Memorizing Scripture…

If I were asked what one area I felt I was weakest spiritually, I would probably say prayer. But if I were asked what two areas I was weakest, I would say prayer and Scripture memorization.  I think these two spiritual disciplines are extremely important, and extremely neglected by most people in the Church today.  Perhaps Scripture memorization is the most neglected by the greatest number of people.  I’m not sure if we think of memorizing Scripture as something that kids do in Sunday school, and we are, therefore, too old to do it. Or perhaps we’re just being lazy.  But I think memorizing Scripture is extremely important for our spiritual lives, and sadly, I’m not very disciplined about doing it myself.

Why Memorize Scripture?

The usefulness of Scripture is plainly told in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “¹⁶All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (emphasis added). Scripture is also likened to a sword, being called “…the sword of the Spirit…” in Ephesians 6:17. Therefore, memorizing Scripture is like a soldier who keeps his sword on him at all times. When he needs it, whether for defense or attack, he can pull it out and use it at will. When we memorize Scripture, we can pull it back out whenever we need it. It’s always at hand.

Some other things to remember about the power of Scripture, which make memorizing it all that more important:

• God’s Word is Supernatural. It’s not just mere words that we find in the Bible, or fancy stories that teach children how to behave. “…the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12). We can rely on the fact that what we gain from reading and memorizing Scripture is more than just understanding and wisdom, but also powerful movements from the Spirit of God in our own selves.
• Scripture makes us holy.  To be holy means to be set apart and consecrated as being sacred or special. Right before his death on the cross, Jesus prayed for his disciples by saying “¹⁷Sanctify them [make them holy] by the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17).  The way this happens is that we, as believers, take in His Word on a regular basis and apply it to our lives. “As we daily appropriate God’s Word we are sanctified by it. We are set apart to God and changed in the way we live so that we bring honor and glory to the Father” (see here).
• The Bible is reliable. “…the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times.” (Psalm 12:6). We can rely on what we read in the Bible to help us in every situation and circumstance, and we never need to worry that it might steer us wrong. God’s Word is perfect.

A Perfect Example

The best example of someone who memorized Scripture was Christ Himself. From the beginning of His public ministry to His death, He quoted Scripture right and left.

In Matthew 4:1-11, it tells of when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness:

¹Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. ²After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” ⁴Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶“If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ ” ⁷Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹“All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ ” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

When Satan tried tempting Jesus with food, Jesus responded with Scripture (Deuteronomy 8:3).  Satan caught on to what Jesus was doing, so he misused Scripture to counter him by saying “for it is written…” But Jesus wasn’t caught off guard – he replied with more Scripture (Deuteronomy 6:16). Then Satan, who I assume was feeling almost beaten, laid it all out there and just said what he had came to say – “worship me.” But once again, Jesus responded with Scripture (Deuteronomy 6:13).

And these aren’t the only examples – the gospels are littered with examples of Jesus quoting Scripture in His teaching, but also in His prayers.  On the cross, Jesus cried out ” ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ ” –  a direct quote of the first line of Psalm 22.  And his final prayer was “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46), which quoted Psalm 31:5.  Jesus’ mind was so infiltrated with memorized Scripture that, when He was at the darkest hour of His life and in more misery than you or I have ever known, He quoted it. It came to mind easily when he needed it.

My focus right now is to gain a stronger prayer life, but I’m starting to see that I also need to start memorizing Scripture. Maybe I should do them both, together. I think I’ll find that they are as complementary as two things can be.  I believe I will start adding a Scripture-To-Memorize post on my blog every Monday (we’ll call it STM, for short – I love acronyms), and if you’d like, you can memorize them with me.  And if you have a particular Scripture you want to add, just comment with it at any time and let me know, and we’ll do what we can to get through them all.

Truth: How Do We Know That the Bible Is True?

When it comes to talking to people about our faith in Jesus, it’s almost impossible to do without referring to the Bible. I mean, technically, none of us were there. None of us were eyewitnesses to any of the events written about in the gospels or in Acts. When we tell people about Jesus, we are forced to fall back on others’ testimonies about Jesus, and these are found in the Bible. The problem with this is that if the person we are talking to doesn’t believe that the Bible is authentic, then our only line of evidence is worthless to them. So, it’s important that we provide a strong argument for the authenticity of the Bible when we talk to people about Jesus.

In today’s lesson from The Ever Loving Truth, author Voddie Baucham lists 3 major objections that people often give when discussing the authenticity of the Bible:

1. The Bible has been changed many times, so we can’t know for sure what it originally said.
2. The Bible is just a collection of myths that may or may not be true.
3. The church has hidden documents over the years because they refute the Bible.

Baucham then points out that there is no evidence for any of these objections. In order to show that the Bible was changed, you’d have to show what the original was like. In order to show that documents exist that refute the Bible, you’d have to produce those documents, or have some kind of proof that they were being concealed. These arguments just don’t stand up.

The truth is that the Bible is “a reliable collection of historical documents.” There is plenty of evidence for this:

1. Thousands of early manuscripts exist. There are more than 5000 ancient New Testament manuscripts available, some written as early as within 50 years of the original documents. Other historical documents (like Julius Ceasar’s Gallic Wars, or Aristotle’s Poetics) have only 5-10 manuscripts available, and were written 900-1300 years after the originals. Scholars never question the authenticity of these other historical documents, yet they easily question the authenticity of the Bible.
2. Early translations exist. Translations of the New Testament exist that were translated into Latin, Syriac, or Coptic, as early as the 2nd or 3rd centuries. Scholars often argue that the New Testament was written much later than that, but how, then, could it have been translated earlier? If this blog post were translated into Spanish tomorrow, you couldn’t come back a few weeks from now and say that it was really written two weeks after it was actually written. A translation exists that was written earlier than that, so the original must have existed earlier than that.
3. Early church fathers quoted the New Testament. The men who read the early texts written by Peter, John, Paul, and others, quoted and cited from that text so much, that we could almost reproduce the entire New Testament completely from their quotations. In other words, even if we didn’t have the 5000 manuscripts of the New Testament, we could probably still piece together what was written in them by simply taking what others had quoted from them.

This evidence makes it clear that the Bible is more reliable than any other historical document around. Once that is established, we can go one step further and take Peter’s words in 2 Peter 1:16

¹⁶We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” ¹⁸We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

Peter is saying that he and others were eyewitnesses to the events of the gospels. Not just storytellers who relay what others have told them. Actual eyewitnesses. They were on the mountain with Jesus when God spoke (see Matthew 17:1-11, Mark 9:2-13, or Luke 9:28-36). And the apostle John made this same truth clear when he said “¹That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1, emphasis added). The stories they told of Jesus were first-hand accounts.

If the Bible is authentic, as it evidently is by any standard we might use to show its authenticity, and if those who wrote it claim first-hand knowledge of the events and person of Jesus, we now have a solid base from which we can then explain to people their need for a savior, and God’s provision of just that through Jesus Christ.