Bible Revival

Recommitting Ourselves to One Book

Kenneth Berding

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781683592020
• eBook ISBN: 9781683592037
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

1
A REVIVAL OF LEARNING THE WORD

Confronting Distractions, Priorities,
and the Pretext of Being Too Busy

Stacey Irvine ate almost nothing but chicken nuggets for fifteen years. She never tasted fruits or vegetables. She occasionally supplemented her diet with french fries. One day her tongue started to swell and she couldn’t catch her breath. She was rushed to the hospital, her airway was forced open, and they stuck an IV in her arm to start pumping in the nutrients she needed. After saving her life, the medical staff sent her home, but not before they warned her that she needed to change her diet or prepare herself for an early death.

I’ve heard people call it a famine. A famine of knowing the Bible. During a famine people waste away for lack of sustenance. Some people die. Those who remain need nourishment; they often require someone from the outside to assist them in halting their downward spiral toward the point of no return. They need to be revived. And if they have any hope of remaining alive over time, their life situation has to change in conspicuous ways.

During normal famines people don’t have access to the food they need. But Stacey Irvine could have eaten anything she wanted. She had resources, opportunity, and presumably all the encouragement she needed to eat well. Can you imagine what would happen if all of us decided to follow her example and discontinued eating all but nonnutritious foodstuff? If we happened to beat the odds and live, we undoubtedly would suffer in the long run from nutrition-related chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Like Stacey Irvine, we’re killing ourselves. It’s surely not for lack of resources; nevertheless, we are in fact starving ourselves to death.

We applauded, prayed for, and sent money to support Brother Andrew when he began “smuggling” carloads of Bibles into countries hostile to God’s Word. We have searched out languages that have never been written down and have painstakingly reduced those languages to writing for the single purpose of introducing the Word of God to those who speak other languages. We’ve been zealous about people getting their hands on personal copies of the Bible ever since the fires of the Protestant Reformation were stoked by new translations. Martin Luther dedicated most of the later years of his life to translating the Bible into vernacular German. William Tyndale literally gave his life so people could read God’s Word in English. And all throughout the previous fifteen centuries scores of our predecessors spent countless hours, months, years, and sometimes lifetimes copying by hand thousands upon thousands of biblical manuscripts one line at a time. We Christians are ardent in our conviction that everyone should have access to the Word of God. A growing presence of online resources making the Word available in multiple formats is contemporary evidence of our commitment. So how is it that we’re living in the middle of a famine?

Christians used to be known as “people of one book.”¹ Sure, they read, studied, and shared other books. But the book they cared about more than all others combined was the Bible. They memorized it, meditated on it, talked about it, and taught it to others. We don’t do that anymore, and in a very real sense we’re starving ourselves to death.

A FAMINE OF BIBLE KNOWLEDGE

Does this sound overly alarmist to you? People who have studied the trends don’t think so.

Timothy Larsen comments that “it has been demonstrated that biblical literacy has continued to decline. . . . Gallup polls have tracked this descent to a current ‘record low.’”²

In “The 9 Most Important Issues Facing the Evangelical Church,” Michael Vlach cites “Biblical Illiteracy in the Church” as his final concern. He agrees with George Barna’s assessment that “the Christian body in America is immersed in a crisis of biblical illiteracy.”³

The Barna Group gives a brief summary of its conclusions in this area: “Biblical literacy is neither a current reality nor a goal in the U.S.” They then add that

little progress, if any, is being made toward assisting people to become more biblically literate.

There is shockingly little growth evident in people’s understanding of the fundamental themes of the scriptures and amazingly little interest in deepening their knowledge and application of biblical principles.

Our research suggests that this challenge initially emerges in the late adolescent or early teenage years. By the time most Americans reach the age of 13 or 14, they think they pretty much know everything of value the Bible has to teach and they are no longer interested in learning more scriptural content.⁴

David Nienhuis summarizes his understanding of the situation:

For well over twenty years now, Christian leaders have been lamenting the loss of general biblical literacy in America. No doubt you have read some of the same dire statistics . . .

. . . some among us may be tempted to seek odd solace in the recognition that our culture is increasingly post-Christian. . . . Much to our embarrassment, however, it has become increasingly clear that the situation is really no better among confessing Christians, even those who claim to hold the Bible in high regard. . . . In each of these questions, evangelical teens fared only slightly better than their non-evangelical counterparts.⁵

If I sound alarmist, I’m not alone.

Recently I was leading a college class discussion about an early church leader named Ignatius (a key leader in the city of Antioch just after the age of the apostles). Ignatius pushed hard for the idea that every Christian should obey their “bishop” as though rendering obedience to Christ himself. Wanting to keep the discussion anchored in the Bible and not just in the opinions of the church fathers, I asked my students, “Does the Bible anywhere specifically teach us to obey our church leaders?” I was, frankly, astonished when confronted with silence from the group. None of the ten students knew the answer to the question—and this group of students was a biblically literate group, at least by modern standards. But this isn’t a difficult biblical question. Do you know the answer?⁶

I can’t imagine such a thing happening to a group of German Lutherans in the sixteenth century, or to English Puritans in the seventeenth century, or to Wesleyans in the eighteenth century, or to modern Chinese-mainland Christians even if they only have access to a few Bibles in their house church. Or even to our believing great-grandparents in the United States. My paternal grandfather, who never came into personal relationship with Jesus Christ, read his Bible regularly and had many passages committed to memory.

These days many of us don’t even know basic facts about the Bible. I remember a student—not a new believer—who asked a question after class about Saul’s conversion in Acts 9. She wanted to know whether this was the same Saul who was king over Israel. No. King Saul’s story is found in the Old Testament; the Saul of Acts—also known as Paul—is found in the New Testament.

When I was teaching at a college in New York, I assigned each student to write a biographical sketch of an Old Testament character. I came across the following line in a paper about the Old Testament figure Joshua: “Joshua was the son of a nun.” This student clearly didn’t know that Nun was the name of Joshua’s father, nor apparently did he realize that Catholic nuns weren’t around during the time of the Old Testament. But I’m sure it created quite a stir at the convent!

MEDITATING DAY AND NIGHT

In the book of Amos, people who experienced a “famine of hearing the words of the Lord” are portrayed as undergoing divine judgment. Amos paints a picture of people without access to God’s revelation searching for a message from God like desperate people—hungry and dehydrated—in search of food and water (Amos 8:11-12). In Amos they want it, but are not permitted it. In our case, although we have unlimited access, we often don’t want it. The irony is intense. Who would deliberately and knowingly put himself under God’s judgment? Would someone enter an earthquake zone if he knew in advance that the Lord was going to judge that place with an earthquake (Amos 8:8)? Would someone move his family to a land that was soon to suffer drought if he knew ahead of time that God was going to send a judgment of drought to that land (Amos 8:13)? Are we somehow positioning ourselves in the domain of God’s judgment when we spiritually starve ourselves by not “hearing the words of God” (Amos 8:11-12)? Is this what happens when we severely limit our engagement with the Word of God?

You are probably already aware, at least to some degree, of the dilemma that this Christian generation is facing because of its biblical malnutrition. The simple fact that you have picked up this book indicates that you want to do something about it. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you! I’m praying that God will use this book to move your affections toward an increasing love of and commitment to learning the Word of God! And I sincerely hope that your influence rubs off on others.

When God commissioned Joshua (the son of Nun), he charged him with these words: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it” (Josh. 1:8, italics added). How often should you meditate on it? Day and night. Why? So that you do what is in it.

The Old Testament book of Psalms leads off with these words:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. (Ps. 1:1-3, italics added)

And in another psalm: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97, italics added). Have you ever wondered how it could be his meditation all the day? The psalmist didn’t have the Bible on his smart phone. Did he carry around a big scroll under his arm? No, he had memorized the passages he was meditating on and was thinking about them. He had committed large sections of the Bible to memory.

You know, the easiest way to memorize the Bible is to divide it into chunks and then read one ten- or fifteen-minute portion over and over again aloud until you know the entire passage. This method of memorizing is painless, edifying, and only requires a bit of consistent time. (I’ve written more on this in appendix A: The Easiest Way to Memorize the Bible). I know precious few who memorize any Bible verses at all, much less large chunks of the Bible, and yet it’s not as hard as most people make it out to be. And it can change your life.

Are you aware that the New Testament authors included in their writings more than 300 direct quotations from the Old Testament writers—not counting hundreds of other allusions and echoes of Old Testament language? There is no evidence that any of these authors actually looked up the references as they wrote. They simply knew their Bibles—that is, the parts of the Bible that had already been written. How did they come to know it so well? They worked on it “day and night.” They saturated themselves in it.

DIGGING DEEPER

So how is it that we find ourselves in the middle of a famine and in such need of a Bible revival?

Distractions

Every time I teach a class called Biblical Interpretation & Spiritual Formation, I ask my students why it is that so few people in this generation are really zealous about the things of God. I can’t remember a time when I’ve asked that question when someone hasn’t mentioned distractions. Social networking, texting, television, video games, and places dedicated to amusement (“amusement” parks, for example) pull our attention away from God’s Word. These fun and interesting activities occupy time that we could spend reading, studying, and memorizing the Bible and they distract our thoughts during time we could spend meditating on God’s Word throughout the day. When we walk from one meeting to another, are our thoughts naturally moving to Scripture and prayer? As we leave a college class session, are we thinking on the things of God that we have learned from the Bible? Or do we immediately check to see whether someone has messaged us? Talking like this is downright countercultural, I know. But remember, we’re in the middle of a famine and it needs to be said.

In 1986, Neil Postman published an influential cultural essay entitled “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” He argued that personal freedoms would disappear not when a totalitarian government imposed oppression from the outside (like George Orwell pictured in his book, 1984), but rather when people came “to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think” (like Aldous Huxley depicted in Brave New World). Postman wrote:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley noted in a later book (mentioned by Postman), we have “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”⁷

We shouldn’t assume that these distractions have no effect on our perceptions of God. One of my college-aged daughters was working at a Christian summer day camp. On one occasion she was talking with a group of elementary kids about what God is like. One girl in her group responded, “I believe that there are lots of different gods, like we saw in Hercules. Some are good and some are bad.” She was referring to the Disney movie, Hercules, which she had watched that morning at the camp. This child’s understanding of God was, at least to some degree, shaped by the polytheism displayed in the movie she had been shown at a Christian day camp.

Might it be that our commitment to fun has resulted in famine, our laughter has yielded loss, and our distractions are ultimately leading to our destruction?

Misplaced Priorities

Priorities are not as simple as “God first, family second, and church third.” What does that expression mean anyway? Every time I have to choose between reading my Bible and spending time with my children, should I read my Bible? No. Priorities aren’t based upon a simple hierarchy; they require the proper balance of activities in relationship to one another. But it is a fitting question to ask: for a person who is working full-time, wh...

Table of contents

• BIBLE REVIVAL
• PREFACE
• 1 A REVIVAL OF LEARNING THE WORD
• 2 A REVIVAL OF VALUING THE WORD
• 3 A REVIVAL OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORD
• 4 A REVIVAL OF APPLYING THE WORD
• 5 A REVIVAL OF OBEYING THE WORD
• 6 A REVIVAL OF SPEAKING THE WORD
• APPENDIX A THE EASIEST WAY TO MEMORIZE THE BIBLE
• APPENDIX B A METHOD FOR ATTAINING BIBLE FLUENCY