Why It's Important to Study God's word

Today I thought that I'd make a little post on why Christians should be regularly studying their bibles. I think that this topic is important because far to many professing Christians put reading their bibles on the back burner in favor of doing something else.


The first reason why we should be studying God's word is because it tells us to (Isa 34:16, Joh 5:39, 2Ti 2:15). In the Old Testament the Israelites were instructed to diligently teach their kids God's commandments, they were to speak of them when they rose up, when they sat at home, when they were walking by the way, and when they laid down (Deu 6:1-9, Jos 1:8). How could this be done without studying them?

We learn in Psa 1:1-3 that those that are blessed delight in God's laws, and meditate in them day and night; Furthermore the bible also informs us that whatever they do will prosper. So many people fall into dangerous cults because their lack of knowledge about God's word, instead of believing everything we hear we need to be prudent and look well to our going (Pro 14:15).

Another thing that we learn from the bible is that one indication of being righteous is that you study to answer (Pro 15:28, 1Pe 3:15).  Furthermore it's important to read God's word because it's what gives us our doctrine, is what we use for correction/reproof, and is also profitable for instruction in righteousness. In other words it enables us to be perfect, see 2Ti 3:15-17.

The bible also speaks of the importance of abiding in the doctrine of Christ (2Jn 1:9), this is yet another important reason to study.
We can see by the example given in 2Co 3:14-16 that people can hear God's word and not have the full understanding of it because they are not born again. This can be demonstrated by the fact that many atheist will claim that they've read the entire bible and list a bunch of supposed contradictions which in reality don't contradict at all. This is just another example of Rom 1:22.

So, how often should we be reading God's word? We see that Israelite kings were instructed to make a copy of God's law and read it everyday in Deu 17:18-19. We see in Neh 9:3 that the people read in the book of the law a whole fourth part of the day, wouldn't that be six hours? I find that very impressive. The perfect man Job esteemed God's word more than his food (Job 23:12), how often do you eat? We see in Act 13:27 that the prophets were read every sabbath,  and that the noble bereans didn't just take people's word for it but searched the scriptures daily to see if they were telling the truth (Act 17:11).

See also: Neh 8:3 -8, Pro 16:23, Isa 30:9-10, Mal 4:4, Rom 15:4, 1Th 5:27, Heb 5:12 -14, Rev 1:3