Al Mohler on Personal Bible Reading
Jun. 5 2008At the New Attitude 2008 conference we sat down with speaker Al Mohler for a few minutes and asked him how he reads the Bible and what principles he’d encourage others to follow as they read. Dr. Mohler talked to us about why the Bible is like coffee, why getting the big picture matters, and how to have a good devotional time reading about the size of the laver.
The Bible can't be boring, not if you understand it.
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What is your personal practice of reading God’s Word?
I never let the day go by without reading God’s Word and I generally try to get there early and end there late. I’m a night person rather than a morning person so my best reading comes at night.
I would just encourage opening it up, reading it and studying it seriously. See the big picture of the unfolding God’s story. See the individual passages and texts as they begin to open all new windows into understanding who God is and what God does and he expects of us and has done for us. The Bible can’t be boring, not if you understand it. I was reading something the other day--it was an inventory list of things for the temple--and thinking this is the most minute stuff. The laver has to be this size and all the rest. Then you realize that this is a God of such specificity that he’s going to give us everything we need not to get this wrong. I found it fascinating and don’t even know how many times I’ve read it over before. There’s a theology in a inventory list right here. This is a part of the story. And it’s also a part of the story that we don’t have to worry about that anymore--that now that Christ has perfectly fulfilled all that we don’t have to make sure in church we perfectly fulfill all that we just have to take a BIble and a pulpit and teach.
How would counsel either a new Christian or a Christian newly committed to reading the Bible? How would you counsel them to build a practice of reading God’s Word?
I would say that the Word of God is a pedative--which means you grow in appetite for it. When I first took a sip of coffee I didn’t like coffee. I didn’t know much about coffee and it didn’t taste the way it smelled. It smelled great and it tasted kinda bitter. But I thought I’d keep drinking it and see if I liked it. Well, I drank more of it and now I’m a connoisseur I could tell you different blends of coffee and different brands of coffee. I’m willing to expend considerable time and resources to have the kind of coffee I want and enjoy. It’s the same with the Word of God. You start out and it feels strange. It’s a very strange world. It’s like going into a world that is connected to ours but isn’t. It doesn’t tell us what we already know, otherwise we wouldn’t need it. It’s rearranging our categories, changing the fundamentals, and bringing us into a story.
So I would say, start out by always keeping some reading in the gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And do a bit of that so that you’re always connected with the story by which you came to know Christ. And then read in the Old Testament, read the prophets, but I would say don’t start out trying to read the entire Bible in terms of a study. Read the Bible in terms of a story first. Just start with Genesis, start reading through, and if you get to parts that bog you down and you’re not sure exactly who’s what tribe, then just read on faster and keep going because by God’s grace you’ll have an opportunity to go back later. What you need first is the big story. When you read the Old Testament every time you stop reading the Old Testament you should go, “I want something more, there’s not enough here.” Well that’s why we needed Christ, and just exult in that. You’re supposed to read an Old Testament text and say, “There’s got to be more than this.” And there is. That’s Christ.
Then when you read the latter parts of the New Testament that’s the apostles coming back and saying, “Here’s what the gospel really is. Here’s what the church is supposed to be.” And some of that stuff is really deep because it was meant for a maturing church. If you’re not there yet the Bible uses this metaphor; it says that there are those who start out with a diet of milk and then they get to a diet of meat. That’s alright. There’s no embarrassment there. Start out with milk and you’ll discover an appetite growing for meat. And then next thing you know you’ll say, “Hey this verse connects with something I read over here. This is where this fits in the story. Now I understand this doctrine.” I discover find themselves into the appetite rather than trying to will themselves into the appetite.
What’s one thing you’ve learned after reading the Bible for many years that you wish you’d known when you began?
I think it would be the important of understanding the big overarching story. For those of us that grew up in the church we got taught Bible stories, or we had christian parents and we sat on their lap and heard Bible stories. And you can begin to think that this is a collection of stories. Well, it is, but the bigger issues is that it’s one big story of creation and fall and redemption and consumation, of what God was doing and is doing in Christ for us. You’ve got to put the little stories in the big story. That’s the way I’d say I would’ve wanted to read the Bible differently as a 13 year old, as a 23 year old, as a 33 year old had I seen how this individual story fits into the big story.
Any particular books or resources that would help people do that?
I would recommend the author Graeme Goldsworthy I think he helps to do that. I think you get a taste of that in John Piper’s work. Mark Dever’s volumes on the Old and New Testament where he takes each book of the Bible because he keeps putting it into the context of the big story.
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