Take Good Care of Your Bible
And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath. (Mark 4:24-25)
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THESE VERSES was a sobering experience and I still come back to them with reverence. There is a law here that governs how much we are going to hear from Heaven. Some call it: The Law of Use. If God enlightens us and we make use of what He has given, the door is open for us to receive more. If we neglect or despise His gift to us, we will lose touch with what we have already received. A fuzzy mind can take away a lot of stuff we used to know.
GOD HAS IMPARTED KNOWLEDGE to wasps, hornets, spiders, birds and beavers, the ability to build their different nests and dens and how to propagate their kind. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years. They’re all still here! They are all locked into the only thing they know, and it works! Likewise, we should take heed when God tells us to take care of what He shows us in His Word.
THE ORDINARY, USUAL LAW OF USE holds that by use, we are to obtain the best possible results. By disuse we will lose our grasp on what we had. That’s true in playing golf, basketball, music, use of computers.
TED SMITH WAS A CONCERT PIANIST FROM CANADA, who played for Billy Graham for 54 years. When they were in Chattanooga in 1953, he met with the music students in the chapel at Tennessee Temple. I attended his lecture. He said he practiced piano two hours a day to keep from losing his edge.
WE CAN LEARN FROM JIMMY STEWART, the well-known actor and B-24 bomber pilot during World War II. He was part of the U.S. Air Force build-up in England. It was a staging area. Some practice flying was done by fresh planes and crews coming in. They needed to practice the skills they had been taught. One flew into a water tank and they flew into each other. They flew in tight formations to protect themselves from enemy fighters and flying in tight formation was very hard and dangerous. They needed practice.
WHEN THERE WAS A BREAK IN THE WEATHER to permit flying, Stewart had his crew of 10 men on his plane in the air in practice flights so they would “keep their edge.” The B-24 flew at high altitude and it was extremely cold. It was dubbed: “The Flying Coffin” because the only exit was near the tail and it was hard for all the crew to make it that far with parachutes on. If the plane nosed down, they had to climb almost straight up to get to the tail exit.
WHEN STEWART ROUTED HIS MEN OUT OF BED to practice-fly, they complained. However, when Stewart became a squadron leader of several planes, some of the men in the larger wing formation of planes noticed that more of his planes made it back to base. They wanted to fly with him. Stewart’s practice of keeping his crews “razor sharp” paid off.
HE WAS NOT ALLOWED TO FINISH HIS "25 MISSIONS" because the Germans found out he was flying and wanted to take him down. If they could have captured him, they could have made a propaganda film to help demoralize our Air Force. Jimmy Stewart knew the value of keeping sharp and on the cutting edge of what you are doing. We should do that with our Bibles and our prayer life.
TODAY'S VERSES SPEAK OF A SPECIAL WAY God measures and regulates what He has shared with us. The verses are a higher level than ordinary “learning and forgetting”.
WE HAVE TWO BIBLES: The Bible on the table, and the Bible inside us. We should take care of our physical Bible and take care of the Bible inside us.
MY FRIEND, PAUL FERGUSON (evangelist and welter-weight boxing champion for 11 years), told me that when he quit boxing, he wrote Dr. John R. Rice about several things and in one of his letters to Paul, Dr. Rice said: “Work hard at memorizing Scripture. Preachers tend to be lazy in memorizing and their preaching is weak because of it.” That is, their preaching is not rich in the Word of God. A pack of 3x5 cards (for writing verses) can transform a preacher’s ministry. Paul memorized eight thousand verses. In the later part of his life he didn’t learn any more verses but spent time reviewing the verses he knew.
I ONCE HEARD DR. RICE SAY to a thousand preachers in Chicago: “If you don’t learn how to pray, you needn’t bother to learn how to preach.” That’s all I remember from that trip and returning home in a snowstorm. We should take good care of our internal Bible and, should study what God says about prayer.
THE BIBLE TELLS US WE SHOULD TAKE IN THE BIBLE five ways. We should: Hear, Read, Study, Memorize, and Meditate. This is enough for an article and I plan to come back to it another time. I just mention it here.
MOSES WROTE WHAT GOD TOLD HIM TO WRITE. Deuteronomy (means the 2nd writing) was a summary Moses wrote not long before his death. Jesus quoted the Psalms the most and Deuteronomy the second most often.
THE FIRST THING MOSES TOLD HIS PEOPLE (in Genesis) was where they came from and where the world came from. The world and the universe were created by God in six 24-hour days and there is no mention of billions of years or of animal fossils or of judgment of any kind. It was all creation. At the end of six days, it was all spanking brand new. They needed to know that. In Genesis 6 he told them about Noah, the ark and the world-wide flood that destroyed every breathing thing. (The flood produced the billions of fossils found today. The fossils came from the Flood and not from long ages of evolution.)
TODAY, THERE IS A TENDENCY IN SEMINARIES to try to to get along with the evolutionists who need billions of years to sell their story. In the fossil record in the earth, there are billions of skeletons and not one case where one kind of animal changed into another kind. We need to take care of the Book of Genesis and don’t add to it. Moses wrote it like God told him to write it.
MOSES TOLD EVERYONE NOT TO BE REWRITING HIS WORDS to suit themselves. What thing so ever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it. (Deuteronomy 12:32)
PAUL WARNED HIS READERS: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8)
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, THERE WAS A CONSTANT THREAT of philosophies or systems of thought, being brought into the congregations. The source of these false philosophies was from two directions: 1. The various Greek ideas and 2. False ideas coming out of a Jewish source. Much of the New Testament is given to refuting these troublesome intrusions into the churches. Church people were able to be taken captive when they were untaught and therefore a prey to whatever wind of doctrine that came along.
IT'S THE SAME TODAY. People who do not know their Bible are game to be taken. If something sounds religious, many people will buy it.
TWO OF THE MOST NEEDED SCRIPTURE PASSAGES TODAY ARE:
●Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. (2 Timothy 2:15-16)
●And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Timothy 3:15-16)
IT'S A TOUGH WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN and our children sometimes get caught up in it and bring heartache home with them. Parents have a tough job and need the Word of God. Take time to be holy. Take good care of your Bible. I hope each of you have found a good Bible-believing church to faithfully attend and be a part of. Ω
Read Through the Bible in a Year
AUGUST 26, 2019 - MONDAY
A.M. Psalm 119:49-104 P.M. 1Corinthians 4
(Bible Gateway will read this to you if you like. Look for the speaker icon.)
Good Memory Verse:
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. (John 15:3)
Song for Today:
Break Thou the Bread of Life (2:18) (Acapeldridge.com)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQpj4TSe-Ec
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