Bobby has been holding down his part of that pew for the last several years now, hearing nearly a hundred sermons and several times that many hymns and choruses, and he has come to a decision. He is tired of being lost when the minister asks everyone, “Turn in your Bibles to Luke 5,” or John 3, or Psalm 119.

Bobby patiently turns until he finds the passage in question, then follows along with the reading and sits back and listens to the minister open it up. And Bobby feels lost. Without a proper understanding of the Scripture–what it is, what it means, what God intends–he might as well be dropping in on a meeting of scientists and him the custodian. He’s in way over his head.

And that’s how Bobby came to his decision: he’s going to get serious about reading his Bible.

Two rows behind him sits Margie, and she’s made a similar decision. Margie has been a member of First Church for thirty years. She and Thomas joined back when the children were small and they were looking for a church with a good program for the little ones. The children are grown now, with families of their own, but First Church is home to Margie and Thomas and as familiar as their living room. But lately Margie has become dissatisfied with her spiritual life.

That’s why she has decided to get serious about studying her Bible. She figures rightly that it’s a shame she has been a believer all these many years and is still so ignorant about God’s Word. She has made a decision to remedy that situation.

Bobby and Margie have not actually done anything about their decisions to get to know God’s Word; they’ve just made the decision. And they’re at a vulnerable time.

This is the moment when the enemy presents his two greatest lies about God’s Word. Now, he has plenty of misrepresentations in his armory of weapons, slanders, and tricks and some are pretty dastardly, even outright evil. But the two lies he selects to use on Bobby and Margie are rather subtle.

To Bobby, the baby-believer who is ready to dip his toes into the ocean of God’s Word and get acquainted, the enemy uses this one: “It’s too deep. You will never be able to grasp it. No one does. Even the pastors and professors can’t agree on what the Bible says. It contradicts itself. This is beyond you, Bobby. Leave this to the scholars. Go back to sleep.”

He’s lying, Bobby. Seriously and big-time lying.

You can understand it. The portion that scholars debate is a tiny sliver of the entire thing. Why, look around you and notice that the children in your church carry Bibles with them. Believe me, they wouldn’t if they were just for show. Even a child can open the Bible and understand much of it.

In fact, this is one of the proofs that this Word is from the hand of God: its accessibility. The 10-year-old and the theological professor read the same book and are blessed by it, and not always in different ways. They read where Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow or reap or gather into barns. And yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth more than they?” (Matthew 6:26) They both read that and they understand what Jesus is saying, and both are strengthened in their faith.

The professor understands more about the context, that this is part of the Sermon on the Mount, delivered early in Jesus’ ministry, and he thinks of a dozen other Scriptures that connect with this, each one shedding light on the other, and he can read it in the Greek. But the nourishment he receives from reading the Scripture is very much like that which the Holy Spirit gives the child who opens her Bible and reads, understanding none of these details.

My wife and I have four grandchildren who are taking piano lessons these days. I note that they are not using a child’s piano from which they will graduate to a more complex instrument and finally to the full-size keyboard. They plant their small bodies on the piano stool and learn the same keys from the same adult-sized piano which concert artists employ. That’s how it’s done. The music the children coax from the huge instrument is limited and simpler, but next year they will understand more and each year they will become more proficient on the piano. The day will come (and I can’t wait) when I will walk in the door and one of them will give me a hug and say, “Grandpa, would you like to hear Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number One?” And I will say, “That’s what I’ve been waiting for!” (Or Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” that’s another of the best things ever written.)

That’s one of the reasons Margie is feeling so guilty. She’s been taking lessons in church for 30 years. That is to say, she’s been a member of the congregation and hearing sermons and occasionally reading her Bible. But she’s still basically ignorant of its message. She feels she has wasted a lot of time, and who’s to argue with that. So, she’s decided to get serious about her Bible and to learn what it says.

The enemy has a different word of discouragement for Margie. He whispered in Bobby’s ear that the Bible is too deep and no one can understand it. Bobby noticed the children opening their Bibles and getting insights from it and knew the enemy was trying to pull a fast one.

To Margie, the enemy whispered, “This is old hat. You know the Bible. You’ve read it all these years. It’s boring. You’ve been there and done that.”

He’s lying, Margie. It’s a personal letter from the Creator of the universe and your personal Savior–it’s a lot of things, but boring is not one of them. You do not know the Word, Margie. In fact, that’s one of the evidences this is the Word of God: its depth. No one has ever plumbed its depths and reached the bottom to the point where he could say he now understood all of it.

The Bible is unlike any other book in your house. My wife and I read all of John Grisham’s novels and the Jack Reacher series from Lee Child and I love a good Western, but after we finish one and lay it aside, we never pull it off the shelf and re-read it just to see what we missed the first time. We didn’t miss anything. There are no deeper meanings, no insights for those who come back to it again and again. It’s just a novel.

But the Bible is different. Read the same chapter every day for a month, and each time you will see something you didn’t notice before. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but the simplest is that it’s alive.

J. B. Phillips, who spent the World War II years producing his own translation of Scriptures in modern phraseology and gave us what we call the Phillips New Testament, later reported, “Being an Anglican priest, I always believed the Bible to be God’s Word. However, being trained in the classical Greek of Homer and Virgil, we were taught to look down our highly-educated noses at the Koine’ Greek of the New Testament. But when I began studying and translating it, I made a discovery. This Word is unlike any other I’ve ever read. This is alive.”*

In fact, God’s Word claims this very attribute for itself. “The Word of God is alive and active and sharper than any two-edged sword….” (Hebrews 4:12)

No, Margie, you do not “know” God’s word. You have not been there, done that. In fact, I have a confession. I have been a Christian since 1951 and a preacher since 1962, and I still do not know the Bible. I know a great deal about it and I read large portions of it every day and I love it and depend on it. But I’m still in kindergarten, there’s so much more I want to learn.

The Old Testament character Job once said, “I have esteemed the words of thy mouth more than my necessary food.” (Job 23:12)

In a similar vein, our Lord said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)

Both Margie and Bobby have so many wonderful discoveries in store for them, if they will follow through on their commitments to get serious about the Bible. They will want to ask their pastor where to begin, and then, they will need to follow a few simple suggestions to get the most from their daily time with the Lord in reading the Bible.

I hope they will not miss this: the point is not just to know the Bible, but to know the Lord. The Scriptures are one of the means God has given us for that. As we “listen” to His Word, we are literally visiting with our Savior. I suggest anyone opening the Bible begin by offering a brief invitation to the Lord to join them and to speak to their hearts.

Here are some practical suggestions to Bobby and Margie and anyone else beginning to get serious about learning their Bible.

Find a place in your home where you will read it each day. Have a notebook and pencil handy to jot down insights you find or questions you want to explore. Keep a highlighter pen nearby so you can emphasize verses you want to find later. Leave everything there in your special place so they will be waiting for you the next day.

Take one book of the Bible at a time. Whether it’s Genesis or Matthew or another book–you’ll want to ask your minister for suggestions–read several chapters each day. When you finish, consider going back over the same book, just to get what you missed the first time and to fix it more solidly in your mind.

You will read a lot of things you do not understand. No matter. Just keep reading, looking for the parts you do understand.

Should you try to read the Bible through in a year? Some people do, and it involves taking in several chapters from both the Old and New Testaments every day. My own opinion–and that’s all this is–is that eventually you may want to do this, at least once. But it’s not a great way to learn your Bible. It’s a little like seeing Europe in two weeks. You get a few hours in this city and a day in that country, but you have to rush on to the next destination. When you finish, you can say you have been to those countries, but in truth you do not know them. Better to take one at a time and spend enough time exploring it before moving on.

Should you just open your Bible at random and read whatever passage unfolds before you? There’s nothing wrong with doing that–I do it myself sometimes–but not as a rule. You can walk into your pantry blind-folded and select something off the shelves and eat it and receive nourishment. But it’s not a very good way to plan a meal or to feed your family a balanced diet. My observation is that the Holy Spirit will frequently honor this slapdash method for new believers who are just learning what a great resource the Bible is. But in time, He wants His children to get serious and systematic about their Bible reading.

For a time, I would caution Bobby and Margie against reading commentaries on books of the Bible. Just read the Bible. You want to learn the basic message before turning to consider what others have said about it.

I recall being in the first grade. I loved everything about school, but one thing worried me. The children in the second and third grades seemed so much older and more mature, and I wondered if I could work at that level. When I arrived in those classes, the work was easy enough and I worried about the higher grades. The idea of going to college was like becoming an astronaut and flying through space–too far over my head to be practical. And eventually, I did all of those things in time, simply by applying myself to the class in which I was enrolled at any given time.

It’s that way with learning God’s word. Do not worry about what you do not know and do not concern yourself with all that lies before you. Read the passage for today and enjoy what the Lord says to you there. In time, you will arrive at those distant markers which used to seem so remote. You will never have the feeling that you understand all of God’s Word, but you will grasp so much of it that you love where you are and are excited over what you do know.

No believer should ever forget one thing: the object is not to know God’s Word; it’s to obey it. Jesus said, “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” (John 13:17)

Dixie was a senior adult of the Catholic faith who frequently came to the weekday events at our Baptist church with a couple of her friends who lived in the same apartment complex. One day while calling on church members in that building, I walked over to say hello, and found Dixie on her tiny porch reading the Psalms. I knew immediately I had intruded on a special moment when she looked up at me with teary eyes. It’s been many years now, but I remember as though it were yesterday what she said.

“Oh, Pastor Joe, I’m reading God’s word in the Psalms. They’re so wonderful. And when I think that I’ve lived all these years without knowing these wonderful treasures, I could just cry.”

And that’s what she was doing, crying.

Well, you’ll never be any younger and never get started any earlier, friend. Start now.

(*Since Mr. Phillips paraphrased Scripture, I decided it was all right to paraphrase him. The quote is what I recall him saying from his book, “The Ring of Truth.”)