Should You Re-read the Bible?

12 Sep Should You Re-read the Bible?

Most people don’t read books more than once.  Once you have read a book, say for example Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, you now know the story.  You know the ending, the suspense is no longer there, the plot is unveiled and the literary features that intrigued and dragged you through the story are less powerful.

This is also true with non-fiction books, like self-help books, or financial guides, or more.  Once we have digested the core concepts we don’t need to re-read the book, we have the sense of it already.  We may still consult books like this as a reference, but not often to learn new things.

But this is where the Bible stands in contrast to all other books.  It is when you read the Bible again, and again, that its value increases.

I personally read the Bible first time through by the time I was ten.  I enjoyed the Old Testament stories, but forced myself through the Psalms and the Prophets just so I could finish reading the Bible.  As a child I used sermon time in church for Bible reading time.  I was ‘killing two birds with one stone.’  After this, it wasn’t until many years later that I returned to the prophetic books, but by the time I did, they started to have meaning.

The Bible is an interconnected book, and while it is chronological in one way of seeing it, it is also ordered in many other ways as well.  So that what you learn reading it once, sets you up to understand new things the second time through.  Then what you learn the second time through sets you up as you continue to read.  It is a lifelong journey of probing the depths of what God has to say in teh Bible.  Ultimately it is a revelation of who God is.

I remember my declaration at one point that ‘Leviticus was the most boring book in the Bible.’  Later I became aware that it was one of only a few places in the entire Bible that was dictated directly by God.  If red letters were used in the Old Testament, virtually the whole book of Leviticus would be in red.  That suddenly made that book much more interesting.  Why then did God say what he said in Leviticus?  Asking questions like this helps more to be learned and understood.

Later I decided to actually pay attention to the numbers in Numbers.  That too was taught me things.  Why don’t you try it sometime?  Count the numbers of tribes before the Exodus to the numbers in the tribes after the Exodus.  What happened to them, and why might that be important?

Another time I realised that the name Jesus is also Joshua, and a variant of that is Hoshea/Hosea.  Two more books of the Bible are called by the name of Jesus….. Joshua in the Old Testament, and Hosea one of the minor prophets.  Fancy that.  Two books called ‘Jesus.’  Why?  Those two books are about Jesus.  And another book, Revelation is ‘a revelation of Jesus Christ.’ Rev 1:1  Jesus is to be found all through the Bible in surprising ways.

The Bible is not a book of diminishing returns like all other books.  The Bible is a book of augmenting value, the more you read it, the more value you will find.   So should you read it a second time?  Yes.  A third time?  Definitely.  How many times should you read the Bible?

The answer: Never stop plumbing the depths of what God has written down for us.  Like God himself, his word has an infinite quality to it.