Why Do I Need to Read the Bible When We Have Bible Teachers Online?
00:00:00.000 | (Music)
00:00:04.000 | Hello everyone and welcome to this final episode of the week.
00:00:08.000 | Pastor John joined us today remotely over Skype for this question.
00:00:12.000 | A question that comes all the way from a believer in Hong Kong.
00:00:16.000 | Pastor John, what can I say to my friend that refuses
00:00:20.000 | to study the Bible for himself because he thinks he can get all
00:00:24.000 | the answers from teachers like you and others online?
00:00:28.000 | He thinks that hours spent listening to good and faithful expositions of
00:00:32.000 | scripture is time better spent than reading the Bible for himself.
00:00:36.000 | He thinks sermons are less confusing and more efficient in his pursuit
00:00:40.000 | to comprehend the message of the Bible. How would you make the case
00:00:44.000 | otherwise? Well, when I saw this question
00:00:48.000 | I was really eager to say something about it because
00:00:52.000 | just this morning when I read the question
00:00:56.000 | I was on a Zoom call with two precious friends
00:01:00.000 | exulting together over Psalm 119
00:01:04.000 | 97 to 100 which
00:01:08.000 | addresses this very issue
00:01:12.000 | directly and ties into my own personal
00:01:16.000 | experience and fills me with a longing to help this young brother
00:01:20.000 | wake up both to the preciousness
00:01:24.000 | of what he's missing and the danger
00:01:28.000 | that he's in if he keeps thinking
00:01:32.000 | that mere human teachers can replace
00:01:36.000 | the very Word of God as the focus of
00:01:40.000 | his meditation. So, let me start
00:01:44.000 | with that passage of scripture and show how relevant it is
00:01:48.000 | to his question and what it has meant to me
00:01:52.000 | in my personal experience and then give
00:01:56.000 | two other reasons for why I think he should
00:02:00.000 | give himself primarily to serious, prayerful
00:02:04.000 | personal meditation directly
00:02:08.000 | on God's Word rather than
00:02:12.000 | assuming that he will be better off receiving
00:02:16.000 | God's Word always through the filter of human teachers.
00:02:20.000 | So, here's what the psalmist wrote in Psalm 119
00:02:24.000 | 97 following. "Oh, how I love
00:02:28.000 | your law. It is my meditation
00:02:32.000 | all the day. Your commandment makes me
00:02:36.000 | wiser than my enemies, for it is ever
00:02:40.000 | with me. I have more understanding than
00:02:44.000 | all my teachers, for your testimonies are my
00:02:48.000 | meditation. I understand more than the
00:02:52.000 | aged, for I keep your precepts."
00:02:56.000 | When I was in graduate school in Germany, which is 45
00:03:00.000 | years ago or so, I was in my 20s,
00:03:04.000 | I was surrounded by
00:03:08.000 | world-class, high-powered
00:03:12.000 | scholarship in people who did not believe
00:03:16.000 | the scriptures as God's Word or share my love for
00:03:20.000 | the gospel. I knew that given my limits
00:03:24.000 | I could never read as much as they read
00:03:28.000 | or remember as much as they remember or have my
00:03:32.000 | have in my head as many historical facts as they
00:03:36.000 | did, but I took tremendous
00:03:40.000 | heart from Psalm 119
00:03:44.000 | verse 99. It had a powerful effect on my
00:03:48.000 | perseverance and confidence that God would make
00:03:52.000 | himself known to me, that he would keep me
00:03:56.000 | from doctrinal error and that he would use me
00:04:00.000 | even as much or more than those folks
00:04:04.000 | to make an impact on the world for his
00:04:08.000 | name. And here's what the verse says. "I
00:04:12.000 | have more understanding than all my teachers."
00:04:16.000 | Really? How can you say that? "Because
00:04:20.000 | your testimonies are my meditation."
00:04:24.000 | Now, when the psalmist said that, it's
00:04:28.000 | very likely he was talking about esteemed
00:04:32.000 | teachers who were looking at the same record of God's
00:04:36.000 | Word that he was looking at. And the difference is that the
00:04:40.000 | psalmist believed that a direct
00:04:44.000 | sustained, personal, love-filled
00:04:48.000 | meditation on the Word of God
00:04:52.000 | itself would produce in his mind
00:04:56.000 | and his heart a kind of discernment
00:05:00.000 | and a kind of insight that would protect him from
00:05:04.000 | errors in his teachers and indeed would give
00:05:08.000 | him an authentic, personal, true
00:05:12.000 | understanding of God and his ways that would go
00:05:16.000 | beyond what he got from his teachers
00:05:20.000 | or what they got from their way of study. Now,
00:05:24.000 | that was enormously important and
00:05:28.000 | encouraging and protecting to me. It meant
00:05:32.000 | that I didn't feel like I was at
00:05:36.000 | the mercy of scholarship. I had access
00:05:40.000 | to something so powerful and so precious
00:05:44.000 | that by personal, prayerful, sustained,
00:05:48.000 | thoughtful, rigorous, love-soaked
00:05:52.000 | meditation, I would see things and comprehend
00:05:56.000 | things and taste things that these teachers
00:06:00.000 | didn't see, didn't comprehend, didn't taste. And
00:06:04.000 | frankly, looking back 50 years now, I believe it's true.
00:06:08.000 | I believe God granted me to see beautiful
00:06:12.000 | things that many of my more sophisticated,
00:06:16.000 | even more intelligent teachers did not see.
00:06:20.000 | But the text is even more amazing than that.
00:06:24.000 | And this is what I saw this morning
00:06:28.000 | as we were pondering these verses together.
00:06:32.000 | It says, "Your commandment makes me wiser than
00:06:36.000 | my enemies, for it is ever with me."
00:06:40.000 | And then in the middle it says what I was just talking about, "I have more understanding
00:06:44.000 | than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation." And then it says again,
00:06:48.000 | "I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts."
00:06:52.000 | So there are three steps. One, "Your word is ever with me." Two,
00:06:56.000 | "It's my constant meditation." And three, "I obey it."
00:07:00.000 | And when I do that, I exceed three
00:07:04.000 | groups of people in three ways. I exceed my enemies,
00:07:08.000 | presumably in their subtleties so that they can't trip me
00:07:12.000 | up and bring me to ruin. Two, I exceed my teachers
00:07:16.000 | in their doctrinal grasp of things so they can't
00:07:20.000 | mislead me in false doctrine. And three, I exceed the aged
00:07:24.000 | so that all their life experience can't intimidate me if it should
00:07:28.000 | point me away from God's way. So, my
00:07:32.000 | first response to our friend in Hong Kong is
00:07:36.000 | "Do you believe these words?" Do you believe
00:07:40.000 | the scripture? Do you believe that having the word of God
00:07:44.000 | with you, meditating on it day and night,
00:07:48.000 | and obeying it will bear better fruit
00:07:52.000 | of insight and wisdom in your life than always depending on
00:07:56.000 | other human teachers? That's the question facing you. Do you believe it? Are you
00:08:00.000 | content to be a second-hander for the rest of your life
00:08:04.000 | in view of Psalm 119, verse 99
00:08:08.000 | and what it promises? Here's my second response.
00:08:12.000 | The Bible makes clear that when we are taught something
00:08:16.000 | by somebody, or when somebody makes
00:08:20.000 | some prophetic pronouncement to us, we are to test all things
00:08:24.000 | and hold fast to what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5, 21.
00:08:28.000 | We are to test the spirits. 1 John 4, 1. And Paul
00:08:32.000 | gave us the criterion for the test in 1 Corinthians 14, 37.
00:08:36.000 | If anyone thinks that he's a prophet or spiritual, he should
00:08:40.000 | acknowledge that "the things I write to you are a
00:08:44.000 | command of the Lord." If anyone does not recognize this, he's
00:08:48.000 | not recognized. In other words, Paul's word, the
00:08:52.000 | apostolic word, not the word of any human teacher, John Piper
00:08:56.000 | included, is the criterion by which
00:09:00.000 | we judge the truth and authenticity of teachers.
00:09:04.000 | So I would simply ask our young friend there in Hong Kong
00:09:08.000 | if you are using teachers, human
00:09:12.000 | teachers, as the sole means of
00:09:16.000 | understanding God's word, by what will you
00:09:20.000 | judge the teachers with any confidence?
00:09:24.000 | And finally, a third thing I would say is
00:09:28.000 | I think there's a love problem. I mean a
00:09:32.000 | problem with the way God and his precious word are being loved by
00:09:36.000 | this brother. Something's wrong with the taste
00:09:40.000 | palate of the tongue of your soul if you
00:09:44.000 | need to have the food of God's word always
00:09:48.000 | spiced with the words of a fallible human being.
00:09:52.000 | Something is wrong. Do you ever say with the
00:09:56.000 | psalmist, "Oh, how I love your
00:10:00.000 | law. It is my meditation all
00:10:04.000 | the day." Or, to put it starkly,
00:10:08.000 | something is amiss in a love relationship if
00:10:12.000 | every time a lover gets a letter from his beloved
00:10:16.000 | and instead of reading it slowly,
00:10:20.000 | I can't help but think back on being a
00:10:24.000 | water safety instructor in 1967, madly in love
00:10:28.000 | with Noel who was 700 miles away. And I'll tell you when one of those
00:10:32.000 | lavender envelopes came in the mail, I just went out in the woods and smelled
00:10:36.000 | it. [laughter] Okay, alright, this came to me.
00:10:40.000 | Let's see if I can find my thought here. If every time a lover gets
00:10:44.000 | a letter from his beloved, instead of reading it,
00:10:48.000 | smelling it slowly as if to savor
00:10:52.000 | every word revealing the heart and the mind of the beloved,
00:10:56.000 | he goes searching for somebody else to read the letter to him
00:11:00.000 | and then talk to him about the letter? That's a
00:11:04.000 | defective relationship. I mean, this is serious.
00:11:08.000 | So, perhaps at the bottom of the problem is that our friend has
00:11:12.000 | so completely intellectualized his
00:11:16.000 | faith that the only category in which he
00:11:20.000 | thinks, the only category that's going to profit
00:11:24.000 | him, he thinks, is the category of verbal
00:11:28.000 | explanation. There's a lot of people who think about
00:11:32.000 | sermons that way. They just think about, I need some more
00:11:36.000 | information, I need some more explanation, rather than
00:11:40.000 | also the heartfelt exultation
00:11:44.000 | that a lover has in reading the very words of his beloved.
00:11:48.000 | So, those are my three questions. Number one, do you
00:11:52.000 | believe Psalm 119.99? Number two,
00:11:56.000 | how will you test the reliability of your teachers by the Word of God?
00:12:00.000 | Three, why do you want to avoid the immediate
00:12:04.000 | authentic experience of savoring your love letter
00:12:08.000 | by asking someone else to read it for you? Really good word.
00:12:12.000 | Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening wherever you are, Hong Kong,
00:12:16.000 | Minneapolis, Phoenix, Nashville, London,
00:12:20.000 | Singapore, wherever. If you want new episodes of this
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00:12:32.000 | And to find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us of your own, do that online
00:12:36.000 | at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn
00:12:40.000 | We are back on Monday with a Bible question on Matthew 8.
00:12:44.000 | In this text, why did the demons ask Jesus' permission to be
00:12:48.000 | sent into the pigs when those pigs would be
00:12:52.000 | immediately drowned? I'm Tony Rehnke. We'll find out on Monday
00:12:56.000 | with Pastor John back in studio. We'll see you then.
00:13:00.000 | [silence]
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