Psalm 119:11
“Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”
Psalm 119:105
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Matthew 7:24-25
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
Next year at our church camp, the theme will be Transformed, and the sub-theme is Our Firm Foundation. As I was contemplating this theme and what I might begin to write as we plan the lessons, this lesson came to my mind, and I began to think about my journey in the Word of God, first as a boy, as a young man, and as a minister. I grew up seeing my father and my mom regularly reading the scriptures at home. I saw my dad reading almost daily and my mom often sitting, drying her hair while reading the scriptures. My dad died when I was 16, and my mom re-married when I was 20. My other dad could be seen often reading his Bible at his desk first thing in the morning. He is 84 years old now, and every morning shortly after 5 am, he can be found at his desk with a cup of tea, reading the scriptures.
I have spent a lot of time reading the scriptures over the years. I read many parts of the Bible and even taught through entire books. But it was not until about 4 or 5 years ago that I began simply reading the Bible cover to cover. I still read topics, and along with a church member, I may do a reading for 30 days on a lesson series to help encourage them. But for the most part, I set aside time to read the Bible from cover to cover. I recently finished the cover-to-cover for the 2nd time this year. I did a challenge that my preacher friends and I do for the first 90 days of each New Year, and then I did another read-through.
The idea here is not to embarrass, to hurt, or to boast. Rather, I want to encourage you to do the same. If you have the Bible App, it has several read the Bible in a year plans that you can use. You can do the chronological one that lets you read the Bible in the order in which each book was written, or the one I just finished did a Psalm each day, so by the end, I had read through the Psalms multiple times as well.
Once one reads through the Bible multiple times cover to cover, the continuity of the narrative begins to come into play. One can begin to see parts of each book that mention each other; you can see the prophecies that are fulfilled in the New Testament; and when a verse or set of verses are cited or quoted in the New Testament, they begin to sound and feel familiar, and it becomes easier and easier to understand what was being said.
The Bible is the only firm foundation that we have today. It is the Word of God, and in it, we have the basis for our faith. The Bible offers us truths in history, science, geography, laws of physics, and many other areas while not being a book about any of the topics. We can take facts like the ones often mentioned in Acts about who was the leader, where a certain event took place, or who was involved in an event and find that the Bible is very accurate. We can take a look at Daniel 11, one of the most prophecy-filled chapters in the entire Bible, and then take secular history and see how accurate these prophecies were.
The Bible offers us the truth about where we come from and where we are going. It tells us that we are deliberately made by God and that we have a purpose for which to live each day. The Bible tells us that God loves us, and as we read the Bible, we see that God loves imperfect people from Abraham to Peter. We see that God has been faithful even when His people were not and that when He did have to punish us evil-doers, He exhausted every offer of grace, kindness, and pleading to repent before any punishment was meted out. We see that even in the punishment, there is grace from Noah, to Lot, to Daniel and his fellow captives, and even to today and God’s preservation of Israel in the midst of very hostile neighbors.
We have a firm foundation that is based on the truth of God’s Word. The time is coming and may come sooner than we think when the Bible will be illegal. Have we worked hard to ‘hide it in our hearts?’ No one can erase it there or confiscate what we memorize. The Bible offers us the understanding that God uses broken and fallen men and women who submit to Him and let Him do what only He can do.
The Bible offers us a firm foundation of God’s grace to fallen and broken people who have no hope in themselves, and without His grace, we have only despair to look forward to. Even if this life you had here was the best ever, the one to come without Jesus is intolerable. The opposite is also true; if one has a horrible life filled with hurt, filled with loss, and filled with pain, but you have Jesus as Savior, then this is as bad as it gets and the future is awesome.
This is the kind of foundation that gives us a sure footing. But this only comes when we read the whole Bible and see people just like us, just like me, being used by God. It comes when we see the barnacles on the ‘heroes’ of the faith, and we see the same kinds of barnacles like we have on us. We have a sure foundation to see that God is there in the background making things work for His people, and we see that even if He is silent, He is never off the clock. And if we just keep looking, we will see His mighty hands at work.
Read, study, re-read, and work at memorizing the Scriptures. Find songs that have entire verses of the Bible or that are based on the Bible and learn them. Keep working and knowing the truth, and in it, we have the power to serve the Lord and be sure-footed as we walk here until we get home. Learn to love the Book.
God bless you,
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
How To Connect With Us
Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/
Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca
Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09