Picture the scene.
You’ve taken delivery of a new wardrobe. It’s a flat pack wardrobe so has come with a 40 page booklet of how to assemble it.
Do you:
a) spend half an hour reading through the booklet and count out all the pieces to make sure they are there?
b) ignore the booklet and plough on to building the wardrobe?
We all know that the right thing to do is option a. The instruction booklet is there for a reason so use it!
But it seems hard work. We think we know what we’re doing. Option b often seems more appealing to many of us.
The sad reality is when it comes to living in God’s world we all automatically choose option b. We think we know best and we just get on with life through trial and error.
Yet this isn’t the only option. God has placed us in this world but he hasn’t just put us here and expected us to get on with things. God has spoken to us through His Word…the Bible.
Daniel’s attitude to God’s Word (scripture)
A few Sunday evenings ago we spent time in Daniel 9.
Daniel was a man of great faith and prayerfulness. He lived around 500 years before the birth of Christ and saw the collapse of the kingdom of Judah. Despite having to spend most of his life in a foreign land serving foreign kings in Babylon he kept trusting God. In fact, his faith was used against him by those jealous of him in the kings court in Daniel 6.
What Daniel also revealed to us was Daniel’s dependence upon God’s Word…the scriptures. Before Daniel’s great prayer in chapter 9 we find him in God’s Word, literally ‘reading from the books or the scrolls’.
Despite living in a foreign land and being surrounded by foreign gods Daniel treasured reading the scriptures.
Why?
For Daniel the scriptures were necessary for his daily walk with God. They were necessary to fuel his prayer life. They were necessary to help him keep in view the God he followed and trusted in. They were necessary to help him cling hold to the promises God had made, in particular through Jeremiah.
The difference God’s Word makes
Living in God’s world without listening to him through his revealed Word is like trying to build something with no reference to the instructions.
But the consequences for doing this though are far greater than having to buy another wardrobe or put up with one that is poorly put together.
When we read God’s Word we realise how amazing God is and how poorly we have responded to him in our lives.
We see that ignoring God brings with it everlasting consequences.
God’s Word points us to and reveals to us one described as ‘The Word’.
“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God; children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:9-14)
Reading God's Word causes us to meet 'The Word'...The Lord Jesus. We come to realise our need of him to rescue us from our sin and to bring us into God's family.
God has chosen to reveal himself through His Word…the Bible.
What a blessing that is!
God ultimately chose to reveal himself through ‘The Word’…Jesus Christ.
What a Saviour He is!
Be thankful today for God’s revelation to us through God’s Word…the Bible.
Be thankful today for ‘The Word’…the Lord Jesus…who brings us back into relationship with God.
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