Who Can Study the Bible? B

If a man does not have the indwelling spirit, he can't know anything about God. Oh, he may think he knows some things. He 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. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You'd never want to discourage a person from reading the Bible, especially a non-Christian. Still, the Holy Spirit must open your eyes. You need to be saved to understand Scripture and to apply its truth to your life. Even then, there are some things you need to know if you want to get all you can from God's Word. Today, John MacArthur is going to show you the skills you need to cultivate to study Scripture effectively. And if you're already a serious Bible student, this series can help you become even more proficient and propel you to greater growth in the Word. So follow along as John shows you how to study the Bible. Who can study the Bible? 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? Lots of people purport to understand it. They come and knock on your door and tell you they'll explain it to you. Who can understand the Bible?

What other requirements? 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, 1 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 in 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.

He 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. And 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. Martin Luther said, Man is like a pillar of salt. He's like Lot's wife.

He's like a log or a stone. He's like a lifeless statue which uses neither eyes nor mouth, neither sense nor heart until that man is converted and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. And until that happens, man will never know God's truth. And so I just encourage you that the bottom line on knowing the Bible is that you know God through Jesus Christ. You say, I thought you were going to tell us how to study the Bible. This is just preaching. Listen, I'm going to tell you that tonight, but I want you to know what I said earlier.

If you don't...if you don't understand the requirements, the method doesn't mean anything. This is basic. The believing heart will understand. You know, this is brought home by the words of our Lord as profoundly as anywhere in the Bible. In John 8 He says in verse 44 to the Pharisees, He says, You are of your father, the devil. And then He makes an incredible statement to them. He says, The devil speaks lies. And then He says in verse 45, this is something, Because I tell you the truth, you believe Me not.

Amazing. In other words, the reason you don't believe Me is because I'm telling you the truth and that is something you can't perceive. Now that is the state of an unregenerate man. That is the condition of an unbeliever. You tell them the truth and they don't receive it because it is the truth and they can't perceive it. There's a second principle. In order to study the Bible, you must be diligent. Not only born again, but diligent...diligent. And this is a great thought, to be diligent. You can't study the Scripture in a haphazard way.

There's got to be a commitment to it. Let me show you what I mean in Acts chapter 17...Acts chapter 17. You remember the Apostle Paul was moving around in his ministry to the Gentiles. He had been in Thessalonica proceeding from there south to Berea. It says in verse 10 of Acts 17, And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming there went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind.

Now this is great. Boy, here are some open minds. This is the group that's in that little gap in the middle. They want to know and their minds are open and they're ready to receive it. And they search the Scriptures daily whether those things were so, therefore many of them believed. They were more noble than the rest because they were diligent in their study. I believe they were true Old Testament saints.

I believe they knew God under the terms of the Old Testament. And now their hearts were cracked wide open when the gospel came in their openness to receive and they searched diligently. By the way, the term for search is a judicial term meaning an investigation.

They really got into it and investigated to see if it was true. Beloved, you can't study the Bible in a haphazard manner. In 2 Timothy 2, 15 it says, Be diligent and it uses a tremendously strong word. Be diligent to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Listen, you need to be diligent in your Bible study.

Why? So that you can rightly divide it because if you don't, you'll have something to be ashamed about and you will not be approved. Oh, that word approved is a great word, dakamos, proven, tested, shown to be of high quality. A high quality Christian, an approved Christian who has no flaws for which he will be ashamed is one who is diligent to study the Word of God, to cut it straight. The word rightly dividing is to literally cut it straight. Paul was making tents and that was a word he used because he used to make tents out of goatskin and he'd cut the hides to fit together. He didn't make one tent out of one goat.

There was no super goat. So you had to cut little goats and fit them together, see? And they fit all those pieces together and the diligent part of what Paul is saying is you have to cut straight every portion of the Scripture or the whole doesn't come together. You can't make a dress, ladies, when you sew unless every part is right.

And in theological terms we would say you can't be a theologian unless you're an exegete. You can't make sense out of the whole unless you know what to do with the parts. And so you must deal with the Word of God cutting every portion straight and then fitting the whole together. And that takes work.

As I told you before, G. Campbell Morgan said, 95% of inspiration is perspiration. It's work. In 1 Timothy chapter 5 the Bible indicates this as it writes about elders. It says, "'Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who work hard in the Word.'" And it uses kopoiao which is a Greek verb meaning to work to the point of sweat and exhaustion. Oh, it says, "'Honor those elders who work hard in the Scripture.'"

It's labor. There's got to be a commitment to diligence, hard work, searching the Scriptures. And so to begin with, if you're going to be a Bible student, if you're going to learn the Scriptures and make it in your own life a personal commitment, first you have to be born again and know Jesus Christ so you have the resident Spirit to teach you. Secondly, you must be diligent. Thirdly, and maybe this should even be the apex of our thoughts, you must have a great desire. Desire. It isn't going to happen by accident.

In fact, nothing ever happens by accident. Certainly not becoming a good Bible student. You've got to want it. 1 Peter 2, 2, As babes desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow thereby, a baby desires one thing, milk. That's all.

That's the only thing a baby desires. It doesn't care about anything else. It doesn't care what color the curtains are, the carpet. It doesn't care whether you're in one room or another. It doesn't care what color the booties are or the nightgown. It could care less about anything.

You can do anything you want around the house. That baby doesn't care what kind of car you buy. The baby doesn't care anything about what you eat. The baby wants milk. That's it. Give them the milk.

Deal with the consequences. That's the whole deal. A baby has single-mindedness and that's what Peter is saying. He's saying, like a baby desires milk and only milk and is consumed by milk, so should your hunger be for the Word. And, you know, people sometimes, you know, ask me why we study the Bible and I don't know where I got this, but somewhere along the line God has given me a hunger to know His Word. Very often a pastor will say, you know, your church has grown from Bible teaching. I'd like to do that and build a church. But what they really want to do is use Bible teaching as a way to build a church rather than as a fulfillment of their own hunger.

And it doesn't work as a gimmick. You've got to have the hunger for the Word. I love what it says in Proverbs 2. Proverbs 2 and verse 4, it says, seek for her as for silver. Can you imagine how hard people work to find silver, find gold?

That's the way you ought to seek for the knowledge of God's Word. I think Job has the most marvelous speech on this in the 28th chapter of Job. He gives this tremendous speech on mining and then he applies it to the Word. Listen, surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they refine it. Now Job's going to talk about how men work for gold and silver.

Now iron is taken out of the earth and bronze is smelted out of the stone. And he says, boy, men will go to all lengths to do mining. They'll set an end to darkness, search out all perfection, the stones of darkness and the shadow of death. He says they'll burrow into the earth like a bunch of moles, into pitch black darkness. They'll get themselves surrounded by very dangerous situations.

They'll do anything to find the stuff. The flood breaks out from the inhabitant, even the water is forgotten by the foot. They are dried up.

They are gone away from men. The idea here is of changing the configuration of the earth and mining and digging it all out. They literally, verse 9, overturn the mountains by the roots. They dig so deeply.

They change the configuration of the earth. They go places, verse 7, where no bird has ever been, where no animals have ever gone. Lion's whelps have never tread there, in verse 8, and the fierce lion never passed it by. They cut rivers among the rocks and they dam up other places, in verse 11. They dig and find precious metal. Just think about that in our society. We dig and hunt and go to tremendous extremes to buy gold and silver to hang on our fingers and our arms and our necks and our ears and all kinds of stuff like that.

It's a tremendous expense involved and we mine and dig for other precious metals and all the different things and we go to those lengths. And yet with all of the advancement, all the technology, all the luxury, all the gold, silver, metal, everything we've got, the one thing we don't have is any wisdom. And that's exactly where Job is going and he brings it up very clearly in verse 12. But where shall wisdom be found? Man is so good at digging everything else up, where is he going to find wisdom? And where is the place of understanding?

Where can you mine understanding? And the depth says it's not in me and the sea says it's not in me. And you can't buy it for gold and you can't get it for silver and it can't be valued with the gold of Ophir or the precious onyx or the sapphire, the gold and the crystal can't equal it and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or pearls for the price is higher than even rubies. And he goes on and on.

It just isn't available. In other words, what he's saying is in man's earth and in man's concourse and in man's economy, wisdom is not found. But the implication of what is being said in Proverbs that man is a fool who spends such energy to find metal and spends none to find truth. God help us to seek for wisdom in His Word as men seek for precious metal. Do you have a desire for His Word? Do you have an overwhelming passion for His Word?

Job 23, 12, I love this verse. He said, I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. If it came down to working for my food or studying His Word, it would be His Word. If it came down to eating or feeding on the Word, it would be His Word, for I treasure that above anything else. That's the kind of hunger the psalmist must have been referring to when he said, Do you know how I love thy law?

He said in Psalm 19, sweeter to me than honey in the honeycomb is the truth. So there must be a great desire, people. You say, well, I don't have that desire.

How do you get that desire? Well, I think all of these things that I'm going to mention to you come together and you don't really have them in a vacuum. If you're just born again, that's only the first requirement. If you're born again and diligent, that's just the first two. If you're born again, diligent and you have a desire, that's just three and there aren't even more.

I think they all come together and where you're weak in one, it'll be strengthened by another. So let's go to the fourth and we'll just go through these last two very briefly. Fourth is holiness. I feel in order to study the Word of God, there must be holiness.

You say, well, where do you get that? Well, let me show you two verses and that's all just very briefly. I want you to get it, 1 Peter 2, 1. And I mentioned verse 2, but I want to mention 1 in connection with it. Wherefore...listen to now...laying aside all malice... Now the word malice is kakia in the Greek.

It means evil, general evil. Put away all evil, all deceit, all hypocrisy, all envy and all evil speaking. In other words, clean up your act.

Holiness, righteousness. Get your life pure and then desire the milk of the Word that you may grow. If the desire isn't there, you better back up to verse 1.

You see why I say you have to take them all? You're not going to get a desire in a vacuum. If you're born again and if you're holy and righteous, that is, you're dealing with sin in your life, confessing it and living a pure life before God, out of that born again reality, out of the holiness of your life will grow the diligent desire to study. But you can't have one another in a vacuum. Now I want you to look at James 1.21 because it says the same thing.

Listen to this. It says at the end of verse 21, Receive with meekness the engrafted Word. Receive with humility the Word.

That's a great thought. Receive with meekness the Word. But you can't do that unless you go to the first part of the verse. Wherefore put away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness and then receive with meekness the engrafted Word. The Word, you see, cannot do its work in a sinful life. For it is not a conceptual thing, it is a living reality.

It isn't just thought, it's life. And so what is the Word of God saying to us? Who can study the Bible? Someone who's born again. Someone who's willing to be diligent and search the Scripture.

Someone who has a strong and hungering desire for it. A desire that is born out of holiness, righteousness. And fifth, in order to study the Word of God effectively, it must be Spirit-controlled.

Spirit-controlled. I've been reading a book written by a secular writer about a well-known religious personality. And as I've been wading through the book and he's been talking and evaluating and criticizing and making tremendous statements about this man and other parts of his ministry, it's been interesting to me as I've gone through the book, I've had more of an urge, I think, in this book than any other in a long time to want to talk to the author.

If I could just sit down with him and say, Now what do you mean by this? Or how do you know this is true? Or how do you support this?

Or where is the basis of this statement? I've just wanted so much to talk with him and in thinking about that, I've thought of how wonderful it is to study the Scripture and know that I not only have the page in my hand, but I have the author in my heart because the Spirit of God is the teacher. Look at 1 John 2.20. 1 John 2.20 says, But you have an unction from the Holy One and you know all things. Now it just stated itself that verse doesn't maybe make a lot of sense, but what's going on here is John's talking about false teachers, antichrists. They thought they knew everything and they said, We know because we have an anointing.

That was their little phrase. We know because we have an anointing. We have a special anointing that elevates us above everybody else.

And John is saying to the Christian, Hey, you're the one with the unction. You're the one with the anointing. You have an anointing, not some fantasy mystical anointing. You have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things. Over in verse 27, he elucidates on the same thought. But the anointing which you have received of Him abides in you. Whatever this anointing is, it lives in us.

And who is it? It's the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God living in us so that we don't need human teachers because He teaches us. And what it's saying there is that we don't need teachers teaching human wisdom.

Why? We have an anointing, the Spirit of God. And so, beloved, it's obvious then that we need to be born again, diligent, have a strong desire, live a holy life and be Spirit-filled, Spirit-controlled because the Spirit is the one who teaches and applies the Word of God. There's one other thing and I close. All of this has to come together in an atmosphere of prayer. You want to put down a sixth, that's it.

And yet it isn't a sixth. You could draw a circle around the five and it encompasses all, prayer. I believe that our Bible study must be born out of prayer. So many times I pray the simple prayer, Lord, as I approach Your Word, show me Your truth, teach me what I must know.

I would never approach the Scripture without seeking God in prayer. And so says Ephesians 1, Paul says, I pray for you. What do you pray, Paul? That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know. Listen, Paul says, I'm praying for you. What are you praying for, Paul? That you'll know, that your eyes will be opened, that you'll understand, that you'll see the truth. If Paul prayed for us to understand God's Word, then we are well instructed to pray as well. Who can study the Bible?

Listen, you've got to be the right who or the how won't matter. Are you born again? Do you have a strong desire in your heart? Are you diligent, holy, spirit controlled, prayerful? If you are, you can open the pages of this book and God will open His truths to your heart.

You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary in the Los Angeles area. Today's lesson is part of his foundational series titled How to Study the Bible. John, that hunger for the Word of God that you talked about today, I think every Christian will admit to times when that hunger is less than it should be.

And when that happens, what should a believer do? How do you create an appetite for the Word? It was Peter who wrote, as babies desire milk, a believer should desire the pure milk of the Word. So, a baby desires one thing.

Milk doesn't have a lot of other interest, to be sure. So, this is a kind of command and expectation at the same time. It should be the natural longing of the heart of a believer to seek out the truth of God that's available through Scripture.

This should be where your affection lies. And that's what David said, didn't he, in the psalm. He said, Oh, how I love your law. He talked about how much delight he found in it. And it was sweeter to him than honey in the honeycomb.

It was more valuable to him than gold and much fine gold. So, I think it starts by treasuring the truth of Scripture. And along that line, I'm so thrilled to be able to mention the MacArthur Study Bible, now in the LSB version. The LSB is the Legacy Standard Bible. It's a new translation done by the faculty at the Masters University and Seminary. It is the best of the best translations. It's just an amazing translation, faithful to the original Greek and Hebrew.

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Yes, do. And thank you, John. Friend, for decades, the MacArthur Study Bible has helped people around the world understand, apply, and love God's word more.

And it can do the same for you and your loved ones. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, contact us today. You can call us during our regular business hours.

That's Monday through Friday, 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time. Call us at 800-55-GRACE, or you can order online anytime when you visit our website, gty.org. The MacArthur Study Bible comes in various bindings from hardcover to premium goat skin. And you can choose the New American Standard, New King James, English Standard, or New Legacy Standard text of Scripture. Whichever you pick, we are confident that the MacArthur Study Bible will make a tremendous difference in your understanding and application of God's word.

All of these options are reasonably priced, and keep in mind that with the slowdown of delivery services this time of year, we recommend using our second-day shipping option in order to receive your order in time for Christmas. Again, to order, call 800-55-GRACE, or go to gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. When you're studying scripture, where's the best place to start? For the answer, be here tomorrow as John continues his practical series called How to Study the Bible with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.