right food and nourishment to begin with; and then we must have light--there is no

growth apart from light. And then we must have the right environment and training. If a

child has those three things, it will grow naturally and come to normal adulthood. It is

just the same spiritually; we must have the right spiritual food. This new nature that God

has given can only assimilate one type of food and one only, and that is the Word of God.

we shall be wise if we do not try to feed the new spiritual nature with anything else, such

as the things of the world, and the temporal things around us for it cannot assimilate these

things, and if we do not feed this nature with its proper food, the Word of God, it will

weaken, instead of growing strong. We need, then, constantly to come before God's

Word, and as it were, feed on it, Jeremiah said: "Thy words were found and I did eat

them"--he likened them to food! In ordinary language we talk about digesting a fact;

that is we are receiving it into our minds, and God wants us to receive the truth of His

Word in this way like food and make it our own. Thus, as we feed upon God's Word day

by day, we grow spiritually, and realize this as we keep in close touch with Him. He can

supply all our needs through His Word. We go along then, day by day, in complete trust

in Him, handing over everything to Him to control; for we have become His property;

the price has been paid, and this was nothing less than the life and the death of His

Beloved Son. What a tremendous cost! "You are not your own" wrote the Apostle Paul,

"You have been brought with a price". If we do not do this we are really cheating our

Saviour of His possession and we cannot expect peace and happiness or progress in the

knowledge of God's Truth.

The next thing is this. As we explore this book together we shall need some principle

to guide us. We also want, as far as possible, to be rid of human opinion, because,

directly we introduce the human element we have the possibility of fallibility and error.

But how can we keep out human opinion, with its failure and mistakes?

In order to do this there are certain principles that we must keep well in view. These

are really nothing more than common sense; but it is very easy when we take up a book

like the Bible to even let our common sense desert us, and that is a pity. In order to avoid

human opinions and ideas we want to know exactly what God says; and we must

therefore be accurate in our reading of the Bible. It is extraordinary, how sometimes we

find ourselves putting in words that are not there, or leaving out words that are there! We

shall never get the fullness of truth unless we read accurately what God has written. If, of

course, we have any means of getting to know the original languages in which the Bible

was written--Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek--so much the better. But possibly many are not

in a position to do that, in which case the best thing to do is to get hold of more than one

good translation. You have the Authorized Version. There is the Revised Version and

others like Weymouth, an up-to-date English Version, and Rotherham; get these and

compare them side by side.

The second point: make sure about the Bible's background and its setting. God's

Word had a meaning, originally, to the people that He sent it. Note to whom He sends

His Word, what was the circumstance surrounding it; that is very important. Do not

think first of all "What does it mean to me?" that will come later, but "What did it mean

to those to whom God sent it?" Get that settled clearly in your mind.