11 It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:
12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:
13 If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.
14 Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers.
15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
Introduction
Often people come to me saying they want to be a better Christian. If you have ever thought or said that, you will be interested in my response. I remind them there is no magical switch to flick to suddenly become a better Christian. Becoming a better Christian is a growing process. If you have the desire, discipline, and determination, you can make it.
One thing necessary to being a better Christian is getting into the word of God. The scriptures are spiritual food (1 Peter 2:1-2). We must have them to be strong. Man does not live by bread alone. Let the strongest among us go without food and with nothing but water to drink for a week or two, and his strength will dissipate. Our spiritual strength will likewise dissipate if we go for long periods of time without being nourished by the word of God. If you are going to be a disciple, you must get a firm grip on the word of God. I used the word grip because one of Satan’s primary objectives is to snatch the word of God out of your heart and mind, to keep you from growing and serving as you ought.
In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus told of a man who planted some seeds. Some of the seeds fell on hard ground and the birds came and plucked them away. As Jesus interpreted this parable later, he identified the seed as the word of God, and the birds as Satan who desires to snatch God’s word out of our hearts (Matthew 13:1-19). One of Satan’s first efforts is to rip the word of God out of our hearts and our minds. If we are going to be disciples and grow as Christians, we must have a firm grip on God’s word.
This can be accomplished in five ways. You need to hear, read, study, meditate upon, and live or apply the word of God. Doing all five will help you get a good firm grip on the word of God. Omit any one of them, and you weaken your grip on the scriptures. Let me illustrate by using the five fingers on my hand. Each finger will represent one practice that will help you get a grasp on God’s word.
The little finger represents hearing the word of God. Now try to pick up your Bible with just your little finger. Try as you may, you can never get much of a grip on it with only your little finger. It would be easy to snatch the Bible out of your hand if you were holding it with just one finger. You can hear the finest preachers and teachers in the whole world and never get a grasp of the Bible by just hearing it. Hearing by itself is not enough.
Then let your thumb represent reading the word of God. Now, using your little finger and your thumb, you are able to pick up the Bible and get some grasp on it. However, your grip is still so weak that the book can easily be snatched from you. One good quick jerk and it’s gone.
Let your ring finger represent studying the word of God. Add it to your grip and you have a stronger hold on scripture.
Let the middle finger represent meditation. When it is added, your grip is stronger still.
Finally, let your index finger represent application of the word of God. When it is added, together your fingers form a vicelike grip, making it exceedingly difficult for another person to jerk the Bible out of your hand and for Satan to snatch the Bible out of your heart. Eliminate any of these practices and you lessen your hold on the word of God. I have an uncle who was involved in a work accident years ago, and his index finger and his middle finger were cut off. Since then, he has had a very difficult time doing normal things like tying a shoelace or buttoning a shirt. It most certainly has affected his ability to grip things. Even in your life, if you eliminate any one of these practices, your grip on the word of God is lessened.
Do you want to be a disciple? Do you want to be a better Christian? Then here is what you need to do: hear, read, study, meditate upon, and then live the word of God. We’ve got to increase our grip on the word of God. If a doctor didn’t know any more about medicine than what the average church member knows about the Bible, he would be sued for malpractice. We’ve got to grip the eternal word of God and apply it to our lives if we are ever going to be what God wants us to be. You will find admonitions to all five of these practices in 1 and 2 Timothy.
1. You must hear the word of God.
Our first duty is to hear the word of God. Twice Paul refers to Timothy hearing his word (2 Timothy 1:13; 2:2). Paul declares that God has given to his church certain gifted teachers and preachers who use their gifts to bring us to Christian maturity. It is therefore our responsibility to put ourselves under their ministry so that we may grow to become all that God desires for us.
You have a responsibility to hear the word of God. There are times when the preacher does not feel like preaching and is not particularly inspired, but he must deliver a message. So there are times when you don’t feel like listening but you have a responsibility to listen anyway. That’s why Jesus kept saying, “He that has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).
As important as hearing is, you can never get a grip on God’s word by hearing alone, any more than you can grip the Bible with one finger. Ordinarily, you only remember about 15% of what you hear. There is a way however for you to increase your hearing ability. You can begin taking notes on sermons you hear in church. When sermons go in one ear and out the other, very little is retained. However, if you allow the sermon to go in your ear, run down your arm, go out the end of a pen and onto a piece of paper, you will increase your hearing ability by 300%. Things etch themselves into our minds indelibly when they pass through the fingertips onto a piece of paper, so you have a 300% better chance of remembering sermons if you’ll take notes.
How do you take notes? Write down the subject, the text, and the main points of the sermon, and then write down a sentence or two that is especially striking to you. It’s better that you leave church with one or two sentences from God than to leave and have no recollection of what was said. Most people leave church with no message at all.
Taking notes in church can also provide material for family devotions throughout the week. For example, you could use the Sunday school lesson as a devotional at home on Monday morning. Then on Tuesday, you and your family could go back and review your notes and your thoughts on Sunday morning’s sermon. On Wednesday, you could review your thoughts and notes on Sunday night’s sermon. Then on Thursday, you could review your notes and thoughts on the prayer meeting message. If every member of the family is taking notes, then you can share what impresses you most about these messages. This way you’ve got four devotional thoughts already prepared just from the notes taken in the worship service and it gives each worship service more meaning.
2. You must read the word of God.
Your second responsibility is to read the word of God. Paul admonishes Timothy to give attention to reading until he comes again (1 Timothy 4:13). The Bible unfortunately is the least-read best-seller in all of history. If all the neglected Bibles were dusted simultaneously, we would have a record dust storm and the sun would go into eclipse for a whole week. However, if any sincere seeker will keep an open mind, and prayerfully and slowly read the Bible for a year—especially the gospels—it is practically certain that something of importance will occur in his life. If he stays close enough to the central fire for a sufficient period, he is likely to be ignited.
Mark Twain once humorously commented about his father: “When I was 14,” he reminisced, “I discovered that my father was so dumb that it was embarrassing to have him around. When I was 21, I was amazed at what he’d learned in seven years.” Some of you haven’t read the Bible in so long that you would be absolutely amazed at the wisdom found in it. If you would just take time to read it, you would be enriched.
How do you study the Bible? Martin Luther studied the Bible as one would gather apples: “First I shake the whole tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.”
We need to approach the word of God with the same kind of diligence. We need to read the Bible prayerfully, carefully, systematically, and trustfully. We need to begin with prayer. Why? Because the Holy Spirit, who inspires the scriptures, is able to enlighten our minds with regard to the meaning of them. Thus, the psalmist prayed: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalm 119:18). Prayer like that is a reminder that the unaided human intellect cannot grasp the true significance of scripture.
The writer of the book of Revelation stated, “Blessed is the one who reads the word of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it” (Revelation 1:3). He does not say, “Blessed are those who understand all that is written.” He says, “Blessed are those who read.”
Another method of vital reading is to take a book of the Bible and read it through in one sitting. Read the book again and again. Let the verses around a verse interpret it for you. G. Campbell Morgan, considered by some the greatest Bible expositor in my generation, would read a book of the Bible at least 50 times before he ever tried to teach it. Slowly read the Bible in many different translations and ask God to teach you what is in it. Take a notebook and write notes as you read and then you’ll get excited and start telling people about it. Jesus said, “Now are you cleansed through my word” (John 15:3). As you read the Bible, it cleanses you. The world is full of pollution but the word of God can cleanse us.
The average man could read the Bible in a year just waiting for his wife to get ready to go out. The average woman could read the Bible in a year just waiting for a husband to get to the supper table after he has been called. Whatever we do and however we do it, we need to read the word of God.
3. You must study the word of God.
Our third responsibility is to study the word of God. Paul wrote to Timothy, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
The difference in reading the Bible and studying the Bible is the difference between waterskiing and deep-sea diving. When you waterski you just skim across the top of the water and enjoy the beauty of what you can see as you skip by. When you deep-sea dive you go down deep into the water for a specific purpose and often come up with something worthwhile and helpful. Both waterskiing and deep-sea diving can be profitable. However, one is better. The deep-sea diver knows what he is looking for and thus is more likely to find it. Reading the word of God can be enjoyable but studying the word of God can be more profitable. In fact, if you’ll go down deep into it you may come up with some unknown treasure that will bless your life forever.
Peter encourages us to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Studying the Bible is one of the essentials of doing this. If you want to be a knowing and growing Christian, then you must hear, read, and study the word of God.
4. You must meditate upon the word of God.
Our fourth responsibility is to meditate upon the word of God. Paul said to Timothy, “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all” (1 Timothy 4:15). The word profiting literally means “advancement, progress, or growth.” It is through meditation that we advance, progress, and grow in the Christian life. The Greek word for meditation literally means “to attend.” It suggests that we are to hear, read, and study God’s word with attention and intention. Meditation is the doorway to application; it is never an end in itself. Meditation is not for gratification but for application and edification.
Meditation allows you to apply the word of God to your heart and life. The Hebrew word for meditate describes a cow who chews her cud. A cow chews her cud up, down, and around. The cow swallows it and then brings it back up to chew on some more. It goes down into the stomach, pops back up, and is again chewed. So the word meditate means “to consider, ponder, and remember.” Meditation is reflective thinking with a view to application. It is letting what you have already learned come back into your mind so it can be reviewed and pondered.
David prayed, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto you, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). The ideal man is depicted as one who meditates on the word of God both day and night. Meditating and memorizing the word of God will give you strength and guidance in the hour of temptation, and wisdom in the hour of opportunity. At the outset of his ministry, Jesus went into the wilderness where he fasted for 40 days. During that time Satan came to tempt him to go contrary to the will of God. Jesus met each temptation with a scriptural quotation. As Satan enticed him to do wrong, Jesus replied by saying, “It is written.”
Jesus had both guidance and strength in the hour of testing because as a child he had meditated upon and memorized the word of God. When the hour of stress and enticement came, he was sustained through scripture. Jesus had to have God’s word stored in his heart and mind, as that was before pocket New Testaments. In Jesus’ day, scriptures were copied by hand onto huge scrolls. They were so large and so expensive that no one had a copy of the scriptures in their home. It was not until the 1400s and the invention of the printing press and loose-leaf binding that the average person could own a copy of the scriptures. Since that time, we have been able to reduce the printing and binding of the Bible into smaller and smaller sizes.
The other day somebody gave me a copy of the smallest Bible in the world. It was a reproduction of a 1,245-page edition of the Bible. Both the Old and New Testament were reduced to a one-and-a-half-inch square plastic slide. It contained every verse, chapter, book, and each of the 773,746 words in the Bible. It can be read with an ordinary student’s microscope with a magnification of 100 times (100x) or more.
But Jesus had no such Bible, pocket New Testament, or even a loose-leaf Bible to use. The only scripture he had was that stored in his heart and mind. In the hour of temptation it sustained him for victorious living.
When the apostles gave witness to Christ in their world, they did it by quoting Old Testament scriptures that they had memorized. Steven’s defense of the faith in the book of Acts, chapter seven, is an example of how early Christians used scripture upon which they had meditated and memorized. From these examples it follows that meditation and memorization will help you in your days of temptation and in your days of opportunity.
We are to read the scriptures with both attention and intentions. Joshua said, “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Joshua 1:8). Meditation is to be used as one prepares to and anticipates applying God’s word.
5. You must live the word of God.
The fifth thing we need to do to get a grip on the Bible is to live God’s word. Paul admonishes Timothy to do this when he writes, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them” (2 Timothy 3:14). It is not enough just to hear, read, study, or meditate upon God’s word. If we want to really have it in our lives, it must be lived out on a daily basis.
James, the brother of our Lord, warned us not to be hearers of the word only, but to be doers as well. The man who only hears is like a man who looks at himself in the mirror. He soon forgets his looks and then goes back for a second and third glance. I don’t know how many times you have looked at yourself in the mirror today, but I would expect you have looked more than once. Why would you look at yourself in the mirror again and again and again? The reason is that you soon forget your appearance and want to take a second look to make sure. The man who only hears God’s word and does not take action soon forgets what he hears.
I said at the beginning of this message that you only remember about 15% of what you hear. However, when you live the word of God, it becomes an inseparable part of you.
The trustees of a Bible society were meeting to decide what kind of binding they would use on a new edition of the Bible that they were printing. Would they use paper? Cloth? Vinyl? Or good Moroccan leather? Finally, one of the members of the board stood and said, “Mr. President, I move that we bind these Bibles in shoe leather and let their readers walk out their teachings in their daily lives.”
If we will hear, read, study, meditate upon, and then live the word of God, we will have a firm grip upon it. Remember that we are in a spiritual struggle, and one of Satan’s primary desires is to snatch the word of God from our heart. Until you apply these five practices to the Bible, you will not be able to retain its message or be the disciple you ought to be.
One of the ways to get the most out of the Bible or any book is to find out why the author wrote it. You would not read the phone book to learn how to raise a garden. You would not read the dictionary to find an airline’s flight schedule. You wouldn’t read a cookbook to know how to service your car. Obviously that is not their intended use. To get the most out of the Bible, you need to know why it was given. It was given to introduce us to Jesus Christ who is both Lord and Savior. Once we know him as Lord and Savior, and through faith in him are born into the kingdom of God, the Bible can become spiritual food to help us to grow into the likeness of Christ. To be a disciple you must daily apply the five practices and let your life be guided by God’s word.