The last four reasons for reading God’s Word are really important. This devotional reading finishes our looking at why we are to read God’s Word.
Nuggets
- We should read God’s Word because it leads us to salvation.
- We should read God’s Word because it equips us with direction specifically from God.
- We should read God’s Word because it shows us how we gain eternal life.
- We should read God’s Word because it provides us access to God’s power.
In the last devotion, we started to show that we need to read God’s Word more. We grow closer to God when we read for ourselves what God actually says.
In this devotion, we finish the last four why’s.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Outward and Inward Religion study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
All headings are the wording from the S. S. Times’ sermon Searching the Scriptures.
Resource
If Rightly Studied, It Will Lead to Salvation
“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (Jas. 1: 21 ESV)
We should read God’s Word because it leads us to salvation.
One thing we can never forget is that God’s #1 priority is for our relationship with Him to be restored. He wants to get us back to the Garden of Eden relationship.
God wants to have that face-to-face relationship with Him again.
We messed it up with the original sin. We can’t blame it on anyone else but mankind.
It was our choice to disobey God. It is our choice to make it right.
Making it right is called salvation. Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
Glossary
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
How do we get from disobedience to obedience? Enter God’s Word.
We have a written record of the standards by which God is going to judge us. Every person can have access to it.
It tells us what we need to do to be a true disciple.
What we have steer clear of just reading to read. Trapp told us what we need to do. He wrote, “It is self-evident that the better disposed the mind is, the more likely it must be to receive and retain the heavenly instructions. As a vessel which is empty, clean, and sound, is best fitted to receive and retain pure water, or any such liquor poured into it.”
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We only grow through reading God’s Word. “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ …” (II Pet. 3: 18 ESV).
We do that by getting God’s Word to our hearts.
How do we accomplish that? We have to approach it through meekness. Meekness is a personality trait a mild or moderate disposition that places dependence on God.
If we don’t accept God’s Word meekly, we — in essence — don’t receive God’s Word. It is an all or nothing deal.
We have to accept all of God’s Word. We can’t pick and choose what we get behind. We can’t hold back our acceptance to see how it will go.
God wants us to do exactly as His Word says. We gain when we do that.
Did you catch that? Getting God’s Word to heart level means we have to go from reading to doing God’s Word. We have to put it into practice in our lives.
It Is Profitable for Both for Doctrine and Practice
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (II Tim. 3: 16-17 ESV)
We should read God’s Word because it equips us with direction specifically from God.
We briefly talked about II Timothy 3: 16 in the last devotion. We talked about how God’s Word is breathed from Him to us.
Let’s focus on the fact that God’s Word comes from God.
But Vaughan gave us some insight into what it means when it says Scripture is breathed by God. He wrote, “‘Inspiration’ is a breathing into: ‘influence’ is a flowing into: neither word is self-explanatory; the former, like the latter, may clearly admit of degrees and modifications.”
Resource
I think — often — we think of breathed as being inspired. God didn’t use a pen and write out the words. Humans did the actual writing.
God did the creating. It is His actual words. He gave them to the human writers through inspiration.
Because of how God actually did it, I can see where the influence part comes into play.
Inspire. Influence. Either way, it shows God is in control either way.
But I also think that both are appropriate. “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Pet. 1: 21 ESV).
If the conduit of the words is the Holy Spirit, He is both inspired and influenced by God Himself.
We’ve also talked about how God reveals Himself in His Word. Hunter helped us understand how revelation is different from inspiration. He wrote, “It is not revelation, but the infallible record of an infallible revelation.”
Resource
Inspiration is the way in which the words are presented. Revelation are the words and ideas themselves.
Why are the books of God’s Word so different? The inspiration allows the author of the books to write in their voice.
That does not negate the fact that Scriptures are the Word of God. The revelations are from God Himself.
That fact that the 66 books — written by 35-40 people from 1445 BC to 96 AD (not counting Job) — are interconnected shows the single Author. The Old Testament foreshadows the New, and the New Testament fulfills the Old while both prophesy the future.
Because of that, we must give them the weight they are due.
Christ Enjoins the Study
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (Jn. 5: 39 ESV)
We should read God’s Word because it shows us how we gain eternal life.
We gain knowledge and conviction by searching God’s Word. This means more than only reading it.
To find the connection between what we are reading has with other verses, we, at times, need to read further in that book or look at another one entirely. We have to determine when prophesies are given and when they are fulfilled.
We have to be careful with this verse. We should not interpret it to mean that reading only and knowing of what the gospel says gives us eternal life.
Eternal life is only given when we have taken what we know to be from reading God’s Word and ABCDing.
Without a Knowledge of It, We Will Go Astray
“But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God’” (Mt. 22: 29 ESV)
We should read God’s Word because it provides us access to God’s power.
When we read God’s Word, we see His power. It is evident throughout His Word.
One of His greatest displays of power is when God created the universe. He created it with space, time, and matter.
God showed His power by taking a family of 70 and turning it into a nation of over two million.
Most importantly, God showed His power at raising Jesus from the dead.
We can only access this power by ABCDing.
Making the Connections
When we sin, it creates a filthiness within us. That is the opposite of what God wants.
God wants us to be pure, as He is. The moral decay caused by sin goes against our new creation status.
Reading God’s Word helps us access God’s power. It is only through His grace do we have the ability to withstand temptation and not sin.
How Do We Apply This?
- Seek God’s Word for His truth and believe it when we find it.
- Approach God’s Word with reverence and submission.
- Diligently search God’s Word.
- Read through God’s Word in timeline order.
- Study the different topics contained in God’s Word.
- Take advantage of all tools available to us.
- Depend on God to reveal understanding of His Word to us.
- Cover our study of God’s Word with prayer.
- Critically study God’s Word.
Resource
Father God. Lord, we want to read Your Word so that we understand and come closer to You. We want Your salvation. Amen.
What do you think?
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