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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Randy Roberts

Stop Reading About The Bible

God of grace, as we come to, so listen for the gentle voice of the Spirit in our hearts.

We pray that we might be open to and interested in it.

Psalm 119 is well known for being the longest psalm in the psalm book.

It is also well known for a variety of different verses that are therein.

1 of the better known verses is a verse that I'd like to read this morning.

I'm reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

The title for these thoughts this morning is Stop Reading About the Bible.

I suppose if you heard that title, the first question, if you're like me, that would come to mind for you would be, why?

What kind of advice is that coming from a preacher to parishioners?

Is it advice a pastor is giving to parishioners who do nothing but read about the Bible?

They're students on a campus, they're young professionals, hard at work, and yet the reality is because they spend so much time reading about the Bible, they can't get to their studies.

Is that why you're giving the recommendation to stop reading about the Bible?

Are you giving as a pastor advice to parishioners to stop reading about the Bible because you find that people are doing that to great length and yet there is nothing different in their lives.

In fact, I would think if you asked me that question of the family, the wife and mother of whom said to me, I can't take it anymore.

She said, my husband is consumed with things religious, consumed with them, it's all he does.

Well, that might be enough to cause someone to say, stop reading that stuff, but that's not why I'm saying it today.

I'm not even saying it, as some in our surrounding culture might ask, because of what's being written in this day and age.

If you follow at all the bestseller lists, if you peruse the bookshelves at Barnes and Noble, you will see that among bestsellers in our day and time are books about the Bible, not complementary books.

Books written by a wide range of atheists, books written from the more philosophical and scientific perspective, as well as from the more popular perspective.

And the gist, if I could bring those books together in 1 simple statement and try to describe what I understand them to be saying would simply be this, stop reading about the Bible.

So maybe you ask me, is that why you're saying it?

In fact, the reason I would say something like that, stop reading about the Bible, is simply this.

I am interested in well-educated Christians.

Well, there's an interesting thought that I ran across some years past that had to do with education.

A gentleman for whom I have a great deal of respect, an educator himself, 1 day in conversation said to me, you know how you can tell somebody who's truly educated, at least in the standards of educational systems around us?

The people who get an okay education are those who read about the great writers, about the great people in their fields.

But, " he said, The people with a truly good education are those who have read the great writers.

The ones who have read the great names in their fields.

Not those who have merely studied about them, though There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the ones who have studied them themselves first hand.

I have a bit of a hard time pinpointing exactly when it was.

Best of my recollection, it was probably about 16 years ago or thereabouts.

In other words, it's after I had been in pastoral ministry, after I had been to seminary, certainly to college, after I had worked in chaplaincy for several years.

It was after all of that had happened that 1 day I listened to a cassette tape.

Most of you don't remember cassette tapes, and that pains me greatly.

What's even worse is most of you don't remember 8-tracks.

I jog in the mornings, and when I jog, I no longer listen to cassettes.

But in those days, I listened to cassettes.

I had a voracious appetite for them because day in and day out as I jogged, I was looking typically for sermons to listen to.

Well, that day I had run out of all the sermons, all the tapes I had on hand, so I was digging through some old things that I had, box from the garage, you know how it is, dig it out, look and see, is there anything in here worth re-listening to?

And I found a tape, cassette tape that I had been given some years before that.

A cassette tape that I had been given some years before that.

A cassette tape that I had been given by the Ministerial Secretary of the Southwestern Union Conference.

I was ordained in Texas and the Southwestern Union Conference was part of what oversaw the Texas Conference.

The afternoon, the Sabbath afternoon I was ordained, he gave me a couple of gifts.

He gave me 1, a small communion set, not much bigger than my Bible, a bit thicker.

And then he gave me a cassette, cassette tape by HMS Richards.

On 1 side of the cassette tape was a sermon on living water.

Exceptional sermon, powerful sermon on living water.

On the other side of the cassette tape was an interview.

An interview, he was basically answering this question, that was the title of that side of the tape, if I were a young minister again." Well, now that's interesting.

And so I stuck it in the Walkman and off I went, listening to H.M.S.

It was interesting to hear what somebody who was nearing at that time when he recorded it, the end of his not only career, but his life, it was interesting to hear him reflect back, talk about the things that he would do differently, wished he had known, would change if he were a young minister again.

It's been years now since I've listened to the tape.

I'm not sure I could tell you all of the things he said.

1 thing He said hit me right between the eyes.

1 thing He said hit me hard enough to almost cause me to stumble.

It hit me very hard because I knew a little bit about H.M.S.

I knew he read his Scripture and read it voraciously.

I knew that because I had heard such things and read such things.

But I also knew it because I had watched such things.

I had watched in that time he had come to Guatemala City to preach.

He was preaching at a large convocation there in Guatemala City where we lived at the time.

And my dad was going to do the translation.

I remember sitting out in the congregation and looking up front and seeing HMS Richards, older by that time, a bit frail, hunched over in his seat, little blanket wrapped around him.

Guatemala City was cold at that time of year.

Waiting as the early parts of the service moved by.

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Stop Reading About The Bible

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