What does God want? A man came to the Lord Jesus, and that is what he asked: “Which is the first commandment of all?” (Mark 12:28).
1,500 pages, 66 books, one of them comprising 150 individual pieces, 1,189 chapters in total, 31,103 verses, rich with stories and laws and drama and prayer and praise and wisdom and prophecy and doctrine and exhortation and vision and a host of other things – genealogies, letters, decrees, riddles and much more – how is it possible to boil this down to one single commandment?
But that is what the scribe asked. Here was a man who had spent many long hours day and night bending over a writing desk, painstakingly copying manually the scrolls of the Old Testament, counting every letter, every word, every line to ensure as far as possible that he had made a perfect copy – and obviously he had thought long and hard about this question, and he wanted to know what Jesus thought. It was a test, but this test was from somebody genuine, who really wanted to know the answer.He had probably put his question to many people over the years, and received many unsatisfactory answers. But here in front of him was somebody different, somebody who could bring all of Scripture to bear on a point and give an answer that was so obviously right and so completely satisfying, that this scribe felt moved to put his favourite question one more time.
The answer
“And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (v29–30).
The Lord had been asked for one commandment – but one was not enough! It is not possible to love God without loving our neighbour.
Immediately the lawyer recognised the truth of what Jesus had said: “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (v31–33, esv).
“And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God” (v34). God is not far from any one of us; but we are often far from Him. It is when we love Him with an all-consuming love and go on to love our neighbour as ourselves that we are on track for the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. “And no man after that durst ask him any question” (v35).
The basis
This exchange between the Lord and the lawyer was based on two places (Deut 6:4–9; Lev 19:18). There are eleven references to loving God in the books of Moses, all of them in Deuteronomy, and this is the first: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
The God who is our God is the one God, and His love calls forth a love from us that holds back nothing at all, a love that comes from every corner of our being, and focuses all of our energy and all of our powers. And that love will be informed and sustained by “these words”:
“These words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”
We are to put this Word front and centre in our lives: to tie it to our hands and lace it to our feet and spray paint it to our walls and nail it over our front door, so that wherever we go and whatever we do as an individual and in a family, in the workplace and in the community, in the local ecclesia and in the brotherhood shall be decided by our love for God and our neighbourly love for all.
“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:40).
The difference between failure and success
Throughout Scripture, therefore, even in times when few people had their own Bibles, we find model brothers and sisters attending to the Word of God.
Joshua, with his great mentor dead, and the enormous responsibility resting on his shoulders to bring a wayward people over the Jordan and to lead them in wresting their inheritance from the Canaanites, is bluntly told by God that he will be successful. “I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” His success factor? Reading the word of God in the morning, carrying it in his heart all the day, reading it again in the evening (Josh 1:7–8). That was God’s command to Joshua, and the secret of his success. That is how he would defeat all the power of the enemy and come at last to the Kingdom of God, with the seed of Abraham.
In the Law God looked ahead to the time when Israel would want a king, and he instructed the king to write his own copy of the Law. Every day the priest would walk around to the palace with a scroll, and the king would copy it out with his own hand, letter by letter, word by word, line by line. He was to keep the copy by him and read it every day, “he and his children” (Deut 17:19–20). As his children grew up in the palace they were to see him reading from his own copy of the Word of God, they were to be taught by him what the Word of God said, how it guided him in his life, and how they in turn should live. Again the Word of God was the difference between failure and success.
And as Paul prepared Timothy for a challenging ecclesial environment beyond the apostolic age, he instructed him, “Give yourself to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1 Tim 4:13–16). “Practise these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (esv). This was Paul’s answer to “perilous times”.
Whether the Lord Jesus had access to the written Word of God only at the synagogue in Nazareth, or also at home, we do not know. It is obvious from the gospels that his mind and heart were saturated with the Word of God, and that was in addition to the voice of God speaking directly to him every day.
Meditation
We cannot separate meditation from reading. They go together. The Hebrew words for meditation are also used of speech generally, and so meditation is inner speech. We are all conscious of the stream of words, of thoughts, the inner narrative, the chatter that is going on in our heads all the time. Meditation is taking that stream of thought and fixing it on the things of God.
Once we have read the Word of God, we can carry it with us wherever we go.
“His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psa 1:2). “I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice” (Psa 63:6–7).
“Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land” (Psa 143:4–6).
“On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate” (Psa 145:5, esv).
Whether we are lighthearted and joyful and confident in God’s promises, or anxious and afraid and desperately searching for answers and explanations in the middle of some great personal trial, reading and meditation and prayer will bring us back to God, and the certainty of His love, and the greatness of His power.
What better way to go to sleep, or to spend a sleepless hour if we wake up with an anxiety attack in the middle of the night? What better way to spend time driving in the car, or if we have a quiet moment in a park during the day, than reading, and meditation, and prayer? Let us switch off the radio and the television, log off the computer, turn off the mobile phone and fill every corner of our minds with the Word of God!
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil 4:8).
The dangers of not reading
Can we get by without reading the Word of God for ourselves?
At least seven times the Lord challenged the people of his day to read the Word of God, or criticised them for not reading it. The passages to which he refers come from all over the Old Testament. He clearly expects us to be reading the Word of God widely and thoroughly.
And there are terrible consequences of not reading. Our spiritual perspective becomes badly distorted (Matt 12:3; Mark 2:25; Luke 6:3). Service becomes stagnation (Matt 12:5). We work the love of God out of our lives (Luke 10:26). We bend God’s law out of shape to serve self–interest (Matt 19:4). We cannot see Christ as he is, and rejoice in him (Matt 21:16). We fail to see the true greatness of Christ, and the reality of his return, and judgment to come (Matt 21:42; Mark 12:10). We lose sight of the true power of God, and end up believing nonsense (Matt 22:31; Mark 12:26).
Pray God we will dedicate ourselves to reading the Word of God with care and insight!
How to read
First, we must make time for reading. It is essential that we structure our day to put the first thing first – reading the Word of God. Whether we use a diary or whether we have a straightforward life where every day is fairly predictable, we need to ensure that there is time with God over His Word.
Second, we must read with prayer. Sincerity, not quantity, is what impresses God. We could do worse than take the words of Psalm 119:
“Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me” (v17–19).
Until we have really come to terms with the power of the Word of God for its first hearers or first readers, we will not really understand what it is saying to us. So we must start with the then and there, the original situation.
So when we read Joshua 24, for example, it will help us a great deal to see that old, white-haired warrior standing before the people in the plain between the two high hills of Ebal and Gerizim as he points to them and reminds Israel of the blessings and the curses and calls on them to make a choice. Or when we read Psalm 119, it will help us to revel in its rich celebration of the great wealth and awesome power of the Word of God if we are able to see a young man, scorned and persecuted, ardent for God yet conscious of his own temptations, moved to tears by the pressure he is under yet rejoicing in the Word of God, poring over the heavy scrolls of Scripture by the light of an oil lamp, searching through each chapter for the assurances and the promises of God, tracing the thread of God’s faithful love for His people through their turbulent history and his own experience.
Every chapter of the Bible has its story: every proverb, every law, even those genealogies, with theirlong lists of Hebrew names. Each of them was a real person, with a real place in history, and they have a powerful spiritual story to tell if we will read it.
So put yourself in the situation and feel all the drama and the emotion, flinch at the failure, feel the sting of rebuke, smell the fear, experience the agony of defeat, and taste the victory. Every effort to bring these things to life will pay off and the Word of God in all its power and glory will break over us afresh like a surging wave.
When you have done that, it will be time for our fourth step: to move from the then and there to the here and now, to apply the living and powerful Word of God to ourselves, and ask what we can learn, what we can believe, what we can do or avoid doing, or hold onto, or love, or share, or pray about, from that Word.
The questions opposite may help us as we read.
Family Bible reading
Like the kings of Israel, we are to read for the next generation, and with the next generation. It is critically important that we make time for this each day. Like personal reading, if we don’t prioritise it and build it into the structure of the day, it’s very likely not going to happen at all. We find the best time is after tea, straight after doing the washing-up, but other times might work better for you.
If we don’t know much about the chapter, then we can take the questions above and go through the chapter and answer them for ourselves first. That quick ten minutes will enable us to implant the key points of that chapter in the hearts and the minds of our children, a small investment of our time that will repay itself many, many times. A Bible dictionary and a Bible atlas will fill in most of the gaps; and books and study notes are also very useful.
It is also helpful to explain the story and the implications for our lives as we read, taking a few verses at a time, so that our children understand as they read. That’s what Ezra did, and that was for adults. When it comes to children, it is even more important to break it small.
There are other ways of helping children to take away something of value, like choosing a key verse that sums up the purpose and point of a passage, or pencilling in a few words that sum up, or spending some extra time to mark something into our Bibles. The Sunday School Association publishes worksheets for this purpose. You might have seen the ‘Know Question’ series that is being distributed by the Scripture Study Service, which includes questions against every chapter of the Bible, structured around the daily readings program. All of these things are there to help us.
Do we value Sunday School?
One other place where our children learn to read the Bible is Sunday School. We should never, ever treat Sunday School homework as a task to get out of the way, or even worse, to skip over during the week. We will get the most value out of it on Monday night, when the teaching diligently prepared and delivered by the teachers the previous day is still fresh in the mind.
It is important to get actively involved not just in settling children down to the task, but in reminding them of the lesson, helping them with their answers, vetting the amount of effort that has gone into the homework and the quality of the outcome.
A structured approach reminds children every week that Sunday School is important, that Sunday School homework is important, and that they need to value the work of their teachers and the Word of God from which their teaching is taken.
Are we teaching our members how to eat their Bibles?
In “the book of the prophet Isaiah” (29:10–14) the prophet speaks of the Word of God being handed to an educated man. “I cannot read it”, the man replies, “because it is sealed.” So the scroll is handed to an uneducated man. “I cannot read it”, he replies, “because I have never learned to read.”
The first man is making excuses, and feeble excuses at that. He will grow close to God only when he takes his Bible off the shelf, and begins to bend his capable mind to the task of reading and understanding it. We have never been so well educated, and particularly our young people. Many of us have one, or two, or three qualifications. How many of us are applying those skills – time management, research, critical enquiry, imagination – to our Bible reading? The time may come when we cannot! If we refuse to open the book, God may seal it against us.
But the second man is also at fault. He has not invested the time, and equally his ecclesia has not invested the time in helping him develop the skills to read it and find meaning in it for himself and his family. He will grow close to God only when he learns to read the Bible for himself. And even though there is a critical personal responsibility here, there is also an exhortation to every ecclesia to provide the tools, keys, helps and skills that people need in order to read and understand the Bible for themselves.
The one could, but would not; the other would, but could not. Consequently the Word of God was neglected in Judah – and will be in our ecclesias unless we address these same issues.
Are our Sunday Schools and our Youth Groups and our Bible Classes, our Sunday morning and Sunday evening activities teaching our members how to read the Word of God by themselves, for themselves? Is it working?
Jeremiah said, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts” (Jer. 15:16). But Amos warned Israel, “The days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8:11–12).
If we serve up a cracker talk, we feed our listeners for a day. If we teach them how to read and understand and draw nourishment from the Word of God for themselves, we feed them for a lifetime, and we give them the means to feed others in turn.
Teaching our members how to eat their Bibles must be a high priority for the Arranging Brethren of every ecclesia.
Reading must issue in action
Reading must produce results. James speaks of a natural man, looking into a mirror, walking away, and instantly forgetting how he looked (Jas 1:22–25). Is that how we read the Bible?
Unlike a mirror, the Word of God has the power to read us, and change us, if we will continue in it. “The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (esv).
If we sow to the Spirit we will reap a great harvest, a field of blessing that stretches to the horizon and beyond – eternal life in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and the great company of those who have known him, and loved him, and followed him.