It Helps Us Spot Counterfeits
As I sat across the table from the United States Secret Service agent, I couldn’t help wondering why he was so intent on meeting with me. I couldn’t think of anything that I had done that would warrant any concern, so I tried to relax. It wasn’t easy, though. I was 27 and had just moved to California after my seminary studies in Michigan. All I knew was that my phone had rung the day before and that the gentleman had introduced himself as an agent with the Secret Service. He wanted to see if I could meet him at a restaurant the next day at 5:00 pm.
The agent looked very much like you would imagine—tall, thin, hair combed to the side with a heavy coating of hair spray, dark-blue suit, and narrow tie.
After a polite gesture for me to take a seat at the restaurant table, he said, “You’re probably wondering why I wanted to meet with you.”
I smiled and nodded, not trusting my voice to sound relaxed without cracking.
“Well, my daughter is a student at the academy where you’ve just started teaching, and I wanted to get to know her new Bible teacher.”
I tried to hide my relief, but I could see from the look on his face that this agent had, as a bit of a joke, intentionally held back this little tidbit of knowledge back until we met. He had a quirky sense of humor, and I immediately connected with him because of it.
Time flew by as I pummeled him with question after question about his job. I was so curious. What was a Secret Service agent doing in California? I thought their job was to protect the president. He reminded me that protecting our currency is one of the Secret Service’s primary duties. They are the ones who catch the counterfeiters.
“How can you tell if money is counterfeit?” I asked.
He gestured with his hand for me to wait while he pulled a $20 bill from his jacket’s inner pocket. “Can you tell why this bill is counterfeit? How many things can you spot?”
I studied the bill. It was printed off-center, with uneven margins at its outer borders. The green ink on the back was too light. A couple of the serial numbers were smudged. The paper felt a little too thin. The watermark didn’t look like the others I had seen before. I found at least 10 things that looked suspicious to me. This was obviously a counterfeit $20 bill!
After I couldn’t find any other mistakes on this currency (despite the agent’s encouragement to find even more), I handed it back to him.
With a big, toothy grin the agent said, “Actually, this is a real $20 bill. It is not a counterfeit.”
“What?” I protested. “But all those things looked wrong. How can you tell if a bill is real or counterfeit?”
“As a Secret Service agent, we are never, at any time, allowed to study or handle a counterfeit. We study only the original. We spend all our time becoming intimately familiar with the ‘real deal.’ That is why the moment we come into contact with fake money, we know it immediately.”
The only way to avoid the enemy’s counterfeit of God’s plan is to spend all our time studying the original picture of God.
In very much the same way, the only way to avoid the enemy’s counterfeit of God’s plan is to spend all our time studying the original picture of God—and that picture is painted perfectly by the words of Genesis through Revelation. One of the Bible’s primary purposes is to protect us from counterfeit images of God. Psalm 119:11 says, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” Without having an intimate knowledge of the Bible, hidden within our hearts, we are allowing ourselves to be fooled by the prince of counterfeiters—the devil himself.
The world has plenty of other things for us to look at to get us off track and to take us away from our time with God’s Word—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, TV news networks, and the list goes on and on. That’s why today even Christians are arguing with each other on social media and in person, losing friends, and even dividing families who used to enjoy time together. The world brings division and hatred, but one of the purposes of God’s Word is to bring unity and love. The more we spend time with the “original,” the more we become loving, like the One who breathed life into His Word.
It Reminds Us of What God Really Wants
Did you know that the little book of Hosea is one of the most pivotal books of the Bible—that Joshua and Jesus each lived about 700 years on either side of Hosea, and that they actually all share the same name? (They only look and sound different because of the dialects of their time.) Why did God inspire this prophet to write his book, and why, of all things, did He ask Hosea to marry a prostitute?
Ultimately, God inspired the writers of Scripture because He knows that humanity will either forget what God really wants or will warp His will into our own. God breathed a description of His character to Hosea exactly when He did, midway between Joshua and Jesus, because He knew that by the time His Son came to earth, even church leadership wouldn’t recognize Him. His love and compassion for the outcasts despite their disloyalty, His elevation of relationships over rules, and His desire for connection over correction were all at odds with the teachings of the day. This Old Testament book strived to prepare the New Testament crowd to recognize Jesus when He would come. God wants to have an intimate relationship with us, as close as an adoring husband, forever, in righteousness, justice, love, and compassion (Hosea 2:16-19), even though we act as unfaithful as the temple prostitutes of Hosea’s day. That is why this little book, and each and every one of the other 65 books of the Bible, is so vital to us today. They reveal God’s true nature, and they surprise us with His mercy and love to all humanity.
The purpose of the Bible is to give us a more complete picture of who God is and how He has committed Himself to humanity despite our lack of commitment to Him. Second Timothy 2:11-13 says, “This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him.
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”
It’s just in His very nature. God remains faithful, even when we are faithless! He sees you as part of Himself! That is why reading the Bible regularly is so vitally important. While the devil is continually trying to discourage us and to convince us that we are lost, the Bible reminds us that we serve a God who will never turn His back on us. He cannot change who He is. He remains faithful to us in every generation despite our faithlessness.
It Builds Our Faith
Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Simply hearing the inspired words of Scripture builds up our faith. Why? Because these words continually surprise us with the awesomeness of God.
The world brings division and hatred, but one of the purposes of God’s Word is to bring unity and love.
Did you know that the Bible is still full of surprises? Did you know that the same place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac is the very same place where Jesus died on a cross?[1] Did you know that when Jesus was hanging on the cross, He sang a song (see Ps. 22)? Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20), because the people thought God would come and give you His attention only if you had 10 people.[2] Did you know God never hardened Pharaoh’s heart and changed his mind? (There are a number of different Hebrew words we translate into English as “hardened,” but they mean different things.[3]) God was trying to save Pharaoh and the Egyptians, too! Would it surprise you that when God spoke to the boy Samuel, he was having a sleepover next to the ark of the covenant inside the most holy place (see 1 Sam. 3:1-3)? The Bible is full of amazing surprises about God, His interaction with humankind, and His loving plan for each of us. It is not a dead book. It is alive with new insights and truth for our time. That is why it is just as exciting to read the Bible today as it was to the original audience many generations ago.
It Is the Spiritual Swiss Army Knife for All Time
For my ninth birthday my uncle gave me a Swiss Army knife. I was overwhelmed. It had knives, scissors, screwdrivers, tweezers, and even a toothpick! I carried that thing everywhere, looking for opportunities to put it to work. Just having it in my pocket made me feel more confident that I was ready for whatever the day might throw at me. The Bible is, in many ways, similar.
The Bible is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). It teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains you into righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). It guards your path and protects you from evil people who twist the truth (Prov. 2:8, 11, 12). It reveals who God really is. (Heb. 1:1-3). It gives us the wisdom necessary for salvation (2 Tim. 3:15). It transforms our hearts and renews our minds (Rom. 12:2). It gives us encouragement, hope, and comfort (Rom. 15:4). It reveals God’s glorious plan for our lives (Rev. 21:1-5). The Bible prepares each of us for our calling and the good works God has destined for us to accomplish (Eph. 2:10), and so much more. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Bible is so full of almost countless useful tools that it makes a Swiss Army knife look practically useless.
This is why the Bible is not only practical—and not only alive with purpose—but also priceless. It’s the reason such men as William Tyndale, John Rogers, and Thomas Hitton were willing to die so that people could read the precious words of Scripture in their own language. They knew, as do I, that when you read the Word of God, your life will never be the same—that the Holy Spirit will bring power into those words and draw you closer to your loving Maker.
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[1] Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, Mark 15:22-32, p. 1815.
[2]A Dictionary of the Bible: Dealing With Its Language, Literature, and Contents, Including the Biblical Theology, Volumes I–V, vol. 4, p. 640.
[3] The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, volume 1, on Ex. 4:21, p. 516.
