Why Should I Read the Bible? | Jake Vayda

This week we explored why reading the Bible matters and how it helps us grow as followers of Jesus. Looking at Jesus’ invitation to Peter and Andrew in Mark 1 — “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people” — we were reminded that the Bible is more than information; it’s an invitation into apprenticeship with Jesus. As we read Scripture, we begin to see God’s character more clearly, hear His voice more rightly, and learn how to live His way faithfully. 

Following Jesus isn’t about having everything figured out — it’s about staying close to Him and letting His words shape our thinking, decisions, and lives. The more we engage with God’s Word, the more we grow in confidence, clarity, and purpose.

Transcript

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Have you ever been recommended a book, bought it, and never read it? I was on a plane and I was watching a documentary about a book. And it has to be a pretty good book if a whole documentary is about this one book. And this book is about a man named Robert Moses who created the infrastructure of New York City. And I'm I'm drinking my coffee and I'm 30,000 feet up in the air, and I'm like, man, I need to read this book. You know what I mean? Like, I need to get into this book. In fact, uh, this is what people call classic literature. I never read classic literature. I read self-help books, spiritual books, leadership books, but never classic. I'm gonna start reading this at night before bed, and my wife is gonna think I'm very smart. So that's what I started doing. I bought the book. It was $40. Never bought a $40 book in my life. And I realized why it was $40 when I got it. It was like receiving a piece of furniture. It was a thousand pages. It was huge. Like if a robber comes in, I'm not getting the bat, I'm getting this book. So I start reading this book, and uh I'm slowly realizing how detailed this author got about this man named Robert Moses. So detailed, I'm convinced this author knew more about the subject than the subject knew about himself. And over time I'm reading it, and I'm just like, I'm dozing off. Day after day. I'm like, I gotta finish this book. I'm like 50 pages in, and then slowly starts gathering a little dust on my nightstand. And that was a year ago. Have you ever bought a book and never read it? Sometimes, when it comes to something like the Bible, I wonder if we have a similar thought process. I mean, there's a lot of good books out there, right? Books that don't start with massive genealogies and ritual laws of sacrifice and uh crazy names like Jehosaphat or uh I had another name here, Mahir Shalal Hashbaj. Like, why should I read the Bible when there's a lot of books that are clearer, quicker, and easier when it comes to wisdom? That's why today I want to answer one specific question. It's this why should I read the Bible? Maybe you've asked this question before. Like, why should I read the Bible? As a Christian, we believe that the Bible is a library of writings that together tell one unified story about God and how he wants to redeem the world. So, Christians, we actually believe that these scriptures, God speaks and actually invites us to understand our place in that story. So, what are we missing if we very rarely open this large book? What's at stake? Last week we had a guest speaker that talked about a study, and what was interesting is that I had this in my message, and he had it in his message, and we didn't even talk. This is a very important study about Bible engagement. And they look at all the spiritual habits of someone who professes to be a Christian or desires to become a Christian or is interested. And what they found out of prayer and going to church and going to a group, there's one specific habit that is a catalyst for all the other spiritual habits in your life, and you guessed it, it's Bible engagement. And they even got specific out of interviewing thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Four times a week. If you could open up this big book filled of genealogies and it can be difficult, if you can open it up four times a week, here's what the study shows. Stats said that you will have less bitterness, less discouragement, less loneliness, destructive thoughts, and addictions. You will have more generosity, more grace, more forgiveness, more boldness in sharing your faith, and more faith itself. In short, if you read the Bible, the stats show in America that it will transform your entire life. This book is a little bit different than the other books that we have on our shelf. And that's why today I decided we gotta continue the series on how to read the Bible. That's why I wanted to do this uh series in the first place this year. And last week we looked at what is the Bible. This week I want to look at why the Bible, why should we read the Bible? And next week we'll look at how to read the Bible. And if you've been following on, last week we talked about uh the book of Mark and how we're actually reading through the book of Mark. It only has a couple of chapters, like 16 total chapters in this book. And every week, if you just read three chapters, four chapters, just follow along. It'll end with Easter. And when it ends with Easter, you'll have such a more powerful idea of Jesus because it tells the whole story of Jesus from beginning to end. How to read the Bible. Hey, I met a couple of first-time guests. I'm so glad you guys are here earlier. Uh, like our guest or host said, we have something called Ready Set Create right after. We'd love to have you join us. We are a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church, and today we'll be in Mark 1, 17 through 18. We're gonna look at one specific sentence. I just want to break it down word for word today, and I believe it'll show us three reasons why we should read our Bible. But it starts off like this the shores of Galilee, and two young men named Simon and Andrew. They typically back then they would just follow the family trade. For them, it was fishing, it wasn't a hobby. Fishing was working long hours, figuring out where the fish were, reading currents and weather, repairing nets, casting, knowing when to haul the catch. This is their life as being fishermen. This is where the story picks up. This is Mark 1, 17 through 18, if you're following along. As Jesus was walking along the shore of Lake Galilee, he noticed two brothers fishing, Simon and Andrew. He watched them as they were casting their nets into the sea and said to them, Come follow me, and I will transform you into fishers of men instead of fish. They immediately left their nets and followed him. This is not like Star Wars. These are not the droids you're looking for. Like, why do they just immediately follow him? You know what I mean? What's happening here? They followed him for many reasons. One of the reasons that they left their nets and followed the person of Jesus is because earlier they didn't catch anything. They're back on the shores, frustrated. This is their life. This means not a known future. This means insecurity in a lot of ways when it comes to food for their families. Jesus says, hey, go out. Uh cast again. They did it and they filled to the brim, and then they invited their friends to come over, James and John, and they also filled their nets. So they already saw Jesus can do things. They're like, I like this guy. He's helped me in my vocation in a tremendous way. But not only this, when he says, Come follow me and I'll transform you into fishers of men instead of fish, what also was happening is Jesus was a rabbi, which means he did a lot of training on what it looks like to be a person of faith. So much so that rabbis had a select few that they would hand pick, hand select to learn under them, to be teaching the way of being a spiritual guide to other people. So it was a very prestigious position to be handpicked by a rabbi to follow them. And Jesus is a rabbi, and he asked, Would you like to follow me? And of course they did. So here's what I would love to do. Let's break this verse down and see how it relates to why we should read the Bible in the first place. Mark 1, 17, come follow me. He starts with this, right? Come follow me. I'd imagine a rabbi coming up to you and saying, Dane, I'm picking you to be a part of what it means to follow God. Like, that's a big deal. It's almost like getting into the internship at Dean Witter Investments. If you've watched the movie The Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith, it's an amazing movie about a man named Chris Gardner who was a homeless salesman with his young son, and he turned into a successful stockbroker. He eventually founded his own brokerage firm. Chris created his big break when he got accepted into this internship program at Dean Whitter. And Chris saw how the best did it. It was an unpaid six-month internship where they would take 20 people, and at the end of this internship, they'd only choose one that they would hire. Guess who they hired? Well, you're gonna have to watch the movie to find out. Before there was internships, there was something called apprenticeships. Now, if you're learning a trade even today, you would be apprenticed under maybe a plumber, an electrician. It's the same back then when it comes to being a baker, being a fisherman, being a carpenter. You would apprentice under someone. So when Jesus says, come follow me, what he is saying is become my apprentice and learn my ways so that you can become someone who can lead others. And you might be a little worried because what does it look like to get into the internship of Jesus? You know, how do I get handpicked? You know what I mean? That's a little like what do I have to do? You know, I think Jesus cared way more about who they would become than where would they go. In other words, I don't think Jesus necessarily wants you to quit your job. I don't think Jesus necessarily wants you to completely change radically all the things that you do in the time that you wake up and you go to sleep and all your friends. I wonder if Jesus, he might want to change those things, but I wonder if he's looking to potentially help you become someone who thinks a little differently. Maybe there's a weight that you're carrying that you don't need to carry. I wonder if Jesus, learning under the ways of Jesus, is not necessarily changing everything about your life, but changing the inner workings of your life. Come follow me, he says. They followed Jesus, and what they saw was Jesus healing people. What they saw was Jesus transforming people, and I can imagine it built faith in them of who Jesus was. And when we read our Bible, actually, can you give me my Bible right here? When we read this Bible, this way of life, what actually happens is that we see Jesus clearly. You can actually write this down if you're if you're writing uh notes. This is the first reason why we read the Bible. We see God clearly. And when we see him clearly through the Bible, it builds confidence in God's character. Through all of these stories, you see how God interacts with humanity. And you see his character in motion. Have you ever seen someone go through a tough time and you're just inspired by their character? This is what you'll see in this Bible. How God responds to the frailty of humanity time and time again. And what you'll notice about this God is he's the same when it starts in Genesis, and he's the same when it ends in Revelation. Thousands of years the same God. And what you'll notice is that there's promises that God has given from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation that he followed through on time and time again. Here are a couple of those promises. God promises to never leave us. God promises to forgive our sins, to give eternal life, to give wisdom when we ask, to provide for our needs, to give peace beyond understanding, to give strength when we are weak, to work all things for good, to give rest to the weary, and his love will never fail. This is the character of our God. These are the promises of our God, and he lives no lies. These will never be a lie when it comes to the character of God. And when you read this, you build confidence that the God who did it before will maybe follow through again. And he'll do it in your life too. My wife and I were seven days away from induction. Yes. You're like, what is induction? We're excited to welcome our baby boy into the world next Sunday's afternoon. And uh man, we're a little nervous. If you know, if you don't know a little bit about our stories that we actually lost our first son at 35 weeks. And as we're going through this journey, it has been filled with some anxiety, some fear. And man, it was like Wednesday morning. And I woke up and I knew I needed to read the Bible. And I do it every morning, but I needed it that day. I don't know if you had that moment where you're like, I need to read something about Jesus here. And what I needed to read was some of the promises of God. And for me, to give peace beyond understanding, to work all things for good, to give rest to the weary, that his love will never fail. These are the promises of our God. And what I'm so excited about is as I'm reading this Bible, what happens is that I grow in trust. And I grow in faith that his character will be the same, not only from Genesis to Revelation, but in my wife's and my life in 2026. Do you believe in the character of God? What if you really believed that God was closer to you than a brother in the hospital room? What if you really believed that God has a plan to better you and not to harm you when you get fired from that job? What if you really believe that his mercy is really new when shame tells you that it's over? The character of God, when we see Jesus through the Bible, we see his character. Let's continue. It says, Come follow me, and I will transform you. This is the next part of the verse that Jesus says. I will transform you. This is a promise. A promise from God that he'll form you, transform you, conform you into the ways of Jesus, into the image of Jesus. This is a promise that if you stay close to Jesus, he will make you into a different type of person. You might be a little nervous about that. Some of us fear, you know what I mean? Like, if I really follow Jesus and I allow him to transform my life, my personality is gonna look different. I'm gonna be weird. That's what's gonna happen. I'm just gonna be a weird person if I follow Jesus a little too closely. When we follow Jesus, what happens is that he wants to get rid of the bad stuff, not the good stuff. In fact, Jesus doesn't necessarily want to change everything about you, Jesus wants to make you you're it's like you with a spiritual six-pack. I don't know if that's in the Bible. This is a promise that Jesus would transform them. And when you read the Bible, you don't just you hear these stories for yourself. That's what happens when you read the Bible. Because it's it hits different, man, when you're like, you're hearing it from a pastor, you hear it on TikTok every once in a while, your friend randomly mentions it. But when you read it for yourself about how God wants to transform you, something hits differently. And I can imagine these disciples following Jesus and hearing him. Hearing how he responds to the poor and to the powerless, hearing how he responds to the religious elite and those who think they could do no wrong, hearing how he responds to him being in a time of overwhelm when his emotions are running high. Hearing how he responds. This is the next part. If you want to read the Bible, here's a second reason why you should. Because you get to hear God rightly through the Bible. And what does it do? It brings clarity to every day's decisions. There's a famous quote that says, When you're born, you look like your decisions. When you die, you look like your decisions. When you're born, you look like your parents. When you die, you look like your decisions. How do you get your answers when you need a decision? Like, how do you get your answers when there's a decision to make? Should I move to another city? Should I start a new business? Should I go back to school? Like, so many of us climb metaphorical mountains, right? Like we're up until 2 a.m., like going through all the different ideas, we're talking to our friends, maybe we're reading books about it, all these decisions that, what decision do you need to make? How do you make that decision? And we're doing all of these things, and I'm just wondering if sometimes the clarity we're searching for is sitting on our nightstand. Why would God go through the work of inspiring dozens of authors over 1,500 years, preserving thousands of manuscripts with more accuracy than any book in ancient history, crafting the most carefully transmitted, widely translated, globally distributed book in the world has ever seen, so we could ignore it. Know what the Bible says about what it does? It says it's like a lamp to your feet. When there's an unclear decision, it feels like you're in a fog, man, right? You've been there. You're in the darkness, fork in the road, where do I go? It says the Bible is a lamp to your feet. When we begin hearing God's voice through the Bible, we start learning how to hear God's voice for ourselves. And that's the thing. You're not just hearing God's voice, but you're learning, how do I hear God's voice for me in my life? When I'm going and when I'm coming back, what does it look like to hear God's voice? So the question I have as we end this part is how do you get your answers when there is a decision to make? Consider starting with this. Last part. Come follow me. And I'll transform you into fishers of men instead of fish. Albert Einstein felt out of place at school. If you know anything about his history, school was more of like memorization than anything. School is a little bit like that, even still. And it didn't necessarily work for the very creative mind that is Albert Einstein. And so much so that not fitting in, he was looking for something else. He was curious, and uh an older mentor, a graduate student, uh, started giving him books like way beyond his years, you know. Uh it's like the Robert Moses book, but he actually read them. You know what I mean? Like these crazy books about physics, about space, and time. And he would read these books, and ultimately it gave gave him an imagination of the impact he could have. So much so that if you know anything about Albert Einstein, he reshaped modern physics and changed how we understand the entire universe. Max Talmud was the guy's name. In some ways, Jesus is a little bit like Max Talmud here. These guys are fishing, they're learning work ethic, they're learning so many things, and Jesus sees them right where they're sitting. They see them as a student, they see them as an actor, they see them in the Navy, they see them as a mechanic, they see you, and he says, What you're doing is good. You're teaching something. You're feeding people fish, right? That's what fishermen literally do. But I can show you how to feed people for eternity. Jesus is giving them a picture, an imagination of a greater calling in their life. So when he says, I will transform you into fishers of men instead of fish, it's an invitation into a greater story than their vocation can provide. Do you want that? A greater story than your career can provide? You can write this down. The third and last reason why we should read our Bible is that we get to learn and live God's way faithfully. And when we do it, it leads to a life of impact. I don't think you can look at the three-ish years that Jesus was in ministry and the fruit of the impact that he created. I don't think anyone has ever done that in the history of the world. In fact, in 2026, you're sitting here because you want to learn about the person of Jesus. You're curious about this person. And it says in the Bible, I don't know if it, but the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave actually lives in you today, right now. And maybe for years thinking, okay, following Jesus' way faithfully. It sounds a little boring. Once you look through the Bible, you'll notice these five areas that God wants to transform your life. These are the five spaces. This is our logo, soul connection. That God desires to transform you in the ways of a loving union with Him. God doesn't only want to transform your soul, but He wants to transform yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, to form you in the way of love. God wants to form you in social belonging to be known and to know others. God wants to help you supply good. How do you make and how do you spend your money, your time, your talent? And lastly, set live and to go live sent in the world largely through your vocation. If you notice, this matches your deepest desires that you have. And if you notice, we we don't got those things figured out. A lot of us. I don't know what just dropped there, but something drops. Right? Like, we're still struggling in our marriages. We're still struggling when it comes to our debt. We're still struggling when it comes to bitterness in our lives to forgive. And if you learn from him, you watch how he lives, what you'll notice is you begin practicing the same way of life. And what's a little sad about this is the same way isn't always comfortable. I'm gonna grab a mic here. Oh, yeah. We'll see here. I think it's usually more than just the comfortable stuff. Like when you look at the scripture and it calls you to forgive, well, you forgive. When he calls you to confess and be honest, you bring it into the light. When he calls us to give generously, we step in even when it feels risky. When he calls us to love difficult people, we move towards them with grace. This path is difficult, but it's the way of Jesus, and it leads us into the life of impact. You know, when you imagine these two guys on the shore of Galilee, and Jesus says, Come follow me, and I'll transform you into fishers of men instead of fish. These guys are like the normal dudes, you know what I mean? Like he called tax collectors, the people in careers like you and like me. These were fishermen. They didn't have this great intellect of years at the monastery. This is not the people that Jesus called. But yet Jesus made himself accessible to them. They could walk with him, listen to him, learn from him, and slowly begin living in the ways of Jesus. And the same way, the Bible is for the everyday person like you and like me. The Bible was never supposed to be locked away when it comes to wisdom and intellect. The Bible is never supposed to be locked away just for people who actually scholars, spiritual professionals. It was given to ordinary people like you and like me. And it's an invitation to come follow him and to be transformed. So I'm gonna invite the band to come up. But as the band comes up, why should I read the Bible? Why should I read the Bible? If you look at your notes, we've been over the fact that we get to see God, we get to hear God, and then therefore we get to live in the ways of Jesus. And this helps us make everyday decisions, this helps us lead a life of impact, and this helps us build confidence in the character of God. The saying is if you walk so closely to the person of Jesus, literally in the desert, the dust will come up and get on your body. Would you be so close to Jesus that you'd be covered by the dust of your rabbi? And my hope for you, and my hope for me and for us, is that through the Bible, we get to be covered in the dust of our rabbi, to be learning about these ways and to allow it to transform you into the person that you want to become. It's like you, but with a spiritual six pack. Would you stand with me? I just first want to say uh, man, thank you on behalf of yourselves. If you're a person who uh read the first three chapters of Mark this past week, if you notice we went through Mark I, so you're like, wait, I actually read that this week. This next week is four chapters. Mark four, mark five, mark six, and mark seven. If you're saying, I'm behind, I wasn't here last week, well, the good news is if you read just seven chapters, one chapter a day, it takes 15 minutes altogether. Uh, you can be caught up. And my hope is that you would take this seriously. This pr this this book where it's not covering dust on your on your nightstand. If you have a Bible, if you don't, we can get you one. Uh there's also the Bible app, which is an amazing resource that gives you the Bible for free as well. But this is the way that we get covered by the dust of our rabbi. Uh, we're about to sing uh sing a song. I want to invite the the uh prayer team to come up. And as they come up, maybe you just need a prayer today. Maybe there is a decision that you need to make. Maybe for you, you are not trusting in the character of God, and you have anxiety and fear. Maybe for you, the impact of your life is not nearly what you desire it to be. And maybe you just need prayer from God that He would give you an invitation to change, to transform in one of these three ways. So I'm gonna pray for us, and we're gonna sing a song together, a couple songs, I believe. And uh during this song, yeah, would you just uh actually during this prayer, would you just open your hands as a posture of receiving? Lord, we we want to receive your wisdom. God, we want to see you. We want to hear you, we want to live like you. Lord, I pray right now, specifically, I just feel like there's people who need to make decisions this week. Uh the decisions maybe that weigh them down. Lord, I pray that you would give them insight and wisdom through your scripture. And Lord, I pray for those decisions, God, that those decisions would look a little like how Jesus would make those decisions. And Lord, I pray for those people right now who are struggling with uh trusting in your character and the promises that you've said. Lord, I pray that you would uh give them a stable ground to stand on. God, that they wouldn't just know your promises, but they would experience your promises this week. Lord, I pray for those right now who are living a life where the impact isn't necessarily where they want the impact to be. God, that you would bolster them. God, that you would give them the same impact, the same power that rose you from the grave. Lord, I pray that you would allow us to receive these fruits through your daily scripture through this time together as we worship you. Amen.