(Guidelines) Pratical Ways to Learn the Bible

Now, we want to look at, actually, some guidelines, seven to be exact. And I'd like to open today with this Scripture, which we opened with before. The Scripture I want to begin with is Psalm 119, 18.

Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. And when the psalmist wrote these lines, of course, he had in mind the Mosaic system primarily. But we widened that out to include the 66 books of the Bible, and can say today, open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of the Bible.

And so, with that thought in mind, we look at these guidelines. Now, there are certain guidelines that each of us should follow relative to the Word of God. You may want to add to these, but I believe that the ones we're mentioning are basic and primary.

And I'd like to put it like this. I guarantee that if you follow these guidelines, blessing will come to your heart and your life. Certainly, there should be these directions in the study of Scripture.

Today, for instance, a bottle of patent medicine, no matter how simple it might be, it might be just a tonic, or it might be something for a cold. It has directions for the use of it. I even noticed that a bottle of aspirin has on it directions.

And any little gadget that you buy in a five and ten cent store, and I must pause to say that probably there's no misnomer today like the five and ten cent store. You can't find anything in there that sells anymore for five and ten cents. It's generally up in the dollar bracket today, but any gadget that you buy there always has with it directions for its operation.

I know that I bought my daughter, when she was a little girl, a toy, and it had with it directions. You had to assemble it, and I took it out to give to her, and I thought, well, I'd put it together. And I want to tell you, friends, I never got into a thing as complicated as that was, and the directions were right there with it.

Not only directions, but pictures. And even with all of that help, I had my problems. Well, if things in this world today are like that, then certainly the Word of God needs directions in order to read and to study it.

A Word of God should have a few directions and a few instructions on the study of it. Now, I'm going to mention seven very simple yet basic preliminary statements that will be a guide for the study of the scriptures, and we're going to attempt to follow them. Well, let me mention the seven to you.

Begin with prayer. That's number one, and we're going to talk about each one of these. Second, read the Bible.

Third, study the Bible. And fourth, meditate on the Bible. And fifth, read what others have written on the scriptures.

And now the sixth one is obey the Bible. Obedience. That is all important.

Now, number seven is pass it on to others. Someone has put it in this very brief, cogent manner. The Bible.

Know it in your head, stow it in your heart, show it in your life, sow it in the world. Well, that's another way of saying some of the things that we are going to talk about here.