Confession? I struggle to read the Bible regularly for my own benefit. And I do not think I am alone in this. Bigger confession? Going to seminary only made it worse. No, I don’t blame seminary for making it hard for me to read the Bible. I just really struggle to read it for my own personal benefit, especially when I am spending so much time in it for projects related to my job as a pastor.
Some close friends and I are starting a program soon to read through the Scriptures together. And in light of this, I have been thinking a lot about this because I am excited to go through sections I often miss and that a lot of sermons tend to overlook. In 8 posts, over the next two or three weeks, I am gonna talk about the importance of the Scriptures. I think we all tend to favor one section over another (most of us preferring the New Testament – either the Gospels or Paul’s letters).
I hope this is insightful and beneficial for all of us.
The first section I want to tackle is the Pentateuch or the Torah. This section includes the first five books of the Christian Scriptures – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Many of us know the stories of Genesis and Exodus and some of us have engaged Deuteronomy for the section on the Ten Commandments. But we tend to skip Leviticus and Numbers because they can be what one of my friends recently called “literary tryptofan” (the natural sedativein Thanksgiving Turkey that sends us looking for a pillow and into a nap).
I think this section of the Scriptures is vital for several reasons.
1) The stories within these books give us great insight into our humanity and the character of God. The lessons are timeless and human struggles remain consistent. I find myself in so many of these men and women.
2) It gives us a good opportunity to affirm that God is the same God in the Old and New Testament. This is a difficult thing to swallow, but a vital truth to accept as followers of Jesus.
3) It gives us a good opportunity to explore the common misconception that the Old Testament is all about the law and the New Testament is all about grace. There is a lot of grace on God’s part in these 5 books and you can get a context for why the law came about. (Reading Romans later gives us insight as well – but that’s another post).
4) It challenges us to consider the question – “do I believe that all of the Bible is God’s inspired written word for me?”. Most of us deny this in practice, if not in principle.
5) We can learn to allow all of Scripture to “read and interpret us”, rather than just us reading and interpreting Scripture.
6) All of the laws about discharges and sexuality in Leviticus are a good thing to explore when we get bored during a sermon.
See you tomorrow for part 2 on the books of history.
-Savage
