(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Alright, amen. The title of the sermon this morning is Bible Reading Basics. Bible Reading Basics. Part of the reason is, we're coming up on the New Year, and hopefully everyone's resolved this year to be reading their Bible on a consistent and regular basis. We're going to get into some of the reasons why it is that we're going to want to read the Bible regularly, but let me just start out by saying this is a pretty simple sermon. It's very basic, as the title tells us. It's a very basic sermon. It's a very milk of the word type of thing, but this is a very foundational truth. This is something that in our Christian life, we're going to excel. If we're going to do well in our Christian life, we have to understand this principle. That daily Bible reading, that regular Bible reading, that reading your Bible consistently is absolutely essential if you're going to excel in Christian life. We all want to come to church and hear the exciting sermon that's got a lot of deep doctrines. Most of us, where the pastor just gets up and just rips face and tears things up. And I love those types of sermons. I love going to a service like that where it's just a lot of dynamic, bold preaching and stuff like that. But the guy who's able to do that, the preacher who's got up, can get up and preach a sermon like that, it's because he's understood this truth. It's because he's learned in his early Christian life that if he were ever going to be able to be that type of a preacher or that successful of a Christian, that he's going to have to read his Bible regularly. All that comes from a wealth of knowledge that comes from reading the Word of God regularly. That's how such sermons are even able to be preached. And that's all kind of by way of introduction and kind of going on. I want to give us, just before we get into some tips and some suggestions and some maybe some helpful thoughts that are going to assist you in reading your Bible this year, that's kind of the thrust or the point of the sermon. But I want to just stress the reasons why we need to read the Bible. Because we might be thinking, you know, I know I should read the Bible, but is it really that big of a deal? But it's something that's seriously lacking today in Christianity. It's something, that's why we're seeing so much error just abound, even in independent fundamental Baptist churches. That's why so many preachers who get up and preach a sermon, maybe that's considered a little controversial, are being called out. Where people are standing against them, where people are saying, hey that's not Christ-like. Well it's because the people that are saying those type of things, they haven't read the Bible. They don't understand what that preacher is saying is exactly what Christ would have said. Or exactly the things that Christ did say. Or it's a spirit or an attitude or a principle in the Word of God that is taught. But they are completely ignorant of it because they don't read. They don't read the Bible. Now one of the first reasons we should read the Bible is simply because of the fact it's a command. It's a command in Scripture to read the Bible. You're there in Deuteronomy chapter 17, look at verse 18, and it shall be, speaking of the king, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law, the book out of that which is before the priests and the Levites. Well let's just stop right there. At least we have a written copy already written down, right? At least we don't have to sit down like the king did and actually write it out. Take the time to go over every word and write out all of the law before the priests and the Levites. We have so many Bibles, they're just abound. I mean, a lot of us, if we went home and started counting how many Bibles we had, we'd probably take two hands. I've done before, I know there's a bookshelf just from over the years, Bibles that have worn out, Bibles that I've replaced, just Bibles that we've somehow found their way into our home. Just Bibles stacked up everywhere. I mean, we live in a great time where there's really no excuse for us to have a copy of the Word of God in our hands readily available to not be reading it. So it says first of all that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of which is before the priests and the Levites and it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord as God and to keep all his words of this law and his statutes to do them, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, that he turn not aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left to the end that he may prolong his days and his kingdom and he and his children in the midst of Israel. So we see right there that first of all, one of the reasons we ought to read is because it's a command. And you know, the king here was commanded, he was commanded for several reasons why he ought to read therein all the days of his life. He was told every day the king ought to, he ought to write this down and then he ought to read what he wrote down every day of his life. And it gave some reasons there, didn't it? It said in verse 19, and it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life. Why? That he may learn to fear the Lord as God. I mean, that's a good reason for us to start to read the Bible, that we would learn to fear the Lord our God. I don't want to, you know, when we first start to read the Bible through maybe the first, second, third, fourth, and even beyond that, there are things that maybe initially would shock us about God. I mean, I know there's things that I read in the Word of God when I first started to read it on a regular basis and had gone through it. I said, wow, that happened or wow, that's the way God thinks about this sin or thinks about this situation. That's one of the laws of God. Wow. There's things that would cause us to step back and learn, you know, the character of God and who he really is, not who the world's painting him as. You know, not this long-haired hippie, Jesus, who's just going to love, who's just all about love, love, love, never gets mad at anybody. You know, if you read the Bible, you'd see that Jesus gets mad, that Jesus gets angry, that God is somebody who judges Jesus, that God is somebody who has great wrath at times and great anger and fury, and God does, you know, just, you know, frightening things, quite frankly, in the Scripture. And God judges his people. There's a lot of things that we can learn that would teach us to learn to fear the Lord our God. You know, that's something that we would learn if we were to read in the Word of God as we ought to. And it goes on and says to keep all the words of these laws and these statutes, to do them. I mean, how are we going to, you know, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. You know, how do you call, you call me Lord Lord, but, you know, you do not, why do you not the things that I say? You know, how are we going to know to be pleasing to God and to know what it is that He wants us to do if we don't read it? If we don't take the time to get in and say, well, what is it that God expects of me? You know, God has given us all the answers that we need. What does God expect of us? It's all right here. But it's up to us to get into it and read it, to do them. Verse 20, another reason why the King was commanded to read in the Bible all the days of his life, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren. That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren. He said, what is it about reading the Word of God that's going to cause a person to be humbled? You know, when we start to read the Word of God, we start to realize how quickly we don't measure up. We start to see very quickly that all our righteousness are as filthy rags. It can be a very humbling thing. You know, we can start reading the Word of God, hearing and preaching the Word of God, and start to say, wow, man, there's sins that I'm guilty of. There's things that I'm not doing that I should be doing. There's things that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing. I think the Word of God starts to convict, and it starts to shine a light in our own hearts and cause us to, you know, it starts to search our reigns, our inwards, and see if there be some wicked way in us. And that can be a very humbling thing in an autonomy. What it does is it causes us to not be lifted up above our brethren, not to start to think that we're better than somebody else, just because, for whatever reason. It can be a very humbling thing to regularly read the Bible. In fact, it will be. And it goes on and says that he turned not aside from the commandment to the right hand and left, to the end that he may prolong his days and his kingdom. Wouldn't we love to prolong our days? The Bible says if we read it, that we'll learn to fear the Lord our God, that our hearts won't be lifted up, and that our days will be prolonged. And he's saying, well, you know, this is addressed, this is the Old Testament, this was a command for the king. This doesn't really apply to me. But go ahead and turn over to Revelation chapter 13. Revelation chapter 13. This does apply to us, because the Bible teaches very clearly that we are kings and priests unto our God. That we, in Christ, have been made kings. I mean, nobody this morning has probably, you know, got a crown and a throne and a scepter at home. We might have, like, a La-Z-Boy, right? And that might feel like our throne. And we have our nightstand or our end table, you know. Yeah, there you go. That could be a place, that's a place of, that's a sanctuary. So we have, but we are made unto kings, right? We will be kings. The Bible says in Revelation chapter 13 verse 4, John, the seven churches which are in Asia, graced be unto you in peace from him which is and which was and which is to come and from the seven spirits which are before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father. It doesn't say, will make us kings and priests. It says, hath made us kings and priests unto our God and his Father. So we are made kings and priests. You would find the same thing in Revelation chapter 10, you have to turn to Revelation 10, 10 says, and has made us unto our God, kings and priests. We are made in Christ through his blood through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, kings and priests. We will rule and reign with Christ. And you know, this is the book, this is the manual for his kingdom. This is what we're going to use when we rule and reign with Christ in a thousand years, in the millennium. This is the book. This is what we're going to use to judge the nations. So, why not learn it now? You know, because we are already kings and priests. We ought to be reading therein all the days of life. One of the first reasons we should be reading the Bible is because it's a command and because of all these things that we've read about here that will help us. The next reason to read I want to touch on briefly, go over and turn over to 2 Timothy chapter 2. This should be pretty obvious, but 2 Timothy chapter 2, one of the reasons we ought to read is because it's necessary for study. We're commanded to study the word of God. Well, that's going to require reading it. If we're going to have to know what the word of God says or study some doctrine, we're going to have to open it up, put our eyes on the page and interpret the words. The Bible says in 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 15, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So there, right there, we need to study to show ourselves approved unto God. God's not going to be impressed with whatever we think it is that we do for God. We say, oh, I do this and I do that. God's going to say, well, how well do you know this book? How well are you obeying the commands that are written here? How well are you living your life? How well is your life lining up what's written in here? How much time have you spent studying and reading and knowing what this book says? Not reading and studying what YouTube says. Not listening to somebody just preach at us about whatever it is that we want to listen to, but actually knowing what this book says. That's why we're studying to show ourselves approved unto God. Another reason we ought to read is for spiritual strength. Go ahead and turn over to John chapter 15. We've seen so far that the reasons we ought to read are simply because it's command. Because we as kings are commanded, as kings and priests unto our God are commanded to know this book that we might fear the Lord our God, that our hearts might not be lifted up, and that our days might be prolonged. Another reason to read is because it's necessary for study. If we want to know the doctrines and the deep things of God and be able to teach others and help them in their lives, we need to know what these things are. So we have to study. But another reason we need to read is for spiritual strength. Spiritual strength. Look in John chapter 15, look at verse 7. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, they abide in you. You've got to get them in there. You've got to open up the book and start to read them that they can be in there. You shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you. Look at verse 10. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even if I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. I mean, if we're in Christ and we have, and He's going to get to the point where we shall ask what we will and it shall be done unto you, I mean, having God on your side to the point where if you ask something, He's going to do it for you. Because you're abiding in Him, and He in you, and you're abiding in His words, and you can ask what you will. Because you know what the mind of Christ is. You know what it is that God would expect in a situation. You know how to pray for the things that you ought to. You could pray and say, Lord, I know that this is your will. Your word says this. This is your will in a situation. Please make it come to pass. And the very God of heaven will work on your behalf. That's powerful. That's real spiritual strength. Go ahead and turn over to Psalm chapter 119. Psalm chapter 119. Keep something there, John, because we're going to be coming back into that area. Turn over to Job for right now. I'm sorry, Psalm. We ought to read for spiritual strength. Job said, in Job 23, neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips. I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. He said, you know what, the word of God is even more important to me than food. I'll get more strength spiritually out of this book. I mean what if we got all the proper nutrition and exercise and we were very strong and healthy? What good would that do us if we had no spiritual strength? I mean to what end are we going to use that physical strength? I mean maybe we could walk 50 miles in one day. No problem. We're healthy. We're going to live a long life. But what good is it if we don't have any spiritual strength? What good is all that walking going to do if we don't know to go door to door and house to house and preach the gospel to every preacher? We haven't been reading and understanding these things. The Bible says in John chapter 6, it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life. The words of this book, the words of Jesus Christ, the words of God, they are spirit, they are life, they are strength. Another reason we need to read is for spiritual safety, you know the Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and rulers and high places. That we have a spiritual enemy, that our enemy, the adversary, the devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And he's hunting, he's looking to devour us. We have a spiritual enemy. We need spiritual safety. You know sometimes in any battle, sometimes there has to be a retreat. Sometimes when the battle gets too hot or something's gone wrong, sometimes we have to have that place in a battle where we can retreat and recover and gain strength and go back out and try again. The Bible says in Psalm 119 verse 9, wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed according to thy word with my whole heart of my softy, O let me not wander from thy commandments. Look at verse 11, thy word have I hid mine heart, why that I might not sin against thee. You know that's spiritual safety. You know we talked about our adversary the devil, but you know we wouldn't want God upset with us. I'd rather have the devil upset with me any day over having the Lord upset with me. So if we can get his word in our heart that we might not sin against him, we'll have some spiritual safety, you know, yea even from God, from God's wrath. But look at verse 114. Psalm 119 verse 114, he said thou art my hiding place and my shield, I hope in thy word. You know God's word can be a sanctuary. God's word can be a place that we go for spiritual safety. When our life, when something's going on in our life, some tribulation, some problem, something we don't understand, you know we're being persecuted, we're discouraged, we're down, whatever it might be, you know we can go to God's word and find spiritual safety, we can find spiritual strength, we can find encouragement, we can find strength, the help in a time of need, we can go to God's word and read it and gain strength and recover and understand that there's an end to this, whatever it is we're going through. I know whenever I'm physically ill, a lot of times I've been sick, you know I've been bedridden, you know one of the best things, I think recently when I went through that bout of vertigo, I mean that was probably the worst thing I've ever gone through physically is having vertigo and not sure what was causing it, not sure if it was going to end, what we were going to have to do, you know, thinking is it a tumor, you know, it wasn't a tumor, you know, so thank the Lord. But we weren't sure for a while there, went to the doctor, got no answers, just rattled something off and I just remember laying in bed and just said you know what, I'm going to Psalms and just listening to the book of Psalms and able to find just some kind of peace and some kind of relief and some kind of comfort and just knowing that God is there and that God, you know, you read the book of Psalms and you see David, you know, pouring out his heart before God as he's going through all his trials and his tribulations and we can relate when we're going through that, we can go and gain some comfort, we can gain some safety. The Bible says in Proverbs 30, every word of God is pure, it says He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him. The Bible says that every word of God is pure, that He is a shield unto them. You know, when we understand we have the pure word of God, we have something that can protect us, we have a shield here in this book that can help us, that can give us some safety. So we've seen several reasons why we ought to read, why we ought to be reading in the first place and that's really what I'm trying to do right now is just encourage you and understand that you ought to be reading the Bible. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how to go about reading the Bible, let's talk about why we should be reading the Bible. Another reason is to avoid error and this is a big one. I mean, this is something that's very important. I mean, as I said earlier, you wonder how some of these doctrines are so easily debunked from the word of God. Doctrines like the pre-tribulation record, doctrines like dispensationalism, doctrines like Zionism and things like that. We read them and we go, wow, that's so clear in scripture. How can anybody believe this nonsense? And yet it's believed by the vast majority of people because they're just listening something regurgitated from the pulpit. They're not going home and opening up the book and seeing whether these things be so. They're not diligently searching the scriptures. They're not reading from the scriptures. They're not comparing spiritual things with spiritual. They're not testing the prophets. They're not listening to what they're hearing and seeing if it lines up with the word of God because they're not in the word of God. That's why these false doctrines just abound and are perpetuated and continue on to no end because people are not avoiding error because they're not reading the Bible. Go ahead and turn to Matthew chapter 12. We're going to see here the big reason, you know, one of the reasons that the Pharisees could not grasp who Christ was and why He was doing the things He was doing is because they didn't understand the scriptures. The Bible says in Matthew chapter 12 verse 1, He said, At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn, and His disciples were in hunger, and He began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto Him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day. But He said unto them, Have ye not bread what David did? See, they couldn't understand why Jesus was doing what He did. Why He was felt at liberty to just go through these ears of corn on the Sabbath day with His disciples and begin to pluck and eat. And these people are being offended, they're offended at it. And why was it? Was it because yeah, you know, I just do whatever I want. He's like, No, you haven't read. You don't understand what David did when he was in hunger and they that were with him, how he entered in the house of God and eat the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for the priest. And he goes on and says this, Or have ye not read in the law how on the Sabbath days the priest in the temple before the temple profaned the Sabbath and are blameless? He's saying, How is it you don't understand? Why are you offended by what I'm doing? Have you not read? That's the problem. That's why people lack understanding. That's why people get offended at a preacher when he gets up and preaches the Word of God because they themselves have not read it. Matthew chapter 19. Turn over there. Matthew chapter 19. This is something that Jesus consistently rebuked repeatedly the Pharisees over their lack of reading, their lack of knowledge of the scripture. And you would think of all the people that should know it, it would have been them. The people that should have been in the Word of God and reading it and knowing it. The Bible says in Matthew chapter 19 verse three, the Pharisees also came up and tempted him and saying to him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said to them, Have ye not read? I mean, we can go back in the Old Testament and we can find it in the book of, we can go to the law of Moses and read these things. Have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. Therefore God hath joined us together. Let that man put asunder. He's saying, Didn't you understand what you read? Have you not read about these things? Look at Matthew chapter 21. Matthew chapter 21. We started Matthew 12, 19, 21. As we get deeper into the Gospel of Matthew, it's like Jesus starts out kind of just, he knows, of course, whether or not they've read. I mean, he knows the answer. He's saying, Have you not read? Have you not read? Have you not read? And then it seems like the farther in we go, he's like, he's just, that line of questioning gets more intense. Look at Matthew chapter 21 verse 15. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna, the son of God, they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea, have ye never read? Now he's like, you know, it's not just like, Have you not read? It's like, Have you never read? You guys are really slipping up a lot. You guys are missing a lot of things that are going on here. This would all be pretty obvious to you, you scribes and Pharisees. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of the babes and sucklings, thou has perfected praise? Look at verse 40. He goes on and gives them, of course, the parable of the vineyard and, you know, the servants and how he sends, the owner of the vineyard sends unto them to receive that which is his, and they stone his messengers and they kill his son and so on and so forth. And it's a parable. Well, Christ coming unto his own and them never receiving him not. But he says in verse 40, When the Lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto them, He will miserly destroy those wicked men and will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen which shall render him the fruits and their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures? You can see how he's getting a little more intense. Did you never read? Have you not read? He's saying, Have you never read? Have you ever cracked the book open? Have you ever laid your eyes upon one single word in the word of God? Did you never read in the scriptures? The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner? So, you know, the point of reading is to avoid error because that's what it leads to. And if you go ahead and turn over to Matthew chapter 22, we'll see that. Where Jesus says, You know what? This lack of reading is leading to error. He says in Matthew chapter 22 verse 29, Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye doer not knowing the scriptures. What was it that was causing them to err? What was causing them to err? What was it that was causing them to be wrong about understanding the truths of God? Not knowing the scriptures. Having never read. Having not read. That's why, the same way it is today, why we see so many false doctrines about me. Because people and the pew are not being taught. And when they start to read, they start to realize real quick that a lot of things that they've been taught are true. And a lot of times the reason those things are being taught is because the guy teaching them isn't reading. If he would get in the book and read the Bible, then he would start to understand some things. Because notice how he says, Ye doer not knowing the scriptures. Not knowing the scriptures. There's a lot of preachers out there, they know about Matthew Henry's commentary. They can tell you about Clarence Larkin's book on Dispensationalism. They've got a whole library full of Peter Ruckman's writings. They've got all these books about the Bible that they've read and they've got all their false doctrine down and they know how to refute everything, but they don't know the scriptures. Because that's not what they read. They read books about the Bible. They don't read the Bible. If we don't want to err, if we want to be right in our doctrine, we need to be reading the Bible. Not books about the Bible. That's a waste of time to sit there and read. Why would you read a book about the Bible and you could just go read the Bible? You have not the need that any man teach you, but the Spirit will lead you into all truth. I mean, we've got the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. He's the one that can teach us all things. And we can read this book and have the Spirit bear witness with our spirit and teach us things out of this book. God himself will teach you out of this book if you just read it. And open your eyes to things and teach you doctrine. He'll give you understanding and give you light out of his word, but you have to be willing to read it. So we've seen some reasons of why we ought to be reading the Bible. Why is it we ought to be reading? Because it's a command. Because it's necessary for study, for spiritual strength, for spiritual safety. You know, to avoid error, to avoid false doctrine, to be able to discern right from wrong. So we've seen some pretty good reasons. You know, if those reasons aren't enough to convince you this morning to read your Bible, I don't know what else to say. You know, if you don't want spiritual safety, if you don't want spiritual strength, if you don't want God to teach you, you know, great truths from his word, you know, I give up. You know, what else can I say? But I trust that that's probably not the case with anybody in here. I'm pretty sure everybody here, if they're not already, is making a regular, you know, habit out of reading their Bible. And, you know, some of us are maybe newer to faith. Some of us, you know, are maybe just getting into this thing and we want to go about reading. And I want to just give, whether you've been reading your Bible a lot already, you know, you've been reading your Bible for years or you're just getting into it, I think there's some things that we can talk about that will help us in our Bible reading. Just some Bible reading basics. Just some things that will help us to do a better job of reading the Bible. And because, you know, it's coming up on the New Year. A lot of people, that's a resolution they make is that they want to learn, you know, how or they want to do more Bible reading. You know, they make plans and stuff like that. So let me just go over some things about just some Bible reading basics and we'll be done here in just a minute. But first of all, and foremost, if I haven't made it pretty clear, you should be reading your Bible every day. I mean, I understand sometimes life happens and we get busy and we miss a day here and we miss a day there. But, you know, we should be missing, we should be reading more than we're not, you know, if that makes sense. We should be trying to read the Bible every single day. And you say, you know, one thing I've heard is, you know, the morning is usually best to read it. And I find that to be true, you know. Not because, maybe, I know personally for myself, I probably would get, I get more when I read in the evenings. I'm more alert, you know. When you wake up in the morning sometimes it takes a little bit to get going. If you're not a morning person, I'm not, you know. You gotta get that coffee down and stuff like that. But as far as making sure you're accomplishing this goal of reading your Bible, morning is best, I find. Because it's, because your day gets busy. You know, you go to work, you come home, there's things with the family. So you know, you got things to do when you get home. It's real easy, the day can just slip by and the next thing you know, it's 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night. You're tired, you know, the bed's looking really good, the pillow's calling your name. And you say, well tomorrow, tomorrow I'll get to it. And then you wake up in the morning, you don't read your Bible, I'll get to it tonight. Same thing happens. So it's real easy to just get into a pattern of not reading the Bible if we don't make it a priority. So I think that reading the Bible in the morning is best simply for the sake of priority. Just making sure it gets done. You know, the things that you want to get done, you should do right away. So that's the first thing. You know, read every day, morning is usually best. Everybody's schedule's different. You know, I'm not saying if you're not reading in the morning and reading in the evening, you're wrong, you shouldn't be doing that. I'm just kind of, these are just suggestions, these aren't hard, fast rules. These are just generalities I think that will help people. That we'll be more consistent in our Bible reading if we get up and just make it one of the first things we do. I know for myself, what I like to do is I like to get up, I like to get dressed, get ready, like I'm ready to get everything done. I'm ready to walk out the door and go to work. I've got my clothes on, everything's ready to go, and then I can sit down, and read my Bible, because then I'm not looking at the clock, oh I've still got to get a shower and get dressed. I know I'm already ready to go, and I can read my Bible without, and give it full attention. So that's just maybe that'll help you there. Now one of the big things is to determine how much to read. This is important. How much should you be reading? Well, how do you determine that? Well, I think for a lot of us, because, you know, people are busier than others, you know, moms have a lot on their plate, dads have a lot on their plates, you know, their schedules can be tight for us if we're working a lot of hours. Here's what I would do, is I would say, you know what, I'm going to see how much I can with the time I'm given. Say, you know what, maybe for instance, you're going to say, I'm just going to get up and I'm going to try and read the Bible for a half hour every morning. Say, I'm just going to read for a half hour every morning. And that's not a lot. Sit down on a half hour, morning, evening, whatever it is, whatever length of time it is, you know, time wise, how many minutes you're going to read, and just keep track of how far you made it. Say, hey, you know, I started reading in Genesis, I got, in a half hour, I got all the way to Genesis 6, you know, or wherever it is, you know, people read at different, there's different levels of reading abilities, right? And you say, okay, and then if you keep track of that for a little while, you can start to develop an average. You can say, hey, if I read for a half hour, I typically get this far. And now you have an idea of, now you can set a goal, a realistic goal of how many times you're going to read it that year. You know, you say, I'm going to read the Bible ten, you know, ten times this year. But it takes you an hour to get through it, you know, at a rate of one time per year. You know, that's pretty low reading ability. But I mean, what if that's the case? You know, you're going to really, you have to put in ten hours a day to get through the Bible, you know, ten times in a year. Or if you start with how much can you read in a certain amount of time, that will give you how many times to read through. A lot of people do it backwards. They say, I want to read the Bible X amount of times in a year. And then they go, so that means I have to read X amount of pages a day. And then they sit down to do that, and they find themselves reading for two, three, four, I mean, they're overwhelmed by how much time it takes. And that can be discouraging. And again, that's a point I'll get into later about, you know, spending a lot of time reading the Bible. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not discouraging that at all. But I'm just saying, you know, especially if you're just starting out with Bible reading on a regular basis, and you want to figure out how much should I read this year, in the new year, how many times should I try to read the Bible, start out by saying, well how much time do I have to read the Bible? How much time in my schedule can I carve out to read the Bible? And find out how much Bible you can read within that time, and then you can develop a plan from there. Hopefully that makes sense. Now when you're doing that, keep in mind, this is a helpful guideline when trying to figure out how much to read your Bible. Let's give you a helpful point. Keep in mind that average readers can read the entire Bible once a year by reading 15 minutes a day. 15 minutes a day. If you could just sit down and read the Bible, if you were just average reading ability, and just say, you know what, I'm going to read for 15 minutes a day, that would get you to the whole Bible in one year. In one year. That's a lot, because look how thick this book is. This is a big long book. I mean, it's all black and white, you know, small print, there's a lot of reading. But if you read for 15 minutes, who doesn't have 15 minutes at a minimum? You know, just to get daily Bible reading in, I think we could all find 15 minutes to get through the Bible at least one time in a year. And for a lot of people, reading the Bible once a year, that's great. If you were to sit down and do that, you would be in the minority of Christians. You would have been a person who actually read the Bible cover to cover once. You know, the vast majority of Christians haven't even done that. They have no idea what the Bible says about so many things. They haven't even begun to read the Bible through. But if a person would just sit down and have enough discipline to just say, 15 minutes. Maybe you're not as good a reader. 20 minutes? I mean, I think we could all probably find that. Probably many of us would find that 15 minutes, we'd probably read a lot more than average. Now you'd say, okay, 15 minutes, once through a year, that's great. That's a great place to start. That's a great place if you're a real busy person, you know, you're a busy mom, you've got a lot on your plate every day that you've got to take care of kids and the house and everything like that. I think 15 minutes a day getting through once a year, that's a great goal. You know, you're a businessman, you work a lot of hours, you're out in the secular world, you've got a lot to do. 15 minutes per day and you get through the Bible once a year, that's a great place to start. And even for a lot of people, just maintain. But if you wanted to take on a little bit more and say, well, you know, I want to read the Bible more than just once a year. I want to try and read the Bible multiple times a year. Whether it be two times, three times, four times, five times. Especially if you're somebody who wants to preach or teach the Word of God, we should be reading the Bible multiple times a year. You know, four, five times, maybe even more. You know, I know for myself, this is a touchy subject for me because I have to confess that I am one who severely lacked in this area for the vast majority of my time. And it's a shame and it's something that I'll never really live down. It'll always be kind of over my head. But I don't want to let that keep me from preaching it to you. Because I don't want that to be you. I'll just come out and tell you right now, prior to moving here, I had not read the Bible one time. You know, I hadn't read the Bible through. And that's after 11 years of attending an independent Baptist church. That's after like 12, 13 years of being saved. I have nobody to blame for myself, but man, it would have been a real big help if it was something that there was a sermon called, Hey Bible Reading, where someone stressed the importance of Bible reading. It just wasn't stressed. And again, ultimately it's my own fault. As God's child, as somebody who knew better, it should have been reading the Bible anyway. But that's kind of the point of the sermon. I want to encourage you to read the Bible. Now, I have since read the Bible multiple times. Praise the Lord. And for myself, I've set a little bit higher goal because I'm trying to catch up. I'm trying to make up for all that lost time. If I think about the fact, hey, if I had just read the Bible one time a year, how many times I would have read it by now? Or if I said, hey, if I just read it a few times a year, how many times I would have read it? It's sad. I feel bad about that. I don't want that to be any of you in here. I don't want you to wake up a decade from now and go, man, I've been a Christian, I've been in church, but I've never read the Bible. You just don't want to be that guy. Trust me. So, you want to read the Bible multiple times a year and you have to determine how many times that is for you. I'm not going to sit here and say you must read the Bible X amount of times or you're in sin. If you read it once, I think you're in a great place. You want to get ambitious and go two or three times. If you're somebody that wants to go to ministry one day, I think you should be doing four or five times to try and just keep up on things. But one of the best ways that I've found to do this is to take the number of pages in your Bible, take the number of pages in your Bible and divide that by 365 because that's how many days are in a year, right? So if you take how many pages are in your Bible and you divide it by 365, now you have how many pages you have to read per day to read once in a year. And you'll find that's probably a .0 decimal unit. It's a very small amount. But you take that number of times, so you take that number, right, take how many pages you have, divide it by 365 days in a year, now you have X amount of pages per day to read once in a year and then multiply that number by how many times you want to read. Now I have a really good Bible for this because my New Testament is 365 pages long. When I first saw that, I was like, wow, this is of the Lord. That made my math really easy because at 365 pages in my New Testament, I read one page of the New Testament a day, I'll read the whole New Testament in a year. So I'm just going to use that as kind of an example to kind of make this clear. So if I took 365 pages and divided it by 365 days a year, I have one page. So now I have one page to read to read once a year. But I say, hey, I want to read it more than once a year. So what do I do? Simple. I just multiply it by how many times I want to read. I want to read the New Testament five times a year. So now I don't know whether I have to read the Bible or to read the New Testament. I have to read five pages per day to read it five times a year. Now everybody's Bible is going to be different. You have to sit down and obviously work that math out for yourself to figure out what the numbers are. But that's a great way to go about how to accomplish multiple readings. You say, you know, I've got the time to do it. How do I chart myself through? How do I track? That's a great way to determine that. Just do the math on it. Now I just kind of want to make some suggestions on reading. Things that, you know, when I got serious about Bible reading and reading my Bible multiple times that I had kind of been more thoughtful about. One of my suggestions is to read the New Testament more than the Old Testament. I mean the fact is that the New Testament has more doctrine, more things that are directly applicable to us, things that are going to clarify the Old Testament. I mean the focus is should be on the New Testament in your Bible reading, in my opinion. Now here's the thing and this is why this is important because if you say, well I'm just going to read the Bible once this year, which is great, you know, start somewhere, and you just start in Genesis and you just go, I'm just going to start in Genesis and read Revelation and there's nothing wrong with reading the Bible that way. Well let me just tell you right now, you're going to be in the Old Testament for a long time and then when you get to Matthew it's going to go like that. And then guess what, next year you're going to be right back in the Old Testament again and it's going to take you a long time. And then you're going to get to Matthew again and it's going to go like that. And then it's just going to go over and over again. So what you'll end up doing in your daily Bible reading is you're going to spend a long time in the Old Testament and quite frankly not a lot of time in the New Testament. I mean the New Testament, we all know, I mean just look at your Bible, look how much it makes up. It's such a, you know, it's so much smaller than the Old. So the point I'm trying to make here is that you need to work on focusing on reading the New Testament more times than the Old Testament. And even if you say, hey I'm going to read the New Testament five times and the Old Testament three times, in terms of the actual amount of time spent, you'll probably spend more minutes reading the Old Testament but you'll still be reading the New Testament more times, if that makes sense. So that's just my suggestion right there. Try to read the New Testament more times than the Old Testament. If you're going to read the Old Testament one time, try to read the New Testament twice. That's a good way to do it. The other suggestion in regard to this that I would make is to read in the Old Testament and the New Testament concurrently, meaning at the same time. Meaning that every day when you get up you say, hey I'm going to read a little bit of the Old Testament and I'm going to read a little bit of the New Testament. I would suggest not plowing through the Bible like that. You could do that, there's nothing wrong with that, I'm glad you're reading the Word of God but I just feel like people will burn out. They'll get into Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and by the time you get into... Job's one of the harder books for me. When his friends start talking it's just like, come on, let's get to those later chapters, 38, 40, where the Lord starts speaking because then it gets really good. Some of my favorite chapters in the Bible are where the Lord's speaking. Let's get into that. That's what I'm saying, you'll burn out. If that's all you're reading, I'm just reading through the Old Testament and you're just plowing through, don't be surprised if your tires start to spin and you're not making a lot of headway. What's really going to help you is to read concurrently, Old Testament and New. That's one thing that I would do. Now, a great way to do that is get a Bible reading plan. There's a lot of stuff online. I thought about printing Bible reading plans out but everyone's different, everyone wants to do things their own way. I don't try to put people in a box and say, do this plan. Just try to give you guidelines and we all probably have access to the internet. If you just go Bible reading plan, you'll just find a multitude of plans that you can print off and do. One year Bibles are great, the one year Bible that you read a little bit in different sections. I think that's a great way to read the Bible. It's great for reading concurrently like that. Now, another suggestion that I would make, something that really helped me, this might not help you. Maybe this isn't for you. But something that really helped me when you're trying to read multiple times in a year to make sure that you don't burn out or you get too focused on one area of the Bible and it takes you so long to get to the other sections that you're kind of forgetting. Because if we're not keeping things in remembrance, they tend to fade away. We could read something over here deeper into the Bible and say, wow, what a great truth. And by the time we go back to read through again, we've forgotten about it. And it's so much longer before we get back to that passage or that truth that we discovered that we can forget about it. So one thing I like to do for myself is break the entire Bible into seven sections. This may or may not work for you. This is just something that I do. Maybe this is something that will help. But why did this and this help my Bible reading? Because it kept me not only old and new, but it also kept me in different parts of the Old Testament. And then you kind of start to see how things overlap in the Old Testament. Now, I will say this, if you're just starting out Bible reading, I would probably just read straight through the Old Testament as much as I can, just to get the big picture. Just reading straight through Old Testament and New Testament at the same time, that's a great way. And then you can start to break these things down the more times you read it. Maybe you say, hey, I'm going to read Genesis through Song of Solomon and Isaiah through Malachi. You could do that. And while I read the New Testament as well, you could break it into three sections. The more you read, the more sections you can create. But I like to read Genesis through Deuteronomy, concurrently with Joshua through Esther, concurrently with Job through Song of Solomon, Isaiah and Daniel, Hosea and Malachi is another section, Matthew and Acts, and then Romans to Revelation. So I actually have seven sections that I'll read from. And then every one of those sections I have to determine how many pages are in that section, how many times am I going to read it this year, and do that math on each section. And then I know how many pages per day in that section to read. Hopefully I'm not losing on this, but that's what I do. That helps. Now if you're going to do that, you're going to end up finding yourself needing a checklist, and you're going to have to actually sit down and plan out your Bible reading, like every day. Every day you're going to go, okay, here's where I left off. What I do is I would take my, in fact I brought it with me, I would take this checklist and I would highlight, you know, I've had multiple checklists, so I would say, well I've got to read from here to here today, and then I would highlight it. And I could look at it and say, oh, I haven't gotten that done today, and I would check it off. And I would just go through each section and highlight what it is I need to get read, and then as I go, check it off. So that's helpful. If you want to ask me more about that, go ahead. And that would be a great way to do it. But another great thing I think that will help people in their Bible reading is using an audio Bible. And at first I was real hesitant when I got into Bible reading to use an audio Bible. But now I'm actually really a fan of it. I really like using an audio Bible. You know, and especially because, like the king was told, you know, when we read, that he shall have the book of the law with him. I mean, he was to have that what he wrote out of the priests and Levites with him to read all the days of his life. I mean, what better way to have the Word of God with you than right here. I mean, you can have it, you know, in print format right here, I mean in digital print format right here, you could read the words. But you could also have the audio right here at your fingertips. I mean, that's awesome. That's amazing. Use your smartphone. If you have an Android, I would suggest Word Project. There's an app called Word Project. And you can download every single book read by Alexander Scorby, who in my opinion is the best Bible reader that I have ever heard. And great Bible reading. The audio quality isn't the best, but it's absolutely free. It's downloadable. It has text that you can follow along with. That's great. If you have, I used to have an iPhone, you know, you're going to have to pay a little bit of money. I think it was like 20 bucks to get the Scorby app, but it was a top-notch app. It was great. So there's just things available. Use an audio Bible. Let me give you some numbers on Scorby. Scorby reads the Old Testament in 54 hours. How do I know this? Because my wife got me MP3 Scorby on MP3 discs. I was able to put it in and look at the media player and tell how long every track was. And yes, one day I sat down and added this all up and figured out how long he reads the Old Testament and the New Testament. So he reads the Old Testament in 54 hours. He reads the New Testament in 18 hours. So Scorby, Alexander Scorby, the audio version, he reads the entire Bible in 72 hours. That's how long it takes him to read the Bible. So if you were to sit down and just listen to Alexander Scorby for 20 minutes a day, just 20 minutes, you would read, you would listen to the whole Bible all the way through in one year. That's how long it would take you. Just 20 minutes a day listening to Alexander Scorby. I mean, you could do that on your ride to work, you know. But people are hesitant to do this because they feel like they, and this is true, and it was for me when I started out, it's really easy to let your mind wander. It could turn into background music. It could just turn into background noise. You're not really paying attention, your mind could wander. So what I did to really help me with this is I started out by listening and reading along. And this was kind of by accident because I live in a two bedroom apartment with like three or four kids now. When I started it was only three. And it could get really noisy, so I would put headphones on and just listen. And I would read along and listen because that way I could focus on it. It didn't matter what they were doing. They could make noise. I was in it. Because not only am I listening to it, but I'm looking at the words as you read them, read them. And as I did that, what I found was that when I went to listen just to the audio, you know, driving the work van, I was able to follow along a lot better. Because I used to be one who would say, hey man, I would read the audio. I would find myself like 10, 15 minutes into it going, what did I just listen to? And I'd have to back up and try and listen again. And that can be pay staking. But what I found is that having great, I started out reading while I listened, that's helped me to be able to just listen to the audio only. And I still do both, but I think we should use that to our advantage. You know, audio Bible is an excellent option to get to the Bible. Let me give you in closing just some warnings about Bible reading. Some things that I wish somebody had told me a little bit about starting out, or that I had known or learned about. Don't turn your Bible reading into a math problem. You know, don't sit there and turn it into just like, you know, I must read X amount of times, I must, you know, and just forcing yourself into this, you know, constraining yourself into just making it about how many pages you're going to read. You know, because what happens is you don't realize why you're reading it in the first place. You know, to gain knowledge, to gain understanding, to gain wisdom. You know, it can turn into this, don't let it turn into another way to say it's like a competition. You know, like it's just about finishing, it's just about getting through it. I mean, it's important to have a goal, and by all means, use these principles that we talked about to develop a reasonable and sensible goal. You know, be realistic and go ahead and aim high, you know, set the bar high, but within reason, you know, something that you could, is attainable. You know, and use some of these principles, you know, figuring out how much time you have to figure out what a reasonable goal is. Otherwise, it can just turn into just this chore of just trying to meet this number. You know, just trying to meet a number. That's not why we're reading the Bible, just so we can get to the end of the year and say, I read it X amount of times. You know, so that we can gain knowledge and wisdom and understanding and grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we're reading. So, don't let, don't let just the numbers become the goal. Be it so that you can grow in the Lord. Here's another thing I just want to mention, because there's going to be other people that you could listen to that will talk to you about Bible reading. And I've heard people say some things that, quite frankly, I just don't agree with when it comes to Bible reading. Don't let the abilities or inabilities of others stop or discourage you. When you start to talk about people about Bible reading, a lot of times they want to just take their, the way they feel about it and just say, well that's for everybody. The way I do it, that's how everybody should do it. You know, and I just don't agree with that, because everybody's different, you know. I've heard one person say, you know, an hour is all anybody can read. If you read more than an hour of Bible, you know, you're no longer, you're probably not even paying attention anymore. You know, well, to that I say speak for yourself. You know, that's you. Everybody has different aptitudes. You know, then I've heard another guy say, there's no such thing as reading the Bible too much. You know, I've gone to my pastor at Anderson and I said, hey, you know, is it possible to read the Bible too much? What if I sat down and tried to read for two or three hours at a time, you know, on certain days. You have a day off or you have extra time, you have some downtime where you can sit down and do a lot of reading. You know what works for me? There's no such thing as too much Bible reading. But what's wrong, man? I've just been reading the Bible too much. Like, who can read the Bible too much? I mean, come on. The problem today is a lack of Bible reading and not people reading too much Bible. So for somebody to say to others, you know, well you should only read for an hour or you should only read X amount of pages a day. You know, that's maybe for you, right? And that's what I've been trying to stress off and on through this sermon is that what I'm suggesting here are just that, suggestions. They're just principles. You know, you could use these things, these mathematical formulas and all this stuff to figure out what works for you. Maybe audio Bible isn't for you. Maybe it is. You're different. I'm not going to sit here and say you have to do it this way or this amount of times or don't, this is too much. Don't let somebody else's ability or inability discourage you or stop you from doing something. I'll say this, longer sessions I've found for myself were more immersive. I get a lot more out of the Bible when I know that I have time to just sit down and just read a lot at once, you know. But sometimes we only get the 15 minutes in. And reading the Bible, it's like, you know, sometimes we want to run, you know. We want to run and we can just go full charge, full steam ahead and we have lots of time, we have energy and ability to do that. But sometimes we have to just slow down and just walk. Maybe not that fast. Maybe you can read a lot some days and some times in your life you're only going to be able to read 15 minutes. You're only going to be able to read the Proverb of the Day. But there's going to be other times where you can sit down and read a lot and get some catching up don't worry. So be flexible with your Bible reading, but the point is to be reading every day. Getting ahead. And don't let anybody else stop you. People have different attitudes when it comes to reading. You know, the Bible says, I'll just read to you from Psalm 119, it says, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Just a closing thought here. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. The psalmist is saying that God's word was a light unto his path, that it was a lamp unto his feet. It was what showed him the way. It was what helped him to not stumble and fall and trip. It was what led him where he ought to go. It helped him be able to see where he was going and what direction he was headed. That's what the Bible will do for you. It will be a light unto you. It will be a lamp unto you. That's why we need to read it. To know where we're going. To know where we ought to step, where we ought not to step. What to look out for. I mean, how many of us would walk into a dark room, just pitch black and not be instinctually just flip the switch to see what we're doing? Who would just walk in a dark room, walk in here when it's dark and say, I know there's chairs over there, maybe I can avoid them. You're probably going to end up on your face. And it's the same thing in your spiritual life. If you don't take the time to get the light on, you're going to stumble and fall and you're probably going to end up just completely lost off the path. And somebody's going to come looking for you or something. So that's why we need to be in the Bible. It's because it's a light unto our path. You know, what if I were to, this is an illustration I like to use the junior church kids back when I used to teach it. I would say, hey, what if I loaded you kids all up on the bus? What if we all got on a bus today, right? And we went out into the deep dark woods in the middle of the night, moonless cloudy night. There's not a star in the sky, pitch black, coyotes howling, you know, out in the middle of the woods. You don't know where you are. And there's, you know, just a whole room full of people. We're all out there. And I took out a flashlight and I said, you guys got to find, this is the one source of light you have. You can find your way back with it. And I took that light and I just threw it into the woods. Well, what do you think you would do? You'd go looking for that light. You'd try to find it. Say, I think I heard it fall over here. You'd try to find that, wouldn't you? Or if you had that light, you would be sure, hey man, I'm not going to lose track of this thing. I need to find my way out of these woods. You know, that's where we're at spiritually. We're, you know, this, we're in a world, we're in the woods of the world. I mean, there's just, we're in the deep forest of sin. The whole world lies in iniquity. You know, the adversary's seeking to devour us. There's coyotes, wolves, you know, predators out in the darkness and the shadows that are just, you know, they can see pretty well in the light. They have the vision. They live in the darkness. That's where they dwell. And we need some light in our life. We need to be in the Bible. We need to be reading it because it's a light onto our path to show us the way that we ought to go. Let's go ahead and pray.