Studying the Manual - Part 2

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Please make your donation today at vision.org.au. When you read the Bible, is it from a sense of obligation? Is it like a ritual? Or is it because you know that reading God's Word will do great things in your life? Today on Turning Point, Dr David Jeremiah shares some crystal clear examples of the Bible's power in the life of the believer. From The Life God Blesses His David, to introduce the conclusion of his message, Studying the Manual. And thank you for joining us today.

If you know anything at all about Turning Point and David Jeremiah, you know that our main connection and commitment is the Word of God. People ask me why I do what I do, and I tell them I don't know how to do anything else. This is what I've been doing all my life for 50 years. Plus, I have been teaching this incredible book every day on the radio, every weekend in a church, and in arenas all over the country and around the world.

And I have to tell you, I couldn't have been asked to do something more exciting and thrilling with my life. Today we're going to finish up our discussion of Studying the Manual. That's about the Bible, the manual for life. This is a series called The Life God Blesses, and certainly at the core of it is that principle.

Right now, let's jump into the last part of this discussion. It's called Studying the Manual. How many of you know that it's learning how to deal with the issues of life, and when you make a mistake, you come back to the Word of God and it shows you how to get back on the path? And let me just tell you something. Don't stay gone very long. Because what happens is if you take a little detour and you don't get back to the Word of God, pretty soon the detour becomes two years. Sin will keep you from the Word of God or the Word of God will keep you from sin. Even when you're not doing everything you know is right, stay in this book because that's the best chance you have to keep growing and moving forward. The Word of God will produce spiritual growth in your life. That's why you ought to read it. When you don't read it, you can't grow.

You become stagnant in your spiritual walk with the Lord. Secondly, the Word of God will provide cleansing for your life. How many of you know that we all live in a toxic world? You know, when I got sick, I got all kinds of stuff from people all over the country telling me how to get well. And all of it's good. I just wish I had time to read it all. I mean, I could be the most healthy person in the world if I could read all this literature everybody sends me.

But one of the things I got were two books and they were that thick. And one of them had in it all of the toxic things that are in our culture that can affect you. And the other had all of the things that you do to take care of all those toxic things.

Well, I looked at those two books and they were thick. I didn't have time to find out everything that was toxic because I looked in it and everything's toxic. How many of you know that toxicity isn't limited to the physical realm? How many of you know that we live in a spiritually toxic world where everywhere you look, there's some kind of toxicity that's chipping away at the things that you believe and the things that you hold dear? That's what our culture is all about. Our culture, little by little, wears away at the things we hold dear.

One man, one woman, married, living together without any outside relationships. That's what God's Word says, but the culture is toxic against that. You say, how do I deal with that, Pastor? You've got to take the Word of God into your heart and let it cleanse your life. Because the Word of God is like spiritual dialysis. You know, I don't need to be railing against that stuff.

I hardly ever talk about it. What I need to do is replace it with God's truth. And when I do that regularly, daily, it cleanses my life.

Do you see what God's Word will do for you? It cleanses your life. It keeps you clean. The renewing of your mind, says Paul in Romans 12. It will produce spiritual growth. It will provide cleansing for your life.

Listen to this one. It'll keep you from sin. It'll prevent you from sinning. You say, you mean I can go through this whole year and not sin?

Probably not. But I'll tell you one thing. If you get in the Word of God, you won't sin as much as you would if you didn't. Why does it keep you from sinning? Well, listen to what David said in Psalm 119, verse 11. You know this verse, don't you? Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119, verse 133 is a great verse. Direct my steps by your word and let no iniquity have dominion over me. Psalm 37, 31 says the law of his God is in his heart and none of his steps shall slide.

I love that verse. You say, Pastor, how does God's Word keep me from sinning? I promise you, if you commit yourself to spending some time in this book every day, it will rearrange some things in your life. It may not do it the first day or the second day, but little by little, God's Word will start to change your priorities, change the way you think. And you know what one guy said to me?

It makes you just downright uncomfortable at some things in your life. When you begin to look into the Word of God, it will steer you away from the path of sin and toward the path of righteousness. God's Word will prevent you from getting involved in a life of sin.

Here's another one. God's Word will protect you from Satan. Now, I know some of you don't even believe in him, but let me tell you something. It doesn't matter. He's real anyway. Can I get a witness?

Amen. Some of you think, well, I don't believe in Satan, and you feel like because you don't believe in him, that makes him not there. That didn't work.

You can't do that. Satan is real whether you believe him or not, and the Bible says he goes around like a roaring lion trying to devour us. What does that mean? That means he's trying to drown our influence. He's trying to take us out of our game. He's trying to keep us from being effective. He's trying to make us look foolish in the eyes of the world and of the church. He's trying to undercut everything we believe in. Satan's desire is to do everything he can to destroy your effectiveness for God.

You say, how in the world do I compete, and how do I go to war with him? Well, let me tell you what Jesus did. Satan took him out one on one, and he began to tempt the Lord. He tried to get him to make bread out of stones. He tried to get him to bow down and worship him. He tried to get him to jump down off of the temple and show that he would be caught by the angels. You know what the Lord Jesus did?

Listen to this. Matthew chapter 4 verse 4. As soon as Satan tempted him the first time, Jesus answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

What did Jesus do? He used the almighty word to combat the enemy. Satan wouldn't give up. He came back to him the second time. When he came back to him in Matthew chapter 4 verse 7, Jesus said to him, It is written again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God.

Satan said, All right, I'll try another approach. He came back to him again, and this time in Matthew 4-10, Jesus said, Away with you, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. What was the Lord Jesus doing?

He was doing what every Christian ought to do. He used the word of God to defeat the enemy. And for those of you who think you might get stuck early on in your reading through the word of God, let me just encourage you that every one of his quotations came out of the book of Deuteronomy. So when you get to Deuteronomy, just remember, there's some good stuff in there because Jesus used it to deal with the enemy. When Paul was telling the Ephesian believers about the armor of the believer, he said, Put on the whole armor of God, that you might be able to stand against the evil one. He went through this whole list of armor that they were to put on, and there was only one offensive weapon.

You know what that was? The sword of the Spirit, which is what, class? The word of God. If you're going to be effective against the enemy of your soul, you've got to know the word of God. You've got to be into the word of God. If some of you are getting victimized all the time, Satan just seems to have his way with you.

Maybe one of the things that's missing in your life is a solid grasp of God's truth and some time spent letting God's word filter into your heart. It will protect you from Satan. Now, those are some kind of defensive things.

Let me give you some offensive and encouraging things. It will not only produce spiritual growth, it will not only protect you from sin and from Satan and cleanse your life, but here, listen to this, it will protect you from discouragement. You know, the Bible says that we're to lay aside every besetting sin. You know what a besetting sin is? It's kind of Satan's way he gets to you. Most of us, if we're honest, we know how Satan can get to us, and I've learned over the years that one of the things Satan can do if I'm not careful, he can get to me through discouragement. That might surprise you, because I'm a pretty upbeat guy, but, you know, sometimes the crest of the wave determines the depth of the trough that comes behind it, and there's a certain way of ministry that gives itself to the propensity to be discouraged.

Satan knows that he can do that. What do I do when that happens? Well, I used to call my pastor buddies, and I found out most of them were more discouraged than I was. I don't do that anymore. I get in the Word of God. And I found out that the Word of God is the greatest thing you can appeal to in times of discouragement. Do you know there were two disciples who left Jerusalem after the crucifixion? They were so depressed because they thought everything was all over. They were really down, and Christ had died, and they didn't even know he'd been resurrected.

And they were walking toward Emmaus, and they were talking about how hopeless everything was, and they were sad about all that was going on around them. You know, discouragement is always worse when you walk away from the cross and from the open grave. When you start putting that behind you and not walking toward it but away from it, you can get discouraged, and then they did one other thing.

They started talking to each other about how discouraged they were. How many of you know that when you get discouraged, you don't need to get with somebody else who's discouraged and share your discouragements? You know, my wife and I have this thing about how we don't ever want to get discouraged at the same time. You know, we just made this commitment. We're not going to do that. I'm going to never get discouraged when she isn't.

She's never going to get discouraged when I am, because we need each other to kind of pick each other up. And then the Bible says they're walking toward Emmaus all down in the mouth and discouraged, telling each other how bad everything was, and there's no hope, and all of a sudden they heard an exposition by the greatest of all preachers. The Lord Jesus joined them, and the Scripture says in Luke 24, 32, and they said one to another, listen to this, did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us on the road and while he opened the Scriptures to us? How did they get out of their discouragement? The Lord Jesus came along, and he just opened the Word of God.

And you know what? I don't know how he knows, but when I'm in a plan to read the Bible, God seems to know where I'm supposed to be in that plan on the day when I need the Word that he gives me for that particular time. Just uncanny. You know, when you don't have a plan, everything is sort of up in the air, but when you have a plan and you get in the Word of God, sometimes I'll call Don and I'll say, honey, did you read this today in our little devotional thing we're reading? It just seems like the most perfect thing for what God wants to say to us. If you want to defeat discouragement, my friend, you got to be in the Word of God. If you want to try it your own way, have at it, but God has a better plan.

Let me give you another one. It will protect you from discouragement. Number six, if you get into the Word of God, it will promote success in whatever you do. Now you say, now wait a minute, pastor, you're just overselling a little bit here. You know, I can get with the other things. They're all kind of spiritual, but this sounds like positive motivational stuff.

This is way beyond positive motivation. Listen to what I said. If you stay in the Word of God, you can be successful in whatever you do. You say, that doesn't sound like something that would come from the Bible.

Well, don't take my word for it. I want you to read out loud with me Psalm 1, verses one through three. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. That brings forth its fruit, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. Say that last phrase.

And whatever he does shall prosper. See, I didn't say that. God said that. You say, now wait a minute. I know some people that read the Bible all the time and they're failing miserably.

Well, wait just a minute now. It's not enough just to read it. You got to do what it says. And the context of success is the context which God puts around it. I want to just say to you this way. A person who spends time in the Word of God is going to be a better father and a better mother at home. And, my friend, that's where success starts. It doesn't start out there in the world.

It starts at home where life is really lived. A young person who spends time in the Word of God is going to find that he has a greater interest in his studies and a greater interest in his testimony. A person who's in the world of business, who spends time mining the truth of this Word of God, is going to make better decisions.

He's going to live his life with integrity. And how many of you know that while you can get to the top quickly by denying everything that's right, you don't get there and stay there very long unless you walk the road that's built around the character of the person? My friend, the person who stays in the Word of God and walks with God will find that success will be a lasting value in his life, and it will stay with him wherever he goes. When the Lord was trying to encourage Joshua, Joshua, I'm going to give you an assignment that will be bigger than anything you've ever done.

Take these unhappy, murmuring Jewish people who don't even want to go in the Promised Land and take them in there. And then God said to them, here's how you're going to do it, and here's how you're going to succeed. Joshua chapter 1, verse 8. This book of the law, Joshua, shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

What was he saying? Joshua, let me tell you something. Here's how you do your job. Get in the Word of God and meditate on it every day.

Don't turn from the right or the left. Do whatever it says, and when you do, you'll be successful. And I think the Word of the Lord to Joshua is the Word of the Lord to every one of us. My friend, if you want to succeed in life, you've got to spend some time in this book because God is the author of success. He didn't put you on this planet to fail. He put you on this planet to succeed, and he'll tell you how to do it if you'll just read the instructions. I think about Joseph, who was put down in Egypt in a foreign land, and he had the Word of God in his heart. You know what it says about Joseph in Genesis 39?

Listen to this. And his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand. Did you know that God can do that for you? My friend, if you don't have time for God in your plans, you're going to fall short.

But you put God in the midst of it, and you watch what he does. He will make you prosper in whatever you do. And then, just quickly, it will prepare you for powerful praying.

Listen to this. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it will be done for you. You say, does that mean I can ask God for anything and he'll give it to me?

Listen to the text. If you abide in him and his words abide in you, you will ask anything you desire, and he will give it to you. You say, well, what is the context here, pastor?

Context is real simple. If you're in the Word and the Word's in you, you're not going to ask for some crazy, stupid thing. If you got from this that you can just go to God and he's your heavenly bellhop, and you're going to say, God, this is what I need.

Here's my list. That's not what the Word of God says. But it says when you're in the book and the book is in you, you will know what to ask for.

You ask for the right things and God will give them to you, and you will have a sense of power and adventure in your prayer life. Finally, and I saved it till last, if you are in the Word of God, it will prepare you and point the way to salvation. Now, everything I've said up to this point is for all of us who've already put our trust in the Lord. We've asked Christ to come into our heart, but I know that every time I preach, there's probably a dozen people just sort of checking things out and see what's going on. And you can't look back in your life and ever remember that there was a point in time when you asked Christ to come into your heart.

Let me tell you what you need to do. If you're not ready to make that decision yet, you need to start reading the Word of God. Now, you need to let God point you to salvation through his Word.

Now, I need to tell you something. The only thing you're really going to understand as an unbeliever when you begin to read the Word of God is that you need God. Some of the rest of it won't make a lot of sense. How many of you know that the natural man doesn't understand the Word of God? He reads it, and it doesn't make any sense to him. It's like the guy I told you about who read the Word of God and went to his preacher, and he said, you know, I can't understand this.

It doesn't make any sense to me. Then he got saved. He accepted Christ as his Savior, and he came back and told the preacher somebody rewrote the Bible. You know, that's the way it looks when you study the Word of God. But listen to what the Bible says. Paul was writing to young Timothy and reminding him of his heritage, and he said to him in 2 Timothy 3, 14, and 15, but you must continue in the things which you have learned and be assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and watch this, and that from childhood you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation.

Listen to me, parents. How do you get your children into the faith? You saturate them with the Word of God because the Word of God is what makes them wise into salvation.

I love it when these little children come up and tell me the memory verses they've learned in Sunday school, in daily vacation Bible school, in children's church. Our teachers are taught to put the Word of God in their heart because it's the Word of God that makes us wise into salvation. The best book to read if you're not a Christian is the Gospel According to John because in that book you will see the Gospel almost every chapter presented, and when you get to the end of the book you will find that the writer says in John chapter 20, as he gives the purpose of it, he says, these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

What does it say? The Bible has been written so that you can read it and believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing that you have eternal life. If you haven't believed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, you haven't got eternal life, and you say, well, I'm not ready to believe that yet. Well, get in the Word of God and start reading it.

Maybe God will speak to you straight from his book and give you the faith to believe that you don't have currently. 1 Peter tells us that the Word of God is the incorruptible seed which lives and abides forever. It is God's Word. My friend, if you're not a Christian, if you've never trusted Christ, you need to take the Word of God at face value.

Here's what it says. The Word of God says that God loves you, that he sent Christ into this world to be your savior, that he went to the cross and hung there between two thieves, paying the penalty for the sin of the whole world, which he alone could pay because he was God in a body, and he paid that penalty for you and for me and for everyone. And he asks only that we come to him by faith and accept him into our lives and receive him into our being and accept what he did in the cross as our only hope of heaven and say, in essence, Lord God, I bet eternity on Jesus Christ and what he did for me. And until we do that, we're still outside the kingdom.

We may be moving toward the kingdom, but we're not in the kingdom. My friend, that's what the Word of God says. That's why the Bible says God's Word is able to make you wise unto salvation.

When you read the truth of the Word of God, you find out what must I do to be saved. You don't have to go to church. That's what some people will tell you. You don't have to clean up your life.

That's what some will tell you. You don't have to try to be a better person or do kinds of philanthropic things. What you have to do is what the Word of God says. You have to believe that God loves you and that Christ died for you, and you have to ask him to come into your life and be your Savior. Amen.

That's where it starts, and that's what the manual's all about. It's to lead you to faith in Christ, and if you haven't arrived yet, let me tell you, all you have to do is, wherever you are right now, just bow your head, tell the Lord that you know you're a sinner, that you have failed in your life, as we all have. The Bible says we have all come short of the glory of God. The standard is really high, and we all fail, but when we announce to ourselves and to God that we understand that we need him to come in and help us and forgive us, he does. He sends his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, send him, first of all, to the cross, and then he sends him into our hearts so that we can be forgiven and know for certain that we're on our way to heaven. So, if you haven't done that, pray that prayer right now and thank God for his love for you, and you can begin a life that God will bless. Tomorrow here on Turning Point, we're going to talk about obeying the Father, how to find your way in this life worth living, this life God blesses. It begins with an obedient heart to the instructions of the Lord.

We'll see you right here tomorrow. Our message today originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the Senior Pastor. Would you like to tell us how Turning Point ministers to you?

Please write to us, Turning Point Post Office Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Or visit our website at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. Ask for your copy of Jack Countryman's new book, God's Blessings, just for you. It features 100 inspirational readings and reflections, and it's yours for a gift of any amount. And if you still haven't requested David's new daily devotional for 2021, Strength for Today, there are still copies available. It's a great way to get a dose of biblical truth every day. Ask for your copy when you visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series, The Life God Blesses. That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au