Eleven Great Reasons to read the Bible

“Bibles which are falling apart usually belong to people who are not”.
But why read the Bible??? Let’s look together at three short passages of the New Testament which together give us ELEVEN great reasons for reading the Bible.
FIRST READING John 2030 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Of a ministry of 3 years or more than a thousand days, only 50 days are recorded of Jesus’s ministry. The Apostle John selected to tell us just a few of the things Jesus said and just a few of the things Jesus did. But these accounts are sufficient to achieve his twin aims.
“that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
1. So we can believe in Jesus
Romans 10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? ……. 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
In order to believe in Jesus we have to know about him. We have to hear the message!

2. So we can enjoy life in all its fullness
“God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in Him will not die but have eternal life.”
It is as we believe in Jesus that we receive and experience eternal life.
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Last Sunday evening :-
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (NIV)
We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust. (The Message)
The great Scottish Bible expositor Alexander MacLaren once wrote: ‘We may have as much of God as we will. Christ puts the key of the treasure-chamber into our hand, and bids us take all that we want. If a man is admitted into the bullion vault of a bank and told to help himself, and comes out with only one cent, whose fault is it that he is poor?”
God has given us his “very great and precious promises” “our tickets to participation in the life of God” everything we need for life and godliness, life in all its fulness, eternal life which begins right here and now and which not even death can take away from us.

SECOND READING Luke 1:1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eye-witnesses and servants of the word. 3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

3. To know from eyewitnesses the wonderful things Jesus said and did.
A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.
John R. W. Stott (1921– )
The apostle Peter said to Jesus, “Where else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” We want to know the things our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said. His teaching. His parables. His claims. His words of wisdom and encouragement and challenge.
And we want to know the wonderful things Jesus did. The miracles of healing the sick and driving out demons and feeding the 5000 and calming the storm and even raising the dead. Eating with sinners and even forgiving their sins.
We want to know the details of the things Jesus said and did because it is these words and actions which bring us new life. And in the New Testament we have not one but four parallel accounts of the life of Jesus based on eyewitness testimony.

4. To know what the first disciples believed and taught
so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. How can we be sure that we are understanding the things Jesus said and did correctly? Because we have the teaching circulated and received in the Early Church. We have the letters mostly written by the apostles themselves explaining the Christian faith as they themselves received it from Jesus Himself. We can be sure that the understanding we have of Jesus passed on to us through the ages by his people the Church is correct, because it comes to us from the Early Church in the things the first Christians wrote and believed and preached.

THIRD READING 2 Tim 314 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

5. The Holy Scriptures make us “wise for salvation”
Only a couple of months ago we were asking the question – “What is salvation?” We were thinking about the wonderful forgiveness God gives us through Jesus’s death on the cross putting us “right with God.” We thought about how we share Christ’s resurrection life, life in all its fullness, eternal life, which begins here and how and which not even death can take away from us. We thought about love and joy and peace and the gift of God the Holy Spirit living inside us. We thought about the privilege of prayer and of belonging to God’s forever family, the Church. All the blessings of salvation. We know about those blessings and we come to experience them through God’s Word the Bible.
The Bible is our “handbook of salvation”. If you have a car it probably came with a handbook which tells you how to start it and how to open the windows and maybe even how to change a wheel. But other handbooks for cars are available which tell you how to service them and repair them and fix them if they get damaged and get them running better than they did when they came from the factory. If you have ever had to repair your own car, as I did when I was an impoverished minister in training and couldn’t afford garage bills, you have probably come across “Haynes manuals”. They take a car apart piece by piece and then put it together again taking photographs at every stage to show you how to do the same.
The Bible is our “Haynes Manual” for the Christian life! Everything we need to know is in there – it makes us “wise for salvation.” Our handbook for salvation.
George Mueller said this about God’s word: “The viguor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts. I solemnly state this from the experience of 54 years. The first 3 years after conversion I neglected the word of God. Since I began to search it diligently the blessing has been wonderful. Great has been the blessing from consecutive, diligent, daily study. I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the word of God.”

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

6. The Bible is inspired – God-breathed

Inspiration is not the SOURCE of the Bible’s authority for us. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Those words have authority and power in our lives precisely because Jesus said them, not just because the gospel-writer was inspired when he wrote down John 11:25. The authority comes from the Lord Jesus Christ who spoke those words. But the inspiration of Scripture is the guardian of that authority. We can trust that Jesus really did make all the wonderful promises we read in the Bible, because Matthew and Mark and Luke and John were inspired in their recording of what Jesus said. We can trust that Jesus really did DO all the wonderful things we read about, because the gospel writers were inspired. And we can trust that our understanding of who Jesus was and what he accomplished is correct because all the other New Testament writers were inspired to write exactly what God wants us to read.

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Scripture is useful, older translations say “profitable” and Paul now lists five areas of our Christian life where the Bible is useful and even profitable for us..

7. The Bible teaches us

The New Testament word for Christian is disciple, and disciples are learners. We can learn everything we need to know about our Christian life and faith from reading the Bible and understanding it correctly. We learn about God the Father, about Jesus the Son of God, about the work of the Holy Spirit. We learn about salvation and heaven and hell and love and holy living. We learn about prayer and worship and Christian service and witnessing and church. Jesus said “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The Bible teaches us the truth which sets us free.
8. The Bible rebukes us

The Bible challenges our wrong ideas and our wrong behaviour. When we go astray it brings us back to Jesus
You cannot criticize the Bible- It criticizes you.
Sin will keep you from this Book or this Book will keep you from sin. — Dwight L. Moody

9. The Bible corrects us
The Bible puts us right when we are going wrong, correcting false doctrine and understandings, as well as wrong behaviour.

10. The Bible trains us in righteousness
The Bible shows us how to live righteous and holy lives.
“Other books were given for our information, the Bible was given for our transformation.” DL Moody
A young believer was discouraged in his attempts to read and remember the Bible. He said, “It’s no use. No matter how much I read, I always forget what I have just read.” A wise pastor replied, “Take heart. When you pour water over a sieve, no matter how much you pour, you don’t collect much. But at least you end up with a clean sieve.”
Don’t let the world around squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12:2 in J.B.Phillips)
11. The Bible equips us for every good work
We want to know how to please God – the Bible teaches us. We want to know how to serve God in the church and in the world, the Bible shows us how. We want to know how to pray and to worship, the Bible will tell us. We want to witness for Jesus and share our faith, the Bible tells us how. If we want to be USEFUL Christians, the Bible equips us to be useful for God.
So there we go – 11 great reasons for reading the Bible.
• So we can believe in Jesus
• So we can enjoy life in all its fullness
• To know from eyewitnesses the wonderful things
Jesus said and did.
• To know what the first disciples believed and taught
• The Scriptures make us “wise for salvation.”
• All Scripture is God-breathed
• The Bible teaches us
• The Bible rebukes us
• The Bible corrects us
• The Bible trains us in righteousness
• The Bible equips us for every good work

If we want to enjoy all these blessings which the Bible will bring us, Scripture itself tells us in many different places what we must do.
We must read it; We must feed on it and take it into our very being; We must bathe in it for spiritual cleansing; we must look into it like mirror to see our true self; We must meditate on it; We must commit it to memory ; We must study it; We must teach it to others; We must talk about it; and we must preach the Bible and sow its seeds of truth in the field of the world.

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