Psalm 119:97a
O How I Love Thy Law (NAS)
Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall
For Missouri Gideons Meeting, April 15-16, 2016
My first message encouraged you in the wonderful work you do as Gideons. Moses, Levites, Josiah, couriers, Laodicea/Colossae, Coptic, Latin, Gothic, etc.--yours is a breathtaking heritage. At the end of that first lesson, I spoke of the need to love Holy Writ. I want to continue this theme now.
We can become so focused on the inner daily routine workings of a task that we forget the ultimate, original reason for it. I remind us of the story of the ruler in India who built a mausoleum to honor his dead wife. After years of construction, he one day ordered a box to be taken out of his way. It was his wife's coffin. As Gideons, your distributing Bibles could become perfunctory. Rather than a loving act, it can become an act of habit.
The Bible has won a place of primacy in our theology in USA conservative, evangelical Christianity. Our minds have embraced its infallibility and inerrancy. The question is; will it win a place of primacy in our hearts? Believing it and carrying it is not the same as loving it. My goal for this message is simple: I want it to help us love the Bible more.
Love it in the private place. Carrying the Bible is not enough to bring us victory in our spiritual lives. We must weave it into the warp and woof of our innermost being. We must be in the Word for the Word to be in us.
"Do we love the Bible? Are we in the Word, reading from it daily, all of it yearly?" Beware the religious person's downfall. Many preachers and Gideons trace a spiritual failure to letting technical handling of the Bible as a textbook, or an item to be placed, substitute for being in the Word.
I made this near-fatal choice in seminary. I was attending religion classes and studying theological books. I decided I did not need daily private devotional time. As my brain filled with facts, my spirit bled dry. I was dying on the vine. I am glad I learned this painful lesson in early adulthood.
I love to read. I am addicted to it. I have high reading aspirations. I someday plan to read "War and Peace", and all the works of Shakespeare. I love to read books, newspapers, magazines, obituaries, and tombstones. Mud Island in Memphis has a one-mile scale model of the Mississippi River. Along it are placards telling of significant events that happened on the river. One day, when the temperature was over 100, I read every marker as Ruth and the children writhed in the heat. It was not one of my better days.
We later visited Dearborn Village, which has acres of vintage cars, each one having an explanatory placard. When we entered the museum, Ruth grabbed my arm and said, "You are NOT going to read every sign!" Ruth says she is going to have as my tombstone the McDonalds Golden Arches inscribed with "Here lies a bookworm being eaten by earthworms."
I love to read anything, but above it all, I try to stay in the Book. 2015 marked the fortieth consecutive year I have read the whole Bible. This custom is the most helpful single discipline in my spiritual walk before God.
Much good literature is available. Beware, dear Gideons, best's worst enemy is always second best. In the private place, love the Bible most of all.
Love the Bible in your public mission. Keep prioritizing it, continue distributing it with all your might, for it is worthy of our love. Christianity has no authority apart from the Bible. Spurgeon rightly said, "The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is our religion."
We have no right to speak of absolute truth apart from God's written revelation. Without Scripture, a preacher or a Gideon's thoughts are merely guesswork, anyone's opinion is as valid as any other person's; swampy subjectivism muddies the water. Only the Bible is eminently trustworthy.
When Reformation fires ignited John Calvin's heart, he destroyed the idols in his cathedral, and built an elevated table to set the Bible on. Henceforth the Bible retained the highest place, the position of honor, in his building. A preacher entered the pulpit by a stairway. To discourage distractions, the preacher wore a robe, and the only sound coming across the top of the pulpit was the voice of an almost hidden preacher, whose words floated over God's Word. The Bible was love-number-one.
My boyhood church called the pulpit the sacred desk. From it God's man heralded God's truth to God's people from God's Word, the Bible.
Love it in your private place and in your public mission for the sake of our nation and churches. We all yearn for revival. Only God can bring order out of our social and political chaos. I want to speak cautiously here. I am pleased with calls to prayer I repeatedly hear and read. These encourage me.
I remind us, when Israel strayed from God, they had always strayed first from His word. When they returned to God, they returned first to His Word. I rejoice at calls to prayer for revival, but am appalled at the dearth of preaching I hear about the six great Old Testament revivals. This troubles me because by ignoring them we miss a deep truth; all six were begun, not primarily in prayer, but in response to rediscovering God's written Word.
Revivals under Joshua (JS 8:32), Asa (2 CH 14:4), Jehoshaphat (2 CH 17:9), Hezekiah (2 K 18:6), Josiah (2 K 22:8), and Ezra (EZ 7:10) were "Bible revivals". God convicted people by a re-discovery of Scripture.
If revival comes in our nation and churches, it will descend on the wings of prayer and ascend from the pages of the written Word. Revival hinges on both/and not either/or. Keep praying hard about revival. At the same time, ratchet up a notch your talking about the Bible.
Gideons, please keep carrying and distributing the Bible. The spiritual health of God's people and this nation hinges on the blessed work you are doing. History has proven this to us repeatedly.
Luther, in the battle of his life, knew the world's only hope was the translation and distribution of the Bible. When kidnapped by his friends to protect him from those who wanted to kill him, Luther translated the New Testament quickly, in a remarkable 11 weeks.
This was Luther's greatest gift to the German people. It was so popular, print shops had to be created to meet the demand. Bibles were wanted everywhere. A whole industry sprang up. The copies had to be carried to the churches and the people. As the Bible spread, revival followed.
We English speakers also owe our successful spiritual roots to the translation and carrying of the Bible. William Tyndale knew the Bible needed to be in the hands of every believer in a language they understood. When chastised by a priest for wanting to translate the Bible, Tyndale replied, "If God spare my life, before very long I shall cause a plough boy to know the Scriptures better than you do!" To publish his New Testament, the first to be printed in English, he had to flee to Germany to get it done. When Tyndale's Bibles were carried into England, they were promptly pronounced heretical; the battle was engaged; as a result, only two complete copies (of 3000) survive from the 1526 printing done by Peter Schoeffer in the German city of Worms. The Bibles were smuggled into the country by laymen (sounds like Gideons to me), London merchants, in bales of cloth, boxes of food, and other goods of trade. Those discovered carrying them were in danger. At first, only the detected books were destroyed, but soon those carrying the books were punished. Some were burned as heretics, including Tyndale himself in 1536. He died, praying, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." His prayer was answered two years later when Henry authorized the Great Bible for the Church of England.
During our Civil War, the American Bible Society was turning out about 7000 pocket New Testaments a day to soldiers in the field, but the Union embargo kept them from carrying the Bibles to the South. Lincoln, who appreciated the Bible, felt no one should be deprived of the Bible. Thus, he exempted Bibles from the North's embargo against the South. Bible were shipped to the Maryland Bible Society and the Washington City Bible Society. From there, the Scriptures were carried to southern soldiers on the front lines. My guess is; the great revival that swept though the Confederate army during the War was enhanced by this carrying of the Scriptures. By the way, during the war, the ABS passed out over 5 million Scriptures.
On a missionary trip up the Orange River in South Africa, Dr. Robert Moffatt, one of Christian history's best men, arrived at a village desperately hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. He offered to buy water or milk, but no one in the village would supply it. When darkness fell on what purported to be a miserable night, a woman came alone to find him. She brought supplies to comfort him. Moffatt asked why she had been kind to a stranger. As a tear came down her cheek, she explained, "I love Him whose servant you are; it is my duty to give you a cup of cold water in His name." Moffatt asked how she had retained faith though she was the only believer in the village. She pulled out a New Testament she had received as a school girl years before--a Bible someone would have had to carry to her hometown.
Gideons, please keep carrying those Bibles. People need them. I thank the Lord for you. God bless the Gideons.
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