Monday, August 12, 2013

Book Review: Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study

Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study. D.L. Moody. 167 pages. [Source: Bought]

I loved, loved, loved this one! It's such a great book--a very good resource too! Moody urges his readers to read the Bible, study and meditate upon it. He discusses various ways and methods for reading the Bible, for applying and studying it. He shares a few stories as well, good sermon illustrations perhaps. I also love how this one comes to focus on evangelism as well.

Favorite quotes:
A QUICKENING that will last must come through the Word of God.
The more you love the Scriptures, the firmer will be your faith. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.
If you come into closer contact with the Word, you will gain something that will last, because the Word of God is going to endure.
If I could say something that would induce Christians to have a deeper love for the Word of God, I should feel this to be the most important service that could be rendered to them. Do you ask: How can I get in love with the Bible? Well, if you will only arouse yourself to the study of it, and ask God’s assistance, He will assuredly help you.
When I pray, I talk to God, but when I read the Bible, God is talking to me; and it is really more important that God should speak to me than that I should speak to Him I believe we should know better how to pray if we knew our Bibles better.
If you are impatient, sit down quietly and commune with Job. If you are strong-headed, read of Moses and Peter. If you are weak-kneed, look at Elijah. If there is no song in your heart, listen to David. If you are a politician, read Daniel. If you are getting sordid, read Isaiah. If you are chilly, read of the beloved disciple. If your faith is low, read Paul. If you are getting lazy, watch James. If you are losing sight of the future, read in Revelation of the promised land.
It does not need defence so much as it needs studying. It can defend itself.
A man once sat down to read it an hour each evening with his wife. In a few evenings he stopped in the midst of his reading and said: “Wife, if this Book is true, we are wrong.” He read on, and before long, stopped again and said: “Wife, if this Book is true, we are lost.” Riveted to the Book and deeply anxious, he still read on, and soon exclaimed: “Wife, if this Book is true, we may be saved.” It was not many days before they were both converted. This is the one great end of the Book, to tell man of God’s great salvation. Think of a book that can lift up our drooping spirits, and recreate us in God’s image!
They go on reading the Bible with a pen-knife, cutting out this and that. Now, if I have a right to cut out a certain portion of the Bible, I don’t know why one of my friends has not a right to cut out another, and another friend to cut out another part, and so on. You would have a queer kind of Bible if everybody cut out what he wanted to. Every adulterer would cut out everything about adultery; every liar would cut out everything about lying; every drunkard would be cutting out what he didn’t like.
If the Bible only has a chance to speak for itself, it will interest the people.
MERELY reading the Bible is not what God wants. Again and again I am exhorted to “search.” “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
Read the Bible, my friends, as if you were seeking for something of value. It is a good deal better to take a single chapter, and spend a month on it, than to read the Bible at random for a month.
I do not think there is a book in the world we neglect so much as the Bible.
SOMEONE has said that there are four things necessary in studying the Bible: Admit, submit, commit and transmit. First, admit its truth; second, submit to its teachings; third, commit it to memory; and fourth, transmit it. If the Christian life is a good thing for you, pass it on to some one else.
It is a great thing for a boy or girl to know how to handle the Bible.
There is no place in the world that is so fascinating as a live Bible class. I believe that we are to blame that they have been brought up in the Sunday school without Bibles and brought up with quarterlies. The result is, the boys are growing up without knowing how to handle the Bible. They don’t know where Matthew is, they don’t know where the Epistle to the Ephesians is, they don’t know where to find Hebrews or any of the different books of the Bible. They ought to be taught how to handle the whole Bible, and it can be done by Sunday school teachers taking the Bible into the class and going right about it at once.
THERE are two opposite ways to study the Bible. One is to study it with a telescope, taking a grand sweep of a whole book and trying to find out God’s plan in it; the other, with a microscope, taking up a verse at a time, dissecting it, analyzing it.
Do you want to win men? Do not drive or scold them. Do not try to tear down their prejudices before you begin to lead them to the truth. Some people think they have to tear down the scaffolding before they begin on the building. An old minister once invited a young brother to preach for him. The latter scolded the people, and when he got home, asked the old minister how he had done. He said he had an old cow, and when he wanted a good supply of milk, he fed the cow; he did not scold her.
That is a popular objection against the Bible—that it tells about the failings of men. We should, however, remember that the object of the Bible is not to tell how good men are, but how bad men can become good.
I FIND some people now and then who boast that they have read the Bible through in so many months. Others read the Bible chapter by chapter, and get through it in a year; but I think it would be almost better to spend a year over one book. If I were going into a court of justice, and wanted to carry the jury with me, I should get every witness I could to testify to the one point on which I wanted to convince the jury. I would not get them to testify to everything, but just to that one thing. And so it should be with the Scriptures.
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?
No matter how weak you are, God can use you; and you cannot say what a stream of salvation you may set in motion.
It is a great mistake, in dealing with inquirers, to tell your conversion experience. Experience may have its place, but I don’t think it has its place when we are dealing with inquirers; for the first thing the man you are talking to will do will be to look for your experience. He doesn’t want your experience. He wants one of his own.
 © Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

1 comment:

hopeinbrazil said...

Great quotes. Thanks for reviewing this little known book.