The Great Lego Revelation: Why Understanding the Bible is so Important

Imagine you've got a box of Legos dumped out on the living room floor. Your grandson is sitting cross-legged next to you, looking up with those big eyes, and he says, "Build something cool." So you start snapping pieces together. A wing here. A tower there. Before long you've got some kind of spaceship, or a castle, or who-knows-what, but the kid loves it. You love it. And why wouldn't you? You built it yourself, from your own head, with your own hands.

But then you notice something sticking out from under the couch cushion. The instruction sheet. Turns out this wasn't a random pile of bricks. It was a kit, designed by someone who had a very specific finished product in mind. And the picture on that sheet? It looks nothing like your little spaceship.

Nobody's going to arrest you for building off-script. Your grandson doesn't care. But here's the thing. You missed what the designer intended. You had every piece you needed to build exactly what he envisioned, and you never bothered to read the instructions.

That's the church right now. Not with Legos, but with something that matters a whole lot more.

We've been given the pieces. The Spirit is at work. Jesus has saved us. We've got a community of Christ-followers around us. But without a deep, personal knowledge of the Scriptures, without the instruction sheet, we end up building according to our own preferences. Our own ideas. Our own version of what the Christian life should be. And what we build might appear good to us. It might even appear spiritual. But it might have zero resemblance to what God had in mind. That's the part that keeps pastors like me awake at night.

Trusting a Book We Haven't Read

There's a question I wrestle with every time I sit down to prepare a sermon. How much can I assume my people actually understand? Can I reference David and Goliath without retelling the whole story? Can I bring up the Prodigal Son and not give background? Can I quote Romans and expect anyone in the room to have read it? The answer, more and more, is no.

Biblical illiteracy is everywhere. And I don't mean among people who've never been to church. I mean among people who've been sitting in pews for decades. Lifelong churchgoers who can't name the four Gospels. People who mix up Old Testament prophets with New Testament apostles. They haven't touched Acts. They've never opened Leviticus. They've memorized a handful of popular verses, usually stripped from their original context, and they assume that's enough.

It's not an access problem. Most of these people own more than one Bible. We've got apps, study guides, commentaries, and podcasts overflowing with biblical content. No generation in history has had more resources at their fingertips. And still, the Bible itself sits unread. Honored? Sure. Studied? Barely.

The fallout from this is real. People make bad decisions because they've never read what God actually said about how to live. They swallow false teaching because they can't tell truth from error. They stumble through hard seasons without the comfort Scripture offers because they don't have a clue where to find it.

Jesus put it plainly:

"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32).

Flip that around. What happens when we don't? We stay stuck. Trapped by lies. Swept along by cultural pressure. Misled by voices that sound right but aren't.

I've watched people in my own congregation embrace bad theology that five minutes in the text would've corrected. I've sat across the table from couples whose marriages were falling apart, and the wisdom they needed was sitting in a Bible they hadn't opened in months. I've counseled parents, business owners, and young adults through crises that could have been avoided or at least softened by the application of biblical principles they simply weren't familiar with.

And I'll be the first to admit: leaders like me carry some of the blame. We dumbed things down. We made the gospel more palatable and less demanding. We lowered the bar in the name of being welcoming. That's on us. And it needs to change. The gospel has to be preached in its fullness. Crosses have to be carried, not worn as jewelry.

The Bible is not a self-help book collecting dust on a shelf. It is the primary instrument God uses to shape us. When we ignore it, we don't lose information.

We lose formation. We stay the same.

You can build whatever you want without the instructions. Nobody will stop you. But the designer had a specific picture in mind. Every piece in that spiritual lego box was meant to fit into something beautiful and intentional. Skip the instructions, and you'll build something that comes from you. Follow them, and you'll build something that comes from him.

When the Appetite Is Gone

I'll say this carefully because I'm not pointing fingers as if I have all my ducks in a row. I'm stretched thin too. I understand what it's like to come home exhausted and reach for the remote instead of the Scriptures. The pull is real. But the pattern across the church is hard to ignore. Bible studies half-empty. Midweek services drawing a fraction of Sunday's crowd. Sermon series on tougher books of the Bible followed by requests for something "lighter." Small groups stay small while recreational leagues fill up in a day.

Jeremiah wrote,

"When Your words came, I ate them, and Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart" (Jeremiah 15:16).

That's not a guy white-knuckling his way through a reading plan. That's a man who was hungry. Who tasted something and wanted more.

When that hunger disappears, something else is usually going on beneath the surface. Sometimes it's immaturity, like a kid who wants candy instead of real food. The taste for what actually nourishes hasn't developed yet. Sometimes guilt is the culprit. Unconfessed sin has a way of making us avoid the mirror. And sometimes, most of the time if I'm being honest, it's the sheer noise of life. Schedules packed so tight there's no room left for the one thing that could change a life.

Sadly, the same people who can't seem to find thirty minutes for Scripture will spend hours studying their fantasy football roster. They'll binge a docuseries on Netflix. They'll deep-dive into a new hobby or research the best vacation deals with stunning dedication. The appetite for learning is alive and well. It's pointed at everything except the one book with the power to reshape a life from the inside out. I, way too often, fall into this trap as well.

If I could ask for one thing, one single outcome from years of preaching, teaching, and late-night conversations, it would be this: I want to work myself out of a job. I want to develop people who are so rooted in the Scriptures that they can feed themselves. And then feed others.

What I do on Sundays was never meant to replace your own time in the text. Watching a cooking show is enjoyable. But it won't keep you alive. At some point you've got to make dinner yourself.

Don't treat the Bible like the ark from Indiana Jones, an artifact you respect from a distance. Pick it up. Open it. Read it, not because someone guilted you into it, but because the God who designed your life wrote the instructions. And what He had in mind for you is better and bigger and more purposeful than anything you or I could come up with on our own.

You can build your life any way you want. Nobody's stopping you. But tucked inside the pages you haven't cracked open yet, there's a picture of the finished product. It was drawn by the One who made you.

"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food." (Hebrews 5:12)

The instructions are right there, maybe tucked in a dirty couch somewhere. Pull them out. The Designer is waiting for you to build something glorious.

(This blog reflects some of the content in my upcoming book "What Your Pastor Wish You Knew.")