Line Upon Line

I like to think i'm committed to two things that help read and understand the Bible. The first is expository preaching, that is, doing the best you can do to let the Bible speaking for itself in preaching. Not riding a hobby horse, not preaching on a topic, but taking a part of the Bible, and building bridges from one verse to another. The other is the discipline of Biblical Theology. BT seeks to explain the flow of the Bible's story in it's context, in it's place. It's perhaps best understood as a way to read the Bible that speaks about Jesus, 'beginning with Moses and the prophets.' It stops us from thinking that 'blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,' refers to modern day America.

Reading the Bible line by line, and precept by precept is undoubtedly the best way to do it. So why is it condemned by Isaiah in 28:13. Why is this reading of the Bible what leads to falling backwards, being snared and taken? Well, you and I know the answer. Our hearts, then as now, are the problem.

We are proud, idol making, religionists at heart. So we take something good, like Bible reading, and make it ugly. Like those prophesied against in Isaiah's time, we make our faith a religion. We've had our devotions, we've listened to some 'good' preaching, we're not like 'those people,' we're doing pretty good. We don't need to go to the Temple and plea for mercy, we just need to thank God for getting things right. We read, we preach, we understand line upon line, and precept upon precept, but that's not enough.

It's not enough now for the same reasons it wasn't enough then. Why not? Because religious Bible reading for it's own sake never brings us to Christ. Our eyes glaze over as we read our ten chapters a day, our hearts are hard as we exchange our devotions for sermon prep. We miss Jesus when this happens. We're not searching the scriptures to see Him, we're sitting in front of a book to tick a box.

So we must stick to line upon line, precept upon precept, but only to see Jesus, only to enjoy His light, never to tick our boxes. Then we'll avoid falling backwards, and our religion won't be a snare to us. Open the Bible and seek Him whom your soul loves.