Go to church to understand the Bible better

Attending church on Sundays is not always the easiest thing to do. Our lives are busy and complicated.  Making one hour a week available to hear from the Bible often seems too hard – particularly when you can pick up the Bible and read it at home by yourself. So today I’m beginning a series of articles on why you should attend your church to be taught the Bible. This week I want to begin by looking at how being taught at church helps you understand the Bible better.

The problem with humans is sin and this problem affects even our minds so that you are unable to think clearly. Although you can read the Bible by yourself (and you should!) it doesn’t always make much sense to you. Sin gets in the way. What you need is someone to help explain it to you so that your mind is enlightened.

Thankfully God has been providing teachers to explain his word for years. An Old Testament example would include the a passage in Nehemiah: ‘The Levites…instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read’ (Nehemiah 8:7-8).

A New Testament example would include Philip helping the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8. The eunuch is reading Isaiah and Philip goes and asks him "Do you understand what you are reading?"  Then the eunuch answers "How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" (Acts 8:30-31).

This eunuch’s experience is often our experience when we read the Bible. You realise that you need someone to explain it to you. And God graciously still provides teachers of the Bible for his people today so that they can understand what is written. Where do you find these teachers? Usually they’re at your local church. So when you go to church you are recognising your inability to be a constant self-feeder. You need help and you recognise that the help you need can be found at your church. So you get up Sunday mornings and go despite the difficulties you may experience in getting there.

Do you attend church so that you can understand the Bible?

Joel Radford