How to Study Scripture B

One of the marks of a true Christian is a desire for the Word of God. They will desire to know the Word. More than that, they will desire to obey the Word. And I am very suspect of someone who just has absolutely no interest in Scripture, because Jesus said, if he's a real disciple, he'll continually obey.

Charles Spurgeon put it clearly. If you wish to know God, you must know his Word. If you wish to perceive his power, you must see how he works by his Word.

If you wish to know his purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover that by his Word. So today on Grace to You, John MacArthur continues his foundational series titled Spiritual Bootcamp with a helpful Q&A on how to get all you can from your study of God's Word. John will tackle some of the most common questions people have asked about studying the Bible, maybe questions that you have as well.

So let's get to the first question now, and then John MacArthur's response. I realize it will be a long answer, but I was wondering in which order you're supposed to read. You said 1 John and then the Gospel of John.

Alright, that's a good question. I would suggest that there is no particular order, but that you alternate a short book with a long book. Like when you finish John, you can go back and read Philippians. When you finish Philippians, you can go back and read Romans. When you finish Romans, which is 16 chapters, go back and read 1 Timothy, which is six chapters. Then go back and read Mark, which is 16. Then go back and read Colossians, you know. Alternate between a large book and a small book at your own discretion.

And you may find the Holy Spirit drawing you to different books because there are different needs in your life at any given time. Okay? You said the necessity to study like a babe that would die if he didn't get fed. What do you mean by death?

Would you clarify that? It simply said that a baby doesn't eat, he dies. And a Christian who doesn't feed himself on the Word of God will find that in a metaphorical sense, he will die in the sense of usefulness. He will die in the sense of joy. He will die in the sense of blessedness. Obviously, he will not forfeit his salvation. That's another subject that we could cover, but we covered it in other areas.

Okay? If a person professes to have accepted Christ but shows no hunger for the Word, can we conclude anything about their salvation? And then also, is there anything we can do to make a person like this more hungry for the Word? I think that's a very important question and it relates to two scriptural passages. The first one is in John 8.31. Some Jews came to Jesus and said, We believe. And Jesus said to them, If you continue in My Word, then you are My real disciple. One of the marks of a true Christian is a desire for the Word of God.

Now that desire may vary. There may be some new Christians who have a very minimal desire and I think very often the fault of that can be in the church that they're in or in the Christian community that they're in where there's no emphasis on the Word and they don't really understand what that means. It is true, I think, and Jesus pointed it out that if somebody does really believe and their faith is really saving faith and they've really come to Christ, they will continue in His Word. In other words, they will desire to know the Word. More than that, they will desire to obey the Word.

But in certain cases, that will vary. Obviously, some have a greater tenacity for the Word than others. It may be that for some that commitment comes along later, that real total commitment comes along later. It may be that some are in an environment where there isn't the peer pressure to get into the Word that there should be.

And I think the only thing we can do to encourage them is to do what we're trying to do here, to point out the benefits and the blessings of doing this and the consequences of not doing it, to become victimized. So continuing in the Word of God is definitely the mark of a Christian. And I am very suspect of someone who just has absolutely no interest in Scripture because Jesus said if he's a real disciple, he'll continue in the Word.

Okay, part of it is along what she was asking about. I was wondering too is that sometimes even though the desire is there to study is just in the area of discipline. Some people seem to, I mean, maybe have been brought up a certain way that it's very easy for them to discipline themselves to study where other people really have a hard time with it, even though they want to, but it's hard to be consistent.

I'll answer that question two ways. One is, yes, it's true that some people are more disciplined than others. Two, that's no excuse because the Lord says we're to study the Word. You know, I've met some very undisciplined scatterbrained people who study the Bible a lot and I've met some other military types who don't. So I'm not sure you always have to equate spiritual hunger for the Word with humanistic self-discipline.

Now it may be easier for a very, very self-disciplined person to set a time and get into it, but the facts are maybe he doesn't get as much out of it as somebody who does it a little more scattered, but has a greater intensity of heart. So I really don't think you're dealing with an absolute in that sense. I think that when the Word of God tells us to study, to show ourselves approved unto God, that's a general command to all of us.

And that we can't say, well, I'm sorry, I've taken a psychological survey and I'm undisciplined, so that lets me off the hook. And the second thing I would say, if God makes a command, He gives us the energy and the Holy Spirit to fulfill that if we're walking in the Spirit. Q. You mentioned under study about finding a godly person and a pattern in their life that you could follow. Could you explain a little bit more about what you mean about a pattern? A. Yes. The Apostle Paul said to Timothy, be thou an example of the believers in word conduct and purity and everything.

The greatest feature of leadership is example. And it is true that, and I see it so often, it is true that people mimic other people. We all do it. You know, I mean, I know when I go to the south and spend two weeks in the south, I come out talking like this. Have you ever noticed you do that?

Or when I go to Mexico and I'm there for two weeks and I come home and everybody I see, I say buenos dias, you know. And because you are an imitator, and the Apostle Paul picked this up and everywhere he went, he said, be ye imitators of me as I am of Christ. We imitate. And it's not enough to have somebody like Christ as a pattern because He's God. We need somebody who is human to follow. That's why Paul always went around saying, follow me, follow me because I'm following Christ. You need some flesh that you can see the pattern of life.

And it's very important that you find that kind of pattern. And that's why I say it's dangerous for Christians to just flit around and never have any godly people to whom they submit themselves so that they can watch the pattern of their lives. Does that answer it? Q. John, about that people-followers thing, pretty soon a person is going to find out that that person they're following is human and they have sin in their life.

A. Okay, and that's obvious that we all have sin in our life. The first thing that the guy should do is admit it like Paul to sit on the chief of sinners. So let's get that straight at the beginning.

Let's not wait till you find that out. But the second thing is it isn't so much the absence of sin that makes the example, it's how it's dealt with. It's not...you know, you're not following the guy because he's perfect, you're following him because he knows how to handle his imperfection. And you'll find that in every good thing like that Satan would want to push you to the limits, you know, so that you become a little rubber duck who quacks the same way everybody else quacks. We follow the person as long as following them is the equivalent of following Christ.

And we have to keep that perspective. It's as if you were following a transparent man through whom you could see Christ. When you stop seeing Christ and the man ceases to be transparent, then he ceases to be what he should be to you. And I think it's the example, I think it's the man who's leading you, it's his responsibility to make sure he's transparent so that you see Christ.

As soon as he becomes like Diotrephes who loves to have the preeminence. The interesting thing about that is the concept of preeminence is only used one other time in the Scripture and it's in relation to Christ. So here was a man who was a leader in the church who was usurping the place of Christ and he wanted the preeminence.

When a man does that, then he ceases to be transparent. You can't see Christ anymore and he ceases to be functioning as a true example. But as long as the person continually points to the preeminence of Christ and keeps the focus there, I think that there's a validity in it. Okay, I'd like you also to hit on basically what you're trying to do with the reading the Bible, reading 1 John for 30 days. You're trying to build a habit in our life of getting God's Word into us. And could you say a little bit about habits and how to build them?

Good. Yeah, you know, habits are just doing things repetitiously and that's exactly what it does. If you can ever get the habit begun, we are creatures of habit. You know, we basically do the same things all the time. We put on whichever pant leg goes on first always goes on first by the time you get to be 40 years old.

And whichever sock goes on first, that's all, you know, you're just creatures of habit. You have the same kind of routines the youngest of you don't at this point. You'll find out when you get old like us that everything, you know, what's happened to my thing, why is it over there?

It's not here, you know, and you get into these little deals. But then you can see this creeping up. So we're creatures of habit and the best thing to do is to start habits when you're young. Routine really helps. And you can say, well, I just flow in the Spirit, man.

I just kind of go and blow wherever. Well, you know, you can even trace habits in the life of Christ. You know, He spent most of the nights in communion with the Father. That was His time. He retreated to the Mount of Olives night after night after night after night after night in prayer with the Father.

And that was His time when He was here on earth. And I think habits are very important. I don't think that the habit performed ritualistically or legalistically is a substitute for what really should be going on. But I think if you can get into a pattern, it helps.

Okay, just one more thing. Are you saying that this reading of Scripture and then studying of Scripture on your own for yourself is something apart from any sort of ministry you're doing? Is it something that you do yourself apart from studying for Sunday?

Not necessarily. I feel that if I've studied the Word of God, I've studied the Word of God. If I go into the study at nine o'clock in the morning and have prayer for a while and then I study till five o'clock in the afternoon and go home, I don't say, oh, I'm defeated today. I didn't have my devotions. Not if I've spent six or seven hours studying the Bible. I, you know, people talk about having your devotions.

I'm not sure what that means even, having your devotions. If it means reading without understanding, I'm not sure it's even valid. If it means going through a little formula or reading something like our daily bread, that's fine.

It's a little bit of input. But when you've spent time in the intensity of the study of the Word of God, that's what you're after. I don't think we need to label little segments and say, well, if you didn't do it in this context and read this kind of a thing with this thing in mind, it doesn't count.

But just for the ordinary Christian, because you're a little different studying every single day, would you say that suppose they were involved in a weekly Bible study, which they did a little study during the week before that, would you say that it would be important for them to do this reading of Scripture daily? Yeah, I think you should set the pattern anyway, and then if you did additional things, they would be done additionally. Don't break your pattern on a normal basis.

But I don't think that's a crucial thing. I think maybe there is a day when you will break your pattern because you have to work on your lesson. That's fine. I don't see a problem with that. I'd like to ask you maybe if you could explain the details of what you did this week in order to study and also what you would recommend for, you know, a new Christian, how he should study the Scripture, how it would differ from the way you would study for a particular passage.

Well, it probably would differ. The way I study is to take the...first of all, I would read the text in several versions along with the Greek text handy there until I understand it. Like I was working on 1 Corinthians 4, 14 to 21 this week. And so I read it and read it and read it and read it and read it and just kept reading it. I just, again, repetitiously until 1 Corinthians 14, 21, there's so much in my mind I could probably stand here and quote you the whole passage and I haven't even tried to memorize it.

But I've saturated my mind with it. Now when I do that and do that and do that, then it begins to mean something to me. Then in the middle of that I see concepts. I see in that passage Paul making a very, very clear statement about that he's the spiritual father of the Corinthians and that that means this and this and this and this and this and an outline develops. Now once that develops, I put that on paper, then I go verse by verse through the passage and I get commentaries and I line up about 10 or 11 commentaries and I read everything everybody's ever written on that passage because I want to know the whole breadth of information about that verse. And so I may read 12 commentaries on every verse in that whole section. And I take all kinds of notes on that and then I throw all that together and out comes Sunday morning.

Good, bad or indifferent. But I feel, as I said earlier, that the way to study is first of all to go through the Scripture and get all you can get on the Scripture and then supplement that scriptural understanding with any books that you have available. And as I said, you can study a book, going through it to get the understanding of it, or you can study a topic like prayer or judgment or any of those things we mentioned. You can study a character, a biography, anything you want.

And you can do it by just reading the verses, putting them together on a paper and working through. You may want to study a chapter and you might want to say, what's the key thought of the chapter? Write that down.

What are the other thoughts that build to the key thought? Write all of those down. What don't I understand? Write that down.

What do I understand? Write that down. What are other subjects introduced in the chapter that I could also study? Write all of those down. And you'll find that out of a chapter will come so much stuff you won't believe it.

Just it's loaded with things. So there are a lot of ways to approach it. Does that cover... John, do you do like your word studies and your grammatical studies right out of the commentaries or do you do it in some other way?

That's really hard for me to answer personally because I do it so many different ways. Sometimes, like today, I got this concept that came across where there's a man named Gaius. I was working on 3 John. There's a man named Gaius and Gaius is commended as a man who not only knows the truth but walks in the truth. And I thought, that's interesting, commendation for a man. And I thought, I got to thinking about the idea of commending. So I just took my Bible and I started in the Pauline epistles with the first one, Romans, and I found every time that Paul ever commended anybody. And I went through every one of those passages and he starts out in 16.1, he commends Phoebe for being a servant and a fellow helper and then down and down Mary and Urbanus and all this.

I just went through every single book and I put down everybody that was ever commended and why they were commended. So that was one way to do the study. Other times, for example, I had that thesis on 3 John and I wanted to do some study into a Greek phrase and so I got out that particular thesis and studied through that to see what the Greek phrase meant. And I read B.F. Westcott in the Greek text and found out what he said it meant and then I would do it from that angle. Sometimes I'll do the study myself.

I wanted to do a study on a particular word, a hupa lumbano, so I took out my own Greek text, lexicon, and what I call... what is called the Englishman's Greek Concordance and I did my own study on that. So there's all different ways that you do it. But it gets kind of hairy with me because I go all different directions and there's no one way. Yeah, John, what do you do when you just get up in the morning and you go through a day and you just don't feel like reading the Bible? Well usually you don't read it.

Right? Well, one of the things that I think is important is if you don't feel like reading the Bible, you have just recognized the truth that this is when you most need it. And if you can kind of get that into your mind, it may help. Be aware of the fact that the times that you don't want to read it are the times you most need it and there are indications of the fact that maybe your approach to the Scripture isn't all that it ought to be. You know, we are, let's face it, as rigid as we would like to set ourselves, we are sinners and one of the ways we sin is disobedience and disobedience will take the form of a failure to do a lot of things and that's one of them.

And we all fall there, even myself. But I think if you recognize that when you feel that way, that's when you need it most. Maybe that's a help. John, if you know someone who's a new Christian and they're far away from you and they can't attend a church in your area, what advice do you give them on choosing a church and what to look for?

Well, you know, there are several things. We have some tapes like the marks of an effective church or other tapes on the church and what would be the marks of a church that you'd want to go to. That's one way. But to send them the principles so that they know what they're looking for. But really the only thing you can do is maybe send them some books or some other tapes so that they become built up in the faith somewhere and can make a proper judgment of a church.

This is a very practical problem. Somebody comes to Christ in another area, they don't know where to go to church, so they go to some church because somebody takes them there and the church is all goofed up. And so they find that they lose out, you know, they don't really grow, they don't mature. So it's important to pick a good church. And I think that one way to do it is to send them books or tapes that will strengthen them and help them to grow to a position where they can make a proper evaluation. I get asked every Sunday to recommend a church in some city. I don't always know, so I say, well, send the person some tapes and some books so that they can begin to study some basic things about what the church should be. And once they've made that evaluation, then they'll know how to judge a church. And then the only thing they can do is just follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Q. Do you think there's a danger in overemphasizing, relying on helps and concordances, and so that cutting down on the time after you've read and really allowed the Holy Spirit to just speak to you individually and really let you know, you know, what the verse means? I know in my life, that was my first time I got hold of some helps and commentaries. I just, you know, read the verse and hit the commentaries.

A. Well, in answer to that, I would say this. You really cannot know what the Holy Spirit is saying to you until you know what the Holy Spirit is saying, because He's not saying anything different to you than He's saying there.

You know what I mean by that? It doesn't say, oh, isn't this wonderful? What this says to me is, well, I'm not interested in what it says to you.

I'm interested in what it says. You know, we have a lot of people going around saying the Bible means this to me. Well, you know, if you interpret the Bible that way, everybody's got their own thing. So you can't just say, well, I want to read it and whatever God says to me, that's good. You know, half the time at least you're going to be out of context or misinterpret the Scripture and you've missed the whole point. So I would say that study the Scripture, read the Scripture, study the commentary and then sit down and meditate after you already know what it means and go at it that way. But don't miss the meditation because it says when we read it already in the Psalms and in Joshua, meditate on these things day and night.

We don't meditate in our day and age and that's an important part of Bible study. I was reading some interesting things recently about the fact, I think it was Marshall McLuhan was saying that we live in a world that is so oriented around something happening all the time and conversation going on and music that no one ever thinks. He said in the article, the best way to avoid God is, number one, never be alone and number two, always have the music on. He even went so far as to say there is nothing to talk about anymore in our world. There's nothing to say. The media has said everything.

There aren't any opinions that haven't been expressed a zillion times. There aren't any conversations that haven't been held. So everybody sits around like a blank and stares at a box. There isn't anything to talk about.

We have a whole world of media that Satan has used to so dominate our thinking. You see people going around with little things in their ear. They get in the car, bingo, turn on the deal. You know, get home, turn on the tube, turn on the radio.

It's got to be noise going on, see? The whole idea of meditation. Then you have somebody coming in from the outside with his legs crossed and a silly suit on and his hair hanging down his back who says, you sit in the corner and meditate. And that's the other extreme where you sit there and think about nothing. But really, you know why that's popular today.

It's popular as a social reaction to a world where your brain has been just bombarded and people are sitting in a corner trying to figure out who they are. But I think the Christian and the biblical approach is to meditate on the Word of God. Romans 4 says, think on these things. You've got to sit there and think on these things. You've got to meditate on them. But you want to be sure your meditation is correct, that you're thinking on the proper thing. And you have to interpret it properly to do that.

Now I'm not saying that just meditating on the Word is wrong, but if you're going to be thorough, then you ought to go at it that way. Also, I had somebody not too... some time ago mention to me that... a fairly new Christian. Well, I haven't read about that yet. I don't know about that particular kind, you know, in reference to, you know, a new Christian who's just got to the third chapter and that particular subject isn't covered until the fifth chapter. I believe that any sin at any point in your Christian life is a violation of what you know is right. I do think, however, that there may be some things that aren't such moral things that we really just don't know about. There are some areas where there are more of the practical principles more than the ethical or moral things which I do believe we know.

In fact, I believe even an unregenerate man knows those by conscience. But there may be some principles of behavior that God has laid down for the Christian. For example, a Christian might not know to give what he has on the first day of the week unless somebody told him that because that, you know, he might... until he gets to 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, he wouldn't really know that he was supposed to lay by and store the first day of the week as God has prospered him. He may feel he wants to give, but he wouldn't know the pattern. Or unless somebody taught him about communion, he certainly wouldn't know to keep communion because that's not a moral and ethical thing. That's a practice in the church. So there are some things that, yes, a person would have to learn, but there are other things in the moral area that I believe God would teach through the Spirit. A good illustration would be Romans 14 where he says, there are some who don't understand the liberty in Christ, so wait till they grow up. Don't hassle them. If a man regards a day, let him regard it.

If he wants to keep the Sabbath, it doesn't matter. He'll grow to the place where he understands his liberty. So there's both sides of it there. Well, we're growing personally by repetitive reading.

Is it possible also to be teaching say a family of small children by reading aloud repetitively? It sure is. I mean, without a... Yes.

Without a previous knowledge or... Right. I think if you wanted to do your reading thing with your family, that'd be a great way to do it. Just read it together, and you'd all benefit from it.

Sure. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. John is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today's lesson is part of his series, Spiritual Boot Camp. Well, John, as valuable as it is to listen to a Q&A like this, or the other lessons in this study, there is something about being able to read good biblical materials that can really reinforce what you're studying and help you hear the truth in a way that it takes root. And John, while everything Grace to You does starts with these audio recordings of your sermons, it doesn't end there, does it?

Yeah, it is true that obviously Grace to You is known for the audio recordings of the teaching and preaching of the Word of God. But a long time ago, we were very much aware that we could double up on the input strategy a little bit by creating study guides, we called them, and we created, I think, 140 of those study guides. And they were designed to be in your hand while you were listening to the message, and also you were reading the flow of the message in that booklet. The first study guide that we ever did was called Spiritual Boot Camp, and here we are 40 years later, and we're starting the series all over again.

Really exciting opportunity for us. And we're starting with the very first study guide, Spiritual Boot Camp. It's been redone, and it is designed to put in your hands everything and more that we're going to be saying in our radio series on Spiritual Boot Camp, and also going to be able to be a stimulating section with questions and answers that you can use in a group study.

So this is going to bring back some memories to those old-timers of Grace to You who have listened to us for decades. That's the Softbound book on Spiritual Boot Camp. It will help you dig deeply into the issues we're looking at in this study, and that is how to study the Bible, how to pray, how to fulfill your role in the church, and how to evangelize the lost. Perfect for use in home Bible study.

A lot of people use them in their small groups over the years, about 100 pages long, affordably priced. And by the way, we offered a free copy of this study guide to everyone on our mailing list last month. If you're not on the mailing list, and if you're not currently receiving my monthly newsletter, you need to be. As a rule, when a new book of mine is published, Grace to You offers it by mail, free of charge, to those on the mailing list. Now the rest of the year we offer special messages on CD or booklets or maybe DVDs, always free of charge, so get on the mailing list. You can simply call or send us an email, say you'd like to start receiving my monthly newsletter, and if you order a copy of the Spiritual Boot Camp, that will also put you on the mailing list.

Either way, contact us today. As John said, the Spiritual Boot Camp study guide is not just a rehash of this series. It's filled with even more biblical truth on these key spiritual disciplines, and it shows you practical ways to get better at them.

It's available now, so order yours today. Call our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. The Spiritual Boot Camp study guide also comes with a question and answer section at the end of each chapter.

It helps facilitate rich discussion, and it's a great resource for a small group. Again, to get one copy or several copies, you can call 800-55-GRACE or order from our website at gty.org. Now, if you were encouraged by today's lesson, if our online resources have helped you prepare for teaching at your church, or if someone you know has come to faith in Christ because of the teaching he or she heard on our broadcasts, we would love to hear your story. Email us here at letters at gty.org.

Again, that's letters at gty.org. Or you can drop a note in regular mail to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and tune in tomorrow as John looks at how to pray. He's continuing his study, Spiritual Boot Camp, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.