BIBLE-PRIORITY
This Book
contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of
sinners and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts
are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it
to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains
light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the
traveler’s map, the pilgrim’s staff, the pilot’s compass, the soldier’s sword,
and the Christian’s character. Here paradise is restored, Heaven opened, and
the gates of hell disclosed. Christ is its grand object; our good is its
design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the
heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully. It is
given you in life and will be opened in the judgment and will be remembered
forever. It involves the highest responsibility, will reward the greatest
labor, and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.
Author Unknown
Surely we
only have to be realistic and honest with ourselves to know how regularly we
need to turn to the Bible. How often do we face problems, temptation, and
pressure? Every day! Then how often do we need instruction, guidance and
greater encouragement? Every day! To catch all these felt needs up into
an even greater issue, how often do we need to see God’s face, hear his voice,
feel his touch, know his power? The answer to all these questions is the same: every
day!
How to Enjoy Your Bible, Evangelical
Press, 1984, p. 104.
You can
measure a person’s opinion of God by his or her opinion of God’s Word. That’s
why a person who loves God loves His Word, and the person who hates God rejects
what God has spoken. God’s Word is an extension of Himself – His identity,
purposes, affections, and power.
Jonathan Leeman
Reverberation,
Moody Publishers, 2011, p. 48.
Scripture is
like a working museum of which the Spirit is the Curator, showing us around and
explaining the wonders of the mind of the Maker. In this museum we are taken
behind the scenes to learn from God Himself. In growing to know God, therefore,
there is no substitute for the discipline of Bible study and Scripture reading
and meditation. We cannot bypass the handbook God has given to us and then
expect that we can know Him in our own way. The only god we can know in our own
way is a god that we make in our own image.
A Heart for God, 1987, p. 8, by
permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
Conservative
churches will stop growing if they do not awaken. Mouthing traditional
platitudes will not suffice. A return to the theology of the Bible we rightly
call infallible and inerrant is needed. Biblical definitions of evangelism,
conversion, baptism, and discipleship must be recovered. Worship of numbers
must cease. Courage to be God's remnant must emerge.
Paul R. House &
Gregory A. Thornbury, Who Will Be Saved? 2000, Crossway Books, p. 166.
The message
of the Bible provides the only answer to humanity's most pressing need: to know
God himself. Having been created by God for God, the "self" can never
be "self-satisfied." Yet, having lost sight of the God revealed in
the Bible, all we can see is our self, with its futile drive to meet its own
ever-changing but never satisfied cravings for the second-rate pleasures of
this world.
The God of Promise and the Life of
Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 20.
The Bible has
been my guide in perplexity, and my comfort in trouble. It has roused me when
declining, and animated me in languor. Other writings may be good, but they
want certainty and force. The Bible carries its own credentials along with it,
and proves spirit and life to the soul. In other writings I hear the words of a
stranger or a servant. In the Bible I hear the language of my Father and my
friend. Other books contain only the picture of bread. The Bible presents me
with real manna, and feeds me with the bread of life.
Author Unknown
Sola
Scriptura will bring
about a revolution in your reading, studying, and living of Scripture. Knowing
now the incredible life-changing resource that God has put into your hands, you
will develop a specific plan to read and study the whole Bible through, listen
to the Bible on tape, listen to sermons on tape, help your spouse and children
read and study more, memorize God’s promises that help you escape the
corruption of the world, pray through the Scriptures asking God for help in
applying them, write specific applications that God wants you to do, meditate
on special portions of God’s Word, remove those things from your life that
quench your thirst for Scripture, and get involved in a church where God’s Word
is faithfully taught as “the complete, perfect, all-embracing, and all-sufficient
revelation from God that will never need amendment, correction, or
supplementation.”
John
Thompson
The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What
Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org,
Used by Permission.
I saw more
clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought
to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to
be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might
glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my
inner man may be nourished… I saw that the most important thing I had to do was
to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it.
The vigor of
our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible
in our life and thoughts.
The true
Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God, all
churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all
sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices.
These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the
measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in
the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in
the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible,
reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to
the mast. May it never be lowered!
We must make
a great difference between God's Word and the word of man. A man's word is a
little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes; but the Word of God
is greater than heaven and earth, yea, greater that death and hell, for it
forms part of the power of God, and endures everlastingly.
Table Talk, p. 44.
Here it is,
plain and unvarnished. Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of
Scriptures or…by manifest reasoning I stand convicted by the Scriptures to
which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God's Word, I
cannot and will not recant anything… On this I take my stand. I can do no
other. God help me.
Martin Luther
Let us then
consider it certain and firmly established that the soul can do without
anything except the Word of God and that where the Word of God is missing there
is no help at all for the soul. If it has the Word of God it is rich and lacks
nothing since it is the Word of life, truth, light, peace, righteousness,
salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory, and of every incalculable
blessing.
The Freedom of the Christian.
The rule is:
listen and allow the Word to make the beginning, then the knowing [God] will
nicely follow. If, however, you do not listen, you will never know anything.
For it is decreed, God will not be seen, known, or comprehended except through
his Word alone. Whatever therefore one undertakes for salvation apart from the
Word is in vain. God will not respond to that. He will not have it. He will not
tolerate any other way. Therefore, let his Book in which He speaks to you be
commended to you. For he did not cause it to be written to no
purpose. He did not want us to let it lie there in neglect, as if he
were speaking with mice under the bench or with flies on the pulpit. We are to
read it, to think and speak about it, and to study it, certain that He Himself,
not an angel or a creature, is speaking with us in it.
Martin Luther
You should
not believe your conscience and your feelings more than the word which the Lord
who receives sinners preaches to you.
Martin Luther
Now, wherever
you hear or see this Word preached, believed, professed, and lived, do not
doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica (Christian
holy people) must be there… And even if there were no other sign than this alone,
it would still suffice to prove that a Christian, holy people must exist there,
for God’s Word cannot be without God’s people and, conversely, God’s people
cannot be without God’s Word.
On the Councils and the Church, Works,
Fortress Press, 1966, v. 41, p. 150.
First of all,
the evangelical is one who is entirely subservient to the Bible… This is true
of every evangelical. He is a man of one book; he starts with it; he submits
himself to it; this is his authority.
What is an Evangelical? The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992, p. 42.
No Spiritual
Discipline is more important than the intake of God’s Word. Nothing can
substitute for it. There simply is no healthy Christian life apart from a diet
of the milk and meat of Scripture… Therefore if we would know God and be Godly,
we must know the Word of God intimately.
Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life,
1991, p. 28. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved. For more
information please see the website www.BibicalSpirituality.org.
The Church
and the Scripture stand or fall together. Either the Church will be nourished
and strengthened by the bold proclamation of her Biblical texts or her health
will be severely impaired.
Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Prick him
anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline,
the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a
text, for his soul is full of the Word of God.
Said in reference to John Bunyan
It is blessed
to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in
Scriptural language, and your spirit is flavoured
with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is Bibline
and the very essence of the Bible flows from you.
Quoted in: The Preacher’s Portrait,
Eerdmans, 1961, p. 30-31.
If you find a
professing Christian indifferent to his Bible, you may be sure that the very
dust upon its cover will rise up in judgment against him.
C.H. Spurgeon
The output in
your life is in direct proportion to the intake of Scripture truth.
A Passion for Purity, Shepherd’s Conference,
2005, Session #33
I have
thought I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the
air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God, just hovering over the
great gulf, till a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an
unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing – the way to heaven, how to
land safely on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way;
for this very end He came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. O give me that Book at any price, give me the Book of God!
Sermons on Several Occasions, 1771, preface.
Interior
decorators tell us that the items on a coffee table reveal the personality of
the family. With this thought in mind, in our home my wife and I have open
Bibles on our coffee tables in the living and family rooms so that all visitors
will know that the Word of God shapes the personality of our home. Remembering
that children become readers by picking up books around the house and seeing
their parents reading, we also keep Christian books we are reading next to the
Bible on the coffee table.
How to Read a Christian Book, 2001, p. 31. Used by permission of Baker, a division of Baker Book House Company.
When there is
a famine of the word of God in the land the spiritual nutrients that enable the
eye to spot sin as sin is gone. And the spiritual protein that gives strength
the moral muscle of the soul to do what is right is missing. The spiritual eye
becomes diseased through malnutrition, and the clear lines between sin and
righteousness begin to blur. The moral muscle of the will atrophies, and
weakens, and the result is that the beckoning of the world wins because there
is no strength to stand against it. When the ministry of the word goes wrong,
many are caused to stumble.
Let None be
Faithless to the Wife of his Youth, Sermon, Nov. 22, 1987, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by
Permission.
Satan’s
number-one objective is to destroy our joy of faith. We have one offensive
weapon: the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God (Eph. 6:17). But what many
Christians fail to realize is that we can’t draw the sword from someone else’s
scabbard. If we don’t wear it, we can’t wield it if the Word of God does not
abide in us (Jn. 15:7), we will reach for it in vain when the enemy strikes.
But if we do wear it, if it lives within us, what mighty warriors we can be!
Desiring God, 1996,
p. 129, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
The Bible
will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.
The Christian
is bred by the Word, and he must be fed by it.
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 32.
The Scripture
is both the breeder and feeder of grace. How is the convert born, but by “the
word of truth”? (James 1:18). How doth he grow, but by “the sincere milk of the
Word.”? (I Peter 2:2).
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 33.
All grace
grows as Love to the Word of God grows.
Phillip Henry
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 131.
It
is impossible for a person to be His sheep without believing His Word. When it
is all said and done, true believers embrace God's words (the proximate
object of faith) as well as His person (the ultimate object of faith).
A person who disbelieves the Bible may never rightly be considered a
Christian.
Jim Elliff
Getting It, Christian
Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
Without the
message of the Scriptures we would have nothing with which to encourage one
another. We would have no purpose for meeting together. Our knowledge of God
would be so limited we would have no rational object for our faith, no doctrine
on which to build our hope, and no way of even knowing the meaning of genuine
love.
Encouraging One Another, Cook Communication Ministries, 1985, p. 17-18. Reprinted with permission. May not be further reproduced. All rights reserved.
The
Bible is an armory of heavenly weapons, a laboratory of infallible medicines, a mine of exhaustless wealth. It is a guidebook for every
road, a chart for every sea, a medicine for every malady, and a balm for every
wound. Rob us of our Bible and our sky has lost its sun.
Thomas Guthrie
God’s
Word becomes a millstone if we do not make it a milestone.
Kent Hughes
James, Crossway, 1991, p. 74.
We
ought never to regard unity so much that we would or should forsake God’s Word
for her sake.
Hugh
Latimer
When the
minister of the gospel faces the Lord God as judge, there will be many
questions addressed to him. There will be many standards of accountability.
There will be many criteria of judgment, but in the end the most essential
criterion of judgment for the minister of God is, “Did you preach the Word? Did
you fully carry out the ministry of the Word? In season and out of season, was
the priority of ministry the preaching of the Word?”… There is one central,
non-negotiable, immovable, essential priority, and that is the preaching of the
Word of God.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 16.
A casual
relationship with the Word of God reflects a casual relationship with the Son
of God.
Author
Unknown