Implicit Obedience

Fifth condition: Implicit obedience (John 7:17). Power goes with plan, obedience guarantees blessing. If you want spiritual power, you must discover the divine plan, conform to it and cooperate with it, but if you want spiritual blessing, be perfectly obedient to every divine suggestion and command, and blessedness shall be yours. Whenever we discover some new truth in Scripture, it has to be translated into conduct and incorporated into character. When a man gets his head crammed with knowledge, he is like a ship with all the cargo on the upper deck, a very dangerous and most unstable condition. It is liable at any moment to capsize and flounder. Truth must percolate from the head down into the heart. There must be the moral response and an attitude assumed that shall be correlated to the truth itself. If I draw back and refuse to obey the light that is given, God will give no further light until I live up to what I have and act upon the knowledge that is given. Many a case of spiritually arrested development may be explained by disobedience. I suppose nine-tenths of all intellectual difficulty has an ethical root and if men would do what they know to be right, their doubts would melt away in the doing.

Reverent Humility

Sixth: Humility—reverent humility. “If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing as he ought to know.” This is only another name for docility. This is the characteristic of an ideal disciple. Disciple is the word those who followed Jesus first received. Disciple means learner. They entered the school of faith and of life. The Latin word from which humility comes means near the ground. An old writer said, “There are two safe places in the universe, the heavens and the dust. Of these two, the dust is the safer place, for there have been those who fell out of heaven, but who ever heard of any one falling out of the dust? Where could he fall?” Be clothed with humility, a new style of dress goods, prices not gone up on account of the war. “God resisteth the proud and giveth grace unto the humble.” But alas! when the consciousness of humility goes into the heart, the grace of humility goes out. Life is for learning, and there is no privilege greater than going to school. Christ is the Teacher, and we graduate into the High School of heaven to sit at His feet throughout eternity. Gifted godly men can teach you much, but by and by on the heaven side bank of the river of death, you’ll sit down with Paul and Abraham and Noah and Enoch, and they’ll give you Bible teaching that is worth looking forward to. That is a post-graduate course that awaits us on the other side. Humility is necessary because it tends to self-depreciation. There is no dogmatism or bigotry so hard and bitter as that of ignorance. Lord Bason said, “A little learning tendeth to self-conceit, but much learning tendeth to humility.” The men who know most think they know the least, and the men who know the least think they know it all.

Socrates was declared to be the wisest man in Greece. He was asked, “What do you know?” “I don’t know anything.” “That is very strange. The oracle declared you to be the wisest man in all the world.” They went back to dispute the oracle. “Socrates declares he knows nothing.” The oracle replied, “Others know not that.”

Ceaseless Prayer

Seventh and last: Ceaseless prayer. (Jer. 33:3.) “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and hidden things which thou knowest not.” Suppose you ponder long on a passage of Scripture, and the meaning is vague. What shall you do? Consult commentaries? Yes, but get down on your knees and pray. Say “Lord, what does this passage mean?” Then get up and study it some more. If it still baffles you, get down and pray about it some more and plead the promise. Open your Bible to James 1:5, put your finger on this passage, and say “Lord, I plead this particular promise. I confess my lack of wisdom. O, Thou Spirit of Light and Truth, illumine me.” Then get up and go to work, and while you work and while you pray, light will filter in, and thought will come from God. Have you ever wondered where thought comes from? Is not the origin of thought as great a mystery as the origin of life? Who can explain it? We say life comes from God. Doesn’t thought come from God? You hold your mind against a problem, and keep it there. From the north and from the south and from the east and from the west ideas come like doves flocking to the window? Whence come they if not from God? Luther’s motto was, “To have prayed well is to have studied well.” The time you spend in prayer is an immense advantage, not a hindrance, not a handicap, but an indispensable help to the understanding of God’s Word. Consider the seven conditions under which Bible study may be pursued: Regeneration, baptism of the Holy Spirit, ravenous appetite, unflagging industry, implicit obedience, reverent humility, ceaseless prayer.