People often hear without listening and don't even realize it. If we do this with the Word of God there can be serious consequences. But if we both hear and listen, we will be blessed.
Listen, Listen
The Devil Inside – its just another low-budget horror movie but it scared up a surprisingly strong $34.5 million in ticket sales. The reviews are mixed but the ending apparently left a lot of people more angry than scared.
Like the Blair Witch trial, The Devil Inside is made to look like somebody took a camera and filmed amateur documentary. It wasn’t expected to make a big profit but it managed to grossed 34 and a half million last weekend. And I wonder why? Why do these mostly young people go to a movie about demon possession? I think the answer is – they just like to be scared.
A study in the Journal of Consumer Research says that as long as people know there’s no real danger they actually enjoy the feeling of being scared.
The Devil Inside apparently didn’t deliver on that feeling. The audiences even booed at the end. Apparently the screen goes black in the middle of a terrifying scene and then a message appears with a web address to find out more about the case. Of course that was supposed to make it seem even more real. And of course everybody in the audience knows it’s not real.
And yet, this movie will still shape the thinking of the people who saw it. Most people in our culture have a worldview made up of bits and pieces of information they pick up in the media. Movies leave impressions that become part of our reality. A 2000 George Barna national poll showed that the church isn’t even in the top 10 influences on American culture. Movies, television and contemporary music are the top three.
That’s where most people’s worldview is coming from – movies, tv, and pop music. So here’s my question for you: Where is your world coming from?
I hope it’s coming from God. I hope your take on reality, your worldview, is being shaped by the truth of God’s Word.
(Bible in 90 Days) Reading the bible cover to cover will immerse you into the Truth – into reality as it actually is. It’ll open your mind and your heart to the message that God is speaking not only to his world but to you, personally.
We need to hear it again and again. We need to feed on it and be shaped by it. And I can guarantee, the ending won’t disappoint.
But the Bible can be a tough read. We’re not always sure exactly what it’s saying. What’s the message? That’s what I want to talk about today – how to read the Bible to get the maximum benefit – to really hear what it’s saying – to truly internalize the message.
I have four suggestions:
1. Read it as a story
2. Be a good listener
3. Look for the connections
4. Make it personal
Let me take an example and show you what I mean. Take the story of the Exodus. It starts in Exodus 1 with Israel becoming enslaved in Egypt. We meet Moses. We hear God call him and commission him to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” He refuses 9 times. And then in chapter 12 God’s deliverance reaches it’s climax. Exodus 12 is on Day 5 in the Bible in 90 Days schedule.
I’ll read a portion of it:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. . . . The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. . . . Then at midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.
Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD.”
1. Read it as a story
God has given us this great story -- this breathtaking story. It’s the kind of story children beg to hear again and again. “Tell us the story of how Pharaoh wouldn’t let the people go. He was so stubborn, so proud, but God broke him in the end.”
Even if you’ve read it a hundred times read it like it’s the first time. The tension builds and builds because of Pharaoh’s hard heart. What will finally bring him to the point where he surrenders to God’s will? What’s it going to take for him to let the Israelites go? Frogs? Boils? Hail? And then comes that 10th plague.
Feel what it must have been like for the Israelites hunkered down in their homes, listening in the dark, thinking of the blood on their doorposts. Midnight strikes and the Lord passes through in judgment. The Egyptians get out of their beds to see what’s happened, and then the loud wailing begins. There’s such fear – and sorrow – and regret – you can feel it. Pharaoh is broken. He summons Moses and says, “Up, leave, go.”
But oh the joy, the relief of that moment for God’s people! How great is our God! They get to walk out with their heads held high, carrying away the wealth of Egypt – Vindicated! Delivered by Yahweh’s mighty hand!
Stories have great power. We’re meant to read Exodus that way – to read the Bible that way – because it’s our story. Why do we go to the movies? Maybe it’s because we long to enter into a story, to be part of something meaningful. Life without a story has an Ecclesiastes-boredom about it --- meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless. We need to wake up to the story we’re actually living. God is telling us the great true story of the cosmos. He’s calling us to be engaged in it, to be in the thick of it.
2. Be a good learner
If Pharaoh had just let the people go we would never have learned so much about God. It’s because Pharaoh’s heart was so hard that we get to see what God is like. The story intensifies every time he refuses. What will God do now? Who will win?
What we learn is what Pharaoh learned – I AM is I AM.
In Exodus 9, God let’s us know that this is one of the main lessons of the story. He says, “Remember this. I AM is orchestrating the story this way for a reason:
Exodus 9:14, “so you may know there is no one like me in all the earth”
Exodus 9:16, “so my name might be proclaimed in all the earth
Exodus 9: 29, “so you may know that the earth is the Lord’s”
I AM is I AM
Be a good learner. Take God’s lessons to heart.
There was something the Lord clearly wants us to learn from that 10th plague. Up until then, the Israelites were just passed over by the plagues. But that last time they couldn’t be passed over unless they killed a lamb, dipped a hyssop branch in the blood of the dead lamb, and sprinkled it on their doorposts.
This was so important that God instituted the Passover Feast so the people would never forget – never forget their slavery, never forget that God had delivered them, never forget that God had spared them, his firstborn son, from the judgment he brought on Egypt.
And never forget that he’d done it by means of the blood of a lamb. The ticket to their freedom was that lamb. It wasn’t just God’s power that delivered the Israelites, it was the atoning sacrifice of a lamb.
God wanted them to learn that lesson and he wants us to learn it
3. Look for the connections
The rest of Exodus feels like an anti-climax. Right off the bat the people are worshipping an idol instead of God, they fail the tests in the wilderness, they’re turned back at the entrance to the Promised Land because of their unbelief.
Their deliverance out of Egypt didn’t really set them free. It didn’t really deliver them from themselves. Eventually God sent his people out of the Promised Land into captivity in Babylon.
The rest of the story tells us that another, deeper Exodus is needed -- something that’ll get down to the real problem, the real slavery – that’ll bring a real freedom.
And that something is Jesus – he’s the rest of the story. He’s where the story is always going.
When you read the Gospels, the books that tell about Jesus and what Jesus did, you see the connections. It comes through loud and clear that this is another Exodus story. Luke 9: 28-31 is very explicit, very clear:
“About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his exodus, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”
Jesus came to re-do the story of the exodus -- in Jerusalem, by dying on the cross. He came to redo it so that this time the people would be really and truly free.
At the heart of that liberation, that deeper exodus, was a sacrificed lamb. And a passover. Only this time it was a much greater sacrifice of a much greater lamb. And it provided a much greater atonement for sin.
John the Baptist called him “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Do you see the connection? It was no accident that He arrived in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover celebration -- when the lambs were being brought in to be sacrificed. He came to offer himself as the final, complete atonement for sin. He did it to save his people from judgment and at the same time set them free from slavery.
The blood of this Passover Lamb is sprinkled on all those who put their faith in him and God forgives them, he passes over them in judgment. The blood of this lamb sets believers apart as God’s people. It’s the sign of his love, and the guarantee of their salvation.
Just like with the first Passover, we don’t want to miss the beauty and power of this story. We want to feel it, to enter into it.
I AM, the Great I AM has done this.
We saw his power, his greatness, in the Exodus story. We stood in awe of him as we watched him bring about the plagues and bend Pharaoh to his will. We felt the zeal he has for his people – his love for them.
This same I AM has now handed over his son, his own firstborn son, to become the atoning sacrifice for our sin.
This should stagger us.
When you think of that dark night when the 10th plague passed over, think of the day Jesus died. That’s what the 10th plague was pointing to all along. It was pointing to the true Passover Lamb of God. The day he died was a day of darkness. – darkness covered the land for three hours, the sun was blotted out. It was a day of judgment. Jesus was given over by God to endure the plague of death – the death of the firstborn son. He was given over to provide the blood that would save us from judgment. So that we could be passed over. So that we could go free.
That’s what the exodus story was ultimately all about.
It was all about Jesus.
All about the greater exodus Jesus came to fulfill. All about the true freedom he came to accomplish for his people through his death and resurrection.
4. Make it personal
When we read about the exodus from Egypt we need to realize, ‘This is my story!”
Jesus has done this for ME – only what he’s done is much, much greater.
Martin Luther said, “the heart of true religion lies in personal pronouns.”
ersonal pronouns like “me.” Jesus has done this for ME. In Galatians 2:20 Paul summed up his life and he used a lot of personal pronouns: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
As you read the bible ask the Lord to make it personal, to speak it to your heart. One of the greatest promises God ever made to his people was his promise to personally teach each and every one of them.
Isaiah 54.13 “All your sons will be taught of the LORD;
And the well-being of your sons will be great
He Jeremiah he promised to institute a new covenant and better covenant with his people:
Jeremiah 31:31-34 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
The Lord promised to come to his people and introduce himself to each and every one of them – from the least to the greatest. He promised to be their teacher so they wouldn’t have to learn about him second hand. He promised to teach them directly. He promised to speak his words to their heart, to write them on their heart and to make to them personal.
He kept this promise when he poured out the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is our personal teacher and we can ask him to make things clear, to give us light, to make it personal. And he will.
