Invariably, if I go to make a sermon, I wind up forcing the Bible to fit my sermon, but if I go to try to comprehend a passage, out of the understanding of that passage flows a message to share with you. So a long time ago I gave up trying to make sermons and now I try to understand the Word of God and out of that understanding comes a message. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. There's a story of a pastor who decided to visit one of his church members. It looked like someone was home, but no one answered. So the pastor left this note, Behold, I stood at the door and knocked. Well, the next Sunday, the pastor received a Bible quote from Genesis in reply, I was naked and hid myself.
It's a funny story, but it illustrates a serious point. Taking scripture out of context or twisting its meaning is a mistake that can have serious consequences. John MacArthur helps you avoid that error today on Grace to You, continuing his series titled How to Study the Bible. Now here's John with today's lesson. The Bible is not an open book to just anybody.
It is an open book only to those who come fulfilling certain basic requirements. And we talked about the who of Bible study. Who can really understand the Bible?
We suggested to you six principles really, a five and then a sixth, which was prayer. A person must be born again, must be diligent in his study, have a great desire, must deal with sin in his life so that there's manifest holiness and the filling of the Spirit of God who really is our teacher. And as you've examined your life, if you understand those priorities and are willing to commit yourself to those priorities and bathe all of those in prayer, then you're the person who can understand the Bible.
You're the person to whom God will open the pages of His book and give you the truth. Now I agree that even the unregenerate man may understand a little bit about the history in the Bible. He may understand a few of the words in the Bible, but he'll never have a biblical knowledge in the sense that it works out in his living. He may get some head knowledge by reading and understanding and studying to a certain degree, but it'll never be the real kind of knowledge that the Bible talks about because it never works out in his life. And so what we're talking about is the fact that unless you fit the qualifications, the Bible never comes alive in your living. And so consequently in the Hebrew mind, you never really perceive it at all. You never really understand it until it takes place in your life on a day-to-day basis.
Now, how do we go about it? Number one, how do we really understand the Bible? Point one, read the Bible. Simple enough, read the Bible. This is where Bible study begins with reading and frankly a lot of people never quite get to this point. They nibble, they never really read it. They read a lot about it maybe in books here and there, but they don't really read the Bible. And there is no substitute for reading the Scripture. We must be totally committed to reading it.
That's where it all begins. And my suggestion to people is that you try to read through the Bible once a year. First of all, we'll use the Old Testament. You start with the Old Testament, try to read through it once a year.
There are 39 books and if you read about 20 minutes a day, give or take a few, depending on how rapidly you read, you can usually get through the Old Testament in one year. And I would suggest that as you read the Bible, you mark in the margin a notation where you don't understand what it's talking about. And if you'll do that, you'll find a very interesting thing will happen. You'll start out with a whole lot of things and as time goes on, you can begin to check them off your margin because as you read and reread and as you progress from Genesis to Malachi, you will find an understanding that will become yours and that will answer some of those questions that you had. The ones you don't answer in your reading you can use for individual study and a commentary or another source to get the meaning. But begin by just reading it.
Don't be overwhelmed, oh, how can I learn it all? How can I take care of every verse? Just begin and read through the Old Testament.
And that's my suggestion that you do that every year, at least once a year. Now when you come to the New Testament, I have a different little plan and I've shared this with you, but I'll give it to you again for reading the New Testament. And by the way, I think the major thrust should be to read the New Testament.
I really believe that and it's based upon Scripture. In Colossians, for example, chapter 1 and verse 24, Paul says, verse 25 rather, that he was made a minister according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you to fulfill the Word of God, even the mystery hidden from ages and from generations now made manifest. In other words, Paul says, I'm called by God to give to you the mystery that's been hidden. Now the mystery basically is the New Testament revelation.
And Paul says, I am an apostle of the mystery in Ephesians chapter 3. So that the major thrust of his ministry was the new revelation and he would allude to the Old Testament insofar as it illustrated and elucidated and supported the new. And so the message of the New Testament is the culmination of revelation.
It is that which embodies and engulfs all that is the old and includes all that is the new. And so in a sense, the New Testament will summarize for you the Old Testament as well as lead you further to the fullness of revelation. So when you read the New, you must spend more time, for it explains the old.
And it is because it is written in Greek, a much more complex, perhaps more difficult in many cases to understand, in some not always the case, but in most cases it's a little harder because of its abstractions, because it talks in concepts rather than narrative stories. And so we have to give ourselves to a greater diligence in studying the New Testament. Now here's how I've done it, and I started this when I was in seminary. I started with 1 John, and I decided that I'd read 1 John every day for 30 days.
And that's, I believe, the way to do it. The first day you just read 1 John. And for many people to sat down and read 1 John, when they did that, they found that was the first time they ever read a whole book all the way through. Many people feel the Bible is just a collection of verses. You know, I remember when I was a kid we had a plastic box on our kitchen table with verses stuck in it, our daily bread thing kind of deal, and you could stick them in any order you wanted, it didn't matter.
You could just pull them out, there's a good one, oh there's a terrific verse, and you could just pull them out and throw them up in the air and put them back in any order you wanted. But that's not the way the Bible was written. When a book begins, it begins somewhere, and when it ends, it ends somewhere, and in the meantime it's going there. And most people never read with flow.
You need to learn to read a book. And so you sit down, you read 1 John, it takes you 25 or 30 minutes. The idea is to read it through the first day, second day read it through, third day read it through, fourth day read it through, fifth day read it through. You just sit down and read it. Now about the seventh or eighth day you're going to start saying to yourself, you know, this is getting old, I've got this stuff pretty well under my belt.
But that's the tough part. You push through that and about 15 or 16 days it used to kind of hit me, well I got this stuff, I pushed through a little farther, and I remember when I hit the thirtieth day on 1 John I said, I don't quite understand this book, and I went 90 days before I finished. Ninety days of reading 1 John straight through. Now after 30 days, if you'll just stick with 30, you'll have a tremendous comprehension of that book. Now basically this is what I do all the time as I prepare messages. I just read through and read through and read through until the whole book just falls into my mind in a visual kind of a perception that I see with my mind's eye. Now while I'm doing this, this is a thing I would suggest also. Take a little three by five card and write down the major theme of each chapter, the major theme of each chapter.
Okay? Now as you do that, you just write it on a card. Every day when you read the book, just look at that card and run through that list. And what'll happen is you'll learn the content of chapters. You'll begin to learn what's in chapters. Now you say, I've finished 1 John for 30 days, now where do I go? Now I would suggest you go to a large book in the New Testament. Remember, all the time you're just reading the narrative of the old, just reading it through 20 minutes a day. But now you go to a larger book and I suggest that you go from 1 John to the Gospel of John. You say, but that's 21 chapters.
That's right. So you divide it into three sections. Read the first seven for 30 days, the second seven for 30 days, and the third seven for 30 days. So at the end of those 90 days, you have pretty well read through and mastered the content of the Gospel of John.
And by the way, you've also had a little three-by-five card on the first seven chapters, the second seven and the third seven, because they're 21, and so you've memorized the major theme of each chapter. Now I remember when I started doing this, it was really amazing how fast I began to retain the things in the New Testament. I always wanted to be sure that I didn't wind up a concordance cripple, going around never being able to find anything in the Bible and having to look everything up in the back.
Where is that verse? And so I wanted to learn these things and so I did the Gospel of John after I did 1 John. And you know it, to this day and from when I taught it too, the Gospel of John, 1 John, these other books in the New Testament have stuck in my mind. And this is how you learn, you see. Isaiah says you learn line upon line, line upon line, precept on precept, precept on precept, here a little and there a little. When you're going to study for a test, you don't pick up your book and read through the notes once, shut it and say, I got that.
Not if you're normal, not if you're like me. You learn by repetition, repetition, repetition, that's the way to learn the Bible. And then you might want to go to Philippians and you might want to learn the book of Philippians, another short book. And then you might want to go back to Matthew and then back to Colossians and then back to Acts and divide it up like that and back and forth, a small and a large book. You say, but it's going to take a long time. No, in approximately two and a half years you will have finished the New Testament. That's pretty great. Now you're going to read the Bible anyway, you might as well read it so you can remember it.
Most people say, well I have my daily devotions and I read my passage for the day. And you say to them, well what was it? Let's see. Well what about a couple of three days ago? Hopeless. I can barely remember yesterday.
You can't really retain anything by moving that fast. You must go over it and over it and over it. And if you believe it's a living word, it'll come alive in your life as you read it in a repetitious manner. I think about John Wesley who got up every morning of his life at four o'clock in the morning, get this, and read the Scripture in five different languages so that he might enjoy every possible nuance on the Scripture that he was reading.
And he did it for three hours or so every single morning of his life. I remember when I was in London, I went to his church and a man took us up a little winding staircase into a little tiny room where he went every morning and there lying on the desk were his glasses, little tiny glasses and his little tiny Greek New Testament and a couple of other books, the very ones that John Wesley had spent reading every morning of his life at four o'clock. And I think it's where it all begins in Bible study. Right there. Now some people say, well, should you read it in the same version?
Well, generally, yes. Stick with the same version so you have familiarity. Once in a while I think it's good to stick in another version just to kind of elucidate it.
Now that's a simple method and that's all I'm going to say about it because I think it's pretty obvious. Just flow reading through the Old Testament. You can read from Genesis to Malachi or you can follow some other format that you may have, a little reading schedule or whatever. But in the New Testament, read repetitiously. Now, what question does this answer? Reading the Bible answers this question. What does the Bible say?
And we need to know that. What does the Bible say? Well, in order to find out what it says, you need to read it. And then you'll find out exactly what it says.
Now, I'll tell you another interesting thing that happens, and this is just a footnote. But when you begin to read the Bible, just reading it, just reading it, you will find that your comprehension will increase in an incredible fashion because the Bible explains the Bible. And by the way, I tell people this all the time, God did not write a book to trip you up. This is not a book that's supposed to be some kind of hidden truth. This is not a secret book where you say, ha-ha, God, I discovered what you're trying to say here.
No. You're supposed to, when people say, oh, whatever you do, don't read the book of Revelation. Oh, that book is so confusing. Well, it says in chapter 1 verse 3, happy is the one who reads and they that hear the words of this prophecy.
Not that tough. But I'll tell you one thing, you'll never understand Revelation unless you're reading through Daniel and Isaiah. And Ezekiel. And so as you just flow through, it all begins to come together. And if you will just read the Word of God, it's amazing what production will take place in your life.
All right, second principle. First one is to read the Bible. The second one is to interpret the Bible, to interpret the Bible. Now some people don't interpret the Bible, they just apply it. They go right from reading it to applying it without ever interpreting it. They don't bother to find out what it means.
They just whiz along. Now the first issue, read the Bible, will answer the question, what does the Bible say? The second point, interpret the Bible, answers the question, what does the Bible mean by what it says? We read the Bible, oh, that's wonderful.
It says that. What does it mean by what it says? And we have to interpret. Now you have to interpret the Bible. You can't take the Bible like an aspirant.
It's not a tablet. People always say, well, I had my devotions and I was just reading along and oh, you know, I just decided, well this means... No, you have to know what it means. In Nehemiah chapter 8, Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 1, very interesting. And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the Watergate. And they spoke unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. All right, they're going to bring the book. Get the law of God. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation of men and women and all who could hear with understanding upon the first day of the seventh month. And he read it facing the street that was before the Watergate from morning till midday.
That's where it all begins. You have to read the Bible. He just stood up and read it.
Just read it. And the ears of the people were attentive unto the book of the law. Verse 5, Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people and when he had opened it all the people stood up and Ezra blessed the Lord the great God and all the people answered amen and amen, lift up their hands, bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. In other words, in responding to the reading, they just worshiped the Lord. But then verse 8 is the key. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly.
Then it says, and they gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. So we have to come to what does the Bible mean by what it says? And I really think in many ways that's the key to the growth of Grace Church.
I think people have responded in much many other reasons, but one of the major ones, people have responded to finally finding out what the Bible means by what it says. They've been in the dark for so long and we just kind of cracked the door and you know it isn't that tough to open it because God has given us His Word to understand and His Spirit to be our teacher. In 1 Timothy 4, 13, Paul tells Timothy how to preach. This is what he says, till I come, give attendance or give your attention to reading, exhortation and doctrine. Now you know what he's saying?
Now listen to this. He is saying read the text, doctrine, explain the text, exhortation, apply the text. You don't just read it and apply it, you read it and explain it and apply it. Now that's really what rightly dividing the Word is all about. Misinterpretation is the mother of mania, frankly, of all sorts and kinds. For example, since the patriarchs practiced polygamy, so must we. That's what some are teaching.
Here's another one. Since the Old Testament sanctioned the divine right of the King of Israel, all kings have divine rights. We went through that in the Middle Ages. Since the Old Testament sanctioned the death of witches, we should be killing witches. Because some Old Testament plagues were from God, we should all avoid sanitation so as not to thwart Him.
How about this one? Because the Old Testament teaches that women suffer in childbirth as a divine punishment, no anesthetic should ever be used. Now those are all misinterpretations. Somebody doesn't understand what the Bible is really saying, doesn't understand the situation in which it was written. Now it isn't easy to understand all of this. I remember one man said to me, I'm so sick of trying to figure out the Bible.
He's a Bible teacher. He said, I'm so sick about trying to understand the Bible. He said, I have decided to take everything for everybody. He said, I've tried the dispensational route and I've tried the modified dispensational route and I've tried the covenant theology route and I've just decided to take everything for everybody. I said, then when did you cut the frontlets of your sideburns off?
I said, the Old Testament says the Jews to leave those. Is that for you? I said, when did you offer your last lamb? I say, you don't have any wool and cotton mixed, I hope.
Have you go through ceremonial washings of all the pots in your kitchen before your wife prepares your kosher meal? You can't take everything for everybody. You see, it isn't that simple. There must be interpretation. Now, in accurately handling the word and interpreting the word, there are three errors to be avoided. Three errors to be avoided.
I could have a lot of fun with these. I'll try to restrain myself. Number one, number one, don't make a point at the price of a proper interpretation. Don't make a point at the price of a proper interpretation. In other words, don't make the Bible say what you want it to say. Like the preacher who preached on the fact that women shouldn't have hair on top of their head and his text was, top not come down.
From Matthew 24 where it says, let those on the housetop not come down. That is not what the passage is teaching. And that's a bizarre illustration, of course, comical, but you can approach the Bible like the guy who said, I've already got a sermon, I just have to find a verse for it. I mean, you've already got your preconceived thing, you just want to get some verses to support it. You know, invariably, and this is a confession to invariably, if I go to trying to make a sermon, I wind up forcing the Bible to fit my sermon, but if I go to try to comprehend a passage out of the understanding of that passage flows a message to share with you. So a long time ago I gave up trying to make sermons and now I try to understand the Word of God and out of that understanding comes a message.
You know, you can think of some really great stuff and some fabulous little outlines and some cute little deals to do, but you just have to kind of twist the Bible and kind of fit it in a little bit to make the Bible say what you want it to say. The rabbis at one time, I remember reading in the Talmud, the rabbis at one time decided that they wanted to preach on the message of the fact that their people should care for each other, that there was a social problem, people weren't loving people. And so they said the great story in the Bible that says people should love people is the Tower of Babel and in the Talmud it interprets it this way. It says that the reason God scattered all those people and the reason He confounded all their language was because they had put materials before people.
Now that doesn't make any sense, but this is what they said. As the Tower of Babel was growing taller, it took a hod carrier many hours to carry the load of bricks to the top so that the bricklayers could lay their bricks. If a man fell off the tower on the way down, nobody paid any attention, right? They didn't lose any bricks. But if a guy fell over on the way up, they were furious because they lost their bricks. And that's why God scattered the nations and confounded their language because they were more concerned about bricks than people. Now you know something, you ought to be more concerned about people than bricks, but that is not what the Tower of Babel is saying.
And God did not scatter them because they were more concerned about bricks, but because they were building an idolatrous religious system. I've heard several sermons on 2 Peter 2.20 on how you can lose your salvation. And they go...invariably you'll hear the fellow say, if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. And they'll say, you see right there in that verse, you can escape the pollutions, you can have the knowledge of the Lord and Savior and you can fall and become entangled and your latter end is worse than before you believed. You see, you can lose your salvation.
The thing they forget about is the word they. And if you study the word they at the beginning, you find it's the same they in the whole chapter and it's talking about wells without water, clouds without rain, scabs and spots and blemishes on the love feast and you trace it all the way back to chapter 2 verse 1 and it's talking about false prophets who follow the doctrines of demons. You cannot use the verse for that because that is not its context. In fact, Paul has a word for this when you do this in 2 Corinthians 2.17. He says, we are not like many who corrupt the Word of God. And he uses the word here kapelos. And kapelos basically had to do with selling something. It was basically a word in the marketplace. And it has to do with selling something deceitfully, a product that really isn't what you claim it is, falsifying. And he says there are some who falsify the Word of God.
They corrupt it to fit their own thoughts. You cannot make the Bible illustrate your sermon or your thoughts. So the thing you want to be careful of is that you do not interpret the Bible at the price of its true meaning.
Let it say what it means to say. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, showing you how to unlock the meaning of God's Word. His current series is titled How to Study the Bible here on Grace to You. Now, something we think is important to do regularly, we want to give you a sense of how God is using grace to you in the lives of people like you. And in fact, you have a letter there, John. It's an encouraging story. It's a great reminder of why we do what we do.
So take a minute and share it with us. I'm glad to do that. The letter comes from Brenda, and she writes, My husband pastored a couple of churches in Texas. Beginning in the 1980s, Grace to You was a main source for his expository preaching.
He subscribed to your tape ministry and he used your New Testament commentaries. I grew as a Christian through my own use of those commentaries, as well as from my husband's preaching. Since raising and homeschooling my children, I have been a cancer nurse. Every day when driving to work, I listened to your daily sermons on Grace to You. And I've met countless patients who have needed your teaching.
One patient I had was 30 years old and his cancer was terminal. He'd been raised by Christian parents, but he had rejected Christ. We talked a lot. And during my time with him and his wife, I shared your sermons and particularly those from James 1 on finding joy in trials. He came to know the Lord through these sermons.
After he died, his wife contacted me. During her life, she had not been exposed to Christianity, but she had seen such changes in her dying husband that she too gave her life to Christ. I've shared your sermons with, I don't know how many patients. I could not have had the same ministry as I do without Grace to You. Thank you. Thank you for your faithful studying and preaching. And she signs Brenda.
You know, that is the dream come true. Teaching people so that they can teach others. Teaching folks the Word of God so they can pass it on. God bless you, Brenda.
And I know he does. He rewards those that are faithful. And we are honored to have a small part in equipping you to have an impact on people who are facing death in a cancer environment. Thank you for encouraging us.
God bless you. Thanks, John. And friend, if John's teaching has benefited you as it benefited Brenda, would you please let us know? Your letters encourage John and the whole staff. So when you're able, write a note and send it our way.
Our address is Grace to You, Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or you can send an email to letters at gty.org. And be sure to visit our website, that's gty.org, where you can tap into thousands of Bible study resources that are available to you, including the Grace to You blog, with articles written by John and the Grace to You staff. And as a supplement to the lesson you heard today, look for the series of articles titled How to Study the Bible. Also at gty.org, you can catch episodes of this broadcast that you may have missed.
You can download any of John's 3600 sermons free of charge in audio and transcript format. Our web address again, gty.org. And follow Grace to You on social media.
You'll find us on Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday. Check your local listings for times and be back tomorrow as John shows you five principles that will help you understand Scripture better. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
