Third point: For the most part the Bible is to be read literally and in its simple

meaning. Do not treat it as though there is always another meaning to the plain natural

sense: if you do that you will never hear God saying to you "Thus saith the Lord", and

there will always be the person who will come along and say, "Ah, but it doesn't mean

that, it means this", and so the flood of human opinion comes in and all divine revelation

goes! However, someone may point out that it cannot always be taken literally. No,

perfectly true. We will amplify the previous statement, then. Take it literally and in its

simple meaning unless it contradicts other Scriptures or definitely known facts; in which

case you can know that a figure of speech is being used. But even a figure of speech is

only a vivid way of giving literal facts. Never think that if you have a figurative passage

there is not a literal meaning underlying it; literality is there all right. You must not, of

course, read the symbols or the figure literally, but find out the literal fact these symbols

or figures represent. In other words, do not spiritualize God's Word; people who do that

will never let the Word mean what it says, they are always trying to find some other

meaning and this is not the way to get Truth, but opens the door to error. There is of

course a legitimate spiritual application of the Bible. Once you understand the literal

meaning and its proper setting, then you may be in a position to make an application of it:

that is to say, if it is in accordance with the truth for today and the gospel of God's grace.

We shall find that God's Word is like a letter; it has an address on the envelope, and your

name and my name, so to speak, is not always there. We are Gentiles who have been

saved by God's grace, and quite a lot of the Bible was not primarily written for or to

Gentiles. Most of it was written primarily to God's earthly people, the people of Israel.

Their name is on the envelope, but as we read it we can often find things that are true of

us as well. That is making an application of Scripture to ourselves; but we can only do

this safely if it corresponds with what God's Word teaches us concerning the position of

saved Gentiles now. Remember this always; that God means what He says and has a

meaning for everything that He says, otherwise the Bible can be made to mean anything

and is emptied of all its divine authority. All the varying sects with their differing

doctrines go to the Bible as their basis, but many do not allow it to speak its own

message. Contexts are ignored and the Word gets twisted till it is unrecognizable.

Fourth point: compare Scripture with Scripture, search God's Word, and in doing this

you will need help and this will be the help of a good concordance. We ought to thank

God for the work of men like Robert Young who laboured all their lifetime to give us an

implement, as it were, to dig into God's Word. This is like a spade or a fork, and just as

you cannot do gardening without such tools so you cannot dig into God's Word properly

without a concordance;  it saves you many hours of wasted time.  Get a good

concordance--and I strongly recommend Young's Analytical Concordance. Cruden's is

good; but it only deals with the English; Young's deals with the original, and you do not

need to be a Hebrew or a Greek scholar in order to use it.

If we keep these things well in our minds, we can honestly say that it is a reverent and

sane way to treat God's Word so that God may speak to us and teach us without human

interference or human opinion, that is the all important point. We cannot get Truth by