Delighting in God's Word: A Lesson from Psalm 1, Part I

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish." Psalm 1

In an age where more translations of the Bible and more Bible study helps are available than at any other time in history, how do we explain the fact that most Christians struggle intensely to read the Bible? Although recent data shows that Bible reading has climbed to 50% among Millennials and Gen Z, other studies show that as many as one-third of Christians never open their Bibles at all. Concluding that people just don't want to read the Bible isn't necessarily true, for I could quote any number of people I know and love who have told me recently that they don't study the Bible as much as they should. Inside that admission is an expression of longing for that intimacy with the Lord that alone makes life bearable. Certainly not all, but many people do want to read their Bibles, especially as times grow worse and worse and as listening to world news makes us feel as if we are sitting in a canoe headed for Niagara Falls. People do want to know what's going on. Concluding that people are just too busy doesn't truly account for lack of Bible reading, either, because we are all experts at finding time to do the things we really want to do.

The most obvious reason more Christians don't read their Bible could very well be the widespread misgiving that reading the Bible is too hard. How this could be true in a market overwhelmed with study aids seems counterintuitive, but if these helps were indeed serving their purpose, how do we explain that they are so ineffective in enticing people to read? What if the cure has become the disease: the more study helps there are, the more difficult we think the task really is? After all, why else are there so many books out there to show us how? But I'm not sure much of this enormous market of "Christian" material is truly honoring to God. Before we purchase a study help, we need to research the author. More and more "spiritual gurus" are being tragically exposed as frauds and false teachers. On top of that, even big-name Bible scholars often stand in the way of people discovering truth not only by usurping the role of the Holy Spirit but by twisting the plain sense of the page with the nonsense of their own doctrine. "Oh, you think this text means . . . but what it really means isn't that at all . . . " and on and on we go, doubting our own ability to read and miring deeper and deeper into manmade doctrine while knowing less and less of bedrock truth.

I have in my possession an $80.00 study Bible that I bought with a gift card primarily because I wanted an NASB version of the Bible for comparison with my favorite: The King James Version. This Bible is not only infiltrated from cover to cover with a famous and now-deceased Bible teacher's own interpretations of the Bible, it sports his last initial in a seven-inch script (I just measured) across the opening page that introduces every book of the Bible. His motto is "unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time." Don't believe it. God's Word is not bound. Jesus said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). We don't set the truth free; it sets us free. But this assumption that we need someone else "better trained" to help us open God's Word has not only gotten out of hand; it has led us astray. We are following men instead of God. If there is no Mediator between our souls and God other than the Lord Jesus Christ, there is certainly no aid to knowing His Word apart from the Holy Spirit.

No one can understand God's Word without the Holy Spirit, no matter how high a mountain of study helps he acquires. And the simple fact is this: it isn't any more exciting to study God's Word from what someone else has prechewed than it is to eat baby formula. If people are left feeling overwhelmed by the sources available and underwhelmed once they plunge in, no wonder. To remove the productive struggle from anything, especially from the study of God's Word, not only diminishes the outcome but actually enables ignorance. And we can be sure Satan would have it so. He has his own version of God's Word. And this fact seems more and more apparent as time goes on. The RLC movement with which many Progressive Christians identify isolates the words of Jesus--the "Red Letter" words--as alone being authoritative. This movement doesn't like some of the teachings in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. Go figure. Some churches have interlaced Bible study with the fiction of popular television series' study books written by multimillionaires.

We could go down many a trail following this wind of doctrine and that one--or, what Paul rightly calls "doctrines of devils" (I Timothy 4:3), but the Lord has Himself taught us a way to read His Word. Jesus said to a group of people hardened by the many layers of their own tradition, "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me" (John 5:39). The Pharisees who thought they knew God's Word the best had completely missed the boat. When Jesus confronts their ignorance of Himself, He also gives us three teaching tips in this single sentence: a method, a scope, and a focus. The method is simple: search. Arm ourselves with a good, reliable translation rather than a paraphrase; keep a concordance nearby; consult a good Bible dictionary; obtain access to Hebrew and Greek words; grab a journal and a pen; and get to work. (Notice that these study tools don't come with bias and baggage.)

The scope is also simple: the Scriptures. As few as five percent of all Christians have read the Bible from cover to cover even once in their lives, but all of God's Word is here sanctified by Jesus because the Old Testament is all His hearers had at that moment and the New was being spoken before them. Jesus also gives us the focus: all Scripture ultimately points to Jesus. Creating a false dichotomy between the words of Jesus (in red) and any of the rest of the Bible is a lie. Proverbs tells us that "every word of God is pure" (Proverbs 30:5), and Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed (II Timothy 3:16).

If the same Lord God who breathed the breath of life into you and me also breathed that life into His Word, it is not dead; it is not bound; and it will give life to everyone who reads it. Period. So, we see that Jesus Himself hasn't burdened us with a mountain of dos and don'ts when studying His Word. He has kept it simple--although not easy--and has unleashed us to our own productive struggle. Do read it. But don't just read it. Search it. And when you search, know what you have found: yet more testimony of "Me." Not just testimony about "Me"; but testimony of "Me." Every word is His. And yet the Lord has also promised us the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to come alongside us and read with us: "He shall teach you all things" (John 14:26). As the Lord Himself guides the one who wants to know Him through His Word, He teaches us just as He taught on earth: inductively.

What we need most, I firmly believe, is not more products to explain the Bible. We need a process that helps us to read effectively. When we allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify this process--for it is the way in which our Creator created our minds to think and our eyes to read, we will have access to God's Word that is not only fresh and firsthand; it will be far superior to anything we can buy. "Buy the truth, and sell it not," Proverbs 23:23 commands. How do we do that? When Paul was straightening out confused churches on which spiritual gifts to seek, he plainly said every Christian should seek the gift of prophecy (I Corinthians 14:1). This gift properly understood is the gift of teaching and speaking God's Word to edify all other believers. Paul was by no means minimizing the special calling of pastors to teach the Word; he was widening the obligation of knowing the Word to the scope of all believers. This alone should tell us that we bear not only the possibility but the responsibility of speaking God's Word to every situation in life. Our fellow Christians desperately need this from us!

How will we do for other believers what the Church so sorely needs if we do not even know the Word we are to speak? But when we take this wonderful gift of prophecy down to the practical level, it works. Just as anyone in the classroom can become a stronger reader by applying reading strategies, so we ourselves can approach God's Word armed with several simple but very effective reading strategies. Below is a list which was published in the Elements of Literature series from which I have taught for many years. It really isn't anything new; our brains know to do this when we give them a chance--when we really search the Scriptures and take time to meditate on God's Word as Psalm 1 tells us to do:

• Determining the main idea

• Rereading

• Reading for detail

• Questioning the text

• Making inferences

• Making connections

• Using chronology

• Determining cause and effect

• Making predictions

• Comparing and contrasting

• Making generalizations

• Summarizing

• Evaluating

These strategies follow a natural order but are also recursive, spiraling and looping endlessly. But strategies unsanctified by a listening ear and an obedient heart will only make us smarter, not more godly. We read not merely to know but to obey: to walk "not" in all the ways of our rapidly deteriorating world--in the counsel of the ungodly. When we approach God's Word as the Psalmist of Psalm 1 did, delighting in the law of the Lord and meditating in it day and night, we will not only be blessed beyond measure, everything we do will prosper. The "secret sauce" is secret time alone with the Lord--every single day. We will know that we have an appointment every morning with the King, and He wants to speak directly to us--to little you and to little me--from His Holy Word! It is indeed possible to open our Bible and to understand what it is saying. With the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the perspiration of a surrendered will, a disciplined mind, and a hungering heart, we will find the gold of which David spoke in Psalm 19: 10-11, "More to be desired are they [the judgments of the Lord] than gold."