Hear what God says to the priests who don’t set their heart to honor his name:

Because of you I will rebuke your descendants, I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. Malachai Chapter 2 verse 3

We read this at church recently. We read it because we are committed to reading the bible publicly week by week. No one preached on it or commented on it. It bore no relationship to the sermon that was given. We are reading through Malachi over a couple of months. We read it and were richer for it. God spoke. We listened. God spreading offal on a priest’s face is such a graphic image - you can’t listen to that and be unmoved. 

Paul urges Timothy to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture (1 Timothy 4.13). Elsewhere we see the church was to hear the public reading of apostolic letters (Colossians 4.16, 1 Thessalonians 5.27, Revelation 1.3). 

Some churches have gone for Bible Reading Lite. The Bible is read, but only as an introduction to the sermon. Do we really believe the Word of God needs to always be mediated through a preacher? 

Other churches strip the reading back of squeeze it our altogether because of  the time given to  songs, sermon, or news. 

We need to do better in this area. I’ve seen church done a couple of times where the whole meeting was given over to the public reading of scripture. During the meeting, Mark’s gospel was read. It meant for a week we went without a lot of the other things that normally go into our meeting. But God spoke to us. His Spirit was at work. His people were changed.

Michael Kellahan will be away this week and so unable to respond to comments. But that’s no reason not to share your opinion. Happy posting! - Editor