Can A Believer Know the Bible by Reading It?

1John 2:27 "But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him."

At the end of the Dark Ages, a monk named Martin Luther tried to be the best monk he could ever be. He did it in the desire that it would assuage the terrible feelings of guilt and fear that hounded him constantly. Martin Luther had a picture of Jesus in his mind as a "Frightening Avenger." He did not hear about the grace of God poured out upon us through the Son of God by means of dying for us upon the cross.(Galatians 2:20) He did not know that Christ had actually stood in the gap for him so that Martin didn't have to be apprehensive all his life of Him. (II Cor. 5: 21) Since Luther had been beaten regularly by his schoolmaster in order to learn Bible facts, he didn't associate the Bible with grace. No, not at all.

Even Martin's superiors realized his great anxiety and decided that Martin needed to be a professor instead of a monk. That is when Luther first got to read the Scriptures for himself and the things he feared about God were gradually addressed. He was convinced that he had to work for his salvation, for that is what he had been taught all of his life. One day, while studying in the book of Romans, Martin read Romans 1: 17:

1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.

1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."

What Luther read in Romans 1:17 was actually a repeat of Habakkuk 2: 4 in the Old Testament, so this fact was actually stated twice in the Bible. Martin Luther had been known to beat himself with ropes. He said prayers constantly and attended services seven times a day. He begged and took vows of poverty. But none of these things made the miserable monk mollified.

"You are Guilty!" were the words he could not overcome.

So when the Scripture's declaration "the just shall live by faith" popped off Scripture's page that day, Martin Luther was incredulous. This truth had not been revealed by a Pope but to a perplexed and troubled man, studying for the priesthood, who just happened to be reading the Bible.

This one verse did more than light the Protestant Reformation. It revealed that one seeking the Truth could find it in the Scriptures by merely reading them with a heart that is positive to Jesus Christ and want He wants to reveal to him/her.

But some may say that only if the words are properly exegeted can we properly understand them. That argument sounds like we are going back to the days before the Reformation, when only the Pope or the priest read the Bible to the masses.

Here are some verses that encourage us to seek the Lord. How do we seek Him? Do we do some mystical ceremony? No! We seek Him through His Word! The Psalmist says:


Psalm 14:2 "The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God."

Psalm 119:18 "Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law."

Psalm 138:2 "I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name."

Jeremiah says:

Jeremiah 15:16 "Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts."

Jeremiah 6:19 "Hear, O earth! Behold, I will certainly bring calamity on this people--The fruit of their thoughts, Because they have not heeded My words Nor My law, but rejected it."

Jeremiah 22:29 "O earth, earth, earth, Hear the word of the LORD!"

A few of the Lord's statements on the Word:

Matthew 7:24 "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock (v. 25) "and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock."

Matthew 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."

Do you think that if you sat down with your Bible and wanted to understand it, God would refuse you? If you had a clean conscience before Him, do you think He would deny your request, "I want to know you Father?"

Luke says:

"If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" Luke 11: 13

Jesus showed us the Father. We learn of the Living Word in the Written Word. In the times of the Old Testament Jews, the Jews did not even have the whole Pentateuch in some cases. We now have the whole Bible, plus all the free online Bible resources too numerous to be counted like the http://v3.blueletterbible.org/index.cfm. In a country such as America, for us to be ignorant or led astray is really our own fault. If you ask Him, He will lead you to a place where you can be taught accurately, too. But you have the written Word, and according to the book of Hebrews, today is the day of salvation! (Hebrews 3: 15)

Today is a lot more than Halloween....

While most people celebrate Halloween on October 31, in the course of researching my book, I found out something very important in church history happened on October 31st, that has mostly been forgotten. If you go way back to the 1500's you'd find the monk Martin Luther trying to be the best monk that he could ever be.

Luther was born November 10, 1483 in Germany. He was raised to have a terrible fear of Christ. He didn't see him so much as a Savior but as an avenger. The grace of God and how He had come to bear man's sin upon the cross was not the focus of Church teachings. Martin was afraid, terribly afraid.

Martin was going to be a lawyer, in order to please his father, and make a lot of money to boot. One day, as he returned to university on his horse a severe thunderstorm broke out. Fearing imminent death, Martin promised the city's patron saint, Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, that he would become a monk if she would deliver him from the storm. He was delivered, so Luther set out to be a monk.

Luther felt no relief of the fear of God in studying to be a monk. No amount of prayers, fastings, self-denial could take away Martin's guilt. Finally, one day one of his teachers told him he would become a professor and could study the Bible. When Martin studied the book of Romans where it proclaimed: "But the righteous man shall live by faith" (Romans 1: 17), a transformation occurred.

All his life he had tried to do good works to be right with God. Now this verse said righteousness came by faith in Another. It wasn't trying to keep a bunch of rules and laws. Martin Luther came to see that Christ as the Good Shepherd, who came to lay His life down from the sheep.(John 10:11)

He saw that his church was keeping people in darkness. No common people were allowed to read the Bible. It was only written in Latin. Only the clergy knew how to read Latin. To be pardoned of sin, the Church sold indulgences. For a sum of money, you could be cleared of grievous sins, like murder or robbery. Thus Jesus' agony on the cross became of no effect, since they could cheaply be bought and sold.

Luther came to a realization that his fellow church goers were being deceived. He used his study of the Scriptures to find all the ways that the Church had gotten away from Biblical Christianity. He came up with 95 grievances, or what we call today the
95 Theses. He nailed them to the door of the Church at Wittenburg, Germany on October 31, 1517.

Soon, an uproar ensued. Luther would eventually face a trial in which he was asked to recant his theses. But he remained firm. People joined his cause, and broke away from the Catholic Church, becoming known as Lutherans. Thus the beginning of the Protestant Reformation started with a troubled monk named Martin Luther.

Obscured by a pagan holiday, October 31 is an important day in church history because it opened the door for freedom for the masses of humanity to read the Scriptures once again. As Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!" (Matthew 13: 9) Come to think of it, maybe that is why there is a pagan holiday, the devil sure doesn't want people to read God's Word!!

+++++++


"Why does the world abhor the glad tidings of the Gospel and the blessings that go with it? Because the world belongs to the devil; under his direction the world persecutes the Gospel and would if it could nail again Christ the Son of God to the cross, even though He gave Himself unto spiritual death for the sins of the world."
Martin Luther

Too busy to sit at Jesus feet?

Today I was having a wonderful time with the Lord. I am reading through my Bible and finally have arrived in the New Testament. I am in Matthew right now and I try to get 5 chapters a day in. Well, I have these wonderful reference Bibles (the Hebrew Greek Key Study Bible edited by Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D and the Companion Bible edited by E.W.Bullinger). Maybe you are just supposed to read when you read, but I like to read the notes and look up meanings of words, to try and get the sense (Neh.8:8)
Well, there I am and I start feeling this pressure to hurry up and just get through the readings. Like, I have so many IMPORTANT things to do, like work on my writing.
Whoa! Am I going to be like those with indignation at the breaking of the alabaster box and say "Why this waste?(of time- Mark 14:3-9) As if time with the Lord is a waste.
"If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer." (Martin Luther) What a contrast to me when I can barely get 15 minutes for prayer in!
Maybe we think we have advanced in our present state. But when I get too busy for the things of the Lord, than I am too busy. Is Facebook, emails, writing submissions, and all the clamor of the world more important than my relationship with the Lord of this Universe?
The Lord has given me so very much wonderful teaching and resources to know Him better. I have been given much, so much will be required.(Luke 12:48) Oh God, let me remember that nothing in this world will matter one day but what I did with what You gave me.
To quote the chorus of a beautiful old Twila Paris song:
He Is no Fool
If He Would Choose
To Give the Thing He Cannot Keep
To Buy What He Can Never Lose
To See a Treasure in One Soul
That Far Outshines the Brightest Gold
He Is no Fool, He Is no Fool