Part 2 – Why Read the Bible?

            Reading the Bible can be enjoyable as well as a challenge.  There are difficult parts, as well as passages that don’t seem to have much relevance to us in our modern world, .e.g., the lists of families and tribes. However, God has given us a message in the Bible, and we should at least make the effort to read it. 

            A number of us have begun to read through the Bible in a year.  However, you may not have the time, or be free at this time to join us, but you can still read through the whole Bible by yourself.  You don’t need a plan or a schedule; just work at it at your own pace.  If you read three chapters every day and five on Sunday, you should be able to complete the whole Bible in a year.  You can begin with the New Testament first if that is more convenient.

            There are blessings too from reading the Bible.  Two stand out from my experience of reading.  The first time I read through the Bible as part of my preparations for missions work, I managed to read it in a little over three months. A month or so after finishing, a person in my church said to me that she thought I had changed!  I can’t remember the details now, but I was reminded of Ephesians 5:26: “cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”  The word of God has a cleansing effect if we read it and allow it to influence us. 

Another experience was when I was doing a locum physiotherapy job at a rehab centre in Cardiff prior to going out to Japan.  I was having another Bible read through as part of my preparation for going out for our missions work.  I was reading the Bible in the morning, and again in my lunch break in the staff room, and again at night.  A few years later we received a letter from the superintendent physiotherapist to say that she had become a Christian, and one of the key influences had been seeing me read my Bible in the lunch break.  We never know what God may use in a person’s life to bless them. 

            But why else should we read the Bible?  First and foremost, because God has given it to us, and it is one key way that God communicates with us. God is relational and He wants to enjoy our companionship.  For that friendship to continue and grow there needs to be conversation.  God communicates with us through His word, and we communicate with Him in prayer.  However, it can be quite one sided at times.  Think about a good friend of yours.  When you meet you talk and share together.  Analyse it for a moment – how much of that time are you speaking, and how much of the time are you listening?   A good relationship will probably be 50/50.  But in our relationship with God, how much of the time are we doing the talking?  How much of it are we listening? 

            God uses His word to speak to us as the Holy Spirit takes what we read and applies it to our hearts.  Perhaps you are wondering how that works.  An example might help.  My wife and I were prompted to pray about our future in Japan and whether the time had come for us to return to the UK or not.  We had prayed quite a bit about it, seeking God’s leading in the matter.  Then one Sunday morning, when our Japanese brother was speaking from Mark 5, God used a verse in that chapter to touch our hearts.  After the service and when we were together later, I mentioned that Mark 5:19 seemed rather significant in regard to our thoughts about returning to the UK.  Esther then shared that she had felt the same thing from the same verse.  The verse says, ‘Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.’  “Go home to your family” seemed to hit both of us very forcefully.  This was confirmed in other ways as time moved on, but we believe that God had spoken to us through that verse, giving us a greater sense of direction in our thinking about our future. 

There have been many other times when God has used His word to speak into our situations.  And when we have had a word from the Lord this has enabled us to persevere in spite of difficulties, because we have the assurance and confidence that we are where God wants us to be, and we are doing what we believe God wants us to do.  Often God speaks to us by prompting a thought in our minds about something, but more often than not, we will receive confirmation from God’s word that the prompting was from Him. 

If we are not reading the Bible, God cannot use this means to speak to us.  It’s like any relationship, if it is one sided we do not benefit from the relationship as much as if it were two way.  Let’s open our hearts to God’s word and let Him speak to us through it.

Don’t hit the tent pegs in too far!

            The journey through the wilderness for the people of Israel was very much a time of transition from the life of slavery in Egypt to the freedom and blessings of God in the promised land.  However, the journey itself was full of many experiences of God’s leading and provision.

            Very little is said about the actual details of what was involved in their travels.  There are some passages that help us to get a little picture of what it must have been like moving around the desert for forty years.  In Numbers chapter 2 we see how the camp was arranged around the tent of meeting.  Chapter 3 describes the arrangement for the priests and the Levites around the tabernacle.  They were each arranged according to their tribes, and camped under their family banners. 

            When the people of Israel set out on their journey they followed an order described in chapter 10.  Every tribe knew its position and place both in the camp and when they moved.  Because of this order they were able to move efficiently.

            There is one other detail given in chapter 9 which I would like to focus on.  On the day the tabernacle was set up the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony.  There was always a cloud covering the tabernacle during the day time, and at night it had the appearance of fire.

            Whenever the cloud lifted the people set out, and when it came to rest, they camped.  This was the Lord’s way of indicating when they were to move and when they were to stay put.  Sometimes the cloud would stay over the tabernacle for one night and they moved on the next day.  At other times the cloud stayed put for longer, even for as long as a month or more.  They moved when it lifted, and they camped when it rested.  The people didn’t know whether it would be a short camp or a longer camp.  In other words, they needed to be ready to move whenever the cloud lifted. 

            There is a spiritual principle here.  The people of Israel had to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.  They didn’t want to put in the tent pegs too deeply, as it would take more effort to uproot and move on.  This is a challenge to me.  How ready and easily can I move if the Lord wants me to do so?  There are many things that can get in the way of us being ready to follow the Lord when He moves.  We can become so embedded in our present lives that we might not be willing to pay the price to pull up our roots and move with the Lord.  The comfort of a nice home, a secure job, an enjoyable church fellowship, our family and friends, our personal desires and ambitions can all become hindrances to moving with the Lord.  Have we become so encumbered by our lives that we find pulling up our tent pegs hard to do?

            Of course, this may not necessarily mean moving physically to another town, place or country.  It might mean being willing to move with the times as the Lord lead us, in the sense of being willing to make changes in our individual lives so that we have more time for the Lord, or are available for God to use us to bless others.   Work, interests or hobbies, pleasure/leisure can all get in the way, good though they may be.  In other words, we need to think about what is important to us – living and doing what the Lord wants us to do, or allowing our self interests and desires to have the priority.

Another area is for the church to be ready to move as the Lord directs.  If we are not careful, we can get stuck in a rut and be unwilling to move when the Lord wants to move.  We allow our self-interests and preconceived ideas of what we think is right, rather than allowing the Lord to lead us into new avenues of service as the situations around us change.  We can hold on to things tightly so that when the Lord wants us to move, we find it difficult to let go of our cherished ways of doing things.  We might see change as uncomfortable and inconvenient.  Of course, change cannot be forced, but needs to be introduced in such a way that people can see that it is the Lord who is in control of the direction. 

            The people of Israel had to be ready at a moment’s notice to move.  So they no doubt didn’t allow their lives to get settled so that they could move when the time came.  They made sure they could pull up their tent pegs easily.  How willing are we to make the Lord our first priority and be available for the Lord to move the direction of our lives?  That is the question I need to ask myself, and I trust you will ask too.