Now, we want to look at, actually, some
guidelines, seven to be exact.
And I'd like to open today with this
Scripture, which we opened with before.
The Scripture I want to begin with is
Psalm 119, 18.
Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of thy law.
And when the psalmist wrote these lines, of
course, he had in mind the Mosaic system
primarily.
But we widened that out to include the
66 books of the Bible, and can say
today, open thou mine eyes, that I may
behold wondrous things out of the Bible.
And so, with that thought in mind, we
look at these guidelines.
Now, there are certain guidelines that each of
us should follow relative to the Word of
God.
You may want to add to these, but
I believe that the ones we're mentioning are
basic and primary.
And I'd like to put it like this.
I guarantee that if you follow these guidelines,
blessing will come to your heart and your
life.
Certainly, there should be these directions in the
study of Scripture.
Today, for instance, a bottle of patent medicine,
no matter how simple it might be, it
might be just a tonic, or it might
be something for a cold.
It has directions for the use of it.
I even noticed that a bottle of aspirin
has on it directions.
And any little gadget that you buy in
a five and ten cent store, and I
must pause to say that probably there's no
misnomer today like the five and ten cent
store.
You can't find anything in there that sells
anymore for five and ten cents.
It's generally up in the dollar bracket today,
but any gadget that you buy there always
has with it directions for its operation.
I know that I bought my daughter, when
she was a little girl, a toy, and
it had with it directions.
You had to assemble it, and I took
it out to give to her, and I
thought, well, I'd put it together.
And I want to tell you, friends, I
never got into a thing as complicated as
that was, and the directions were right there
with it.
Not only directions, but pictures.
And even with all of that help, I
had my problems.
Well, if things in this world today are
like that, then certainly the Word of God
needs directions in order to read and to
study it.
A Word of God should have a few
directions and a few instructions on the study
of it.
Now, I'm going to mention seven very simple
yet basic preliminary statements that will be a
guide for the study of the scriptures, and
we're going to attempt to follow them.
Well, let me mention the seven to you.
Begin with prayer.
That's number one, and we're going to talk
about each one of these.
Second, read the Bible.
Third, study the Bible.
And fourth, meditate on the Bible.
And fifth, read what others have written on
the scriptures.
And now the sixth one is obey the
Bible.
Obedience.
That is all important.
Now, number seven is pass it on to
others.
Someone has put it in this very brief,
cogent manner.
The Bible.
Know it in your head, stow it in
your heart, show it in your life, sow
it in the world.
Well, that's another way of saying some of
the things that we are going to talk
about here.