Pleasure & Profit in Bible Study Part 4

THREE BOOKS REQUIRED.

There are three books which I think every Christian ought to possess.

The first, of course, is the Bible. I believe in getting a good Bible, with a good plain print. I have not much love for those little Bibles which you have to hold right under your nose in order to read the print; and if the church happens to be a little dark, you cannot see the print, but it becomes a mere jumble of words. Yes, but some one will say you cannot carry a big Bible in your pocket. Very well, then, carry it under your arm; and if you have to walk five miles, you will just be preaching a sermon five miles long. I have known a man convicted by seeing another carrying his Bible under his arm. You are not ashamed to carry hymn-books and prayer-books, and the Bible is worth all the hymn-books and prayer-books in the world put together. If you get a good Bible you are likely to take better care of it. Suppose you pay ten dollars for a good Bible, the older you grow the more precious it will become to you.

But be sure you do not get one so good that you will be afraid to mark it. I don't like gilt-edged Bibles that look as if they had never been used.

Then next I would advise you to get a Cruden's Concordance. I was a Christian about five years before I ever heard of it. A skeptic in Boston got hold of me. I didn't know anything about the Bible and I tried to defend the Bible and Christianity. He made a misquotation and I said it wasn't in the Bible: I hunted for days and days. If I had had a concordance I could have found it at once. It is a good thing for ministers once in a while to tell the people about a good book. You can find any portion or any verse in the Bible by just turning to this concordance.

Thirdly, a Topical Text Book. These books will help you to study the Word of G.o.d with profit. If you do not possess them, get them at once; every Christian ought to have them.[1]

SUNDAY SCHOOL QUARTERLIES AND THE BIBLE.

I think Sunday school teachers are making a woeful mistake if they don't take the whole Bible into their Sunday school cla.s.ses. I don't care how young children are, let them understand it is one book, that there are not two books--the Old Testament and the New are all one. Don't let them think that the Old Testament doesn't come to us with the same authority as the New. It is a great thing for a boy or girl to know how to handle the Bible. What is an army good for if they don't know how to handle their swords? I speak very strongly on this, because I know some Sabbath schools that don't have a single Bible in them. They have question books. There are questions and the answers are given just below; so that you don't need to study your lesson. They are splendid things for lazy teachers to bring along into their cla.s.ses. I have seen them come into the cla.s.s with a question book, and sometimes they get it wrong side up while they are talking to the cla.s.s, until they find out their mistake, and then they begin over again. I have seen an examination take place something like this:

"John, who was the first man?"

"Methuselah."

"No; I think not; let me see. No, it is not Methuselah. Can't you guess again?"

"Elijah."

"No."

"Adam."

"That's right, my son; you must have studied your lesson hard."

Now, I would like to know what a boy is going to do with that kind of a teacher, or with that kind of teaching. That is the kind of teaching that is worthless, and brings no result. Now, don't say that I condemn helps. I believe in availing yourself of all the light you can get. What I want you to do, when you come into your cla.s.ses, is to come prepared to explain the lesson without the use of a concordance. Bring the word of G.o.d with you; bring the old Book.

You will often find families where there is a family Bible, but the mother is so afraid that the children will tear it that she keeps it in the spare room, and once in a great while the children are allowed to look at it. The thing that interests them most is the family record--when John was born, when father and mother were married.

I came up to Boston from the country and went into a Bible cla.s.s where there were a few Harvard students. They handed me a Bible and told me the lesson was in John. I hunted all through the Old Testament for John, but couldn't find it. I saw the fellows hunching one another, "Ah, greenie from the country." Now, you know that is just the time when you don't want to be considered green. The teacher saw my embarra.s.sment and handed me his Bible, and I put my thumb in the place and held on. I didn't lose my place. I said then that if I ever got out of that sc.r.a.pe, I would never be caught there again. Why is it that so many young men from eighteen to twenty cannot be brought into a Bible cla.s.s? Because they don't want to show their ignorance. There is no place in the world that is so fascinating as a live Bible cla.s.s. I believe that we are to blame that they have been brought up in the Sunday school without Bibles and brought up with quarterlies. The result is, the boys are growing up without knowing how to handle the Bible. They don't know where Matthew is, they don't know where the Epistle to the Ephesians is, they don't know where to find Hebrews or any of the different books of the Bible.

They ought to be taught how to handle the whole Bible, and it can be done by Sunday school teachers taking the Bible into the cla.s.s and going right about it at once. You can get a Bible in this country for almost a song now. Sunday schools are not so poor that they cannot get Bibles.

Some time ago there came up in a large Bible cla.s.s a question, and they thought they would refer to the Bible, but they found that there was not a single one in the cla.s.s. A Bible cla.s.s without a Bible! It would be like a doctor without physic; or an army without weapons. So they went to the pews, but could not find one there. Finally they went to the pulpit and took the pulpit Bible and settled the question. We are making wonderful progress, aren't we? Quarterlies are all right in their places, as helps in studying the lesson, but if they are going to sweep the Bibles out of our Sunday schools, I think we had better sweep them out.

CHAPTER IX.

The Telescopic and Microscopic Methods--Job--The Four Gospels--Acts--Psalm 52:1.

THERE are two opposite ways to study the Bible. One is to study it with a telescope, taking a grand sweep of a whole book and trying to find out G.o.d's plan in it; the other, with a microscope, taking up a verse at a time, dissecting it, a.n.a.lyzing it. If you take Genesis, it is the seed-plant of the whole Bible; it tells us of _Life, Death, Resurrection;_ it involves all the rest of the Bible.

THE BOOK OF JOB.

An Englishman once remarked to me: "Mr Moody, did you ever notice this, that the book of Job is the key to the whole Bible? If you understand Job you will understand the entire Bible!" "No," I said, "I don't comprehend that. Job the key to the whole Bible! How do make that out?"

He said: "I divide Job into seven heads. The first head is: _A perfect man untried_. That is what G.o.d said about Job; that is Adam in Eden. He was perfect when G.o.d put him there. The second head is: _Tried by adversity_. Job fell, as Adam fell in Eden. The third head is: _The wisdom of the world_. The world tried to restore Job; the three wise men came to help him. That was the wisdom of the world centred in those three men. You can not," said he, "find any such eloquent language or wisdom anywhere, in any part of the world, as those three men displayed, but they did not know anything about grace, and could not, therefore, help Job." That is just what men are trying to do; and the result is that they fail; the wisdom of man never made man any better. These three men did not help Job; they made him more unhappy. Some one has said the first man took him, and gave him a good pull; then the second and third did the same; the three of them had three good pulls at Job, and then flat down they fell. "Then in the fourth place," said he, "in comes _the Daysman_, that is Christ. In the fifth place, _G.o.d speaks;_ and in the sixth, _Job learns his lesson_. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' And then down came Job flat on the dunghill.

The seventh head is this, that _G.o.d restores him_." Thank G.o.d, it is so with us, and our last state is better than our first.

A friend of mine said to me: "Look here, Moody, G.o.d gave to Job double of everything." He would not admit that Job had lost his children; G.o.d had taken them to heaven, and He gave Job ten more. So Job had ten in Heaven, and ten on earth--a goodly family. So when our children are taken from us, they are not lost to us, but merely gone before.

Now, let me take you through the four Gospels. Let us begin with Matthew.

MATTHEW.

Men sometimes tell me when I go into a town: "You want to be sure and get such a man on your committee, for he has nothing to do and he will have plenty of time." I say: "No, thank you, I do not want any man that has nothing to do." Christ found Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom. The Lord took some one He found at work, and he went right on working. We do not know much about what he did, except that he wrote this Gospel. But, what a book! Where Matthew came from we do not know, and where he went to we do not know. His old name, Levi, dropped with his old life.

The Key. The Messiah of the Jews and the Saviour of the world. Supposed to have been written about twelve years after the death of Christ, and to be the first Gospel written. It contains the best account of the life of Christ. You notice that it is the last message of G.o.d to the Jewish nation. Here we pa.s.s from the old to the new dispensation.

Matthew does not speak of Christ's ascension, but leaves Him on earth.

Mark gives His resurrection and ascension.

Luke gives His resurrection, ascension and the promise of a comforter.

John goes a step further and says he is coming back.

There are more quotations in Matthew than in any of the others; I think there are about a hundred. He is trying to convince the Jews that Jesus was the son of David, the rightful king. He talked a good deal about the _kingdom_, its mysteries, the example of the kingdom, healing the sick, etc., the principles of the kingdom as set forth in the sermon on the mount; also, the rejection of the king. When anyone takes a kingdom they lay down the principles upon which they are going to rule or conduct it.

Now, let me call your attention to five great sermons. In these you have a good sweep of the whole book:

1. The sermon on the mount. See how many things lying all around Him He brings into His sermon, salt, light, candle, coat, rain, closet, moth, rust, thieves, eye, fowls, lilies, gra.s.s, dogs, bread, fish, gate, grapes, thorns, figs, thistles, rock, etc.

Someone, in traveling through Palestine, said that he did not think there was a solitary thing there that Christ did not use as an ill.u.s.tration. So many people in these days are afraid to use common things, but don't you think it is better to use things that people can understand, than to talk so that people can't understand you? Now, a woman can easily understand a candle, and a man can easily understand about a rock, especially in a rocky country like Palestine. Christ used common things as ill.u.s.trations, and spoke so that everyone could understand Him. A woman in Wales once said she knew Christ was Welsh, and an Englishman said, "No, He was a Jew." She declared that she knew He was Welsh, because He spoke so that she could understand Him. Christ did not have a short-hand reporter to go around with Him to write out and print His sermons, and yet the people remembered them. Never mind about finished sentences and rounded periods, but give your attention to making your sermons clear so that they stick. Use bait that your hearers will like.

The Law was given on a mountain, and here Christ lays down His principles on a mountain. The law of Moses applies to the outward acts, but this sermon applies to the inward life. As the sun is brighter than a candle, so the sermon on the mount is brighter than the law of Moses.

It tells us what kind of Christians we ought to be--lights in the world, the salt of the world, silent in our actions but great in effect.

"I say unto you," occurs twelve times in this sermon.

2. The second great sermon was delivered to the twelve in the tenth chapter. You find over and over again the sayings in this sermon are quoted by men viz.: "Shake off the dust off your feet against them."

"Freely ye have received, freely give," etc.

3. The open air sermon. You want the best kind of preaching on the street. You have to put what you say in a bright, crisp way, if you expect people to listen.

You must learn to think on your feet. There was a young man preaching on the streets in London when an infidel came up and said: "The man who invented gas did more for the world than Jesus Christ." The young man could not answer him and the crowd had the laugh on him. But another man got up and said: "Of course the man has a right to his opinion, and I suppose if he was dying he would send for the gasfitter, but I think I should send for a minister and have him read the fourteenth chapter of John;" and he turned the laugh back on the man.

This sermon contains seven parables. It is like a string of pearls.

4. The sermon of woes; Christ's last appeal to the Jewish nation.

Compare these eight woes with the nine beat.i.tudes. You notice the closing up of this sermon on woes is the most pathetic utterance in the whole ministry of Christ. "Your house is left unto you desolate." Up to that time it had been "_My Father's_ house," or "_My_ house," but now it is "_your house_." It was not long until t.i.tus came and leveled it to the ground. Abraham never loved Isaac more than Jesus loved the Jewish nation. It was hard for Abraham to give up Isaac, but harder for the Son of G.o.d to give up Jerusalem.

5. The fifth sermon was preached to His disciples. How little did they understand Him! When His heart was breaking with sorrow, they drew His attention to the buildings of the temple.

The first sermon was given on the mount; the second and third at Capernaum; the fourth in the Temple; the fifth on Olivet.