Priceless?

Is your Bible all to you that God wants it to be?

This thought provoking question comes from one of my favorite bible teachers – Warren Wiersbe and I ask it at a time when the Bible seems to be more and more devalued especially by those who claim both to believe that it contains the very words of God and who also claim to live by those words.

So let me ask and answer the question which some of you may be thinking – “What DOES God want our Bibles to be to us?”

Well, first of all, I don’t think that He wants it so much to be a rule book by which we judge ourselves and others as much as He wants it to be like an instruction manual for living life His way. The longest Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 119 emphasizes the instructional purpose of God’s word in (v 9) where the psalmist asks and answers his own rhetorical question: “How can a young man (person) keep his way pure? By keeping (his way) according to Your word (NASB95).” In other words, God gives us His word to be learned and lived so that we might overcome temptation; remember in this same Psalm, the writer declared in (v.11) “Your word I have hidden in my heart,That I might not sin against You. (NKJV)” So, one purpose of the word is to instruct us.

Secondly, the Lord wants us to value His word like a great treasure but not as a treasure which we horde, hide or store up in our hearts for our own benefit alone but as a treasure to also be given away. The Apostle Paul wrote in (Romans 10:13) that ” “For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved;” but how was that faith born in them? The Apostle tells us in (v.17) of (Romans 10) “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” But the key to this is in (v.14-15) where Paul wrote:

“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:“How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace,Who bring glad tidings of good things!””

Paul taught that the only way others will share in the treasure we have found in the Lord Jesus Christ and His word is if we share it with them.

Third, the Lord wants us to recognize the power in His word for daily living. Look again at the words of the Apostle Paul, in (Romans 1:16) he wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.” Paul declared the gospel to everyone he could because he KNEW that the word was powerful, “more powerful than a two edged sword” he said, and able to get to the heart of matters and people (see Heb. 4:12). The word dynamite is a derivative of the Greek word used in (v.16) for power implying that God’s word can break down spiritual strongholds and lead captive men and women to freedom in Jesus.

Finally and above all, God wants us to value the Bible as a letter from His heart to ours ~ a letter of love and grace to people who have lived out of sync and in rebellion against Him. He wants us to feast on His word, believe in His word, live by His word, stand on His word, grow in His word and He wants us to obey His word.

As I conclude, it may be that you agree with everything I have written here and that the Lord has written in His word but before you nod your head at them and go on about your day, seriously ask yourself:

“IS my bible REALLY ALL to me that God wants it to be?”