Acts 11:17
Studying God’s Word
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Acts 17:11, “These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.”
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Welcome to God's Word for you, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in southeast Iowa. We want to thank you for listening today, and we pray that you would be blessed by both hearing God's Word as well as having it applied to your life and your heart.
Acts 17:11, “These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.
I was just reading recently in a book “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus” about a Muslim who had become a Christian. And this Muslim was raised in Virginia Beach. His father was in the Navy, and one of the things that happened is, in the book, he talks about interacting with a girl in his class, when he was in grade school. And as he was interacting with her, she turned around in class and said, “Do you know about Jesus?” And he was shocked because this was the first time any American had ever asked him if he had known Jesus. And he said, “Oh, yeah, I know a lot about Jesus.” And he went on and on about Jesus and he denied His divinity, and he denied His resurrection. He denied all sorts of things. And he was expecting this girl to shut down, as if he had all the answers. And what he realized was that she wasn't going to do that.
See, she had been trained in her church to be a Berean. She had every time he had given her something that she needed to think about or didn't know how to refute, she’d say, “I'm gonna read my Bible about that. And I'll come back and we'll talk about it again. But I need to study my Bible about that.” And he was trying to convince her about these things. And often that's the way we get in our lives when something comes before us, or even when you talk to your non-believing family members. They might bring up, “Well, what about this? Well, what about that? Well, what about X? What about Y? What about Z?” And your answer shouldn't be defeat. It should be, “Well, I need to go sharpen my sword. I'm gonna go study my Bible and I'll come back and we'll have this discussion again.” Don't be afraid of those conversations.
Now there’s other types of conversations that are going to lead you into studying your Bible as well. Some of those questions pastors get all the time, “Should I marry this person? My son hates me. What do I do? Should I take this job offer? What's heaven like?” These are questions that people have that rise up from their very experience and the best place to go for those answers, is to go study in the Lord's Word together. To go see what are the principles in God's word to find out what the truth is.
And that's your call today is to go seek the Lord. To go seek the Lord. That's how the Old Testament would say it all the time is, “Go seek the Lord.” Here in Acts 17:11, what does it say? “And they searched the Scriptures.” This is the same phrase in a different way, searching the Scriptures is seeking the Lord. Go seek the Lord in His Word. And that's your first point, seek God's direction in His Word. Seek God’s direction in His Word. See this is exactly what had happened in Thessalonica. Paul had gone to Thessalonica and he told the people the gospel and they just accepted it. And that was wonderful. But when he went to Berea, one of the things that happened is when he told them about the gospel, and these were good Jews, instead of just accepting it wholesale because some rabbi said it, what did they do? They said, “Okay, hold on. We need to go actually see if this guy selling us a bill of goods or not.” And so they go and they study the Scriptures, they go and seek the Lord. Is this lining up with what God has said? And what does Paul say? He says they're more honorable than the Thessalonians, because they actually searched God's Word all day long to find out whether what he was saying was true.
And this isn't anything new for the New Testament. In Deuteronomy 19:18 when Moses was to set up the judges over the people, do you remember that? When they’re to set up the judges over the fifties and over the hundreds and over the thousands and over the tens of thousands. How were they to judge? Well Deuteronomy 19 is clear, they’re to go to God's Word and to seek His will to try to figure out who's right and who's wrong. They weren't just to come up with an answer based on their own preferences, but they were to seek God in His Word.
And one of the most famous stories of this is in First Kings chapter 22 about going and seeking the Lord. First Kings chapter 22 is about two kings this Northern King Ahab and the Southern King Jehoshaphat. And these two kings are going to come into an alliance together, and they're going to go attack one of the pagan kings. And Jehoshaphat, the southern King of Judah, says, “Well, hold on. Let's go seek the Lord and let's find a prophet. And we need to find out whether this is God's will or not.” And so Ahab comes with all of his prophets and they’re a bunch of yes men. They aren't actually prophets. They just tell the king whatever he wants to hear. And Jehoshaphat says, “Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. Is there not a prophet of the Lord that we can inquire of?” And Ahab says one of my favorite lines in the entire Bible, “Yes, but I hate him. He never says anything good about me.”
And so they go and they send a servant to go get this prophet Micaiah. And they go and they get Micaiah and the servant on his way is telling Micaiah, “Now make sure you tell the king a good thing.” And so they walk into the King's Court and Jehoshaphat and Ahab are sitting there on their thrones. And they asked Micaiah, they say, “Should we go to war or not?” And Micaiah kind of sarcastically flippantly says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, go to war, you'll win. It's fine.” And Ahab’s not buying it. He says, “How many times have I told you to tell me the truth and nothing else?” So he says, “You're gonna die. Okay, you're gonna die.”
And then one of the funniest things happens. They put Micaiah in jail. They put the faithful prophet in jail even though they had sought after him. And they still go out to war. And then one of my other favorite lines of the entire Bible is, Ahab gets in all of his armor, and he goes out in his chariot and he even puts a servant in front of him in the chariot. So there's two men in this chariot. And they're going along the way and a random arrow strikes him between the holes in his armor and he dies in his chariot.
Now our second son, Daniel, his middle name is Micaiah. And it was really funny, we were at his birth and we were trying to spell out the name for the midwife as she was sitting there. And she looked up and she was like, “Micaiah, what is that?” And we told her this story, and when we got to the point of, “And he told him that he was going to die,” and then he still went out. She went, “You mean he still went out and he didn't listen to God?!” And I was like, “Wow, this is an amazing point of being able to do evangelism right after Olivia's given birth.” I said, “Yeah, isn't amazing? God tells us the truth all the time and people don't listen to it. If we just believe what He's told us.” See, even the pagan kings knew, even wicked Ahab knew that when the prophet said something, it was true. Whether he believed it or not, he was soon to find out that it was gonna come true.
Seeking the prophets in the Old Testament, seeking the Lord in the Old Testament, is the same thing we do now. We seek the Lord in His Word. His prophets have spoken here. Are we listening? Are we studying? Are we seeking Him out? Are you studying His Word?
Well, not only are we to seek God's direction in His Word, but God's Word is worthy of studying. God's Word is worthy of studying, that's your second point. Everybody studies something. I've met a whole bunch of farmers recently and there's a whole field of study I didn't know: tractor study. They'll tell you everything about every tractor between whether this was a low boy and somebody converted it into a high, or they’ll point out, “Well, this one's got a straight, and this one's got this many cylinders, and this one has this many horsepower versus that one.” And man, you farmers know what I'm talking about, you know your tractors, and you've studied which ones you like best.
Other people study different things. Some people study trains. Some people study color. Some people study math. Some people study languages. Some boys study girls a little bit too much. Everybody's always studying something. Some of you women study cooking because you wanna learn how to cook better. There's a reason we study, isn't there? Because there's something that interests us. There's something that we find beautiful or we love or is going to help us. Well, God's Word does all those things and is all those things. God's Word brings life. Seek the Lord and live, the prophet Amos says in chapter five. God's Word is complete. Revelation chapter 22, “You shall not add to or take away from God's word.” It's complete, it’s whole, it's ready for you. God's Word is flawless. Proverbs chapter 30. God's Word is forever settled in heaven, Psalm 119:89. God's Word is effective and it's sufficient, Second Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God might be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Are you being thoroughly equipped? Sometimes are you being corrected and are you being reproved? Are you building up your teaching because you're studying Scripture? God's Word always accomplishes. Isaiah chapter 55, “God’s Word does not return void.” As Christians, we talked about this a few weeks ago, we’re to be like babes desiring pure spiritual milk. First Peter chapter two. We're to be those who long for it. This is where we get our nourishment from. This is how as babes we grow and we get strong. I'm always amazed that little babies can eat nothing but milk and somehow they gain lots, and they go to the bathroom a lot too. Because of that milk, they just, how is it that you could do nothing but drink milk and get strong? Think about what you have to do to get strong and healthy. As you get older, it seems like you get less and less options, but you have to pay careful attention to the things you eat. But when you're a newborn baby, you've got one thing in your diet. One good thing, drink milk. Drink lots of it as often as you can, and you will get strong. Drink of the Scriptures. Drink often of it. Drink thoroughly of it and you will get strong. Drink deeply of the Scriptures.
When it talks about God's Word is pure like seven times refined silver and it's flawless, this is the idea of it is gold that's been put through the fire not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, not five times, not six times, but seven times it's been through the fire to make sure there's no impurity in it. It's flawless, like a diamond that no matter where you turned at it and inspected it, you wouldn't find a speck of carbon in it. Every time you go to God's Word and you study and you find something, it's like you're taking a silver or gold coin or a diamond and you're putting it into your wallet, you're putting it into your purse. Are you storing up God's Word like treasure in your heart?
But I'm gonna warn you, your third point, be ready for life change when you study. Be ready for life change when you study. If you think that you can come to the Word of God and study like any other academic discipline and not be changed, either by softening or hardening, you're wrong. You're going to change one way or the other when you come to God's Word and study it. God's Word, when we study it, it's like knowing yourself. The book of James tells us it's like looking into a mirror. There's only one of two effects when you look into a mirror, either you know your face better or you walk away and you deny, “I don't know who that person is.”
God's Word is like a mirror, and you'll see your faults. You’ll also see your strengths. God's Word is for personal, building up, edification. God's Word lets us know Him and know His ways. I was just this week reading Psalm 18 and as I was talking to Ralph McDonald about it, I was so excited. There's times that where you read a Scripture and you've read it a 1,000,000 times, you've even sung it a 1,000,000 times and you get struck by it. And just this past week in Psalm 18 I realized the whole first part of the Psalm is nothing but David's prayer to God for who God is. And just some of the things he lists that God is worthy to be praised, God is his love, God is his strength, God is his rock, God is his fortress, God is his deliverer, his trust, his honor, his salvation. David packs all of that in, in three verses. You can spend your lifetime in those three verses and be filled with joy. If that's who you know who God is, you got it together.
When we study God's Word, we find out about who He is. When we study God's Word, we’re made wise to the way of salvation, Second Timothy 3:15. When we study God's Word, there's another effect that it will have in your life. You'll be strong in the Gospel. This is exactly why Paul in Romans 1:16 could say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.” When you study God's Word, when you know God's Word, you know how to wield your sword and you're not afraid. God's Word will bring light to your path. God's Word will show you the way of prosperity and success. Joshua 1:8, “Do not let these words depart from your lips, but you shall meditate on them day and night. For then you will have good success and then you will make your way prosperous.” You want to know what prosperity looks like? I'm going to give you a hint, and it ain’t in the amount of money that's in your bank account. This tells us a very different rich, a very different type of wealth, a spiritual wealth that will not die. A crown that will last forever.
But, let’s just spend a few seconds talking about the buts. There's a lot of objections you might have to studying your Bible for yourself. And that's our next point, point number four, God's Word is for you. God's Word is for you. There's an opposition, a complaint I hear often, and that's studying God's Word is just too hard. Where do I start? I just can't study God's Word. Well, the Bible's clear. The Bible is clear. I'm not telling you that it's always going to be easy, but I promise you it is clear. It might take you your whole life to understand certain things, but I promise you, it is clear. You don't need a priest. You don't need some shaman. You don't need some special magical commentary that's going to tell you everything that's in the Bible. Get it out yourself and start studying those things. You know if a sermon helps you understand a passage, wonderful. If a commentary illuminates something or points something out that you haven't seen before, great. But it's not like you have to wait to study your Bible because you don't have commentaries, or because you think, “Well, I just can't understand it without Pastor explaining it to me.” No, God's Word is not too hard. You can understand it.
Another opposition some people will say about studying the Bible is, it's boring. Let's be honest, how many of you have picked up your Bible and have found it dry? You know, it's supposed to be a well for you, but you opened up the Bible and you’re like, “How am I going to get anything out of this genealogy?” It happens. There are harder passage in Scriptures to get spiritual milk from. Sometimes you need to not zone in on the little details, but you need to look at the overarching message of why that's there, of God accomplishing His promises. Sometimes God gives us entire genealogies, pages and pages of genealogies, just to tell us, “This is my family. These are the people I've chosen. See, I've accomplished my promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. I've made him into a great nation, and you're part of that great nation.”
God's Word sometimes is hard to chew through and get over. And when you get into that passage, when you get into that time where you find God's Word difficult for you, one of the best things you can do is go get someone else to help you. Two are better than one, for they have good return for their work. Go find your spouse. Go find a friend. Go find someone and say, “Hey, I don't understand this, can you help me?” That's perfectly acceptable. We are meant to be a community together, and so if you are struggling to find spiritual food in a passage, or are struggling to understand it, go ask each other. Go ask each other. Get a friend, study, grab a concordance and look through things.
Pick a topic. Sometimes we just need to pick a topic in Scripture and really chase it down to everything we can find in Scripture about it. If you have a Study Bible, that's wonderful. Pick up the study notes and look there. But again, I'm going to encourage you, if you're going to read a bunch of books about the Bible, that's fine, but make sure you're actually reading THE Book and not just a bunch of books. Make sure this is what you're trying to figure out, and does it line up with what He said in all of His Word. God's Word isn't something hidden. God's Word isn't something that depends on the church interpreting it. The more and more you study God's Word, the more and more you'll understand other parts of God's Word, the more and more you'll start seeing connections.
Just this morning, I'm gonna go on a personal tangent here, just this morning I was doing my devotions, and I was working through Esau’s embracing of Jacob. And again, one of these stories I have seen a million times. And something rang in my mind about, “Hold on, Esau ran to Jacob, and he hugged him, and he any embraced him, and he kissed him, and he cried upon his neck.” And I realized, “Hold on, I had just heard this happened before, when Laban had received Jacob.” And then I realized, “Well, hold on. That sounds really familiar to Luke chapter 15 when Jesus talks about the parable of the Prodigal Son. When the father runs to meet, and the father embraces, and the father kisses, and the father brings the son into the house. When you read God's Word, you'll start just making connections. There will be things that you haven't seen before, stories that, “Oh, hold on, this happens in this way.” Literally, just this past week, one of our children in family worship did that. They said, “Oh, Dad, it's like Abraham offering up Isaac, it's like Jesus going to the cross.” It's like, “Bingo, dude, you got it.” Make those connections. Study His Word. It will become a rich tapestry in your life.
But your next point, be careful. Danger. You need to be warned right now. There is a real danger in studying the Scriptures. And that danger isn't what you find here, but it's what you find here. There's going to be a real temptation in your life as you study the Scriptures, to get prideful. To be a know it all. To get puffed up. To think that somehow because you've studied everything in God's Word that somehow you understand everything about God. I hate to tell you, but you will never exhaust the depths of the knowledge, of the wisdom of God. You don't have all the answers. You never will. When you study God's Word, we come to it with humility. When you study God's Word, you don't come to it because you want to be better than others, but because you want to know your Father more. Be careful when you study God's Word. This isn't about somehow learning how to browbeat people. But when we study God's Word, it's about learning how to love our Father more.
And lastly, I'm gonna go over this quickly. We're gonna go over this more next week during chalk and talk. But I want to spend just a few last minutes with you talking about the how. How do you study God's Word? Okay, so we've talked about why, we've talked about the means, we’ve talked about all these things about studying the Biblical principles underlying it, but you might be sitting in the pews saying, “Okay, great. How do I do it? Where do I start?” Let me give you a few pieces of “don'ts” first.
Don't just pick out a word. Don't just pick out a word and just look at that one word and just kind of think about everything that that word might necessarily mean and start importing your own thoughts into the text. Don't just take one verse. There are many people who do this, right? “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me.” And they'll use that, saying, “I can do absolutely anything and nothing will go wrong with me.” And they forget that Paul is writing that from jai. When you read, when you study, zero in on the passages that are about what you're studying, but make sure you read them in their context. We find meaning in the Scriptures based on what is being said in the whole part of what's being talked about. You need to make sure you zoom out and you read the context. Word studies are wonderful. Verse by verse studies are wonderful, but make sure you're getting the whole context even when you're reading verse by verse studies.
When you're studying the Scriptures, come to it like a journalist. When you come to a piece of text, ask yourself, “Who wrote this? Why did they write it? Who are they writing it to? What was the time frame? When did they write it? Where are they writing it from? What are they saying and why does it matter? How did it apply then?” And you need to make sure, when you're studying God's Word, the primary question you are asking is not first, “What does this mean to me?” But it's, “What did God write to the people who received this letter at that time?” And then, when you understand that, you apply it to your own life.
So how do you read God's Word? Come to it like a journalist. Ask the five W's: who, what, when, where, why, and then your how. Come to it with curiosity. Don't come to God's Word with pride. But I encourage you to go to God's Word, to study God's Word, to get deep into it and have your life changed by it. I promise you, it's not going to be wasted time. Every time you spend studying in God's Word, I have yet to meet someone who's walked out of studying God's Word and went, “Well that was a waste.” You'll be enriched by it. So get in God's Word. Study it and love your Father.
“Lord, we thank you so much for Your Word. God, we thank you that in it we find the very words of life. Thank you, Lord, that it's in Your Word that you've shown us your Son and you displayed Him to us as clearly crucified. God, we pray that we would be people of the Book. We pray that we would be people who hear of Your grace and Your mercy, because you've told us about it. Lord and that we would seek Your face, in Your Word. Do this work by the power of Your Spirit, we pray in Jesus's name, amen.”
Thank you for listening to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. We pray that you would be blessed as you grow in your love for God, your love for His Word, as well as your love for His people. Until next week, God bless you.