Biblical Spirituality
I’ve been reading books on spirituality, recently. It’s a little bit of a funny word actually. It’s not a word the Bible uses a lot. But I get what people mean, I think. Or, at least I know what I mean. What does it look like to have a good everyday relationship with God? That’s really what I am talking about when I talk about spirituality. And while it might not be the world’s best word for that, whatever name you give it, it’s obviously an important subject.
It is definitely a subject people talk about. There are a lot of different ideas out there. Just google spirituality and I’m sure you’ll find a wide variety of explanations. Unfortunately, many of those ideas and explanations don’t place much emphasis on the Bible. Of course, you expect that from non-Christians. But, we shouldn’t expect that from people who say they are Christians.
After all, this is one of the things that makes Christian spirituality so different.
Honestly, apart from the Bible, we don’t even know how to talk about being spiritual. This book directs our spirituality. It also is a big part of how we practice spirituality. Reading the Bible, thinking about the Bible, meditating on the Bible, enjoying the Bible is a big part of how we live in a way that pleases God right now. When we gather together once a week to worship God, we pray the Bible, we sing the Bible, we read the Bible, we teach the Bible. We are Bible people.
Hopefully all that doesn’t sound very surprising to you.
It is surprising to many people however.
Sometimes reading the Bible and hearing the Bible preached doesn’t feel all that powerful. People wonder, “Isn’t there supposed to be something bigger going on here?”
Why do we put so much emphasis on studying the Bible?
I was asked that question many times as a missionary in Africa. In fact, the last time I visited, one of the members of the church we planted shared her testimony about the first time she attended. “I was looking for a place where there was fire! And I thought, there is no fire at this church. Pastor Josh, you didn’t even have a little fire.” She was trying to be funny, but she was talking about how she pictured the power of God working now and days and she wasn’t too impressed by someone opening up the Bible, explaining the Bible or by someone saying need to spend a lot of time reading or studying the Bible.
And sometimes deep down, neither are we.
Maybe you come to church and you are like, “Do I really have to listen to a sermon again?” You are not always coming thinking, “Oh, I get to hear the Bible! This is so exciting that my children get to hear the Bible.” No, it’s more like, “Ok, family, we are supposed to do this. Let’s try do our best to get through it.” Perhaps personally, you know you should be reading your Bible or trying to learn from your Bible, but as you attempt to do so, you wonder, “Am I really doing something here?” It takes work. It’s not always all that exciting. We’re not always very eager. When we are having problems and someone starts to counsel us, you might be tempted to respond, “I know what you are going to say. You are going to tell me to read the Bible and pray, because everybody always says that. But you have to understand, I have some real problems here and I need something a little more powerful than that.”
We can take the Bible for granted. We get used to it. We say this is God’s Word. We’ve got it right on our doctrinal statement. But it doesn’t always hit us. We might even start to feel like we’ve got the short end of the stick. We feel like other people throughout history had it better, and sometimes honestly, we want something bigger or more exciting ourselves.
Of course, one reason for that is because life goes up and down and our feelings go up and down, and until heaven that’s kind of the way it is. But another reason is that we don’t always fully appreciate what we have in the Bible. In the next few posts, I want to think about the Bible from the ground up. What makes this book so important?
And we are going to begin at the very beginning.
With God.
What the Bible is basically about. The Westminster Catechism asks, what do the Scriptures principally teach? The first part of the answer is, “The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God.”
And they are right.
The Bible is a book about God.
It begins with God. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And it ends with God. Revelation 21:3. “The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
He's the main character of the Bible all throughout, which is not too hard to prove, but is important to stop and think about if we are going to appreciate what we have in the Bible. We need to make sure we appreciate the unique content of this book.
This is not just a book about anything, this is a book about the most important person in the universe.
First of all because He is the Creator. Our creator and the creator of everything. "It is he who made the earth by His power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.” (Jeremiah 10:12) He’s the reason for the universe. “For from him, through him and to him are all things.” (Romans 11:36) The owner of the universe. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell on it." (Psalm 24:1)
And as our Creator, He is also our judge. He is going to evaluate us. He created us for a purpose. A big part of that purpose is knowing Him, enjoying, and glorifying Him.We literally been made for a relationship with God. If you were to ask, what is man for? Man is for God. John Calvin once asked, “What is the chief end of human life?” And his answer, “To know God by whom men were created.” That’s your main purpose. To know God. And what reason do you have for saying so he continues? “Because He created us and placed us in this world to be glorified in us."
We'll be judged for a failure to know God as God.
This is part of what makes sin so ugly and gross. There's a relationship we are intended to have with God. When we sin, we are sinning against a person. God has made Himself plain. But people rejected the knowledge of God. Paul says in Romans 1, “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." And you can see why he says they became fools. Because God gave us such a privilege. We can have a relationship with Him. We can know God in a way that other created things can't. We can know God in a way that is different than the animals and plants. There are things that are similar between us and animals obviously, but one big way we are different is that God made us in His image and as a result, we can speak to Him and be spoken to by Him and know Him. He gave us this gift of communication and a soul that can fellowship with Him so we can know God in a different way than animals know Him.
That knowledge is life. Other knowledge is helpful. Knowledge of this or that may have some benefits. But the knowledge of God is life. “And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) It is a better knowledge than any other kind of knowledge and actually essential to knowing any other kind of knowledge. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” (Proverbs 1:7)
And so as we come to the Bible, why do we take the Bible seriously?
The answer starts with God. We take the Bible seriously because we take God seriously and this God who is the most important person, who we were made to know, SPEAKS! The Bible is His Word.
