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Old Testament scriptures to begin with, and in Psalm one hundred and nineteen, we'll read a few verses about God's word. Psalm one hundred and nineteen, and we shall read verse ninety seven. Oh, how love I li- thy law. It is my meditation all the day. Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precept- precepts.
I have refrained my feet from every evil, that I might keep thy word. I have not departed from thy judgments, for thou hast taught me. How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through thy precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Now please, First Peter chapter uh two. First Peter chapter uh two. Verse one.
wherefore laying aside all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby, if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is great. A word or two about that passage before we proceed with our subject. You will notice, please, at the close of chapter one that these people have been born again. And they have been born again of the incorruptible seed of the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. And it is one of those principles of nature, isn't it?
That a child, an offspring, will turn to its mother for its sustenance after it is born. And if you and I have been born again of the incorruptible seed of the Word of God, that natural outcome of being born again is we turn to the seed of which we have been born in order that we might there find our sustenance. So chapter one is about our new birth. Chapter two, the opening verse, is about the natural consequence of new birth. These words are addressed not to newborn Christians, but to all Christians, realizing that they have been born again.
The Word of God says, as newborn babes, all of us taking ourselves back and remembering that as newborn babes, we have a God-given appetite, desire the spiritual milk that is without guile, that we may grow thereby unto salvation. That means that I should expect, if I have been born again, that within my breast there is a longing for the word of God. I don't know about you, but what it was like with me was this, that I had been reared, of course, in a Christian home, and in that Christian home, honestly, I'd heard hardly, hardly anything else than the word of God from almost when I can first remember.
My folks were always interested in the things of God. Our home was a home where the Lord's servants and the Lord's people constantly came and constantly went. So I knew, I suppose, a considerable amount of God's word before I was saved. Many of you might be like that. What a boon it is to have been reared in a Christian home where they talked about the word of God. But others of you may not have been born in Christian homes, and when you trusted Christ as savior, you were sort of starting off from scratch, with no knowledge of the Word of God at all, really ignorant of divine things.
So I've got to bear those two kinds of people in mind as we look at our subject this evening. But one thing, one principle you must establish is this: when you have trusted Christ as Savior, you must read the Word of God. You must read the Word of God to sustain your spiritual life. You must read the Word of God in order that you might grow. Of course, reading the Word of God will help you to serve. But first of all, it's your food, it's your meat, it's your drink. I remember in those early days sitting by the old smoky fire before I went to school in the morning, when I came home lunchtime, before dinner and after dinner, and in the evening before we went to the meeting, just reading, reading, reading, reading God's word.
Just a authorized version, no reference books, nothing else, just reading and reading and reading God's word. That is absolutely essential in the life of every Christian, just reading and reading God's word. You know, I never was a very good salesman, and the last thing I'm good at selling is Bible books, because, you see, quite frankly, I try to be honest. If somebody say to me, is this a good book? Well, do I sell it as a salesman or be an honest advisor about divine things?
If I sell it as a salesman, I'll trade it up. If I tell the truth, I'll possibly say it's no good at all, don't buy it. So, years ago, when I first came to the office in Kilmarnock, a fellow came in the shop and he got a handful of notes he was only just saying. Good job, a rough character. He said, now I've got all this money. I'm just saved. I want to learn about the Bible. Will you give me books to the value of this? I said, now put it back in your pocket and take it home. Go home and for three months read nothing else but the Word of God. And when you've got a real grasp of the Word of God, then come back to me if you like, and I'll possibly sell you a book of sales.
That was good Christian advice, but bad salesmanship. But now, that's my advice to you this evening. Forget the book shop, please. Forget everything else. And for the first, the four, at the beginning, the first three months at least, and possibly longer of your Christian life, read nothing but the Word of God. When that three months or six months is over, well, please go on reading the Word of God. For the best way to study the Word of God is to keep on reading it. And the first way to get it into your, best way to get it into your mind is, is just keep on reading it.
You see, reading the Bible is like doing lessons or scales or whatever you call them when you're learning music. However advanced you get, you've got to go back to that hackneyed business of running over your scales, haven't you? And however advanced you get in divine things, you've got to keep up this business of progressively reading and reading and reading God's word. And you're not really ready for a real study of the word of God unless you have got the basic facts of God's word, its history, its a- its uh teachings, its doctrine.
You're not really ready to start studying God's word until you've got that really into your mind. So you start reading God's word and you keep it up. Now, how do you read God's word? Well, let me say this. Don't fall out with me, will you? Stick to an authorized version, please. It's the best to read for a beginner. You'll find it to be absolutely reliable. And possibly when all these other versions are just curios on the bookshelf, the dear old authorized version will still be taking on its life. Whatever you do, get a literal translation of the scriptures and stick to it.
All right. I would suggest that you read the New Testament through twice to begin with, and then read from Genesis to the last chapter of Esther, which is the historic section of the Old Testament scriptures, read that through once. Then go back to your New Testament, read it through twice. Go back and read the same passage again in the Old Testament too. Get those things well in your mind. Then maybe you'll read the New Testament twice again. Go back to the Old Testament this time and read it through.
Then, after that, proceed day by day, reading through God's word. You know, your textbook is a very big book, isn't it? Some of you will find you've got a thousand pages. Reading one chapter a day will take you three years to get through that book. If you enjoy sixty years of converted life, you'll have been through it twenty times. And really, that's not many times to go through your main textbook, is it? And that's the book you're dealing with, the Word of God. So you must go on reading, reading, reading, until you've got it all sort of in your mind, the dribbles.
You'll say, when I read it, you know, a lot of it doesn't make sense. Nor did it when I first read it, nor does it today. Well, there's lots of things I come across in God's Word, and I don't know. But you see, the word of God, there's an illustration that goes like this, a dear farmer fellow, and he sent his son, uh, to the pump with a sieve. He told him to bring water in. The fellow did it, and of course the water ran through. And after he tried various times, he went to his father and he said, Father, I can't get any water in this sieve. No, but, says the farmer, the water's cleaned the sieve. It may be that when you read God's word, it's just going to go through you.
So I don't pick up much at all. But I tell you what, the reading of God's word will clean the sieve. Well, you can't read God's word without it giving an impression of the holiness of God and the holy kind of life you ought to live. So keep on reading the word of God, if it's only for merely for its cleansing effect. Then the word of God is like a big jigsaw puzzle. And, uh, when I used to do jigsaw puzzles, I found some pieces were kind of easy to put together. And some bits, especially in the sky, my word, they look all the same color, couldn't make them fit anyway.
So what we used to do was put the bits we couldn't make fit on one side and fit together the easier bits. When you come to God's word and you read the New Testament, you're dealing with the easier bits. When you go to the Old Testament, up to the book of Esther, well, it's all historic, and you're dealing with the easier bits. When you come to the poetic books of the Old Testament and the major and minor prophets, you're getting those bits of the jigsaw that are kind of difficult, and it'll be a long while before you can fit any. But I tell you what it's na- like now after fifty-odd odd years of reading God's word.
Suddenly I'll be reading the minor prophets through, and then something will come to my mind, yes, the same expression is in Chronicles, or the same expression is in some New Testament book. I say to myself, now that's where it fits. Just like you've had the experience with a jigsaw puzzle. You say to yourself, now I need a bit of red and blue here. You say, ah yes, over here. And you go on reading like that, and even though the minor prophets don't seem to make much sense when you first read them, as you go on reading God's word, gradually the bits come together, and they click, and they fit.
But you must go on reading that way. It's line upon line and precept upon precept, and gradually after years, the bits of the book all fit together, and God will unfold to you his word. But you must start in that way of reading and reading and reading. Well, I don't expect you'll stop there all the while, though I do want to ask you young Christians, have you ever started that yet? Remember, one chapter a day will take you three years. I reckon you better get down to about three chapters a day, would you? If you're going to get to know the Bible. Real, honest reading of God's word.
You better make a start of that. The SU notes are all right. You won't get your Bible through your Bible very quick that way, and you won't learn much either. The hand notes, they're all right too. And the little book published by, uh, Precious Seed Folk, that's a gem. But if you only have that, you won't get to know God's word. And you've got to make up your mind that every day you're going to read at least one chapter of the Word of God, preferably three, in order to be able to get a grip of divine truth. Then when you've done that, you'll need to kind of enlarge your tools a wee bit, and you could spread out from the authorized version to the revised version.
And I strongly recommend JND translation. You may have a Newbury Bible, but please don't go around with your Newbury and tell folks, you know, this is the best because it gives you the original. That's a fallacy. It's based upon the authorized version, and so it is basically an authorized version. But when you put all those signs in, it's a Newbury translation. Just like JND and the translators of the other versions I've mentioned, all those dear men did their best to give you in the English language, as well as they could, a literal translation. So don't quote Newbury as though it's the last word, really.
Maybe JND was a greater scholar than Newby, but both of them are reliable, so put those four translations together and get down to God's word now and begin to compare them and read on. You'll get to know God's word. You say, is there nothing that I can add to that? Well, I suppose there's some good booksellers in the meeting this evening, so I bear look out, seeing I've left the trade. But I'm going to tell you this, the number of tools that you need in the study of your Bible is very few. Though I didn't buy many books in my early Christian life, a lot of them were what C. H.
Fergan, Fergan called a waste of good sugar flavor. But once you'd read them through once, you didn't need to read them anymore because, well, they, well, they weren't nice, but they didn't instruct you much in divine things. So what would you add to those few versions that I have mentioned? I think you would have to add now, uh, Greek English, Insalina, New Testament. Bagsters have a good one, and you can still get it. And you add that to those, um, translations that I've mentioned. Somebody's kind to you, you could get a Youngs or Strong's concordance, and you could add to that the other essential in study, Vine's expository dictionary of the New Testament words.
If you want a good, reliable, don't get surprised, you elder brethren, now. Jemisin Fawcett Brown is as good as any of the modern ones, if not better. And with those few, that's only a few tools, isn't it? With only a few tools like them, you can get down to God's word now and begin to examine the meaning of words. Begin to look up in your commentary to see comments made on it, and uh, in that simple way, without many tools, looking up to see what words mean, comparing them where they're mentioned elsewhere, so you just plot at it, getting to know God's word.
I'll deal with methods later on. Whatever method we may arrive at is the best way to study God's word. Remember, please, it'll only do you good if you work at it. No good saying I've got a good method if you don't use it. The only way you'll get to know your book is by working at the word of God. I get it clear? Knowledge of God's Word does not come by kind of going to bed at night and knowing it all in the morning. It's not a sudden illumination. It's not a unfolding vision.
The only way to get to know God's Word is to make up your mind to work at it. Got that, young Christian? You go to school, university, you're studying for a degree, you want to get on in your profession. You know you've got to work at it, and you've got to do precisely the same with God's word. You've got to work at it. That brings us to why so many young Christians and older Christians have failed to get a knowledge of God's word, because they don't work at it. You working at it? Maybe as a student you've got your priorities wrong.
Maybe as a businessman you've got your priorities wrong. And you think that because, well, your profession means LSD and your business means LSD. You must work at that first. And anytime you've got fear for God's word, well, then you can study the Bible, if you can just spare the time. If not, it has to slip, and you've got your priorities wrong. My dear brother, if you're studying for a profession, it may be that you've got to let the opportunity of the top of your profession go and be satisfied with second place, to put the word of God first.
And it may be, my dear brother in business, you've got to let that big order go. If you're employed, you've got to get that, let that possibility of, uh, advancement go, and be prepared to take second and sacrifice financially in order to get to know your book. As you said, we're not prepared to do that in nineteen eighty two. And that's the tragedy. So intent on getting on in this world, so intent on making money, that we excuse our consciences that we must work at those things, and we've got our priorities absolutely wrong, and we don't work at it.
And I say that to rich Northern Ireland. Where the saints are better off in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the British Isles. And you are allowing advancement in this world to rob you of getting down to God's word and getting to know the book. You want to get your priorities. And some of the saints are too lazy to study God's word, aren't they? So a fellow came to me some years ago, and he said, you know, I want to find a way in which I can study God's word and get to know it.
So I told him there's this method, there's that method, there's the other method. Yes, he says, I know there's all these methods, but I can't make myself do it. You know what you did? He went to a Bible school because he said, if I go to a Bible school, well, I'll have to go and study then. Didn't get any place. It only needs that kind of compulsion of a Bible school to make you do your lessons in order you don't get a red face when you're supposed to, to know. Is that all? Oh no. That won't answer your problem. You've got to give yourself a good jolly good shake. You've got to say to yourself, now I want to know God's word, I want to get down to it, really know it.
And you've got to make yourself study God's word and abandon your laziness. Maybe the reason why you don't know God's book is because you've got your priorities wrong, or maybe you're just late. Hm. But if you're going to get to know God's word, you're going to study your Bible, you've got to work at it. The discipline of getting to know your Bible means this, that day by day you will conscientiously read at least a chapter of God's word. The man that led me to Christ said, read fourteen chapters.
Old W. W. Ferry rattled back at him and said fourteen verses would be better. Coming in between, you've got to keep on reading and reading and reading. That's the discipline of reading. Then you've got to be prepared to set pa- set apart so much time. You'll, you'll know how to allocate it, but so much time per week, shall we say, covenant with God, that you'll spend that amount of time on the word of God, and then get at it and keep at it. That's the basis of getting to know God's word.
You know, you can study math, you can study s- study science. You can study all kinds of things, and you'll find that you could be the, uh, biggest profligate out. You could be a blasphemer. You could be all sorts of things. It wouldn't stop you from getting a grip of those things. But when you come to God's word, it's different. To get to know God's word, there's not only to be diligence in studying the scriptures, but there's a moral condition, isn't there? We can learn maths, you know, live in morality.
You can't learn your Bible and live in immorality, can you? There's a moral condition attached to getting to know God's Word. So when I think of the moral conditions, number one, conversion. That's essential, isn't it? Oh, I know an unconverted person can read the word of God and be led to Christ because the spirit of God will operate in the man's heart. Ah, but for our understanding of God's word in all its details, conversion is essential. That's why a lot of the unconverted people are expound God's word make such an awful mess of it, because they're as blind as bat.
When you've got the Spirit of God, you've got the key to it. So moral condition number one for studying God's word is conversion. With that conversion, John will tell you that babes in Christ have an unction from the Holy One. What's that mean? It means that the Spirit of God within you is a divine intuition into the understanding of the book, and a divine preventative to keep you be- from being led away from the truth that is in God's word. And so if you're converted, you've got new birth to begin with, then you've an unction from the Holy One.
On top of that, you have the Spirit of God. Now, if you're at the varsity, you may not be too clever, and some of those fossils that try and teach you may not be too helpful, and, uh, you're not getting on too well, and you pay to get extra tuition. With God's word, you never need to pay to get extra tuition. You know why? The divine author of this book lives in your heart, stands by your side, and better than any teacher leaning over your shoulder, he interprets divine truth for you as you go down the pages of God's word.
Not only that, but the essential of conversion must be coupled with the essential of holy living, mustn't it? I mean, you could go and spend hours in your study, you know, over this book. Converted, yes. But something wrong in your life that's definitely grieving the Lord, and I tell you this book is a closed book. And the only thing this book will tell you on almost every line, it'll tell you your sin, get it right with God. You won't learn a thing until you get it right. Then another essential, along with new birth and holiness, is obedience.
You see, understanding God's word is like climbing a ladder, isn't it? And in divine things, you don't go on rung two before you've been on rung one. You come to this book, the young believer, come to baptism, you say, I'm not, no, I'm not. You won't learn any more in this, out of this book until you get baptized. You come to, uh, assembly fellowship, you say, no, I'm not. You won't do any, learn any more about this book. Ah, but they're not the only things in Christian life, are they? And there'll be many times in your life when you come to this book and the word of God impresses itself upon your heart in the power of the Spirit of God.
Yes, this is something I ought to do to please the Lord. You say, no, Lord, not me. So you won't learn any more out of this book until you do it. So there are the moral conditions, conversion, holiness, obedience, but the advantages that go along with it are the fact that the Spirit of God is there, just to teach you, lead you into all the things. You say, with those few books and just the Spirit of God, is that all you need? Well, you see, I'm talking as an ordinary man. See, I'm not clever. I left school when I was fourteen, not like my clever cousin.
Tried to learn Greek when he started learning Greek. He gave it up because I was no good at it. He politely told me, and I'm sure he was right, that if I didn't intend to make Greek a lifelong study, I might as well pack it in because, well, a little Greek is far more dangerous than no Greek, and so I packed it in. I advise you all to do the same. Nothing appalls me more than to hear men on the platform that can't talk King's English telling me that in the Greek it's sore. No, no, it just won't do. And after all, there's no need for all that learning Greek in the day in which we live. So the Lord blessed the folk to do it, but there are so many books you can get, aren't there, that will tell you what the word means in the Greek.
I don't need to waste my time learning Greek. I can find that all right. But you see, my dear young Christian, this business of learning Greek, I'll tell you something. In our Bible reading on one occasion years ago, we had a lot of young believers. One would come along with this version, one would come along with that version, not to read them in the meeting, but just to turn to as we were going through the passage and to, to try and get the meaning. And so one young brother said, well, Darwin says this. Another one, he said, well, uh, Young's Literal says this. Somebody even dared to say Scofield says that. The young fellow sitting on the front seat says, the Greek says. All the authority of an old graveyard, the Greek says.
You see, he could read about two words in the Greek, and he thought he's a real Greek scholar, as though JND didn't know Greek before. Huh? That's how some folks talk, as though they know a handful of Greeks and... that version, not to read them in the meeting, but just to turn to as we were going through the passage and to to try and get the meaning. And so one grandfather said, well, the Darwin says this. Another one, he said, well, uh, Young's Literal says this. Somebody even dare to say Scofield says that. The young fellow sitting on the front seat says, the Greek says. All the authority of an old graybeist, the Greek says.
You see, he could read about two words in the Greek, and he thought he's a real Greek scholar, as though JND didn't know Greek. Huh? That's how some folk talk, as though they know a handful of Greek, and they're really authoritative. And you know, the difficulty is not being able to translate Greek. If that's all there was, that's easy. Because brain's good enough. It's what Greek? Which Greek? Because there's all those multitude of manuscripts, and you've got to judge which are the most reliable, and that's where the difficulty starts. Now let me take you back to those early days in my Christian life.
As I say, bit of a dud, I couldn't learn a bit. And, uh, I was fourteen when I got saved. And I only had an authorized version when I left. And so I just sat and read my authorized version over and over and over. Then I got a secondhand copy of the revised version I was looking at the other night. Still there, my bookcase, green and faded, back torn, and with that I added to my reading of God's word. Somebody gave me a secondhand copy of J and G, and that was all I had.
All I had. In the house where I lived, we had no heat upstairs. Couldn't afford it. We had no electric light upstairs. Couldn't afford to put it in. I had no desk, no bookshelf, an old marble slab washstand. Ten o'clock at night, two o'clock in the morning. Just an authorized version, revised version, in the plain Greek translation.
And that's how I study God's word. That's all the tools I have. But you see, it's not the tools you've got. It's the fact that you've got the word of God, and you've got the Spirit of God, you've got a good pair of knees, and you know how to pray with those in God's presence. You young believers can learn God's Word. Now, none of you had a start with that. I was ministering God's Word at conferences when I was eighteen and I had very little more in the way of tools than those three books.
And how do you do it? You just stick at it and try, and stick at it and try, and read, and read, and read, and read, and you get to know the word of God. You say, how did you proceed from that? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I, uh, earned in those days six shillings a week. That's thirty p, I think. That's all. Out of that thirty p, I paid twenty fivep fivep, for my kids. Let me five p or a shilling.
Six months for the collection. 6 months left. No, uh, father to ask for. No other source of income. And, uh, saved up those signatures. Until I got five shillings to put in the post, send to either John Riches or Pickering and Inglis in Glasgow. Say, send me this value in money, in books on, say, Romans or Ephesians or Colossians.
And in those days, you could get three book- three books, decent books for that price through the post. And so gradually, I added one book after another to get to know God's word. You say, just how did you get at it? Well, you see, I was in the printing trade. And, uh, I saw in the printing works a big pile of offcuts of thin card like postcard thickness. I managed to take them off the box, and uh, I went home, and with a pile about postcard size of card, I commenced with the Philippian epistle.
The way in which I study today is the same way in which I studied then. So this will be my method for studying God's word. I divided each sheet into two, and I put verse one at the top, verse two halfway down, turned over the page, verse three, verse four, went through it until I'd written out the Philippian epistle just two verses to a page. When taking each of those half pages, I put the revised version about three words at a time, down the side. Then I got my JND, and where JND was any different, I put it in very, very small.
Of course, all this is very small writing, hardly read it myself now, but all in very small writing, what JND says. Then I would look up the main words in Brian's expository dictionary and get the meaning of those main words and write that in. Then carefully examine all that before God, and maybe on an odd scrubber paper, write out what I concluded the verse meant. After I'd done that, not before. After I'd done that, I would turn to whatever expositions I've got, what I could care for present in the meeting, and, uh, go through them and summarize what they had to say about that verse.
If I managed to write up about twelve expositions, I would, uh, find that possibly nine agree, 2 had an alternative, and one had a far out one. Can you scrap the far out one? But sometimes I would take the majority view, and sometimes the view of the two, but I would write them both down in the half page usage of that verse. If I had room, I would put down the reason why I accepted one and rejected the other. Verse by verse, I went through nearly all the New Testament and quite a large part of the Old Testament, slavishly, very long method, very laborious.
But I was sure of this, that when I was reading God's word, I did know technically at least what it meant. When as God began to use me to talk to God's people, I could expound God's word, and broadly speaking, I got the right interpretation of the passage. I never found anybody else that studied the Bible that way, but that's the way I study the Bible. I used to do it, don't know about that ten-minute question. Uh, I used to do it, uh, on those cards, and uh, of course they weren't joined together, it was easy to get them lost.
So I got a loose-leaf binder, the holes in it were the same as a, a loose-leaf Bible. Never had a loose-leaf Bible, though. Anyway, the holes were the same, and I kept my notes in a loose-leaf binder, but then when it came to taking a meeting, I used to take them out and put them in my Bible, forget to put them back again, and the whole thing went awry. You see, I'm a most untidy character. So in the end, I got, uh, these kind of books, you know, just what you use at school. Penny jottas they used to be when I was a boy. I have a pile of them, a colossal pile of them. And I've gone through all those books, writing out verse by verse, books in the Bible, adding to it in the way I said the information I believe.
As I read a magazine or another book and get some extra points, I put them in the, in those places. If I go to a meeting here, a brother speaking on a passage of God's word, and he comes away with something new, well, I tuck it up in here first, maybe scribble it in my Bible. When I get home, it just goes in place. Well, that's one way, at least, of studying the Bible. Hard work. But it pays. You may have some other method, you dear elder brethren, but you'll agree with me that whatever method you have for studying God's word, it's hard work.
You've got to make up your mind about it, and you've got to stick at it. Could I say, North Ireland needs men that know their book. The whole of the British Isles needs men that know their book. Canada, United States, hiring for men that know their book. The reason why they're not forthcoming. Why is it? Got the balance wrong in life? Laziness? Around Unspirituality. spirituality, you'll need to get down to it and stick at it.
Maybe if the only thing you learned from this meeting this evening as to how you study your Bible is just this business, stick at it, we'd have got the idea over. Now, a few methods of studying God's word apart from my own method. Uh, there is that most common method, of course, of just reading God's word. That's not bad. Just keep reading God's word and enjoy it in your soul. Live it out practically in your life, and that will be a path of divine blessing, and you'll enjoy the word of God.
You want to go further than that? Well, there is a method of studying words in God's word and making that the basis of your understanding of divine truth. For that, you need just Franz or Young, you need Vine, you need Vincent possibly, Robertson might help, and there are a string of others, of course, that deal with the meaning of words. And you look at a word, you get the meaning in its particular place. You find that word in other parts of God's word, and of course, young, youngs and strongs and Wigrams, of course, will tell you where that particular word is used in other parts of God's word, and you'll find this a varying, uh, different shade of meaning sometimes in different places.
The comparing the word in different places will cast fresh light upon the passage you're reading, providing you always remember that it is the context of a ver- a word in the New Testament that decides its meaning. You don't say, well, this word means that in that passage, and therefore it must be this in this passage. But it might have a different shape there to what it has here. Always remember that the context of a word decides its meaning. Yet the comparison of words in the Word of God will cast a lot of light upon the meaning of faith.
But then you could study God's Word by taking up subjects. That's not my idea of things, but you could do it that way. And if you want to study God's Word by taking up subjects, well, somebody said the other day they had a constant reference Bible. I never possessed one of those, but to study subjects, possibly, that would be a great help. Then there's these here, brethren, that go in for alliteration. Well, nothing wrong with that. I never could do alliteration. Some of them can. And looking through a passage and alliterating your headings as you go through it will, with some people at least, fasten the passage onto their minds and give them a kind of, of grip of the passage, and just let me put in a warning here.
Alliteration is all right for private study. Alliteration is fairly all right in print. Alliteration can be helpful in ministering God's word, as long as you don't go too far. What I mean is this, that some preachers will divide up their subject by, what, four E's, you know, everything begins with E. Then they'll take place number one and they'll divide that with four D's, place number two, four X's, and place number three, Q's, and place number four, something else.
And then they take all those spaces and they divide them up again, and they've got alliterated headings for the lot until everybody listens to them absolutely bewildered. Now, if you're going in for alliteration, half a dozen at the most in an address. uh twenty four possibly if it's a printed article, if the compositor knows how to lay it out right, so that you get your points distinguished from one from the other. But it can be, though I'm not a man for literature, it can be a great help in studying a book. Then there is the way of analysis. And of course, to get an analysis, well, you've got to read through and read through and read through until, uh, by reading, say, reading through so many times, it begins to get it straight into your mind.
And, uh, then you can kind of get an analysis. When you're doing things that way, what you have to think about is things that suddenly hit you. I was reading through Micah one day, and it suddenly struck me that several times before I'd read the expression, hear this. And I found that hear this, if I took that as a division, that would give me a pretty good analysis. I was reading through Habakkuk, and I came to a passage where it said, woe to him. I said it five times. When that clicked, I got that.
That's the key to the analysis. You will know that reading through Malachi, you come to wherein, and that's the key to the analysis. You go to Isaiah in these opening chapters, you come to these woes, and that's the key to the analysis. You go to John's Gospel, you read after these things, and that's the key to divide up John's Gospel. You see, you can, by by reading and thinking of things that kind of repeat themselves. But these are sort of punctuation marks the Spirit of God has put through the book in order to get it into a vivid analytical way of handling God's word.
So, you know, I'm pretty convinced that when the writers of the New Testament wrote their epistles, they didn't write out an analysis and then fill it in. They just wrote their epistles. So they didn't start off with an analysis. So don't stretch analyzing God's word too far, or you may be putting into it something the Spirit of God never intended to be there. There is one I don't rec- recommend, that's the Pentateuch method of studying God's word. You say, what on earth is that? Well, you see, my dear brethren who go into this say, well now, you take the Pentateuch as your key.
Genesis is the book of beginning, Exodus is the book of redemption, Leviticus the book of sanctification, Numbers the book of journey, Deuteronomy finishes out the list with prophecy. You got five keys. Now you'll find the five books of the Psalms will answer to that. There is a pentetugal interpretation of the Psalms, for the first section is all about beginning, second section about redemption, and so on. You will find your New Testament will divide up in that pentetugal way, for the Gospels, the beginnings, and the Acts is the Exodus, the coming out. And Paul only priscels out the sanctification section.
And the practicals that priscels that follow out a number of sections. And of course, Jude and the Revelation, that's the Deuteronomy section. And you can even divide up books like, uh, Malachi and, uh, Haggai and Zechariah. You can divide them up in that way, but it's a bit farfetched for me. Now, I must watch that clock because we've taken up the, the time, I think, for the questions, haven't we? Have I? What time do we finish? Hm? Five minutes. Well, now in five minutes I got to do an awful lot. Now, think, a good way of, uh, studying God's word, uh, and a way that will help to clear your bookshelf for you.
Got the old Bible. Old Bible. Now, if you go along to shop and you get some nice bits of cardboard, possibly old cartons, and cut them up all a regular size. Hm? Please put all the bits you've got left away because otherwise I'll get wrong with your mother or your wife. But cut them tidy, all the same size. Get a box that you could put them all in, and then you're ready to start. You get old Bibles that you never knew about to do anything with, but you need two of the same to do this. If you say take all Ephesians, take all the pages out, and stick the whole of Ephesians up on this side of the board, so you've got it all at one view.
Then the other side, put all Colossians up, all one. There's a lot of similarities between Colossians and Ephesians. Then you want to set a colored pencil, and you mark off inheritance, inheritance, body, body, so on, and you mark off on both of them, same color, of course, both sides, and then with a ruler, you draw across. And by doing that, you can very, uh, helpfully compare Colossians and Ephesians, and you can see its differences, you can see why its differences, you leave space at the bottom, make a few footnotes as the conclusion that you've come as to the difference between Colossians and Ephesians, and you've got it there, keep it safe, and every time you want to look into those epistles, out comes the chart.
You can do that with, uh, Ephesians and Colossians, Ephesians and First Peter, Romans and Galatians, Romans and James, Jude and Second Peter, First Corinthians, Timothy and Titus. If you put them up like that, so easy to sit down, instead of keep on turning all over the place, you draw it all out, mark it all up in colors, and everything just comes to life. All your comparisons are all there, just to look at, at, at life. Now, just in closing, one or two things. If you want to understand to study the Psalms, essential number one is to try and fit in your respective Psalms into the places that they belong in the Old Testament books of Samuel and Kings and Chronicles.
You must do that in order to give the right interpretation of the psalms. Then it's advisable to get the order of the, uh, pro- the Old Testament prophets and learn where to fit those particular prophets again into the historic books. And you will find at the beginning of most of the, uh, minor and major prophets that they tell you the kings in w- in whose reign those messages were delivered, and you put them back into their historic setting. When you've got their historic setting, you'll find that they will illuminate for you the, uh, the passages that you want to understand.
Then, to understand your Bible, you must understand dispensations. And the much maligned Scofield Bible is very helpful to teach you that. I don't go all the way with Scofield, but in a day when Scofield is being attacked, the new Scofield Bible is quite a reliable book, and from it you'll get dispensational truth, and if you don't understand dispensational, you won't understand your Bible. Then, just to close, there is such a thing as the progress of doctrine. So what's that mean? Well, don't expect the man in Genesis to know what was in Leviticus, will you?
That is to say, don't take later truth and presume that people who lived before it was given know it. For instance, Job wrote about, Job lived about the days of, uh, Abraham. And I read concerning Job that he offered burnt offerings because his sons have sinned. You say, foolish man, where'd he read his Bible? Sin offerings of the sin. And Job offered burnt offerings for sin. But Job lived before Leviticus one to 7 was ever written. You don't expect Job to know what wasn't written till he'd been dead ten years. That's the same in your New Testament.
Get the historic order in your mind of the order in which New Testament books were written. And don't expect the people in First Corinthians to know what's in Timothy. Timothy wasn't written after. And don't expect Paul to know what was in the book of Revelation, because he never read it. Wasn't written till after he'd gone to heaven. And so you must get the historic order of the writing of New Testament books and keep things in that order. And you'll notice that through the New Testament scriptures as well as the Old Testament scriptures, there's a progress of regulation.
You never predate the regulation, but you reckon folks that lived after that regulation must live in the good of that regulation. Other idea? Well, time is more than gone, and so we're going to bow our heads. Our Father, we bow in thy presence, and we thank thee for thy word. And as a result of our meeting together, we do pray that the younger folks especially might be exercised as to how they will study thy word, and not only how, but make up their minds to do it. So that as a result of our coming together, we might be better Bible students, have a better grasp of the Holy Scriptures, know more about thy word.
In it we shall find Christ, and we would know and love him more. And in it we shall find thy will, and we pray thee to give us willingness to obey thy word. And so bless thy word to all our hearts, we pray. We commend ourselves to thee in the name of the Lord Jesus.