Who is able to understand the Bible? Only believers. Only believers. First of all, you have to be a Christian, true Christian, a believer, born again, regenerated. If you're not a believer, you cannot really perceive with understanding and result the truth of the Word of God. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's been said, nobody ever outgrows Scripture. The book widens and deepens with our years. Today, John MacArthur will help you tap into those inexhaustible treasures as he continues his series, How to Study the Bible. Now, friend, you probably know that we devote the bulk of our time each day to studying Scripture, and we don't say much about the inner workings of our ministry. So let me ask you, John, if you were talking to someone who tunes in and prays for us and appreciates what they hear, what would you want that person to know about Grace to You? Well, I think we'd want them to know what is patently obvious.
You just said it. We're committed to studying the Word of God, to proclaiming divine truth. We say very little about our finances.
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Nothing more important than handling Scripture accurately and learning what it says. So stay with us. Thanks, John.
Friend, as 2024 winds down, thank you for your prayerful support that will help us start 2025 on firm footing. Stay with us until after today's lesson for more information on how to partner with us. But now, here's John continuing his series titled How to Study the Bible. Some of you may have read of a certain Danish religious philosopher who lived in the 19th century by the name of Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard has said many things in terms of Christianity and religion that we would not necessarily accept. But on the other hand, every once in a while he says some pretty profound things too, and one of them I thought was this statement that I'd like to read to you.
Listen to it. Too often in their church life, people adopt an attitude of the theater, imagining the preacher is an actor and they his critics, praising and blaming the performances. Actually, the people are the actors on the stage of life. The preacher is merely the prompter reminding the people of their lost lines. End quote. I think he perceives a real problem. It's very easy for you or for anyone to come to church and treat it like a theater and sit and watch it happen and then to either praise or criticize what went on.
But he's right. The fact is, you are really the actors living on the stage of life and I'm here to prompt you about what you ought to do. If all that happens is you come and evaluate the sermon, then you've missed the point. But if you come and learn from what I do what you should do in approaching the Word of God, then you've gotten it. A lady said to me in one of the conferences, she came up to me and she said, Do you know what your preaching does to me?
And I said, Have no idea. She said, It makes me want to study the Bible. She said it very matter-of-factly.
And I said, Well, I think that's the best compliment I ever got. It makes you want to study the Bible. I really feel that that's the whole point. I'm not here to entertain you. I'm not here to put on a show which is to be evaluated. I'm here to stimulate you to do something on your own, and that is to learn the Word of God and learn to live it. And if you don't get that message, you've missed the whole point.
Mine has become an exercise in futility. The ministry in the pulpit is to stimulate the people in the pew. And the reason I study and teach is to stimulate you to study and teach. And the sad part of it is there's so many Christians who don't really do that, they just don't get into it and they don't teach it to somebody else.
And there's always distractions, you know. I think about Paul writing to Timothy and he said to him, Timothy, the things you have heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. In other words, Timothy, what I told you, I told you to tell somebody else. Because you see, Timothy at 2 Timothy in his life, at that juncture in his life when Paul wrote that book, is beginning to falter. He's even having anxiety, you know, and Paul had written to him earlier about taking some wine for his stomach's sake, and he was beginning to be fearful about his youth. People were kind of hassling him about it and so Paul says, Don't let anybody despise your youth.
And he says, Flee youthful lust. And Timothy was fighting his youth. He was fighting his physical problem. He was basically a timid person and so Paul says, God has not given us a spirit of timidity. He was being persecuted. He was also being attacked by some high-powered religious errorists who had invaded the Ephesian church and were propagating some genealogies and some sort of high-powered philosophy that he really couldn't handle. And so he was beginning to falter and fold up and quit and bail out. And Paul says to him, Look, fella, you can't stop. Too much is invested in you.
Everything I committed to you, I committed to you to give to somebody else. That's the whole point. Now, to begin with, if we're going to study the Bible, we've got to be committed to the fact that it needs to be studied, right?
I mean, that seems to me to be basic. Look with me for a minute and let me just kind of set that for you in your thinking. Look at Hosea chapter 4. Hosea is facing a reality in Israel and the reality is this. God's people have abandoned God and consequently they have fallen into all kinds of sin. They have become a harlot wife, an adulterous nation, violating the vow to God. And what is the basic problem?
How did this happen and why did it happen? Indicated in chapter 4, verse 1 and following. Listen to what he writes. Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel.
We can stop right there. Hosea 4.1, hear the word of the Lord. He puts his finger right on the problem. When a nation ceases to hear the word of the Lord, confusion and chaos takes place. For the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land because there's no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. In other words, they had removed the foundation and when the foundation was gone, what was left is in verse 2...swearing, lying, killing, stealing, adultery and blood-touching blood...blood flowing everywhere. In other words, you get the national chaos of verse 2 when you give up the foundation of the Word of God in verse 1.
I'll tell you something, people. In America, people are concerned. They're concerned about our country. They're concerned about a rising crime problem. They're concerned about a disintegration of the family. They're concerned about chaos in government. They're concerned about economic stress and chaos there. All of these concerns people have in their hearts. And I'll tell you the truth about it.
There is no resolution to any of these problems. You can change the cabinet every week if you want. You can do that all the time. You can just shovel people in and out of there all week long and month long and year long and you're never going to eliminate the moral problems in a nation like ours unless there is a reaffirmation of the standard of the absolute qualification of the Word of God to set the pace for this country. Same thing in Israel. Destroy a biblical base and all you're going to get is chaos. And because they wouldn't hear the Word of the Lord, everything bad began to happen. And the land mourned in verse 3 and everyone that dwells in the land languisheth with the beasts of the field, the fowls of the heaven, yea, the fish of the sea also should be taken away. Everything goes wrong. Everything. And it all comes down to verse 6, my people are destroyed.
Why? For lack of knowledge. Because they reject knowledge. Now when a people reject the law of God, the knowledge of God, they open the floodgates to chaos. Now as it's true in a nation in the case of Israel, it's true in the life of an individual. If you do not have as the base of your life, as the orientation of your behavior, as the solid foundation upon which you live the Word of God, there is no base.
There is none. In Proverbs chapter 1 the writer says, Wisdom cries in the streets. How long, you simple ones, will you continue in your simplicity? How long will you go on being naive and foolish? How long will you reject the Word of God? And it says they turn a deaf ear and they will not hear. Wisdom is available, people. And so just as a general thing, I'm trying to get you to see how important it is to study the Word of God.
This is the foundation of everything. Here is a judge who writes me and says, What does the Bible say about what is right in a law court? A doctor, what does the Bible say about what is right in terms of how we discipline our children?
I've received letters from doctors. What does the Bible say about abortion? What does the Bible say about euthanasia? What does the Bible say about how certain people are to be treated in certain psychological and psychiatric situations? And so, beloved, what I'm saying to you is, you see, you can't live your life the way it ought to be lived unless you have the knowledge of God's Word. And so it's imperative that we be students of His Word.
In the New Testament this becomes literally a replete issue. In Romans 12 2 it says, And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed. Now how do you get above the system that engulfs you?
How do you rise above the corruption we live in? How do you ascend beyond the mentality of the day? It says, Be ye transformed, but how? By the renewing of your...what?...your mind that you may know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. In other words, it is first of all to know and then it is to live. If you rush off headlong trying to live life without the knowledge of God's truth, you're going to find you're going to hit right into the system, full blast. In order to rise above it, you must know the Word of God. In Ephesians 4 23 the Apostle Paul says, Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. In Philippians chapter 1 verse 9 he says, That you may abound more and more in knowledge and discernment. In Philippians 4 8 he names a lot of things and then he says, If there's any virtue, any praise, think on these things. In Colossians chapter 1, increasing by the knowledge of God, he says.
In 2 Peter 3 18, Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Timothy 3 16, The Word of God is given to perfect you that you may know what God's will and God's choice is for your living knowledge. In Proverbs 24 there's a beautiful statement about knowledge. Verse 13, My son, eat thou honey because it is good and the honeycomb which is sweet to thy taste, so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul. And all through Proverbs 31 chapters is the injunction to learn God's truth and to live it, to know, seek wisdom, seek wisdom, seek wisdom again and again. And by the way, every Hebrew boy as he grew up was taught the book of Proverbs that he might know God's standards for life. And so we must know.
May I add something? The knowledge of which Scripture speaks is not separated from obedience. It knows nothing of the theory. It knows nothing of the concept.
It knows nothing of simply the intellectualism of the Greek Sophia. The Hebrew thought of wisdom was always behavior. In fact, to the Hebrew, if you didn't live it, you didn't really know it. To the Greek, wisdom, sophos, was intellectualizing, was theory, was conceptual. But to the Hebrew, wisdom was life, it was living, it was behaving in a manner in accord with the law of God. Wisdom wasn't just conceiving, wisdom was walking. And so where the Bible draws us to knowledge and where it draws us to knowing and where it draws us to wisdom and to understanding and to enlightenment and to perception, it is always with a view to behavior.
You never really know until you live it. Blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it, Jesus said. If you love Me, keep My commandments, for this is the love of God that we keep His commandments.
And in Deuteronomy 5, 29, the Bible says, Oh, that there were such an heart in them that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always that it might be well with them and their children forever. The Lord told Joshua that he was required to study and reflect on the Word of God. And so in Joshua 1, 8, it says, This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success. In other words, Joshua, you must be committed to the law of God.
You know the chaos that existed in Israel when the law was lost. And finally when it was found and they stood up to read it, when a revival broke out as they found again the standard for life. And you remember the words of Isaiah, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth in bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth.
It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in the thing whereunto I send it. God says, as the rain and the snow comes down and waters the earth, so my word will come down and give growth to your life. I love the Psalms, the hymnbook of the Old Testament, and David, of course, was a man with a worshiping heart. And in Psalm 138, too, he worshiped God with these words, I will worship toward Thy holy temple and praise Thy name for Thy loving kindness and for Thy truth.
Why for Thy truth? For Thou hast magnified Thy word above all Thy name. In other words, David says, God, I will worship You on the basis of Your truth.
We've talked about that in the past. You can't even worship God no matter how meaningful that might be in your own mind. You can't truly worship God unless you worship Him according to truth.
Here were the people up on Mount Gerizim trying to worship God in John 4 and Jesus says you must worship the Lord in spirit, yes, but in truth. You can't devise your own means like Saul. You can't offer the Lord a whole lot of animals that you stole against His commandment and then say, well, I'm serving the Lord. And the prophet said to him, you may be thinking you're serving God. He said no to those animals.
You will never put a son on the throne and cursed his line. God doesn't want self-styled worship. He wants it according to His Word. In Psalm 119, one of the most majestic poems in all of Holy Writ, nearly every one of the 176 verses teaches us the necessity of obedience to the Word of God. In verses 1 and 2 the whole psalm begins, blessed are the undefiled who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep His testimonies and seek Him with their whole heart. And you know what it says in verse 11, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. And so we find the Scripture calls us to obey the Word.
Now beloved, the standard is up there. You see, I've just given you Scripture after Scripture after Scripture, the importance of the Word. Can I ask you to make a covenant in your heart?
I don't want to impose it on you, I just want you to do it because it's right. You say, well, you know, this Bible study is hard work. Yes, but these things are written unto you that your joy may be what?
Full. You want full joy in your life? That's why God wrote this. Would you make a covenant? And I'll give you a covenant so you don't have to think up your own. This is a covenant made by Josiah the king and God really blessed him for it. In 2 Chronicles 34, 31, and the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord. Bless his heart, this young man Josiah is like a beam of light in the midst of the darkness of the ancient past of Israel, the godly man. He made a covenant before the Lord.
Now listen to it. To walk after the Lord, to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all His heart and with all His soul and to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book. Josiah said, God, as long as I live, this day I vow to learn and to live Your Word. That's why he made a difference.
That's why he was different than everybody before him and after him. Are you willing to make that covenant? This is God's Word. Study it as God has commanded you. Now specifically, who can study the Bible?
I've just given a general injunction. I've just said, everybody study the Bible. Now who can study it and get something out of it? You say, well, you've got to go to seminary, do you?
What other requirements? Well, you've got to have a lot of books to do it. Well, I'm too new, I don't know. Well, I've tried to figure it out, but boy, all those words are so tough. I don't understand it.
Well, my wife's good at it, but I'm lousy. Who can understand it? Number one, who is able to understand the Bible? Only believers. Only believers. First of all, you have to be a Christian, a true Christian, a believer, born again, regenerated. You say, well, you mean if you're not a Christian, you can't understand the Bible?
That's right. Let me show you that. First Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. I want to work up to it a little bit, so let me start in verse 10.
This is a tremendous, tremendous insight. But God...now watch this...hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. Now them refers to God's truths, God's principles, or God's revelation, or God's Word.
Who receives it? God hath revealed it unto us by His Spirit. Now I want you to notice the little phrase, unto us, those two words in verse 10. Now that might not seem too important in the English, but in the Greek it is because in the Greek it comes at the beginning of the sentence, unto us, and it is an emphatic form. And what Paul is saying is this, that the revelation of God's truth is unto us.
And the us refers to believers, watch, in contrast to the ones he has been referring to. Because all the way from chapter 1, verse 18, clear down to chapter 2, verse 9, he is talking about how ignorant the philosophers of the world are regarding the truth of God. They cannot know it.
Why? Because of verse 9, eye hath not seen. In other words, they can't see it empirically. They can't find it out by discovery. Secondly, neither has it entered into their heart. They can't find it by their own feeling, or their own emotion, or their own musings, or their own spiritual experience. It is not available externally. It is not available internally, no matter how erudite the philosopher may be. Why? Because God has revealed it unto us, not to them.
That's the implication. It isn't available. There are those in the world who speak human wisdom. The princes of this age, he says in verse 6, but none of the princes know the truth, verse 8 says, none of them know it. It's not available to them.
Why? Because in their humanness they can't know it. Verse 11, for what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. If a man does not have the indwelling Spirit, he can't know anything about God.
Oh, he may think he knows some things, may try to figure some things out, but he can't really truly know, not in the sense of knowing and living out that truth in life. But verse 12 says, now we have received not the spirit of the world. The spirit of the world is just the idea that human reason, it's a paraphrase for human reason. We don't depend on human reason, but the Spirit of God.
And because of Him we know the things that are freely given to us by God. Then verse 14 sums it up. The natural man, now mark this, understandeth not or receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness unto Him, neither can He...what?
Know them for they're spiritually discerned. If you're not a believer, you cannot really perceive with understanding and result the truth of the Word of God. It is the same and the analogy of verse 11, a man cannot know anything about himself unless he knows it in his spirit.
In other words, his body can't know. Illustration, a dead body doesn't know anything because it has no spirit. A man without the Spirit of God is like a physically dead body.
He can't know anything either. That's what spiritual death is, the absence of the knowledge of God because of the absence of the Spirit of God. And so without knowing Christ, you can't know the Bible.
And that's what's so sad about the cults and all, they come along and they figure out these elaborate concoctions of supposed theology and because they don't even know God to begin with because they deny Jesus Christ, they are hopelessly muddled and the confusion just is added upon confusion. The truth is only available to those who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ. Before you ask how a certain scripture passage applies to your life, you need to settle the question, am I a Christian? Critical truth from John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current series here on Grace to You is titled How to Study the Bible. Now going back to something John said before the message, remember, it's the financial support of listeners like you who benefit from Grace to You that keeps this broadcast on the air in your area and beyond.
To partner with us, contact us today. You can express your support when you call 855-GRACE or when you visit our website, gty.org. And thanks for remembering how important this time of year is for us financially.
Typically about a quarter of our budget is met by the gifts we receive these last few weeks of the year. So to send us into 2025 on strong financial footing, call us weekdays from 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time at 855-GRACE or you can make a donation online anytime at gty.org. Or you can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. And remember, you can download John's current study, How to Study the Bible in MP3 and transcript format. The study is free of charge along with 3,600 other sermons from John at our website, gty.org. So start downloading today our web address one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378 and then be here Monday for more practical teaching on how to study the Bible when John returns with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
