Studying God's Word

Series: Signs of Belonging
George J. Saylor
April 20, 2008

A collector of rare books was talking with a man who told him he had just thrown away an old Bible that he found in a dusty, old box. He happened to mention that “Guten-somebody-or-other” had printed it.
"Not Gutenberg?" gasped the collector.
"Yes, that was it!"
"You fool! You've thrown away one of the first books ever printed. Depending on the condition that book could have been worth millions!"
"Oh, I don't think this book would have been worth much," replied the man. "Some guy named Martin Luther wrote all over it.”

Not many people are bible scholars, but most of us would know enough not to throw out a Guttenburg Press bible, especially one that had been owned by Martin Luther. But as valuable as that bible would be, the real value of any bible is simply found in one thing- reading it.

So here’s the point today- I want you to read the bible. I want you to be a student of God’s word. Now if you can promise me you’ll read your bible, we can wrap this up really quick and all go golfing.

Why read the bible? In the context of our signs of belonging, we have established this: we belong to God- he made us, he redeemed us, he loves us, he wants to us to know we are his and he is ours- we belong. And so we worship him. That’s the start. The way we worship him without ceasing is by embracing our role as stewards- we talked about stewarding our time, talents and treasures last week. Now here’s where being a student of God’s word fits in- because he loves us, because we belong to him, because we are to worship him, because God wants us to be stewards, he has not left us in the dark wondering how to do all this. He has literally given us a book so that we can know the story of his love for us. So we can know how to worship him, so we can know how to be stewards. Why read the bible? Because God loves us enough that we are not left wondering how to work all this stuff out.

Read the whole sermon at cccsermons.blogspot.com