Every now and then I see someone wearing a t-shirt promoting their favorite sport. You’ve probably seen the one. It says, “Life is basketball or football or soccer (or whatever the person’s favorite sport is). Everything else is just details.”
Whenever I see someone wearing a shirt like that, I actually feel sorry for them. You see, they are saying that life is about a game. What happens when they realize that they’ve focused their lives on something that really doesn’t matter in the long run?
So, if life is not about a game, what is it about? Is it about your job or your house or your car or your next promotion or your money or even your family? What happens when you lose one of those or all of them? Well, maybe life is about religious stuff. Maybe life is about church attendance, or charitable giving, or maybe…surely life must be about studying the Bible!
Well, actually Jesus tells us the answer in the Bible, in the Gospel of John, chapter 5 and verses 39-40. Jesus says to the religious people of His day, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
Jesus is saying that even the Bible can become an idol if you pursue it instead of Him. You see, the religious folk of Jesus’ day studied the Bible. They had figured out exactly how many words it contained, how many times each word appeared, which was the shortest verse, which was the longest chapter, and even what the middle word was. But they were missing the point. The Old Testament Scriptures were given to prepare the Jewish people to accept the coming Messiah. But they rejected Him!
Now I will be the first to encourage you to read AND study the Bible. I’ve spent quite a bit of my life doing just that. But if we focus on the Bible and lose sight of the One the whole Bible points us to (Jesus Christ), we’re missing the point!
So what is the point? Well, if I put it on a t-shirt, it would say:
“Life is Christ, everything else is just details.”
– Pastor Bill Crane