Pleasure & Profit in Bible Study

by Dwight Lyman Moody

When you are away from home, how you look for news! You skip everything in the daily paper until your eye catches the name of your own town or country. Now the Christian’s home is in heaven. The Scriptures contain our title-deeds to everything we shall be worth when we die. If a will has your name in it, it is no longer a dry document. Why, then, do not Christians take more interest in the Bible?

Then, again, people say thy don’t believe in revivals. There’s not a denomination in the world that didn’t spring from a revival. There are the Catholic and Episcopal churches claiming to be the apostolic churches and to have sprung from Pentecost; the Lutheran from Martin Luther, and so on. They all sprung out of revivals, and yet people talk against revivals! I’d as soon talk against my mother as against a revival. Wasn’t the country revived under John the Baptist? Wasn’t it under Christ’s teachings? People think that because a number of superficial cases of conversion occur at revivals that therefore revivals ought to be avoided. They forget the parable of the sower, where Jesus himself warns us of emotional hearers, who receive the word with joy, but soon fall away. If only one out of every four hearers is truly converted, as in the parable, the revival has done good.

Suppose you spend a month on Regeneration, or The Kingdom of God, or The Church in the New Testament, or the divinity of Christ or the attributes of God. It will help you in your own spiritual life, and you will become a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Make a study of the Holy Spirit. There are probably five hundred passages on the Holy Spirit, and what you want is to study this subject for yourself. Take the Return of our Lord. I know it is a controverted subject. Some say He is to come at the end of the Millennium, others say this side of the Millennium. What we want is to know what the Bible says. Why not go to the Bible and study it up for yourself; it will be worth more to you than anything you get from anyone else. Then Separation. I believe that a Christian man should lead a separated life. The line between the church and the world is almost obliterated to-day. I have no sympathy with the idea that you must hunt up an old musty church record in order to find out whether a man is a member of the church or not. A man ought to live so that everybody will know he is a Christian. The Bible tells us to lead a separate life. You may lose influence, but you will gain it at the same time. I suppose Daniel was the most unpopular man in Babylon at a certain time, but, thank God, he has outlived all the other men of his time. Who were the chief men of Babylon? When God wanted any work done in Babylon, He knew where to find some one to do it. You can be in the world, but not of it. Christ didn’t take His disciples out of the world, but He prayed that they might be kept from evil. A ship in the water is all right, but when the water gets into the ship, then look out. A worldly Christian is just like a wrecked vessel at sea.

I remember once I took up the grace of God. I didn’t know the difference between law and grace. When that truth dawned upon me and I saw the difference, I studied the whole week on grace and I got so filled that I couldn’t stay in the house. I said to the first man I met, “Do you know anything about the grace of God?” He thought I was a lunatic. And I just poured out for about an hour on the grace of God.

Study the subject of Prayer. “For real business at the mercy seat,” says Spurgeon, “give me a homemade prayer, a prayer that comes out of the depths of your heart, not because you invented it, but because the Holy Spirit put it there. Though your words are broken and your sentences disconnected, God will hear you. Perhaps you can pray better without words than with them. There are prayers that break the backs of words; they are too heavy for any human language to carry.”

Some people say, “I do not believe in Assurance.” I never knew anybody who read their Bibles who did not believe in Assurance. This Book teaches nothing else. Paul says, “I know in whom I have believed.” Job says, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” It is not “I hope,” “I trust.”

The best book on Assurance was written by one called “John,” at the back part of the Bible. He wrote an epistle on this subject. Sometimes you just get a word that will be a sort of key to the epistle, and which unfolds it. Now if you turn to John 20:31, you will find it says, “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye might have life through His name.” Then if you turn to 1 John 5:13, you will read thus: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life; and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” That whole epistle is written on assurance. I have no doubt John had found some people who questioned about assurance and doubted whether they were saved or not, and he took up his pen and said, “I will settle that question;” and he wrote that last verse in the twentieth chapter of his gospel.

I have heard some people say that it was not their privilege to know that they were saved; they had heard the minister say that no one could know whether they were saved or not; and they took what the minister said, instead of what the Word of God said. Others read the Bible to make it fit in and prove their favorite creed or notions; and if it does not do so, they will not read it. It has been well said that we must not read the Bible by the blue light of Presbyterianism; nor by the red light of Methodism; nor by the violet light of Episcopalianism; but by the light of the Spirit of God. If you will take up your Bible and study “assurance” for a week, you will soon see it is your privilege to know that you are a child of God.

Then take the promises of God. Let a man feed for a month on the promises of God, and he will not talk about his poverty, and how downcast he is, and what trouble he has day by day. You hear people say, “Oh, my leanness! how lean I am!” My friends, it is not their leanness, it is their laziness. If you would only go from Genesis to Revelation, and see all the promises made by God to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to the Jews and the Gentiles, and to all His people everywhere; if you would spend a month feeding on the precious promises of God, you would not go about with your heads hanging down like bulrushes complaining how poor you are; but you would lift up your heads with confidence and proclaim the riches of His grace, because you could not help it. After the Chicago fire a man came up to me and said in a sympathizing tone, “I understand you lost everything, Moody, in the Chicago fire.” “Well, then,” said I, “some one has misinformed you.” “Indeed! Why I was certainly told you had lost all.” “No; it is a mistake,” I said, “quite a mistake.” “Have you got much left, then?” asked my friend. “Yes,” I replied, “I have got much more left than I lost; though I can not tell how much I have lost.” “Well, I am glad of it, Moody; I did not know you were that rich before the fire.” “Yes,” said I, “I am a good deal richer than you could conceive; and here is my title-deed, ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things.’” They say the Rothschilds can not tell how much they are worth; and that is just my case. All things in the world are mine; I am joint heir with Jesus the Son of God. Some one has said, “God makes a promise; Faith believes it; Hope anticipates it; and Patience quietly awaits it.”