This devotion is a monthly ministry of the Pee Dee Baptist Association, comprised of 31 Southern Baptist churches in Dillon and Marlboro Counties. For more information call 774-8062. Featured this month is Rev. Bert Petty, the pastor or Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, Dillon.
It is the New Year. Have you ever done this? “I am going lose 35 pounds, I am going to exercise, I am going to eat right, I am going to start playing tennis again”…well, I am going to challenge you to read the Word of God from cover to cover.
I had been a Christian for about three years and had only read the Bible sporadically, and only small portions of the Bible, mostly in the New Testament. I had a friend that I went to church with who said to me, “Bert, have you ever read the Bible from cover to cover?” And I replied, “I have not.” He said to me, “We are going to read the Bible together, and we are going to keep each other accountable.” It was a great way to read the Bible. He would call me and ask me where I was reading, and I would do the same. We both read the whole Bible.
I have read the Bible through every year since then. I remember the first time I read it I ran across sayings in the Bible that I had heard all of my life: the apple of my eye (Pro. 7:2), escaped by the skin of my teeth (Job 19:20), at my wit’s end (Ps. 107:27).
I am still amazed that, when I read the Bible, I still run across things that I have never noticed in the text before. The reason that this happens to all who read the Bible is because God’s Word is alive! Hebrews 4:12: For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. God uses His word to speak directly to our hearts. If you ask the Lord Jesus to speak to you through His word, He will do it.
The Bible has come under much criticism over the past few years and many do not consider it God’s Word to man. Many want to pick and choose in the Word what they will and will not believe. But what does the Word of God say about itself? In 2 Timothy 3:16 we read, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” The text actually means “God breathed,” that God was breathing the word of God through the human writer.
2 Peter 1:20-21 reads like this: “Knowing this first, that no prophesy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, [21] for prophesy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” Notice “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit of God moved upon them to write the word of God.
Also in 2 Timothy 3:16 we read “All Scripture.” God’s Word is clear – all of it is from God spoken to man. My wife and I were once in a church where the pastor said that Paul’s teaching about marriage did not apply because Paul was never married. I could not believe it. Let me tell you, that pastor was only interested in pleasing man – God was not pleased by that statement at all. Even Paul’s writings in the New Testament are called Scripture by Peter, the leader of the New Testament church, in 2 Peter 3:15-16.
It is interesting that this phrase, “the Word of the Lord,” is repeated 259 times in the Bible. My point is that the Bible is God’s Word spoken to man. Can you believe it? The God of the universe wants to speak to you. I feel sorry for those who pick and choose in God’s Word. Listen to Deuteronomy 4:2: “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
Over and over God through His Word warns those who read His word not to pick and choose (Deut. 12:32, Pro. 30:6, Rev. 22:18-19). The reason people want to pick and choose in God’s Word is because they want to keep their sins and have God on their own terms. It will never happen. Jesus said clearly, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
To repent means to turn from your sins with a willingness to give them up. We cannot have both a personal relationship with Jesus and keep our sins also. I beg you to read the Word of God and know the truth “and the truth shall make you free.”
