The book is about the size of a hand and the cover has been mended with tape twice.
It is one Gospel, on its own, printed cheaply in the language his father actually spoke, and Rafa's father read it for something over forty years and Rafa never saw him read anything else.
Not one other book. Not a commentary, not a study Bible, not a devotional, nothing.
He read it at the table in the morning before work, for about ten minutes, and again on Sunday afternoons for longer, and Rafa can hear the sound of the pages if he thinks about it, because the paper is thin and his father turned them with a wet thumb.
Rafa has eleven books about the Bible on a shelf in his own house.
He is fifty-two, he did a course at the church that ran two years, and he has read considerably more about that Gospel than his father ever did.
And in April he was clearing the flat and he found the book in a drawer with the tape and the wet-thumb pages, and he sat down on the floor with it, and he opened it, and there is nothing written in it anywhere.
Forty years and not one note.
And what Rafa felt, sitting on that floor, was something he has not been able to say to his wife, because it comes out sounding like a criticism of a man he loved.
What he felt was: I have always thought I needed more than he had.
And underneath it, worse: and I do not think I have got anywhere he did not get.
His father sat with the family of a man who had done something unforgivable, for a whole evening, when nobody else in that street would. Rafa was fourteen and he remembers the quiet in the car going home.
There is nothing in Rafa's eleven books that produced an evening like that.
And you may have inherited a reader like that. And you may have quietly assumed that what they did was the simple version of what you are doing.
Luke calls a group of ordinary examiners noble
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it since April and it was never yours.
You did not need more than he had. You never did. Scripture praises a group of people by name for one specific practice, and the practice is going to the text themselves, daily, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a shelf, who confirms a thing to a person. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and it came out of a drawer.
Now hear it, and notice what earns them the compliment.
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.Acts 17:11
Examined the Scriptures every day.
They are being complimented for checking a preacher against the text. Not for having studied under him longer, not for reading around the subject: for going to the book, themselves, every day, and seeing whether it said what they had been told it said.
And the man they were checking was Paul. If anybody could have been taken on trust it was him, and Luke writes down that going to the text anyway made them the nobler of the two towns.
That is what your father was doing at a table for ten minutes before work. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who confirms a thing in a man, and He has never once made a shelf the requirement.
Now let me be careful here, because there is a ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.
Nothing here says your eleven books were vanity. They were not. You have learned real things and some of them have kept you steady. Scripture names teachers as gifts and His Spirit is the one who hands them out.
And nothing here says one Gospel is enough for everybody. It is not, and your father would be the first to say so, and there are sixty-five other books and God did not include any of them by accident.
The point is narrower and it is about the comparison you made on that floor, and Scripture calls daily examining of the text noble, and His Spirit is the one who did forty years of work in a man with one book and no notes.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. There is nothing written in it because he was not studying it.
He was being read by it, every morning, for forty years, and that is a different transaction and it leaves no marks on the page. His Spirit was at that table before work and He has never once needed a margin.
So here is the turn, and it takes one passage and nothing on the shelf.
Read one passage with no commentary open beside it. Then stop at the end of the passage.
That is the whole of it. Not a purge of the eleven books, which are good and which you paid for. Not an attempt to read the way he read, which took forty years and which you cannot start in the middle of.
One passage, and let it read you.
Going to the text yourself is what Scripture calls noble. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who confirms it, and neither of them ever asked for a note in a margin.
I am not going to tell you what forty years of that would do or promise you your father's evening in that car. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is a compliment paid to people whose whole method was the book, daily.
Read your one passage. Turn the page with your thumb.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own, out loud, in ordinary words. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was in that drawer before it was here. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Small mended book with nothing written in it, you were forty years of a man being read by you and you are not the simple version of anything. In the name of Jesus I set you down at this table, because I can read this as it reads, and it was written to be understood and I am allowed to take it plainly.
- Assumption that I needed more than he had, you were built on a shelf and never once out of Scripture. It calls a whole town noble for examining the Scriptures daily to see whether what they were told was true, and the man they checked was Paul.
- Lord, You were at that table before work for forty years and Your Spirit is the one who did it. You never needed a margin or a note, and I am reading ten minutes with nothing to write with tomorrow.
Acts 17:11
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.