The Burden of Bible Reading | Theocast

Theocast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Many people, when they wake up in the morning, there's this decision to be made. Do I have the time, energy, or the desire to read the

00:08

Bible? And then the rest of their day, they either feel excited that they took the time, or shamed that they didn't.

00:15

And it goes on, not even if they even understood or benefited from it, but they believe that the act of reading the

00:22

Bible is mandatory for the Christian, and it often just leads to discouragement and shame.

00:28

Today, Justin and I want to have a conversation about the joy of Scripture, knowing His Word, and what does the

00:34

Bible really want from us as far as engaging the Word, specifically reading it.

00:41

We hope this is encouraging, hope it's clarifying. Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word.

00:47

It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?

00:54

That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform, instead of thinking about what

00:59

Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

01:05

Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

01:13

And we have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

01:20

Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

01:25

Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

01:31

Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

01:47

If you're weary, stay tuned. Or if you're surprised like me, John got started so fast,

01:52

I didn't know what we were doing. Anyway, continue. If you want to know where we come from, we are confessional, covenantal, and reformed

02:02

Baptist preachers. What's that mean? Let me clarify what that means. Listen, we just want to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.

02:11

Stay tuned. A lot of words. We're just two pastors who love the gospel, love our churches, and hopefully we're here to encourage you as well.

02:19

I'm John. Actually, let's start with Justin. Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

02:25

I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. I just had another listener who was in our town, didn't even know.

02:32

He's been listening for a year and he kept skipping the intro. So, there you go. Don't skip the intro. It does happen. It's happened with us too.

02:40

Anyways, it's good to begin the year for you, not for us. Justin and I are still recording in 2023, so back to the future here for us.

02:48

And we're excited. The only announcement I have for you is that we're working on all kinds of new things, like books and new merch, all that kind of stuff.

02:57

If you want to stay up to date with what we're doing, download the app. Justin Perdue Download the app. Can I make a brief announcement that's quasi -Theocast related, just because it's stuff that people have been asking about on the community?

03:07

Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you're going to go for. So, this podcast should release, I think, scheduled to release on January 31st.

03:13

In the month of February, registration will go live for a conference that we're hosting at my church on April 19th and April 20th.

03:21

We've got our friend, our brother Chad Bird, coming to speak. He's going to be doing a mash -up of the

03:26

Limping with God and night driving content. So, it'll be a Friday evening, Saturday day, kind of short conference in Asheville, hosted in the building where we meet.

03:35

Looking forward to that. So, if you're interested in coming, registration opens to the public. I think at least the plan was to open that on February 1, so it may even be tomorrow when registration will go live for everybody.

03:45

So, if you want to make the trip to Asheville and enjoy the spring in the mountains and hear some good teaching, we'd love to have you. Lord willing, hopefully, we might get him on the pod while we're there.

03:54

So, we'll see. Yeah, because I think you're going to come and we may, yeah, we're going to make a thing of it. I'm going to miss that.

03:59

I mean, I may have to miss it, but I don't want to. Yeah, word. Well, that's it. Community, Justin, at this point,

04:05

I mean, we're already over a thousand people. I don't even know where we're at now, several months later after this, but it's refreshing. I know there's a lot of people in there.

04:11

It's refreshing. The people are kind. They're gracious. They ask really good questions. Friendships are being made.

04:18

I know people are even connecting off the app, like in their own towns or meeting up with people.

04:23

So, it's been great. That sounded like a dating app. It's not a dating app. Anyways, moving on. We're not swiping any direction here.

04:30

All right, Justin, kind of a punchy title, but we don't want it to be.

04:36

We want it to be helpful and encouraging. So, talk to us about Bible reading. About the burden of Bible reading.

04:41

Oh, man. Yeah, that's a shock jock title if I've ever heard one. Yeah, I know. We're trying to do that.

04:46

We're really not shock jocks here. I think we're meaning to draw people in. I know that we're meaning to draw people in with the title, and then we want to have a very warm, balanced, we hope, encouraging biblical conversation about God's Word, reading it, but just effectively how we have individualized it so much in a way that it's just become unhelpful rather than thinking in good communal ways about how the

05:11

Word of God functions in the church. It's the new year. You've started a

05:17

Bible reading plan a few weeks ago. Maybe you've already fallen on your face, and you're 11 days behind, and you're just like, man,

05:23

I'm about to just punt and give up and try again next year. Or maybe you're plowing strong, and then you're going to get to Leviticus here in a few weeks, and you're not going to know what to do with that, and you're going to trip up there.

05:34

I'm not sure how you view reading the Bible. So, John and I are here to say reading the

05:40

Bible is a good thing, but it should be a joyful thing that we get to do as the followers of Christ. We're going to talk a whole lot about that and how

05:47

Bible reading sadly has been ruined for us all in the ways that it's talked about and the way that preachers and theologians talk about it.

05:57

A lot of the joy has just been sucked out of the whole thing. We often go to the

06:03

Bible, let's be honest. People go to the scriptures and read things and are like, man, I just don't know how to understand that.

06:11

Justin Perdue applies it in ways that are horrific. Justin Perdue At best, it may be unhelpful.

06:18

At worst, it may be just patently false and wrong. Conclusions are drawn, and that's not good.

06:26

What's a better way to think about engaging with God's word as a

06:33

Christian? That's what we're going to talk about today. Jon Moffitt I've grown up in a

06:38

Christian home. Bible reading was part of the daily habits that I was encouraged to participate in.

06:45

Justin, there are many times I checked it off the list because I needed to do it. There are times when

06:51

I try and pick things that were quick and easy just so I could check it off the list. I think a lot of people have grown up with that.

06:57

They hear preachers and they read books about the importance and the value of Bible reading, and you feel the weight of that.

07:03

You think about the sin in your life. You think about how your marriage is falling apart. Often we equate it to, man, if I just would have spent time in the word.

07:14

I can feel that, and I can hear that. Often, Justin, when we start pulling apart the concept of reading the word, the most important part about Scripture is that you actually know it and believe it.

07:32

Those three things Scripture commands. You know it, you believe it, you obey it. Those are the three things it absolutely commands.

07:39

You know the word, you believe the word, and you obey the word. That, to me, is more important in my life, in the life of our church, than anything else.

07:50

That is the priority of the preacher, that they may know the word, be mature in the word, that they might believe the word, because who cares if you know it?

07:58

You must believe it. What does Jon say? I write this thing that you might believe, and believe and have eternal life.

08:05

And therefore, if you have eternal life, that means obeying. You're going to obey. What ends up getting confused is the idea of reading.

08:14

What I always encourage the people in our church is that, listen, my responsibility as an elder of this congregation is that you have the ability to engage in God's word, that you might hear it and know it, to grow in the knowledge of our

08:31

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Paul commands

08:38

Timothy to preach the word and to teach it faithfully in season and out of season, and that we reprove, rebuke, and exhort.

08:45

Why? So that there can be mature Christians in our congregation. Justin and I love mature

08:52

Christians. They're a sweet joy to be around. We want nothing more than the people to grow in maturity.

08:58

This conversation is really about that. The question you have to answer is, have we misplaced or misunderstood reading?

09:08

I want to say that there is, I think, a difference between reading the word of God and knowing it. Some people will say this to me all the time,

09:15

Justin. How are you to know it unless you read it?

09:21

That's a fair argument, is it not? How are you to know it unless you read it? I'll toss this back and say,

09:27

I agree. Then how did the church for the first 1 ,500 years know it? Because they definitely knew it.

09:33

How did they know it? Because they definitely knew it, they believed it, and they obeyed it, but they couldn't go about knowing it in the same way that we do today.

09:42

No, I agree. I think you know the word by engaging with it is a better way to say it.

09:48

That's exactly right. Reading is just one of the ways that a person might engage with the word. That's right.

09:54

I think we do need to be honest and acknowledge historically, you already alluded to it, that for,

10:00

I would say, the first 1 ,600 years of the church's existence, the vast majority of Christians would not have had a copy of the scriptures for their own personal use.

10:10

Not an entirety one, no. No. They maybe would have had portions, but where did they engage most pointedly with God's word written?

10:19

Well, it was in the corporate gatherings of the church. It was with other saints where they would gather to hear it preached.

10:26

They would gather to hear it taught. They would meet to discuss it. Those are ways that we can and should still engage with the word today.

10:34

I think a lot of times this isn't an either or. Sadly, it often is pitted against each other. It always is, and I'm trying to figure out how to stop that.

10:42

It's so lamentable to me and notice to you. Now we have more ways that we can engage with the word, but what we ought not do is jettison the ways in which the saints engaged with the word for 1 ,600 years and the ways that the

10:56

Lord has told us in the word to engage with it. So, John, you and I are preachers of God's word.

11:05

We're called to be pastors of the congregations where we are, and so at the risk of sounding self -serving, I'm just going to say all this.

11:12

Sermons, preaching, the corporate gathering are not man's idea. It's not like a group of pastors got together and said, hey, we need to figure out a way to bind people's consciences so that they will come and listen to us talk so that we have a job to do.

11:25

That's not how this came about. The Lord has worked this way by using people whom he has gifted for certain purposes to preach and teach his word so that his people would learn and grow.

11:38

They would grow in their knowledge and understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are transformed as the message of Christ is preached to us.

11:45

We are confirmed in the faith as the power and love and mercy of Jesus is extolled to us.

11:50

All of those things are how God has always worked, and so it is not a slap in the face to the Holy Spirit in any regard for us to say that we need churches, we need pastors, we need people to teach us the scripture so that we would rightly understand it and so that we would better engage with it.

12:06

We can't just throw those things away. A healthy way to engage the word is going to include sitting under good preaching.

12:14

It's going to include being taught by faithful pastors as to how to understand the scriptures, doing theology corporately with saints who are alive with you now and with faithful Christians who live before you so that we can better understand how the saints have always engaged with the word of God and how the church has rightly understood it.

12:35

Of course, we're going to gather to pray and sing and participate in the sacraments to receive the

12:40

Lord's Supper and baptism as a piece of how the Lord imparts and sustains, strengthens faith, and nourishes us.

12:47

That can't be thrown away. Sadly, that is often jettisoned. The way in which we now grow as Christians, it sounds almost exclusively if you listen to some people, is through our own personal reading and study, and that would be an error.

13:02

That's right. Paul talks about multiple times that discipleship flows down.

13:10

The elders are teaching and preaching, but then those who are mature in Christ, it says the older women are teaching the younger women.

13:15

The engagement of God's word, it's not just the elders who are doing it. It's communal. Really, I would say the

13:23

Bible emphasizes that. Hebrew says, do not forsake the sibling of yourselves. You're doing consider daily how to build one another up.

13:30

I love this. Let the word of God dwell in you richly through songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing. Singing.

13:35

Wow. Yeah. But he does say singing to one another, by the way.

13:41

You could sing at home. I enjoy listening to music. It's clear that he means the gathering. He does.

13:47

So I think that we have to be careful. Justin and I have heard people say this, and you mentioned it before on the pod.

13:57

If you don't have a desire to read your Bible every single day, then you should question your salvation. I've heard people say that.

14:03

I've heard people say that. If you are not engaging in God's word consistently on your own by yourself, then there's something wrong spiritually.

14:12

You're making yourself vulnerable. Justin, I can't say that. What I can say is that you engaging in God's word will be encouraging to you.

14:21

It will uplift you. It'll give you ammo to fight the discouragement and encourage your brothers.

14:28

I can say that. I can say that God's word in our hearts and our minds is definitely a means of encouragement.

14:37

My family and I will take turns writing down our favorite verses, put them on three -by -five cards, and we share them on the table just as a healthy way of sharing

14:45

God's word. But the point of this pod is to relieve this pressure that people have.

14:53

Listen, again, the Bible is clear. You must know it, believe it, obey it.

15:00

Not antinomians here. But part of that obeying it, you have to understand, is that there's nowhere in Scripture that puts the obligation on the individual that there has to be a certain amount of time that you spend with it individually.

15:15

I think it's beneficial. I think it could be helpful. But God has certain people in certain places in time where they have to depend on the communal aspect of the word because that's about all the time that they've got.

15:29

Or education. Some people just don't do well reading, but when they sit in discussions or they sit under the word, they just blossom in knowledge and faith.

15:38

We can't downplay that or make them feel less than. You're a weaker disciple because you haven't engaged in seven hours of reading this week.

15:48

Yeah, gosh, there's a lot of thoughts I have. I want to talk in a minute about how the joy has been sucked out of this whole thing.

15:56

This is because of the way that preachers and theologians talk about reading the

16:02

Bible. It's turned into something that it isn't. It does become a burden when it shouldn't be that.

16:10

Even when it comes to knowing God's word, I think a lot of times we miss the forest for the trees, man.

16:15

We get so caught up on reading particular verses or reading particular passages or memorizing certain passages.

16:23

Not that those things can't be helpful, but I care a lot more as a pastor that my people in our local church understand the emphasis of all of Scripture.

16:35

For people watching on YouTube, how does that book hang together? What's it about?

16:40

Can I talk to you about the plan of God from Genesis to Revelation that centers on Christ?

16:47

Do I have an idea of how the Old and New Testament relate to each other, etc.? It's not healthy for people to just read verses in a vacuum and to isolate passages and start to develop theological systems based on obscure verses, because this happens all the time.

17:04

We have meetings regularly with our people, like folks that are new to our church usually, coming to talk to us asking theological and doctrinal questions.

17:13

We love to have meetings like this with people like our staff and pastors do. To a person, this is what's happened.

17:21

They've read things or they've heard things where verses are being isolated or passages, and they've got real questions about a theological framework.

17:30

This doesn't seem good to me, but this is what I read. How am I supposed to understand that? Then we start to talk to them about any number of things, like the redemptive historical emphasis of Scripture, the

17:42

Christ -centered emphasis of it, how the covenants make sense of the whole, and here's what's going on when

17:47

Jesus talks like that. Here's how you need to understand law and gospel and all the different ways that He engages different groups of people, etc.

17:54

We had a conversation like this yesterday in a meeting with a new attendee here. And the point of what

18:00

I'm saying is, let's even redefine how we talk about understanding

18:06

Scripture and engaging with it. It's not just that you can recite a verse from memory, that's great, but it's like, do you know the truth about Jesus?

18:15

Do you understand the law and the gospel? Do you understand how the Bible hangs together? Are you aware of the ways in which the

18:23

Lord would have us live? Do you have any understanding of the relationship between your justification and your sanctification, your union with Christ and your identity in Him?

18:33

Do you know any of these things? That's how we should talk about knowing the Word and engaging with the

18:39

Word. Let's make it normal to have conversations with each other in the church about these things all the time so that we're sharpening each other in how we understand the

18:48

Scriptures. I think that's a better way. Then Bible reading that takes place in that context is much more helpful.

18:54

Yeah. Can you imagine being in a country where there is no healthcare system and the healthcare system that is there ends up killing more people than it helps?

19:04

I could see how you self -medicate and you start learning how to take care of yourself on your own. Right? Yeah.

19:10

I think that's what's happened in the Christian world here in the United States. I'm not even just blaming evangelical, but just Christianity in general, in that there has been just a hatchet job done, spiritually speaking, and people find more benefit out of their own personal study.

19:26

I would even say off the internet. I mean, Justin, you and I have people who email us and say, you guys have convinced me to go back to church after listening to you.

19:33

Praise God. That's what we want. But a lot of people go to church and it's whack, dude. It is.

19:39

Just because someone does it wrong doesn't mean that this is the better way. God's way is always the right way.

19:46

Not better way, it's the right way. And if you've been in a church where they're not feeding you, or they're misleading you, or they're beating you,

19:55

God instituted the church and he designed it to be in a certain way. And it's unfortunate, Justin. It's so unfortunate.

20:01

It's like saying marriage is a bad thing because a lot of people get divorced. No, marriage isn't the problem.

20:08

It's what caused the marriage to go sour and get the divorce. Same thing with the church. Church is not the problem.

20:15

The church is God's institution if used rightly. This is why, Justin, you must have qualified men, men who are trained, men who know the word and who can be held accountable, men of reputation.

20:28

Why? Because their job is to shepherd the church. Their job is to teach. Technically, every Christian should have a teacher.

20:35

Are you following me? Every Christian should have a teacher because that teacher is the one who's going to help them and guide them in maturity into Christ.

20:43

Unfortunately, we've been told to go home and be our own teachers and be our own guides with our own

20:49

Bible study. And I'm like, listen, you should go home and learn all that you can, but you need a guide.

20:57

And I know I'm sounding Roman Catholic, but I'm just saying this is what Scripture says, right?

21:04

Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go?

21:10

How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

21:16

Theocast Community, and we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

21:28

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Yeah, John, like I said a minute ago, I think sadly for a lot of Christians, when they go to church, it is not helpful.

21:37

Their church experience has been subpar, suboptimal at best, if not just out and out bad.

21:47

And so it's not a mystery as to why people would revert to other means and other methods of trying to engage with God's Word, because frankly, they can't trust what's going on in the church they attend.

21:58

And that is lamentable. And may the Lord kill and close down churches that don't preach

22:05

His Word rightly. Yes, I said it. And may there be more churches planted and reformed so that the

22:12

Scriptures are rightly taught and Christ is preached. I mean, may that be. And at the same time, yeah, we trust the

22:18

Lord that the ways that He has outlined in His Word for us to grow together, it's a community project.

22:25

We trust that those things are good. And our personal engagement with the Scriptures is a piece of that.

22:31

And so don't hear us saying that the only way you engage with the Bible is on Sunday morning.

22:36

That is not at all what we mean. There may be other structured opportunities for you at your church to engage with the

22:42

Scriptures. That's not even what we're talking about either. We're talking about holistically Sunday morning, the

22:47

Lord's Day gathering, the preaching of the Word, the teaching of the Scriptures in systematic ways in your church. But we're also talking about your living life in the fellowship of the saints, having meaningful, deep friendships, and being able to engage with God's Word with other

23:00

Christians. That's really important. And I don't think we do a good job of that either, frankly, many of us.

23:06

So don't just think about Bible engagement as your own personal time in the Word, reading it and contemplating it.

23:14

And do acknowledge that you are prone to error, and you might draw bad conclusions on your own.

23:20

And so just be humble about that. And we are called—I want to be really clear. Like when, John, you were talking a minute ago about several things, and this popped into my mind.

23:28

You hear people rip Acts 17 out of context a lot about being a good Berean, and they'll say, you know, I need to be a good

23:33

Berean, as though that means that they, by themselves, kind of sit in authority over the preacher and evaluate everything that's being said.

23:39

Because I, as the individual, I'm the one because I have the Holy Spirit. I'm able to discern all truth.

23:46

That's not what Luke is getting at and what is going on in Berea in Acts 17.

23:53

That's a corporate exercise. Understand that. Like being a good Berean, it's a corporate engagement with the

23:59

Word, where the Word is taught, it's opened up, it's taught, and we together engage with it and discuss it, and we're sharpened by it.

24:08

That's what being a good Berean is. And we're evaluating the teaching, and we're evaluating the truth of Scripture together.

24:15

And if we together agree— Well, they said they went to the synagogue because that's where the Word was held. Just FYI. So hear us encouraging you to engage with the

24:24

Scripture in every conceivable way. And may we all humble ourselves and acknowledge our need of other believers, whether that's our pastors or whether that's our fellow church members and friends in the faith who can help us to better understand

24:36

God's Word. That's healthy. That's sustainable. I want to make a comment about joy and freedom,

24:43

John. I'm happy to make it now, but I'm happy to wait. No, I'll jump on that. So I think one of the most lamentable things about this entire conversation pertaining to Bible reading—I said this already—is that all the joy and the freedom have been sucked out of the thing, and it's because of how it's talked about.

25:02

It's really funny to me that pastors, church leaders, and theologians—basically, the tone and the tenor of all the conversation about Bible reading is guilt and shame.

25:11

We just get up there and we berate people and browbeat them and shame them for not reading their Bible and tell them that they might not be a

25:18

Christian because they don't desire God's Word enough and put all these qualifiers and conditions on eternity as it pertains to our desire for the

25:25

Word and all the rest. Then we wonder why people only know how to engage the Bible in a burdensome way.

25:32

It's because it's only ever been law that they've been burdened with. It's only ever been another thing that they need to do in order to prove that they're legitimate, and it's always been riddled with guilt and shame because I'm not doing it well enough.

25:47

It's just like we say a lot. If you want to make any Christian feel terrible, talk to them about their prayer life and their evangelism.

25:54

Add in the Bible reading component, and you've got the trifecta, man. We can shame everybody because we could all do better, and we know that.

26:02

I think the tone of the conversation and the discussion about Bible reading has really hurt the whole thing. It's harmed us because I'll say it.

26:10

I read the Bible most every day of my life, and I don't mean for my work. I just mean as a believer.

26:15

I read the Scriptures, but it was a paradigm shift for me at some point in my life where it began to become something that I didn't do out of rote obligation and burden and duty.

26:29

Like, oh, I need to read, and the more chapters the better, and I've got to just do this even though I don't want to do this.

26:35

I just got to do this and white -knuckle the thing. When you begin to see that no, to read

26:41

Scripture is actually a joyful thing, and it's a freedom we have because of Christ, of course, but even because the

26:48

Lord loves us, and He's pleased with us, and He's told us how He feels about us, and even when

26:54

I engage with the Scripture, as I read of Christ, I feel free to put yourself there.

27:01

He's talking to me, and the Lord loves me, and He smiles on me, and I am learning about Him, and I'm learning about His great plan, and I know

27:11

I'm safe and secure, and so I just want to engage here. Just that's a way better posture.

27:18

Instead of having this absolute wreckage in your brain and your heart over feeling guilty, feeling shame, and I'll say that many people that have come to love

27:28

Theocast, I think in the cage stage, you kind of swing out on the pendulum because spiritual disciplines were always terrible.

27:35

You always felt shame and guilt about them, and you didn't see the usefulness of them. You hear us talk, and then you draw the wrong conclusion.

27:41

Well, I just want nothing to do with Bible reading because I just have nothing but bad juju about it.

27:49

There are people in my church that have felt that way, and this is, I hope, a helpful counterbalance and corrective to say, read it with joy.

27:56

Read it in freedom. Know that the Lord loves you and that Jesus is smiling upon you as you engage with the

28:01

Word, and maybe it'll be a better experience. Justin Perdue Right, and that's my encouragement is engage with the

28:07

Word. I'm not, you know, Justin and I are different in a lot of ways. I actually don't have like a time where I sit down and read the

28:14

Word every single day or a period of the Word, but I can't think of a day in my life unless I'm really sick where I don't engage in the

28:20

Word, you know, in multiple different ways, whether it's hearing a sermon, listening to a pod, reading an article, having a conversation, and the thing is,

28:30

I just love the Word. I love the Word. I love God's Word. It's like it's my life.

28:36

Even if I wasn't a pastor, I love the Word. Justin Perdue And if I can interject, dear Christian listening to this podcast, so do you, or you wouldn't be listening to this.

28:43

Justin Perdue That's right. Justin Perdue If you didn't love the scriptures and love the gospel, you wouldn't be listening to this. Justin Perdue That's right, and so, you know, this idea that you have to have sit down, you have to read through their

28:52

Bible in a year, my encouragement too is know the Word, engage His Word in any means possible, whether it's, you know, a song, an audio, or if it's a conversation, if it's reading a book, reading an article, because sometimes people are like,

29:03

I need to stop reading books and read more of the Bible. Well, maybe. Justin Perdue That's probably a seasonal thing.

29:09

I mean, you're free. Justin Perdue I don't know about that, you know, it's like, listen, just the desire is to know His Word and know it rightly, and then to believe it and obey it.

29:16

However that happens, you know, what's interesting is the Bible doesn't pigeonhole you that way. Justin Perdue Don't codify. Justin Perdue I think it's fascinating.

29:22

No, there's no law in which there are certain things you can't do. You can't abandon the church.

29:29

You have to listen to the preaching. You have to be a part of a Bible, of a body, and be underneath the teaching, leading of eldership.

29:37

That's non -negotiable. Justin Perdue All right, I'll pull back the curtain a little bit. This happened to me the other day. I had a limited amount of time, and I thought

29:44

I could read the Bible, or I could read this manuscript that this brother sent me that I think is going to be a really edifying read about the love of God.

29:56

Which am I going to do today? I think a lot of times people would clearly need to read the

30:04

Bible because that's better. My thought process in the moment was, one, what do I want to do?

30:09

What sounds better? Two, I really want to read what this friend in the faith wrote about the love of Christ because I know enough about him.

30:20

The fact that we are really loved by God. I want to start engaging with this manuscript because this is going to be biblical, right?

30:27

And it's going to encourage my soul that the Lord loves me. That's just a small example of the kind of freedom we should feel.

30:38

To engage with the Word, and that may be in reading chapter and verse.

30:43

That might be in listening to a podcast. That might be in reading a book. What you're doing there is engaging with the

30:51

Word through the labor of another Christian. That's a useful thing, too. We shouldn't just pigeonhole ourselves to use your

30:59

Word. We shouldn't codify this thing and just kind of bind ourselves into this. There's only one way to go about doing this, and there's only one way to grow and benefit and be edified and sharpened in courage.

31:09

There's a number of different ways that we can even engage with the Scriptures in our daily lives. Maybe some of this has been helpful to the listener.

31:18

Justin Perdue That's our goal. We want to remove the burden of God's Word in general. We want the gospel to become centerfold.

31:25

I would say, Justin, when you see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, then the

31:32

Word of God changes for you. When you see God as a tyrant who's going to thump you,

31:38

I can see why you want to stay away from that story. Justin Perdue I agree. That's why I keep pounding that the Lord loves us and smiles on us.

31:46

When He says the wonderful things He says, He says those things to us and may administer to our souls.

31:52

I think that will encourage us all to engage with the Word. Justin Perdue Thank you for listening. In case you missed it, we're encouraging you to know and love

32:02

His Word in any means possible. Know and love the Word. It's not an either or.

32:09

If you're not in a good church that is shepherding you, preaching to you, and encouraging you, then you should be in one.

32:15

Let us encourage you to find one because it really is powerful. That's where God's rest is found, and that's where His Spirit encourages us.

32:23

So thank you for listening. May God's peace and grace be upon you, and we'll see you next week.