ISAIAH 33:17 – “Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar.”
THEME OF THE DAY: WHY WE READ OUR BIBLES. So, what are some reasons we read our Bibles? We each may come up with many good ones. It is God’s Word. It shows us how to live. We are commanded. We know God through His Word. I am sure there are other good ones but consider this one. We read our Bibles to behold the Lord Jesus, or to experience today’s scripture – “behold the King in His beauty”. The Apostle Paul implies this truth in his second letter to the Corinthians – “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). How do we behold the glory of the Lord? His Word.
But we each know the challenge of consistently being in our Bibles and with the right motive. Life gets in the way. Distractions abound. The loud screams of earthly comfort, worldly pleasures, and dutiful responsibilities seek to quiet the still small voice of God’s Spirit wooing us to be in His Word to see the beauty of Christ. And if life isn’t keeping us from the Word, something else might be preventing us from seeing the beauty of Christ in the Bible. We read more as a mindless habit, a “check the box of our yearly reading plan”, or even read out of a sense of guilt. In any of those cases, we rarely encounter Christ.
So, how do we read our Bibles properly to see the beauty of Christ? Three helps. First, ask God to give us the hunger and desire to see His Son in Holy Scriptures. This would include a conscious reliance on the Author of the Scripture showing us Christ – the Holy Spirit. And remember, the chief role of the Holy Spirit is to draw us to Christ – “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:12-15).
The second help in seeing the beauty of King Jesus in the Scripture is to realize that is why God gave us His Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, God’s book is all about Jesus. Believe Him. He wants us to know His Son because to know Him is to know eternal life or the one true living God (John 17:1-4).
A final help and most important is to hold our bibles, even close to our hearts, realizing what we are holding – God’s love letter so we may develop our relationship with Him. When I was in the United States Navy and enduring those long months at sea away from my family, we would get letters from home. This was long before email and cellphones. Sometimes mail was delayed but as soon as it arrived, and mail call announced, those letters were precious. I would read the ones my wife sent over and over and over again. Why? Did I not understand them the first time? Of course, these were love letters and most precious to me because of who wrote them. Apply that to our Bibles. The ultimate motive to read our Bibles is love; love from our God expressed in the giving of His Word to us. And there is no greater reason to consistently be in our Bibles than love – love for the God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son and also so loved the world that He gave us His Word to know this, Son!
PRAYER: Father, thank You for giving me Your Word that I might know, adore, and love You, Your Son and Spirit.
REFLECTION: We come to the Bible not to gain mere knowledge of God but to know Him to behold Him.