Amen. Okay, we looked at the first part of the section on Bible study, lessons four and five, a few weeks back. We were supposed to do the second part on the 2nd of February and the weather prevented us from doing that. And then we took a week off last week for the fish fries. So we're back to part two of lessons four and five. And we're at the section entitled a method for Bible study. The handout is the same one that you should have already received but there are additional copies on the table. If you didn't bring yours with you or if you weren't here before. Before we get to the handout, though, if you take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 33. Psalm 33. This is one of my favorite Psalms for a number of reasons, not the least of which is when I would teach students seventh grade Old Testament survey on the second week of class, I would give them Psalm 33 for a memorization assignment. And they would look at it and they'd say, that's 22 verses. And I'd say, you're right. And I'm going to take that into consideration. And I'm going to give you two weeks to learn it instead of one. And that's the time when they would go home, tell their parents how much the memorization was. And I'd get the phone calls. That's way too much memorization. My child can't learn that. And I would have to go through my annual spiel of, well, all the other children who've done this over the years have learned it, and they didn't have any problem with it. Surely your child is as smart as all those other seventh graders who've come through here. And you'd have to reassure them that it was possible. And inevitably, two weeks later, 99% of them would have it down pat, word for word, and they would say, it really isn't that hard. And I'd say it's not hard when you're in the seventh grade, wait till you try to memorize this as an adult. So great passage of scriptures, one worthy of memorization. So if you're into Bible memorization, this would be a good place to start, Psalm 33. Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous. Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to him with the harp of 10 strings. Sing to him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. For the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth, all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap. He puts the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in all of him. For he spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man. From where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. The king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might, it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you. Amen. God's word. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that the Old Testament nation of Israel, even in its heyday, was still a relatively small nation compared to the great powers of the world. And frequently, Israel was not only a small nation but a rather weak nation. If you've ever read Old Testament history, you remember that. Israel was often a kind of vassal state to the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Babylonians or some other great power. And they were paying tribute just to be able to keep their king and keep their names alive. There wasn't much in Israel in terms of resources. There was nothing that Israel could draw upon to fight off great enemies. They realized that as far as their ability to stand up to the forces of this world, they were pretty impotent. And they had little to call upon except the name of the Lord. And the Lord, you remember, was using this. He wanted Israel in this position. He wanted his people to remember that he was their strength and their very great reward. He kept warning them. Don't try to build up a great armies. Don't try to accumulate great wealth. Don't try to be like the nations of the world who are always talking about what they have accomplished. I am your accomplishment. Your hope has to be in me. And you need to realize every day that I'm the only one who can defend you. And so in this Psalm, when the people of Israel began to worship the Lord and to sing his praises, they remind themselves that the king is not saved by his great army and a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation. And by its great might, it cannot rescue. You can imagine the people of Israel singing this when the Babylonians are all invading from the north and from the east and the Egyptians are coming up from the south and they've got plenty of war horses and they've got plenty of chariots. And they're all bragging about how many nations they've destroyed and how great their army is. And here's little Israel with almost no army. And they're saying, oh, who cares how many horses you've got? Who cares how many chariots you've got? I guess it would be sort of like the modern state of Monte Carlo trying to stand off an attack from the European Union. I mean, here you got just a few square miles and almost no army and some of the most high-tech weapons in the world surrounding you from the sea and from the land and from the air. And it looks like there is no way and militarily that you can last for even a day, much less survive over the long haul. But as Israel sings this song, which seems like a kind of foolish song at one level, they remind themselves that their power is somewhere else. And if you read carefully, you'll remember that their power was in the word of the Lord. Their strength was in what God had spoken. And so they sing in verse four that the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. And the word upright here is usually translated truthful in the Old Testament or honest. And the idea is that when God speaks, he only tells us what's true. God doesn't deceive us, he doesn't mislead us. When God reveals something to us by his prophets, he always tells things exactly like they are because he is a God, verse five, who loves righteousness and justice. And the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. And steadfast love, if you have read the Psalms very carefully, usually refers to God's covenant love, God's covenant promises. When he tells his people, I am going to be your God. You're going to be my people. I'm going to protect you. You're going to be with me. I will never separate you from my love. You belong to me and you're called by my name. And the people sing, God's love for His covenant promises is sure, it's steadfast, it never fails. God always has delivered us in the past and surely He will again. And then they remind themselves in verse six, that the word of the Lord is powerful. How powerful is it? By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of His mouth, all their hosts. You've read the creation story, haven't you? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the Lord said, let there be light. And there was light. That's all he had to do was say, let there be light. There's no flexing of muscle. There's no assembling of products. There's no engineering software to be developed. There's no mathematical or physical computations to be done. God simply says, let there be light. And there was light. When God spoke, things happened. In fact, when God spoke, things that didn't exist came into being and they came into being out of nothing. So it's not like God had to have resources that he could improve or put to some kind of new use. God could make resources out of things that weren't resources at all. And that's one of the glorious things about God. He's able to feed 5,000 families with one boy's box lunch. He's able to raise the dead. He's able to heal the people who have been seen by every doctor in the land who say there's no hope for them. He is the God who's able to save sinners and the God who is able to keep little bitty Israel alive in the face of mighty armies. Sometimes those armies, you remember, would turn against themselves in the middle of the night, right before they got to Jerusalem. Sometimes God would send another army from another direction to divert them and distract them so that they would leave Israel alone. But all God had to do was to speak. This is how I want it done. And that's what happened because the word of God is alive and active and sharper than any double-edged sword. But it's not just the creative word that Israel has in mind here. It is also the scripture word that they're referring to. The earth is called upon to fear the Lord in verse seven and the inhabitants of the world are told to stand in awe of him because he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm. And the Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing and he frustrates the plans of the people. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. And so the psalmist says, you wanna know what it really means to be happy and successful and blessed in this world? It is this. It is to know the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth. And it is to call him our God. And it is to remember that we are the people whom he has chosen to be his heritage. This is where Israel is going to find its strength. We are going to survive in a difficult world, not because there are lots of us, not because we're the smartest people in the world, not because we're the best people in the world. We're going to survive because the one true God of the universe has said, you are mine. And no one will ever separate you from my covenant promises. And what Israel had to learn and what they sing in worship here in Psalm 33 is the same lesson that you and I have to learn, isn't it? When we get up in the mornings, we have to trust that the day is going to work out well because God has already said, you belong to me and nothing will separate you from my love in Christ Jesus. And when the problems of the day look like they're almost more than we can bear, we have to remember that God says, I will work all things for the good of those who love me, to those who are the called according to my purpose. I'm going to use this high stress difficult day for your good and for my glory. And when the day goes on and it just seems to get worse and worse rather than better and better. And we think, oh, this is gonna kill me. And the Lord reminds us that even if we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he's going to walk right there through with us and he's not going to leave us nor forsake us. In fact, it is in our weakness that he's going to show his greatest strength and his strength is going to be made perfect in our weakness. And God's word is what keeps us going. And it keeps us going because we are reminded in that word that our God is powerful and he is able to save. And he doesn't just save good people, he saves weak people and hurting people and the helpless and the sick and the needy and the oppressed and the sinful. He saves folks like us. And he saves us as a demonstration of his great faithfulness and his great power, not as a reward for our having been good to him. So if you ever wonder why you need to study the Bible, it's so that you can know the powerful word of the Lord. so that you can remember that our God who creates the universe out of nothing can even take what looks like a nothing situation in our lives and use it for good and for glory. He can take people who are broken and who don't seem to offer much as far as the world is concerned and use them for good and for glory. And it is a reminder that the only thing that limits what can be done is the will of God himself. Because what God desires, he is able to accomplish by his mighty word. I have a fellow who attends my little Saturday morning men's breakfast. And he used to come each time we got together and I'd say, we'll see you next time. He's not a member of our church, he just visits. And he used to say, well, I'll be back if the Lord wills and the creek don't rise. And I would always say, Jack, you do understand that if the Lord wills, it really doesn't matter if the creek rises or not. If the Lord wills, you're gonna be here. And he now says, I'll be here if the Lord wills, creek or no creek. And I say, yeah, that's the way it works. Because the Lord's will is so great that even if the creek rises, he can still accomplish whatever he desires. He works all things after the counsel of his will. And there's nothing that limits him other than his own will. So we read the Bible, not just to come up with facts, not just to remember what God did long ago, although both of those things are important. What we really want is to read the Bible so that we can know how great and good and powerful and faithful and loving and glorious and spectacular and compassionate and merciful and kind is the one God of the universe who has called us his own and who has bought us with the blood of his only son. and who has promised to bring us to eternal life. So how do we read the Bible like that? We're at point two, basic principles. And the first basic principle is really rather simple. You need to read the Bible like a book. Did all of you have to read Poor Richard's Almanac or sections of it when you were in school? You remember Benjamin Franklin had his little book of quaint little sayings and all these little proverbial things that all of us have learned throughout our years. And the nice thing about Proverbs is they're short and pithy and you don't have to memorize 22 verses like you did in my seventh grade Bible class. You just memorize an apple a day keeps the doctor away and you sort of got it and it doesn't really matter what came before that or what came after it in poor Richard's almanac. But the Bible wasn't written like that for the most part. Isn't it interesting that we say the Bible is made up of 66 books? And each of those books has an author, and each of those books has an outline, and each of those books has a plot, and each of those books has characters, and each of those books has a certain kind of narrative that's unfolding. And when we read the Bible, we need to remember that God gave it to us in books. which means that if we're going to understand the Bible, we need to read the books. Now, not everybody does that, I understand. There's an old practice that used to be referred to as lucky dipping. I don't know what people call it now. Does anybody know what lucky dipping is? Lucky dipping is the practice of saying, Lord, I'm not sure what I ought to do in this situation. So I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to open my Bible and I'm going to spin my finger around and I'm going to let it drop on the page. And whatever it says, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to say, that's the word of God to me. Have you ever known people who've practiced that? I'm sure that God can use that. because he's only limited by the greatness of his own will, but just doesn't seem like a very wise way to read the Bible to me. You know, the man who did that one time who said, I'm not sure what the Lord wants me to do in this situation. And so he closed his eyes and let the finger drop on a page somewhere and his finger fell on the verse that said, and Judas went out and hanged himself. And he was sure that that wasn't the will of God. So he said, I probably didn't do it right. So he closed his Bible and he opened it up again and let his finger drop. And it fell on the verse that said, go thou and do likewise. And he was really beginning to think maybe this isn't the best way to decide what is the will of God. And it's not the best way because God didn't give us just little verses that we can pick and choose to read as we want. God gave us books. And if you want to understand the Bible, there's no better thing to do than to read John's gospel from chapter one, all the way over to chapter 21. And there's no better way to learn the book of acts than to start in chapter one and read it in succession until you get to chapter 28. And there's no better way to learn Romans than to start at chapter one. and read all the way through chapter 16 or Genesis and it's 50 chapters or Exodus and it's 40 chapters. You just read the books because God gave you those books so that you could see things that he wants you to see and not so that you can just pick out little things that you like. The book of John has a purpose is to remind us that Jesus Christ is truly the son of God as he claimed to be. And John is writing to convince people who weren't Christians that Jesus is divine. The book of Acts is God's own testimony to how Jesus fulfills the great commission. You remember at the, after the resurrection, Jesus said, I want you to go and make disciples of all the nations. Don't you baptize them, teach them to obey. And he says, I want you to go out and be my witnesses and all the earth. I want you to start in Jerusalem. And then I want you to go to Samaria and Judea and to the ends of the earth. And the book of Acts is an unfolding of how that works. The church is blessed in Jerusalem. The church doesn't go out on its own. So God persecutes the church and they spread into Samaria and Judea. And then finally, we have the... missionary journeys of the apostle Paul and the gospel is taken to the whole Roman empire, the whole known world of Paul's day. And what Jesus said he was going to do, he does. That's the great thing about the book of Acts. It's not just that Paul converts person here and plants a church there. The bigger message is that Jesus is building the church around the world that he said he was going to build. and that nothing stops him, not persecution, not the resistance of the Jewish leadership, not the antagonisms of Caesar, not unjust courts, nothing stops the progress of the gospel. God is building his church around the world. And you can't see that if you just pick out a verse here or there. You miss out on what is the really big picture. So you need to read the Bible like a book. Get to know the characters in each book. Try to understand what the plot is in each book. Sense the conflict that's taking place that makes it such an interesting story. Second, when you do start reading the Bible like a book, ask for the Holy Spirit's help. The Protestant Reformation was valuable for a number of reasons, but one of the great lessons that we learned from Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Knox and Ulrich Zwingli and such people is that the Holy Spirit plays a two role function in scripture. The Holy Spirit is the one who inspired the writers of the Bible so that what they wrote was truly and completely the word of God. You remember 2 Timothy 3 16, all scripture is inspired of God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. The word inspired literally means God breathed. All scripture is God breathed. It all comes from God. So even though Paul wrote several books of the New Testament and John wrote some and Peter wrote some and James wrote one and Luke wrote some and Isaiah and Jeremiah and all these other people wrote books in the Old Testament. And they all wrote in their own language and they wrote in their own style with their own grammar. in their own vocabularies about the messages that God had given to them individually, yet they wrote in such a way that the Holy Spirit was working in them and through them so that what they did put on paper is truly the word of God and without error. And it bears all the authority and the power of God so that when you read what Paul wrote in Romans, you're also reading what the Holy Spirit wrote to you and me as the church today. Your Bible on its cover probably says Holy Bible. Bible simply means book. Holy means unique or set apart. And so when your Bible says Holy Bible on the cover, it means that it is a book that is set apart or unique and different from all other books. And what makes the Bible holy and unique is that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's not just a human book. It is a God-given book. And so the reformers pointed out that scripture has authority unlike any other document. It is inspired by God. But then they pointed out that the spirit also has a work today as we read the Bible. And whereas what the spirit did for the apostles and prophets was inspiration, he does a work of illumination for us. He's not giving us new books. He's not giving us new revelation, new messages today. But what the Holy Spirit does do is give us enlightenment so that we can understand the Bible and know how to apply it to our own lives. Now this isn't automatic, it's not magic, pick up a Bible and the Holy Spirit turns on a flashlight so that you can see what's there. But it is the idea that as believers come to scripture and read the books of the Bible and ask, what does this mean? And how am I to learn more about God from this passage? And how can I better serve God in this passage? And what am I to believe in this passage? The Holy Spirit, is going to help you do that. Jesus told his disciples that if children come and ask their father for a loaf of bread, he's not going to give them a scorpion, is he? He's going to give them what they need. And in the same way, God loves to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. We should remember that when we open up our Bibles. Lord, you promised to help me so that my Bible study would be fruitful. You promised to illuminate this word so that I can understand it. May the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writers of the Bible long ago, give me grace to hear what the Spirit has said to the churches. Would you be my teacher, Holy Spirit? Would you enable me to grasp what's here? Now, I don't think that we can take that to mean that if we ask for the Holy Spirit's help, we're all going to immediately understand everything in every paragraph of the Bible. I'm always a bit encouraged when I read Peter's words in the New Testament and he says, we ought to pay attention to Paul, even though Paul says some things that are really hard to grasp. And I'm encouraged by that because if Peter had a hard time understanding Paul, then I feel a whole lot better about the difficulties that I sometimes have with what the Apostle Paul wrote. It's not that the Holy Spirit makes everything equally understandable. There's some things that I suppose we're always going to file as unclear until we get to heaven and there are some things that are just above my IQ pay grade. There are some things that you got to be smarter than me to grasp. I've got friends who talk about things in scripture and I to this day really don't have any idea what they're talking about. It's just way above me. That's okay. I don't have to understand everything in the Bible, but I'm thankful that the Holy Spirit does show me the things that I need to know in order to live a faithful and godly life before the Lord. And I'm glad that the Holy Spirit does point out those places where I'll fall short. so that I can see that I'm a sinner still and that I still need Christ. And I'm thankful that the Holy Spirit, when I do see my sins, points me to Jesus and reminds me that the cross is there as the payment for my sins and that the Lord Jesus Christ has already made full atonement for those sins. So that as bad as I feel about disappointing the Lord today, I know that Jesus has already more than made satisfaction for that. And the Holy Spirit guides me and teaches me and nurtures me and matures me. And I think as time goes by, he teaches me things that I would not have understood a while back. If you're a parent, you understand that there are certain lessons in life that are We call them now age appropriate. Now there are certain things you tell a five-year-old and there are certain things that you don't tell a five-year-old because you think they're either not mentally or or emotionally mature enough to handle them. And you'll tell them more when they're 10 and more than that when they're 13 and 15 and when they're 40, you'll still be telling them some more things, I suppose. And the idea is that over a period of time, as you mature, you're ready to receive more and more information and understand it and know how to process it and put it all together. And I think the Holy Spirit does the same kind of work in us. He brings us along at our own pace, but he does teach and he does help. I think we make a terrible mistake when we believe that the Holy Spirit does this in some kind of dramatic fashion always. I know some very frustrated Christian friends They're frustrated because they just keep waiting for God to sort of send a lightning strike in their daily devotions that day to remind them that He loves them and that He's going to do something great for them today. And when it doesn't come, they feel like, oh, you know, the Lord let me down. Why can't I have some kind of great, dramatic, extraordinary Christian life? when these people share this and you can tell they're crying for help, I usually try to remind them God's done something better than that. The Bible tells us that God demonstrated his own love for you not by shining some great heavenly light on a verse of the Bible to get you through the day We're told in scripture that God demonstrated his love for you and that while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you. What more could you want? When you weren't seeking God, he was seeking you. And when you weren't loving God, he was loving you. And when you were a sinner with no way to save yourself, God saved you anyway by his son, Jesus. What better testimony of his love for you could you ask him that? He gave his only begotten son. So rest assured that even if you don't get this heavenly illumination on a verse of the Bible so that it shines like a sharpie highlighter on the page, that the Holy Spirit, who sometimes works more like yeast than like a headlamp, is working to mature you and change you and bring you along. But ask for the Spirit's help. Ask that he would illuminate you as you read. Then third, ask the right questions. You assume if the preacher says, ask the right questions, then there must be what? Wrong questions too. And sometime the wrong question is, oh, what can I point out to so-and-so and tell him how badly mistaken he is about this or that? Or, well now that's a nice little bit of trivia, I can pull that out of the coffee shop and nobody will know anything more than I do about the Bible today. The purpose of the Bible isn't to get one up on someone else, it's not to impress people or to use the word as a means of digging into other people and humiliating them. The purpose is to make us more aware of God's grace and power and faithfulness so that we will trust him more and obey him better. So we do better when we ask questions like, what does this passage teach me about God? What can I learn about his power, his grace, his mercy, his compassion, his judgment, his holiness, his purity? What does this passage teach me about the character of God? Because we know that God's character doesn't change. So how he was 3000 years ago in the Old Testament is how he's going to be today too. He's the same yesterday and today and forever. And then we might ask, what does this passage teach me about my duty to God? What does God expect of me? Does he expect me to follow a certain command here? Does he expect me to believe a certain idea here? And we have to be careful here. because as John White points out in his excellent little book, The Fight, most of us come to the Bible with rather great prejudices. Most of us have already decided what we think the Bible is going to teach before we ever open it up. And so we look for passages that reinforce what we thought we were going to find, and we just sort of tune out passages that don't fit our little grid of what we expected to read there. John White has a wonderful story about this in his book. He spent time as a missionary in Latin America and worked on a university campus. He said that a lot of the students he worked with grew up Roman Catholic or as communists. And he said, the interesting thing in working with these students is that the Roman Catholic and the communist students probably read the Bible better than those that grew up in evangelical Christian churches. because the ones who grew up in church had sort of gotten the Sunday school lessons from the teacher about how to, what the Bible was all about. And sometimes he says, the Sunday school lessons weren't always what the Bible had to say. You know, Sunday school teachers simplify things and sometimes they leave out the hard things. And sometimes they twist them a little bit to make them look a little more appealing to students. And we understand how that works. Did any of you ever sing the little song, Dare to be a Daniel in Sunday school when you were little? It's a common Sunday school song. And the problem is that we teach children to sing that and it makes us think that the whole idea of serving God is that we need to be brave and courageous or God's not going to love us. We gotta be like Daniel. You gotta dare to be like a Daniel. And John White's point is when we grow up thinking that salvation is a matter of being good and doing good, we sometimes tune out the real message of the Bible is that God saves people who aren't good and that God is willing to show great compassion for people who don't know how to be good and that he saves the brokenhearted and the lost and the sinful. And if we're not careful, we can grow up in church and become very much like the Pharisees and the Sadducees that Jesus had such hard things to say about because we think salvation is a matter of our own performance rather than a matter of trusting God and in his saving grace. And so we've got to read the Bible. We've got to read it carefully. We've got to understand that God does want us to be courageous and brave, but he wants us to be courageous and brave because we already know that he loves us. And because we know that he's already saved us. And because we know that we are safely tucked in his hand and that nothing can separate us from his care. And even if we die, we're not going to be separated from his care because to be absent from the body is just to be present with the Lord and to go and live with Christ is far better. And so we are confident that we can take great risks for the sake of Christ. knowing that Jesus has already assumed all the liabilities of that risk in his life, death, and resurrection. What does this passage teach me about sin and salvation? What does it do to show me my weaknesses so that I'll know how much I need a savior and what will it do to lead me to Christ? Because if our reading of the Bible does not take us to Jesus, we've read it wrongly. If it doesn't drive us to the cross, we have really misunderstood what the Bible is all about. It's not a textbook on how to run good government. It's not a textbook on how to manage your finances. It's not a textbook on how to raise godly children. It has things to say about all that, but the goal of the Bible is to help you see that you need a Redeemer and to show you that Jesus Christ is the only Redeemer. And when you read about managing finances, it's probably going to show you, well, I didn't do that very well. Wish I'd done something better way back. And then it points you to the Lord Jesus Christ, who forgives people who aren't good money managers. And it points you to the Lord Jesus Christ who forgives people who haven't been good husbands and wives. And it points you to the Lord Jesus Christ who forgives people who haven't been good neighbors or good business people or good citizens. And it points us to the cross where in Jesus we find that there is life even for those who are dead in trespasses and sins. And so in light of these, what practical changes can I make in my life? How can I better serve the Lord who has loved me? So that's the bottom line. And then remember that there is no substitute for practice, practice, practice. You heard that from your ball coaches when you were in school. You heard that from your first grade teacher who was trying to teach you how to print your name on one of those lined pieces of paper. You've learned that from the drill instructor at basic training. There's no substitute for practice, practice, practice. Don't quit if Bible study's hard at the beginning. Every good thing's hard at the beginning. You just have to keep going. You just have to work at it. You'll just have to go at it day after day after day. Now, how do we do that better? That's the section on helpful tips. We're going to cover those very quickly. There's no better thing to do than to set aside a regular time and place. I was reading section in John Calvin earlier this morning where Calvin was talking about prayer but it applies to Bible study too. Calvin said that if you don't force yourself to have stated times of prayer, you're probably going to miss out on your prayer times. And that's true, isn't it? If you just say, well, I'll pray when I get a chance, then you probably never get a chance. Uh, so you, if you're going to be faithful at Bible study or faithful in prayer, you sort of have to map out a time. This is my prayer time. And I'm going to, I'm going to use this time for prayer. Maybe you have to get up a little earlier when nobody else is up to have that prayer time or Maybe you need to set an alarm on your iPhone so that at 10 o'clock it will buzz and you'll know that you need to spend about five minutes in prayer before you go on to something else. Or maybe your lunch hour can be a 40 minute lunch and a 20 minute time for reading your Bible and praying. There's no set time in the Bible that says this is the best time to do it, but there's no substitute for doing it either. And for most of us, the only way we're going to do it regularly is to say, I've got a place and a time to do it. When we were in Louisville, we had a lady in the church. She was a devoted reader of the Bible. And she had a chair in her living room that she called the chair of honor. So one day I bet, I said, Why do you call it the chair of honor? And she said, oh, that chair is only used for one thing. When I sit in that chair, I read my Bible and pray. And every time I go by that chair, I'm reminded that I need to read my Bible and pray. And I don't do anything else in that chair. That's the chair of honor. And when I'm there, I know what I'm there for. and I don't go there for anything else, but I put it in a very visible place so that all throughout the day when I'm cleaning the house or going to the kitchen or going to the front door to get the mail or whatever, I go by that chair and I'm reminded that my life grows from reading the scriptures and praying and I have to have a place to do that. Different people have different schedules. I understand that some folks are morning people, some folks aren't, And so you got to sort of find your own time and do things as you can, but you got to do it. It's also helpful to use a pen or pencil as you go. I know some people are really sort of afraid to mark in their Bibles. would say, well, if we lived back in the middle ages and it cost 10 years of your income to buy a Bible so that you could have one at home, you might not want to write in it. But the fact is you've probably got a dozen Bibles at your house. And if you've got one you don't want to write in, that's fine. Just choose one of the other ones and mark in it, but underline. Jot a note in the margin. Ask yourself a question that you don't know the answer to. It may be when you come back to that passage later on in life, you will have read the Bible enough that you'll be able to answer it. You'll say, I don't know why I couldn't get that when I read it before. Write down things you need to do. Respond at the bottom of the page with a one sentence prayer based on what you've read. I know a lot of people don't like study Bibles and I understand why. It's tempting to mistake what's at the top of the page and is inspired by God with what's in the bottom of the page and it's just the words of men. And it's tempting sometimes to say, thus saith the Lord to what the notes at the bottom of the page. That makes sense. But the fact is that most people aren't going to go venturing off looking for answers to questions when they're reading. And if they can get the answer to their question at the bottom of the page, it's probably a pretty helpful thing. So if you got a study Bible and you say, what does this verse mean? It doesn't make any sense to me. A good study Bible might be able to answer your question so that you're not so distracted that you just quit and you're able to continue with your reading. Good study Bibles have outlines, they have maps, they have glossaries, concordances, various kinds of aids that will help you to make the most out of your Bible reading time. The fourth tip, try memorizing something. You don't have to memorize all of the 33rd Psalm by next Tuesday night, I promise. I'm not going to give you a test on it. But memorize a verse. Maybe not a verse a day. Try a verse a week. You might find that once you get into it, you can learn two verses a week. And then you can learn more. You say, well, I don't know how important Bible memorization is. The best example I know is the Hanoi Hilton. You've all read stories of the prisoners who were held there for years as captives. They had to work out codes to communicate with people who were in the next cell, because they were in kind of solitary confinement. And the way they kept their sanity was to take things that they had memorized and share them so that they could all be remembering something and learning something. And guess what it was that they all remembered from childhood? Bible verses. Because in Sunday school, or in school, they had been taught various Bible verses. They said, in many cases, we had not thought of them since we were children. But when we were locked up in those cells, it was those Bible verses that kept us alive. And we taught them to one another, and we learned from one another, and we encouraged one another. But more than anything else, it was the Lord encouraging us. Time spent memorization is time well spent. And then on the backside of the page is the last line. Try to summarize your reading into one simple sentence and then share your sentence with someone else during the day. Teachers will tell you that no one learns more in a class than the teacher. Why is that? because the teacher has to learn the material well enough that he or she can actually distill it and pass it along to the student. And you can't do that if you don't know it. You can't bluff your way through teaching very long without somebody calling your hand on it. And so if you want to make sure that you understand what you've read, maybe it's a chapter or two chapters, But if you want to help make sure you understand what you've read, try to say, this chapter is about, and put it in one sentence, just one crisp sentence. And then sometime during the day, try to share your sentence with someone else. Because if you tell it to someone, you're more likely to remember it. So when you go to the lunch at the depot, you've got something you can share with the people at the table. Or when you're riding along the road, can I take 30 seconds of your time to tell you what I learned in my Bible reading this morning? Share your one sentence. It might be just enough to whet their appetite. It might be enough to make them curious that they'll want to read what you read. And it certainly will be helpful for you in recalling your reading for the day so that when you pick up the reading again the next day, you'll know where you were and you'll have grown from it. Let's pray.