How Valuable?

Do we treat our Bibles as valuable objects? Do we spend as much time with it as we do anything else? Pick your favorite thing to be doing – do we spend more time on that than we do with the Bible?

The questions resulted from a comment written by a Baptist missionary: “How different we would view the worth of our Bible if we knew that we could never obtain another.”

How did you get your Bible? Our church gives one, engraved with their name, when someone is baptized in our church. I know of Sunday School teachers who give one to students in their class who do not have the means to get their own. One teen student brought the Bible given to her father when he was in prison. I’ve given one to each of my children and my husband.

There are several Bibles in our home. Some we inherited from our parents when they went home to be with our Lord. Some we’ve purchased as study Bibles. One has four translations on each page for side-by-side comparison. Most of those don’t get opened often.

My King James version of the Ryrie Study Bible does get a lot of use. It has notes written in it, highlighted verses scattered through out. I like it even though the concordance is limited and I wish it had a search feature as well as the electronic e-Sword that I use for cut/paste here. I have it in my hands each Sunday, teaching from it in Sunday School and reading along with Pastor Pugh during services.

I am reminded of its worth almost every Sunday morning when we hand out Bibles for use in class for those who have forgotten theirs, or don’t have one. You see, we are taking up offerings for a missionary to countries whose leaders have outlawed the Bible. Bibles must be smuggled in. If found while being shipped in, they are burned. If found in the possession of citizens, they are seized, burned and their citizens punished. In some instances, the punishment is death.

Is your Bible worth your life? Is it even worth opening? Does it warm your heart? Do you believe any portion of it, or is it a part of your every breath, as it is for me.

And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? (Mark 12:24 KJV)

That’s the Old Testament, the scriptures Christ referred to. Before the New was completed, epistles were being read as scripture, too.

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16 KJV)

The epistles referred to were Paul’s, giving the account of our Lord and Savior.

And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; (2 Peter 3:15 KJV)

How valuable is that information? Valuable enough to study? To respect? Or, ignore?