Reason 3: The Bible is the Surest and Purest Voice of God

At no time in history have we been bombarded with so many voices – seemingly all claiming to help us if we will only . . . In the past, the great challenge was in finding people and sources to give us good advice and counsel while today we are overwhelmed by a tsunami of spam, much of it very slick and professional looking and sounding. Thus, our immense task now is in effectively filtering all the bad so we can find, hear and consider what is good and helpful.

And among all this “chatter,” God is speaking as well and in numerous ways (through preachers and teachers, other Christians, in nature, circumstances, feelings, dreams . . .), but by far the purest Voice of God is the Bible.  The Bible has the great potential (if we take advantage of it) of being the filter of all the voices (true and false and misleading) that will otherwise overwhelm us if not controlled.

Everything should be checked against the Bible, even the Bible itself.  Huh? We won't correctly understand God, life, the Bible itself if we don't understand the great foundational themes outlined in the Bible on which all rests.  Several key great themes necessary to begin grasping the Bible and everything else around us are that:

• God is sovereign.  This is a difficult truth to grasp (no one does so perfectly), but it is one nevertheless we need to begin to understand because our faith cannot be any greater than our faith in God’s sovereignty – believing He can do what He says, when He wants to, without any limits . . . God is sovereign!
• The counterpoint to this great Bible truth and theme is that we are very very helpless, hopeless and weak apart from God.  Or as Jesus says: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
• Then there is the great theme of the hope of God: His grace. We need the Bible to show and tell us of His many huge promises, what they are and how to “find” them.
• To keep and grow this grace we are warned, in the great Bible theme of being careful, that we must be continually alert and vigilant for the dangers that surround and threaten to attack and destroy us.

Yes, the Bible has great and foundational themes on which the pieces (the individual verses) “hang.”  Or to use another analogy, as we read the Bible, and apply and practice what we read, more and more of a picture emerges and becomes clearer and clearer.  And this picture is not simply understanding more what the Bible says, but in understanding ourselves better, seeing others better, being better able to filter the bad from the good in life in general.

Yes, the Bible is both the surest and purest Voice of God.  These are surely great reasons to read the Bible!