What It Takes to Study God's Word B

How do you know when you have a desire, a real desire? You'll honor the Word. You'll never want to discourage a person from reading the Bible, especially a non-Christian. Still, the bottom line is, it's only after the Holy Spirit opens your eyes, after you're saved, that you're really able to understand Scripture and apply its truth to your life.

If you're a Christian, that should make you supremely thankful for the salvation you've received, thankful for your unique ability to understand the Bible. Still, there are gaps in our understanding when it comes to Scripture, and today John MacArthur shows you what it takes to fill those gaps in another practical lesson from the study he calls, How to Get the Most from God's Word. So take your Bible and follow along now as John starts the lesson.

We've laid down this foundation preliminarily. We must have a high view of Scripture. We must know its content. Now, beyond that, I want to give you some understanding of the requirements for determining the meaning of Scripture, some requirements for determining the meaning of Scripture. May I suggest to you that even unbelievers may have a certain interest in the Bible.

I am always amazed why liberal theologians who deny its inspiration want to become professors of religion, or professors of theology, but they do. They have some kind of interest in Scripture. It is also possible for an unregenerate, unconverted, unsanctified person to read and understand some of the basic content of the Bible, right? They can read that Jesus died on a cross. They can read that He rose again. They can read that He promised to return. They can read that He did miracles. They can read that an axe had floated. They can read that the Lord parted the Red Sea and the children of Israel crossed under the leadership of Moses and Pharaoh's army was drowned.

They can read that. But in order to comprehend its meaning with full spiritual implications, there are some requirements. There are some requirements. First requirement, one must be a Christian. One must be a Christian. Don't ever trust the interpretive skills of a non-Christian. I don't care whether they are a liberal theologian or whether they are a cult, whether you're talking to somebody who doesn't believe that God authored the Bible but it's merely a high level of human inspiration, you cannot trust their interpretation of Scripture. They can read it like you can read it. They can know what it says. And sadly, many times they know what it says better than Christians do who aren't nearly as faithful to read what it says. But you cannot trust their interpretation.

I'll show you why. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 6. This is a very, very important portion of Scripture. Verse 6, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature.

He means there those who are in Christ who are believers. A wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers or leaders of this age who are passing away. We have a wisdom. We have a knowledge and an understanding of the depth of Scripture that they do not. It is the wisdom that is called in verse 7, God's wisdom, spoken in a mystery. That means something hidden the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood. For had they understood it, they would not have what?

Crucified the Lord of glory. He's talking about religious people. I'll tell you something else. If the rulers of this age and the educators of this age and the philosophers and the psychologists and the wise men of this age understood true wisdom, they would not reject the Lord of glory who was crucified. They do not have wisdom. You remember Jeremiah 8, 9? You have rejected My Word, so what kind of wisdom do you have? And the point is even stronger in verse 9 as he reaches back into the Old Testament and quotes out of Isaiah 64 and 65, just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard. Do you know why they don't know the meaning of God's wisdom?

Why they can't get beyond what the Bible says to what it means? Do you know why? Because it is not available purely to empirical study. Eye can't see it and ear can't hear it.

It is not purely a physical thing. It cannot be apprehended by empirical study. It can't be understood objectively by any kind of application of human logic or reason or intellect. Furthermore, verse 9 says, it has not entered the heart of man. Man can't understand the wisdom of God externally through objective research and he can't understand it internally through subjective wisdom. He can't know it on the outside and he can't know it on the inside.

He can't know it. The only ones who can know it, according to the end of verse 9, are those who...what?...who love God...who love God. Verse 10 explains why. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit. Let me tell you something folks, there's only one way to understand the meaning of Scripture and that is to be taught by the Spirit of God. I don't expect a liberal theologian to come up with a right answer. I don't expect a cultist to come up with a right answer.

I expect them to come up with a wrong answer because they do not have the external objective criteria to discern the mysteries of the truth of revelation. They do not have the internal subjective criteria to discern the truth of God's wisdom, therefore it is not available to them. But to us God revealed them through the Spirit.

Isn't that amazing? To us. For the Spirit searches all things even the depths of God. To understand the wisdom of God, redemptive wisdom which unfolds in the Scripture, to understand all of the greatness of God's revelation is not possible for mankind unaided by the Holy Spirit. And he gives an illustration of that in verse 11. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?

This is a little analogy. There's only one component in the human being that understands the thoughts of a man and that's the spirit that's in man. In other words, it's your internal self that understands your mind. Your hand doesn't understand your mind. Your foot doesn't understand your mind. Your nose doesn't understand your mind. Your ear doesn't.

Your eye doesn't. It's that internal part of you that understands your thought processes. Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. No part of the physical creation can know the mind of God, only the Spirit of God. That's his little analogy. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things freely given to us by God.

Isn't this amazing? And we're not many noble, not many mighty, but we know what the world doesn't know. In fact, we know the things freely given to us by God, which things also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom but in those taught by the Spirit who combines spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. I'm not surprised that people in the world think we're a little odd, a little weird, a little spacey. We speak a language they don't understand. They don't understand it at all. And they look at us and wonder with our limited intellectual abilities how in the world we understand it. How is it that we know things they don't know? How is it that we can comprehend things they can't comprehend? And you know, here we are with so little in terms of the world, and yet we know what they just can't understand.

Why? Verse 14, and this is probably the key. A natural man, that is a man unconverted, without the aid of the Holy Spirit, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. It isn't that he just doesn't accept them. They are what to him?

Foolishness. He can't understand them. He cannot comprehend them because they are spiritually appraised.

That's why you have to remember, folks, when you go out to present the gospel to an unconverted person, unless the Holy Spirit awakens the heart, it's useless. It's hopeless because they can't understand it. You're not in an intellectual battle trying to have a heavier weight of argument so you can swing the pendulum over in their mind.

This is not some human enterprise you're engaged in. They're hopeless. They're dead in trespasses and sin and they have no faculty to comprehend spiritual reality. In fact, their assessment of it is that it's foolishness because things like this are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual, as opposed to being natural which is unconverted, spiritual is being converted, born again, those who are spiritual who have that new mind, the mind of Christ who have a new nature, appraise all things and yet he himself is appraised by no man.

Boy, that's marvelous, isn't it? They can't even make an accurate judgment on us. The world can't accurately judge us. We can accurately judge them because we know God's wisdom.

They have no way to appraise us. They can't figure us out any more than they can figure out what we believe. For who could ever know the mind of the Lord? But we have the mind of Christ.

Isn't that tremendous? Beloved, you have no hope of ever understanding the Bible unless you've been born again, unless you have a new faculty aided by the Spirit of God. It isn't just the Spirit of God, it's the Spirit of God working through your mind. It's the Spirit of God giving you the mind of Christ so that you can think in a way that you could never think apart from Him. Scripture writers set forth the truth in divine words. Unaided, natural, unconverted people can read those words and they can basically read what they say, but they cannot understand what they mean.

The truth then is available only to those who are illumined by the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther once wrote, man is like a pillar of salt. He's like Lot's wife. He's like a log.

He's like a stone. He's like a lifeless statue which uses neither eyes nor mouth, neither sense nor heart until he is regenerated and converted by the Holy Spirit. The best that an unconverted man can do is to chew the bark of Scripture, but he'll never get to the wood. And that's why it is so foolish to expose yourself to someone teaching the Word of God who doesn't have the Holy Spirit. What folly that is.

Of course they'll come up with the wrong interpretation. There's a second necessary component and we've already sort of begun to speak about this. Let's just call it desire...desire. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 2. If you are going to study the Word of God, you have to desire it. Real, diligent Bible study is done by people who want to know desperately.

There is a certain level of desperation and Peter deals with that. Look at 1 Peter...1 Peter 2, verse 1, therefore putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the Word that by it you may grow in respect to salvation if you've tasted the kindness of the Lord. Now the heart of this passage is one statement, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the Word. Here he's not talking about milk and meat as he was in 1 Corinthians 3. He's giving a simple analogy and here it is. You need to have the same kind of desire for the Word that a baby has for milk.

That's a great analogy, isn't it? When you bring a baby into your home, a newborn baby, that's really all they care about and they notify you and they notify you relentlessly when it's time for that milk. You care what color the curtains are in their nice little room that you fixed up. You care what color their little booties are and that stuff you put on them and you care about putting a curl in their hair and a little ribbon or whatever. You care about buying them a little set of pajamas with footballs if it's a boy. You care about all that stuff. All they care about is milk.

Give them the milk, deal with the consequences and give them some more. Life is very, very simple. That is the simplicity which Peter has in his mind as he draws the analogy in writing to these believers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia who are the elect of God in the midst of difficult times and even persecution. He calls upon them to have a hunger, to have an appetite, to have a singular focus that desires the Scripture like a newborn baby desires milk. What should feed that desire?

Several things. First of all, if they remember that the Word was the source of their life, see the first word in verse 1, therefore, that takes you back. Back to what? Back to verse 23, you were born again not of the seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through the living and abiding Word of God. You were born again by the Word of God. The point being, the Word of God made the most profound impact on your life ever, the most profound impact on your life possible. And if the Word of God is that powerful to have that kind of impact on your life, then you ought to long for it. Remember, the Word is your life source.

If it so dramatically changed your life at the beginning, remember what it will do if you continue to desire it. Secondly, eliminate your sin. Remember the Word was the source of your conversion.

Secondly, eliminate your sin. Verse 1, putting aside all evil. Malice is kakia in the Greek. It simply means general evil. Put aside all evil.

And he gives some illustrations, some examples like deceit. The word guile is dallos in Greek. It's the word used for fishhook, which is very deceptive if you're a fish, obviously. Put aside hypocrisy. Put aside envy. Put aside catalelia, la-la-la. It's an onomatopoeic word.

It sounds like what it means, slandering, speaking about somebody behind their back. Put aside those kinds of things. Get rid of the evil in your life and then desire the Word. What drives this desire?

A remembrance of the power of the Word of God as demonstrated in your salvation and an elimination of your sin. As long as there's sin in your life, it's going to clog up that desire. It's going to convolute that desire.

It's going to mess with the purity of that focus. It's going to draw you away from the Word of God. As somebody wrote in their Bible long ago, either this book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book. Thirdly, admit your need. Verse 2, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. Admit your need. Be open and honest enough to cry out for it. I'm always saddened when I meet people who are in a place in the world where they can't seem to find a church, they can't seem to find a place where they can be fed the Word of God, and they have such a crying heart, longing for this. Acknowledge that need.

Cry out as that baby does for milk. Pursue growth is another thing. Remember the power of the Word in your salvation. Put aside sin, admit your need for the Word, pursue growth that you may grow in respect to salvation.

The last little point to make is survey your blessings. Verse 3, if you've tasted the kindness of the Lord, if you already know how good it is to know His Word and obey it, if you've already been blessed in obedience in the past, survey that and seek to obey in the future. How do you know when somebody has this desire?

How do you know when someone really has a longing for the Word? First of all, they honor it. They honor it.

They hold it high. They're like Job who said, I've treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. They're like Jeremiah who said, Thy words were found and I did eat them and they were the joy and rejoicing in my heart. They're like the Psalmist who said, They're more valuable to me than gold and much fine gold.

They're sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. When I find someone who honors the Word, I am seeing desire. And then a love for the Word, deep affection for its truth. That shows up in wanting to talk about the Word, wanting to teach the Word, wanting to hear the Word taught, wanting to read books that unfold its truth. Like Psalm 119, over and over, Oh how I love Thy law, I delight in Thy law.

It is my joy, it is my rejoicing. People who have this desire honor the Word. They respect it. They exalt it.

They obey it. They love it. They have deep affection for its truth.

They'd rather talk about that than anything. They'd rather pursue an understanding of sound doctrine than anything else. They also fight for it.

They belong in Jude 3. They earnestly contend for the once for all delivered faith. They'll go to war. They'll go to battle for its veracity. They'll go to battle against those who attack its truth.

It's that precious to them. When you honor the Word and when you love the Word, you will fight for it. Sometimes people will say, Well, you need to be more peacemaking. You need to be more conciliatory.

You need to be more loving. And perhaps if that's a personality trait, they're right. But when it comes to the Word of God, if you love it and honor it, you can't help but fight for it. And then I would add, the people who desire the Word proclaim it, too. Proclaim it.

Don't tell me you have this longing for the Word. Don't tell me it's sweeter to you than honey and more precious than gold if you don't proclaim it. Because whatever it is you love most, you talk about. Is that not true?

Whatever it is you love most, you talk about. I see all these bumper stickers. My kid was the honor student at such and such a place. There must be a lot of kids who get to be that because it's on a lot of bumpers. Parents wanting to proclaim from the back bumper their love for this kid. I understand that.

I see a lot more of those than you do a little bumper sticker saying, my Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ. I understand the humanness of that. I understand when a young man falls in love and all he can talk about is his girlfriend. I understand when a little kid in a little league baseball game hits a home run. That's the most important thing in his life and probably in his father's life, too, for a while.

I understand those aspects of life. But sometimes they do betray a really confused order of priorities, don't they? The people who long for the Word like a baby longs for milk can't help but proclaim it. They can't be restrained, it just comes out. And then lastly, they personalize it.

They personalize it. They're not conformed to this world, but they're being transformed by the Word. The Word dwells in them richly, Romans 3. It takes up the fabric of their life, begins to shape them, shows up in how they live.

You watch their life and you don't see some teeth gritting, stern, veined neck trying to gut their way through disobedience. There's a calmness, there's a sweetness, there's a naturalness. And you can catch them at any moment in their life and there's a consistency because the Word is taken over and shaped their personal character. How do you know when you have a desire, a real desire? You'll honor the Word.

You'll love it. It'll be the source of war for you on occasion. It'll be the topic of conversation most familiar on your lips as you proclaim it and it'll show up in your life even involuntarily. I always say, when someone is spiritually mature, their involuntary responses are godly.

They don't even have to think about it. It's so much a part of the fabric of their life. Let's pray. Father, thank You for those who by virtue of their salvation, conversion, and new birth have the Spirit of God as their teacher. Oh God, may they have a strong desire like a newborn babe does for milk, a strong desire to know Your Word, so essential if they're to be diligent and study it as workmen who need not be ashamed. We thank You, Lord, for this great treasure. We thank You that we can understand it.

You have made it clear. We want that understanding that we may live it and know the fullness of blessing and bring You honor. In Your Son's name, amen. You're listening to John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, showing you how to maximize your study of Scripture. The title of his practical study here on Grace to You, How to Get the Most from God's Word. Well, John, you made it clear today that true believers desire God's Word. They long for what the Apostle Peter calls pure spiritual milk. And with that in mind, talk about how those spiritual desires are cultivated. What, if anything, can a person do to increase his or her love for Scripture?

You know, the answer to that question is pretty simple. I really believe that the appetite for the Scripture is only created two ways. First of all, it is initially created by desperation to hear from God. The people who come to the Scripture, other than those who might want to study it as some academic exercise, but the people who come to the Scripture to hear the Word of God come from some point of desperation. They haven't found the answers in this world.

They haven't found the answers in the wisdom of man. So it all begins when your heart is drawn to know God and know His truth. From then on, once you belong to God, once you become a believer, once you've been regenerated, the Bible itself creates the appetite.

A simple way for me to say that is this. The more I study the Bible, the more I want to study the Bible. The more I understand its truths, the more I want to understand its truths. I've literally lived that reality my entire life.

What has happened in my life, and Grace to You is a classic illustration of it, as well as the Master's University, the Master's Seminary, and Grace Community Church, is by teaching the Word, I have literally drawn to the Scripture these people from all over the planet at all different levels and in all different ways who want more of the Word of God, and they never get enough. It is satisfying. At the same time, it is unsatisfying. It satisfies the heart, but it makes the heart long for more. It's like that best meal you ever ate.

You loved every bit of it, but you wanted more. That's the Word of God. I want to remind you, the MacArthur Study Bible, you need this tool. Twenty-five thousand footnotes right there embedded in the text of the Scripture clarify the meaning of every passage. Place your order today.

Yes, do, friend. This resource has been a tremendous help to millions of pastors and lay people alike, and it will be for you as well. It has hundreds of helpful charts, introductions to each book of the Bible, and as John mentioned, twenty-five thousand footnotes that explain nearly every verse. Contact us today and order your copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. Call us at 855-GRACE.

That's Monday through Friday, 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time. Or you can also order the MacArthur Study Bible from our website, gty.org. The MacArthur Study Bible comes in multiple English translations, the New American Standard, the New King James, English Standard Version.

It also comes in many non-English translations, and it's available in a variety of bindings as well. Call us at 855-GRACE, or you can see all the choices at our website, gty.org. And if the MacArthur Study Bible has strengthened your study of Scripture, if your family has benefited spiritually by John's current series, How to Get the Most from God's Word, or if someone you know has come to faith after hearing John's teaching, we'd love to hear your story. You can email your feedback to letters at gty.org. That's our email address, letters at gty.org. Or you can send your note by regular mail by writing to Grace To You, Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question. Where do you turn for answers you can trust? You'll want to consider that tomorrow as John continues unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.