How Do We Apply God's Word

Well, that was quite an inspiring video, wasn't it? It's always good to see God's creation just put in front of our eyes like that. We tend to take it for granted. But you know, as awesome as that creation is, when we look around the world, there's something else that's just as inspiring and something just as awesome that God has given us. You know what that is? That's the Bible, the Word of God. A few weeks ago, we talked about the book of life. And we talked about what the requirements the Bible says there are to be in the book of life. Those would include knowing what's written in this book, living by what's written in this book, understanding it, and applying it into our lives.

The Bible is the other most important book in the world. And today I want to talk a little bit about the Bible, but specifically what God wanted us to do with the Bible. Because we should know its truth, and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but there is so much in the Bible, and it really is the key to the book of life.

If you're interested in the book of life, you have to be interested in the Bible, and you have to learn what the Bible says. More importantly, you have to apply it into your lives. We all have to do that. And if we don't do it, if we don't do it, well, then the other alternative that isn't at all appealing is what waits for us. You know, Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, He said to the people that were there, the Jews of His day, He said, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things I say?

Why do you do that? And He might ask us the very same questions. I gave you my word. I told you what you needed to do. Why do you use my name? Why do you come before me, but then do something totally different than what I told you in the Bible? How do we apply the Bible into our lives? Because many, many people in the world today will say they know Christ, know they know God, but there is coming a time when He will say to them, I don't know you, you who practice lawlessness.

Well, let's go back and look at some of the things that we read in the Bible. Let's go start in Philippians 4. Philippians 4, Paul, is of course speaking to the church or writing to the church in Philippi. And in chapter 4, let's pick it up in verse 8. That begins the paragraph there, if you will. And see the context of what He's talking about.

He's encouraging them to think about good things, positive things. Finally, brethren, a verse you all know, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of a good report, if there's any virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. And then He says in verse 9, the things which you have learned and received and heard and saw in Me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. So Paul was telling them, I brought you the Word of God. You've seen, you've heard what I say.

I read it from the Scriptures. He learned how to apply the Old Testament into the New Testament times. God, of course, led Him with His Holy Spirit because He knew there was a continuity of the Bible from beginning to end. You can't have just half of the Bible and be doing God's will. You've got to have the whole Bible and be able to see what is going on there.

But He says, all these things you've seen that you've heard and you received, the key is, do them. Because if you just know them, it's not enough. If you just hear it, it's not enough. James 1, verse 22 makes that very clear. It says, it's not the hearers of the law that will be justified. It will be the doers of the law that are justified. It will be the doers of the Bible, the doers of the lifestyle, the things that the Bible talks about that we should do that will be in that book of life.

We all have it. We all have one in our homes. We have them on computers. We probably have multiple copies laying around. There's no excuse for people that God has called to not be living the book of life, or to be living the way of life that is espoused in the Bible. Let's go over to Psalm 119. Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it's probably fitting that it's the longest chapter in the Bible. In this chapter, David talks about God's law. He talks about how much he loves it. You can feel in the words that he writes that's recorded for us, the sincerity that he has.

He has spent a lot of his time and a lot of his life coming to the point where he looks at God's law, and he absolutely knows down to the depth of his bone, to the very being, the depth of his being, that this is the right way. He extols God and he praises him. In chapter 119, verse 9. Psalm 119, verse 9. How can a young man cleanse his way? We know that God is looking for people that are clean, people that are free of the defilement that we talked about, free of the abominations, what God calls abominations.

How can a young man cleanse his way? He can cleanse his way by taking heed according to your word. That's the way you get clean. You've got to know what's in the Bible. You've got to apply it into your life. You've got to let God clean you up, but you've got to know what's in the Word. With my whole heart, David says, I've sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments. In verse 11, he says something we should all take note of. Your word I have hidden in my heart. I've hidden it in my heart. It's in the depth of my being.

Your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Isn't that a beautiful verse? Have we hidden God's word in our heart? Or do we just know it? Or do we just read it? Or can we just repeat it? Or is it really in our hearts? Have we hidden it in our hearts? Well, to appreciate the Bible, we have to know the value of the Bible. We have to believe that it is the Word of God.

Let's go to 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3. As you're turning there, I will remind you that Jesus Christ Himself said in Matthew 4.4 that man does not live by bread alone, but he lives by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. Every word that's in that Bible is profitable for us. In every word in that Bible, we should come to know and let it lead, guide, and change our lives. Over in 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, you find a verse that we are all very familiar with.

Chapter 3, verse 16, all scripture, all scripture. Paul was writing to Timothy here who was becoming a minister. All scripture. Of course, they had the Old Testament. Christ didn't do away with the Old Testament. Or the commandments He says plainly. As He was on earth, I didn't come to do away. I came to fill them up to complete them. So today, we keep the law of God, which is continuous and the same as it was when the time He brought Adam and Eve on earth until the time it will be until He burns the earth up and is finished with the plan for humanity.

2 Timothy 3, 16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for doctrine. You want to know what truth is? You want to know what to believe? Then look into the Bible. That's where we find it. It is the rock. It is the book that teaches us what is true and what is the way to eternity.

It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof. We use it to prove the concepts of what we believe. And it can reprove us, as we may think something wrong or find ourselves thinking in error and we go into the Bible. And when we look into the pages, we say, no, that's not the case at all. And how do we handle that when we see the truth of the Bible? Do we hang on to what we falsely believe, or do we yield to God and believe what He taught us to believe?

It is profitable for correction. How many times are we reading through a book of the Bible or the Proverbs? Maybe something you've never seen in yourself before and a verse all of a sudden jumps out at you. And you think, whoa, that is something. I do that. But I never thought of that as being wrong. But all of a sudden, it's there in front of you. It is profitable for correction. We would never know how to live if we didn't have the Bible. And every single occasion we find ourselves in life, there is the answer in the Bible.

There is the way that shows what we need to do. But we have to know the Bible. We have to learn to apply it into our lives. Because if we don't do that, we're only getting part of the job done. And in God's eyes, that's not nearly nearly enough. It's profitable for correction. It's profitable for instruction in righteousness. We don't know how to live righteously, except the Bible shows us how to live righteously. And only the righteous will be in the kingdom of God. Only the righteous will see the New Jerusalem.

Only the righteous will be there when Jesus Christ returns. Only the righteous will be there after this world is done, and the purpose for mankind is over, and the rest of eternity begins. God gives us all this. He gives us this, and we must believe that it is. Why? He gives it so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Thoroughly equipped for every good work. Want to be a complete person?

Want to feel completely satisfied? Want to feel completely, well, just complete? Learn God's way? Do it? Apply the Bible. Just knowing, just reading isn't enough. We have to apply what we learn into our lives. Well, how do we do that? How do we do that? Because that is the key question, right? Let's look at a few things here. Now, before we do that, let's look at some of the benefits of the Bible before we get into a few points here on that.

Let's go back to Psalm 19, not Psalm 119. We could spend sermons and sermons in Psalm 119, but in Psalm 19, we find David again espousing the goodness of God's Word and the profits and the benefits of it. We should take note of some of the benefits of his Word. Psalm 19, pick it up in verse 7. David, under inspiration from God, writes, The law of the Eternal is perfect. We don't call too many things in life perfect, do we? Nothing in this room is perfect. None of us are perfect. No book that we would find in the world would be perfect, but David says the law of the Eternal is perfect.

It's the Word of God. We would expect nothing else. And look what it does. The law of the Eternal is perfect, converting the soul. When we're called, when we repent, and when we're baptized, God calls us to a life where He transforms us from who we were into who He wants us to become. It's a process of conversion. Little by little, as we're led by His Holy Spirit, we become like Him. We become converted. You can't become converted without knowing the way of God. You can't become converted without understanding the law of the Eternal. You can't become converted unless you look into this perfect law and way of life that is mentioned, that is talked about in this Bible, that we talk about every week and that we hopefully read every day or most every day.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. He goes on, the testimony of the Eternal is sure. There's no doubt in it. It's absolutely sure. You can take it to the bank. It's the absolute rock-solid thing that you can guarantee yourself. The testimony of the Lord is sure. Look what else it does. It makes wise the simple. Now, we just read that this week in the Bible reading forever, right? 1 Corinthians 1, around verse 26 and 27, it talked about how God calls the foolish of the world. The foolish of the world He makes wise when His Holy Spirit comes and it opens up our minds to understand the Bible and the principles in it.

It makes simple the wise. No matter what we did in our prior lives, no matter how smart we thought we were, no matter what position we thought we had, and whatever, we realized when God calls us, we were just foolish. We were just foolish. We didn't have a clue about what life was about or what we could do. But when we look into the perfect law of the Lord, it makes the simple wise. Another huge benefit. Verse 8, the statutes of the Lord are right. Notice how He keeps referring. It's perfect. It's pure. It's right. Rejoicing the heart. Lacking a little joy in life, things not as happy as they should be or you don't feel as good as what you should, you might look into the law of God.

You might look into your life and see, am I doing what God wants? Am I paying attention to His way of life? Or is it just kind of a surface thing, the kind of I have out here, but I haven't really applied it. I haven't really absorbed it. It hasn't really begun to define me. The statutes of the Lord are right. And, of course, one of the fruits, the second fruit listed in the Holy Spirit, is joy, love, joy, peace, long suffering, and so on.

The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. Then He says the commandment of the Lord is pure. It's right. It's sure. It's perfect. It's pure. We can count on it and we better learn it, enlightening the eyes. Our eyes are opened. We begin to see why we were the way we were. We begin to see why the world is in the state that it's in. We begin to see why the world will survive and it will take Jesus Christ to return because without Him returning, there is no answer in this world, only Him. But we learn that as we read and apply the Bible into our lives. It enlightens the eyes.

The fear of the Lord, verse 9, is clean. Remember, it's only the clean that are going to be in the book of life. The fear of the Lord is clean. It endures forever. Not just until the day we die, but literally forever. Beyond the return of Jesus Christ, beyond the white throne judgment, forever. Beyond all that. For eternity, it endures forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together.

See how He keeps repeating these things and the benefits that He keeps adding to it. Learn it. Apply it. Use this tool that God has given us. It's the key to the book of life, of course, with God's Holy Spirit leading us and guiding us. The most valuable thing that you have on this earth. More to be desired, He says in verse 10, are they than gold? Yes, than much fine gold. Do we look at the Bible that way? What would we trade it for? Is there anything that we would say, you know, I'd trade it for that?

Why, I hope not. I hope that there's nothing in this world that we would say is more important than what we learn in the Word of God. If there is, we may want to, well, we definitely want to get on our knees and ask God what is going on with us. The Word of God teaches us how to live. It makes us skilled in daily living. You know it's more than that as well. Let's go back to Ephesians, Ephesians 6. We see the Word of God mentioned by Paul again here in this chapter.

He's talking about the armor of God, the things that we put on every day so that we can withstand the wiles of Satan, we can withstand our own selves, the world around us, and the things that we have to have as part of our armament if we're going to stand and endure to the end. I won't read through it all, but in verse 17, we see the Word of God there. The Bible, verse 17, says, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And he says something that goes without saying, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.

We have to be praying as well, but today we'll look at the Bible, the sword of the Word, the one that helps us fight all those things that are out there that would have us be killed. Because we know that Satan would like nothing better than to infest us with the spiritual cancer we talked about last week. He'd like nothing better than that, and to see it grow and be uncontested and kill us.

He'd like to see nothing better than to attack us so that we would just throw everything away. How do we battle it with the sword of the Word? Because we know that Word. Just like Jesus Christ in the Great Temptation when Satan was battling him, what did he use to rebuke Satan? He used the Word of God three times. He repeated Scripture back to him because that is the Word of Truth. It is the sword that we can use. Over in Hebrews, we find another aspect of the truth, of the Word of God.

Hebrews 5. And verse 12, the author here, many believe it's Paul, relating to this group of people here. Apparently, some of them have fallen back in time. They haven't progressed the way they should in the church or in the way of life that they've been called to. He says in verse 12 of Hebrews 5, So by this time you ought to be teachers.

You've been in and around this a long time. You should be living this way of life. You should be able to teach others what to do. You should be able to give an answer for what you believe. And you should help them through by using the Word of God. Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. Well, that's not a good state.

If we're in school, we don't want a teacher telling us, well, you know what? You haven't progressed at all. You need to go way back to first grade and start all over again. You have come to need, he says, milk and not solid food. So we learn the Word of God is food. It's food to us. When we're young, we need milk to grow and to begin to mature. But later on, we need strong food, meat, other things to help us mature and keep growing in the way we should.

He says in verse 13, for everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the Word of righteousness, for he's a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age. That is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

So we practice this way of life. We have to use this way of life. We can't just repeat back Scripture and verse. We can't just read and feel great about ourselves. Yeah, that's a good beginning. We have to use it. And as we use it, we become more and more skilled in the way of life. As we use it, as we read it, as we absorb it, we begin to see from beginning to end the continuity and the unity of the Bible.

We begin to see that what God told Adam and Eve back on day one when they were alive is the same thing he's telling his people today. Nothing's changed. Jesus Christ is saying yesterday, today, and forever, I am the Lord your God, I change not. He set a plan in motion on earth. He set the laws and the way of life back at the beginning of time for mankind, and they haven't changed and they won't change until the plan for mankind and all of creation is complete.

We learn that as we use what God has, as we study. I'm getting ahead of myself and absorb. Let's go back to Revelation. Revelation 19. Here we find in this chapter Jesus Christ returning to earth after the seven trumpets, after the seven vials, he returns to earth to claim the kingdoms of this world as his own. And in verse 12, we jump into the middle of a description of him here. Revelation 19.12, his eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns.

He had a name written that no one knew except himself. Now, there are some people around today that think, oh, we know. We know what the name of Christ is, the only name he would be named by, but no one knew the name except himself. Verse 13, he was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. Ah! What he speaks is here in this Bible. When we read the Bible, it's God speaking to us. And he is crystal clear, as we learned in the last few weeks and as we knew before.

We don't add to it, and we don't take away from it. We do it exactly the way God said. If we believe him, if we follow him, if we believe in his plan, we do it exactly the way he said. Not listening to someone else, not listening to someone else's interpretation, but going back and letting God show us what the truth of the Word is, because what you have in your lap is God's Word to you and to me. What do we do with it? Let's go back to 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians 2. Paul here, of course, writing to the church in Thessalonikus says, For this reason we thank God without ceasing, because when you receive the Word of God, the momentous occasion in our life when we receive the Word of God, when our minds are open then we begin to see what the truth of God is.

When you receive the Word of God, what you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the Word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. Paul saw something in that Thessalonian church. He saw that they knew and they received the Word of God, but he saw it working in them. He saw the changes in their life. He saw the conversion of the soul. He saw the joy. He saw how the people responded. He saw the Word of God at work.

The same Word that he wants to see at work in us today. 2 Timothy 2. We'll begin with three or four points here, depending on how you want to order them. What do we do? How can we learn to apply the Bible into our lives? 2 Timothy 2 verse 15 gives us a good starting point.

It says, Be diligent to present yourself. Paul writing to Timothy, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God. Don't we all want to be approved to God? Don't we want him to say, Yes, I approve of what they've done, of how they've lived their lives? Present yourself approved to God. A worker who doesn't need to be ashamed. You know how it is if you've done a half-days work and your boss looks and sees what you've done and you might think, Ah, I just haven't really given him a full day's work today.

We don't want to be a worker like that. We don't want to stand before God ashamed. Present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing. It's a word of truth. That means, open it up. That means point one, read it. Now, reading isn't all that we do, but we got to read it because we never learn what's in the Bible if we don't read it.

You know, many of you know people who have come to understand that God's Sabbath is the seventh day. I know how they've come to understand that whenever I talk to someone, that's usually the first thing they come to realize is I've read the Bible and there's absolutely no basis in the Bible for changing the seventh day to the first day. God's Sabbath still stands and they want to worship God on the day that He established. And you can go from front to end of the Bible. You will never find anything that says that they would change Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What He established, the creation, stays there for the time until the reason for the physical earth is done.

But they began to read. And when they read, rather than just listen to what someone was telling them, they began to see truth.

Reading is a very good first step. You know, locally we've been doing this Bible reading program. And I know during the Old Testament, when we were looking at the Old Testament, doing all that commentary, there was an awfully lot of reading. And some days it became really arduous to try to get all that in or to have to leave and then come back and look at it later. I have a feeling, and I'll include myself in this, there was a lot of reading that went on, but not a whole lot of learning that went on, maybe. Maybe there were some interesting points we found out or learned along the way. We need to read the Bible, but we need to do a lot more than that with the Bible. And so the reading program now has many, much fewer chapters per day for you to read. It doesn't take very long to read through a couple chapters in 1 Corinthians. You can probably get through it in 10 minutes. But that's not the purpose I did it because I thought no one needs to be writing, doesn't need to be reading any more than 10 minutes. It's because there's much more we need to do with what we read because God is interested that we read, but we have to do a whole lot more than that. Here in chapter 15 or verse 15, notice what Paul tells Timothy, be diligent.

Diligent means work hard. Work hard at what you're doing. Dig down into it.

Understand what is in that word. If you're going to apply it into your life, you've got to understand what it says. You've got to see how all the dots connect together. You've got to be able to see that.

And it doesn't come by just reading it, taking the 10 minutes to do that, flipping it shut, and thinking you've done your job. No, that's a worker who would be ashamed.

A worker who would be ashamed because you just you took the shortcut. You didn't do it all.

There's a lot more in the Bible than just reading the words. Diligence. Be diligent in what you do.

That's what he told Timothy. That's what God would tell us. Be diligent in what you do.

You know, there's a group of people that were really diligent that we could learn from. We find about, we read about them back in Acts 17.

Acts 17, they had the same experience you and I have had. They came to understand the truth of God. They were hearing things that they hadn't heard before.

They didn't just believe them because they heard them, but they were diligent in what God had given them.

Acts 17, let's pick it up in verse 10.

The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness.

They were receptive. Okay, we're listening to what you say. You know what? That makes sense. That's kind of what we know are in the Scriptures.

They didn't automatically reject it and say, that isn't what Grandma said.

That isn't what my friend down the street says.

They received it with all readiness, but they weren't just going to accept it because they heard it. What did they do? They went back and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

Is that true, what they said? It makes sense. It sounds good, but we want to know, is that what God says? Because this is the rock. This is the book that we go to.

This is where we are able to learn doctrine, correction, instruction, and righteousness.

They received the Word with all readiness, and they searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. When they went back into it, and when they researched, and when they searched, and when they looked at the Word, they thought, you know what? What Paul and Silas have told us is exactly right. And what did they do? Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks. They believed. They followed God, and not their own ideas. They began to let the truth of God, the Word of God, be absorbed into their mind. Not just there as a surface thing that they read, but they actually went in, and they looked at it, and they searched those scriptures so that it became part of them. They were absorbing them. John 8 verse 32. Actually, verse 31 is where I want to start. John 8, 31. Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, and remember what believed means. It means that it was something that cut them to the core, that they changed the way they thought, the way they acted, the way they believed. When they believed Jesus, it changed them. The Word, the Law of God, converts the soul, and he said, if you abide in my Word. You know what abide is? If you live with it. If you live in it. If you let it live in you. If you abide in my Word, you are my disciples indeed. Remember, disciples are ones who study. Study diligently. Not only the Master, but His Word and what He teaches, and they follow exactly what He has to say. That's what He's called us to, to follow Him. He set the example. We follow Him. If you abide in my Word. If you let it live in you. You are my disciples indeed. You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free. We have to allow God, or we have to give God the time.

We have to let Him make us able to absorb what we read.

We have a lot of tools today that can help us with that. There are some things in the Bible we read, and we think, oh, that just doesn't apply today. You know, I'm convinced that, just as Jesus Christ said, every single word in the Bible is applicable to us today. We may not fully understand how it applies, but it applies in some way. Jesus Christ said, you live by every word of God. Not just the select ones that fit your century or your generation, every word of God. Because in the examples and what's written in here, what we learn to apply, when we learn the context, or when we learn the concept of what God is doing, when we know the whole context of the Bible and see what God's plan is from beginning to end, we begin to know what He's about. And it makes no sense some of the things that we might think when we understand and we've allowed to absorb into our minds what God is working in us. We have to read, but if we don't study it, we miss out on a lot.

You know, like many of you, I remember back in high school, I remember back in college, you would get these enormous reading assignments. Remember that? Sometimes in history, sometimes in science, and some of the times you would just kind of read through the thing, and at the end of it, you just kind of let out a sigh like, ah, good, I'm done with it. But if someone asked you what you read, you would have no idea. If a thing didn't interest you. I mean, you learned after you went to back to listen to the teacher, I think, I don't remember any of that in there, but, you know, I'll take good notes. But other times, you really absorbed it. It was very interesting. It was something you wanted to know, how does that work? What had happened back then? What were the reasons that happened? And you find yourself absorbing it, not just looking to see, you know, put the stop clock on and see how long does it take me to get through this chapter, but I really want to know what's going on. And it's those things that we really want to know that carry with us the rest of our lives. They change the way we think. It kind of settles in our minds with the things that we just read, just to fulfill an assignment. Really, it's a waste of time. And I learned the classes that I had to learn to read just what I had needed to repeat back. Other classes I very much enjoyed.

And others I didn't. You know, I don't have the choice of what I enjoy in the Bible. Everything is supposed to be a joy in the Bible. Everything in here we need to know. Everything in here we need to study and not just read so we can put a jig check mark and feel good about ourselves. Because until we understand what is in the Scriptures, like the Bereans did, we haven't done the job that we need to do. Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example of something we can read in the Bible. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians. You read this this week. 1 Corinthians 1. And in the introductory verses here to the church of Corinth, Paul makes some comments. And oftentimes we will read through those comments and think, you know, just like saying, hello, how are you? I'm fine, and blah, blah, blah. We don't need to really pay attention to it.

But if we read verses 4 through 9 of 1 Corinthians, it's a really, really long sentence. A really long sentence that we have there. And we can tend to just read right through it and then just keep on going and check those five verses off. 1 Corinthians 4. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There's a lot in that sentence. There's a lot in that sentence. We shouldn't just read over that sentence and say, know it, read through it. Paul is telling an awfully loud in that sentence. He talks about the grace of God, which is more than just on merit and pardon. He talks about enduring to the end. He talks about it's by God, by His Spirit, that we learn everything. He's telling us that we need to become blameless and that the day of His return, He wants to find us blameless in His sight. That's a whole process through the rest of our physical lives as God cleanses us, as David said back in Psalm 119. As God cleanses us with His Word, as Paul said in Ephesians 5, with the washing of the water of His Word, there's a lot in that verse. So, where are those five verses there? So, we might just rush through that if we're reading, but when we come through that, we might actually want to stop and say, you know what? I need to digest. I need to digest what are in those verses. I want to know exactly what Paul is saying there because he seems to be saying an awfully lot. He keeps adding to it and adding to it and adding to it, and there's an awfully lot of truth in there that is absolutely the same as you find in the rest of the Bible. But if we come across those things, we wouldn't just rush through it. We'd actually stop and we'd study it, and we'd digest it piece by piece and see that what he's saying is true. See that what he's saying is what we believe and adjusting our beliefs if it's not that if we see something we don't believe, we don't understand. We go to another verse of the Bible because the Bible interprets itself.

That's what studying is. Not just reading through it and putting a checkmark at the end of the day, but actually digesting it. You know, we read about in Hebrews 5 the Bible's food. Milk to babe, strong food to those who are mature. You have to digest. You have to digest the food for it to be any value at all. Edmund Burke was a philosopher back in England, back in the 1800s, and he said reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. You get nothing out of it.

And that's true, isn't it? If our body is just and there are some diseases that our bodies will eat, but they don't get anything out of it at all, and we end up dying. The Bible's the same way.

If we eat it, we better digest it because all we're doing is eating it and letting it pass right through our minds in one ear and out the other, then we are certainly a worker who should be ashamed and a worker who we might want to wonder if we're being approved by God.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. You get nothing out of it.

So when we study the Bible, when we go through the chapters we read, and it doesn't have to be the Bible reading program. It was never designed to replace your own personal study. We all have things that we need to study that God leads us to study. But something that we could all do together, something that we could discuss together, and some people have said, I don't even know. I don't even know what to study. The Bible is so big. I've been through it so many times.

Well, this gives you an idea or a place to start anyway. And if you're really studying, you'll find that one verse will lead to another, and then you'll begin to understand the whole concept of the Bible and what Paul is talking about, or Peter is talking about. And as we read through some of Paul's epistles, even Peter says, some of the things he says are hard to understand.

Not impossible to understand, but you've got to work at it. You've got to work at it, and not just read right over it. So reading and studying, digesting, absorbing, letting it nourish your body, your spiritual body, is what we would need to do if we're going to apply the Bible into our lives. Another thing that we can do, often overlooked in today's society, let me read to you to introduce this section from a 2013 magazine article by an author named Brad Lighthouser. And the title of the article appeared in the New Yorker magazine was, Why We Should Memorize. Why we should memorize. And in this article, Mr. Lighthouser is talking about the days when he was growing up when, I guess many of us would remember that, people had to memorize things, poems that you would have to memorize and repeat back. And it was part of the curriculum. And he talks in here about how that is a discipline that seems to have disappeared in our society today. Let me read a few paragraphs from what he says. He says, My late colleague Joseph Brodsky, who died in 1996, used to appall his students by requiring them to memorize something like a thousand lines of poetry each semester. He felt he was preparing them for the future. They might need such verses later in life. And then he talks about how in Brodsky's life, he did face a time when he was in Russia in a camp and he relied on what he had memorized, that he could come back and those poems that he memorized gave him hope to get through the travails that he was in. He goes on, he writes, I'm struck by how, in the 17 years since his death, the meaning and justifications for verse memorization have shifted. The effort and its acquisition may be the same, but we'd be naive to suppose the necessity behind it is unaltered.

Well, he's saying we still need to know things. We have to recall things. There's things in all our lives we need to remember. Just like math formulas, sometimes you think, what was that math formula? I sure wish I remembered what it was. Today we can go to the Internet and find it, right? And that's what he's talking about here. Today people just go to the Internet.

They don't bother memorizing things anymore. They don't use that part of their brain.

You know, 15 or 20 years ago, I could look at many of you in this room and I would know your name, and you know what? I would know your phone number, too. I'd be able to tell you, here's your name and here's your phone number. Because I learned to save a lot of time with the contacts I had. It was a lot easier. Didn't have the scrolling of the iPhones that you could just kind of pick out a name. I didn't want to go back and look. So I would memorize the numbers that needed to be there, so it saved a lot of time, and I would know that about you. Today I don't know. Sometimes I have to stop and think what my own number is. You know, it's like it's crazy because I don't ever use it.

You know, I know who you are, not because your number shows up on my phone, but because your name shows up.

If I'm in another phone and your number shows up, I'm clueless who I'm talking to, which you would probably like. No. That's the society we live in. No one has to memorize any things anymore. You know, if I want to know a Bible verse, I can go to Google and I can type in three or four words. Here, Mr. Cubick said this a few weeks ago, too. And you know what? That first verse pops right up. I don't need to memorize that verse anymore. I can just kind of sell what the context of it is, and it'll pop right up there. But Mr. Lighthouser says we've lost something as a result. So he says, so why undergo the laborious process of memorizing a poem these days when, tap, tap, tap, you have it at your fingertips? Why go through all that work?

The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge we can't have otherwise. You take the poem inside you. You take it into your brain chemistry, if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen.

Isn't that true? Well, we memorize something. It becomes part of us. It's planted up here, in our minds. If Lighthouser can say, that's so important that you would know these poems, how much more important is it that we would know some of the verses in the Bible and be able to just memorize those? How valuable is that? He quotes someone by the name of Robson here. He says, he puts the point succinctly, if we don't learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent heat. The same is true of the Bible. If we don't know what's in the Bible, if we haven't memorized some of those things, if we can't at a recall think, oh, that's the verse, and that applies in this situation. Oh, I know exactly where to find that. I can show that person because I know that verse. You know, a few years ago, ah, right here in my pocket, a few years ago, Ambassador Bible Center. Remember this? These little boxes of Scripture memory cards? And they come complete with, I don't know, hundreds, I guess, right, of memory cards in there. Marriage, prayer, faith, forgiveness, thankfulness, truth. There's an O in doctrine as well.

All the things that, you know, many of us bought, nice cards. 1 Peter 3, verse 1 and 2, memorize the verse. It comes in handy. Our three young ABC graduates could tell you how important that is in ABC, right? Didn't you have to memorize things there as well? It's good to know those verses. Who knows? Who knows when you will need to have that verse pop up into your mind?

Now, memorization alone is no different than reading alone, okay? We can memorize, and if all we've done is memorize and not apply, we're no better off than the person who reads and doesn't absorb. But when we memorize, it does become part of us. Over in Deuteronomy 17, many of you who have counseled for baptism recently, when I give you the Bible studies on repentance and baptism, I will ask you to write out the answers to the questions. And there's a good reason that I ask you to do that, because when we write and when we diligently put together answers to our questions, we remember a lot of it. And it plants something up here than just reading it. And that's exactly what God told Moses to command the kings who would one day rule Israel. And he told them in Spedigani in verse 18, It shall be when he the king, remember, we're all in preparation to become kings and priests, it says in Revelation 1.5, It shall be when he sits on the throne of this kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord, his God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes. And then you see the benefits of those laws and statutes.

Write them down. You know, David had to judge people. Solomon had to judge people. When he ascended the king, he was worried about how would he judge us righteously. How would he judge us righteously as his father did?

The Bible says we, Jesus Christ, judges us. How? By what's written in the books. By what's written here.

And he says to us in 1 Corinthians 6, you read it this week, don't you know that you will judge angels? How are we going to judge angels? How are we going to judge anyone if we don't know what's in the book? How are we going to know any of that if it's not absorbed into our minds, if it hasn't become us? If it isn't our whole heart, whole mind, whole being? But we don't diligently do it. Though we're doing something, we're cutting short what God has called us to do. John 14.

Speaking of the Holy Spirit, which we know we must have, and we know how we receive the Holy Spirit after we repent, after we're baptized, after hands are laid on us, after we turn from our ways to God's way, when we commit to Him, and when we learn all the truth of the Bible and learn that truth the rest of our life, the Holy Spirit is with us, and it will guide us and teach us. Verse 25, John 14, Jesus Christ is telling the disciples that here before He was arrested and crucified, He said, These things I've spoken to you while being present with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit which the Father will send in my name, it will teach you all things. It opens our minds that we can understand, and it will bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Ah, that's why when you're talking sometime, and someone brings up a point, what immediately pops into your mind is the Bible verse that answers that, that shows you the direction that you should go, the direction that they should go. If you haven't taken the time to read, if you haven't taken the time to absorb, if you haven't let it become part of your heart, part of your brain chemistry, as Mr. Lighthouser would say.

How to do that? So the Holy Spirit is able to bring to remembrance the things that we have done. So, as we look at God's Word, the most valuable thing on earth, we wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, we know we have to read it, we have to study it. There's parts that we should memorize and commit. We've got to absorb, we've got to digest it. If we're not, then we're then we're fooling ourselves, deceiving ourselves, as the Bible would say. One other thing that we would talk about, and you know what that is, that would be we need to meditate. We need to meditate on it. And meditate isn't something that we put the stop clock on and say, I'm going to spend one minute meditating on this verse, and in 60 seconds I'm going to know what God means. Now, there's some verses you will meditate on for years and years before it finally crystallizes in your mind what God is talking about and how that all fits. Let's go back to Matthew 13. Matthew 13, we have several parables here. Let's talk about the parable of the sower and the seed. The parable we all well known. We all well know. We can repeat it. We've seen it happen where someone receives the seed, but then they don't allow it to grow. They're here for a while, and then something comes up and they're no longer there. But as I was reading this recently, something popped out of me. Let's look at verse 22. I don't want to go through the whole parable, but let's look at verse 22 and pick it up there. It says, Now he who received seed. We've all received seed. The Bereans received seed. Everyone who God calls received seed. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word. Here's the word. The word of God hears the truth. They hear it. They think about it. They know it's true, but all they do is hear it. It's not the hearers of the word that are justified. James says it's the doers. He who receives seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word. Ah, not that important. I don't have time to do that. Yes, it makes sense, but you know what? I never absorbed it. I never let it sink in, and he becomes unfruitful. But he who receives seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it. And understands it.

Ah, they hear it and understand it. They were diligent. They studied. They absorbed. They looked at it seriously. Who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces some 100-fold, some 60, some 30.

To understand it, we have to do the things we talked about. We need to meditate as well. Let's go back to Psalm 119.

Psalm 119, verse 145.

Psalm 119 isn't a bad chapter to review sometimes to see how much David has said, because he says a lot in this this chapter where he's extolling God's way, God's way of life. Psalm 119, verse 145.

145. I cry out, David writes, with my whole heart.

My whole heart. Hear me, O Lord. I will keep your statutes. I'll do it. I've read them. I've studied them. I've digested them. We're going to see in a minute he meditated on them a lot. And when he was through all that, he came to the conclusion God's way is the perfect way. God's way is the only way. God's way leads to everything lasting. And then he did it. He did it, and he turned his life around from who he was in the time of Bathsheba and Uriah to who God would say, this is a man after my own heart. When he knew it and he understood it, he followed it. I will keep your statutes. I cry out to you, save me, and I'll keep your testimonies. I rise before the dawning of the morning and cry for help. I wasn't sleeping in late. I'll get up early because I seek you and I want to know your way. I rise before the dawning of the morning and cry for help, I hope in your word. My eyes are awake through the night watches that I may meditate on your word. So when David was laying there awake at night, he wasn't thinking about daydreaming about the pot of gold at the wherever. He was thinking about God's word. He was thinking about God's law. He was letting God connect all the dots. Ah, if all of humanity lived this way, just think how good that would be. If I would just follow God, he makes these promises, but I have to do it.

And little by little, God filled in the dots. David saw the picture. It happened over many night watches, as it does with many of you. But you know, it takes discipline if we wake up in the middle of the night. I've said this before. I used to think it was not a blessing to wake up at two in the morning and lay there for two hours. But I realized, you know, that is really valuable time. That is really valuable time. If I make myself think about God's Word. If I make myself meditate on His Word and not what I need to do tomorrow, what didn't go right the day before, what happened to the sports teams this week, and if they had just done this instead of that, if I do all that, it's wasted time. But if I meditate on God's Word, it's valuable time. And you wake up and you realize, I know more today than I did the day before because I meditated on it. Can't put a stopwatch on that. Can't put a stopwatch on it. Meditation helps us connect the dots.

You know, some of the things we can meditate on. Next week, after services, we will have completed the book of 1 Corinthians. We'll have a discussion group, you know, after services about 1 Corinthians. And some of the things we learned there, maybe some of the questions you've got about it, some of the things that you would like to know more about it. And we'll discuss some of those things.

If you meditate on 1 Corinthians, if you go through and you begin to memorize some of what Paul is saying, remember, in 1 Corinthians 1, he's talking about a situation that existed then that still exists today. Men follow men rather than following God. It's happened back then. It happens again today. If you remember chapters like 1 Corinthians 7, and marriage is a problem, go back and look at 1 Corinthians 7, and know where you can find it.

1 Corinthians 6, where he talks about the type of people who won't be in the kingdom.

You might want to know what that is and make sure you're not falling into that category.

1 Corinthians 2, when he talks about the Spirit of God and how it opens our minds to the truth of God. Just like the Spirit in man gives us the ability, man the ability to do the things they do, including an incredible Internet system. 1 Corinthians 3, talking about the temple of God. If you allow yourself to meditate on some of what Paul is saying, you know what? You will understand that book of 1 Corinthians. You'll understand what Paul was writing in that voluminous letter to that church, because there's so much truth, so much truth in it, and so many things that we can discuss. If we just allow ourselves to think, you might look at 1 Corinthians 8. You read about meat sacrificed to idols.

You might think, well, that doesn't apply today. I can just kind of cross that chapter off. No, it does apply to us today. Think about the similar situations in our lives today that may not be meat sacrificed to idols, but some other thing that goes on that we could cause offense to someone by what we're doing. Last week we talked about Hymenaeus and Philetus, remember? They had a doctrine that they began to espouse throughout the church there that the resurrection was already passed. We look at that and we think, what? Now that someone thinks the resurrection is already passed, Revelation is very clear on that. We would say we would never fall prey to that doctrine, but there are other doctrines that people do. Everything that happened in the Bible is there for us to learn from and to apply into our lives. We don't just read it and say, nope, meat sacrificed to idols will never be a problem with me. There will be something else along that line, but you're never going to know it if you don't think about it. If you don't allow God, as you meditate, to help you see that. Finally, we have to do it. We have to do it. David said, I keep his laws, and even though you may not understand something, you would still do it if you see it in God's Word. But let's go back to James 1. James 1 verse 22. I cited this earlier.

James 1 verse 22. Be doers of the Word. You know, you will know how to apply the Word when you go through that process. Not if you just read it and run through it. Be doers of the Word. Ask God to do that. Look into those verses and say, what does God want me to do with this? How do I put this into practice in my life? Am I putting this into practice in my life? Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. Look at those two words. Deceiving yourselves. Feeling good about yourself, but really falling short. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. He observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. If I look into the mirror and I've got stuff all over my face, I usually wash it off. If I see my hair a mess, I usually comb it, even though my wife has to remind me. Well, I comb it. I mean, just what happens in the wind sometimes. And yes, I know I need a haircut that's happening this week. That's one of my things I feel bad about today, that that didn't get done this week. But we have to look in the mirror. God's Word is a mirror to us. We look at ourselves honestly, and we don't walk away from it and say, oh, it's okay.

We change. We do the things that we need to do in order to comply it. We do the law.

Let me conclude in Psalm 119. Psalm 119. Summary here.

I've given you some tools, but you've got to do the work and dedicate the time and be diligent in it to be a worker approved by God and become a complete man, thoroughly prepared for every good work. Psalm 119. Let's conclude in beginning in verse 97. 97.

David, and you can feel the sincerity as he writes this, oh, how love I, or how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. You, through your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies.

We grab that that's the benefit of it. We derive or we develop wisdom by living God's way, for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. God's our teacher. We might hear things here. We read things in the Bible, but it's God who's our teacher if we let him teach us, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep your precepts. I do it.

I don't just know it and ignore it because I keep your precepts. I do what you say to do.

I have restrained my feet from every evil way. I resist the temptation. I use the power of your spirit. The word is a sword against my own self. I have restrained my feet from every evil way that I may keep your word. I haven't departed from your judgments, for you yourself have taught me.

How sweet are your words to my taste? How sweeter than honey to my mouth? Through your precepts, I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way. We learn to discern good from evil, something that will become more and more important to us between now and the return of Jesus Christ. To really discern good from evil, we better have digested the word of God to be able to tell the difference. He says in verse 105, the word is the lamp to my feet. It lights our paths.

If you feel distant from God, if you feel like you haven't been there, look at verse 107.

I am afflicted very much. My life isn't where I want it to be.

Revive me. Revive me, O Lord, according to your word. Let's make sure that we're knowing God's word, studying it, meditating on it, applying it into our lives so that we are workers who He will approve.