The men of our church have been meeting once a month for a number of years now. We don’t have a fancy name for it like “Theology on Tap” or “Men up to Their Necks in Glory” or some such names I have seen. We just call it “Men’s Group”. We have been in the habit of working through some good books, like Macleod’s “A Faith to Live By“, Murray’s “Redemption Accomplished etc“, Reeves’ “Delighting in the Trinity“, Robertson’s “The Christ of the Covenants” and some others. It has been demanding stuff but, I think, helpful in so many ways.

However, we took a change of tack earlier this month and went back to basics. The church has changed over the years and I have begun to realise that there is a need to do some ground-level work with our group. Not that everyone is at a basic level, but I have always found that going over basics has always been helpful personally, and I trust it will be for others.

So, this series of group meetings I have tentatively called, Feeding on the Word. The question is, what are the ways that we can make use of this rich deposit of revelation the Lord has given us? There are several, they are all useful, and they all compliment each other. So earlier this month I outlined where we are going to go over the next few meetings. So here is a summary.

Introduction

Since the arrival of the printing press, a proportion of the evangelical church’s members have treasured the Bible in their hands. They read it, studied it, memorised it, meditated upon it, heard it preached. People were trained in the scriptures.

Today, we have never had such a plethora of inexpensive Bibles, notes, reference books, commentaries and a huge amount available to us online, free of charge. And yet modern Christians seem to know so little. We don’t use what is available to us.

Churches need good men. Not just a “Few Good Men” but lots of good men! They are good for the church and its health. They are good for their families.

Scripture: God-breathed

2 Timothy 3:16 shows us the deep connection there is between the written word and God himself. It is on his breath. It is the divinely communicated, Holy Spirit-worked truth for us. It is for a number of things:

teaching: to get technical, it has indicative statements and imperative statements. Or, in other words, it has statements of truth for us to believe and commands for us to obey. So it gives us understanding about what it true and false and what is good and bad. Proverbs 13:14 says, “The teaching of the wise is the fountain of life.” God is infinitely wise and he teaches us in his word.

reproof: this is the use the Holy Spirit makes of the word in convicting us of our sins. The Bible shows us our sins and thereby it addresses our consciences which leads us to repentance. We should see this as a mercy of God to us – something to give thanks for.

correction: that is, to put right what is broken, or make straight what is crooked in our lives, rather like an orthodontist straightens out teeth. We need our lives straightened out. God does that through his word.

training in righteousness: God takes us through a spiritual workout when we use the Bible rightly. Some of us who have a gym membership forget to go and make use of the facilities, but get a crumb of comfort that at least we have a membership. Some of us can be like that with the Bible – I may not read it much, but at least I have a Bible! Well, the Lord wants us to be regularly in the gym of scripture, growing in strength, stamina, skill.

The effect of all this in verse 17: that the man of God may become ‘competent’ (ESV). Other translations have ‘thoroughly equipped’, ‘complete’, but I like the word competent. In many walks of life, no man likes to be thought of as incompetent. So what about the word of God? We should all seek to become, competent men of God, skilled in the use of the word of God. Then we can believe all God has told us and do all the things he has commanded us.

So what ways do we have to become competent in the scriptures? I only list them here, more or less, but I tend to expand on them in later posts. Here are five:

Listening well to biblical preaching

The Reformed faith has always put preaching at the centre of church’s spiritual growth. This is reflected in the Shorter Catechism Q.89:

How is the Word made effectual to salvation? A. The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation.

Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 89.

It is a thoroughly scriptural notion. You cannot read the New Testament without, if you are paying attention, seeing how the apostles put preaching at the very centre.

Having a daily devotional time

Scriptural examples abound of people taking time to read the scriptures and pray, but most importantly Jesus did it (Mark 1:35; Luke 9:18; 11:1; 22:39ff). Sure he did not have a Bible with him, but he knew the scriptures and so his time of prayer was also a time of meditation on the word.

Reading the Bible

This is simply the discipling of making sure that you get to know all of it. For that, you simply have to get down to it and read it. You would not pause at every verse, but read it as you would read the newspaper. Reading four chapters a day gets you through the Bible in a year.

Meditating on scripture

Not emptying your mind but filling your mind with scripture.

• Joshua 1:8a – “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.”
• Psalm 1:2 – “…his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

This is about how to think about scripture at any time – not just while studying, but also while walking, in the car, before you fall asleep. Of course, this has implications for memorising the parts of the Bible.

Finally, …

Studying the Bible

This is a more structured and concerted time spent getting to know parts of the Bible. It involves finding out about the background to a book – who wrote it? why? when? etc. It also involves identifying themes and ideas, and relating it to other parts of scripture. It involves using tools, like maps, dictionaries, handbooks, commentaries. It can be done alone or with a group of people.

So those are the ways I plan to cover with our men, and I will add posts here as I go. Remember, the idea is that we become competent!