by Kevin Burton
If you knew there was gold buried in your back yard, how long would it take you to start digging?
Perhaps you would wait half a day, for the cover of darkness, so as not to alert your neighbors.
But you’d be on the job and make it a top priority. A certainty of treasure, to be turned into many other kinds of treasures would motivate you, push many other projects to the side.
What then is this dust resting on your Bible? Are not the spiritual riches therein, sufficient to cause you to open the book? And not just open it, to search diligently, as you would in your back yard with gold in it?
The words of the sovereign God of the universe, lovingly captured for your benefit, for your spiritual enrichment, stuck on a shelf and ignored?
Let it never be!
Under the headline “Hunt For Truth,” Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry, spells out why we should be in the Bible, and not just in some casual manner.
“The Greek word translated search signifies a strict, close, diligent, curious search, the kind men make when they are seeking gold, or hunters when they are in pursuit of game,” Begg writes. “\We must not be content with giving a superficial glance to one or two chapters, but with the candle of the Spirit we must deliberately seek out the meaning of the Word.”
“Holy Scripture requires searching—much of it can only be learned by careful study. There is milk for babies, but also meat for strong men and women.”
“The rabbis wisely say that a mountain of matter hangs upon every word, indeed, upon every title of Scripture. Tertullian declared, ‘I adore the fullness of the Scriptures.’”
Can you say that along with Tertullian, the early Christian author?
“The person who merely skims the Book of God will not profit from it; we must dig and mine until we obtain the treasure. The door of the Word only opens to the key of diligence,” Begg writes.
“The Scriptures demand to be searched. They are the writings of God, bearing the divine stamp and imprimatur—who shall dare to treat them casually? To despise them is to despise the God who wrote them.”
“God forbid that any of us should allow our Bibles to become witnesses against us in the great day of account.”
“The Word of God will repay searching. God does not ask us to sift through a mountain of chaff with only here and there a grain of wheat in it, but the Bible is sifted corn—we have only to open the granary door and find it. Scripture grows upon the student.”
“It is full of surprises. Under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to the searching eye, it glows with splendor of revelation, like a vast temple paved with gold and roofed with rubies, emeralds, and all manner of gems,” Begg writes. There is no merchandise like the merchandise of scriptural truth.”
Begg mentions a key element there. Unlike when you pick up a recipe book or a mathematics text, when you pick up the Bible you can ask for a receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit to help you understand what you are reading.
I would never claim that there are not parts of the Bible which are challenging to understand, even for seasoned Bible scholars. How blessed are we to have the book’s Author to show us the way?
“Finally, the Scriptures reveal Jesus: “They that bear witness about me.” No more powerful motive can be urged upon Bible readers than this: He who finds Jesus finds life, heaven, and all things. Happy are they who, in searching the Bible, discover their Savior.”
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