Read 2 Kings 25, Haggai 2, and John 15.
This devotional is about John 15.
The Bible could be a lot shorter than it is. God could have just started with Exodus 20–the Ten Commandments–and continued until all of his law was given to us. Likewise, in the New Testament, God could have given us one of the four gospels and, say, the book of Romans and/or Ephesians and just stopped at that. In this imaginary situation, we wouldn’t know anything about creation, the fall, the flood, Abraham and his family and so on. We wouldn’t know about the exodus from Egypt or about the judges in Judges or about Samuel, David, Solomon, and others. We would have a bunch of commandments from God with very little storyline or context.
Likewise, if the New Testament were just a gospel and one or two of Paul’s letters, we would know about Christ’s life, atonement, resurrection, ascension, and what it means to follow him. But we would know very little about Christ’s second coming and very little about Christ’s coming kingdom and the New Earth.
So, God gave us a lot more than a bunch of commandments and a lot more than just the gospel message. He gave us many stories, much history, songs of praise and redemption, as well as prophecies about the future.
But why did God give us all this information? Jesus answered that question here in John 15 when he said, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (v. 20, NIV). The answer is that God graciously chose not to treat us as slaves, who only get commands. That’s what Jesus meant in verse 20 when he said, “…a servant does not know his master’s business.” Instead of treating us that way, God chose to reveal the grand story of scripture because he, by grace, bestows on us the privileges that a friend has–the privilege to know more about what God is doing and why God is doing it.
In this specific context, this verse explains why Jesus spent three years teaching the disciples and the people. But, if we zoom out and see his words as a principle that describes the usual ways of God, we can see that God gave us his word in story, covenants, commands, history, prophecy, and so on to show us the big picture in which all of his actions and commands fit together and make sense.
In the larger context of John 15, Jesus and the disciples were walking to Gethsemane where Christ would be betrayed and arrested. Then he was tried, executed, and rise again. Jesus wanted the disciples, and–through them, us–to know how all of this fit into the plan God has been working out in human history for thousands of years.
One of the great privileges of having this lengthy book we call the Bible is that we can learn God’s plan and understand God’s character as we read and study the Bible. So rather than seeing the Bible as a long book that’s hard to read, let’s view it as privilege to have, a gift from God himself who revealed his plan and himself to us. Then, let’s use the word as God intended by reading it, studying it, meditating on what it says, and walking in faithful obedience until God brings the next chapter of his story–the return of Christ–into reality.