Chapter 1
No True Life Without the Bible
A spiritual revitalization that will last must come through the Word of God. A man stood up in one of our meetings and said he hoped to get enough out of the series of meetings to last him all his life. I told him he might as well try to eat enough breakfast at one time to last him his lifetime. That is a mistake that people are making; they are running to religious meetings and thinking the meetings are going to do the work. But if these don’t bring you into closer contact with the Word of God, the whole impression will be gone in three months. The more you love the Scriptures, the stronger your faith will be. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures. If you come into closer contact with the Word, you will gain something that will last, because the Word of God is going to endure. In Psalm 119, David prayed nine times that God would quicken or strengthen him according to His Word. For example:
Revive me according to Your word. (Psalm 119:25)
Strengthen me according to Your word. (Psalm 119:28)
Revive me, O LORD, according to Your word. (Psalm 119:107)
Sustain me according to Your word. (Psalm 119:116)
If I could say something that would motivate Christians to have a deeper love for the Word of God, I think I would be doing them the most important service that could be done for them. Do you ask, “How can I fall in love with the Bible?” Well, if you will only stir yourself up to study it and ask for God’s assistance, He will definitely help you.
Word and work make healthy Christians. If people are all Word and no work, they will suffer from what I may call religious gout. On the other hand, if they are all work and no Word, it will not be long before they will fall into all kinds of sin and error, so that they will do more harm than good. If we first study the Word and then go to work, we will be healthy, useful Christians. I never saw a fruit-bearing Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work, but God cannot use him, for there is not much for the Holy Spirit to work upon. We must have the Word itself, which is sharper than any two-edged sword.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
We can have many prayer meetings, but there is something just as important as prayer, and that is that we read our Bibles, that we have Bible study and Bible lectures and Bible classes, so that we may get hold of the Word of God, and that it may get hold of us. When I pray, I talk to God, but when I read the Bible, God is talking to me; and it is really more important that God should speak to me than that I should speak to Him. I believe we would know how to pray better if we knew our Bibles better. What is an army good for if the soldiers don’t know how to use their weapons? What is a young man starting out in Christian work good for if he does not know how to use his Bible? A man isn’t worth much in battle if he has any doubt about his weapon, and I have never found a man who has doubts about the Bible who has been successful in Christian work. I have seen work after work wrecked because men and women lost confidence in the spirit of this old Book.
You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 11:18-20)
If young converts want to be used by God, they must feed on His Word. Their experience may be very good and illuminating at the outset, and they may help others by telling it; but if they keep on doing nothing else but telling their experience, it will soon become stale and unprofitable, and people will get tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. After they have told how they have been converted, the next thing they need to do is feed on the Word. We are not fountains ourselves, but the Word of God is the true fountain.
Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. (1 Peter 2:2-3)
If we feed on the Word of God, it will be easy to speak to others about the Word of God; and not only that, but we will also be growing in grace the entire time, and others will notice the change in our walk and conversation. So few Christians grow, because so few study. I would advise all young converts to spend as much time as they can in the company of more mature Christians. I like to be with those who know more than I do, and I never lose a chance of learning as much as I can from them. Study the Bible carefully and prayerfully; ask others what this passage means and what that passage means, and when you have become familiar with the great truths that the Bible contains, you will have less to fear from the world, the flesh, and the Devil. You will not be disappointed with your Christian life.
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)
People are constantly saying, “We want something new. We want some new doctrine or some new idea.” Depend upon it, my friends, that if you get tired of the Word of God and it becomes boring to you, you are out of communion with Him.
O how I love Your law! it is my meditation all the day. (Psalm 119:97)
The last time I was in Baltimore, I could see an Episcopal church when I looked out my window. The stained-glass windows were dull and uninviting by day, but when the lights shone through at night, they were beautiful! When the Holy Spirit touches the eyes of your understanding and you see Christ shining through the pages of the Bible, it becomes a new book to you.
The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. (Psalm 19:8)
A young lady once took up a novel to read, but found it dull and uninteresting. A few months later, she was introduced to the author, and in time became his wife. She then found that there was something exciting and worthwhile in the book, and her opinion of it changed. The change was not in the book, but in herself. She had come to know and love the author.
I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have revived me. (Psalm 119:93)
Some Christians read the Bible as a duty, if they read it at all; but as soon as a man or woman sees Christ as the greatest among ten thousand, the Bible becomes the revelation of the Father’s love and becomes a never-ending fascination.
A gentleman once asked another man, “Do you often read the Bible?”
“No,” was the answer. “I honestly admit I do not love God.”
“Neither did I at first,” the man replied, “but God loved me.”
A great many people seem to think that the Bible is out of date, that it is an old book, and they think it is of no use today. They say it was very good for the Dark Ages and that there is some very good history in it, but it was not intended for the present time; we are living in a very enlightened age and men can get on very well without the old Book; we have outgrown it, they say. Now you might just as well say that the sun, which has shone so long, is now so old that it is out of date, and that whenever a man builds a house he doesn’t need to put any windows in it, because we have a newer light and a better light; we have electric light. But it’s not true – nothing can replace the sun’s warm rays of light.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8)
Keep in mind there is no situation in life for which you cannot find some word of consolation in Scripture. If you are in affliction, if you are in adversity and trial, there is a promise for you. In joy and sorrow, in health and in sickness, in poverty and in riches, in every condition of life, God has a promise stored up in His Word for you. In one way or another, every case is met, and the truth is commended to every man’s conscience. It is said that Richard Baxter, author of The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, was amazed in his youth by the miracles in the Bible; as he grew older, he was more impressed by fulfilled prophecy; and toward the end of his life, he felt the deepest satisfaction in his own sweet experience of the power of the gospel.
In Psalm 119:165, we find these words: Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble. The study of God’s Word will secure peace. Take those Christians who are rooted and grounded in the Word of God, and you will find they have great peace. But those who don’t study and who don’t know their Bibles are easily offended or discouraged when some little trouble or some little persecution comes, and their peace is all disturbed; just a little breath of opposition, and their peace is all gone.
Sometimes I am amazed to see how little it takes to drive all peace and comfort from some people. A little gossip or slander quickly bothers them; but if we have the peace of God, the world cannot take that peace from us. It cannot give it; it cannot destroy it. We must get it from above the world. It is the peace which only Christ gives. Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble. Christ says, And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me (Matthew 11:6). Wherever there is a Bible-taught Christian, one who has his Bible well marked and who daily feeds upon the Word with prayerful meditation, he will not be easily offended. Those are the people who are growing in Christ and working for Him all the time.
It is the people who never open their Bibles and never study the Scriptures who become offended and discouraged and wonder why they are having such a hard time. They are the people who tell you that Christianity is not what they thought it would be, that it is not as great as we claim it is. The real trouble is that they have not done as the Lord has told them to do. They have neglected the Word of God.
Seek from the book of the LORD, and read. (Isaiah 34:16)
If they had been studying the Word of God, they would not be in that condition; they would not have wandered away from God all these years, living on the husks of the world. They have neglected to care for the new life. They haven’t fed it, and the poor soul, being starved, sinks into weakness and decay, and easily stumbles or is offended. If a man is born of God, he cannot thrive without God.
I met a man who confessed that his soul had fed on nothing for forty years. “Well,” said I, “that is pretty hard for the soul – giving it nothing to feed on!” That man is like thousands and tens of thousands today; their poor souls are starving. We take good care of this earthly body that we only have for a short time. We feed it three times a day, and we clothe it, and we dress it, and soon it is going into the grave to rot; but the inner man that is to live on and on forever is weak and starved.
Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)
If a man is traveling and does not know where he is going or how he is going to get there, you know he is going to have much unnecessary difficulty on his journey. It is not safe or wise traveling without a plan and a map. The Bible is a guidebook in the journey of life, and the only one that points the way to heaven. Let us take heed then, not to refuse the light and the help it gives.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)