Streams of Living Water

[II] What should I do before I read the Bible?                          

Read: Psalm 119:9-40
“Zaccheus was a very little man and a very little man was he, he climbed up into the sycamore tree for the Saviour he wanted to see. Now as the Saviour passed that way he looked up to the tree and he said, ‘Zaccheus, you come down, for I’m coming to your house for tea’”. A nice child’s chorus, but as so often, the children have much to teach us. What did Zaccheus do so that he could get a better view of Christ? He climbed up into a sycamore tree. Such an action from Zaccheus had far reaching consequences – it led to Jesus coming to his house for a meal and it led to Zaccheus’ repentance and, we believe, new birth. If we want to get a better view of Christ, what should we do? What is the sycamore tree which we must climb if we are to improve our view of Christ? The catechism answers – we are to use the means God has given us for doing so – the Word, prayer and the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper). Using these gifts of God won’t get us a better Christ, but they will help us to get Christ better – and you never know what will happen once you start using them – they might even result in a total change of life for you, just as they did for Zaccheus.

To hone down our studies into the means by which we get Christ better, we have been focussing on the sycamore tree of God’s Word – we have been looking at the topic of ‘Reading the Bible’. Let’s return to Q. 90 of the Shorter Catechism.
SC.       Q. 90 How is the word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual unto salvation?
            A. 90 That the word may become effectual unto salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts; and practise it in our lives.
As we said last week, this answer can be divided into 4 distinct sections:
1. Why Should I Read the Bible? – ‘the word … effectual unto salvation’
2. What Should I do Before I Read the Bible? – ‘diligence, preparation and prayer’
3. What Should I do As I Read the Bible? – ‘receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts’
4. What Should I do After I Read the Bible – ‘practise it in our lives’
Tonight we tackle the subject of how we climb the sycamore tree. These are what we must do to get the most out of reading the Bible for ourselves so that it may become effectual unto salvation.

There are 3 stages in this:
[A] Diligence
Diligence, according to the Dictionary, means “steady and careful application; proper attention or care”. It is the opposite of haphazardness and carelessness. It refers to our attitude towards the reading of God’s Word. Perhaps it also includes within it a certain level of eagerness and desire. In order to get the most out of reading God’s Word, we are to approach it with proper attention and care. Listen to what John Piper writes, “Our approach to the Bible should be like a miner in the gold rush, or a fiancée who has lost her engagement ring somewhere in the house. She ransacks the house. That is the way we seek for God in the Bible.”
Piper’s quote gives away more than it seems, because it includes the whole reason why we approach God’s Word with such diligence, care, eagerness and desire. It is because, again in the words of John Piper, “that is the place the Lord reveals the beauty and excellency of Christ.” It is in the Scriptures that we find our Saviour – just as Zaccheus saw Christ from the sycamore tree, so the Scriptures are the sycamore from which we see Christ. The diligence and care with which we approach the Scriptures is a reflection of how seriously we take Christ. Now, if we claim Christ as our Saviour and King – the One who came from heaven’s height to the cross’s depths and at whose name every knee shall bow and tongue confess that He is Lord – would we dare approach such a One with carelessness and haphazardness. No way! If we would take an invitation from the Queen seriously, how much more should we take Christ’s invitation seriously?
In the same way, what is it that we come, with such diligence, to seek in the Scriptures? It’s not a what, it’s a who. Surely, it is Christ, because it is He of whom the Scriptures testify (John 5:39). When you are coming to the Word enscripturated, you are coming to the Word incarnate – when you are coming to the written Word, you are coming to the living Word. And do you desire Christ? Then come to Him in the Scriptures! Thomas Boston wrote, “How many go to prayers, sermons etc, who have it not in their view to meet with Christ in them? So they come away without him, and they do not mourn because they find him not; and how can they be so affected, since it was not their errand to meet with him?” The message is clear, don’t go to the Scriptures because they are just a good book, or even because they are a God-breathed book – go there because that’s where you find Christ; and go seeking Him there – the index of how much you love and desire Christ is how much you love and desire His Word. George Donaldson wrote, “A more fearful symptom of spiritual death cannot well be conceived than a want of desire for and delight in the Word of God.”
At the weekend, I went to see our latest congregational addition, little Scott Morrison. His mother was holding him against her shoulder, burping him, as you do to tiny babies. But all the time, little Scott was doing something called ‘rooting’. ‘Rooting’ is when a baby bobs his head from side to side and up and down licking his lips and making sucking noises – it’s as sign he’s hungry and wants something to drink. The little baby knows that his greatest need is his mother’s milk, so he roots after it. Now can I ask this evening, are you rooting for Christ? Are you aware you’re your greatest need is Christ, and Him alone? And what is the breast at which you think you will get what you need? Where will you be fed? It is in God’s Word. When you come to His Word morning by morning, are you desperate to get your fill of Him? Not just a quick suck, or a cursory snack, but a feast and a banquet? Thomas Boston wrote, “Seek Christ in (the Word) and come to them with a design to find Christ there.” And Jesus Himself has promised (Matt. 7:8) that if we seek, we shall find.
Approach the Word like a miner in a gold rush and a fiancée having lost her engagement ring in the house – not carelessly, but with diligence.
[B] Preparation
Having established that when we approach the Bible, we are approaching Christ, how then should we prepare ourselves for such a meeting? God gives His people a solemn command in Amos 4:12 – ‘prepare to meet your God’! Now you wouldn’t go into a physical meeting with a physical King wearing shabby jeans and a tank top, you would go in ultra-smart. So how do you prepare your spirit to meet with the King of Glory? The answer consists in mind-control – it consists in controlling in which direction your mind is going to work. Time does not permit me to develop the advantages of Christian mind-control, but I believe preparatory mind control in the area of reading the Bible can be split up into two sections:
(1) Controlling How to Think as you approach the Bible - I have just one Word in mind here – that Word is ‘teachable’. Set your mind and heart on being teachable. James 1:21 – ‘humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.’ We so often come to God telling Him what to think, telling His Word what it will say to us rather than with meekness and teachability. Do you expect to learn anything from God’s Word if you go to it thinking that you know better than God? I think that’s where Paul was before he became a Christian – he was in the driving seat, not God; and God had to bring him down a few notches to make him teachable. Take my advice, save yourself the dazzling blindness of a Damascus Road experience – approach your Bible with a teachable spirit.
(2) Controlling What to Think as you approach the Bible – there are several patterns we might adopt as we try and control what we think as we approach our Bible readings – perhaps this is something you can develop for yourselves, but I want to take as a working model the 4 points of Thomas Boston:
1. Get your heart impressed with a sense of the majesty and holiness of God – Psalm 89:6 tells “For who in the skies can be compared to Yahweh? Who among the heavenly beings is like Yahweh?” and this is the God into whose presence we come when we open our Bibles.
2. Banish out of the heart worldly cares; John Flavel calls this ‘discharging the heart from worldly cares and carnal lusts’. Matthew 13:7 is the account of how some of the sower’s seed fell on thorny ground and the thorns grew up and choked them. In vs. 22, Jesus explains that the seed sown among thorns represents the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. James 1:21 tells us that in order to be able to accept the truth planted within us we must rid ourselves of all filthiness and rampant wickedness. Boston writes, “The heart going after the world at such a time renders the word ineffectual”. So when you come to God’s Word, focus your mind on God and defocus your mind away from the world.
3. Stir up spiritual desires in your heart – see yourself as God sees you and realise that you are needy. In I Kings 8:38 God tells His people to ‘stretch out their hands towards this house’ – which really means, ‘stretch out your hands to wards me’. Stretch out your spirit to God – yearn for him and long for the presence of Jesus Christ with you, knowing that He is all you need to keep you going.
4. Apply the blood of Christ to your soul from removing guilt – remember what Jesus Christ did on the cross for you and how His blood can make the foulest clean. Consciously apply that blood to yourself – consciously say to yourself, ‘Jesus died for me to forgive all my sins and to take away my guilt.’ “Happy”, Boston writes, “are they who come washed to hear the word; for they may expect to hold communion with Christ there.”
Now all these preparatory thoughts are just that – they are thoughts, not prayers, but thoughts. We so often rush into the presence of God, and there are times when we must, but our day to day times of fellowship with Him in prayer and Bible reading must be ordered affairs. These preparatory thoughts are the meditations which should precede even our prayers and which will, if understood, put us in the right frame of mind for reading the Bible in such a way as to get the most out of it.
[C] Prayer
So we have talked of our general attitude to the reading of the Bible, that it is there we find Christ. We have talked of how we prepare to meet with Him in the Scriptures in terms of how and what to think. But now we come to talk about our prayers in relation to reading the Bible. We have many different types of prayer for different situations, but what type of prayer should typify our approach to God’s Word? Before I answer that question, I do want to emphasise the absolute importance of prayer to Bible reading. Thomas Boston wrote, “If ye would have good of the word read or preached, pray, and pray earnestly before it.” John Piper writes, “Prayer is indispensable if we would see the glory of God in the Word of God.” He writes again, “Prayer is essential to Christian living, because it is the key to unlocking the power of the Word in our lives.” From these three quotes, we can see that prayer has 2 roles in the Christian’s life in relation to the way she reads the Bible.
(a)    Prayer unlocks Christ from the Scriptures – it is through prayer that God shows you the Christ you long for in the pages of the Bible. Without prayer, like as not, the Bible will be a dead book and you will not see the glory of Christ in it.
(b)    Prayer unlocks Power from the Scriptures – it is through prayer that God shows you how to apply the Scriptures in your life. It is through prayer that the word of God become living and active, sharper than any two edged sword. If you are lacking power in your Christian life, could it not be because you are not soaking your Bible reading in prayer.
But how then do we soak our Bible reading in prayer? What prayer should typify our approach to God’s Word? I want to suggest that the best place to go for this is Psalm 119 – the Psalm of the Bible. In that psalm, the songwriter makes different prayers to God regarding the reading of the Bible. I want to follow John Piper’s analysis of this prayer-soaked Bible reading psalm. There are 7 requests we make to God as we approach His Word in order to get the most out of it:

1. That God would teach me His Word (Psalm 119:12b) – ‘teach me your statutes’
2. That God would make me understand His Word (Psalm 119:27) – ‘make me understand the way of your precepts’.
3. That God would not hide His Word from me (Psalm 119:19b) – ‘hide not your commandments from me’. A famine of the Word of God is the most fearful judgement God can send upon us – just see Amos 8:11.
4. That God would incline my heart to His Word (Psalm 119:36) – ‘incline my heart to your testimonies’.
5. That God would give me life to keep His Word (Psalm 119:88) – ‘in your steadfast love give me life, that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth’. What you are asking for here is the strength to put into practice what God teaches us through His Word.
6. That God would establish my steps in His Word (Psalm 119:133) – ‘keep steady my steps according to your promise.’ This is a prayer that God would deeply ingrain the teachings of the Bible upon our hearts.
7. That God would seek me when I go astray from His Word (Psalm 119:176) – ‘I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant.’

This can be shortened down, there are other patterns we can follow, but this is one which I think is very helpful. Why don’t you try it for a week, not in a mechanical, formal way, but in a meaningful, sincere way? God has told us that He will answer our prayers if they are prayed in His Will – His Word is His Will – therefore if we are praying His Word, as these prayers from Psalm 119 are, then He will answer and He will bring the Bible to life for us.
So what will the impact of applying due diligence, preparation and prayer to our reading of the Bible? It will be that of ploughing the ground. Now I could just go out into my back garden and sow vegetable seeds willy-nilly and some of them might grow, but not many. But if I prepared the ground first by digging it up and aerating it, I would hope that most of the seeds would grow. Ploughing is vital if you want a good crop. If you want your reading of God’s Word to be fruitful, if you want to see Christ in the Scriptures and be transformed more into His likeness, then you need to plough the ground of your hearts in readiness for the seed of God’s Word to be planted. Thomas Boston said, “The Word is the most patent door of heaven, at which the King usually comes forth to his attendants, that come to wait on him there.” May God use this message from His Word to make our Bible reading more productive and fruitful for Him. AMEN