Last week we talked about sin. We talked about its effects on our life, how it can hinder our walks as disciples, and why we should flee from it and strive for righteousness. Now in order for us to lead pure lives, we must know what sin is and when we are sinning. The only way we can do this is to be in the word of God, which will enable us to recognize our sins. So the next characteristic of a disciple I want us to look at is the study and application of scripture.
This is probably something you have heard sermons on before. At the very least I know most of you have heard either Brad or myself talk about the importance of daily bible study in your lives. I don’t think either of us have preached solely on study in the past couple of years, so I want to take a closer look tonight at what study encompasses. There are a lot of reasons why we need to study our bible and know what is in it and I want to take a look at a few of those.
The first reason is because it will enable us to grow spiritually. Our spiritual growth is directly dependant on our consistent intake of the word of God as our spiritual food. The author of Hebrews divides biblical intake into milk and meat. In Hebrews 5:12-14 it says, “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”
A new convert to Christianity needs the milk of the word so that they can begin to grow through that intake of spiritual nourishment. The disciple, however, ought to be taking in solid food, or meat as it is put in Hebrews for their growth beyond the newborn stage. Milk will help us grow to a certain point, but after that we need meat and protein for continued growth. So whether you are new to the faith or you have been a Christian for most of your life, you need to have a regular intake of the word of God to grow spiritually. The more mature you become in your faith though, the more meat, or in depth study you are going to need to grow. If you choose not to study the word of God you will most certainly become stagnant in your walk with Christ. Once you become stagnant, you fail to produce fruit for the kingdom of God.
We will talk more in a minute about the different ways we can have in depth study, but now I want to look at another reason we need to study the word of God and that is so that we can be guided and directed in our life. If you are looking for guidance in your life, you may go to your friend, or your parents, or your pastor. These people are often a great source for guidance, but the best guidance you can get if you are truly seeking God’s will for your life is from God himself. You can certainly do this through prayer which we will talk more about next week, but you must also do this through study. God has left us with the bible as our instruction manual and when we read it and try to apply it to our lives, God will use it to give us direction.
Finally, if we want to be effective as disciples in evangelism, we must be in the word of God on a daily basis. We cannot be an effective witness for Christ if we do not know what the Bible tells us. We have to have something to say to unbelievers. This requires having a thorough knowledge of the gospels to share the message of Jesus Christ with others. I hope that by the end of our study this summer everyone in here will feel prepared to go and make disciples of others. Having a good knowledge of the bible is an absolute must if we are going to lead others to Christ. That doesn’t mean we have to be biblical scholars, because I don’t know near as much about the bible as I should, but we do need to have a good understanding of the scriptures. If someone asks you, “why do I have to believe in Jesus to go to Heaven?” what are you going to say? John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only begotten son so that whoever believes in him shall not die but has eternal life.” Or you may say, “Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life, No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s John 14:6. What if someone asks you “why do I have to be good all the time if Jesus already died for my sins?” “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” Romans 1:18. “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, hatred, discord, jealousy, selfish ambitions, drunkenness, and envy. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21.
Are you equipped with the tools and knowledge you need to effectively share the gospel with others? Without a disciplined routine of study it will be hard to know how to share Christ with others, so we must make it our daily habit to study God’s words.
Now in order to be prepared to witness and to get direction and have spiritual growth we need to learn how to get to know our bibles better. If you read a couple of chapters from your bible every day, or read from a devotional book everyday, or perhaps read some Christian literature by authors such as Beth Moore, Phillip Yancy, Max Lucado, Charles Swindol, Kay Arthur, and Billy Graham then you are on the right track to developing your biblical knowledge and understanding. However in order to know our bibles really well I think it takes a combination of several things.
First, we have to hear the word of God. Romans 10:17 says, “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” This means going to church on Sundays, maybe going to a midweek service, and also getting into a bible study. This can also mean listening to speakers on the radio or television, or going to a conference, or a seminar. When you hear the word preached or taught, a servant of God is communicating the Lord’s message to you. To help you remember what you have heard, make it a practice to take notes. If you are listening to a sermon or involved in a bible study, have a notebook with you and jot down scripture references, main ideas, and key points. Not only will taking notes typically help you better remember and understand a sermon, but it will also become a tool for you to look back at down the road if you need reference materials.
The next thing we have to do is read and study the word of God. Deuteronomy 17:18-19, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees.” Reading and studying go hand in hand, but there is also a difference between the two. Reading your bible is good, but if you don’t take time to look in depth at what you are reading, you won’t get near as much out of your reading. Sometimes it’s very beneficial to just sit and read from your bible without other distractions, but it’s also important to use reference materials, commentaries, and study guides when you study your bible. A concordance is a great tool to have when studying your bible because it can give background information on words and it can give you better meaning to what you are reading. There are also lots of bible commentaries out there. These are usually very in depth studies on one particular book of the bible. These offer very detailed insight to what you are reading and gives great historical backgrounds. There are also question and answer study guides out there that will give you some guided reading and then ask you study questions to help you with your comprehension and understanding.
Now another thing we need to do to get to know our bibles better is memorize the word of God. The scriptures are full of passages that indicate God’s desire is for us to saturate our life with his word. Deuteronomy 6:6 says “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” And Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.” Scripture memorization is probably the #1 way that you really get to know what God is saying through the bible because the words are always in our hearts.
Think about some of these advantages that scripture memory offers us: It increases your knowledge of the word of God and gives you a foundation for your life to continue building upon. It is profitable for guidance and counseling. It enables us to pray more effectively. It will help us in our bible study because we will be able to use our memory verses as cross-references and tie scriptures together and increase our understanding. And of course it helps make us more effective witnesses for Christ.
Now everyone has their own method and not one way is better then another, but I want to share just a few tips for how I try to memorize scripture. Pick one scripture every week and make it your goal to have it memorized and etched in your brain by the end of the week. Write it down and take a few moments every day whether it’s during your prayer or study time or if it’s standing in line or waiting before a class starts. Start with a phrase and continue to add phrases to it until you know the whole thing. Practice your verses for a friend now and then and always overlearn the verses. That means once you have it memorized say it 5 to 6 times a day for several weeks until you know it’s not going anywhere. You should also come up with some kind of review system where you spend one day a week reviewing verses that you previously memorized a month or more ago just so you never forget them. Once you do this, I promise that you will begin using these verses in your life whether it’s in prayer, witnessing, or counseling a friend.
The final thing you must do to really know your bible is to meditate on the words that God has given you and apply them to your life. Meditation sometimes has a bad connotation with it, but for Christians it means to simply quietly reflect on what you have read and learned from the bible. It simply means sitting still and being quiet and waiting for God to reveal something to your heart. This is not a time for technical studies or analysis; it is a time to allow God to speak to you through the scriptures. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says this about meditation of scripture, “just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of scripture and ponder it in your heart.” That is it, that is meditation, simply accept the scripture or scriptures upon which you are meditating and let your heart and your mind soak it in so that God can speak to you.
I want to show you how easy meditation can be. If you have your bibles open them to John 14:27. It says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Our task in meditating upon this scripture is not to study the passage or dissect what peace means. You would simply focus on the truth that this passage speaks and allow your heart, mind, and soul to be flooded with the peace that God can bring you. Imagine your fears being lifted from you and God replacing those fears with his peace that passes all understanding.
When meditating upon this scripture or any other for that matter, you enter it not as an observer or a reader, but as an active participant, and that right there is the key to all study and knowledge of the bible. You must become a participant in it and not just an observer or listener of the word. James sums this up for us in the 1st chapter in verses 22-25, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it- he will be blessed in what he does.”
We have learned why it is important to study the bible and how we can go about doing that, but none of that matters if we do not put it into practice! James tells us that we are deceiving ourselves if we simply listen to the word, he says we must do what it says! If we are simply hearers and not doers, we are like someone who sees themselves in a mirror and then goes away and forgets what they look like! If we look at our verse from John one more time we hear the words, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” If we study this scripture and know it backwards and forward but do not put it into practice we will never receive this peace that Jesus wants to give us. If we study that scripture or one like it and then go and become engulfed in our daily jobs without meditating on that scripture and becoming doers of those words we won’t be opening ourselves up to receive the peace that Christ can offer us from the stresses of our daily lives. If we learn the fruits of the spirit in Galatians, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, yet do not put them into practice in our lives, what good are they? We must be doers of the word and not just hearers!
I’m sorry if tonight’s material is kind of dry, but it is absolutely necessary for us to know God’s word and apply it to our lives so that we can be effective disciples for Christ. And so even though it may not be the most exciting topic to preach on or to listen to, I firmly believe it is something we all need to hear from time to time so that we can examine our personal study practices. The challenge tonight is very clear. As disciples, we must be spending time increasing our knowledge and understanding of the bible. We have to do this if we want to effectively lead others. What areas do you need to work on? Do you need to become more disciplined in devoting time to God for personal study? Is God calling you to put more energy into memorizing scripture so that you will be equipped for his work? Are you studying the word, but struggling to apply it to your life? The challenges and commitments we are called to make as disciples aren’t easy and they do require discipline. I challenge everyone in here to discipline yourselves to become hearers, studiers, meditators, and doers of God’s word! As we close tonight’s service in song and worship, make it a personal time with you and God and listen to what he is seeking from you.
