7 WAYS TO READ YOUR BIBLE (a sermon extract)

The below is a transcript from a sermon extract by Min David Pawson - What we believe - About the Bible

7 Ways to Read the Bible

1. Read it gratefully.

Whenever you pick the Bible up you should be thankful that you live in a land where you can buy it so cheaply. Thank God for the invention of printing. Did you know that Gutenberg, a German, invented printing so that the Bible could be produced cheaply? Printing was invented solely for the Word of God. Thank God for the invention of books.

As Brian said earlier, if you'd lived in the Old Testament days you'd have had to carry around a great scroll. But about the year 100 A.D. a man thought of cutting a scroll up into pages and sewing down one side, so that you could carry a lot of pages together. And so it looks as if books, bookbinding was invented so that you could have your Bible. Read it gratefully.

2. Read it reverently.

There is a retired army officer living a few miles from here, who before he reads his Bible, goes to the bathroom and washes his hands. And he does it to remind himself that this is the holy word of God. And he wants to be clean when he reads it.

Read it reverently. You are not judging this as a human book. It is a divine book, so the book is judging you. You're not reading it to see what you think of the Bible. You read it to see what the Bible thinks of you. So read it reverently.

3. Read it frequently, regularly.

You'll never get exhausted. Read it again and again.

I remember going into the home of a retired Durham miner, up in County Durham. Dear old Grandar Harrison. And there he was reading his Bible at the age of 80. I never caught him reading anything else. I said, how many times have you been through it now Grandar? He said, 18 times. And I said, why did you go right through it? He said, I don't want to miss anything. So read it frequently.

4. Read it thoroughly.

The trouble is nowadays, we get used to headlines and pictures. We read magazines, we read papers, and we can get through a newspaper in five or ten minutes. But you can't read the Bible like that.

And people say to me, how do you prepare your Bible studies? Well I'll tell you, I take my Bible and sheets of paper and I read the passage. Then I read the passage. Then I read the passage.

Then I read the passage. Then I read the passage and then a thought comes. Then I read the passage and another thought comes. Then I read the passage and three more thoughts come. And it goes on like that. And it's like digging for gold.

You've got to go on with the pickaxe until the gold comes. Read it thoroughly. By the way John Wesley said this in his diary, in the year 1729, I began not only to read but to study the Bible. That's when you've really moved forward.

5. Read it prayerfully.

The Jews have at least three quarters of our Bible and they cannot understand it. Why? They read it, they can't understand it because they're blind, there's a veil in their mind (2 Corinthians 3:14). And unless you ask the Holy Spirit who wrote the Bible to help you to read it, the veil is in your mind. And unbelievers can read this book and get nothing out of it. Just dull boring history. So read it prayerfully.

6. Read it personally.

Put yourself in it. Ask, what is this saying to me?

A friend of mine, a young farmer in Northumberland was reading the story of Zacchaeus and Zacchaeus said, if I've wronged anyone I will repay them fourfold. And he put himself in and he said, what, what has this got to say to me personally. And he remembered that he had lied to a neighboring farmer about the age of a cow that he'd sold him. And therefore got about five pounds more for it than he should have done. So he had to go straight from his Bible reading down the road to the neighboring farmer and pay back the money.

And the farmer said, you're a fool, I couldn't tell the age. And he said, I'm not a fool, I'm a Christian. Because he'd read it personally.

Every passage has your name and address on it, did you know that?

7. Read it, and I've already said that in one way- obediently.

If you don't do what it says, the Bible will go dead on you quite quickly. You'll lose interest in it quite quickly.

Can I say this, and if you forget everything else, remember this statement. Sin will keep you from this book. This book will keep you from sin.

Read it obediently. Jeremiah chapter 15 verse 16 says this, Your words were found and I ate them. And your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.

Two things you are to do with God's Word. You are to eat it, and you are to enjoy it. If you don't eat it, you won't enjoy it. If you just nibble at it, or lick it, you won't enjoy it.

Eating involves chewing. Chewing it over. Read, mark, and it's a good thing to scribble in your Bible with your pencil, underline things, write your own comments in. You can always buy a new Bible when you wear it out.

Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the same. That's how we began this service with that prayer. And if you really do that, you will enjoy it more any other book that you'll ever read.

I finish with a quotation from a great Christian who said this, this is what I do (with the Bible):

I study it through,
I pray it in,
I write it down,
I pass it on, and
I work it out.

Hallelujah!

Let's give God thanks for the Bible.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for our privilege in being here this morning.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the rich variety of translations we've got. But Lord, help us not just to be buyers of Bibles, but eaters of Bibles. And not just readers, but doers of your word.

We ask it for the sake of him who was the Word made flesh, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.