While considering our acceptance of the Bible as the word of God, we should also exhort one another not to neglect it. If it really does come from God, we should spare no effort to know it, understand it, and live by it. This imperative is powerfully illustrated by an incident from the ministry of John Rogers, a preacher in England during the 1600s. Thomas Goodwin, then a young man and later to become a great theologian, recalls a sermon of Rogers as follows:
Mr Rogers was preaching on the subject of the Scriptures. And in his sermon he begins to rebuke the people for their neglect of the Bible. He speaks as God to the people telling them,
Well, I have trusted you so long with my Bible: you have slighted it; it lies in one house all covered with dust and cobwebs. You don't care enough to look at it. Do you use my Bible like this? Well, you shall have my Bible no longer.And he takes up the Bible from the pulpit and acts as if he were going away with it and taking it away from them.But immediately he turns again and speaks as the people to God, falling down on his knees, crying and pleading most earnestly,
Lord, whatever you do to us don't take the Bible from us; kill our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods; only spare us your Bible, don't take your Bible away.And then he speaks again as God to the people,
Is that what you say? Well, I will test you a little while longer; and here is my Bible for you; I will see how you use it, whether you will love it more, whether you will practise it more and live more according to it.
Goodwin was so moved by the sermon that he hung weeping on the neck of his horse for a quarter of an hour before he had the strength to climb onto the horse and ride off—so powerful was the effect of the sermon upon him and upon the whole congregation of being rebuked for their neglect of the Bible.1
Let us likewise consider our devotion to God’s word which he has given to us.
13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.