MFM H/Q Sermons

Glorious Sunday Worship Service.
May 12th, 2024.

Topic: EVERY MEMBER, A BIBLE STUDENT (5)
Text: Psalm 119:89, Hebrews 4:12, Psalm 138:2.
Minister: Dr. Daniel Olukoya (G.O. MFM Worldwide)

We continue our series, and today I am going to try to explain to you how to read and study the Bible. Let us go to Psalms 119:89, that powerful scripture that formed the basis of our songs when we got born again newly; a very short but powerful sentence.

Psalms 119:89 (KJV): “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”

Hebrews 4:12 (KJV) says: “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

One of the greatest powers that God gave us is the Word. The words of a man who is a teacher turn his student into a medical doctor. The words of a teacher who is a human being will turn a student into a lawyer. How much more the Word of God?

There is power in the Word. The Bible says, “Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven”. That is, there is only one person who speaks, and nobody can change those words.

The Bible says, “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” It also says; “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” It did not say ‘for some time, O Lord’, or ‘for so many months, O Lord’, or ‘when Jesus was in the world’, or ‘in the time of Moses’ but “Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven”. It says, “Heaven and earth may pass away, but one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

So, no word is as important as the Word of God, which is the Bible. There is no other book that has changed human nature as much as the Bible.

And as I told you two weeks ago, it is not possible to enslave a Bible reader. If you make up your mind today to read 3 to 4 chapters every day, you will read the entire Bible in one year. You want to enjoy scripture? You should read it like a love letter. God has written a love letter to you. The Bible is the government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Somebody told Spurgeon that he should defend the Bible. He said “me? Defend the Bible? No. It is like trying to defend a lion. The lion will defend itself.” If you study history and the story of great men, there have been 95 great men down the centuries. 87 of them were followers of the Bible. The Bible contains the mystery of mysteries. It is actually better not to have been born than to scorn or mock the Bible. That Bible you are carrying in your hand is a spiritual microscope to see what is going on in your life.

So any Christian who is careless in Bible reading will be careless in Christian living, even though he may pray very well. That is why you find a lot of prophets and prayer warriors somersaulting because they do not read scripture.

Many years ago, there used to be a student called Brother John on one of our campuses. He was highly anointed; he was a student at the university, and even as a student, he had raised 32 dead people. Anytime you saw him walking on campus, he would walk as though he were treading on air. He was so anointed.

After some time, he stopped coming for Bible study. He only came when he was asked to come and preach. When they asked him, “Brother John, we do not see you in Bible study”, he would ask, ‘who is teaching?’ When they answered, “It is brother Lazarus”, he would ask them, ‘How many dead people has he raised?’ Do you know where Brother John ended up with all the anointing? Yaba psychiatric hospital, and that was where he died. So once you are careless with Bible reading, no matter how many visions, dreams, and prophecies you are having, if you push the Bible to the back, you will soon somersault.

Other books are for information; only the Bible is for transformation. Many people push their Bibles to the back, so they are biblically illiterate until Sunday service.

Many own the Bible, but they do not study it. Why? The enemy goes to steal from their hearts and pushes the Word away. So if you want to begin to enjoy the Bible, start off in a simple place. Begin with a simple book like the gospel according to Saint Mark. Read it through, a little at a time. As you read the book of Mark, it will introduce you to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Many of the stories you read in the book of Mark have probably been supplied by Peter the fisherman. When you finish reading Mark, next read the gospel of Matthew. Matthew was written several years after Mark and repeats almost every line that Mark wrote, and it gives many of the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ that Mark omitted. Mark wrote six of the sermons of Jesus that are found in the book of Matthew.

1. The first sermon is quite familiar. We call it ‘Sermon on the Mount’, where Jesus taught the beatitudes in Matthew 5. It was one of the greatest sermons ever preached. All believers should sit down and study it. As you read it, you will be amazed at how it will help you.

Somebody told me the other time, “Somebody is calling your name in an evil way.” I started laughing. He said, ‘Are you laughing?’ I said “yes, because the Bible says, ‘blessed art thou when men shall revile you and raise false allegations against you for my name sake. Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven. So they did to all the prophets that were before you’. So, if they did not do it to me, then I am not a prophet.” You read that from Sermon on the Mount.

2. The second sermon in the book of Matthew is in chapter 10. It tells us how the gospel should be preached.
3. The third sermon is in chapter 13. It deals with the growth of the kingdom of God in a series of parables and stories. It is there that you read about the parable of the sower.
4. The fourth one is in chapter 18. It concerns forgiveness and humility.
5. The fifth one is in chapter 23, which is a rebuke to the Pharisees and Saducees because of hypocrisy. That is where you read, “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”
6. The sixth sermon is the one in chapters 24 and 25, which graphically describes the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world. It is there.

So those are the treasures you can gain from Matthew if you read it. When you finish reading Mark, which gives you a foundation, you go to Matthew, which gives more explanation.

Mark is like a summary; Matthew expands it further for you. Next, read the book of Luke. It is in the book of Luke that you read about The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Child, The Rich Man and Poor Lazarus.

And the way Luke writes, he writes scientifically because he was a medical doctor. He used terminologies that only a doctor can use.

So when you have read Mark, Matthew, and Luke, then you can read John. Do not start with John; you will be confused. It is only after you have read those three books that you can read John. John is the deepest and most spiritual of all the gospels. All other ones started with the birth of Jesus or that he was by the seaside. But when it got to John, it started in a strange way: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. He went right to heaven to start the book.

So after reading those four gospels, you would have had the finest introduction to the Gospels. And a good understanding of those four books will ensure that nobody can deceive you. Then, during the period you are reading from the gospels, you can read a bit from the book of Proverbs every day. The book of Proverbs is deep in wisdom, understanding, and how it can help us live our lives right. After this, you can now go forward and read Acts and all the epistles. After this, you can now read the book of Genesis to find out about the beginning of sin, which eventually caused Christ to die.

When you have done all this, you can now begin to enjoy yourself in the scriptures by looking for stories in the Bible, and there are hundreds of them. You can read the biographies about Moses, David, Samuel, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Paul the Apostle, Deborah, Mary, Elizabeth, and so on. You may pick one character every day to deeply study the Bible about him or her. When you begin to study like this, you begin to enjoy the Bible.

After that, you can now graduate to what is called topical study of the Bible. That is to say, for example,: What is the Bible saying about prayer? What is it saying about faith?

What is it saying about obedience and disobedience? About rapture? About judgement? About prophecy? You study all of these. These are ways to enjoy Bible reading and have a strong foundation. If you start a course of Bible study and you cannot finish it at once, you continue next time. You can keep on reading until you understand the Bible very well.

Each time you have the Bible before you, approach it with prayer. “Father, I want to read and study your word. Give me understanding. Lay your hands upon me to behold the wonderous things in this word”.

Then, if you are reading the King James Bible and you find it very hard to understand the English, buy a simpler edition of the Bible. You can also buy the Bible in your language so that you can see what it is saying.

If you ask me who the greatest Yoruba man that ever lived is, I will say Joseph Ajayi Crowther. That man did a lot of uncommon, immeasurable benefits to his Yoruba race by translating the English Bible into Yoruba language. The Yoruba Bible we are carrying today, which is the root of the revival that happened in Yoruba land in the 1930s, was a result of Ajayi Crowther.

This is because most of the men who drove the revival could not read the English language. They were reading Yoruba. So, buy a Bible that can explain things to you.

There is also something called a concordance. You can buy it. It is good for every Christian to have one. It is a priceless gate to Bible study. I am not talking about the concordance at the back of the Bible. It can sometimes be useless and frustrating to use. But a proper concordance is a book that has all the words in the Bible and how they were used. If you look at faith, for example, it will tell you everywhere faith is mentioned in the Bible.

You want to be a Bible student? You want to enjoy scripture? Spend that extra money. Buy a concordance together with your Bible. Fortunately, there is concordance in other languages that you can use to study. When you have balanced a little bit, then you start digging deep into the Word. A man inherited a house, and he just needed money, so he sold off the house. The man he sold it to got there and, for some reason, began to dig into the ground surrounding his house. To his amazement, he found out that a few feet below, there were diamonds.

You may say he was lucky, but yes, he dug before he could get it. Most of the previous things are not found on the surface. They are deep down. You do not find crude oil, gold, or diamonds on the surface. You need to dig to find them.

Some complain about two or three ministers teaching one topic. Some others complain that they do not get much from one minister, but they get much from another minister. It is because of digging, not just scratching the surface. And you will sweat and spend many, many hours if you want to dig deep.

And it is so easy to tell between ministers who dig deep into the scriptures and those who do not. So if you want to enjoy scriptures, also learn to dig. Also, if you want to enjoy scripture, learn how to meditate. Meditation is very powerful. And when you begin to meditate, you begin to grow. ‘This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.’

You will NEVER become anything spiritually if you do not meditate. Do not read the Bible as if you were reading a novel or magazine; meditate. As you keep pacing up and down in your room, or you are somewhere deep in thought, turning it over in your mind, the fire will begin to burn. So, meditate day and night. Do not just hear these teachings on this topic without taking any action. You must have a regular method of studying the word of God.

PRAYER POINTS

1. My Father, anything you have not planted in my life, kill it now, in the name of Jesus.
2. O God, arise, close every door that should be closed in my life; open every door that must be opened in my life, in the name of Jesus.
3. Forces assigned to destroy my joy, you are liars, in the name of Jesus.
4. Jesus, chain breaker, break my chains now, in the name of Jesus.
5. Ocean divider, Way Maker, Jesus Christ; change my story, in the name of Jesus.

MFM H/Q Sermons
LIKE our Page on FACEBOOK
http://www.facebook.com/mfmsermons
http://www.mfmsermons.com
Share the Word of God to all!!!