How Valuable to Me Is My Bible Today?
What would it feel like today not to own a Bible? What if I knew hardly anyone who did? What would I be willing to do to have one for myself?
Six Years and Fifty Miles?
One of the most heartwarming true stories I’ve ever read along this line is the experience of a determined Welsh girl named Mary Jones. Born just after our Revolutionary War (1784) into the home of a poor Christian weaver, Mary exhibited a tender heart toward the Lord even as a child. At six, she insisted on walking the rough trails with her mother to the humble Lord’s Day services two miles distant in the home of a farmer named Evans. For her, the highlight of every service was the Bible reading. Bibles translated into Welsh were few, and, if available at all, impossibly costly. Jacob and Molly Jones had never owned one, and Mary could not have read it if they had. By the time she was eight, she still could not read a syllable.
But the child’s hunger for Scripture was intense. When a grammar school opened in a neighboring village, she begged to enroll and learn to read. Though Mary’s help in their little cottage industry was desperately needed, Jacob and Molly sacrificially encouraged her attending. Shortly she could read, and soon thereafter she began to walk the four-mile round trip to the Evans farm on Saturday afternoons to read the Bible for herself. One can only imagine her feelings that first day when Mrs. Evans led her into the room where she and her husband’s prized copy was kept on a center table, covered reverently with a clean, white cloth. After kindly admonishing the child to be careful not to tear its pages, Mrs. Evans left the room, and for the first time in her life, Mary Jones was alone with a Bible. The portions she read that day included the fifth chapter of John where her eyes fell upon the words, Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. It was then that a fervent passion took possession of her heart. Upon leaving the Evans home she exclaimed to herself right out loud, I must have a Bible of my own! I must have one, if I have to save up for it for ten years! By the time she arrived home, she’d formed a simple, child’s plan.
She began to look for ways to salvage rare free moments for taking on little jobs for neighbors. She eagerly accepted babysitting, laundering, gathering sticks for fuel, mending and patching clothing, and anything else she could do for even a pittance. Jacob made a rough little money box with a hole in the lid into which she joyfully dropped her tiny earnings—a farthing and halfpenny at a time, even occasionally a copper coin.
Meantime, she was trekking the miles back and forth to school and back and forth to the Evans farm; learning to read and then reading the Bible. Soon she was memorizing entire chapters to share with her parents. And all the while she was saving coins, denying herself every indulgence, and often praying, The time shall come when I shall have my Bible. Dear Lord, let the time come quickly.
In the spring of 1800, after six long years of saving, the day at last arrived when enough small coins lay in the rude box to afford a Bible. But now the challenge was to locate one. Her father had no idea where to look. Even the local pastor did not know where a Welsh Bible might be obtained, except perhaps from a minister named Thomas Charles. But Rev. Charles lived in Bala, twenty-five miles down the valley from Mary’s village. And the pastor added that he feared that whatever Bibles Mr. Charles might once have owned were probably long since sold.
Undeterred, Mary rose one morning, washed and dressed with care, stowed her only shoes (too precious to be worn until she reached town) in a bag around her neck, and after family prayer set out on the journey that it was essential to complete by nightfall. (Today her twenty-five-mile route is mapped for Christian tourists who wish to walk at least part of it for the sake of experiencing a little of the daunting trek she undertook.) Accustomed though she was to going about barefoot, the eighteenth-century rocky paths and the length of the trip blistered and cut her feet. But by evening she managed to arrive at the home of a respected Methodist pastor, David Edwards, where she was given a meal, a night’s lodging, and the promise of an introduction to Rev. Charles the next day.
Early the next morning Edwards knocked on Charles’s study door. He and Mary were invited in, and Mary told her story to the minister. At first Charles was elated at hearing of her schooling, her trudging back and forth to the Evans farm to read the Bible, and her recitation of the Bible passages she’d memorized. But his delight turned to deep sadness when he was compelled to reveal that the consignment of Welsh Bibles that he’d received from London the previous year was completely sold out, except for a few copies already promised. Even more disappointing, the society that had been supplying the Bibles had decided not to resume their printing. Mary was overcome and could only sob with her face buried in her hands.
Moments passed, the silence broken only by her crying. Finally, Mr. Charles stood up, walked over, and laying a tender hand upon her bowed head, said in a trembling voice, My child, I see you must have a Bible, difficult as it is for me to spare you one. It is impossible, yes, simply impossible to refuse you. Mary couldn’t speak, but her joyous upturned face of inexpressible joy brought tears to the eyes of both men. Rev. Charles turned to a book-cupboard, opened a door, drew out a precious Welsh Bible, and with great emotion placed it in her hands. Since she had been eight years old she had been longing to be able to read a Bible. For six years she had worked, scrimped, saved, and prayed. She had walked twenty-five miles barefoot in a single day. She now needed to walk the same twenty-five miles back home, again in a single day. But finally, at the age of sixteen, she at last owned a Bible!
Mary died in 1866 at the age of eighty-two. Today her Bible rests in the archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society. In her own handwriting are the words, I bought this in the 16th year of my age. … The Lord may give me grace, Amen.
Now, My Turn
You and I already own Bibles—perhaps quite a few of them. We don’t have to walk two miles today to be able to read one (and then two miles back!). Nevertheless, we’re confronted every day with the identical question that Mary Jones was. It’s our turn to answer it. How valuable to me is my Bible today? Would you take just a second or two and ask yourself that question again, but very pointedly this time? How valuable to me is my Bible today? Maybe it would be good to ask it one more time. How valuable to me is my Bible today?
I’ve had to ask myself something like that many times, though not always in the same words. Generally the ones I use are suggested to me by certain statements I come across in my daily Scripture reading. Here are the ones that tend to punch my pause buttons and to make me question myself.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb (Ps. 19:10).
The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver (Ps. 119:72).
Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold (Ps. 119:127).
I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food (Job 23:12).
What I notice immediately in these statements is that the Bible is compared to things of great value.
(1) things of intrinsic value, such as gold and silver,
(2) things that give exquisite delight, such as honey and the honeycomb,
(3) things that are vital necessities, such as food.
If my values are the same as God’s, when it comes to things of intrinsic value, pleasure value, and even necessity value, His words are more to be desired … sweeter than … better than … loved above … and more than any of these. Or are they? I mean, are they to me?
Let’s test our Bible’s value intrinsically. Even as I write this morning, gold is trading on the commodities market at right about $1600 an ounce. That’s right, not a pound, but an ounce, the weight of only about eleven US pennies or of five quarters. What might I be willing to do to make an extra $1600 in the next two months? To get an ounce of gold? Take on a part time job? Get up an hour earlier five days a week? Skip my church’s Wednesday night prayer meetings? Work on Sundays?
Many professing Christians make an easy, thoughtless trade of their early mornings, their Wednesday evenings, or their Sundays for just a little bit more money. They may not give sixty seconds to calculating what that will cost in terms of time forever lost for reading and studying their Bibles or for hearing God’s Word preached. God’s Word is not more valuable to them than gold and silver, let alone thousands of gold and silver. They cannot say, they wouldn’t dare to say, more to be desired . . . sweeter than . . . better than . . . loved above money—or running, or biking, or playing soccer, or Facebook, or a thousand other personally chosen priorities that push their Bibles to the bottom of their want-to-do lists day after day after day after day. There’s just no other way to explain their nearly Bibleless lives. They simply don’t value the Scripture the way the Scripture values itself. It’s light and weightless to them. It isn’t worth even an ounce of whatever else they’re after. Now why not?
Experiencing the Pleasure
There’s an answer to that, at least in my own experience. I think that one of the main reasons that the Bible doesn’t easily tip people’s scales with way more intrinsic value than lots of other things is that it hasn’t yet given them more delight than those pleasure-giving alternatives. In other words, people’s estimate of its intrinsic value is directly proportional to their experience of its delight value. If lifting weights or running marathons or surfing the Internet or Facebooking my friends gives me more pleasure value than the Bible does, its intrinsic value—to me at least—goes way down. It may be worth more than money to somebody else, but not yet to me. My head may even concede that it ought to be the most valuable thing I possess, but my pleasureseeking heart won’t agree. And when it comes to what part of me makes the final call on what I’m going to do with my time, my head or my heart, my pleasure-loving heart wins almost every time.
So I think that most people have to experience the Bible as honey before they’ll value it more than money. But how?
A child doesn’t know the value of money. He’ll hand over a dollar as soon as a dime for whatever it is he wants to buy. So we inform him of the difference. But he’ll have to experience it for himself—and he will the first time he discovers that one dollar will buy him more than even nine dimes will. It’s then that he starts to experience that a dollar is way better than a dime.
This is the kind of thing that the Scripture is talking about when it says that it is sweeter than honey. In other words, to be persuaded that it is of more intrinsic value than gold and silver, one needs to experience that it is has more delightful value than honey. Intrinsic values mean nothing in the abstract. But they can get concrete real fast.
For instance, Jonathan Edwards, America’s foremost eighteenth-century New England pastor, preached a message on “Spiritual Understanding” in which he attempted to help his people understand the difference between merely notional knowledge of God’s Word and delightful spiritual knowledge of it.
It is not he that has heard the long description of the sweetness of honey that can be said to have the greatest understanding of it, but he that has tasted it. If a man should read whole volumes upon this one subject, the taste of honey, he would never get so lively an apprehension of it as he had that had tasted, though it were but from the tip of his rod.1
This explains why an adult man or a woman who grew up in a Christian home and attended a good church may know a great deal about the Bible but value it very little by comparison with a newly saved teenager growing up in the home of lost parents. We might tend to think that the difference is simply that the newly saved teenager is excited about the Bible because to him it’s new. He’s not been around it all of his life, so he’s curious about it. It’s novel to him.
There’s no doubt some truth to that. But when that teenager’s intense interest persists month after month and year by year, there’s more to it than that. He (or she) is undoubtedly experiencing the Bible to be like honey. Or, to change the illustration, like colors or sounds. Edwards suggested that the knowledge that most people have about spiritual things is very much like the knowledge of those that are born blind have of colors from the descriptions of them, or one born deaf has of sounds. But the knowledge that those indwelt and enlightened by the Spirit of God have is like ecstasy over the colors of a sunset that only those who have eyes can know, or like exhilaration in musical sounds that only those who have ears can know. There is a mental knowing which many have of the Bible. It often estimates the Bible to be of very little worth. But there is an inexpressibly intense emotional knowing of the Bible that compounds its intrinsic worth immeasurably. What is it that evokes that emotion?
Feeling the Necessity
Emotion isn’t something one can turn on and off like a faucet. Something must spark and then keep on fueling it. It seems to me that recognizing this is the solution that many Christians need to their frustration over not feeling more in love with their Bibles. They read that Scripture is like honey and then feel convicted that, truth be known, they don’t actually feel that way about it. They hear preaching that they should delight in it. Once again they’re convicted. But for the life of them they can’t seem to feel the pleasure. Other Christians apparently have it. But they don’t, and don’t know how to turn it on. Well, actually, it can’t just be turned on. I hope that simple fact will help someone.
The thing that breaks this impasse is when the Word of God meets deep needs; when it satisfies like cool water on a blazing afternoon. Then we feel the delight. For instance, there’s a vexing question in my mind, but one morning I open the Bible and read a particular chapter and it’s as if all the lights go on in my head. A mental need is met, and when it is, my soul rejoices.
Or there’s an ache in my heart. Nothing comforts. Nothing relieves it. And then I read a certain psalm, or one of Christ’s reassuring discourses, or one of God’s unconditional promises. In an instant there’s some kind of invisible, inexplicable healing applied to my spirit. I don’t know how it happened. But it did! And my pain is not only gone, but my pleasure in the Word of God is profound.
This is supposed to work universally and inevitably for God’s true children. They are new creations in Christ and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). That nature instinctively hungers for things of its own kind, things that are divine. It especially hungers to hear divine words. There’s no explanation for this except that it is a miraculous work of God in a human being when He regenerates him and imparts to him supernatural life. By God’s design and determination, this supernatural life feeds on supernatural words; supernatural doctrines, supernatural explanations, supernatural promises. When it reads or hears them, it is satisfied. And when it is satisfied, it feels indescribable pleasure.
I say this is supposed to work like this for God’s true children. But what about when it doesn’t? Well, if you’ve never known this experience, you would need to ask yourself straight out whether or not you truly possess new life in Christ. The longer I’m in the ministry, the more I am persuaded that the explanation to the spiritual apathy or dissatisfaction of many people in our churches is that they are simply not regenerated. Their appetite for the things of the flesh is high. Their appetite for the things of the Spirit is low or nearly nonexistent. Perhaps many of these folks don’t possess the nature necessary to experience the value of God’s Word.
But if a person is truly God’s child yet isn’t finding the Bible to meet his needs and stoke his desires for more and more of God’s words, he probably has drifted away from living Christianly. There can be other causes, some of them physical or even circumstantial, but most of the time the problem is as I’m describing it.
The Bible is designed to profit those who possess a new nature and who are attempting to live a new kind of life. It’s of only limited value to those who are pursuing a life different in kind than the one it calls for. It isn’t at all designed to help folks with any other kind of life, other than reproving and correcting them for their folly in attempting to live a subnormal Christian existence. But once a true child of God commits himself to walking the way of the Word (the experience described in Psalm 119), the Scriptures open up, feed his soul, satisfy his mind, and bring him pleasure that is joy unspeakable and full of glory. Deep calls unto deep, and God’s new life in His new creature is nourished up and gloriously happy with its Bible. So . . . how valuable to me is my Bible today?
Dr. Mark Minnick pastors Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina, where he has served since 1980.
(Originally published in FrontLine • July/August 2013. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
- The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Sermons and Discourses 1723–1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (Yale University, 1997), 14:76. [↩]