In one of His disputes with the Pharisees, Jesus told them, very directly,

“The Scripture cannot be broken.”
— John 10:35

His meaning here is that, if we are to genuinely believe the Scripture and live by it as we should, we must take it as a whole, rather than think we can take some parts of it and reject others that don’t seem to make sense to us. This is an admonition we as His followers today need to take very seriously.

Of course, this requires, first of all, that we have at least a basic familiarity with the contents of the Scripture; we cannot know the word of God, if we do not first know the words of God. Unfortunately, as Titus Chu has said, most Christians don’t really know the Bible; they just have a collection of a few favorite verses they like. This is a major factor in the church’s lack of testimony today.

Some admonish us to “turn back to the Bible!” We surely need to do that, but such a statement must include the thought of not only appreciating the word of God and telling others we believe it, but of spending time in it, and dealing with the Lord regarding what we find there.

I so appreciate how, at the very beginning of His ministry, as recorded in the first Gospel, Matthew, the Lord shows us how crucial it is for us to be in the word. When He is dealing with Satan, He quotes the Old Testament to tell us,

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”
— Matthew 4:4; cf. Deuteronomy 8:3

How we need the word of God to become our daily food, so that we may live by it!

And at the very end of His ministry, as recorded in the last Gospel, John, on the night He was betrayed, the Lord again stressed the importance of our being in the word. In His prayer to the Father, He says of His believers,

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
— John 17:16

And then, just after saying that, He goes on to ask the Father to

“Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”
— John 17:17

This shows we can only be “not of the world” in a practical way, when we are sanctified in the truth of God’s word, the Bible.

Again I would say, how we need to be in the Scriptures in a daily, consistent way! Then we will indeed learn the words of God, feed upon the word of God so that we live by it, and be sanctified unto the Lord day by day!

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—  17 August 2024 —