"Why People Don't Read the Bible"

Dear Friends in Christ,

   (Begin by reading story from Extreme Devotion, p. 201.)

   In the light of that story, may I ask you, How much does your Bible mean to you?  Most of us probably have more than one Bible in our homes and we didn’t have to wait 50 or 20 years to get those Bibles.  They’ve always been accessible to us.  And yet I find it amazing that we who have such easy access to God’s Word rarely use it, read it, or treasure it the way that the people wanted to do in the story I just read.

   And why is that?  Well, that’s a question that we began to explore last Sunday and that I promised we would finish looking at today.  And just to refresh your memory, we offered 3 reasons people give as to why they don’t read the Bible.  Reason #1 was: I don’t know where to start.  Reason #2 was: I can’t find what I want in the Bible.  And reason #3 was: The Bible doesn’t conform to what I believe.  Now if you weren’t here and you want to find out exactly what I said about those reasons, you can find that sermon in both written and audible form on our church’s web site at salemlc.org.

   Today we want to spend our time examining a number of other reasons why people don’t read the Bible, starting with this one: I hear the Bible at church, so why do I need to read it for myself.  And hopefully the first part of that statement is true.  Hopefully you do hear the Bible at church.  But the question is, how much of it do you really hear at church?  Way back in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, there’s a section in chapter 8 which describes an occasion when the Jews came together for a time of worship and we’re told that Ezra the priest read to them from the Book of the Law “from daylight till noon.”  And you thought that my sermons sometimes went a little long?  But listen to this.  In v.3 it says: “And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.”  No one fell asleep.  No one got up and left.  They all stayed right where they were and gave Ezra their full and undivided attention.

   In the New Testament this extensive public reading of the Scriptures was also common because the people didn’t have their own personal copies of the Bible.  But as those copies became more readily available to the common lay person, as is the case today, the reading of Scripture in worship became shorter and shorter.  So even though you may hear the Bible read at church, you don’t even come close to hearing it read in its entirety.  We really only scratch the surface through our Scripture lessons each Sunday and our sermon text.

   And that really leads into a 5^th reason why people don’t read the Bible: It’s such a big book.  I could never read it all.  The first part of that statement is true.  The Bible is a big book.  But remember what I said last week?  It’s actually a library of 66 books.  So if you tackle each book by itself, all of a sudden it becomes quite manageable.  In fact, some of those books are very short like Philippians, Malachi, and Colossians that have only 4 chapters.  Five books in the Bible have only 1 chapter.  And one book has just 2 chapters.

   But in all honesty, is the length of the Bible really a good reason for not reading it?  I know that some of you here today read all 9 books in the Left Behind series that came out a few years ago.  And I’m pretty confident that others of you have read all the books in the Harry Potter series.  The first one, which was the shortest, had 309 pages.  By book four, author J.K. Rowling was up to 734 pages.  Book five had 870 pages.  So the fact that the Bible is long should never be a deterrent to reading it.

   I’m not sure how many times I’ve read through the Bible, but I have done it quite a few times.  And I would say that normally I will read 2 chapters a day, unless I’m in the Psalms which is where I am right now.  Some of those Psalms are rather short so I may read 5 or 6 of them a day.  But typically it’s 2 chapters a day.  Reading at that rate, it takes me just over 2½ years to read through the entire Bible.  Now do understand that the Bibles I read are usually study or devotional Bibles, so my reading also includes any notes or devotions that are contained on the pages I’m reading.  But when I finish with one Bible, I then move on to another one.  For example, the last Bible I finished was called The Encouragement Bible.  The one I’m reading right now is The Archaeological Study Bible.  I’ve read Max Lucado’s Inspirational Bible, The Life Application Bible, The Concordia Self-Study Bible.  The next one I plan to read is one that Suzanne Fred gave me called The Word in Life Study Bible.  The key is to not let the thickness or bigness of the Bible intimidate you, but rather to just tackle it one verse at a time, one chapter at a time, one book at a time.

   And it’s important that you do so in a translation of the Bible that you can understand because a 6^th reason why people don’t read the Bible is because: The language of the Bible doesn’t make sense to me.  Many of us older folks here today (and I include myself in that category) were raised on the King James Version of the Bible.  And while there is a certain beauty to the Elizabethan language that is found in that version of Scripture, the older I got the more I found myself scratching my head and wondering what different passages meant.  For example, James 1:21 in the KJV reads like this: “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.”  Could somebody tell me what that means?  But contrast that translation with the NIV which renders it this way: “Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent.”  Or how about the translation known as God’s Word which says: “So get rid of all immoral behavior and all the wicked things you do.”  I can understand that, can’t you?  So don’t let the excuse that the Bible is too difficult to understand get in your way of reading it.  Find a translation that you enjoy and understand and let the King of the universe speak to you through it.  And if you need some suggestions, give me a call and I’ll be happy to help you.

   Here’s another reason why some people don’t read the Bible.  They say: It isn’t relevant to my life.  I guess I would counter that by saying every time I read the Bible I can’t get over how incredibly relevant it is to my life.  Whether I’m reading the Psalms which are pouring out all this emotion before God, or the Proverbs which are giving me all kinds of practical advice on how to live my life, or the history of the Israelites and the rebelliousness that they displayed toward God that is not at all unlike what we see going on in our own nation today; or whether I’m reading a parable that Jesus told about how people will respond to the preaching of the Word or how I’m supposed to treat my fellow man; or whether I’m reading one of Paul’s epistles in which he tells us that we are saved not by what we do but by what Christ has done for us, I’m sorry, but the Bible has got to be the most relevant book ever written.  It’s relevant to my life right now and relevant to my life in eternity.  So when you read it, personalize it for yourself.  When Jesus says in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life, understand that to mean that God so loved me that he gave me his one and only Son so that if I would believe in him, I would not perish, but I would have eternal life.  And when David says in Ps. 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” understand that the Lord is not just David’s shepherd, he’s your shepherd too.  When you start to personalize the Scriptures like that you’ll be amazed at how relevant these ancient writings are to you and your life.

   Then closely related to that reason for not reading the Bible is this one: The Bible is boring.  Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are places in the Bible that are rather boring.  For example, when I get into the detailed instructions that God gave Moses for the building of the tabernacle in the book of Exodus, I can’t wait to move on to something more exciting.  Or when I get to the long lists of names and genealogies in Genesis and I Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah, I have to confess that my mind has a tendency to wander.  But the vast majority of the Bible is not like those sections. 

   In the Bible you will find love stories, like the ones between Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph and Mary.  You’ll find war stories, stories of family conflict, stories of international intrigue, stories of incredibly bad situations being turned by the sovereign hand of God into incredibly good situations.  Most of all you’ll see the story of God’s love for a lost and sinful world reaching its climax in the shameful and humiliating death of his Son on an old rugged Roman cross and then culminating in his triumphant resurrection from the dead 3 days later.  And I don’t know about you, my friends, but I don’t find anything boring about that!

   That takes us to one more reason that people give for not reading the Bible.  And I would have to say that this is the #1 reason of them all.  Anybody care to guess what it is?  I don’t have time to read the Bible.  And I can understand why some people would feel that way.  The hectic pace at which most people live their lives these days is mind-boggling and crippling.  It cripples their family life.  It cripples relationships.  It cripples their health.  It cripples their energy.  And it cripples their spiritual life.  After all, there’s work and school and running to the store and basketball practice and basketball games and dinner to fix and clothes to wash and a house to clean and homework to do.  “And now Pastor is wanting me to read the Bible every day?”  Remember the old commercial where the frenzied and frazzled lady cries out: “Calgon, take me away from all this!”  Do you ever feel like that? 

   I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do know that most of us need to slow down.  And it would be to our benefit if we would not only do that, but also spend some time with God each day, reading his Word and letting him calm our troubled hearts.  I also feel that if we do an honest evaluation of our lives, we’ll discover that quite a bit of our time each day is spent on useless things that really won’t matter one bit in the grand scheme of life, whether it’s those hours of television we watch each day or that computer game that we just can’t seem to pull away from or that inordinate amount of time that we spend on My Space each day.  I guess what I’m trying to say, my friends, is that we give our time to that which matters most to us.  So what we’re talking about here is a 1^st Commandment issue.  Remember the 1^st Commandment?  “You shall have no other gods before Me.”  So if you’re finding time for everything else while you’re claiming that you just don’t have time for God – and we all struggle with that, myself included – then it appears as though we are placing other things ahead of God.  We are making gods out of them.  And we need to take that sin to the cross and ask God’s forgiveness.  But we also need to do what I said earlier.  We need to do some re-ordering and re-structuring of our lives so that we can do a better job of keeping the main thing the main thing. 

    And to help us out here, to give us some motivation to do just that, next week when we get together we’re going to spend some time taking a look at some great reasons why we should read the Bible and what benefits we can derive from this wonderful spiritual discipline.  Until then, may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds firmly set on Christ Jesus at all times so that you might make the time to get into his Word in order that his Word might get into you.  Amen.