April 26, 2026 
Pastor Jack Graham 

There is a book that has outlasted every empire that tried to destroy it. A book that has been burned, banned, buried, and ridiculed, and that has survived every one of those attempts and emerged with more readers than ever. A book that has shaped more laws, more literature, more music, more art, more science, more philosophy, more hospitals, more universities, and more changed lives than any other piece of human literature in the history of the world. 

That book will be celebrated at The Museum of the Bible today. 

The Most Important Book in America 
The great American statesmen Daniel Webster once said: “Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.” And the source of that transformation, the instrument that makes a person both a better follower of Jesus and a better citizen of any republic, is the Word of God. 

Biblical illiteracy may be the single greatest threat to our nation right now. Not the national debt. Not foreign adversaries. Not political polarization. When God’s people do not know God’s Word, something always rushes in to fill that void. And what fills it is not wisdom. It is confusion, manipulation, foolishness, fear, and sin. 

The founders understood this. They did not simply tolerate the Bible as a private religious text. They read it, quoted it, built on it, and treated it as the source code of the civilization they were constructing. The Scriptures were in more than 90 percent of colonial American homes, more widely distributed than any political pamphlet or legal document. The moral and political philosophy of the founding generation was saturated with Scripture. 

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, hardly the most orthodox or moral of the founders, rose during the Constitutional Convention in June 1787 to remind the delegates of the words of Psalm 127:1: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” He called for prayer. He told the assembled architects of democracy that without God’s aid, they would succeed no better than the builders of Babel. 

Even Franklin knew you could not build a free nation without the Book. 

What This Museum Holds 
The Museum of the Bible holds artifacts that will take your breath away, ancient manuscripts, rare editions, fragments of scrolls that are thousands of years old. But the most important thing in this building is not behind glass. It is the message those artifacts carry. It is the same message that has crossed every century, survived every attempt to silence it, and arrived in your hands today: “The word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8). 

The grass withers. The flower fades. Empires rise and fall. The Soviet Union tried to eradicate this Book, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. Emperor after emperor commanded it burned or forbidden, and the Church that carried it outlasted every one of them. 

You cannot kill this Book. Because the Author is alive. 

The Word That Shaped This Nation 
Walk through the exhibits today and look for the thread that runs from ancient Sinai to the American founding. It is not hard to find. The Ten Commandments are engraved in stone in the Supreme Court. The words of Leviticus 25:10, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” are inscribed on the Liberty Bell. Lincoln quoted Isaiah in his greatest speeches. The language of Scripture has been the language of America’s greatest moments of moral courage. 

And this is why: because the Bible does not just tell us what to do. It tells us why. It tells us that every human being has dignity because every human being bears the image of God. It tells us that liberty is not a political invention but a divine endowment. It tells us that justice is not merely a social preference but a reflection of the character of a God before whom every nation and every ruler will ultimately give account. 

Remove the Bible from the American story and you do not get a cleaner, more neutral version of democracy. You get a civilization stripped of its foundation, with nothing to stand on when the foundations shake. 

The Book That Reads You 
Here is what I want you to understand about the Bible. It is not primarily a history book, though its history is accurate. It is not primarily a moral guidebook, though its ethics are the best given to humanity. It is not primarily a political document, though its principles have informed the greatest free governments in history. 

It is a living Word. It is God speaking. And it reads you more than you read it. 

The writer of Hebrews says it plainly: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). When you open your Bible, you are not just examining an ancient text. You are standing in the presence of the God who wrote it. And He has something to say to you, today, about exactly where you are and exactly what you need. 

Joshua understood this. Before he led Israel into the Promised Land, God gave him not a battle plan but a reading assignment: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (Joshua 1:8). 

The path to prosperity and success, for a person, for a family, for a nation, runs straight through this Book. Not around it. Through it. 

Five Ways to Feed on the Word 
I have taught for decades that there are five ways to take the Bible into your life, and each one matters. 

Hear it, in the preaching and teaching of the Word of God, gathered with God’s people. Read it, with discipline and consistency, covering its pages rather than sampling at random. Study it, going deep, asking hard questions, wrestling with the text until it yields its treasure. Memorize it, because a Word hidden in the heart is a weapon available in the battle. As the psalmist says: “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). And meditate on it, turning it over in your mind, letting it soak into the way you see the world, as Joshua was commanded to do. 

These five practices, hear, read, study, memorize, meditate, will do more to change the direction of your life than any program, any conference, or any resolution. Because they are not just disciplines. They are an encounter. Every time you open this Book, you have the opportunity to meet the Author. 

The Book America Needs 
Let me be direct with you as we stand in the shadow of the Capitol and the White House and the monuments that surround us on every side. 

America does not need a new political party. She does not need better polling or a more charismatic leader or a smarter communications strategy. She needs a return to the Book on which she was built. The Bible is the moral and spiritual foundation that makes free government possible, that gives citizens the character to govern themselves, that reminds every human institution that it stands under something higher than its own authority. 

God’s Word is not silent on the great questions of our time. It speaks to life, to liberty, to justice, to leadership, to all of it. And the Christian who is rooted in Scripture does not need a pundit to tell him what to think. He already knows what God has said. 

As you walk through this museum today, let every artifact you see remind you of the extraordinary gift in your hands. You carry the most important book in the history of the world. You carry a message that has survived everything thrown against it. You carry words that are living and active, not museum pieces, not relics, but a living voice speaking to a broken world that desperately needs to hear it. 

Read it. Believe it. Live it. And then, as Jesus commanded, go and teach it to everyone you can reach before He comes back. 

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). 

In a world growing darker by the day, there is no better time to open the Book.