(Clip) Is the Bible Your Treasure Book — Michael Durham

The Bible's Commands to Study and Meditate

I, too, like a lot of pastors, well-intentioned, used to encourage and exhort my church, read your Bible, read your Bible, read your Bible, read your Bible. We even would have printed in our bulletin McShane's reading schedule, so we all could be reading the same thing together, and then one day God just showed me the foolishness of that.

I discovered that there's not one text of scripture that commands me to read it, not one verse. You'll search your concordance in vain to find it, but you will find exhortations and commands to study it, to meditate on it, to muse, to think about it, to hide it in your heart.

But why no command to read? Because just reading the Bible is insufficient. It has some benefit. I don't want to discourage you from reading a chapter a day to keep the devil away, because that's how most of us read, but that's not what you need.

Reading Scripture to Know and Encounter God

That's not interacting with Jesus. You don't read your Bibles to gain information either. Now we need information, we need knowledge, but that's not the purpose of why God gave you a Bible. He gave you a book so that you might know Him, interact with Him, and see His greatness towards you.

From Bible Study to Personal Revelation

And when the Lord showed me that, it revolutionized my Bible reading. Until that, I have to confess that I studied the Bible like most of us do, to learn, to learn more facts, to gain knowledge, and that's about all that happened.

I could impress people with that knowledge, but that's about the only thing that happened. I could certainly help somebody by giving them a verse, and I don't demean that or try to minimize that, but it usually had no power, no life.

The Bible as a Treasure Rather Than a Textbook

Why? Because it was just coming from my brain. And when the Lord showed me that I'm to open this book, not with the intent of just learning knowledge and facts about Him, but I am to open this book to hear Him, to see Him, to experience Him.

And this book became a treasure. It no longer was my textbook, it was my treasure. And so, I get up in the morning and I open my Bible, and I now read to see this big God. I read to see just how big and great this God is, because I know today the enemy's gonna come and he's gonna lie to me about my God.

Experiencing God's Greatness, Grace, and Goodness

He's gonna try to persuade me that my God is not as good as He claims to be, not as gracious as He claims to be, not as great as He claims to be, nor is He as glorious as He says He is. Therefore, I need to see it for myself.

I need to experience the glory. I need to experience His greatness, His vastness, His omnipotence, and oh yes, His great grace toward me. And His goodness. And so now, when I get up in the morning, I read not just to see how big He is, but how big He is to me and towards me.

Abiding in Christ Through the Holy Spirit

That's what Jesus is saying. If my words abide in you. It's the means by which we interact, but there's yet another and necessary thing. Because once again, even studying and meditating on the Word of God apart from the Holy Spirit, there will be no help.

It will be black ink on white paper.