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Feed Yourself Lesson One

Part 1 - Introduction

"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Acts 17:11

One of the most important aspects of growing in Christian maturity is learning how to feed yourself from the Word of God. Many Christians are spiritually starving. Often, they are only eating once or twice a week. Sometimes their main diet is either junk food or just plain poison. Their spirits are so hungry that they just swallow everything that comes their way.

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"Many preachers preach to be popular, instead of preaching to change lives. Their sermons are 95 percent their own thoughts and 5 percent God's truth. And the average church member cannot tell the difference because he or she is Biblically illiterate!" Anne Graham Lotz [Billy Graham’s daughter]

When you listen to a Sunday morning sermon or a Bible study message, how often do you check out the references and look for context?

This is not throwing doubt on the speaker, but being diligent in knowing and applying what is taught. The Bereans were happy to hear from Paul and went to the Scriptures to seek confirmation. Studying a message for ourselves helps implant it deeper in the mind and heart. Paul was not insulted that they researched his teaching. Any Bible Teacher who is confident in his/her message welcomes people to confirm it with Scripture [as long as it is not turned into a verbal assault if there is a disagreement]. Respect and honour are the key words always.

The church is a vital part of spiritual nourishment, but it is not enough to sustain spiritual growth. If we only feed our bodies once or twice a week, we will not be healthy. The same is true in the spiritual realm. If we only listen to the Sunday morning message and perhaps an adult Sunday School lesson or mid-week Bible Study, we are starving spiritually, even if the meals are top-quality and nutritious. If the Sunday morning service is basically geared to evangelism or motivation, then it is not providing a full meal for the sheep. There is nothing wrong with evangelistic or motivational messages. They have their place, depending on the service's goal, but they will not provide the sheep with a meal that will last a week. No message can do that. We must learn to feed ourselves.

Read 1 Peter 2:2, Heb. 5:11-14

Feeding ourselves does not mean that we leave the church with a "me and Jesus" attitude. That is a sure sign of immaturity, and it is extremely dangerous. We need the church and the church body. It is essential. We should love what Jesus loves, and Jesus loves His bride—the church. However, we also need to know how to feed ourselves from God's Word. We cannot rely on others, no matter how great they are, to provide us with all the food we need. We must learn how to study and apply the Word of God correctly ourselves.

Satan is on the watch for the lone sheep, the easy target. We need to “flock” together for many reasons:

1. It is the Lord’s command,

2. We can give and get encouragement and instruction, and,

3. We have leadership to watch over us and protect us.

Additionally, we mustn't despise the food we are served at church. We have to guard against pride and an "I already know that" attitude. If we begin to think we know more than our pastor or to criticize his messages, we are headed for disaster, not Christian maturity. God has placed our pastor over us because He knows that he is the best person for us. We always treat him with respect and honour. We learn in humility. However, God never intended for pastors or Christian teachers to feed us full-time. We must know how to feed ourselves.

Can you remember what last Sunday’s sermon was on? How many primary references can you recall? The Puritan pastors would often speak for two hours or more, presenting 20 or more points, and expected their members to remember all the points and discuss them intelligently during the week. Have we progressed or regressed?

There are numerous books, podcasts, and DVDs available on almost every imaginable topic. Some are great, many are simply junk food, and some are even downright poisonous. If we do not know how to feed ourselves from the Word of God, we will not know how to judge what is good and what is trash. Even well-known speakers/writers can serve junk food and poison. Our spiritual life depends on being able to know and judge the Truth.

Sometimes we accept teaching simply because the teacher is well-known or someone we personally enjoy. We have to realize that everyone is human and subject to error. Only the Word of God is without error, so we must measure a teaching against the Word of God, not against our admiration of a person or even the fact that God is or has been using him or her in powerful ways.

Sometimes a person can go into error because they move beyond the ability God has given them. For example, a person may be a gifted writer on the subject of Christian marriage, and we respect him/her for that, but that doesn’t mean God has gifted them to write on evangelism. If he leaves the area God has given him, he will be more likely to err. Sometimes, God provides a person with many areas of general teaching skills, while at other times, He limits them to one or a few areas. In every case, however, we must judge what is taught by the Word of God, rather than simply accepting it at face value.

Every Christian is responsible before God to feed themselves without withdrawing from the church.

Reasons To Study God's Word

We have already seen that we need to study the Bible to know the Truth, have a solid foundation to build our lives on and avoid deception. But there are two more important reasons to understand Scripture.

1. The most important reason is to learn about God and develop our relationship with Him. Some Christians study the Bible only to help them with marriage, family, finances and things like that. This is turning the Christian life into a "spiritual self-help" program. Those things are important and should be studied, but the primary reason is to know God. As we learn more about Who God is and what He is like, we grow to love Him more and our relationship with Him blossoms. Christians who do not want to study theology [study of God] will never grow to maturity.

2. If you have taken any first aid courses, you will have learned that when you enter a situation, you have to look to your own safety first. If you are injured while trying to help, not only will you be of no help to the person in need, but you will also complicate the situation. In the same way, if you are not feeding yourself from the Word of God, you will not only be unable to help others in need, but also you may actually feed them poison just because you don't know any better. It is essential that we understand how to care for ourselves so we can be effective in helping others.

The most basic ingredient of Bible Study is allowing the Holy Spirit to be the Teacher. This is true whether we are listening to Christian speakers or doing our own study. Without Him, we cannot correctly understand the Scriptures.

My goal over the 20 weeks of this course is to teach you, step by step, how to feed yourself. For some of you, this may not be new; for others, it may be a refresher; and for still others, it may be the thing that saves your life. You have to know [and practice] how to feed yourself.

PRESUPPOSITIONS

Presuppositions are beliefs we accept and build on. Everyone - Christian and non-Christian - operates on presuppositions. For example, Christians have the presupposition that God exists and He is who the Bible describes Him to be. Atheists operate on the presupposition that God does not exist. Neither group could scientifically prove their belief. They accept their presupposition as a fact and build from it. Obviously, someone is right and someone is wrong. Each group interprets the facts based on its presuppositions—what it has already chosen to believe. [This also explains why evolutionists and young-earth creationists can look at the same facts and come to different conclusions.]

Presuppositions are not the same as blind faith, although they can degenerate into blind faith. Presuppositions are the framework we use to examine the facts. If the facts do not align with our presuppositions, then we are either misinterpreting the facts or we need to revise our presuppositions. For more details on presuppositions, take Rev. LeRoy Davis' course on Presuppositions and World Views.

I said all of that to say this: If you are going to get the most out of your Bible Study, you will need to believe the following presuppositions. Of course, you may study the Bible without believing the following, but it will be more like studying Shakespeare than the Bible. In other words, it may be interesting, but it will not have the same spiritual impact. If you are in that position, I trust a study of the Bible will cause you to question your current presuppositions.

Presupposition One: God is Truthful. God does not lie. He may not tell us everything, but everything He tells us is true.

As finite human beings, we can never understand everything about an infinite God. In fact, the ONLY way we can know anything reliable about the spiritual realm is through revelation - i.e. God has to tell us about it. Discovery through observation and experimentation is the primary method for increasing knowledge in the physical realm. It does not work in the spiritual realm. Knowledge of the spiritual realm and how it operates must come through revelation. God reveals to us what we need to know about Him, His ways, and His salvation. God chooses what and when to reveal Himself. Everything He says is true.

Presupposition Two: The Bible is the infallible Word of the Truthful God.

We believe that the autographs were completely without error. The autographs are the original writings. No autographs exist today. However, the copies that we do have have proven to be remarkably accurate.

Textual Criticism is the science of making sure we have the most accurate copies possible. It examines and compares ancient manuscripts as well as compares Bible quotes in ancient writings to the Biblical manuscripts available. Higher Criticism, on the other hand, is an attack on the Scriptures by trying to cast doubt on the Bible as the Word of God. Some Higher Critics may say the Bible “contains” the Word of God, while others doubt that any of it is divinely inspired.

Presupposition Three: The Bible is a unified whole.

Although written by different people over a period of more than a thousand years, it remains consistent and never contradicts itself. We may not understand how seemingly opposite statements can be reconciled, but we know there is an explanation. Part of Bible Study is understanding how different statements work together. At times in the past, the Book of James was questioned because it was thought to teach salvation by works in contrast with Paul's teaching of salvation by grace alone. However, when correctly understood, there is no contradiction, but they flow together in unity.

Presupposition Four: The Bible is the ultimate authority.

Bible study is not theory, but the living Word of God. It gives us direction for our lives. When we see something in Scripture, it is our obligation to change our lives to be in unity with the Word of God. Many people don't want to study the Bible [or they only study things like "end times"], because they don't want to change. Bible Study will change your life. It may not be easy, but it will be for your benefit and the benefit of others.

May God bless you as you launch into learning how to feed yourself.

WEEK ONE PROJECT

1. You will need a binder [or a file folder]. Commit to printing each of these lessons and placing them in a binder. This is easier if you are doing the course by email. If you are working from the online version, you may want to bookmark the page where the lessons are located or copy and paste them into a Word or Pages document before printing. You will also need lined paper or a notebook to do your projects. Later on, you will need a set of pencil crayons - 12 different colours is fine, but 24 would be better.

2. Take notes on each Sunday message and look up each passage quoted.

Note: In the Next lesson, you will be given the location and password to a very special page. This is available only to students enrolled in this course. This page provides links to numerous online Bible Study resources, including Bibles, commentaries, maps, and more.

Return to Feed Yourself Lessons.

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