Heath Lambert: This is the season when everybody is concerned about New Year’s resolutions and making goals for the coming year, and one goal that many Christians often have is the good and right spiritual goal of completing a Bible reading plan. And so all sorts of people are going to be talking about this; they’re going to be talking about the Bible reading plans they’re going to use. We’re going to be hearing recommendations about reading through the Bible canonically – that is, in the order that the books appear in our Bibles.
We’re going to be talking about reading plans that have us reading through the Bible in a year historically – that is, according to the time in which book was written – which is different; it’s important to understand in the order they appear in the Bible. Other plans have you reading through sections of the Bible at a time; the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan is a very popular reading one. All of those can be fine. There are fabulous ways to organize your reading so that you accomplish your commitment to read through the Word of God in a year. But the issue we’re going to address on the podcast this week is not which of those plans that you should use but why for so many people listening to this, it will be a struggle to complete the Bible reading plan that they select, whatever it is. The reality is so many folks will make a commitment to read through the Bible in a year that they won’t complete. And on the podcast this week, we’re going to talk about three reasons why that is.
The first reason is a timing issue. Because our schedules are so crammed because we are so busy, it means we need to plan to accommodate a Bible reading time in our schedule. There’s all kinds of ways that you can accommodate this need to make time for your Bible reading. The most important way is to actually set a time that you won’t deviate from. It’s also important to know that you can be flexible and you can be creative on the making of a time. One of the most common bits of advice that people give when they’re talking about reading the Bible on a daily basis is that you need to get up early in the morning. One of the things about our commitment to Scripture, though, that is very helpful here is that the Bible itself does not command that you must get up early every morning to do it. And so, if you’re not a morning person, you can feel freed up here. You could read during your lunch break, you could read at night before bed, you could read before dinner, and you could find quiet time in the afternoon, but you need to find a time. You can be creative. You can listen to the Bible be read while you work out, or do chores around the house, or work in your office. You can be creative, you can be flexible, but you also might need to be aggressive. You might have to be willing to say; I’m going to throw something out of my schedule to be able to accomplish the reading of God’s Word. Maybe you would throw out extra sleep; maybe you do need to get up early in order to do this. Maybe you do need to take a quicker lunch; maybe you do need to take on fewer commitments. Maybe you need to watch television less. But in some way, you need to set a concrete time. Be flexible, but also be willing to be aggressive with your schedule.
A second reason why people will struggle to complete their commitment to read the Bible this year is because of the problem of self-control. The reality is that we are people who are weak, and we need self-control. All kinds of problems are going to cause us to lose self-control. One of them is the problem of timing that I just mentioned. Because we’re busy, things will come up, and life will just crowd out our commitment to read the Bible. And so we need to be self-controlled and say no so that we can make the commitment to a better yes. Also, if we’re honest, some of us, as we read through the Bible, will get bored with the project. We’ll get to parts of the Bible that we don’t understand, we will get in seasons of our life that are hard, and it won’t seem as exciting or as scintillating as it has in the past, and because of a lack of self-control, we will give up on it.
Let me mention a couple of things you can do to help with this here. The first thing you should do is read with accountability. That is, read through the Bible this year with someone alongside. Find somebody right now; it’s five days until the new year, starting today; you’ve got plenty of time right now to connect with somebody and say hey, I want to read through the Bible this year; you want to read through it with me? You could find two people or three people. There are some church ministry leaders who listen to this, and you could lead your whole church to get into groups to do this together. So read with accountability. Find somebody who is going to be checking in with you throughout the course of the year to do this. I’m happy to let you know that as a staff, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors will be reading through the Bible this year together, and we’re going to update you as the year goes on about our progress together.
Another thing you can do to address this issue of self-control is to read with intentionality. One of the things that I do not do well is just reading through the Bible aimlessly. I am most successful in my Bible reading when I make a commitment to read through the Bible, looking for something in particular. So my favorite way to read through the Bible is to buy a two-dollar paper Bible from the bookstore and get pens and a colored pencil. Maybe I’ll read through looking for works of the flesh, or I’ll read through looking for Christian virtues, or I’ll through looking for sexual sin or the presence of the demonic; I’ve done all kinds of topics like that through the year. Maybe you need to select an issue that you’d like to know more about when it comes to God’s Word and say; I’m going to read through the Bible looking for this. And when it shows up, you can highlight it or make a note about it. You’ll have your very own study Bible when the year is over, and you’ll know a lot more about the topic that you’re concerned about right now. A third issue when it comes to not completing your commitment to read the Bible is the issue of passion. And this is really where the heart of the matter is. This is the thing that upholds the struggle with time, that upholds the struggle with self-control. And the reality is that because the Bible is important, we need to read it with passion. And we don’t fulfill our commitments to read the Bible. We don’t read the Bible at all when at the bottom of it, we don’t believe that the Bible is as important as it is. Nobody has to remind you to eat; nobody has to remind you to sleep; that’s because everything about you screams that those things are important, and you’ve got to make room for them on a daily basis.
When we have the same conviction about the Word of God, we won’t need to set up a time. We won’t need to fight these other things because our passion for the Word will drive us. We need to reconsider how important the Word of God is. Do you know what a precious gift is in the Bible? In that great text on the Word of God, Psalm 119, the whole of the text, every verse, screams about the importance of the Word of God. Let me just draw your attention to a few of them. First, Psalm 119: 1-2, how blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. How blessed are those who observe His testimonies. Verse 7 says I shall give thanks to you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous judgments. Verses 9-11, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to your Word. Your Word I have treasured in my heart that I might not sin against you. And then, verses 14 and 16, I’ve rejoiced in the way of your testimonies, as much as in all riches. I shall delight in your statutes; I shall not forget your Word. In those four sections of text, there are four words. Blessed, thankful, purity, and joy. And that’s just in the first handful of verses of Psalm 119. It goes on and on and on. But if you want to be blessed, if you want to be grateful, if you want to be pure, and if you want to have joy this year, the Bible ties those virtues to a study of the Bible, to a study of God’s Word. This is hugely significant. Our blessedness, our thankfulness, our purity, and our joy decreases in direct relationship to the amount of time we are not spending in the Bible.
But on the other hand, the opposite is true. Our blessedness, our thankfulness, our purity, and our joy increases as we have our faces in God’s word and our hearts shaped by it. This issue of passion means we need grace to do this. We can’t be content with the mere behavior modification of finding a right time or a forcing ourselves to do something in self-control. We need to appeal to the Lord for His grace to love His Word in the way that we should love His Word. One of the realities that is really going to motivate us to read the Bible through this year is the realization that we’re getting ready for 2017. That is the year of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. And it can be easy for Protestants to forget one of the most important realities that led to the spark that started the Protestant Reformation – which actually didn’t have anything to do with any Protestant but had to do with a committed Roman Catholic, a man, by the name of Erasmus. Erasmus was committed to Roman Catholic Doctrine, he was concerned about corrupt moral practices in the Roman Catholic church, but he wanted to preserve the doctrine of the church. But one of the things that Erasmus did that was so influential in beginning the Protestant Reformation was he published in 1516 a Greek translation of the New Testament. That Greek translation was used by Martin Luther and his teaching at Wittenberg and which he used to produce a German translation of the Bible accessible to Germans in their language. It’s the same edition of the Bible that Tyndale used to create the English translation that he produced. And so Erasmus was crucial in a recovery of the Bible. It was when people – theologians like Luther and Tyndale, but also normal people in their churches – it’s when they got exposed to the language of the Word of God, to the Scripture in everyday language, that the Reformation not only sparked but was allowed to continue. It was the Word of God that led to the kind of zeal that changed the whole world. And so as we think about the Protestant Reformation, we remember about the crucial nature of the Bible and being exposed to the Word of God, and how that fuels passion that changes lives and it can even change the whole world.
