Thru the Bible

Steve Schwetz: What do you think about when you don't have anything else to think about? Well, that's the interesting question that our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, asks in this study of Thru the Bible. I'm Steve Schwetz, your host, and I know what I'd like to answer. I know that I'd like to say that I think about the Lord and what pleases him.

Well, how about you? What would you say or what would you like to say? I know many people listen to our studies while on the road, riding along in their car or truck. You know, that's a good place to really give thought to a passage of scripture, isn't it? May God bless you in that discipline. Ask God to help you develop that habit.

We've been studying Dr. McGee's guidelines for understanding scripture, and he's got seven in all. We'll hear two more in just a few moments. But before we dive in, here's Dr. McGee with a few introductory thoughts.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Some time ago, a minister in California announced that he would speak the next Sunday over radio on heaven. During that week, the minister received a letter from an old man who was very ill. In this letter was one of the most beautiful expressions of faith ever penned. It read in part:

Next Sunday you are to talk about heaven. I'm interested in that land because I have held a clear title to a bit of property there for over 55 years. I did not buy it. It was given to me without money and without price. But the donor purchased it for me at a tremendous sacrifice. I'm not holding it for speculation, since the title is not transferable.

It's not a vacant lot. For more than half a century, I've been sending material out of which the greatest architect and builder of the universe has been building a home for me, which will never need to be repaired because it will suit me perfectly and will never grow old.

Termites can never undermine its foundation, for it rests upon the rock of ages. Fire cannot destroy it. Floods cannot wash it away. No locks or bolts will ever be placed upon its doors, for no vicious person can ever enter that land where my dwelling stands, now almost completed and almost ready for me to enter in and abide in peace eternally without fear of being ejected.

Steve Schwetz: What a great perspective that man had on our heavenly home. We'll hear more about heaven in our next study. Now, before we dive into more guidelines, let's pray.

Father, thank you for your Spirit, who leads us into all truth as we study your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, here's Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: We are now looking at guidelines for the study of scripture. We have spoken about: begin with prayer, that's number one. And number two is read the Bible. Number three is study the Bible, and that is where we are right now: study the Bible.

And I would like very much to pick up where I left off last time. I mentioned the fact that you may be shocked when I say what I'm going to say about devotional reading of the Bible, or devotional reading. And may I say that I do not encourage that type of reading at all.

Because I've learned over a period of years that a great many people who are very faithful at what they call devotional reading are very much ignorant of the Bible. To begin with, devotional reading is generally done at a time in which it ought not to be done.

I stayed with a family for over a week when I was holding meetings in a place in Middle Tennessee. And every morning at the breakfast table, we had devotions. And unfortunately, breakfast was always a little late, and Susie and Willie were rushing to get away to school. And I'm confident they didn't even know what was read.

And dad was wanting to get away to work, and he generally made it a very brief reading. And always he'd say, "Well, I'll read this familiar passage this morning because we don't have much time." And believe me, we didn't. By the time that the reading was over, these two children, they went away from the table like they were shot out of a gun.

And he got out of there almost as quickly as they did, and mother was left with the dishes. And I wondered whether she had really heard, whether anything would be read. I determined right then and there that in my home, we wouldn't have devotional reading.

I've always tried to encourage the members of my family to read the Bible on their own. That's the only kind that is profitable. When I was brought up, that's not the way that we studied mathematics. My dad didn't get the family around in the morning at the breakfast table and say, "Now we're going to have some devotional reading in mathematics," and then he'd take up the lesson that we had for the day.

I give you my word, I don't think we'd have learned much in the way of mathematics. And I don't think you learn history that way. Now, somebody's going to say, "But I have my devotions at night after the day's over." Well, now really, don't you have it right before you go to bed?

You've got one foot in bed already. One eye is already closed. And again, you turn to a passage of scripture and you read it. I have made a point never to read the Bible at that time of night. Now, I wake up sometimes at night, have difficulty getting back to sleep, and I read the Bible. And I find out, friends, it'll put you to sleep. And if it won't, one of my books will.

But may I say to you, I don't think it ought to be read at times like that. I think that you ought to read it when you have time, when you can give time to it. And if you can't give time, you ought to make time. And you ought to set apart 30 minutes or an hour.

And if you are to do things haphazardly like I do, then you will find out that one day you're going to read 30 minutes, the next day five minutes, and the next day two or three hours. I find out that's the best way to do it. That is, to fit into my program. And I'd put down no particular rule, but I think each person ought to read it for themselves.

I think that that is the thing to do, to encourage boys and girls to read the Bible. And I was delighted to find out when my daughter went away to college and she got pretty far away from us and from other things, but I was told by a roommate that she got her Bible out and read it because that's the way we had done it in the home.

I believe that is true. Now, I know that's going to shock some folk and say, "Oh, I think we ought to have our devotional reading together." Well, fine, if that's the way the Lord leads you to do it, you do it that way. But I'll guarantee you, you won't be an intelligent Bible student after 20 years by doing it like that.

You have to study the Word of God. The Bible must be studied, and intelligently. You remember that Ethiopian eunuch? He was reading the scriptures, and he didn't know what he was reading. And the Spirit of God got Philip to go down and join himself to the Ethiopian eunuch, and then he asked him, "Do you understand what you are reading?"

And the man was very honest. After all, he was the treasurer, and he was an honest man. And he said what I think a great many people ought to say today, "Well, how can I? I need somebody to help me here. I don't know what he's talking about. Is Isaiah talking about himself or some other?"

I feel that there must be this study of the Word of God or there'll be no understanding of it. Now, I have been deeply gratified to find that across this country and in other places, literally hundreds of Bible classes have been organized in homes where people can study the Bible.

And many pastors have put in this Thru the Bible program. They themselves have found it's been a blessing to them, and they have put it into the churches and asked people to study the Bible. That is very important. It was said of John Wesley that he was a man of one book.

Well, then what made him a man of one book? Well, I'll tell you what made him a man of one book. He got up and read the Bible at four and five o'clock every morning. I'm told that he read the Bible in five different languages. Believe me, he studied the Word of God.

And you and I today need to study the Word. We need to get the meaning of the Bible, and that's very important. Now, that leads me to the fourth very important guideline for the study of the scriptures, and that is meditate on the Bible. Meditate on the Bible.

Meditation is something that God taught his people. The Word of God was to be before the children of Israel all the time so that they could meditate on it. And let me give you that passage of scripture, over in the sixth chapter, Deuteronomy, verses six through nine. Listen to this very carefully:

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

You see, the Word of God was to be kept before them. It was to be written in their homes, on the doorposts and the lintel over the door. It was to be that which they talked about when they ate, when they would lie down at night and probably had a little difficulty getting off to sleep. And it presented a problem. This is the most amazing statement that so far we've considered that the Lord has given.

He told them to write the Word of God everywhere, and it would be burnt into their hearts and lives. Now today, we've forgotten about that. Oh, every now and then you see a verse of scripture stuck up. And unfortunately, today, it's written in a way that's difficult to read and it's not presented in a dignified way.

Somebody comes down the street in an automobile, an old beat-up jalopy, and a verse of scripture written on it, you can hardly read the thing. I always feel humiliated when I see that. And then I look at the liquor advertisements. My, how dignified they are given out. And I rode out Wilshire Boulevard with a friend and called his attention to the number of billboards that are liquor signs. That's all they are.

And I said, "No wonder so many people in Southern California drink. This thing is burnt into their minds and hearts. Everywhere they turn, why, here it is, right there before them: Drink this, drink that." And it all adds up to one thing. There is something wrong with you if you don't drink liquor. That's what they're trying to tell you.

They give you the impression that the intelligent are the ones who drink and the oddballs do not. Now, when I was growing up as a boy, it was the opposite, that there's something wrong with the drunkard. Today, he's just sick. He's not a sinner at all. And that he just needs a little revamping of a few of his axons and dendrites, and then he'll be in a position to drink in a normal sort of way. And after all, what is normal drinking?

This is something that I think is very important to see: Meditate on the Word of God. And there was the man that was formerly in my church down in Cleburne, Texas. And this man, he owned the Coca-Cola plant. He owned it there and in two other places in Texas.

And one day I was riding across the square in our little town, and I was going down to his place. And I went over to him and I said to him, "You know," I said, "I counted 13 Coca-Cola signs on the square." I said, "Do you have to tell people 13 times on the square about Coca-Cola when everybody already knows about it?"

And then he said this to me. He said, "When was the last time you saw a package of Arbuckle coffee?" Well, I said, "I don't recall of seeing a package of Arbuckle coffee since I was a boy." He said, "That's it." He said, "Years ago, Arbuckle coffee was advertised as much as Coca-Cola. And then the people who made the coffee thought, 'Well, everybody knows about Arbuckle coffee,' and they quit talking about it. They quit advertising. They cut down on it."

And he said, "Now," he says, "nobody knows about Arbuckle coffee." And he says, "Coca-Cola feels like that a certain percentage—and you'd be amazed how much—out of each bottle of Coca-Cola they sell, how much of that goes into advertising." Now, they feel like they've just got to keep saying it. And certainly, certain soap products feel like they have to keep saying it. And certainly, cigarettes, they have to keep saying it with the silliest type of advertising.

May I say to you, God says his word ought to be given prominence. Now, if you and I are to understand the Word of God, we must meditate on the Bible. I know a great many people—family is, of course, divided during the day. The wife listens to the program at home, the husband listens to it at work, and of a evening at the dinner table, they discuss what was covered that day in the Bible. May I say, that's meditation. Go back over it, again and again.

Well, what do you think about when you don't have anything else to think about? Now, I find riding along in the car alone—and I make quite a few trips by myself—I find out that's a good time to take a passage of scripture and to think about it, to give thought to it at that time. Someone ask a man once, says, "When you can't sleep at night, do you count sheep?" He said, "No, I talk to the shepherd." Well, that's what God's people are asked to do. That is, God asks his people to meditate on his word.

Now, what does it mean to meditate on the Word of God? Well, there's a very graphic statement that's made in the first Psalm. Let me read the first two verses: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night."

Now, that word meditate, I'm told, is actually a picture of a cow chewing her cud. Now, you know the old cow goes out of a morning, and while the grass is fresh with dew, she eats the grass. Then when the sun comes up and the grass is warm and the weather's hot, the old cow gets under a tree and lies down or stands there in the shade, and you see her chewing. And you wonder what in the world that cow is chewing.

Well, they say that she's chewing her cud. Well, she's actually meditating, my friend. You see, we're also told that a cow has several stomachs. So of a morning, she eats the grass rather hurriedly, stores it in one tummy. And then in the afternoon, when it's hot, she meditates upon it. She chews the cud. She transfers it from one tummy to another, and she chews it over again.

May I say to you that we need to learn to do that in our thought processes in studying the Word of God. We need to take that which we've read and that which we've studied and meditate upon it. And that's one of the most valuable things that you can do.

Now, of course, as a preacher, I've had some advantage here over most of you. And I think here is where a preacher or a teacher of the word has a tremendous advantage over other folk, is this: that in preparing a message, many times I'll take a verse of scripture and spend hours doing nothing in the world but just reading it over and over. And reading what others have said, and just keep reading it.

And finally, it's a marvelous thing that I find that new truth will break out from that particular passage. I remember hearing Dr. Harry Ironside years ago say that he had heard a lecturer in a seminary in Chicago, a lecture on the Song of Solomon. And he gave quite a liberal interpretation, which put Solomon in a very bad light, by the way. And even the record that is clear makes Solomon bad enough, and we do not need to paint him any darker than he really is.

But he was not satisfied. And he said that he went and read the Song of Solomon again, got down on his knees and asked God to give him an understanding of it because he didn't have. And he did that again and again. In fact, he did it for weeks and months.

And finally, new light broke from that book. And I generally give his interpretation of the Song of Solomon for two reasons: It satisfies my mind and my heart more than any other interpretation that I've heard. And then the second thing is, I know the man who did it spent a great deal of time in meditation.

And meditation is really a lost art today. And again, may I say that we let it go at devotions. And 30 minutes after devotions, a man riding to work and the housewife sweeping the kitchen or washing the dishes, I have a notion if you'd ask either one of them what it was they read at the breakfast table, they couldn't tell you. We need to learn to meditate on the Word of God. How important that is.

That Ethiopian eunuch, riding along reading Isaiah. He was actually studying Isaiah, because he's in a passage with which he's having trouble and he didn't know what it meant. And he went over it and over it again. And here comes along this man, Philip. And Philip, guided by the Spirit of God, it says he began at that scripture and he preached unto him Jesus.

And just think of when he got to that particular passage of scripture: that he was a sheep led to the slaughter. "All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." I'd love to have been there that day and heard Philip.

How we need to meditate on the Word of God. And that is, frankly, where television is absolutely blotting out and changing the spiritual life of many families. There are a great many boys and girls today that formerly in the home, they would have known John 3:16 and they could have sung "Jesus Loves Me." But now they can sing that silly TV commercial about a certain soap or about a certain something else. They know that. And even the tune of it as well as the words.

But they can't sing "Jesus Loves Me." May I say to you that one of the reasons today that our churches are becoming colder and colder and more indifferent to the Word of God is just simply because there is that lack of meditation upon the Word of God. And as we go through the Bible this time again, learn to meditate upon it. And I trust that you will continue to meditate on the Word of God.

And by the way, these folk who write in a long time after I've made a certain tape on a certain passage of scripture, and they ask a certain question or some suggestion someone makes, reveal that folk are meditating upon the Word of God.

Now I come to the fifth item about how to study the scriptures, and this is read what others have written on the scripture. Now, this is the fifth guideline for the study of the Word of God. Now, I won't be able to get very far on this and we won't spend too much time developing this one, but it's very important.

And I recognize that it's rather a dangerous rule because a great many folk just depend on what someone else says about it. And there's so many books that are out today that give wrong teaching concerning the Word of God. And we need to test everything that's written by the Word of God, but this becomes a vicious circle because we also need what somebody else has to say to give us some light on a particular passage of scripture.

May I say to you that a good commentary on every book of the Bible is very important. But we'll have something further to say on this next time. And may the Lord bless you today, my beloved.

Steve Schwetz: To get the most out of our study, you're going to want Dr. McGee's notes and outlines. Get our app or go to ttb.org and download our free digital book, Briefing the Bible, which compiles them all into one great resource. You can also call 1-800-65-BIBLE or you can write to Box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1, and we'll put an abridged print copy in the mail to you.

If you already have your notes, then be sure to check out all of our other resources, including our digital booklet of Dr. McGee's guidelines called "How to Understand the Bible." Now, as we travel through God's entire Word over the next five years, you'll find it helpful, I think, to refresh your memory of these guidelines as we study each book. Again, look for "How to Understand the Bible" in our app or at ttb.org.

I'm Steve Schwetz, and I'll meet you back here next time. Our journey on the Bible bus today is supported by the prayers and gifts of fellow passengers as we travel through the Bible.