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Don’t Cling to Shadows When You Have the Reality

He who reads the Bible for himself partakes of unleavened bread and the body of our Lord – both broken for us. Jewish Passovers and Christian communions were only shadows of the reality that would come. Once the reality comes, walk in its light – not in the darkness of its shadows.

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Don’t Wish for the Lesser When You Have the Greater

Some people long for God to appear to them as He did to men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Old Testament times. Yet these men would have traded places with us in an instant if it meant that they could have a complete Bible – Old and New Testament – as accessible to them as it is to us. This is because having documentation of an encounter with God is even better than the encounter itself. The encounter is fleeting but the memory of it – which is guaranteed by the documentation – is forever. This is why God has rooted our salvation and our knowledge of Him in history. History cannot be changed; it can only be remembered or forgotten. That makes documentation of history priceless. Therefore, don’t wish to trade places with the prophets and the apostles – just know that they would have all desired to trade places with you…simply because of the Bibles you have in your house and on your phone.

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Jesus is the Point of the Bible

Never confuse the treasure map with the treasure. The treasure map is the Bible; the treasure is Jesus Christ. People who read the Bible but who aren’t majoring on trusting and obeying Jesus Christ aren’t reading it right – and that applies to both testaments! Don’t major on minors.

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Jesus Christ and the Bible

Polls in the early 2020’s show that while 70% of Americans believe Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead, only 6% hold to a biblical worldview. That’s a 10x difference! It means that 9 out of 10 people who believe that Jesus was raised from the dead don’t believe the Bible. The URL of this website is http://www.jesuschristandthebible.info, emphasizing the importance of both. Without the Bible, the resurrected Christ is reduced to a mute idol, with people ignoring what he taught and, in some cases, putting words in his mouth.

We make room for God in our lives by making room for His word. Otherwise, it’s just lip service to, for example, recite the Pledge of Allegiance (“…one nation under God…”). How can you be under the authority of someone without knowing what that someone has said?

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Bible Readers Must Think!

You have to use your mind when you read the Bible. It’s a matter of extracting eternal principles from an ancient text in order apply them to modern situations. It’s why Jesus and His apostles are so often telling us to stay alert. If we sleepwalk through life, we’ll only bump into things.

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There’s Always More to Learn about Jesus

I am on the right track in life when I think that there is more to Jesus Christ than I have yet realized. This will keep me reading and practicing the Bible every day, hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

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“A Word to the Wise Is Sufficient”

This adage reminds us that we can learn things the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is to accept wise instruction; the hard way is trial and error, including the negative consequences of our errors. The Bible is the epitome of wise instruction, enabling us to learn from the errors of others. For example, consider how Joseph matures the hard way.

In Genesis 37, Joseph was blurting out his dreams to his brothers, but by Genesis 42 he was less naive and more guarded in his disclosures. Jesus would have heard the book of Genesis read in the synagogue as He was growing up in Nazareth. That He probably went to school on Joseph’s experience can be seen when the apostle John writes, “But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them…” (John 2:24). Even Nehemiah – who lived over 15 centuries after Joseph and about 5 centuries before Jesus – probably learned from Joseph’s experience, for he says when he first headed back to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls, “I did not tell anyone what my God was putting into my mind to do…” (Nehemiah 2:12). Jesus probably recognized how Nehemiah’s wisdom contrasted with Joseph’s naiveté, and thus the point would have been reinforced in His mind.

You and I get to read a Bible that includes the experiences of all three men. Thus there are many things we can learn from daily Bible reading without having to go through the hard knocks that result from our own mistakes. There are plenty enough of those without unnecessarily adding to them. As the children’s song says, “Pray and read your Bible every day and you’ll grow, grow, grow.” That’s the least painful way to mature into men.

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The Most Privileged Generation

We human beings who live today are of all human beings who have ever lived the most privileged. We have the word of God bound in book form, as well as accessible by our smartphones, always at our fingertips wherever we are. We do not have to go to a synagogue or church at scheduled times in order to hear someone else read it because we can read it ourselves on our own schedule. Eve did not have what we have. Even the apostles did not have what we have; they knew Jesus as a man, but we know Him as God. I repeat: there is no generation that has ever lived that was as privileged as the one in which we find ourselves. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we remember: to whom much is given, much is expected (Luke 12:48).

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Reading the Bible with Patience

In Acts 26:1-3, the prisoner Paul is invited to defend himself to a king and other dignitaries. Because Paul wants to explain the good news of Jesus Christ, and because he knows he could be cut off at any moment, he begins with a with a heartfelt and practical appeal: “I beg you to listen to me patiently.”

Paul had been having plenty of experience being cut off mid-sentence by impatient people who had heard enough from him long before he had completed his thoughts. I’ll bet you, too, have difficulty getting others to listen patiently to things you have to say – children and adults alike. Attention spans are especially short these days and you often have to rush through whatever points you want to make, and even then aren’t always allowed to finish. The Lord knows how we feel.

We read the Bible every day because it’s how we “listen patiently” to God. We don’t want Him to feel like we’re going to cut Him off before He’s gotten everything off His chest. In fact, we’re committed to listening to Him for the remainder of our lifetimes because He has so much to say and we have so much to learn. A daily BRP is a commitment to listen to Jesus Christ with patience.

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The Primacy of the New Testament and the Equality of the Old Testament

Whenever the Old Testament seems tedious or even strange to me, I remind myself that it was all the Bible that Jesus had – and He squeezed more juice out of that orange than anyone could ever have imagined was in it. And He’ll keep squeezing juice out of it for us if we’ll only be as patient with Him as He’s been with us. Doesn’t a patient Teacher deserves patient disciples? View the OT as the Bible Jesus treasured just as much or more than we treasure the Bible (OT+NT) we have.

In everything I write about the Bible, I prioritize the New Testament because it speaks more explicitly about Jesus Christ than the Old Testament does. This does not mean, however, that the OT should be devalued in our eyes. It’s just that we need a good understanding of the NT in order to interpret the OT as Jesus did. To repeat the point: the NT tells us how Jesus interpreted the OT. He is the Lamb who was found worthy to break the seals and open the book (Rev 5). No one else was worthy to break those seals. There is none like Him!

The NT and OT are inseparable – they are organically intertwined. Without the OT, the NT has no root; without the NT, the OT is missing its fruit. But this equal value of the two testaments can only be fully appreciated if the NT is given primacy in the way I’ve described above. This reminds us of how the equal value of a man and a woman in marriage can only be fully appreciated if the man is acknowledged as the leader.

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Which Is Easier: History or Prophecy?

Moses was, among other things, a historian. In fact, the entire book of Genesis is a record of history with some prophecy sprinkled in; he doesn’t get to the laws for Israel until halfway through Exodus! Many of the prophets wrote history as well as prophecy just as Moses had written prophecy as well as history. To be more specific, the prophets after Moses wrote the books of history (such as Judges and Chronicles) and also sprinkled historical facts in their books of prophecy (such as in Isaiah and Jeremiah).

Which would be easier to get right: history or prophecy? Put yourself in the place of Moses and the prophets. It is, of course, much easier to get history right than to get prophecy right simply because the past is settled and the future is unknown. Why then do some people trust the prophecies of the Old Testament but not the history it contains (including the creation story and the feats of Moses and the prophets)? If the prophecies of the Old Testament reliably tell us about Jesus, how could its history be unreliable? Therefore, no matter how much the history in the Old Testament may stretch your faith, the fulfillment of its prophecies in Christ confirm to you that the authors deserve to be trusted on history as well as prophecy.

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Keeping the Lights On

Even though we can use phones and computers to read and study the Bible, which is helpful and convenient, be sure to keep your home stocked with plenty of conventional Bibles for everyone in your family for times when the electrical grid goes down. Oh, and flashlights for reading at night. The word of God sustains us even in our darkest times.

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If You’re Looking for a Good Commentary on the Bible…

The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible itself. (As our spiritual ancestors have said, “Let Scripture interpret Scripture.”) This can work because the biblical authors interact with each other – that is, a biblical author often comments on what other biblical authors have written.

The most foundational demonstration of this dynamic is that the New Testament is the interpretive lens for the Old Testament. For this reason, my recommendation for beginners in Bible reading is to become well grounded in the NT before spending too much time in the OT. The Bible is not a book to be read left to right; it’s a library to be read right to left. Jesus Christ is the key to that library.

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Having to Choose Between the Word of Man and the Word of God

The Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther decided that when a spiritual leader – even one endowed with as much authority as the Pope – contradicts the Bible, it’s the Bible that must be obeyed. Men sometimes speak the word of God; the Bible always speaks the word of God.

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The Statute of Limitations on Adding Books to the New Testament Expired Long Ago

The rigorous and extensive vetting process, conducted by the geographically-dispersed and organizationally-independent churches of the first three centuries of Christianity, by which only 27 texts out of more than a hundred under serious consideration survived the tests of provenance, cannot be replicated today. On this basis alone, no other text should be considered for inclusion.

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Notes on the Bible (Prior to 2024)