January 5, 2025
The bible is one of the most read books in the world. According to Wikipedia Portions of it have been translated into more than 3500 languages. The whole bible has been translated into 750 languages. In addition the United Bible society reports that there are approximately 900 English translations of the Bible. Every year the Bible holds the top spot for copies sold at 100 million. A book only needs to sell a few thousand copies a week to be a best seller totally in the hundreds of thousands per year. The Bible exceeds this standard many times over and does so year after year. This also places it far ahead of any other book in all time sales a few highly popular books like “The Lord of the Rings” (a personal favourite) or “A Tale of Two Cities” have all time sales of 150 million. Again, these numbers of dwarfed by the 3.9 billion copies of the Bible sold over time. As these numbers reflect It is respected by many people for many reasons. Its words have considerable bearing on the worlds three largest religions Judaism Islam (with qualifications) and of course Christianity. It is widely regarded as the single most influential book in western civilization.
Given how much attention the bible receives both in North America and around the world it’s hard to understand how people who have so much exposure to the bible fail to heed it’s teaching.
However if we will give it a little thought it makes a lot of sense. Is there anyone who thinks smoking is a healthy choice? Is there anyone who thinks Drinking and driving is good and safe? Obviously people know better than to engage in these behaviours. That does not keep them from doing it.
Not to just pick on certain vices I am confident that we all have things that we know are not wise and yet we do them none the less.
This accounts for some of the challenge. However there are a few others things we might want to consider.
The second reason that people don’t follow the teaching of scripture is just that they don’t know what it is despite having spent some time reading it. We all know that just reading something over doesn’t mean we know much about it. Who hasn’t agreed to terms and conditions having only skimmed the pages provided. Some people approach the bible in a similar way.
Even those who have read more carefully may not be emotionally mature enough to set aside personal opinions and biases. In almost twenty years of preaching I have had many people tell me they know what it says they just won’t do it. Further some will only take from scripture what they are wanting to find there. George Deholf once wrote that “the bible is written in such a way that if a man want’s to cavil he may”
We will all struggle from time to time and need the grace of God but let’s make it our aim to approach God’s word with a deep desire for understanding and a strong commitment to obey it.
Kevin Cleary