the Bible, I’ll get questions, I’ll say, “The Bible doesn’t say. We don’t know.” And there’s stuff that we all want to know that we’re never going to be able to fully comprehend from the Bible. But what we’ll understand will certainly be worth the work.

Get in the Word Every Day

Number three, if that’s the case, now let’s get to the heart of what I want to say this morning to you, and that is, the Bible in every way is trying to drive our attention to get into it. Constant use. Get in it every day. Number three: get in it every day. Get in the Word every day.

“Oh, I’m busy, Mike. You don’t know. I live in Orange County. I’m busy.”

Your mother taught you when you were little to brush your teeth. Am I right? Did you do that today? Thought you were a busy Orange County guy. No time for that. Got stuff to do. Got The Wall Street Journal to read. Got to commute. Busy.

Mom taught you to shower, bathe, scrub your pits, right? Clean out the crevices of your body and make sure that you are not a stinky ball of mess. Who’s got time for that every day? I don’t. So when do you bathe? “Well, whenever I have time. It’s not very often. Once a week, maybe.” Really? I bet you find time to bathe almost every day. Brush your teeth. Some of you, twice a day. You floss. What’s with all that? You got no time for that. You make time because you know how important it is.

If you understand the essential nature of the Bible to the Christian life and you understand how good it will be when we become skilled in it, it’s worth the work. You’ve got to make the time for this.

Two parts of this: get in it every day. I want you to get in it in two different ways. Now, I started with five. No applause, but I brought it down to two because I don’t want to burden you with too much here, but just two things. Let me exhort you, two things.

Number one, I want you to read it through from cover to cover, and when you get to the end, to start over and do it again. Read the whole thing. Don’t tell me that you’re a Christian and you base your life on the truth of this book, and you’re not going through it continually. Read the Word of God from cover to cover.

This is such a safeguard against so much of the garbage out there that is pawned off in the name of Christianity. All I say—almost, I say it at least, I don’t know, once a week, twice a month at least—I’ll say, “You know, if people read their Bible from cover to cover, they’d never fall for that.” I say that all the time. Because I think, here’s a guy who’s kind of pandering to the appetites of people with a kind of manufactured Christ or a manufactured God, and I say, all you’d have to do is read the Bible a few times through, and you’d see that immediately as a false god.

To get the 30,000-foot view of God’s revealed Word is a safeguard against so much heresy. It’ll give you a sense of the whole counsel of God. It is so important. And I try to make it so easy for you to do it.

I’m going to ask you to do something here, and I try not to step beyond my bounds of what God has called me to be in your life. But if I am your pastor and you are a part of this congregation—it’s not another bumper sticker. And I know I’ve asked for a lot. And I got to say this; let me, before I ever get to that sidebar, let me get to this sidebar.

Listen, if when I die, okay, I’m going to go and stand before the Bema Seat of Christ, and Christ is going to hold me responsible for everything I asked you to do. It’s one reason I don’t ask you to do very many things. A lot of times I’ll preach what the Bible says, but when it comes to these other things where I get specific and say, “I know the Bible doesn’t say to do it, but I’m asking you as your pastor to do this,” I know I’m going to have to answer for every specific thing I ask you to do.

And you will have to answer for how you responded to it. You want to write it off, you can gamble on that. You’re going to stand before God too. And you want to say, “Yeah, it was stupid. That was unreasonable.” You better hope that God says it was unreasonable when He talks to me about it.

But if I’m your pastor, you do have a responsibility. I know we live in democratic, you know, John Wayne Christianity, where you’re your own Marlboro Man and you do whatever you want. But that’s not what the Bible says. There should be some deference to the leadership of your pastors.

And I’m asking you, as your pastor, to read through the Bible with us. Read it through with us. I know you’ve got a million different patterns and a million different schedules and a million different ways to read through the Bible. But read it through on our schedule.

I print it every week. Do I not? It’s right here in this box on the back of your worksheet. Here’s this week’s schedule. It’s right there. I tell you, here’s where we’re at. I got a chronological Bible. I like that. Take your chronological Bible to our bookstore. We’ll give you store credit for it, okay? Turn it in and read through the Bible on our schedule.

I’m not saying this came from heaven or anything. But I am saying as a family rule here, if I’m your pastor, this is your church, you’re a part of this congregation, read through with us. Now, I know you’re going to miss a day or two. A lot of you say, “Well, you’re already in 1 Kings. I’ve missed everything from Genesis to 2 Samuel. I’ll start next year.” We may all be dead next year. You understand that. We have no guarantee for tomorrow.

Can you start where we’re at right now? Today is on there, May 1st. 1 Kings 1 and 2. Luke 22:54–71. It’ll take you about 12 minutes to read. It won’t take long. There it is, the reading for the day. Read it through on our schedule, okay? That’s what I’d like you to do.

Dump your other reading schedules. You want to read it twice, fine. You want to do that after you do this, fine. But read it through with us. And then—here I go, just building now—I would love for you to go to our website, compasschurch.org, and just comment on what you read.

It is so easy on our website. We’ll have it on there. If you go down the left-hand column, it’ll say “Daily Bible Reading.” Ninety-nine point nine percent of you have computers. Go home, click on that: compasschurch.org, “Daily Bible Reading.” It will take you to the page. It’ll actually have the text printed out of the entire section that we’re supposed to read.

And then you say, “Well, I’m not a very good reader.” Great. There’s a button right next to it that says “Listen.” Click. Little man in the computer reads the whole thing to you. I mean, you can be fully incapacitated and you can do this with us.

And then there’s more. There’s a little button right next to it that says “Comments,” and it’ll have a number next to it of how many people have already commented. Click on that. “Oh, I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to be outed. I don’t want to be…” Just—you don’t have to have anything profound to say. It’s not a place for pontification, not a place for debate. It’s a place for you simply—here’s, I’ll start you off. Go home and read 1 Kings 1 and 2, and that little section there, the end of Luke 22, and all you need to write is this. Just click on the comment. You have to put in an email address one time, and we’re not, you know, going to send you anything. Just do that, put it in there, and then you could just write, “I read it. Period. It was good. Period.” All you have to write. I’m serious. That’s all you have to write.

Soon as you do that and you out yourself from the shadows and crevices of Compass Christianity, then you are a part of a community of people at your church reading through the Bible together every year. It puts you there in a place where we now have a communal presence on the web. It can become your most favorite stop on your computer every day. I mean, you’re not sharing your dog’s pictures or your grandkids’ favorite, you know, things they did this week, but what you will be doing is making simple comments about what you read. And when you get advanced, you’ll say, “I read it and it was good because I like this about it,” or “It ministered to me here.”

Not a time for debate, not a time for pontification, not trying to make sermons out of what you read. Just sit there and give a response to it. I encourage you strongly as your pastor to make that a habit.

You know what it takes? Five minutes. Read it, 12 minutes. Comment, five minutes. It is probably less than you spend with your morning ablutions getting your body ready to go out the door. And the guy can read it to you while you’re brushing your teeth, right? Little digitized computer man can read it to you.

Read the Bible. Read through it. I mean, I know this is over the top, and I’ll be beat up for this one, but I’ve said it twice already this weekend: if you don’t have time to read your Bible or have a guy read it to you, then turn in your Christian card. Seriously. And go find another religion where they don’t expect anything from you. Because God expects us to love His Word and to read it at the very least, okay?

If you’re too busy to read the Bible, you’re too busy. I’d rather you live under the underpass, right, under the 5 freeway, and have time to read your Bible, than be Mr. Hotshot Executive or busy-go-busy PTA Mom and not have time for the Word of God.

What is that? Five plus 12, what is that? Seventeen minutes? You can do it in 17 minutes a day. Read the Bible all the way through. Get in it every day.

Secondly, if you’re still tolerating anything I’m saying at this point—like I said, I started with five, I’m down to two—here’s the second one as it relates to getting in it every day: study at least one verse a day. One verse a day.

Oh, by the way, back to reading. If you get behind—did I already say this?—don’t try to catch up. I mean, you try to catch up, but don’t worry about getting behind, please. If by Thursday you say, “Well, I did it Sunday, and I blew off Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,” just read Thursday. Start with that. Make a comment. If you got time, go back. And same with this. Don’t say, “Well, if I didn’t do it yesterday, I won’t do it today.” Just the days that you can. And I would hope that you’d all get skilled in the Word. By constant use, you’d be in it every day.

Study one verse a day. There’s the difference between reading and study. You could pick a verse from what you just read. You’re going to read three chapters or two and a half chapters a day. You might want to pick just one verse out of that and study that verse. That’ll be harder than what I would probably recommend if you’re brand new with this, and that is go to a New Testament epistle and just start working through it a sentence at a time. Take the first sentence, and you need to ask three questions. We put them under the titles of—we call it the TAN method: Then, Always, Now. T–A–N. Then, Always, Now. TAN.

Then, Always, Now. I don’t care what you call it. Anybody who’s going to be handling the Word accurately or skilled in its handling of the Word, they’re going to have to move from Then to Always to Now. You cannot go to the Bible and say, “What does it mean to me?” That’s the most ridiculous way to try and study your Bible. Frankly, I don’t care what it means to you. What I care is what it means. And what it means is what it’s going to mean to the original recipients, what the original author intended.

So I’m always going to take a verse—let’s say I start in Colossians, great book to start in—and if you’ve never studied verse by verse, just start in verse 1, move all the way through the book. You’re going to get to some things there that you’re going to have to make sure you say, “What was this all about then?” If you don’t and you jump to now, you’re going to misunderstand and misinterpret the Word.

Colossians chapter 2 verse 8 is going to talk about, you know, “Don’t be taken captive by philosophy.” If you take the 21st-century definition of “philosophy” and you pin it on that word, you’ve just misread the text. Or it’ll say, “or the elementary principles.” And you’re going to think, “Well, if I think about elementary principles, what I think of…” You’re going to misunderstand the text. So you’re going to need to get back into the sandals of the original audience, and you’re going to have to think through this text: how did this apply in terms of meaning in the first century? What did this mean to the original audience?

And you’re going to learn, for instance, that the word “philosophy” is used in a way that is much broader than a guy with a pipe at the University of California. This is something that had to do with a kind of thinking that was devoid of God. Or “elementary principles” was actually a Persian concept where they used to talk about astrology and the stars governing our fate. And you’re going to begin to recognize, “Okay, I see what Paul had in mind here and what he was warning.”

“Well, how would I ever do that?” You need one book for this. Buy a study Bible. That’s what it’s all about in a study Bible. The notes in a study Bible are all about trying to—in any time a verse has anything that might have a historical distance—it’s trying to say, “Here’s what that means.” I guarantee you, go to Colossians 2:8, and there’s not a study Bible worth its price if it doesn’t comment on what “philosophy” and “elementary principles” meant in the first century. And every good—the ESV Study Bible, whatever study Bible you use—if it’s a good, reputable study Bible, use the ESV. That’s the text we use here. There are probably five or six different study Bibles that are based on the ESV text. Start with the ESV Study Bible. It’s a great one to have. And use the notes.

And keep your mind at least for, I don’t know, let’s just say 10 minutes, thinking through the text in terms of its first-century audience.

Secondly, you then need to, from that original context, begin to articulate the Always principles. Always principles. You step out of the immediate context, which, by the way, is the word that should dominate the first section: context, context, context. Historical context, the literary context, the grammatical context. Now I’m going to get back into the Always. In other words, what from this text applies across cultures and throughout time?

That may sound hard, but it’s not as hard as you think it is. It’s an essential step in rightly studying the Bible. But you need to get to a place where you say, “If I look at this text, what would transcend Colossae in the first century to be applicable outside of this text?”

There are two things that exist outside of the text all the time, and they’re great diagnostic questions to ask. And that is, God always exists outside of that context. So I need to ask, “What do I learn about God in this context?” That’s a great way to figure out what the Always principles are. You could be studying a passage in Leviticus about how the Levitical priest is supposed to prepare a sacrifice, and you’ll say, “Wow, that has nothing to do with today.” Don’t leave it too quickly. Ask the question, “What is the Always principle here?” And you need to start by saying things like, “Well, why would God ever require such a thing? What do I learn about God by that sacrificial instruction?”

And then the other thing that always transcends it is people, sinful people, God’s covenant people, and ask the questions that relate to that. “What do I learn about people in this text? What do I learn about sinful people, God’s elect people? What do I learn?” What are the eternal principles? And whether you’re in Colossians or Leviticus, you can start to, in quick little bullet points, write out eternal principles. Principles are Always statements that transcend time.

Then—now this is super important, catch this now—the third thing that I write on my piece of paper or my Word doc on my computer is Now. And I don’t ever derive the Now information about how it relates to my life from the Then paragraph. I always draw the Now application from the principles. Always. If I don’t, I’ve missed the whole work of going from Then to Always, because I can only apply—I’m going to think about my life Now, my marriage Now, my parenting Now, my relationship with friends Now. I’ve got to take the application of the text, the Now part—how does it relate to a 21st-century Christian guy, me?—I’ve got to derive that from the eternal principles.

If you go into the Bible like most people do—“Wow, let’s check that out. What does that mean to me?”—you’ve totally slaughtered any kind of logical interpretation of the biblical text. Then, Always, Now. We call it the TAN method. If you want more on that, sign up for our Partners program. We’ve got an entire chapter, chapter three, that’ll go into much more detail as to how to do it.

Oh, the Always thing that will help you with Always: I said your study Bible will help you with the Then. That’s the stuff at the bottom of the page in a good study Bible. And this isn’t one, but you usually have a column in the middle that has cross-references. That’s what helps you with the Always, because those are other passages in other settings, in other geographies, at other times. Sometimes they take you to the Old Testament that touches on the same principle, and those cross-references become the key to me figuring out what the eternal principles are. Study notes, that’s helpful. Those are historians. Those are people that look back in time, help me bridge the Then questions.

Always: cross-references. They take me to other texts that show me what applies outside of that text. The Now, I guess you’ve got to know yourself and pay attention to your own life and your own setting. But then write a paragraph that talks about what you’re going to do today and what you should do today as a response to those biblical principles.

You following that? Then, Always, Now. TAN method. How TAN are you, right? Get TAN.

Did I say I had five things I wanted to cover in that section? I said that a few times. I left you with two. Don’t want to heap a big burden on you here.

Don’t Miss the Point

Lastly, and briefly, quickly, with all this Bible study that I hope is motivated by this weekend’s message, I don’t want you to, number four, miss the point. Don’t miss the point. Don’t miss the point.

This isn’t about you being a Christian brainiac and knowing all the data of the Bible. “I thought it was about knowing the Bible.” It is about knowing the Bible. But when you know about what the Bible says, that’s not the goal, right?

Let’s start with two basic things. One is less important, the other is more important. There is changing your life, okay? The goal of the book is for you to be conformed to the image of His Son. The goal is not that you know a lot and can beat everybody at, you know, Bible trivia baseball or whatever. It’s that you are acting and thinking and responding to people more like Jesus Christ does.

If you want a reference for that, there are several, but how about I give you a classic one: James chapter 1, verses 22 through 25. That’s the whole paragraph there. “Be doers of the Word, not hearers only, because if you’re a hearer only you’ll deceive yourself. You’ve got to be a doer of the Word.” I love this. You’re not a hearer who forgets what you read, right, or hear. You’re a doer who acts. You constantly try to apply the text. You always have time for that Now part, and you really are putting it into practice.

Jesus, after the longest recorded sermon in the Bible, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, ends chapter 7 by saying this: those who hear my words and put them into practice, right? That’s the guy who builds his house on the rock. The guy who hears it and walks away and goes, “Well, that was interesting. I know a lot more now than I knew before,” and you don’t put it into practice, you’re like the man who builds his house on the sand. Your life is no different or no better for knowing it.

So we want to be more like Christ. That’s one point, and that’s kind of like the B point. Here’s the A point, okay? Let’s turn to a passage—last one of the morning—John chapter 5. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. John chapter 5. This is the ultimate point of the Bible. It’s the point that the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had missed, and here Jesus is going to say, “You know a lot about the Bible, but you’ve absolutely missed the point of the Bible.”

Look what He says here to the seminary professors of His day. John 5:37, let’s start there. 37 through 40: “And the Father who has sent Me,” Jesus says, John 5:37, “and the Father who sent Me has Himself borne witness about Me.” Now think about this. He’s the Messiah. He comes from God, and He’s saying, “God has written all about Me.” That’s what the Old Testament is about. It leads up to Christ. It paints a picture of the Messiah. Man, you should be able to see this.

But look at this, middle of verse 37: “His voice you have never heard.” Can you imagine telling the most educated Bible person you know, “You’ve never really even listened to the Bible. You missed it. You didn’t even hear it.” “And His form you’ve never seen.”

Now that’s kind of an enigmatic way to say it, because God has no form. The Bible’s clear on that, right? John 4: “He’s spirit.” He just said that in the last chapter. What’s the point though? Well, He is the embodiment, is He not? God was pleased for all the fullness of deity to dwell in Christ (Colossians 1). How about Hebrews 1? He is the exact representation of God’s nature. He’s standing before them. They’re looking into the brown eyeballs of Christ, and He’s saying, “I am God in human form to help carry out this whole redemptive plan, but you didn’t even—you didn’t even recognize Me for who I was.”

“And you do not have His Word abiding in you.” I know you think you’ve got some facts rattling around in your head about the Bible. You can win Bible trivia with everybody, but you don’t really know the Old Testament Scripture, because if it were abiding in you, you’d trust in Me. “For you did not believe”—you didn’t trust. Pisteuō—you didn’t trust in Me, the One whom He has sent, the One He talked about in the Old Testament.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.” This is not what it’s about. You’re in it because it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. “And it is they,” the Scriptures, “that bear witness about Me. Yet you refuse”—love this phrase—“to come to Me that you may have life.”

That’s the point. The point is not only to become more like Christ, the point is to love Christ and to know Christ. Not just to know about Him, but to have a relationship with Christ that is real, that is genuine, that is growing because you spend time in His Word.

My soon-to-be wife, when we were teenagers and separated by 2,000 miles, tried to carry on this long-distance relationship. She was at UCI as a student, and I was at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. We had 2,000 miles separating us. And I know this is hard to believe, young people, but we didn’t have cell phones, text messaging, email. We didn’t even have computers—I know. We had this thing called a typewriter. Look it up on Wikipedia. It had these arms that slapped up at the paper and created words. It was really weird. It was loud.

And because we didn’t have all these modern forms of communication and the love of our life was across the country, you see, there was this little thing at the bottom of our 20-story dorm that was a set of mailboxes on the wall. They all had numbers on them, and we all had a number assigned to us. And usually mail got delivered around 10 o’clock in the morning. We had chapel every morning at 10. So when chapel was done, I would come down to the mail wall there, take my little key out, and I’d look through that little glass window, and if I saw that little slanted envelope in there, there it was. There it was. And I’d reach in there and I’d grab it and I’d see my girlfriend’s cute little handwriting on the front: “Dearest Michael,” you know. And I’d act like it didn’t really affect me, but I’d grab it and I’d throw it in my Bible and I would take the elevator up to my dorm room and then I’d crack that thing open, sit at my desk, close the door, start reading.

Didn’t ignore it. Didn’t brush it off as a non-essential. It was essential, but it was not the point, right? I mean, it wasn’t about me parsing the letter so that I could really say, “I’ve mastered the second paragraph, man. I get it.” No, I wanted to master the second paragraph, but it was all about the person that wrote it to me, see? I wanted a relationship with her. I couldn’t wait for the time when I didn’t need the letters, right? That’s what I couldn’t wait for. But because we were long-distance, we had to have the letter. That was our means of communication.

There’s a time when you won’t need Bible study. You’ll be walking around with the living Word. But right now, this is the Word we have. And while you read it and study it, it’s not about your pride. It’s not about your mastery of verbs and nouns. It’s not about you, you know, being a scholar. It’s about you learning to love and know the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the Father in heaven is always pointing attention to the Son, saying, “Here He is.” And the Holy Spirit is sent into the world to bring glory and attention to the Son. And as fallen human beings who found redemption in Christ through repentance and faith, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the one all of the Scripture and the triune God’s attention is pointing us to.

And when you read this book, you need to see Him in the Old Testament. When you read the New Testament, it’s all about Him. And it’s all about us loving Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

So get into the Word this week, not because it’s an assignment from your very demanding pastor, right? And don’t do it so you can be a super smart Bible guy. Get into the Word of God because you want to be like Christ and you want to know and love Christ. Because this is the letter He sent. And sitting around on a rock and pondering God is not the answer. You want information about the only God that is? Get into this book this week.

Let’s pray.

God, help us to give ourselves to this work like we never have before. Because it’s good work. Don’t let it be a burden to us. Let it be a joy for us to get into the Word. You prayed for this very reason. You prayed there in John 17: “Sanctify them in truth; Your Word is truth.” Set us apart in it. Let it be, as Colossians says, something that dwells in us richly.

Let us, like David in Psalm 119, verse 164, wake up every day and thank You for the Word. He says there, “Seven times a day I praise You for Your righteous rules.” God, we’re not thankful enough for this book, and we’re certainly not into it like we should be.

So help us, God. I pray for those that aren’t on the Daily Bible. We’d get them in the community, this fraternity and sorority of loving Your Word and just talking about it together, moving through it together, reading it together. And then let us turn off the computer and open up Your Word and then dig into just a sentence at a time, a line after line and a precept after precept, taking in and imbibing, drinking and eating the Word of God, making it a part of our lives so that we can love You and know You better and we can become more like You.

Make that a reality for this church, I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.