We're going to turn in our Bibles to two portions, one in the Old Testament and one in the New. First of all, the first Psalm, Psalm 1 and then the book of Acts chapter 17. I want to commence a new study today, a series of studies on Bible study, on reading the Bible, on studying the Bible. It might seem to be a very elementary point when we say that people should read their Bibles. And that's certainly true, Christians ought to read their Bibles, but they also ought to study their Bibles. And we ought to read our Bibles in a particular fashion. In Psalm 1, we have what is an Old Testament beatitude, because it begins with the word blessed. Blessed is a word that really means, O the happinesses of. So, blessed are all the happinesses of 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. That's what he doesn't do. Here's what he does do. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And here I would say we should take the law of the Lord as a reference to the whole of the Scriptures. the whole Bible. Sometimes the Law of the Lord means the Ten Commandments. Sometimes the Law of the Lord is a reference to the Old Testament Scriptures. The Law of the Lord, however, can be taken to mean the entire book. And I would suggest that that is what is in mind here. And in His Law doth He meditate day and night. Then it tells you about the blessings of the Lord that are on such a person and by way of contrast, verse 4, the ungodly are not so. The first three verses of the psalm refer to the blessing of the man of God and the last three verses of the psalm speak about the end of the ungodly. Now turn to Acts chapter 17. Acts chapter 17, verse 11. And it says here, these, and it's referring to the Bereans, the men of that city called Berea. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica. In that, they received the Word, and it's referring to the Word of God, preached with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily. whether those things were so. Someone once said, the Bible opens up to reading. Now that might seem, again, to be a very elementary point. Of course, you're supposed to read the Bible. But sadly, in many instances, people have a copy of the Bible, but they either don't read it at all, or they don't read it very much. It gathers dust mostly and I think that's a great shame. It's a greater shame if that's true of someone or several someones who profess to be Christians. If you profess to be the Lord's but the Bible is virtually an unopened book, that's a very sad commentary on your life. The Bible opens up to reading. God has promised to bless the reading of His Word. I think of what it says in the first chapter of the book of Revelation, and certainly it is true of that book that there is a blessing on those who read it. Revelation chapter 1 verse 3 records, Blessed, here's a New Testament beatitude, Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein for the time is at hand." I say that is true of the book of Revelation but that verse can certainly be applied to the whole of the Bible. There is a blessing on those who read. There is also a blessing on those who hear the words and there is a greater blessing yet for those who hear and who read and who keep those things which are written therein. Bible study. We ought to study and we ought to read our Bibles. This is a Bible class and you might expect that in the Bible class we talk about the Bible. Big surprise there. You know there's a lot of churches where they might say it's a Bible class or it's a Sunday school class or it's a church service and the Bible is hardly ever opened and hardly ever read and certainly never expounded. That's a very sad thing as well. Psalm 119 verse 11 says, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. When I was a small child and I had my own Bible, we always had our own Bibles even when I couldn't read yet because we were being taught that it's an important thing to have your own Bible. But my mother taught me to write in the fly leaf of the Bible inside one of the front covers This book will keep me from sin. But sin will keep me from this book. The Bible. This book will keep me from sin. Sin will keep me from this book. That's a truism. It's very important for us to read and to study the Bible. It's important for us to receive what the Bible says because you can read without receiving. You can read without accepting and without hearing the Word of God. In James 1, we are reminded of this, where he says, verse 22, But be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. So you can actually read the Word, you can hear the Word proclaimed, but not put it into practice. And that's not good. We are taught in the Scriptures to be doers of the Word. We are to receive the Scriptures. We are to receive them with a readiness of mind. When Paul talked about the Thessalonians, we just read a verse in Acts 17 verse 11 where he actually stated that the men of Berea were more noble than those in Thessalonica. Well, the people in Thessalonica were pretty well known for their adherence to Scripture as well. In 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, Paul said, For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men. They didn't say, well, Paul said it, so it must be right. No, they didn't just receive it as the Word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. So, we are to, like the Thessalonians, receive the Word of God as the Word of God. A Word from God to us. And as you read, as our children's chorus puts it, as I read, God speaks to me. I see Christ in Calvary, the wonderful Word of God. It's a good thing for us to read the Scriptures. What do we find in the Scriptures? We find in the Scriptures that the chief subject is Christ. In Luke chapter 24, our Lord Jesus, and of course it is referring to the Old Testament because that's the only written Scripture that they possess at that particular juncture in history, Later on, the disciples and Paul and others would write the New Testament. But at that time, they had Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. And that's a three-fold division of the Old Testament. The Lord Jesus was walking with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus. And in Luke chapter 24 and verse 27, the Bible tells us this. And beginning at Moses, and when he says Moses, he means The Pentateuch, the word Pentateuch, like pentagram or pentagon, it refers to five. There are five books of Moses, the Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. When the Bible says beginning at Moses, that's what it means. And all the prophets, that's a reference to the rest of the books in the Old Testament. He, Jesus, expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So if you are looking for Christ in the Old Testament, by the help of the Spirit of God, you will find Christ in the Old Testament. You will find Him in type, you will find Him in shadow, you will find Him in the ceremonies, you will find Him in the tabernacle and in the temple, you will find Him in the high priest, in the high priest garments. You will find Christ referred to everywhere in the scriptures. And when we read the Bible, we ought to be looking for Christ. Now proper Bible study is so important. And there's Bible study, and there's Bible study. Not all Bible study is good. Because some people will come to the Scriptures with their preconceived ideas, with their preconceived notions. And they try to squeeze the scriptures into their preconceived notions. They say, well now here's what I think, and here's the Bible, so I'm going to twist and meander and move the Bible around to make it fit in with this particular system. And that's wrong. We need to come to the scriptures with a blank sheet, so to speak, and find out what it is that God says. Now we need to study the Bible properly, and that's what I want to talk about in the coming weeks in the will of the Lord. It's important for us to establish right away that the Bible is like no other book that you will ever read. Some of you may read novels, and if you do, hopefully they're wholesome and good novels, because there's a lot of stuff you can read that's trash. It's not going to do your soul any good. It's not going to do your heart any good. It's not going to bring you any closer to God. You may read a novel. You may read a biography. You may read a history book. And you read it once and you've got a pretty good grasp of what's in it. And then you read it twice and you've got an even better grasp of what's in it. And if you read it 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times, if you're able to do that, then you pretty much know what's in the book. You know how it starts. You know how it ends. finishes, you know pretty much what happens all the way through. And there comes a point where that book will become boring to you because you've read it so many times, over and over and over and over again, you know how it all ends and so it really doesn't have the same fascination as it once did. But that's not true of the Bible. Because when you read the Bible, it's always fresh. It's like the mama that fell each day in the wilderness for almost 40 years. It fell on the ground fresh every day. Now there were those who were told at that time, and you can read about it in Exodus chapter 16, don't be gathering any manna on the Sabbath. Because the Lord is going to meet your need. And they didn't do that. But what some of them did do was to try to keep some of today's manna over till tomorrow. Now that's OK for us with our turkey and our leftovers, we can keep stuff to the next day and enjoy that. With the manna however, you know what happened? When they kept the manna over to the next day, the Bible says it bred worms and it stank. It wasn't fit to eat. It reminds me of a time when I was a young boy and I was staying with my grandfather He was an old man at the time so I could make an excuse for him where that was concerned. But he decided this one evening that we were going to have some chicken. Now he had, to be fair to him, he had the chicken in a refrigerator but what I didn't know was it had the chicken in the refrigerator for weeks. So it was in the refrigerator okay but there was something going on inside the carcass of that chicken that he didn't know about. which I quickly discovered was going on when we brought it out to the table. Because when we brought it out to the table, I said, Grandpa, why is it moving on the inside? Well, it was obvious why it was moving on the inside, because there were certain little white worm-like creatures that were in the carcass of the chicken. They were maggots. So you know what we had for supper that evening? Boiled eggs. No chicken. No, I wasn't going to eat that. Neither was he. He was old but he wasn't stupid. Now why do I say that? That's what happened with the manna. It bred worms and it began to stink. Even just in one day. It was kept over to the next day. It had to be gathered fresh. And that's the way it is with the scriptures. You read the Bible yesterday, that's good. But you need to read the Bible today. He came to church last Lord's Day. Good. But you need to be in church this Lord's Day and the next Lord's Day. That's how it works. It's up to date. God's Word is fresh and it's new. We can gather manna from the Scriptures on a daily basis and we'll come to that in due course. But the Bible is like no other book. You can study it and study it and study it. the same portion and find something entirely different there than you found the last time. It never gets old. It never ever grows old if we are studying it properly. And so the proper study of the Bible is very profitable to us. And that's not only true in regard to our personal study of the Word, it's also true when we study the Word in a corporate way in the Lord's house. R. A. Torrey, great preacher of a former day in this country excoriated the kind of study of the scripture that went on at Chicago University in his day and in the American Institute of Sacred Literature and other such institutions. He said it was not only unprofitable but it was positively pernicious and injurious because it was so utterly improper. He said of those institutions in his day, and we're talking many, many decades ago, that intelligent men would never study fairy tales in the same way in which there were some in his day who were studying the scriptures. And he referenced Chicago University in his day. He said, and I quote, they study the histories of the Bible, which are the most exact and accurate and reliable histories ever written. as if they were fairy tales or folklore. No really intelligent or rational man or woman would study an omniscient word of God as they would study ever erring man's word. And the Bible is God's word. But they study it at Chicago University as if it were the word of men who did not know quite as much as the very self-sufficient teachers at Chicago University know. And he said this, that is a very improper, yes a very asinine way to study the book that is so clearly demonstrated by 18 centuries of investigation and uniform experience to be the very Word of God. And now we can go further than 18 centuries. It is the Word of God. Now in the time that remains, let me just begin this particular aspect of our study by saying this about Bible reading and Bible study. We must learn to study God's Word directly. I'm not against commentaries per se. I'm not against men's writings on the Scriptures. But we should never, and I mean never, ever elevate them to the same level as Scripture. That's a very dangerous thing to do. I'm not going to stand here and say to people, thus and thus saith John Calvin, or thus and thus saith C.H. Spurgeon even, or thus and thus saith Stephen Hamilton. No, that's not preaching the Word of God. It's alright to quote men of God, as long as what they're saying is in keeping Anything else is subordinate to the Word of God. The Word of God alone is God's Word. That is clear. There is no other book but this book of which we can say this is the Word of God. God doesn't have 2 Bibles or 10 or 15 different versions of His Word to give to us. We have God's Word. And it is important therefore for us to study the Bible itself, to study the Bible directly. That is what the men of Berea did. Look again at Acts 17 verse 11. They are referred to as being more noble than those in Thessalonica in that it really means because they received the Word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures. They searched the Scriptures. They read what the Bible said. That's emphasised here. They searched the Scriptures. They didn't search the Talmud. They didn't search the rabbinical writings. They didn't search the commentaries on the Scriptures per se. They went right to the Scriptures themselves. That's how we're to study God's Word. Yes, there are helps. Sometimes Commentators such as Matthew Henry can help us greatly in our understanding of much of the Scriptures. But these men are not infallible. They're not infallible. And we need to understand that they're not infallible. And good men differ in their comments on the Scripture. Someone will say to me, Oh, but he's a good man. Do you not agree with him? I'll say, Well, here's another good man. And he actually disagrees with him. on some particular interpretation. So, I agree with the one who said the Bible often sheds a lot of light on commentaries. Sometimes, and I don't mean to disparage commentaries, but sometimes this is true. And there is a proper way to study the Bible and that is to study the Bible. To read your Bible. When I was a child we used to sing in Sunday school, read your Bible, Pray every day if you want to grow. And that is the truth. This is God's Word. This alone is God's Word. And we are not only entitled, we are encouraged in the Scripture itself to go right to the Scriptures and to study them for ourselves. Just as it was in the days of the Lord Jesus, there are a lot of people who make the Word of God of none effect through their traditions. There are those who teach for doctrines the commandments of men. They'll say, well, here's what you're to do. Here's what you're not to do. And when you think about it and you study it in the light of scripture, they're really men's commandments. They're not God's commandments. It's tradition. Someone once gave me a booklet. It was from a particular community of Christians, and it was a Bible story book for children. And I was noticing all the men that were in it, Abraham and Moses and Noah and others, they all had beards, but they had no moustache. And I thought, that's really interesting. I wonder how they knew that Abraham had a beard, but he didn't have a moustache. And you know why it was? It's because in that particular community, in that particular set of churches, that's the way the men were expected to be. They all were expected, according to the uniformity of their practice, to have beards but no moustache. And I thought, where is that in the scripture? Well, it's not in the scripture. Period. It's not in the scripture. But people will teach for doctrines the commandments of men, or they'll establish traditions. And here's a cardinal principle that sets apart Bible Protestantism with its liberty from Roman Catholic bondage to a hierarchy. And it's not only a principle of Bible Protestantism, it's a principle of the Bible itself. That every child of God goes straight to the pure fountain of God's Holy Word for himself or herself. The Bible teaches that we are to study the Bible for ourselves. I'll have no man say to me, you have no right to study the Bible for yourself. I'll have no man to say to me, now you'll do what I say rather than what the Bible says. Now I will say to that, no Pope Ray. I don't bow to what the Pope says or what some Bishop says or even what some Minister says. We go right to the book itself. Isaiah chapter 8 verse 20 records to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Study the Bible itself. I'm not here to say what goes on in this church or that church or the other church, you can find that out for yourself. But sadly it happens to be a fact that there are places today that call themselves churches And they may actually study about the Bible, but they will not study the Bible itself. We are to be Bible students. The story is told of a young man who graduated from a university who came to D.L. Moody of Chicago to consult with him as to what he should do for his life's work. The young man belonged to a very wealthy family. And Moody advised him, don't go into business because you have more money now than you know what to do with. Why don't you give your life to teaching the English Bible? And the young man replied to that, I don't know anything about the English Bible. And Moody was shocked. He said, why, I thought you just graduated at mentioning the name of the university. And I thought they had a high-priced professor who is employed there for that one purpose of teaching the English Bible. And the young man answered, yes, that's true, and I have taken his classes. But Mr. Moody, would you like to know how he teaches the English Bible? We've been studying for six months to find out who it was that wrote the Pentateuch. And we actually now know less about it than whenever we started. You see that's not Bible study, that's study about the Bible and not very profitable study about the Bible either because it's premised and prefaced upon unbelief. And a good deal of the study of the Bible is like that today in some of the centres of higher learning and it's true in the United Kingdom as well as in the United States. In some of the theological seminaries that's the character of their study. All they do is foster and foment unbelief. And there are young men who go in there believing, at least to some degree, in the Scriptures and they come out of there as atheists or agnostics, certainly as sceptics. Now we need to study the Bible and we need to see what it is that God has to say. Don't just come to the Word of God either as that which is studied by some other man, but study what God Himself says in the book. That's how we ought to study. Study the Bible directly. Let me quote the Lord Jesus Christ. We could do no better than quote Him. We talk about quoting good men, well let's quote the Saviour Himself. And the Lord Jesus said, and I quote John 5 verse 39, Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. Just confirming what I said earlier in Luke chapter 24, the subject of the Bible is Christ, chiefly. The Lord Jesus said, Search the Scriptures. Don't just read them for yourself, but search them. Go through them as with a fine tooth comb. Lay them side by side. Compare Scripture with Scripture. See what it is that God says in His Word. And I would encourage you in our Bible class to do that. Lift your Bible and read it, even if it's not for a lengthy period, though that won't hurt you if it was a lengthy period. But lift your Bible every day And ask the Lord to speak to you from His Word. And come to the Lord as the psalmist did in Psalm 119. And with this I will finish, because it is a most appropriate prayer for us to pray, not just when we come to church, and we should, but when we come to the Bible for our own Bible reading. Psalm 119 verse 18, Open thou mine eyes. that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Lord, speak to me from your word." That's what we should say, Lord speak to me from your word. And let me know that it is for me and it is to me. And help me to receive it like the men of Berea did. To receive the word with all readiness of mind. Help me to search the scriptures daily. to see whether those things are so. May the Lord help us. Amen.