This is the second podcast in a special series on reading the Bible. These podcasts include helpful excerpts from books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that provide insight about reading the Bible.
In our previous podcast we highlighted some of the benefits of reading the Bible and covered five points concerning what the Bible is. First, the Word is God Himself. Second, all Scripture is God-breathed. Next, the Bible is the complete revelation of God to man. Fourth, the content of the Bible is truth and life. And fifth, the Word of God is life.
Now we’ll go on to consider some of the functions of the Bible in our experience.
Having seen more of what the Bible is, we can realize that it is unique among all books in that we can experience it. The Bible is a book of divine revelation, truth, and life. What other book is filled with divine life—life that we can obtain and enjoy? By God’s mercy, we have a tangible book that opens the way to all spiritual experience. By reading the Bible in a habitual and proper way, we can enter into the depths of its reality. Let’s take a look at some of the functions of the Bible in our experience.
First, the Bible is part of our initial experience of God. The Bible testifies concerning the Lord Jesus, makes us wise unto salvation, and causes us to be regenerated:
John 5:39 says, “It is these [the Scriptures] that testify concerning Me [Christ].”
Second Timothy 3:15 says, “The sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
And in his first epistle, chapter 1 verse 23, Peter writes: “Having been regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.”
Some people have come to believe in the Lord Jesus simply by reading John 14:6, which says, “I am the way and the reality and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” This kind of salvation experience attests to the power of the Bible as the embodiment of God to make a person “wise unto salvation” and to regenerate a person with the divine life it contains.
Second, the Bible is our food.
First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.”
And in Matthew 4:4 the Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.”
We must read the Bible because our spiritual life depends upon it. As with all life, if our spiritual life does not receive nourishment, it will weaken and wither. The Bible is our spiritual food. It is both our spiritual milk and bread of life. We must daily nourish our spiritual life by reading the Word.
In Truth Lessons, Witness Lee writes, “Just as our physical life needs nourishment, so also our spiritual life needs nourishment. The nourishment of our spiritual life can only be supplied by the word of the Bible. In order to be living and strong before God, we cannot depend on bread alone, but on every word, that is, the word of the Bible, that proceeds out through the mouth of God. We must take the word of God as food and eat it (Jer. 15:16), even regarding the word of the Bible as more important than our food. (Job 23:12b).”
Many verses speak of God’s Word being our food and the experience of those who have taken in the Word as their sustenance:
Verses such as Jeremiah 15:16: “Your words were found and I ate them, / And Your word became to me / The gladness and joy of my heart.” And Job 23:12: “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my apportioned food.”
When we eat physical food, it becomes a part of us metabolically, through our metabolism. Similarly, our taking in the Bible as food produces a change in our inward constitution. The more we eat God’s Word, the more we are filled and constituted with Him.
In the Life-study of Second Timothy, Witness Lee says, “Just as the food we eat and digest nourishes us from within, metabolically changing and transforming us, so the Word of God transforms us by inwardly teaching, reproving, correcting, and instructing us.”
Note 1 on Jeremiah 15:16 in the Holy Bible Recovery Version says, “According to the entire revelation in the Holy Bible, God’s words are good for us to eat, and we need to eat them (Psa. 119:103; Matt. 4:4; Heb. 5:12-14; 1 Pet. 2:2-3). God’s word is the divine supply as food to nourish us. Through the word as our food, God dispenses His riches into our inner being to nourish us that we may be constituted with His element. This is a crucial aspect of God’s economy. When we eat God’s words, His word becomes our heart’s gladness and joy.”
If we don’t eat physical food, we will grow weaker and eventually die. Similarly, when we neglect the Word, we feel spiritually weak, dry, and dead. But this unhealthy situation can be reversed when we return to His Word and take in the proper nourishment. When we eat the Word, we are revived, supplied, and strengthened spiritually.
The third item of the functions of the Bible in our experience is that the Bible gives us light. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Verse 130 goes on to say, “The opening of Your words gives light.” Thus, as footnote 1 on verse 130 in the Recovery Version explains, our reading of the Word produces a result:
“When God’s word is opened, or unfolded, to us, it gives us light, shining inwardly over our heart and our spirit to impart wisdom and revelation to us.”
Note 3 on John 17:17 adds, “When God’s word says, ‘God is light,’ it carries God as light in it.”
Many times we have the experience that when we spend time in the Word, we receive the shining of God as light in our being, making us clear and full of light and revelation.
Fourth, the Bible waters and refreshes us. Deuteronomy 32:2 says, “Let my teaching drop like the rain; / Let my speech distill like the dew, / Like raindrops upon tender grass, / And like abundant showers upon herbage.”
When we live apart from the Lord and His Word, or when the dust of the old and common things settles on us as we go about our daily activities at work or in school, we feel dry and stale. But because the Word is living and new, when we read it we are watered, refreshed, and invigorated.
Note 2 on Isaiah 55:11 in the Holy Bible Recovery Version says, “God has sent forth His word to water His people.”
Fifth, the Bible enables us to have God’s instant speaking. Without God’s written word, it would be difficult for us to have His instant word, His instant speaking to us. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word.” Here the Greek word for “Word” is logos, which denotes the constant word, the eternal and unchanging word of God. In John 6:63 the Lord Jesus said, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Here, the Greek word for “words” is rhema, which denotes the instant and present spoken word. The constant word, logos, is necessary in order for us to have the instant word, rhema. The logos is outside of us, and when we receive it into our being it becomes rhema within us, which is spirit and life.
Often we experience the word that we previously read moving within us as the Spirit, speaking to us, teaching us, reproving us, and correcting us. This speaking is the instant word of the indwelling Christ, the rhema word, which issues from our receiving the logos word. Colossians 3:16 tells us that we need to let the logos word of God dwell in us richly. If we do, we’ll have the Lord’s instant speaking to us, and we’ll have the promise from the Lord Jesus in John 15:7: “My words”—rhema words—“abide in you.” The more we have God’s instant speaking, the more we enjoy His presence, see His revelation, and have His leading.
In a message titled, “Reading the Bible,” Watchman Nee writes, “God’s speaking to man today is based upon what He has already spoken in the past. God rarely speaks things which He has not already spoken in the Bible…If a person does not know what God has spoken in the past, it is difficult for him to receive His revelation in the present because he lacks the basis for God’s speaking. Moreover, if God wants to speak something to others through us, He will also do it on the basis of what He has spoken in the past. If we do not know what God has said in the past, He cannot speak through us to others, and we are useless in the eyes of God. This is why we need to let the word of God dwell in us richly. By letting His word dwell in us richly, we know His past ways and hear His present speaking.”
Be sure to listen to the next podcast in this special series on reading the Bible, when we’ll be talking about some of the results that come from reading the Bible.
