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Bible Study This...

Discuss verses and passages in the Bible.

  1. Why Do Some People Have Such a Hard Time Reading and Understanding the Bible?

    Why Do Some People Have Such a Hard Time
    Reading and Understanding the Bible?


    One who does the Lord’s work must speak accurately. He should not be careless in his words. Only thus can he become a mouthpiece of the Lord and avoid many difficulties. We are deeply distressed by the fact that many times God’s workman lacks restraint in speech, with the result that brothers and sisters relish his storytelling and his judgmental words but despise his preaching of God’s word. Do not think that it does not matter if we speak wittily with our brothers and sisters today. Indeed, our speech may be very amusing. But wait until we stand up to preach the word of God, and then shall we see how
    they take it to be as amusing as was our storytelling. People will fail to respect what we say anymore.

    One brother may speak and people listen, while another may speak and nobody listens. Why this difference? Do they not speak the same words? The word is of God all right, but one of them has spoken differently from the other in ordinary days on other matters. Let us recognize the fact that if two of us speak differently concerning other matters, and even though we both may speak forth the same word of God, the power of God’s word will be different one from the other. For a person who speaks carelessly and without restraint in his daily speech will witness the same effect upon his hearers when he later preaches God’s word. It will be as loose and powerless as before.

    Let us not easily forget what we have learned from Scripture that a fountain does not send forth from the same opening both sweet water and bitter. It cannot yield up sweet fluid on one occasion and bitter fluid on another. Bitter water is always bitter. Though its bitterness may be somewhat diluted, it still remains bitter nonetheless. Note, too, that in mixing together clean and dirty water, the latter does not turn clean; instead, the former becomes dirty. Many brethren find that their power has been sapped not because they have done wrong in preaching God’s word but because they have spoken wrongly in daily matters; so that no one will listen to them when they stand up to preach. Please be well advised that words uttered on the platform follow the words spoken off the platform. If you speak unwisely away from the podium, your speaking from the podium will be totally diluted, and the sweet water will have been turned bitter by you. We need not daily
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  2. Can a Person be Sanctified by Trying to Keep the Law?

    We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Romans 3.28.
    The concepts towards the law in today’s church are of two opposite kinds:

    (1) People are saved by grace and not by keeping the law; but to attain sanctification we must keep the law.

    (2) Again, people are saved by grace and not by keeping the law; and hence we need not keep the law after we are saved, though we do keep the commandment of grace.

    The latter concept is correct. The gist of the Letter to the Romans is that no sinner can be justified by the works of the law; while the theme of the Letter to the Galatians is that no saved person can be sanctified by the works of the law.

    These two letters have sufficiently proven that neither justification nor sanctification comes by the works of the law.