Eating From the Tree of Life 9-7-08
I truly believe that one of the greatest tragedies in the Church today is the lack of interest in the Bible among God’s people. Quietly disappearing are the men and women (today’s elderly Christians) for whom reading the Bible is as much a part of their daily routine as eating and sleeping. Their children, the “Baby Boomers”, are much more ambivalent about daily scriptural nourishment; for my generation (now being called the “Baby Busters”), daily Bible reading is a rarity. What does this say to the next generation?
I remember a conversation that I had at the campus ministry with which I was associated in the late 1990’s. This conversation was with one of the assistant campus ministers, someone whom I had known since my high school years. Now, although he had come to Christ in his twenties, by this time he had been in the Lord for close to a decade at least. The conversation was about reading the Bible and the need for leaders to immerse themselves in the Word. I was shocked when this individual disagreed with me, saying that all he had to do was “show the people Jesus.” When he had been a new Christian and was involved with teaching a high school Bible class (of which I was a student), the youth minister at the time had evidently told him this; he had never moved on from this philosophy. My response to him then was “how can you show anybody who Jesus is if you don’t know yourself who he is.” My point is that it is only through the Bible that we get a clear picture of the Savior.
I know that many view reading the Bible as a chore (one best left to ministers and old people). After all, who wants to read through all of those genealogies and dietary laws, anyhow? And then you get the plagues, invasions, idol-worshipping, God being mad all the time, and endless disappointment. Better to stick with the New Testament, books like Mark, Acts, and Revelation. For anything else, the footnotes in a Study Bible have all the information that you need to appear smart in Bible class. A concordance has everything else. Right?
Wrong. If the Bible were just a collection of ancient documents that were bound up so that we would have continuity for our cultural identity, then reading it would only be important for academics. But it is the inspired word of God; when you read it, the Spirit that resides within you illuminates different things so that you are able to draw closer to God. That is why eighty-year old people who have been reading the Bible their whole lives still keep reading it: God is still talking to them through it.
In addition to this, constant reading and discussing of the Bible is essential to remain sound in doctrine and judgment. In Revelation 2:1-7, John records the message of Jesus to the church at Ephesus, in which he commends them for being firmly rooted in sound doctrine, testing false apostles and not tolerating wicked men. But the Ephesian church had lapsed from doing the things they had done at first; the love and charity for which they were praised by Paul [Eph 1:15-16] had grown cold. Jesus told them that he would remove their “lampstand” if they did not repent. But even after this harsh admonition, Jesus remarked on their dedication to sound doctrine:
“But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” (Revelation 2:6 NIV)
You see, the Ephesian church was able to withstand great hardships and to resist false and evil teachings because they were dedicated to the scriptures and the teachings that they received from the Apostle Paul [Acts 19]. Because of this, when the Nicolaitans spread their teachings of immorality and debauchery, the Ephesians knew that it was false doctrine.
In today’s church, the message is the same as it was then: we must remember our first love, which is Christ. But if we love Jesus, we must have the desire to know him; this means we must have a burning desire to discover him through the scriptures so that we can share him with others. We also must be able to properly discern God’s will for us and refute lies and false teachings; this can be done only through a mature understanding of the Bible [Romans 12:1-2].
Man’s wisdom causes us to fall away from God. Seek to know God, as revealed through the scriptures. Jesus is waiting to give us the right to eat from the tree of life.
-Charles Peterson