Bill Lytell, pastor of Gospel Baptist Church in Bonita Springs. I am recording the Wednesday night service at Gospel Baptist Church today, and I just wanted to be able to give people in the middle of the week something they can look at and be encouraged by. We're in the season of reading your Bible. We're in the time of renewed commitment I mean, we're well on our way. We started in January, reading the Bible through every big program. Of course, you know that, read your Bible through every year. Been doing this for so many years now. What a help, what a blessing. Maybe of all the things I've done, at least in the top five, would be reading the Bible through in a year. Many of you do more than that. Some of you do, Four or five times, six times I've known folks to read their Bible through. You cannot overdo it, or can you? There are warnings I want to give you, four warnings specifically I want to give you about reading your Bible. You say, preacher, warnings about reading your Bible? Yeah, warnings about reading your Bible. It's amazing. The Bible is a closed book. It is not like other books where you can just open it up read it, reread it, read it a third time, and possibly, you know, through the period of time, you can master the subject, whatever it is. The Bible is not, cannot be treated like that. The Bible is a book that God allows you to understand. Now he'll let anybody read it. We know that, I mean, from the cults and misfits and all kinds of things that come up out of it. Only those people that meet certain criteria will he allow to understand it. So, you know, the Bible talks about Deuteronomy in 29.4, it says, yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear unto this day. Even though they had great privilege, the children of Israel coming out of the land of Egypt, they did not, they were hard-hearted. That whole generation pretty much died in the wilderness, except for Caleb and Joshua. Everybody died in the wilderness. They did not get to go into, they were a hard-hearted group of people. So even though they saw more miracles than anybody ever saw, that time has never been reproduced. And they walked on dry land, watched water stack up on both sides of them, yet those people, those people who saw all those signs and wonders, died in the wilderness without entering into the promised land. How can that happen? This is the warning that I want to give you this evening. here at Wednesday night prayer meeting and Bible study. By the way, which always starts at 7 p.m. on a normal basis. We'd love you to come. This is the kind of teachings that you're missing if you're not coming to our Wednesday night Bible study. It says in Matthew, three times, who hath ears to hear, let him hear. Jesus says over three times. And in Dothan and Elijah and 2 Kings chapter six, most of you remember the great story of Elisha being surrounded by an army, and his servant went out and said, you know, was scared. It should have been, you know, normally, hey, what's going on? And he said, fear not. They that be with us are more than they that be with them. The servant probably goes, are you kidding me? There's two of us and all of those folks? Well, In 2 Kings 6, verse 17, Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. And so there was a supernatural process that had to take place for that servant to see what Elisha was seeing. So here we have two people, Elisha and his servant, one seeing it and one not. I think the same thing happens in Bible reading and looking at the Bible. You started reading your Bible diligently. You've signed up to the program. God bless you for that. That's a good effort. But it is somewhat fraught with some danger to those folks who do that over and over and over. The danger is that you may not be understanding what the Bible says. Blessed are not they that hear the word of God, but they that hear it and keep it. Luke chapter 11, verse 28. One of the most heavenly condemned groups in the whole Bible was, if I may say, were the Pharisees. The Pharisees, most knowledgeable group of any ever group maybe ever around the Bible. Some of them had the Old Testament memorized. They were the best of the best, the most intellectual. And yet they failed. They were condemned with the hardest sermons that Jesus ever preached in Matthew chapter 23. How did that happen? Well, because they knew the technobabble, if I may call it that, of the Bible, but they did not know the wisdom of the Bible. They were not allowed by God to understand the truth of it. And so you can have many unsuspecting Christians here get in trouble reading their Bibles. And, or you could be just, you could be, and I'm going to give you these four things that can happen to us real briefly here, if you read your Bible. So make sure when you think about these four things that you think about them carefully. Is this me? Could this possibly be me? Number one, To get what God wants you to get out of the Bible, you must be spirit-filled to understand it and to get it. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 13 says, which things also we speak not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them. for they're spiritually discerned. In other words, spirit gives you understanding. And though the people can know the phraseology of the Bible, they can know how to navigate in the Bible, they can quote large sections of the Bible, maybe even have much of the Bible memorized, yet they can be outside looking in on what God has for them. Is this not what happens to Jehovah Witnesses? They used to be King James Bible people. This is not what happened to the Mormons. The Mormons adopted the Bible, King James Bible. They say that's the word of God. Of course, they add three other books to it, the same holiness, supposedly, from this so-called angel Moroni that appeared to Joseph Smith. What about the Seventh-day Adventists who claim to keep the law of Moses and the Sabbath and be under grace? What a confusion. The book of Galatians is written against them. The Book of Romans was written against them. Paul called them Judaizers. He saved his hardest curse for them. Let them be anathema because they mixed the law with grace. You can't do it. That's what happened to Jim Jones and David Koresh and those others who were so horrible in our own day and took the people with him. They were not filled or possessed the Holy Spirit. So first of all, You must be born again. I mean, born from above. Repent of your sins, trust Christ as your Savior, realizing there's no possibility of any good work saving you, and believe Jesus is who he said he was, the very Son of God. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And in your heart, have a simple childlike faith with him. And he was resurrected the third day. And when you meet those conditions that the Bible says of faith, God will save you. He will say he wants to save you. He's not trying to make it hard. But if you're trying to fake it till you make it, if you're trying to con God, if you're trying to run something on him, it's not gonna work. But if you come to God on God's terms, trust Christ on his terms, God will allow you to be a child of God, bring you into his family. With that comes the filling and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Now, we're in dwelt one time called the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that happens at salvation, that's what it is. We're filled over and over and over again. And that filling depends on whether your cup's full or empty. If your cup's full of yourself, obviously the Holy Spirit can't help you. But if you'll empty your cup, as it were, of yourself, and allow God to come in and fill it, He will fill you with the Holy Spirit of God. But there's some prerequisites here I want to mention here in a moment. So, number one, be filled with the Holy Spirit, which presumes that you're born again. Secondly, be humble when you come to the Bible. 1 Peter 5, 5, likewise you younger, submit yourselves unto the elder, yea, all of you be subject one to another. And be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to humble. It says in 1 Peter 5, 6, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God and he may exalt you in due time. So what's that word humble mean? It means to bring low, abase yourself, because God resists you if you're full of yourself. And let me say this, are you humble? Well, most of the time if you think you're humble, you're probably proud because humble people think they are proud. Humble people are the first ones to confess their sin. Humble people are the first ones down to the altar. Humble people are the first ones to raise their hand in invitation. Humble people are the first ones to say, I'm struggling, I got trouble. They don't mind confessing their false one to another. Proud people want to make an appearance of righteousness. They want to, if I may say, appear to the people around them to be more than they are. Humble people don't. Humble people say, I'm nothing. I don't have anything good of myself. There's nothing good in me except what God has done. And so you want to be humble. Thirdly, you want to be forgiven when you read your Bible. Psalm 66, 18 says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. That's pretty straightforward, don't you think? 66, 18. Deuteronomy 28, 23 says, Heaven that is over thy head shall be as brass, and the earth under thee shall be as iron. He told that to his people who wouldn't be obedient to his command. Now, Jesus makes it so clear, and this is not a study on forgiveness, Matthew 7, other places, Ephesians 4, 32, so many other places in the Bible. If you don't forgive, you're not forgiven. In the Lord's Prayer, it's real simple. Forgiving my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. So you got to search your mind. Have you forgiven the people around you? I mean, forgiven them. Have you forgiven your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your relatives, your aunts, your uncles, your husband, your wife, your children, your employer, your pastor? Have you forgiven your Sunday school teacher, anybody? anybody that's wronged you. In the degree you forgive Jesus, I'll forgive you. So the forgiveness of God's available to us if we'll forgive and be like him. That's part of really humility, isn't it? So you must be born again, filled with the Holy Spirit, humble, and then be forgiven. You must have a spirit of forgiveness one to another. Fourthly, you must approach the Bible with the attitude of seeking truth. I think sometimes we need to stop and shake ourselves. The Bible gets to be like the newspaper or Time magazine or something else. It just gets to be casual with us, God forbid. But that's our way. Our nature is to treat holy things as if they're unholy. And we need a Holy Spirit to help us to keep reminding ourselves and keep bringing ourselves to understanding that what we read is holy. Proverbs 8, 17, I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me. The word early means diligently. I think we need to make the Bible holy. We need to make it important. Now, how do you do that? Make it number one. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you." Now, what's the lesson in that? The lesson is you got to keep God where he belongs. Where does he belong? Number one. He must be number one. How do we make the Bible number one? Use it, listen to it, read it, meditate on it, memorize it, put it in your house, put it on your car, put it on your clothes, put it on your mailbox, speak it, sing it, shout it, laugh it, laugh with it, I may say, and rejoice with it, and even cry with it. In other words, the Word of God saturates your world. People know, let me say this, I can go over to your house, and it's not too long before I can tell what's big with you. If I go over to your house and all I see is sports memorabilia or sports stuff on the wall, I think, well, sports is big with this person. Now, I'm not criticizing it. I'm not being critical, no. I'm the Spirit, I'm the Holy Spirit, I want you to succeed. But if I go over to your house and I see plaques on your wall that speak of the Word of God, that's for me and my house, we should serve the Lord stuff and over your door. And you know, I see verses, I see pictures, I see things about the Bible. I see your life revolves around the Word of God, church, local church. I think to myself, well, the Bible's important to this person. Now, I don't know much more than that. It's just a broad conclusion. But the Bible, if it's important to you, it's obvious. If you read it five, six, eight minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, go down the road and it has no effect on the rest of your life, it's not important. You just gotta be real with yourself. And so it's important to know the Bible. I warn you, number one, be born again. You can't even begin to know it. You will not be allowed in it unless you're born again. You can know about it. You can quote it. You can read it, but you cannot be allowed in it. You must be born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. God will not fill a dirty vessel. And so you must be humble, be willing to take the instruction of the Bible, the rebuke of the Bible, the reproof of the Bible. You must also be forgiven and forgiving of people around you. If I regard an echo in my heart, remember, the Lord will not hear me. Some people come to me and say, preacher, why aren't my prayers answered? Number one, all prayer is answered yes and overweight. But you say not answered the way I pray it. Okay, well, possibly you're praying at a miss, you're not praying at, you're praying to somehow heap it on your own loss or it's not. In 1 John chapter five, it says, we're confident if we pray anything according to his will, he heareth us. So if you prayed according to his will, is the key in getting answered prayer. Well, how do you know his will? You gotta be in the Bible. So you get in the Bible, You understand the mind of Christ, you understand the will of God, and you can then begin to pray according to his will. It's beautiful. You begin to understand who God is and see him for what he is. Oh, dear brother, sister in Christ, come to the word of God. as a holy book, as a privilege, as a preciousness, and be born from above, filled with the Holy Spirit, humble, forgiving those all around you, and God himself will come and speak to you, and you know what? You'll be called a friend. Jesus says, servants don't know what their master does, but friends do. And as a born again believer from on high, as a part of the Bride of Christ, we can literally know the will of God and even know how the whole thing ends. What a privilege this is. We are friends, not servants. What a beautiful thing when God puts his arm around you and said, you're my friend. Oh, dear one, I hope this helps you in some way. May God come through these hard times we're in. No doubt, pestilence is of God, and God has put a pestilence on the world. It has happened before. 1918 was another time. Smallpox was another time. Measles, polio, TB. I've lived through TB, polio, not smallpox. But many horrible things have come and gone in this old world. This is another one of them. Everybody say preacher of this the end times. Of course, we're towards the end times. Knowledge shall increase. People travel to and fro. There's specific indicators of all that. How do you know that? The Bible. The Bible will help you. You'll be able to peel your head in peace tonight. knowing that God is in control. The righteous cry, the Lord hear, deliver them out of all their trouble. Many of their afflictions are righteous, but the Lord deliver them out of them all. God bless you for giving me a few minutes of your time. May the Lord use this for his glory. God bless. If you would like to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ, you may contact us at the church website, gospelbaptistchurch.com, or you can go to Facebook and type in Gospel Baptist Church Bonita Springs, Florida. Also, you could call the church office at 239-947-1285. Thank you, and God bless.