How to Study the Bible (Part 1)

What Motive?: Video Transcript

Transcript generated from the video's English captions. Punctuation, paragraphing, capitalization, and obvious caption errors were cleaned for readability; the spoken content was otherwise preserved. A portion of the original sermon recording is missing, as noted in the transcript.

Well, have you ever felt frustrated because you really want to retain more of the Bible, but you just can't seem to remember things? Or maybe you don't even have motivation to read the Bible, and it makes you feel guilty because you really want to read the Bible. You know, it's important. Well, today on our audio sermon series from our house church, Living Stones Fellowship, I am starting a new series about how to study the Bible.

And in this message, it's framed from the perspective of marriage. We're going to talk about why it's important first of all, and then we're really going to camp out on this section of motivation. What is your motivation for studying the word of God? and we're going to look at love versus legalism. I did forget to restart the recording.

So, 3/4 of the way through, there is a chunk of the sermon missing. Sorry about that. But like with all my videos, if you're watching from YouTube, I have included the notes that you can print and download in the description. If you're on our website, there'll be a separate button for that before you start the next sermon in this series.

There is homework. So, I'd like you to do the homework and enjoy. So, today is a special day, Victoria visiting and wonderful. So, good to see your beautiful face here from the army.

And I'm just so encouraged by you, Victoria, how you've pressed through and just standing for God. Not to put you on the spot or anything. So, as you are turning to Psalm 1:2 and Joshua 1:8, we are going to do our best today to look at how to study God's word. Now, have you ever felt frustrated reading the Bible but not being able to retain what you read?

Anybody? Anybody out there? Hello. Hello.

Okay, some people easily. Distracted easily. I hear you. Maybe you've lost motivation to read the Bible consistently.

No one here, right? No. Now, this is interesting. If the word of God is our daily bread, as Matthew 4:4 says, why don't we eat it daily?

If the word of God makes us wise for salvation through faith in Christ, according to 2 Timothy 3:15, why do we emphasize worldly wisdom? If the word of God is healing to our life according to Psalm 107:20, why do we not live to remember it? And finally, if the word of God is eternal like Psalm 119:89 says, then why do we let that which is passing away get first place in our life? Have you considered these things?

I know it's a little personal right here. And now to add frustration in the mix, look at at the front of your outline here. I have a little table. We know, everyone here knows the word of God is important.

Would you agree? Yes, it is important. So, what I want us to do is let us read together. The word of God upholds the universe.

Hebrews 1:3. The word of God as a light to our path. Psalm 119:105. The word of God imparts understanding to the simple.

Psalm 119:130. The word of God is a sword of the spirit. Ephesians 6:17. The word of God is the truth.

John 17:17. The word of God is the source of our faith. Romans 10:17. The word of God is our encouragement unto hope.

Romans 15:4. The word of God is given by inspiration of God, making us complete and equipping for every good work. Second Timothy 3:16-17. The word of God is by which we are born again.

1 Peter 1:23. And the word of God will never pass away. Matthew 24:35. Why don't we read it enough?

And by the way, on your own time, I mean, look up those verses. It's awesome. But this is what we do know. We're going to discuss today why we should study.

We're going to distinguish between legalism and love. And we're going to look at how to study. Does that sound good? Yeah.

And at the very end, I'm going to give you homework for this week. And next Sunday, I'm looking forward to this as God wills that we're all still on this earth. Next Sunday, we're going to gather cuz that's the true thing. We don't know tomorrow.

We're going to gather and we're going to inspire each other and talk about what happened with the homework. Does that sound exciting? Cuz everybody looks down. People are like, "I went through school.

I'm on vacation. No homework today." But you know what? Let's not think of it as homework, but let's think of it as an opportunity to get inspired, press in, grow, love, and rejoice in the word of God. Because look, we just read it.

What's the one thing that's going to get you through this life? Chocolate. No, no, the word of God. We got a We got a hard group here.

The one thing that's going to get you through this life is the word of God. The one thing that's going to truly bring you hope is the word of God. Our faith comes by hearing and hearing of the word of God. When you don't hear the word of God, your faith isn't going to grow.

So there's a direct correlation between studying and reading and taking in the word of God and then whether you are growing in your faith or whether you are being overcome in your faith. And we don't want that. So what's Psalm 1:2 say? But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And in his law does he meditate day and night. What do we learn right there? Meditate day and night. Not just during the day.

Not just at night. Day and night. Yeah. I I like to start during the day, but I haven't been too good at like thinking about God's word at night.

Sometimes I just hit the bed. But you know what I'm doing? I'm watching a show. I'm looking at YouTube.

I'm watching everybody else's channel and then figuring out how crazy wrong false teaching is going on through YouTube and then I get discouraged because my channel's not going because I have so much to edit and then I go to bed discouraged or like, "Oh my gosh, there's all this stuff going wrong." Well, Psalm 1:2 gives me the answer what to do. Hey, why don't you meditate on the word of God before you go to bed? And some of you, you wake up and you got to do work. You got the army.

You've got things to do, right? And you get out of bed and you're going. But to you, the word of God says, "Hey, in the morning, read it. Listen to it.

Hear it." Because that will set your entire day. But there's something else that verse said that I'm not hearing. What else does it say? Delight.

It says delight. Delight. It doesn't say drudgery. Delight.

Amen. Now, what's Joshua 1:8 say? This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe and do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall deal wisely and have good success.

So, what's the book of the law? The whole word of God. Well, you can say the whole word of God. Yep.

It's definitely the Torah. What's the first five books of the law? There you go. Amen.

And God is saying do not let them depart from your mouth. Wait a second. Doesn't say do not let it depart from your memory, from your brain. Says from your mouth.

Does that mean something to you? We should speak the word of God. Oh, so you can speak the word of God to yourself. You can read it out loud.

You can you can meditate on it. You know, there's an interesting thing and we'll get to the word meditate later. But just so you know, we started meditating. And first, when you hear meditate, do not be thinking uh Zen meditation, Buddhist meditation.

No, it's to contemplate and think and consider. But the other thing is it's to actually mumble to oneself. mumble to oneself. You know what? We all started as kids meditating.

How many of us while we're playing, while we're doing makebelieve, we talk to oursel again? Meditate day and night. Huh? Look at the second verse.

So you may be careful to do everything written in it. Well, what's that mean to you when you read that? The word careful is interesting because it's like, well, I mean, you have to take care. So you have to be diligent so that you don't I didn't even talked about this a few services ago of like how you can misinterpret or you know use scripture to make a point about something that you want versus what it's actually saying.

So um having to if yeah meditating on it day and night makes it harder to do that type of stuff to do everything written in everything. So I'm confused why it says it shall not depart from your mouth. Why shouldn't it why should it not depart from your mouth if you're supposed to speak it? Do not let it depart from your mouth.

That's meaning if your mouth stops speaking it. Don't let it go like if your mouth starts speaking other things. You've departed from it. But you mean so it's like very technical talk about it.

Yeah, you should. Yeah, cuz that's what because it just sounds like it it sounds like you should talk. That's what it sounds like it's saying, but it doesn't mean that. and just it's coming from the point of constantly talking about it and then not constantly talking about it. And this is one of the things I I appreciate, Victoria, and the things that you were talking to me about of just we have to understand our brains work differently.

And so sometimes in studying you might need to create like columns or use markers or maybe you're more hands-on. Other people journal, right? But some people get frustrated journaling, you know, and that's okay. What kind of translation do you have?

Uh, New King James. New King James. The new the NIV and the NLT, they're pretty similar, but they say in verse eight, keep this book of the law always on your lips. That makes it a lot simple.

Yeah, I like that. Isn't it nice when you hang out with friends, when you can just talk about the Lord? Hey, have you been reading this? Hey, I just got encouraged by this verse.

But one of the things that we should be doing is talking about the Lord, talking about his word. This gets exciting, but it also brings remembrance to you. This is not to be done just twice a week, you know, service on Sunday and midweek. No, we want to be always talking about the Lord.

But when I was growing up in church and youth groups and all this, it was almost like, oh great, we're done with church. Now we can talk about the world and fun and life and love and relationships and gossip and you know what goes on. It's so easy to just talk about worthless things. What we've seen is just in two verses an encouragement to us to talk about the word.

Look, it's by which you're born again. Your very faith comes from it. It's your encouragement unto hope. It's a light to your path.

I love Psalm 119:130. It imparts understanding is simple. I know no one here is simple, but guess what? We all need that impartation of wisdom from the word of God.

So, by the way, Blue Letter Bible, download that as an app on your phone. And next week, we'll be, you know, talking a little bit about some apps and some tools, too. Um, but Blue Letter Bible is very good because you can easily click on words and see the original Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic. I love it.

How to study the word of God. We've understood that the word is important. Amen. And now that we feel guilty and frustrated, some of us, and I mean all of us at times, you know, man, it is so important.

I'm not doing it, not retaining it. Well, this is what I'm going to try and do today. I'm going to frame this whole sermon around the perspective of marriage. What in the world?

Okay, so you're like, that sounds strange. Well, why would I frame this around marriage? We are the bride of Christ. And who is the word of God?

Who is the word? Jesus. John chapter 1. I want someone to read 1 through five and then verse 14.

John chapter 1. 1-5 and then verse 14. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning but God.

All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. In him uh was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.

The glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth. So who's that talking about? About Christ. So the word is Christ and we are the bride of Christ and all of us are going to be headed toward a marriage with Christ if you are in Christ.

And so maybe when we're meditating on the word, we're meditating on Christ, too. That's actually what you are doing, David. And good point. And this is another thing, you know, when we talk about, man, my frustration with the word and the Bible, where do I start?

What do I do? But first, what I'm doing is instead of just getting into the nitty-gritty, like here's how you memorize or here's what we're doing in this lesson is taking a step back and looking at the overview. What is the word? And let's look at it like a marriage.

And it not might not be what we wish we had. And we might not be married like we wish we would have been or we might be looking forward toward getting married. But at the end of the day, as Christ followers, we need to understand this relationship with the Lord Jesus is a marriage. And that's the first thing we need to do is change our mind from we're just doing a religiosity type of thing and memorizing a few verses type of thing and we're just going to try and you know get through life type of thing and move it toward this is an intimate real marriage with a real person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And right there does that change your perspective? Yeah. Point number one, why study the word of God? It says, "Study to show yourself approved unto God." Yep.

2 Timothy 2:15. Be diligent to present your yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word truth. So, we should be in this appointment of rightly understand the word of truth. And does anyone know and has anyone come across false teaching in your life?

Yeah. So, it's abounding, right? So we have the world in which we live which is antithetical to the word of God and really hates the word of God. But then in even in the church and even amongst your friends and colleagues and you're trying to talk about the Lord Jesus, there's a lot of false teaching going along.

So you need to understand how to understand the word of God, how to read in context, how to get the full message, right? But I have two reasons why study studying the word of God is very important. Reason number one, it's the greatest battle Satan will fight you on is the word of God. If you really want to know how to get in a battle with Satan, you start to try and read the word of God.

You start to try and spend some time with God. You are going to get in the battle of your life. You're going to be tired. You're going to be distracted.

You're going to be worried. You're going to feel guilty. You're going to feel frustrated. This isn't working.

Well, why is he doing this? Well, in Mark, it is there in the outline, but look at this. Mark 4:15. Well, Jesus is talking about the parable of the seed sown.

He says, "The sower sows the word." And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. If the word creates faith, which we read, right? Romans 10:17.

The word is your encouragement. The word is which you are born again. 1 Peter 1:23. The word is the truth.

The word is the sword of the Spirit. imparts understanding to you, why wouldn't he come to take it away? So why do we need to study the word of God? Because this is the battle you face. I have to also think James 1:21 says that the word is able to save our souls.

Yes, it does. The second reason we need to study God's word is because our nature is to forget it. Our nature is to grow apathetic and our nature is to ignore God's word. Welcome to being human.

Welcome to having a sin nature. Yeah. So, no single person is being singled out. This is who we are.

Yeah. And look what Joshua 22:5 says. I'll prove it to you. But take careful heed to do the commandment and the law which Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you.

To love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. Did the Israelites follow that time and time again? No. They failed to do that.

And maybe there's some things you want to underline in that. We're going to go over a lot of scripture. I can't exegete all of it, but just so we know, part of this is to follow the Lord with all your heart and all your soul. So, we can't do this half-heartedly.

So, if you're even going to attempt to do this half-heartedly, well, you might as well not start because It's not going to work. But let me put it to you in the framework of marriage. Whoever in the world got married half-heartedly. If you found the love of your life and you're like, I want to marry him.

I want to marry her. You going in it half-heartedly? Are you excited? Well, arranged marriages.

No. And and I would I would push back on arranged marriages. Part of the homework actually is going to be studying a marriage. And we're gonna look at that because in the Bible, let me tell you something.

And the Bible is the foundation of marriage and truth. And not America, not the way we think marriages should be and not our ceremonies, the Bible is. And nowhere in the Bible when it was done God's way, was anyone having to be married against their will. All right?

There was always the decision. And that decision again, when you decide to be married, again, I'm going to ask you, do you do it half-heartedly in between doing the taxes, in between doing your nails? Are you going to be like, I'm in this this it's only your life we're talking about giving your entire life to someone else. Yeah, you're not in it half-heartedly.

So, when we frame studying the word of God like entering into a marriage, that's why we're getting ready here to be serious. This is a this is a real deal. And the way God called his people, he said, "You should talk about it. This should be on your lips.

You need to hold fast to serve God with all your heart and all your soul because your tendency is to forget to grow apathetic to ignore. Think of the heart as the seed of your convictions and the soul is the seed of your emotions and our heart we make like decisions but our soul is how we feel about those decisions. Okay. Cuz I I thought your heart is more so emotional cuz I mean in the Bible it says your heart is deceitful above all things.

So I thought that it's more emotional and uses emotions instead of actual. Your heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it? Well, I said the heart is the seat of decisions.

And so what's deceitful? What you're actually doing? Cuz Jesus said, think of it this way. Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart come what?" Murder, adultery, fornication.

Are those emotions or things done? Those are actions. So if the heart is a seed of our actions, then our soul is a seat of how we feel about those actions or don't feel. So when we get a new heart, think of it this way.

In Ezekiel, God says, "I'll take out the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, and they will do my law." So the heart is the seat of doings, actions, and the soul how you feel about those actions. Now, thank you for all this because that was like a whole another sermon, but I think this is really good to to discuss that. So how how does character play into all this? Because character can kind of dictate how we're going to react or Well, character is what we've been doing.

The Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." What's in your heart now comes out and what you've been doing is your character. Character is just the framework of what you're doing. So when someone has bad character, it just means they've been doing bad things. Someone has good character, they've been doing good things.

But their character is like the measurement of the heart. But what the heart is doing, that's the seed of your actions. So what do you need if you have bad character? Well, you don't need a shrink.

You need a new heart. Yeah. Okay. And that's what the Lord says he will give us.

He'll give us a new heart. Hello. Okay. So look at this.

It is no surprise all the forces of darkness will come to distract, distrust, discourage, and distance you from studying the word of God. Now, in this sermon, you're going to come across 12 Ds. Okay? 12 Ds.

And we'll look at that. But I just want to tell you, I'm going to weave these 12 Ds throughout the sermon. Okay? But what Satan and darkness is going to do is to distract, make you distrust, get you discouraged, and get you distanced from God.

Number two, let's dive in. What is your motive for wanting or not wanting to study the word of God? Now, I want you to think about this for a second. What drove you to learn something that was difficult in your life?

Desire. Desire. Necessity. Necessity.

Sometimes you just admired something and thought it was cool and fun. Admiration. Desire. Admiration.

Necessity. That all did something to blank you. Give you motivation. Motivation.

Now, here's the question I have for you. What's the best way to get motivated? Well, if you if you do something that rewards you, God I believe God made us the way that we will do where there was a reward. Um, so like with your dog, he didn't get a reward.

He didn't get let out. So now he gave up because there's no rewarding. That's how we wired. If you reward good behavior, you will get better behavior as a result.

Um, same with a person. If you reward yourself good things, you will be more likely to keep doing good things. Um, if you think bad things were fun, the child learns bad thing, gets attention, it will do more bad things. We do know God rewards.

And we do know there is a reward ceremony in heaven, isn't there? And we do know Christ followers are going to be before the Bema seat of Christ to receive rewards. Not whether they'll be in heaven or not, but rewards with deeds done on the body, which is good motivation. What's the most protective element that can base that reward system within?

What creates trust and peace? Love. Love. So my thesis to you, again, we're talking about studying the Bible in the framework of marriage, and now we've just looked at motive, and I'm saying the best way to get motivated is love.

Listen to this. If you love someone with all your heart and all your soul and you're like, I want to spend the rest of my life with this person, that desire to love them is going to motivate you to make decisions with your career, to make decisions with where you live, to make decisions where you guys buy a house. These are all hard things. Like if if marriage and love wasn't there, you'd be like, "Oh my gosh, I got to move.

I got to get a house. Got to do all this stuff. It's so hard." And then all of a sudden you put the love of your life there and you're like, I want to spend my life with them. We get to do hard things together.

Young love, right? A lot of people are like, "Oh, that was nice." It is true because the motivation, the best motivation you can have in your life is love. And the only way to get motivated to go study the word of God is love. And if you don't have love to study the word of God and to go to the Lord, then just hang it up.

That's my encouragement to you. Just walk away. How's that for a Sunday service? I'm here to tell you the truth.

Yeah. And I'm not candy coating anything because this is real. You look, I don't know if I'm going to be here tomorrow. This might be the last message you hear.

I mean, you plan on being here Tuesday and Sunday, but I don't know what you're going to choose to do. I'm going to preach with my whole heart. Yeah. Because people have real lives that they got to deal with.

And if they don't get serious, then you know what? You're lying to yourself. And you better stop lying to yourself. It's not going to go good with you.

And when you stand before the Lord, no one else is going to be there. So, let's get real now. And you know what's cool is we get to help each other. We get to help each other.

But no one can help anyone else if we're not real. One of the best things I told my buddy who was in the military and I've had a lot of experience with friends going off in the military and making careers in the military and them calling me and very hard times. I remember my friend said, "How do I love God?" Cuz I don't love him anymore. I said, "Hey, that's really awesome that you said that because so many people don't admit it." So, I prayed with him, but I'm like, "Hey, if you can be like Job, why God?

I don't like you. I'm angry at you, God." Or you're like, "I don't even love God." We can start. We can start there. But if you're like, "Oh, I love God, but I never spend time with him.

I don't care about his word. I have no desire. I have no delight. I I'm not diligent.

I'm not devoted." Then you're a liar and I can't help you. I often find when things go wrong in my life and I have not asked the Lord, I know it's my own fault and things are going haywire because I've kind of given it to the devil and he's just robbing me. Really if I look back what what what already what the Lord did for me in the past it's like amazing and so how can I not love this is interesting read you are remembering an act that happened to you that God did right that's what the psalmist did they remembered what God did for them they remembered what God did for them they remembered what God did for them. They remembered the promises.

They remembered the acts of God of old. Let's just think about God for a second. Let's just remember what he did. Well in the old Testament.

Every time that God moved or did something or remembrance, they always built a memorial. Yeah. It was a beautiful thing. And how quickly people forget.

But what we do with those type of things is remember when God did this. Remember when God split the Red Sea, but look at things in your life. Remember when God saved me from Is there anyone here in this room just raise your hand that you should be dead right now? Okay.

Well, I shouldn't even be here. She shouldn't even have been born. She's got a double double whammy. Double whammy.

What we know right now here in this room is that we are alive for a reason. And God has spared our lives supernaturally. All of us. And so you can remember some things and like, "Yeah, that was really cool when God did this, when God did that." So look on the back page.

What's our motive? I have a column. Someone said they like to see sometimes put things in columns. And I just want you to look with me under love and just read this with me just the first words.

Okay? Starting with desire. Ready? Desire.

Delight. Diligent. Devoted. Versus legalism.

Read those with me. Duty, drudgery, disregard, disdain. Now, let's talk about this because I think it was a great question. How do I know when it's like I want to read the Bible and it's out of love and when does it become legalism?

That's a great question. First of all, desire is a longing and hope. A longing and hope. And so, we can have a longing and hope towards God's word.

Amen. When you desire another person, you pursue them enough to get to know them because deep down inside you believe that there is a longing and a hope and knowing them is better than not knowing them. And the moment you lose desire for someone, you take them for granted. You forget them.

You don't talk to them. We tell ourselves, "I'll see how they're doing tomorrow. It's just a friend. I know all about being friend-zoned.

It's easy to be friend-zoned. The moment a woman friend-zones a man as the moment she loses any type of desire for him, but still wants the, you know, nice stuff, gifts, friendship, listening. But let's just be real. If you lose desire for someone, you take them for granted.

You forget them. And we put it off till tomorrow. I just dreamt about my friend Brian last night. I did his funeral a few years ago. man.

And it's and I had this dream and it was crazy because when I woke up I realized this is the time that he had died. He he texted me during Halloween and he's like, "I'm seeing demons and there's a witch outside my apartment, you know, and he he tried to call and I was doing church. I was preaching and my phone rang and I I put it on silent and I finished the sermon and then went home and and I knew Brian was getting into some weird stuff and 5 days later one of my friends called and told me he's dead. Yeah, I didn't answer the phone.

I put it off and uh that's really really painful and I dreamt about him. I guess I lost desire for my friend. And you know, when you lose desire for the word of God, you begin to say, I can read it tomorrow. I don't really have to spend time because I got things to do.

Desire is a longing and hope toward God's word, God's word. Now, I put in parentheses there a lot of psalms. And if you just here's the the notes, the cheat notes. If you want one book in the Bible, I'll give you a chapter.

It's the longest chapter of the entire Bible and it's the only chapter that's completely dedicated to everything about the word of God. Do you know what chapter I'm talking about? 131. Psalm 119.

But if you just start reading Psalm 119, that's going to help you. Here's some things that David said, and then I'll read something Job said. And when I read this, I want you to to tell me if you sense, okay, any type of enjoyment or satisfaction. And again, these verses are all in your outline, okay?

But for time's sake, let me just read them. You ready? How sweet are thy words unto my taste. Yay.

Sweeter than honey to my mouth. Does that sound like a longing and desire for something? That was 119:103. Look at Psalm 19.

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous, more to be desired, they than gold, yay, much more than fine gold, sweeter than honey and honeycomb. Does that sound like desire? Yeah. For the word of God.

Look at this. Psalm 119:81. My soul faints for your salvation, but I hope in your word, a desire, a hope for. And look at Job.

Good old Job. 23:12. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Wow.

What's the scriptures? They're the words of God. They are God. When you feel hungry, you know, there's times that the Bible says for us to fast that you put your body in check.

Have you ever been like, "As much as I desire this juicy hamburger right now with a vanilla shake from In-N-Out, a little bit of fries for chocolate." Okay, we'll give you a chocolate shake there, Dave. Man, you got that chocolate shake as it is good. Yeah. And you desire that.

And all of a sudden, you say, "You know what? I desire to read the Bible more than that." Well, wow. Yeah, there's some wows. But you can get to this place, friends, but you have to have a love because you're not going to get to it out of duty.

Yeah. But you will get to it out of love. After each one of these four points of love, desire, delight, diligent, devoted. Uh I'm going to have one of you read out of Song of Solomon.

All right. So desire says this. I long to know God's word. And I know all of you here are thinking that way many times.

In fact, that's why you're frustrated because you want to know God's word more. It's just not really it's hard for you, right? But hey, at least you can say, "Look, I desire to know God's word because the world doesn't desire it and duty would never desire it." So listen to this. Someone reads Song of Solomon 3 1-4.

When you read this, let's see if we can sense a little bit of desire. In the night, I dream that I saw the one who love. I looked for him, but could not find him. So I decided to go out into the city, into the streets and broadways, and seek him whom my soul loves.

I sought him, but I could not find him. The watchmen who go about the city found me, to whom I said, "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" I had gone but a little way past them when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother's house and into the chamber of he of her who conceived the love Shulamite woman seeking after Solomon did not stop until she found she arose she went to the city the streets the court the squares to search for him and what did what happened when she found him she did not let go of him that's what we do to the Lord Jesus Christ and And that's intimacy. By the way, that's a woman pursuing a man right there.

That's sort of interesting. But you know what? We're the bride of Christ and we pursue Christ because he pursued us while we were yet sinners and now we are pursuing him in faith and diligence and love. So you might say, Matt, how do I desire God more?

How do I desire to read the word of God? Well, have you ever asked? Matthew 7:7-8 says this, "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks find and to him who knocks the door is opened." And you know what? It could be as simple as not even daring to ask the Lord and saying, "Hey Lord, I want to know more of you.

I want to have a desire for your word. I'm bored with it. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to get my mind right, but I want to desire your word.

Start there. That's good. And if it doesn't come right away, keep on asking. Yeah, keep on asking.

Very good, Dave. Love delights. Delight means finding great pleasure in the word of God. When we love someone, we delight in them enough to spend our time with them.

Where you spend your time shows what your heart takes pleasure in. So just think for a moment where you're spending your time. Now you might say, "Well, it's so frustrating. I spend my time here, here, here." Well, guess what?

That's where you're taking pleasure in. I know we got our jobs and we got this and that and we got duties to do and responsibilities. But if you delight in someone, you make time for them. You will do whatever it takes.

You will move heaven and earth. And you know what happens when you begin not to delight in someone? You begin to wish to spend time with someone else. If you're pursuing a person to the unmarried people here, you're pursuing someone.

You will be finding time to FaceTime, talk, use technology, whatever it takes. You will find time because you delight in them. But when we lose delight in someone, spending time with them becomes laborious, even boring. and we begin to delight in spending and hoping and wishing to have time with someone else. Have you ever thought that with God?

If we love God's word, we're going to begin to want to delight in his word, to find pleasure in his word. But if we have lost that delight, we need to spend time elsewhere. How fast can I read this and get on with my day? I got things to do.

How is it that young people in love can fall asleep on the cell phone? Man, this was happening before cell phones. I remember when people had landlines, they were calling each other and then I guess so and so got grounded because they had a huge phone bill. People and now you have unlimited calling.

Yeah. I I remember people be like, "Oh, wow. You were 14 hours on the phone with so and so." So young people in love, in desire, just listening to each other breathing, snoring. I love it.

I love you. No, you hang up. And yet, what happens with some older people, they begin talking about the days of singleness and they begin to say, "Man, I can't wait to get rid of the old ball and chain." What happened? Somewhere along the way, they stopped delighting in each other.

So, look at this. Why would you dare to spend time in the word if you don't first delight in it? I'm not going to spend time just like why would you spend time with someone you don't delight in? Maybe out of dredgery, maybe out of duty, maybe out of legalism, but that's not going to keep you there.

We need to delight in the word of God. Now, I'm going to read some verses to you, and I want you to see and tell me if you hear delight in these verses. One of the ones is Psalm 12. We read it.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and he meditates day and night. Does that sound like someone delighting in God's word? Psalm 119:16, I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word.

I am determining not to lose and forget your word. I am determining to delight myself in your word. And I'm not going to let anyone stop me. Psalm 119:35, "Make me walk the path of your commandments because I delight in them." Love says, "I find delight in God's word." Song of Solomon 7:6 says, "How fair and how pleasant you are, oh love, with your delights." So, how do we delight in God's word?

Well, I'll ask you this. How would you grow your delight in someone single person? How do you grow your delight in someone? Spend more time with them.

Oh yeah. In fact, you can change your attitude towards anyone. I mean, either way, you might spend time with somebody like this guy. It's crazy.

Or you might spend time with someone be like, I really like them. Like, oh, but you're not going to know if you don't spend time. 1 Chronicles 16:11, seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face forevermore.

So, how do we delight in the Lord? spend time with him. And I love this thing about seek his face, his person, not just the hand of God, what he can give you, but seeking who he is. And that takes time. And the third thing, love is diligent in God's word.

Now listen to this. Love's diligence puts in steady, earnest, and energetic effort. So now we're entering into an action of love. We got the feelings of love.

But love puts diligent, steady, earnest, energetic effort. Who feels diligent, earnest, and energetic right at this moment? Woo. That's the moment that tests you when you don't feel energetic, when you don't feel happy or when you don't feel like reading the word of God, when you don't have energy.

Love is that diligence that's going to push you forward, that's going to finish. What were some of the hardest things you had to do in boot camp? Waking up. Okay.

Going to the gas chamber. Yeah, the gas chamber. The gas chamber. Yeah, they have to go through a chamber.

And like it was actually more mental than anything. And how did you get your mind right? Um well, you don't have your phone. You don't All you have around you is the people who can be pretty nasty in nature, which is nice.

Um, when you think of gas chamber, you Dave's still in the gas chamber. She went through some hard stuff today. I would say probably just thinking about the end goal and writing down like remembering like I don't think this if you're if it's your will, God, because I was on the brink of death like a million times. I was horrible.

But um just reciting that, I would write Romans 8:37 on my hand with my pen. You keep pens in your uh uniform. And I would write on it over and over and over again. And just remembering the end goal.

And like I thought of like, wow, like it would be really embarrassing if I failed because I told everyone at home that I'm going to go into the army. So if I don't make this, I'm going to look pretty stupid. But also just the end goal of like, well, I just need to get through. And something else means I really really want to see my family's last name on my uniform as like cuz you see in basic right but like officially like on your dress uniform it's like our last name like got into the military.

So you had motivation you had scripture going on you had memorization going on. I love Romans 8:37. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Putting your mind in right place.

Man, you know what? I see a lot of love there. love for your family, love for your fellow man, love for the Lord. It was nice. Unfortunately, your body didn't get a lot of love, did it?

Oh, man. But you survived and and you know, I'm amazed by everything you went through. And cuz not everybody makes it. I mean, a lot of people do not make it through.

So, I see a lot of diligence there, Victoria. And it would be so easy to just be like, "Love desires. Love delights. Desire and delight in the Lord." Okay, have a good week everybody.

Yeah, you're not going to get too far because there's going to have to be this push, this energetic effort to overcome all these things. And we're going to talk about the four Ds that you're going to have to overcome. That love is diligent and that means it's not going to give up when hardships happen. Victoria, you never gave up.

And she did go through that gas chamber. I was pretty close to giving up at some point though. Yeah. Great.

I watched this TV show um that gets all these people and they have to train with seals and all that and it's pretty amazing. I thought you might like that show actually. But then Victoria's like why would I watch something that I do? She's like I want to go.

I was like yeah you know you're on another level you know. Wow. Here I am watching people go through that. She's doing it.

You know that's a big difference. What's beautiful is we all get to get into the Lord's army. as we're in the Lord's army, we're in this together. But we need to encourage one another because you're not always going to feel like delighting in the Lord's word. You're not always going to desire to read your Bible.

Hello, let's be honest. But when love diligently, earnestly puts in effort. I think of diligence, too. I think of being thorough, doing absolutely positively everything you can.

Yeah. The the definition is steady, earnest, energetic effort. Yeah. Now, look, Dave, when you love someone, you're going to be diligent to protect that relationship, right?

Yeah. Okay. Now, what are we protecting it from? Becoming lukewarm and common.

If you love someone and you're diligent to work at that relationship, you are doing one thing and one thing alone, making it not like every other relationship that could come and go. I know this is hard for people and people listening. But you know what? God sees you.

Cuz people are in all different stages right now. God sees where you're at and he knows. Yeah. And as long as you do what you can and you give it to the Lord.

Amen. You give it to the Lord. And you say, "Here's all that I am. Here's my heart.

Here's my sorrow. I give it to you." But here's one thing to help. You're married to the Lord and he's faithful. Cuz your spouse might not have been faithful.

Yeah. And you might feel abandoned, but the Lord never abandons you. So you take that heart and you you be encouraged right now, you know, because this is what happens, right? Early anniversaries, huge celebrations.

Later, forget the anniversaries. What happens? No diligence. You know, this happened to Jesus by his own bride.

I'm going to read to you from Revelation 2 4-5. Let me read to you. This is Jesus talking to the church of Ephesus. the apostolic church. Jesus says, "Nevertheless, I have this against you that you have left your first love.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly, and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent." And that lampstand was the actual church. So, what happened? They weren't diligent. They were diligent in every other thing.

Jesus commended them on all these other things they were doing, but they were not diligent in their first love. And so they left that first love because they did not put steady, earnest, and energetic effort into that. First five years are going to be tough. If you are not steady, earnest, and energetic to protect that relationship from becoming common, it will become common.

When you say again, I know we've talked about that before, but when you say common again, what you you mean? Okay. So, what does holy mean? Holy.

Mhm. Means set apart. And how does that relate to common? It doesn't.

It doesn't, does it? It's opposite of common. So, in fact, Paul will talk about in a household, you have some like bowls and stuff that are common, and then you have some bowls that are set apart that only get brought out for like Thanksgiving, those special times. Those we would call our holy bowls.

In fact, the Lord had these things for his temple, holy spoons, holy bowls, holy things. And Nebuchadnezzar's son went had a huge party and all types of lasciviousness and drunkenness and he got the holy things from the Lord's temple and then used them and they're getting drunk out of the goblets and all that and that's when the Lord's finger wrote on the wall and he destroyed the kingdom that night. What happened? That which was supposed to be set apart became common.

What happens with sexual immorality? Our our culture is telling young people just live together. Just experiment. You know, you don't have to commit to marriage.

Virginity doesn't matter. That's crazy. How do you know if you're going to get along with the person if you don't live with them first? Yeah.

It's horrible. And it's all in the TV shows and I hate it. Yeah. You know, it's like frustrates me to no end.

What they're doing, what the live Satan is doing is saying this awesome marriage between one man and one woman till death do you part. Let's just make it common. I think another good word would be ordinary. Yeah.

Common, ordinary, unholy. That's what we're doing. Love says you're different from everyone else. When you earnestly put in effort to someone you love, they're different from everyone else.

They're no longer common. They're no longer part of your regular friends. They've now become someone special. That wisdom is learning how to keep them special for the rest of your life.

Because everything in life is going to say, you know what, let's just take them for granted. Let's just treat them like one of the kids, one of the other people, or let's put the kids above them. Let's do this. You have to fight to keep that person you love holy.

The same way because I get I said I would frame this in the context of marriage. That's what I'm doing. How's it going? You guys are like, "Okay, listen.

I want you to hear these words from scripture and I want you to tell me, do you hear a little bit of diligence in these?" All right. Psalm 119:148. My eyes are awake through the night watches that I might meditate on your word through the night. So David is saying, "I'm doing the night watch." This is like 3:00 a.m.

This is like 5:00 a.m. These are throughout the night. He's getting up to meditate on God's word. You think that is a bit diligent?

Yeah. Okay. 119:112. I have inclined my heart to perform your statutes forever to the very end.

Victoria, we're talking about the heart and out of the heart come the actions, right? Look, he's saying I'm inclining my heart. meaning I'm pointing my heart to go this way. You have the ability to tell your heart no and to say, "Hey, I'm going to do this. My heart's going to perform your word forever, Jesus." When's the last time you said that to the Lord?

I'm inclining my heart to obey your word right now. I don't care. I guarantee you inclined your heart to get through basic. Yeah, you did.

And you did a really good job. And here's something for you. You went through basic and you went through all types of I would say even torturous things and mental things and you've gone through other things that we know about dramas. You overcame.

So don't you dare let Satan say, "Oh, with God's word, you're just a failure." No. You've done the hard thing. You love the Lord. You love him.

You delight in him. He's going to help you. I'm sure he will. No, he will.

He is. And that's that's it. No more entertaining these things from Satan. No, it is it's a done deal.

Boom. That's it. Now we're moving forward. That's very good.

Yeah. Many in your situation, many young people go away, oh yeah, I grew up in church. People people who go off to college, who go off into their lives, they grew up Christian and then they deconstruct because they they do not hold on like this. So it's super interesting the difference between phileo and agape is that agape love is the steadfast how you said David was set his heart steadfast be diligently that's agape and phileo is actually brotherly love yes like wives love your husbands is a different word again so just for wives so husbands actually will read agape wives wives only phileo because the husband is Christ to his wife and women out there listening I'm going to just say it.

Do not even entertain a man who doesn't know God. And don't be like, I'm going to lead him to the Lord. No friendship evangelism in relationships. No.

What? No friendship evangelism in relationships. You know, when I'm going to evangelize my boyfriend, even if he came to the Lord and you were there for him and all this stuff, it's backward. He's got to be the leader of the home.

He's got to be Christ to you and literally cover you and lay down his life for you. And the wife respects her husband. The wife doesn't lay down her life. The husband lays down his life.

And you can see the call of God and the very anatomy of men versus women. The very call of God, the very plan of God is seen in our differences. And men are called to battle. Men are called to fight.

Men are called to war for their wife, over their wife, cover their wife. But a wife is called to respect the husband. And when the wife usurps the husband, then there's war in the house. But when the husband pushes down the wife and is a dictator and not a servant leader, there's chaos.

Satan works at the marriage from both angles. Which is why when you get married, it actually is harder. You have to keep your life in order and she's got to keep her life in order. And everybody has to continue working.

All the while you have the world against you, Satan against you, your flesh against you. Wow. But be of good cheer. You have the Holy Spirit living in you.

So again, when we look at this with our with pursuing the word of God, is it any wonder that all this stuff comes against you when you try and get into the word of God. But again, take courage. You're married to Christ right now. You're married to Christ.

I'm married to Christ. You're married to Christ. And that's the most important thing. Diligence says, "I take action to apply God's word." Now, here's some things.

I have inclined my heart to perform your statutes forever. I love Psalm 119:11. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Well, isn't that interesting?

Where does sin come from? Out of the abundance of the heart, the what? Mouth speaks, murders, adulteries, fornications. So, where was David saying?

Where is he going to hide the word? Not in his soul, not in his intellect, not in his memorization, in his heart, in the place he makes his decisions. And of course, Matthew 7:24, Jesus says, Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock.

But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rains descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall. So when you are diligent, guess what? You are going to go through the same thing that people who are not diligent are.

You are going to go through the storm. You are going to go through the flood. You are going to go through the winds that beat on your house. But the difference is you are being built on the rock of his word and you are going to stand through it.

But do not believe for one second that because you are doing this or doing that with the Lord that he is going to protect you from all this. No, he is strengthening you to go through it. That is why we are studying Job on Tuesdays. Love says, I take action to apply Gods word.

Look at this. Song of Solomon 7:11-12 and tell me if you see any action going on. Come, my beloved, let us go forth to the field. Let us lodge in the villages.

Let us get up early to the vineyards. Let us see if the vine has budded, where the grape blossoms are open and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. What actions do we see?

Come, let us go into the fields. Let us lodge. Let us get up early. That is a lot of action.

So diligence is earnest and energetic effort in the word of God. How do we do this? Obey the word. Someone read James 1:21-25.

Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. Amen. So you see desire: we need to ask him for it. Delight: we need to spend time with him for it.

Diligence: we need to obey the word for it. Song of Solomon. And for everybody who realized like you just got half the sermon cut out: yes, I forgot to press record. Sorry.

We are talking about drudgery and, for whatever reason, the Shulamite woman. I love it, though. She just did not want to answer the door to her love. And all of us, I think, have been in that place where we love God.

We want to read his word, but just not today. And you know what happens every single time? It has happened to me. You go do whatever you are going to do, and then you are like, I wish I would have done it because it would have been so much better.

My day would have been better had I just prayed, had I just obeyed God. The day was ruined. What did you do today? Nothing.

Argued online. Got nothing done. We all know what that feels like. And the Shulamite at least, good for her, went out looking for him.

And she got struck in the face by security. And people are like, Oh, what does that mean? What does that symbolize? She got punched in the face.

This is Israel. You have heavy-duty military guarding the entire city on the walls and you are a girl looking for your husband that you did not let in and you are sneaking around at night and they are like, Who is this? Pow. They rip the veil off her face.

Are you a spy? They cannot be letting a spy in. It is military. What would happen, Victoria, if I tried to sneak up on base one night?

Probably get stuck. Yeah. But she tried to find him. She did not find him.

So she is going to tell her friends, Hey, if you see him, tell him I am lovesick. Well, why did you not just open the door? What does Jesus say? Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If you would open up the door of your heart, I will come in and I am going to make you do slave labor. No. Dinner with you. Oh, I will have dinner with you.

Who wants to eat with Jesus? Okay, so desire versus duty, delight versus drudgery, diligence versus disregard. So the third point of legalism, disregard. It is not a big deal to miss the service.

It is not such a big deal to not read my Bible today. John 14:24. This is Jesus. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

The message you hear is not my message, but the Father who sent me. Here is how you know whether you love me or not. Do you keep my word? I do not even know what your word is because I do not read it.

Well, disregard. Do any of us want to do that? No. We need to be diligent.

And finally, devotion versus disdain. Gods word does not mean that. Disdain. We live in a society where Bible teachers actually disdain the word of God.

They twist it for their own profit and gain like the prosperity gospel. They twist things to say that they do not mean. You have entire churches saying, Oh, God loves and accepts all types of sin and immorality and all these things. And then they rail on you if you stand for the word of God and say you are a fundamentalist.

That is disdain for the word of God. Listen to this. 2 Peter 3:15-16 says, Consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all of his epistles, speaking in them these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures. And that is what we see today in legalism.

The best way to get into false teaching is to leave devotion to the word of God and get into, I have got to do the duty, got to do the drudgery, got to do whatever. And then all of a sudden you find yourself twisting the word of God, believing not the word of God, but your own belief. And do not make God in your own image. This is from Jeremiah 9.

He is a one person, but I love it. He says, When truth no longer pleases their flesh, lies become a religion. The people will still gather, still sing, still open their Bible, but their hearts will belong to another gospel. It will be a message that comforts sin, magnifies man, and reduces God to a servant of human ambition.

They will call it blessing when it is actually blindness. Wow. Well, this was a lot. Well, we went over how to study the word of God.

We looked at what is the word of God. Had that table there. Why study the word of God? Well, it is a battle, the greatest battle Satan will fight against you.

And our nature is to forget and be apathetic. Then we went over what is the greatest motive? And that is love, is it not? And what are the four Ds of love?

Desire, delight, diligence, devotion. And yet legalism comes in with their four Ds: duty, drudgery, disregard, and disdain. And we compared those. It is there.

And then next week, we are going to finalize this. What do we do now? We are going to talk about distraction, distrust, discouragement, and distance. Say that with me.

Distraction, distrust, discouragement, and distance. And we had some distraction today. But we got through it. And we are going to look at how to get through it.

In the meantime, you have your homework. Pull that out. I already read it. Well, tell us what it is, Victoria.

Studying Genesis chapter 24. It is like a free-range type of deal. Just study it. If you have questions, write it down.

Thoughts? You could call it an adventure instead of homework. Yes, I love that. I like that.

An adventure. Thank you for that. And be honest and pay attention to the four evil Ds of distraction, distrust, discouragement, and distance. Share what you did to overcome and then just write it down.

I love it. And what is cool, I am curious to see what peoples free-range adventure leads them to because literally I am not putting any type of framework to this. I love the chapter. I want to see how your brain works and want to see what your brain does with it because the way I study is, I ask a lot of questions and then I find out answers and that is how I get to know Gods word and it becomes alive to me that way.

But if I just sit there and read line by line, line by line, I sort of get bored and it does not really. So I have to get into it. Now, this might not be a chapter you might think, Ah, it does not apply to me. Well, then jot that down.

Be like, I do not think it applies to me. And then read it and study it and maybe you will see maybe it does apply to me. Maybe something in there is interesting. Maybe you have a question.

See what you find. And so, what I am guessing, knowing you all, is there is going to be a lot to talk about next week. So, we will cover the four bad Ds early on and then open it up and really have a fun time as people discuss what that chapter did and what else they did in Gods word. Sound good?

Yeah. Well, I think maybe we need to also go into the different study methods and all that, like comparing Scripture to Scripture, context, Greek and Hebrew words, and different studies that are out there, tools that are out there online maybe. Yeah. So Dave, I had all that ready for next week to do.

But because Victoria leaves, you know, next week, I do not think I can fit that in with the share. So I will have to do that the next week. Is it meditation also ties into how to study the word of God too? Do you see what point three is?

Okay. Meditate, delight, ponder, pray. Number two is all going to be about meditate. But I think I am going to have to go through it sort of quickly because we want to get into the share.

All right. But I like what you are saying and maybe that can be in two weeks because how to study and the nitty-gritty is fun, like not taking things out of context and everything else. Yeah. But today was zooming out and looking at the framework of this all in the framework of marriage.

Yeah. And I brought Song of Solomon in and I think that is a very different way to discuss how to read the word of God. Yeah. But at the same time, I know it affected each of us because it is a highly emotional topic when we talk about love, relationships, marriage, devotion, all this stuff.

And I think if we can get our mindset into that type of intimacy with the word of God, it is going to affect us moving forward. Amen.