Turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Psalm 119. Psalm 119. I want to read verses 97 through 105.

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.

Father, I just want to come to you one last time. As we open up your word this morning, Lord, I’m asking that you would open our eyes to the truths of your word, that you would allow your Spirit to bring clarity, to work in our hearts, to bring wisdom, and I ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

One of my favorite childhood memories is when one night we snuck into my dad’s bedroom while he was sleeping with a small little tape recorder. If you don’t know what a tape recorder is, ask your parents. A small little tape recorder, and we put it on his nightstand, and we caught my dad … snoring. And we proved once and for all, against our better judgment maybe, that my dad was a snorer.

He refused to believe it for years, ’til finally I got a tape recorder. It was a glorious moment in my childhood, and some of the moments that followed when we continued to give my dad a hard time for his snoring, which I could hear, although the master bedroom in our house was downstairs, around the corner, up the stairs, through the hallway, down the hall was my room down there, I could hear my dad snoring in his room … from my bedroom. My dad was really good at snoring.

As I’m sure you can guess, it turns out my dad had a fairly common disorder known as sleep apnea. It affects a lot of people. It’s like, you’re getting good sleep…you think. But you’re not sleeping properly. Sleep apnea can actually be a serious disorder in which you don’t breathe properly while you sleep, and throughout the night you’re literally suffocating yourself until your body forces you to wake up, and [giant gasp] you gasp for oxygen.

All night long you’re on the brink of suffocation. You don’t get enough air. You don’t get the full night of sleep that your body needs to function properly, so you’re somewhat tired all day, and you’re continuously throughout the night experiencing oxygen deprivation, which in some serious cases can actually not only make you feel awful, but can actually, you can begin to develop brain damage.

I’m convinced that there is a fairly common disorder known as Bible apnea, which affects many Christians. Because they do not use their Bible properly, they’re still suffocating little by little. They’re slowly getting spiritual brain damage, as it were. Something’s just not right.

Maybe you feel that way this morning. Maybe you feel that way sometimes. You can go to church, you can go to Bible study, check all your check boxes, do your thing, get all those things accomplished, but still be getting Bible deprivation, slowly suffocating as a believer, if you’re not using your Bible properly, if you’re not using your Bible biblically.

Let me tell you what I mean. Our problem is we tend to view our lives as compartments, compartments of topics and sections of life. You know, marriage, parenting, work, finances. It’s kind of like, you know when we used to be over at Miller Valley School and you would walk down the hall to drop your kids off, there were those little wooden cubby holes, you know, like the little lockers for the kids in the school.

We kind of view our lives that way. You could stand back and see all the cubby holes there and think, that’s the marriage cubby, and that’s the finances cubby. This is the, you know, the dating cubby if you’re not married. This is the work cubby and the life balance cubby. We think through life topically.

So because of that, because we think about life that way, we tend to approach the Bible that way, topically. When we want to know about a Christian view on marriage, we go straight to the marriage passages, and that’s not bad. When we consider our finances, we only consult the verses on money, and we should do that. We wonder about particular topics and then look directly to specific passages on those topics. We go only to passages which directly relate to the topic in question.

Now, the result of this topical way of thinking is that we then tend to come to the Bible reactively rather than proactively. We wait until we have a problem or a question, and then and only then do we ask, what does the Bible say about this? Like a man waiting to learn how to use a fire extinguisher until after his house is on fire, then asking Siri, google it. How do you use one of these things? Right?

Paul Tripp suggests that we have the same problem. Listen to him on this. He says, “Part of the problem is the way we use Scripture.” He uses marriage as an example because this is a paragraph out of his book on marriage, What Did You Expect? He says, “Part of the problem is the way we use Scripture. We mistakenly treat the Bible as if it is arranged by topic—you know, the world’s best compendium of human problems and divine solutions. But we cannot understand what the Bible has to say about marriage [and I would add in parentheses, or any other topic] by looking at only the marriage passages, because there is a vast amount of biblical information about marriage not found in the marriage passages.”

He says, “In fact, we could argue that to the degree that every portion of the Bible tells us things about God, about ourselves, about life in this present world, and about the nature of human struggle and the divine solution [listen to this], to that degree every passage in the Bible is a marriage passage.”

Every passage in the Bible is a marriage passage? Is every passage in the Bible a leadership passage? A parenting passage? A dating passage? A finances passage? Is every passage in the Bible a friendship passage?

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t do topical Bible studies. In fact, we’re doing one this morning. What I am saying is that the primary meat of our devotional time, the primary emphasis of our church, should not be topical Bible studies.

See, when we do topical only approach to Christianity, we treat the Bible like a chef who only wants to memorize recipes. No, no, no. If you want to be a chef, you need to understand why on the molecular level does fat carry flavor. If you want to be a chef, you need to know the five mother sauces. You can’t just memorize recipes for mac and cheese and rigatoni and…all I’ve got on my mind is Italian dishes.

If you only memorize recipes, then one day when you encounter a dish or ingredients that you don’t know the recipe for, your whole culinary process is collapsed like a saggy cake. But we do the same thing. We have people who have been believers for years and still constantly fail to respond biblically to situations that come up in their lives because there’s no direct recipe for that thing in Scripture.

So my main argument this morning is not that topical Bible use is bad. It’s just that it’s not enough. It’s a truncated use of Scripture.

Don’t get me wrong, every husband should know Ephesians 5. Every husband should be able to turn to 1 Peter 3 or Colossians 3. Every man should know, at the drop of a hat, Proverbs 5 through 7. Every woman should be familiar with Titus 2 and Proverbs 31. So we should have some topical understanding about the Bible. We just have to realize that when we approach the Scripture with a topical only approach, we suffer from Bible apnea as a result.

So I’m arguing this morning for whole-Bible Christianity or using the Bible biblically. As A. W. Tozer says, “We must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.”

So I want to give you this morning three essentials for using the Bible biblically. If you’re taking notes, three essentials for using the Bible biblically.

1. Foundation: You need a Doctrinal Backbone

Number one, the foundation. You should use the Bible biblically because you need a doctrinal backbone. I know right off the bat some of you think, doctrine? Theology? That’s like for pastors and elders, right? I’m a stay-at-home mom. (I’m not a stay-at-home mom.)

But let me ask you this: When the Bible says that a pastor must “be able to give instruction in sound doctrine” (Titus 1:9), who’s he giving the instruction to? When the Bible says a pastor needs to be able to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1), who is he teaching that doctrine to?

See, the implication is that every Christian needs to learn sound doctrine. So don’t get caught up and misunderstand me here. People get scared of words like “doctrine” and “theology.” It sounds like big and like maybe you need to have a PhD to understand those things. The word “doctrine” itself just means teachings. The teachings of the Bible.

I think every Christian would agree it’s important for Christians to know the teachings of the Bible. Doctrine is like the foundation of the Christian life. You wouldn’t say when buying a house, ah, foundations? Those are for contractors and construction workers. Just give me the house! No, no, no. Foundations are for every home owner. Every house needs a foundation, and every Christian needs doctrine.

In fact, every Christian is a theologian. You are a theologian, because every Christian believes certain things about, for example, who Jesus is. Have you ever heard someone say like, ah, I don’t want to get caught up in all that doctrine stuff. That just divides, you know? Can’t we just agree to love Jesus? Sure. Who’s Jesus? Well, however they respond is (guess what?) a doctrinal response. Who you believe Jesus is matters.

Here’s why that’s true: Because what you believe about God, sin, man, Christ, sanctification, the church, temptation, the world—what you believe about those things controls and determines everything you do and every decision you make, and all of those are theological topics. They’re doctrine. So it’s not a question of whether or not you’re a theologian; it’s just a question of whether or not you’re a good one or a bad one.

So you say, okay, I mean I can see from Scripture sound doctrine is important. Every Christian should know doctrine. I get that. But why is it that doctrine is so important for the Christian life?

Well turn with me to 2 Timothy 3. And 2 Timothy 3:15-17 we’re very familiar with. It’s a passage that Paul is addressing both the inspiration of Scripture and the usefulness of it. Listen as I read. 2 Timothy 3:16: He says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching [and that word could be translated doctrine], for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Complete, equipped for every good work. This says that the Bible equips us for every good work. The Bible makes us complete. That in and of itself means a topical only approach to Scripture cannot work for the very obvious reason that the Bible does not address every topic.

Every good work, making us complete, has to somehow include social media, mission trips to Nicaragua and dating and balancing career and personal life and creativity and self-esteem and career path planning and choosing a college and retirement. And since you won’t find any of those topics directly addressed in the Bible, it means God must not expect us to have a topical only approach to the Bible.

Somehow we have to gain a biblical foundation of the Bible’s teachings on which to build so that we can be equipped for every good work. See, our doctrine becomes for us a decision making grid of sorts. When you know what the Bible teaches about God and marriage and sin and Christ and salvation and the church and temptation and the world, then making a decision about dating filters through your doctrinal grid, filters through what you know to be true from the teachings of the Bible.

But it’s more than just decision making. That’s an overly simplistic way to look at it. It’s more than just a decision making grid because 99% of your life is lived reactively. You’re not stopping to constantly make decisions. You just react as life kind of hits you in the face. You knee jerk almost everything without any thought. You don’t know what’s coming around the corner when you get up and walk out of this building.

That’s why you need a doctrinal backbone, so that whatever it is, you’ll respond biblically. You’ll respond rightly. Our lives flow out of the kind of person we are, the kind of person that we have become, rather than, as we tend to think, flowing out of this succession of decisions.

It’s funny, I just finished reading a book on behavioral science and motivational theory. Push my glasses up after saying that. Listen to this quote. I just found this striking. “Scientists have recently discovered that people don’t actually operate off a set of predetermined principles and guidelines as much as they just live out of what they believe to be true.”

Well thank you, behavioral scientists, and congratulations for catching up to what Christians have been saying for a few thousand years. That’s awesome.

This is the whole reason that in Romans 12:1-2 Paul talks the way he does about the renewing of your mind. He says that he wants you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.

How does that work? How do you discern the will of God in any given situation that’s not directly addressed in Scripture? You need to have a transformed mind. Because as you’re transformed on the inside by the doctrines you believe and the convictions that you hold, the way that you respond to life instinctively—or should we say, supernaturally—becomes more and more in accord with God’s will.

But also, don’t miss that Paul didn’t say that in Romans 1:1. He said that in Romans 12:1-2. First, he spent eleven chapters on doctrine, unpacking the depravity of man, answering questions about the gospel. What about Israel? He walks through eleven chapters of doctrine before he gives them four chapters of practical application.

We want to just jump straight to Romans 12, and just give me the practical stuff, right? Just kind of help me with my marriage and give me some practical tips and tricks here! But God didn’t start with Romans 12 for a reason. This is the pattern you’re going to see all over the place. It’s repeated in the Bible. You don’t get the commands and the practical instruction without also getting the doctrines and the promises of God and the gospel and the character of Christ and the glory of the Lord.

You get Romans 1 through 11. Then you get 12 through 15. You get Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 on doctrine. Then you get 4, 5, and 6 on practical application. You don’t get, go make disciples. You get, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). Therefore go make disciples. Oh, by the way, I’m with you always.

You see, even Jesus, there’s promises. There’s doctrinal promises, truths about the authority and the sovereignty of Christ bracketing the command to go make disciples.

In Hebrews 10 you get, “since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19)—feel the doctrinal air, that he’s teaching you—“and since we have a great priest over the house of God” (Hebrews 10:21), let us draw near to God.

You want a good prayer life? You don’t just need, you need to pray more. You need, you have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus. You have a great high priest over the house of God. So draw near. You need doctrine.

J.C. Ryle said this: “A [Christianity] without doctrine … is a thing which many are fond of talking of in the present day.” Ironically, he said this like 150 years ago. “It sounds very fine at first [a Christianity without doctrine]. It looks very pretty at a distance. But the moment we sit down to examine and consider it, we shall find it a simple impossibility. We might as well talk of a body without bones… No man will ever be anything or do anything… unless he believes something.”

You need a doctrinal backbone. So you need to use the Bible biblically. You need to pour a concrete foundation for your Christian life as you read through the books of the Bible, not just jump to particular topics.

You need to read books about biblical teachings. They don’t have to be big systematic theology text books, though that’s not a bad idea. Get A. W. Tozer on The Attributes of God. Get Mark Dever’s book Theology for the Church. Ladies, get Gloria Fuhrman—anything by Gloria Fuhrman, but especially Alive in Him just came out. She just walks you through the book of Ephesians and applies it to your life and shows you how wonderful the truths of Ephesians are.

But don’t be a lazy Christian. Don’t be a jellyfish.

Jellyfish have no spine. They’re just this kind of amorphous blob of ooze. How do you even describe a jellyfish? And when the current of the sea goes this way, the jellyfish just kind of are swayed in this trancelike fashion, right? This way…that way…the jellyfish just kind of…bleh. Do they make that noise? What noise does a jellyfish make? Don’t be a jellyfish of a Christian.

Think about it this way: As the jellyfish kind of sways in the current of the culture and the times, the dolphin glides past, bursts out of the surface of the water, and plunges back into the waves. The dolphin flies through the air, plunges into the ocean. The dolphin chooses which way to go. It swims with the current when it chooses. It swims against current when it chooses. Because a dolphin has a backbone.

Be a dolphin! Be a wise doctrine-loving Christian by digging deep into the whole Bible, not just jumping around from topic to topic as you get curious about marriage or leadership or dating or whatever. You need more of the Bible than just a simple topical approach, a few tips and tricks here and there. You need the whole Bible to be a whole Christian. You need the whole Bible because you need a doctrinal backbone.

2. Blueprints: You Need Broad Application

Second, you need the whole Bible because of the blueprints. You need broad application—not simplistic application—broad application.

Turn with me to Joshua 1:8. As you know, Moses is Joshua’s predecessor, and after Moses died the Lord entrusted Joshua with the leadership of Israel. And the Lord told Joshua this in Joshua 1:8: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth [so don’t let the Bible depart from your mouth, Joshua], 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. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

When I say you need a broad application of Scripture, I mean you need to think about how the passage you’re reading, hearing, or studying applies to all the categories of your life. God told Joshua he’d be prosperous and successful if he would fill his mind with the Bible and meditate on it.

Here’s a problem for the topical only approach for Joshua: He only had five books of the Bible. Joshua had Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and that’s it. Maybe a couple of Psalms. Might have had the book of Job. But that’s it.

God told Joshua he’d be prosperous and successful if he’d fill his mind with the Bible, but how is Joshua supposed to handle his marriage without Ephesians 5? How’s Joshua supposed to handle his kids without Ephesians 6? What would you even say to your kids if you didn’t say, Ephesians 6:1 says, “Children, obey your parents”? It’s the most important verse in the Bible, son. I’m just kidding.

How is Joshua supposed to handle these things that aren’t topically addressed yet? Answer: The principles that God revealed even in the Pentateuch are meant to be applied broadly to life, because they reveal the character of God, the heart of man, the promises that God has given, the nature of temptation, the nature of the world around us. And so I say we need broad application. We need the blueprints of the Bible.

We were at Joe Sapko’s house, his new house last week, and we were sanding things and spackling, getting ready to paint, and in the process of taking down some cabinets and stuff, his dad found old blueprints for the house. And it was actually kind of—you feel like it’s one of those moments in National Treasure, you know? We’re like, ooh, it’s Ben Franklin’s glasses. Right?

So his dad lays the blueprints out on the counter, and we’re flipping through, and we’re like, oh, that’s what that thing is for. That makes sense. All of a sudden, parts and pieces of the house made a lot more sense looking at the blueprint. And his dad was like, you need to keep these. This is important.

Why? Why are blueprints important? Because they tell you practically how to build something. You want to know how to build a solid Christian life? You need the blueprints of the Bible.

And the whole blueprint is important, right? You don’t tear the blueprint in half and go, here, you build that half and I’ll build this half. You don’t scroll the blueprint out and then look at it through a straw, just kind of looking at this much of it at a time. You need to see the whole blueprint, how everything relates. In the same way, you don’t just jump to the practical topical passages you want and look at the Bible through a straw. You need the whole thing.

What this means for us is as we read and study through whole books of the Bible, we’re not just looking for the practical tips on topical issues, we’re looking for what these passages teach us about the broad themes of Scripture. What we want to learn is things about God’s omniscience and our own hearts and the church and sin and temptation and the faithfulness of the Lord and the image of God in man and worship and discipleship, and then…we’re taking those truths from the Bible and applying them broadly against the categories of life, drilling those truths down to specific application all over the place in our lives.

It’s like the pimples on the face of a teenager. You talk to any teenager with like a massive catastrophe of pimples on their face, and they will tell you that they scrub their face every morning, they own six different kinds of face cream and face scrubs and face gel and face spray and face this and that. They want to have some kind of a skin solution.

But in reality we know it’s not really a skin problem, is it? The real issue is something deeper. Their hormones are like raging out of control, and it’s messing with their whole body, and the pimples are just one effect of that, and the impact that they have on their parents during those years is another. You don’t fix it by scrubbing the skin. You fix it maybe only with time, but you fix it with balancing hormones. Something deeper has to happen.

And yet, we try to do the same thing with the way we live our lives with the Bible. We want to scrub the skin of our finances with money passages. But if you only go to the money verses when thinking about your money, then you might miss the hormone-balancing passages about self-control that are really going to impact the way that you actually keep your budget. You want to scrub the skin of your finances with the money passages, but you might miss the passages about heaven that are going to completely change the way you think about money and what you value altogether.

We want to scrub the external skin of our parenting with passages about raising children, but if we only go to the parenting passages, you’re going to miss the passage on prayer that’s gonna deeply change the way that you pray for your kids. You’re gonna miss the truths about the sovereignty of God that will allow you to sleep at night when your rebellious teenager is not listening to a word that you say. You’re gonna miss the passages about the profound grace of God to you in spite of your sinfulness that will motivate you to treat your kids with heavy loads of grace, mercy, and patience.

We want to scrub the external principles of our topical approach to life. But what we need is a deeper heart change that is fundamentally different than just personal behavior modification with biblical passages.

Reading, studying, meditating on scripture is about more than just seeking practical application. It’s about seeking internal transformation.

This is why David Mathis says, “When you seek a simplistic approach to application, you overlook the more complex nature of the Christian life—and how true and lasting change happens in a less straightforward way than we typically think.”

You see, our doctrine helps us build the foundation for the life that we should live, and our broad application of Scripture gives us a more detailed blueprint for how we ought to build our lives on that foundation, but it doesn’t change the sinfulness of my heart so that I want to build on that foundation. It doesn’t change the sinful desires of your heart so that you want to build according to that biblical blueprint.

And that’s why we need more than just a topical approach to Scripture. We need more than just doctrine. We need more than just broad application. We need to behold glory.

3. Motivation: You Need to Behold Glory

And that’s why I say, number three essential for using the Bible biblically is to think about motivation. You need to behold glory.

Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 3. Now in 2 Corinthians 3, Paul is again explaining his ministry to the Corinthians, and specifically what it’s like to be a minister of the New Testament as opposed to a minister of the Old Testament, the old covenant. Moses was a minister of the old covenant. He helped people change. Paul is a minister of the new covenant, helping people change.

And in chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians—a little bit of background here—he’s referring to Moses. Now you remember Exodus 34 where Moses goes up the mountain to meet with God, and the people are down below. And there’s this vivid description of the mountain shaking and the sights and the sounds and the noises and everything that’s going on. Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to get the law from God, to get the Bible from God.

And God gives Moses, in that moment, two things. He gives him the tablets, and he gives him glory. The passage describes how Moses comes down the mountain holding the tablets and his face shining, radiating with the glory of God. The purpose or the goal of that revelation, the tablets and the glory, was to give instruction and to display the glory of God so that the Israelites would live differently.

Moses gets to the bottom, and in Exodus 34 the Israelites basically say, pfft, cover up your face, Moses! No, it’s so bright—we don’t want to look at it! And so, Moses puts a veil over his face to obscure the glory of God shining from his face.

So, if we can now bring it to how Paul uses this analogy in 2 Corinthians 3, they get the tablets, but not the glory. They get the instructions without the glory of God, without the goal of the revelation, which was to reveal God’s glory to them so that they would be changed.

Now, 2 Corinthians 3, and I want to read starting in verse 12 and maybe just make some comments along the way. Keep your finger on the verse that we’re in. “Since we have such a hope,”—he’s just described in a lot of ways what I’ve described to you and then talked about his ministry. He says, “Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome [the telos in the Greek, the goal, the outcome] of what was being brought to an end.” The old covenant being brought to an end, and yet it had a glory of its own, didn’t it?

He says, Moses put this veil over his face. Now verse 14: “But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted,” in other words, they’re still not able to see God’s glory in the revelation that the Lord has given to them. “[The] same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.”

Verse 15: “Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil [the thing which obscures your ability to see the glory of God in the pages of scripture] is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” In other words, when you turn to the Lord, the Spirit of God comes into your heart, opens your eyes to be able to behold the glory of God, i.e., removes the veil! You can see the glory in the Scriptures now! You can finally behold the glory of God in the written revelation of his word!

And so Paul finishes in verse 18, “And we all, with unveiled face,” in other words, we have the ability to be able to see the glory of God in the pages of Scripture. “[W]e all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image [the image of God in man restored] from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

In other words, the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to behold the glory of God in the pages of Scripture so that we’re actually drawn towards his glory and made to be more like him! We look to the word; we see the character of God, the glory of God, and our hearts are captivated by it. We’re drawn towards it. Like you want to stand as close as you can get to the edge of the Grand Canyon.

As we see the glory of God in the pages of Scripture, 2 Corinthians 3:18 says we “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

One author said it this way: “A godly life is lived out of an astonished heart—a heart that is astonished at grace. We go to the Bible to be astonished, to be amazed at God and Christ and the cross and grace and the gospel. As we’re freshly captivated by the grandeur of our God and his gospel, we become what we behold.”

So don’t get me wrong here, yes, John 13:17: “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” And James 1:25: A doer who acts will be blessed. But, be careful not to let the drive for specific applications every time you open your Bible alter the focus of your devotion from astonishment and seeking to have your heart happy in the Lord. Coming to the Scriptures to see and feel, to see the glory of God, makes a drastically different approach than primarily coming just to get things to do.

Believe me, when you see the glory of God in the pages of Scripture, you will do what’s revealed there.

Part of this is the way we think about sin. Like I’m just a brain on a stick. If I just get the right information in, I’ll stop making stupid decisions. Well, I sinned because I just wasn’t thinking clearly. No, when we sin, it’s almost never an information problem. Nobody cheats on their wife because they didn’t know it was wrong.

Better checklists alone cannot prevent sinning. When we sin, it’s a glory problem. We’ve not been captivated by the glory of God. Therefore, we’re not just reading and studying the Bible for information; we’re reading and studying the Bible for transformation as we behold his glory in it.

This is why John Piper says, don’t just amass a long list. “Become a kind of person.” Chew on that one for a while. It’s good.

A Christian leader centuries ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” They’ll build a boat.

So you think, okay, all right, I think I’m tracking with you, Jason. So how does seeing God’s glory in the Scriptures like 2 Corinthians 3 talks about—how does that relate to my marriage, to my leadership, to my finances, to my singleness or my dating and every other topic I could come up with? How does it relate?

Well, let’s say you’re a guitar player. Say you’ve been playing for about ten years, and you’re getting pretty good. You’re pretty proud of yourself. You get invited to play for a friend’s party. That’s a pretty big honor, right? And they got a little stage set up there with some speakers, and you got your own barstool, and you get to sit there and play as people mingle, and everybody’s admiring your epic skills on the guitar while they converse with one another.

And then, Jimi Hendrix walks in. Everything changes. What? Are you going to challenge Jimi Hendrix to like a battle of the bands in front of all your friends? No. You will likely go and cower in the corner and say, I am ruined! Woe is me! [Whimpering] I’ve never played a good guitar song in my life!

Your perspective of yourself and your skill and your friends and your guitar—it all changes. In the shadow of a greater glory, your pride is humbled. Your perspective becomes much more realistic.

You’re given a more realistic perspective not only of yourself, but as you behold the glory of God in Scripture, you’re given a more realistic perspective of your life, your marriage, your leadership, your finances, your singleness, your dating; and you’re given the motivation to live in response to the glory of God in all of those areas of life.

This is what Thomas Chalmers called the expulsive power of a greater affection. Idols are never removed. When you’re sinning in your life, it’s not because you don’t have enough information. It’s not because you just need to stop worshiping this idol and chuck it out the back window, and nothing will be there. Idols are never removed. They’re only replaced.

Thomas Chalmers called this the expulsive power of a greater affection because as your greater affection for Jesus Christ rises, your love for the things of this world, your perspective of their insignificance becomes more clear, and your love for them fades. It’s a greater affection which has an expulsive power.

Matt Pappa says, “The glory of God is the reason why every person in the Bible who encounters God nearly falls dead. It changes you.”

Think about what Paul said in Philippians 3:8. “I count everything as loss.” Wow. Have you said that? What does it take to say that? “I count everything as loss,” he continues, “in view of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”

I want more of him! That’s why I’m not looking at that online. I want more of him! That’s why I refuse to gossip. I want more of him! That’s why I want this sin out of my life, because I want Christ! Give me more of Jesus! He’s beautiful to me; I’ve seen his glory! I won’t be captivated by these lesser things anymore.

That’s why, maybe for the sake of your marriage or your leadership or your work ethic or your parenting, what you need is not practical tips from the Bible. Maybe what you need is Daniel 4. “I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:34-35).

That’s why all of our preaching must be more than just commanding people to do things. We don’t just preach to give moral dos and don’ts. That’s why we preach through whole books of the Bible instead of just different topical series on family and then marriage and then dating and then work ethics and then leadership. All preaching and teaching must be exaltational exposition—exalting the glory of God from the pages of Scripture.

This is why all of our personal Bible study—when you sit down with your Bible tomorrow morning or this afternoon, in your living room, with your cup of coffee, ready to go, praying God would prepare your heart, you open the pages of Scripture—it must not just be a search for practical tips. It has to be a whole-Bible approach, a glory-beholding study.

As you read through the passages of Scripture, don’t say, God show me what to do. At least don’t always say that. Sometimes we need to pray, God reveal yourself to me from these words. Teach me about who you are. Let me be captivated by you. I want to yearn for you, Lord. Show me in the pages of your word.

I would just commend to you, by way of practical suggestion—it’s like, okay Jason. Okay, I want to have a whole-Bible approach. Does that mean I have to go home and read the whole Bible this afternoon? Yes. No, I’m just kidding. No, but that’s not a bad idea! What are you doing this afternoon?

Think about it this way: Read the Bible fast sometimes, so you can get through a whole book, so you can see the grand scope of the book. Read the Bible slow, so that you can savor the words. Read the verses repetitively, so that you can start to notice various aspects and elements of what God is revealing through his word. Memorize verses and passages and whole chapters of the Bible. Meditate on verses and passages and whole chapters of the Bible.

Use online resources. Trustworthy Bible colleges and seminaries post classes online. Imagine if you’re like, you want to know about Ephesians? Great. Get online and find a good Bible college. Our website recommends a couple. Find a good seminary, find their YouTube channel, and start watching the classes through Ephesians. Think about what the Lord might do in your life to change your marriage and your parenting and your work and life balance. Think about what God might do to change all of the various aspects of your life through a deep walk through the book of Ephesians…or Daniel or 1 Samuel.

Listen to audiobooks on your commute that help you study and learn and know the Bible. Download biblically rich content online. There is so much good things to read. Ask someone around you, hey, what podcasts do you listen to? Hey, what blogs do you read? What do you do to help understand the Bible better? I want to get in deep; how do I get into the word?

I would say adapt to new media. There are too many great opportunities out there to just be like, uh, I don’t know how to use the podcast thing; forget about it. Find somebody that does and ask them to show you. Isn’t it worth it?

Read Christian books. Pick up some commentaries. Have personal conversations with other believers who maybe know the Bible better than you do and say, hey, can we grab coffee, and will you just read through a book of the Bible with me and tell me about what you know about these passages?

Resolve to be a lifelong learner, a student of the Bible who loves the word. David Mathis says, “If we are going to saturate our lives in the truth, then we must be people of the book.”

So let our approach to Scripture be a whole-Bible, glory-beholding approach to Scripture, and this goes for our ministry to one another too. As we seek to open up the Scriptures, maybe even just quoting a verse to someone in the hallway after church, as you seek to minister to other people in your Bible study, in your small group, in your home—whatever it is—our ministry to one another must be a whole-Bible, glory-beholding ministry, not a dispensary of personal advice. Not a pointing to practical tips in Scripture. You don’t help people simply by telling them what to do if you don’t also help give them the motivation from the Scripture to do it.

Have you ever seen someone with their headphones on, really enjoying the music? It’s fun sometimes to just kind of stand at a distance, and somebody’s just really into the jams, you know? Kind of just… [grooving to imaginary music, shaking head] You know what I’m talking about. And they don’t know you’re watching. You know? And maybe they’re just like… [grooving to imaginary music, shaking head, drumming on legs in rhythm, stomping foot] And they’re just going for it, right? And then you’re kind of standing over there like…this guy. It’s great. And he’s just totally into it, right?

Imagine that’s happening. Someone else walks into the room. A deaf person. Sees what he’s doing, and…looks enjoyable. Looks like he’s having a good time. He starts doing the same thing [shaking head, drumming on legs in rhythm, stomping foot]. Right? And now this deaf person is doing the same thing as the person with the headphones on, right?

Now, a third person walks into the room. What do they see? Two people doing exactly the same thing. Right? Wrong.

See, too often our approach to Scripture just becomes a repetition of steps, tips. This person with the headphones on is responding to something that he’s captivated by, something that he’s moved by, something that’s changing the way that he thinks about this very moment so that his whole body is caught up in what’s happening. And the other person is just repeating steps, just repeating dance moves.

See, there are doctrines and broad application and glory for you in the Bible that should motivate the dance of your Christian life. And so you have to have a doctrinal backbone and a broad application. You must behold glory. Or you will continue to use the Bible unbiblically, and you will live a Christian life that is constantly suffocated by Bible apnea.

Lord, I would just pray for anyone here this morning that has seen that in their lives, Lord, let them not be discouraged. This is the very reason that you’ve given us your word. I pray, Father, that you would begin to reveal yourself to them through the pages of Scripture. Let them take practical steps to dive deep into your word, to learn the great, rich truths of the Scripture, and to behold your glory, and to begin to seek broad application to every area of their lives. God, change them, through your word as they behold your glory in the face of Christ Jesus. Change them from the inside out.

And Father, we know that that’s exactly the picture of what you’ve done for us in salvation. You have changed us from the inside out. You opened our eyes to believe that Jesus Christ died in our place for our sins, and we have put our whole life, we’ve put our faith in him.

Father, thank you for opening our eyes to behold your glory. Let us continue to come back to your word to behold it day by day, that our lives would reflect your character, your love for this world. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Recommended Reading:

1. Foundation: You Need a Doctrinal Backbone

• Alive in Him – Gloria Fuhrman
• Biblical Doctrine – John MacArthur
• Theology for the Church – Mark Dever

2. Blueprints: You Need Broad Application

• Habits of Grace – David Mathis
• A Peculiar Glory – John Piper

3. Motivation: You Need to Behold Glory

• Look & Live – Matt Papa
• Awe – Paul David Tripp