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Sermons and messages from Pastor Jason White and others at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Tyler, TX
Well, today, we're continuing our message series that we've been in the last three or four weeks called rhythms of grace. We're looking at spiritual disciplines, trying to take a little bit of a fresh look at the spiritual disciplines. And if you were here on the very first week of the intro to this series, you will remember that we talked a lot about the checklist mentality and how a lot of us were used to kind of seeing a list of spiritual disciplines and all the things that we're supposed to do as good Christians. This is just what good Christians do, and you work your way down the list. Well, my guess is that if you're used to some kind of a checklist mentality, that at the very, very top of the checklist was reading your Bible. I mean, out of all the things that you're supposed to do in the spiritual disciplines, that is the spiritual discipline of the spiritual disciplines, it just gets hammered into you that you are supposed to be reading your Bible as a Christian. You need to get up early. You need to read it every single day you need to have a quiet time. First thing in the morning, set your alarm early, get up early, read your Bible, at least some of it a little bit. It's that important just read something. But if you really want to be a good Christian, then make sure that you read at least a chapter of of a book every single day, and then make sure you read the next chapter and the next chapter, and then that way, you'll read the entire book that you're in. But if you really want to go a step further than that, then make sure you read the entire New Testament. And if you really want to be the Christian of all Christians, then make sure that you read your whole Bible and not just read it, but make sure you read it in one year, right? There's a plan out there that you need to follow and a checklist of all the ways it's divided up in order to make sure that you've read through it in an entire year, and not that that's a bad thing, or any of the things that I just mentioned were necessarily bad things. But listen, you've got to be honest with I mean, at least for me, I'll just say it for me. I can't really say it for you. When I've gone through those Bible reading plans in a year, a lot of times I get behind. Anybody else ever get behind in those things? And whenever I get behind and I see that I'm three or four days or five or six days behind, and then I've got some time to catch up, then what am I doing. I'm not really reading for any benefit except to get caught up, because I'm behind and I can't stand to be behind it. So I'm reading this chapter. I'm checking, I'm checking, I'm checking, I'm Whoo. I'm back on it, right? I couldn't tell you anything that I read during that time, but I am back on the day that I'm supposed to be on. This is the way that we get with those kind of things. It just turns into this check list mentality. It's a duty, right? It's what we're supposed to do to be good Christians. It's not a good reason to read the Bible. We don't read the Bible because it's our duty to do so. We don't read the Bible because it's part of some religious task that we're supposed to complete each and every single day, and yet, that's the way many of us approach the spiritual discipline of reading our Bible. There's other ways that we approach reading the Bible that I don't think are really that good either. Some of us approach reading our Bible as if it's a book of rules. We just want to find out what we're supposed to do, all of the rules of life. We realize that God is the judge, and so just give us the rules. Tell me what I'm supposed to do, tell me what I'm not supposed to do, and then I'll get busy trying to do them or not do those things. I want to please him, right? So this is the way a lot of us approach it. Some of us approach it more, though, for knowledge, I just want to learn more. I want to know more. I want to make sure that I got all of it from the beginning all the way to the end. And listen, of course, anytime you read the Bible, you're going to gain some knowledge. But that's not the primary reason that we read the Bible to just gain more knowledge, but some of us love that aspect of it. We just love to know stuff, and we love to share with people that we know stuff. We can't wait to get in a room of Bible study people and people who are trying to dive in, and we get to exclaim how much we know about this particular thing or that particular thing whenever we're studying those things, because that's the way we approach reading the Bible. For others of us, maybe we approach it more for just an inspiration, right? I mean, the Bible is something that I go to in order to give me something to just brighten my day. It's what I do in the morning to make sure that I just have I have good vibes throughout the rest of the day, because I read something positive and encouraging in my Bible. Now, again, some of us may not approach it for that particular reason, but the other side of the inspiration is to help us accomplish something that we've set out to do. Right? I want to run a marathon. I need more sales in my business. I want to make sure that I make Varsity, or I get into this college or that college. And so we go.
Of the Bible, looking for inspirational quotes to help me accomplish the thing that I'm trying to do in life. And so a lot of us, whenever we approach reading the Bible, we're looking for the things that will give us inspiration to accomplish our goals in life. And this is all it becomes, is either a dispenser of inspiration and good vibes, or the thing that's going to help me accomplish what I've set out to actually do. None of these are the reasons to read the Bible. We don't approach it because it's a book of rules. You'll see this as we go on. It's not a book of rules. We don't approach reading the Bible to just gain more knowledge so that we know more stuff about God and about Jesus and about the Bible, we don't approach it mainly as a book of inspiration so that we have good vibes or to help us accomplish things that we are set out to accomplish in our life. And it's certainly not a religious duty. It's not something that we just check off of a list. So what's the reason? What do we actually read our Bibles for what's the right way to approach reading our Bibles? Well, Jesus actually gives us the answer in John chapter five. He's not set out to give us the answer to this question, but the way he says something in it helps us see the right approach, the way that we approach reading the Bible in John chapter five, maybe you're familiar with this. Jesus was in Jerusalem. He went to the pool of Bethesda. Pool of Bethesda was kind of known to be this place where people would hang out who were sick or, you know, they were paralyzed or blind or deaf or something that they were going through, because it was thought of to have healing properties in the water. And when the water kind of became stirred and began to move. Then the first one in the pool would would be healed, supposedly. And so there was a guy that Jesus came across while he was at the pool of Bethesda. And this guy had been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus walks up to him and he says, Hey, do you want to get well? The guy says, Listen, I have nobody to help me into the water, right? I mean, I can't get there, and so I'm never the first one in. And Jesus just looks at the guy and says, Well, why don't you just stand up and walk right now. Why don't you just not wait on the water, just stand up, take your mat and go home. And the guy does. He just stands up and he takes his mat and he walks off, Jesus heals a guy who had been an invalid for 38 years. It's amazing. The
only problem is, is that it was on the Sabbath that did not make the religious leaders very happy, because you're not supposed to do things like that on how dare he do something good on the Sabbath and heal someone, that's a work, right? And so whenever they saw this guy a little bit later, and he was carrying his mat, and he was walking around, and they were going, Listen, why are you carrying your mat? You shouldn't be doing that. That is an actual work. And they got really upset. He was like, Listen, this guy named Jesus. He healed me. He told me to do it. And they're like, well, who's the Jesus guy? We need to confront him, because he can't be doing these things. He can't be telling other people about these things. Well, Jesus responds to their accusations, and it's one of his responses in the middle of responding to those accusations that we see the right approach to reading the Bible. Here it is. Here's what Jesus says in John chapter five, verses 39,
and 40, he says you to the religious leaders, you study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. What do we see here about the right approach to reading the Bible? What we see Jesus says here is that these are the very Scriptures that testify about Me. He says, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. We are to approach the Scriptures with this understanding that it is to search them, to know Jesus. They testify about him. They lead us to come to Him in order to have abundant life and then begin to experience that abundant life in him. We come to God's word for a revelation of Jesus Christ, and to know Him, and not just to know about him, but to, like really know him, the God of the universe, to know him intimately. This is what we read the Bible for, but the religious leaders of the day missed it. That's not how they were approaching the Bible. They missed it, just like many of us miss it, and you see the ways that they miss it here. I mean, look at them all. He says, you study the Scriptures.
Diligently. And they did, I mean, these religious leaders, these Rabbi This is the main thing that they did, was study the Torah. I mean, they dove into it and read and read and read here to try to gain some knowledge, all right? And once they had that knowledge, he says that you're approaching those even though you're really coming to them, and you're, you're you're doing it out of this religious duty, and you're reading all of that. You're doing it wrongly because you think that in them you have eternal life. This is what they thought. They really thought that the more they studied the Scriptures, the more they approached the book of rules and knowing those things that they would have eternal life. We know this, not just because of what Jesus said, but the very thought that they had about this from other writers. There was a Jewish rabbi whose name was Hillel, and he actually wrote about this. And we have what it is that he wrote right here where he says this, this, the more study of the law, the more life if he has gained for himself the words of the law he has gained for himself life in the world to come. And so what we see is that they were approaching scriptures diligently for the wrong reason, because they thought they could earn eternal life. Right? This is our religious duty to do so, the more knowledge that we have, the more that we'll earn these particular things. And Jesus says that's not the right way to approach the scriptures. You don't study them diligently for like he said, more knowledge, right? It's not out of a religious duty that we see them doing here. You don't do it to earn favor with the Lord or to have eternal life. This is the wrong way to approach Scripture. They were missing it all over the place. You also think about the whole reason that Jesus was having this conversation with them. You remember what led to this was the fact that a guy was carrying a mat on the Sabbath, and these guys said, Oh no, you are breaking the rules. Right? At least their interpretation of it was that you are breaking the rules, and Jesus was breaking the rules. And so we see another way that they approach reading scripture was to know the rules, the do's and the don'ts, and again, we see Jesus calling them out, because this is not the proper way to approach reading scripture. This is not the proper way to earn to have mostly knowledge out of a religious duty. We see all of the things that we talked about in the first place, brought out right here in the things that Jesus is saying about ways that they were approach, approaching reading the Bible. But Jesus says to them, all of Scripture, all of Scripture. These are the scriptures that point to me that this is the reason that we come to Scripture. It's not about reading it out of again, the duty, the knowledge, the rule book we read, to know Jesus, to know the one who wrote the book, to allow God to reveal to us through Jesus, and to come or himself to us through Jesus, and to come to know him personally and again, not just to point us to him, but to come to life in him. Right? We read these things, not just to point and know about him, but to come to Him, to actually have life. This is the way that God reveals Himself to us, is through his word, and so we come to his word, looking for Jesus and to come to know him personally. I love the way that a W Tozer writes about this aspect of coming to know him personally, and the way that we read the Bible. This is what he says. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bringing men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into him, that they may delight in his presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God himself in the core and center of their hearts. This is the way that we approach God's word. We've been talking about this since day one, that spiritual disciplines are not an end in itself. They're not the goal. We don't check off and say, I read my Bible today. I've accomplished the goal. That's the end. We read the Bible to come to know Jesus, right? And so that's the first thing that he highlights. He says, we come to know Him and to have an intimate and satisfying knowledge of Him, not just to know about him, but a satisfying knowledge the relationship what we have, the contentment that we have. And then he gets into the presence that we may enter into him, that we may.
Light in His presence. You may remember the first couple of weeks, this is what we hammered home. When we were talking about these rhythms of grace. We talked about this rhythm of awareness, right? And when we said what we need to be aware of, and the rhythm of getting into it is to be aware of his what His presence, His omnipresence, that he's with us all of the time, that he dwells in us in every situation and circumstance. And as we get into this acute awareness of remembering and recognizing His presence and His personality in all situations, then we're going to experience that intimacy that we have with him. And we get to do that, not just through awareness, but through talking to him. We talked about this last week through prayer and talking to the Lord. But here's the deal, and I think this is so important, because we need to know again, that Jesus is with us, and start to recognize him speaking to us in all of these ways. But there is no more direct way that Jesus speaks to us than through His Word.
And so this right here, listening and hearing directly from Jesus and allowing us to experience His presence, because it's his words that are speaking to us. How can I say that? How can I say it's the words of Jesus? Well, because of what else we're told about the Bible. In Scripture second, Timothy 316 says all scripture is God breathed. What does that mean? What does it mean that scripture is God breathed? It means they're the very words of God. We breathe words out of our mouth, alright? And so if scripture is God breathed, then these are his words that are on this page that we're reading, and he's therefore speaking to us through His Word. How does that happen? Right? Because, again, I thought it was a bunch of different authors who wrote all of these different books that we have collected together in this Bible. Yes, that is true. Authors and specific humans actually wrote different books, but the Holy Spirit breathed the exact words onto them, inspired them to write the words that they were writing. So as they were writing them, they came from the Lord, and then the Lord used them as his instrument to write down what it is that he was leading them to say, so that he could reveal Himself to us and communicate with us more directly. So again, these are the very words of God. If we want to hear God speak, we want to hear Jesus and enter into that relationship with him and listen for his voice. We dive into his word and what he's saying to us through Scripture. I like the way this one pastor says it right here. Let me see if I can.
He says this, want to hear God speak. Read your Bible. Want to hear God speak audibly. Read your Bible out loud. You uh,
because that's it. I mean, these are his words, and every time we go reading them, we're we're listening he's speaking to us through those this is the approach we take. We read our Bible to hear from God. We read our Bible to allow him to speak to us. We read our Bible so that he can reveal Himself to us through Jesus as what Scripture calls him the word of life. And as we do, we we delight in his presence, right? Go back to the the AW Tozer quote, right? We delight as we get into this rhythm of reading God's Word. We delight in His presence. He's speaking to us. We're we're tasting and knowing the inner sweetness of the very God himself in the core and center of our hearts. And it's being communicated through the words that we're reading off of these particular pages, and so today, that's why we're talking about this rhythm, this rhythm of reading scripture. But we're not talking about just any reading of Scripture, I think, in order to taste and know the inner sweetness in the intimacy that we approach the Bible and read it for what we're really talking about here is developing the rhythm of meditating on scripture, not just reading scripture, but the rhythm of meditating on Scripture. And I want to talk about this kind of on two different levels. Here's the first one. Eugene Peterson in one of his books about reading scripture, he actually titled eat this book like it's a book about reading scripture. And what he's trying to get across is that we are to read the Bible in such a way that we're eating this book. And one of the things that.
Highlights is the Hebrew word haga,
H, A, G, A, B, h, and this Hebrew word, right here is often translated meditation, right? This is the Hebrew word that was used to show us the kind of writing that actually deals with our souls. This isn't just any kind of writing we approach in a way that we meditate and we we eat it in a way that it really seeks into our souls, right? But here's the thing, Haggai isn't always just translated meditation. One of the other things that he brings out is how it was often translated, and even this way that we see in Isaiah 31 four, where it says as a lion or a young lion growls over his prey. This is Haggai. This is the Hebrew word translated growls. Right here, the same word that's translated meditation, meditation, there we go. Is also translated growls right here. And so whenever we start to see that it's translated this for reading and meditating and focusing, and then the growl, a sound that an animal makes over its prey, and that kind of thing, what he begins to say then is, is that he's making the point that meditation often translated this way and with meditation means it's far too tame of a word for what is being signified when we talk about approaching God's Word in this way. Let me show you what he specifically means. If this isn't making any sense,
he says, reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul. He says, eaten, chewed, gnawed and received in unhurried delight
when we take the word Haggai and we know that it means meditation and focusing on and the way he can be referred to as is growling, the image that he gives, which I thought was so good, was, was of a dog who had kind of been given a bone, right? You see a dog get a bone, there's a little bit of meat on it and and, I mean, all of a sudden, they begin to make sounds out of them, like they they growl over this bone. And they don't just do it in front of you, right? They will often take the bone and they'll they'll leave, and they'll go to a quiet place, and they'll get to that quiet place, and they'll just begin to chew it and gnaw it and turn it over and lick it and just enjoy it with sweet, unhurried delight, because that is the way that we are invited to read scripture, to get into this rhythm of meditating on it in unhurried delight, to eat it, to chew it, to gnaw on it, and allow it to be received and taken into our souls. Psalm 3418, even says, to taste and see that the Lord is good. Do you think there's any coincidence that God of the universe, the Holy Spirit, inspired the writers to use those words taste, taste, and see that the Lord is actually good. So this is what I want to invite you into today. Is not just the rhythm of reading scripture, but the rhythm of meditating on Scripture. My wife Natalie will tell you that this has been one of the biggest blessings in her life over the last year or so. I mean, she talks about it all the time, but what she did was she she cleaned out one of our closets in our house, and she made it into this room that she can kind of get into this quiet space where she can shut the door and it's got nice little cozy, whatever things in the back of the closet now, and as she closes the door, then she sits in her quiet place, and she opens up her scriptures, and she begins to read slowly, and she reads prayerfully in unhurried delight. She stops to think about it. She'll often imagine herself being back in that time. She'll look for what Jesus is saying to her. She'll look for him in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and wherever it is that she's reading in the Bible, because it testifies to Him and who he is and the things that he came to do. She'll think about what it says about who she is in Christ. And then as the Lord begins to reveal these things to her, she'll take out a notepad, and she'll begin to journal and just write about the things that she is learning to get them on paper. And now she's thinking.
Talking about it, she's listening, and then she's even writing in this just this unhurried delight. But it doesn't even end there, whenever she's done, and that, that sweetness of tasting and seeing the Lord in that moment, it doesn't stop. Why? Because it's not just a rhythm of meditating on scripture, but we said it's a rhythm of also this acute awareness of God's presence all throughout the day, and so knowing that Jesus has revealed more of herself or himself to her in that particular moment, and he's still with her, and the next thing she's going to do and the next thing, then it's not one of those things where we go up. I've checked it off of a list now I'm going to go on and move about the rest of my day. I've done that task. I've spent my time with the Lord. Now I can go do the rest of my stuff. The rest of it's time with the Lord as well. And so whatever it is that he was revealing to her in Scripture, she knows that he still wants to be doing that all throughout the rest of her day, because he's not going anywhere.
But this is the way we approach it. It's on the top of my checklist. I've done it. I'm done now. I can do the rest of my task today, and we forget about the rhythm of awareness and talking to God about the very things that he shows us in Scripture. And so when she approaches it in this way, I mean, it's nowhere close, it's nowhere close to a religious duty. It's nowhere close to something that she's checking off of a list or looking for rules or looking for an inspirational quote, or for studying it for more knowledge, she's getting into this rhythm of looking for Jesus, and what it is that he's saying to her because she's in an intimate relationship with him, and that's What Jesus said, Right? Oops, that Jesus said here, these are the very Scriptures that testify about Me. So we look and we meditate on what he's saying to us about himself. And so that's my invitation. It's for you to get started on this rhythm of meditating on Scripture. Now I'm just going to say it this way too. Don't make this another checklist. Oh, now it's the spiritual discipline of slowing down an unhurried delight and meditating on Scripture. And so I need even more time. I'm going to have to set my alarm superduper early and make sure that I get up for all of those things, and I've got to check it off of my list. Listen, you may not have time for this every single day, and I know that goes against some of you and your mentality and the things that you've been taught and the way that you've approached it forever was like no Bible, no breakfast, right? You just get something you gotta do. You've gotta do it every single morning before you do anything else that you're going to do throughout the day, and even if I don't want to, it's just something you're supposed to do. So get in there and read it, dead gum it right? I mean, that's the way we still approach it a lot of times. And I'm not saying that maybe, maybe there's some times when you go that way that he still ends up kind of speaking to you. And if that's him saying that to you in that moment, get in there and do it anyway. And you know it's his voice, then, by all means. But if it's not, why would you go in there and approach it as just something you're going to check off of a list. You're not going to get anything out of it. You're not going to spend any intimate time with him. And so how about we approach this rhythm of meditating in scripture on allowing the Holy Spirit to lead you into reading the Bible whenever he wants to lead you into reading the Bible, whenever he decides it's time to slowly, in an unhurried delight, really dive into what it is that he's saying. Maybe that's every single morning for you. Maybe that's every other day. Maybe that's once a week. I would say, if the Holy Spirit's leading you in that way, then that's okay. We've gotten this thing in our head that someone told us that we were supposed to have a quiet time every single day, and if I miss one, then I'm not doing it right.
Can you show me in scripture where it says that it doesn't say it right? I'm
not saying that's a bad thing to be in a habit of reading, but again, we don't approach it with that mentality. It's not the end goal. The goal is more intimacy with Jesus. And so as the Spirit leads you to slow down in an unhurried delight, read His word and gnaw on it and chew it and enjoy it with sweet, unhurried delight, then do that,
but don't let it in there, right? The next part of the meditation that we're talking about in the rhythm is looking and focusing and meditating on it throughout the rest of the day. And that can even include on the days that maybe you didn't sit down and slowly meditate on God's Word in this particular way, because you know things about God's Word. We were having our Wednesday night Bible study after dinner a few weeks ago, and there was someone in there who even pulled out their phone, and this is what Emily was even talking about just a second ago.
Right? It's the idea that you put the passages in front of you. She had them on her phone, the things that it said about God and His character, and the things that it said about who she was in Christ, so that she could meditate on them and focus on them and be reminded of them and renew her mind to the truth in the same way that Emily does it a different way and puts sticky notes all over the place. What's that about? So that you can get into a rhythm of meditating on scripture, even all throughout the day, listening for Jesus's voice in it all, and even in that moment, you can enjoy that in unhurried delight as you're focusing on them, internalizing them, bringing them into whatever situation or circumstance that you're in, rather than just I read it in the morning, and now I'm done right. And so as the Lord leads, we open it up and we read in unhurried delight. And then all throughout our day, we look for the opportunity for him to renew our minds to the truth, to meditate on His words, to focus on his words. And so I invite you into that this week, as the Lord leads in your own life, you.