ROOST Bible Study

Here you will find books or quotations from those

faithful who have gone on before us.

What an amazing example and wealth of knowledge!

Jerry Bridges doesn’t qualify as a dead old man, but his words are powerful none the less.  Here he visits about scripture memory.  Can you say TENT PEGS?

The Discipline of Scripture Memory

Today’s Scripture: Colossians 3:16
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

To influence our minds with the Word of God, there’s simply no better way than through the discipline of Scripture memorization. I know it requires work and is sometimes discouraging when we can’t recall accurately a verse we’ve worked hard to memorize. The truth is, however, all forms of discipline require work and are often discouraging. But the person who perseveres in any discipline, despite the hard work and discouraging times, reaps the reward the discipline is intended to produce.

The example of Jesus’ use of Scripture when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness is often used as a challenge to us to memorize Scripture. Three times he was tempted, and three times he answered Satan’s temptation by resorting to the Scriptures, saying, “It is written” (Matthew 4:1-11). It’s obvious he had memorized these Old Testament commands that he effectively used to thwart Satan’s assaults. But it should also be apparent to us that Jesus knew more than a few isolated verses of the Mosaic law. Rather, his mind was steeped in the Scriptures. If you and I are going to be holy as he is holy, our minds must also be filled with Scripture.

Christ’s use of specific Scriptures to thwart Satan’s temptations should be instructive to us. He brought particular passages from the Old Testament to bear on the particular temptations he faced. So I encourage you to memorize Scriptures that deal with the particular temptations to which you are especially vulnerable. (I again encourage you to identify specific temptations to which you are vulnerable, list them on a private prayer page, and make specific commitments regarding these areas of vulnerability.) Then ask the Holy Spirit to bring these passages to your mind at times of temptation.

On 7 January 1855 the minister of the New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, opened his morning sermon as follows:

It has been said by someone that ‘the proper study of mankind is man’.  I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead.  The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, the existence of the great God who he calls his Father.

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity.  It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.  Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, ‘Behold I am wise’.  But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solem exclamation, ‘I am but of yesterday, and know nothing’.  No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it.  He who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.  Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole  soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory.  Oh, there is , in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore.  Would you lose your sorrow?  Would you drown your cares?  Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.  I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.  It is to that subject I invite you this morning…

These word, spoken over a century ago by C.H. Spurgeon (at the time, incredibly, only twenty years old) were true then, and they are true now.

Taken from the 1st Chapter of Knowing God by J.I. Packer

Let Go – By:  Francois de Salignac de La Mothe Fenelon