Series: How John Wesley Read the Bible (Episode 3) "Wesley read to BE transformed."

[00:00:00]You finished reading an entire chapter of the Bible and you don't remember anything you read. You reached the amen of your morning devotion and left exactly the same person you came in as.

[00:00:12]This is not a lack of faith. This is a lack of method. There was a man who didn't read to accumulate theological information. [music] He didn't read to impress other pastors. He had a single obsession. And that obsession will change the way you open your Bible from today onward. He called the Bible the book of God and declared aloud, "Give me that book at any price, give me the book of God." His name is John Wesley. And in this episode, the third in the series, you'll discover why he read, how he read, and most importantly, what happens when a person stops reading to learn and starts reading to be transformed. Stay until the end. The seventh point in this video will directly challenge your Bible reading routine in a way you won't forget anytime soon. One question before we begin. When was the last time you came away from reading the Bible feeling different from how you started? Wesley was fluent in Latin, Greek, [music] Hebrew, and French. He read over 120 books throughout his life, most of them while riding horses along the roads of England. He wrote sermons, biblical commentaries, grammarss, [music] medical dictionaries, and philosophical treatises. But he called himself with pride and without irony the man of a single book. Not because he didn't read others, but because only one book had for him final and absolute authority over his life. And this episode is about how he treated that book. First [music] point, the Bible as a means of grace, not as a source of information before any technique, before any practical step of the method. We need to understand how Wesley fundamentally viewed the Bible.

[00:01:48][music] Because if you don't understand that, the other points will only be reading tricks. Useful [music] perhaps, but devoid of the power that Wesley discovered. For most Christians today, the Bible is one of two things. Either a rule book, a list of dos and don'ts, a sort of manual of Christian moral conduct, or an a answer book, a repository of verses you consult when you're in trouble, like an oracle you call upon in times of crisis. [music] Wesley saw it differently. For him, the Bible was what he called a means of grace. What does that mean exactly? In Wesleyan theological vocabulary, a means of grace is a channel, a living instrument through which God acts directly on the human soul. It is not a book about God. It is a book through which God [music] speaks, acts, confronts, comforts, calls, and transforms. The difference between these two views is not semantic. It is radical. It is the difference between a portrait of a person and the person themselves. [music] The portrait informs, the presence transforms. If the Bible is a book about God, [music] you can study it from the outside like a researcher analyzes an ancient text from any civilization. [music] You sit down with your pen, your notebook, your Bible study software, and process information.

[00:03:04]You accumulate theological data. You grow in doctrinal knowledge. You know more and more about what the Bible teaches. You become an expert on the map, but you never set foot on the territory. But if the Bible is a book through which God actively works in the present, [music] then you can't simply process it with your mind as if it were a technical text. You need to expose yourself to it. You need to open not only your eyes, but your heart. You need to let it flow through you, not just inform you. Wesley wrote this precisely and meticulously in the preface to his notes on the Old Testament. If you wish to read the scriptures in such a way that you can effectively respond to this end, would it not be advisable to read with a single eye to know the whole will of God and with a firm resolution to do it? See what he's saying? Read with a single eye, undivided focus, without a parallel agenda, without the part of you that has already decided whether you agree or disagree before even finishing the paragraph. And this is what cuts deep. A prior resolution, a decision made before opening the page. I will obey what I find here regardless of what it is. This is the first turning point in Wesley's approach. He didn't open the Bible to judge the [music] text. He opened the text to be judged by it.

[00:04:20]There is a vast difference between the stance of someone reading to evaluate.

[00:04:23][music] Do I agree or disagree with this? Does it make sense to me? Does it align with what I already believe?

[00:04:29][music] and the stance of someone reading to be evaluated. What does this text reveal about me? What does God want to transform in my character through these words? Where am I wrong and is scripture right? [music] In the contemporary world, we live immersed in a culture of content consumption. We consume absurd volumes of information every day, podcasts, videos, [music] articles, books, and our default stance is that of an evaluator. [music] I liked it or I didn't like it. I agree or I disagree. it's worth following or not.

[00:05:00]We like or dislike the content. Wesley would say that this attitude applied to biblical reading will never produce transformation. Never. Because you are not the critic before the word. [music] You are the character being read by it.

[00:05:15]Hebrews 4:12 says that the word is sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates, divides, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

[00:05:24]The text is not being evaluated by you.

[00:05:26]You are being evaluated by it. [music] There's a phrase circulating in Wesley and spiritual circles that sums it all up accurately. [music] The Bible wasn't given to increase our knowledge. It was given to change our lives. This completely changes what happens when you open that page. The question Wesley brought to his reading was not primarily what does [music] this text mean?

[00:05:47]Although he pursued that with all the intellectual seriousness he possessed.

[00:05:51]The more fundamental question, the question that organized the entire reading experience was another. How will this text transform me? What part of me is this text pointing to? [music] What change is God asking of me through these words today? And Wesley was honest enough to admit [music] this is harder than it seems because sometimes often the text points to things we don't want to change. comfortable [music] habits, problematic relationships we'd rather ignore, mismanaged money, pride disguised as theological conviction.

[00:06:24]Transformative reading requires a type of courage that informationational reading does not. And that's precisely why Wesley developed an entire method around correct posture because he knew that correct posture doesn't happen automatically. It needs to be cultivated intentionally every day. Second point, the method of prayer before reading only God is here.

[00:06:46]There is a passage in the preface to Wesley's sermons, those published in 1746, which is in my opinion one of the most beautiful and accurate texts ever written about what it truly means to read the Bible. I want you to listen attentively to every word. Don't mentally rush to the next point. Stay here. Here I am, far from the busy paths of men. I sit alone. Only God is here.

[00:07:09]In his presence, I open and read his book for this purpose to find the way to heaven. Is there any doubt about the meaning of what I read? Does anything seem obscure or intricate? I lift my heart to the father of lights. Only God is here. Five words. Five words that define an entire stance toward the scriptures. Wesley did not begin reading with the first word of the biblical text. He began by deliberately creating an inner environment, a state of conscious and active divine presence.

[00:07:41]Before any verse, [music] there was an intentional act of positioning oneself before God, stepping away from the noise of the world, the day's to-do list, the worries that were already beginning to stir in one's thoughts first thing in the morning, and entering another state, a state of singular, undivided attention directed toward the presence of God.

[00:08:01]This has a name in the contemplative Christian tradition. It's called inner recollection or harvest. Benedicting monks, Carmelaites, medieval mystics practiced this for centuries before Wesley. [music] The radical difference is that Wesley wasn't writing to monks in medieval monasteries isolated from the world. He was writing to coal miners in northern England, to poor workers in the burgeoning factories of the industrial revolution, to ordinary people with busy days, heavy responsibilities, and difficult lives.

[00:08:30][music] He was saying you too can do this before any verse anywhere under whatever conditions you have only God is here and it wasn't just beautiful devotional symbolism it was highly precise spiritual strategy [music] Wesley firmly believed that the Bible is in its deepest nature a spiritual book [music] and that therefore it can only be fully understood spiritually. He quoted Thomas Ampus, the author of The Imitation of Christ, one of the books that most influenced him throughout his life, who wrote, "We need the same spirit to understand the scriptures that enabled the holy men of old to write them." Think about this statement for a moment. The same spirit that moved Paul to write the epistle to the Romans needs to be present and active in you [music] so that Romans produces in you what it produced in Paul when he wrote it. You can understand the Greek grammar of the text with purely human resources and academic effort. [music] You can analyze the rhetorical structure of Paul's argument with sophisticated exeetical tools. But you cannot understand the onlogical weight of the text, what it means for your concrete life here [music] this week in this specific situation you are experiencing without the presence and illumination of the same spirit. So Wesley did the following described in careful detail in his preface. Before opening the Bible, he [music] would pray. Not a mechanical wrote recited protocol. Not a religious formula you automatically fire off without thinking. A genuine, specific, honest conversation. Something like that. And he describes it in his own words in the historical text. I lift my heart to the father of lights. Lord, is it not your word that says, if any among you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God.

[00:10:11]You give liberally and without reproach.

[00:10:13]You said, if anyone is willing to do your will, he will know. I am willing to do it. Make me know your will. [music] This prayer accomplished three simultaneous and essential things which we need to understand separately. First thing, [music] it explicitly positioned Wesley as a learner, not as an expert.

[00:10:30]Epistemic humility was declared and active before any verse. He approached the text as someone who needs to learn, not as someone who already knows everything and is merely confirming what he already knew. Secondly, he declared a prior willingness to obey. This is the point that most separates Wesley from most modern Bible readers and the most demanding point of the entire method. He did not ask for understanding in order to then decide whether to obey depending on what he discovered. He had already decided. The decision to obey was made before reading. The request was only for God to show what to obey, not whether to obey. Third thing, it creates an active and vivid expectation. [music] When you pray before reading with the genuine expectation that God will truly speak, you read differently. You are not passively consuming text like someone watching a program without paying attention. You are in a conversation and you are expecting a response. [music] This expectation fundamentally transforms the quality of attention you bring to the text. Now, I'm going to ask you a direct question, not a rhetorical one, a genuine one. When was the last time you opened the Bible with the genuine expectation that God was going to tell you something you didn't want to hear and you were willing to hear it anyway? Because it is precisely this disposition that separates informative reading from transformative reading. You can have all the right methodology, fixed schedule, notebook, colored pen, Bible reading app with an annual plan and still come away from the text exactly as you went in because you arrived with a mind closed to [music] change. Wesley said that the greatest barrier to transformation through the word is not a lack of intelligence or time. [music] It is a lack of prior surrender. You read with a part of you already decided that you won't change anything that is inconvenient [music] or that costs you anything. And then you wonder why the Bible isn't producing the transformation it promises. The step before opening the book is paradoxically the most important step in the entire method. Start there today before any verse. Only God is here. I am ready to be changed. [music] Third point, comparing scripture with scripture.

[00:12:38]Wesley's analogical method. Imagine this scene. You are reading your Bible.

[00:12:43][music] You come across a verse that seems obscure, perhaps even contradictory to something you read elsewhere in the same scripture. What do you do? If you're like most people, you do one of three things. Either you ignore it and keep reading, accumulating a silent mental file of things I don't understand and prefer not to deal with, or you immediately rush to a biblical commentary, a pastor on YouTube, or a quick Google search. Or, and this is the most dangerous of all, you interpret based on your initial impression without verifying anything at all. And this interpretation settles over the years as an unshakable certainty, when in reality, it's just your untested first impression. Wesley was doing something radically different and he describes this with almost scientific precision in the same historical preface I quoted earlier. Then I seek out and consider parallel passages of scripture.

[00:13:33]Comparing spiritual things with spiritual things, I meditate on them with all the attention and seriousness my mind is capable of. This is what theologians and exedites call the analogy of faith. the fundamental principle that the Bible is the best commentary on itself, that the clearest text illuminates the most obscure text, that no verse, no passage, no doctrine should be interpreted in isolation from the rest of the entire biblical cannon.

[00:14:00]Wesley argued with complete conviction that before any external source, before biblical commentaries, before pastors, before renowned theologians, [music] before any human authority, you should let scripture itself illuminate scripture.

[00:14:15]The text explains the text. The word interprets the word. The Bible read as a whole is its own best commentary. And here's a concrete example of how this works in practice. [music] So it doesn't remain abstract. Imagine you are reading John 6 where Jesus says, "No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them." At first glance, this seems to indicate that human beings have no role in the salvation process. That everything is a unilateral divine decision and that human beings are completely passive and without responsibility. The Wesleyian method doesn't allow you to stop there. You'll look for parallel passages throughout scripture. You'll find Revelation 22:17.

[00:14:53]Whoever [music] wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. You'll find John 3:16. [music] Whoever believes in him, you'll find Ezekiel 18:23. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Or rather, when they turn from their ways, you'll find 1 Timothy 2:4.

[00:15:10][music] God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

[00:15:14]Now the picture becomes theologically much richer, more complex, and more honest. The Bible read in its entirety [music] simultaneously the absolute and sovereign initiative of God and the genuine, real [music] and responsible response of humankind.

[00:15:29]No single verse captures this entire tension. It is necessary to read the whole to understand each part adequately. And it takes intellectual honesty to dwell within the tension instead of artificially resolving it in favor of one side. Wesley called this keeping the reading in the light of the analogy of faith. [music] And he went further identifying four fundamental doctrines that functioned as interpretative axes of all scripture.

[00:15:53]Original [music] sin, justification by faith, new birth, and inner and outer holiness. [music] Any interpretation of any verse that contradicted one of these four axes was for Wesley evidence that the interpretation was wrong, not the axis. Here's a practical application that will be inconvenient for many. When you read an isolated verse and build an entire theology, an entire doctrine, an entire way of life upon that single verse out of context, you are doing the exact opposite of what Wesley taught.

[00:16:23]The so-called proof texting, the widespread habit of taking a verse out of context to justify an opinion, behavior, or practice you already held before opening the Bible, was for Wesley not just an intellectual error. It was a form of spiritual dishonesty, a way of using the Bible to legitimize what you already want to believe instead of letting the Bible reform and correct what you believe. The Bible was not written to confirm your ideas. It was written to reform your mind. And reforming the mind requires reading not in handpicked fragments, but in organic connection. [music] Verse with verse, book with book, Old Testament with New Testament, narrative with poetry, prophecy with fulfillment. The particular within the universal. Wesley read on average one chapter of the Old Testament and one chapter of the New Testament per day, every single day, without exception. Precisely so as never to lose sight of the overall biblical narrative so that any particular text would always be read within the grand arc of the story of creation, [music] the fall, redemption and restoration.

[00:17:28]The point isn't to read faster. It's not to accomplish more reading goals. It's to read more thoroughly. Fourth point, the Bible read in community. There is no solitary holiness. There is one of the most misunderstood phrases in the entire history of Methodism. [music] Wesley said with all seriousness and conviction, "The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion. [music] Many people read this and interpret it as a simple encouragement to attend church more regularly, to go to the Sunday morning service and perhaps also on Wednesday evening." But Wesley was talking about something much deeper, more radical, more structurally challenging than a well- [music] attended Sunday service.

[00:18:06]He was speaking specifically about how to read and live the Bible together with other people. See what he writes in the same preface to the sermons when describing what he does when he still has doubts after praying and comparing passages. If any doubt remains, I consult those who have experience in the things of God [music] and then the writings by which though dead, they still speak. Wesley identified two dimensions of community that were essential and irreplaceable for a healthy and truly transformative biblical reading. The first was the living community, brothers and sisters in faith, especially those most experienced in concrete spiritual life.

[00:18:43][music] And note carefully what he says.

[00:18:46]Not the most intelligent, not the most arudite, not those with the most degrees in theology, not those most articulate in doctrinal discussions, those who had the most experience in the things of God, those who had walked the longest and with the most faithfulness, and who therefore had an accumulated practical wisdom that no single book could provide. The famous Methodist bands and classes that Wesley patiently and persistently organized throughout England and which spread to the United States, Ireland, Wales, and decades later reached Brazil were exactly [music] that in concrete institutional practice. Small groups generally between 10 and 12 people who met weekly. Not for a formal worship service with hymns, prayer, and a message. Not for a theological lecture by a specialist to read the Bible together, pray for one another. And this is the element that most radically distinguishes the Wesleyian model from almost everything we do today and give an account of how they were living what they had read.

[00:19:44]This wasn't a Bible study group in the academic informationational sense that we widely know in contemporary churches.

[00:19:49]It was a group of transformational responsibility. The central question wasn't [music] what does this text mean historically or what is the author's cultural context but rather how are you living this text this week? Where have [music] you failed? Where have you progressed? Where do you need help from your brothers and sisters? This distinction will be uncomfortable for many contemporary evangelical churches, including those that claim to be most seriously committed to the centrality of the Bible. Many Bible study groups that exist today are in practice sophisticated theological discussion groups. People come in, study, discuss, debate intelligently, and leave with more information than when they came in with new doctrinal perspectives, with a more detailed understanding of the historical context of the text. This is not bad. I'm not saying it's bad. But for Wesley, it's simply not enough because nobody leaves with more a personal responsibility. Nobody has been genuinely challenged about their real life, their real relationships, their real financial choices, their real treatment of the people around them. In the Wesian model, you couldn't comfortably hide behind your theological intelligence. You couldn't impress the group with your refined exeetical knowledge and then go home and continue living exactly as before. The other members of the group knew about your real life. They had the right and the fraternal obligation to ask you about it. [music] The second dimension of community was the historical community.

[00:21:14]The Christian writers of the past who continue to speak through their writings. Wesley avidly read the church fathers especially those of the first three centuries. Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullan [music] origin, John Chrissum, Augustine of Hippo. For him, how the church tradition had interpreted the Bible throughout the centuries was important evidence, not infallible, not with the same authority as scripture, but important enough to be taken seriously and consulted before drawing definitive personal conclusions.

[00:21:46]Why did this historical community matter? Because it generated hermeneutical humility. When you realize the 20 centuries of Christians, people who in many cases died as martyrs for their faith, [music] who lived much closer to the cultural context of the New Testament, who read this text in its original languages, read these passages before you and arrived at certain consistent conclusions. [music] It becomes much more difficult to sustain the arrogance that your first reading interpretation is the definitive truth that all these centuries have missed.

[00:22:19]Let me ask you a question that I need you to answer honestly without the easy answer. [music] Do you have someone in your life, a real person who knows you personally, who is present in your daily life, who has the right and the freedom to ask you if you are living according to the Bible. Not a social media follower. Not a pastor you admire from afar on a screen, but with whom you've never spoken for more than 5 minutes in person. a real person who is present, who knows your specific struggles and your specific patterns of failure and who can look you in the eye and say bluntly, you read that last week, how are you obeying? What has changed? For Wesley, reading the Bible without this concrete structure of community responsibility was like trying to fly with only one wing. [music] You might even manage to get anywhere for a while, but you won't get very far and eventually you'll fall. Fifth point, [music] reason as a tool, not as an arbiter. The Wesian equilibrium. There is a very common misunderstanding about Wesley that needs to be corrected precisely before we proceed because it completely distorts the image of the man. Some people upon hearing about prayer before reading, about openness to the Holy Spirit, about community responsibility and lived spiritual experience, conclude that Wesley was an emotional pottist who distrusted critical thinking and celebrated an anti-intellectual faith with a warm heart and an empty [music] head. This image is completely wrong, and to hold on to it is, ironically, an intellectual error about a man who took intellect far more seriously than most of his critics. Wesley was a leading Oxford intellectual. [music] He mastered the original languages of the Bible, Greek and Hebrew, to a degree that allowed him to do his own direct exigesis of the texts without relying on intermediaries. He read classical and enlightenment Greek philosophy. He knew Aristotilian logic and used it naturally in his sermons. He corresponded with the greatest thinkers of his time. [music] He wrote with the reasoned precision that was the result of decades of rigorous and uninterrupted intellectual discipline. For Wesley, reason [music] was one of the essential and absolutely irreplaceable tools of biblical reading.

[00:24:29]But, [music] and this but carries the weight of his entire theology. It was a tool, not an arbiter. This distinction is fundamental to understanding Wesley.

[00:24:40]I will repeat it because it is the heart of this entire point. Reason as a tool serves the text. It helps to understand the grammatical meaning of words in the original language, [music] the historical and cultural context of the time in which the text was written, the logical coherence of the arguments of the inspired human author, [music] and the practical and ethical implications of the teaching for concrete life. It works within scripture in service of scripture, helping the reader to better understand what scripture itself is saying. Reason as arbiter judges the text from the outside. It decides by its own authority what is true or false based on criteria it establishes itself independently of what scripture says. If a verse doesn't make sense according to contemporary rational standards, it discards it or conveniently allegorizes it. [music] If a miracle seems scientifically impossible, it treats it as a poetic metaphor. If a doctrine seems contradictory to modern philosophical thought, it silently eliminates it from personal creed, [music] as if the difficulty lay in the text and not in the limitations of its own understanding. Wesley advocated the first with all the intellectual passion he possessed [music] and resisted the second with all the theological firmness he had. For Wesley, what defined the limits of reason was always scripture as the supreme and non-negotiable norm.

[00:25:58]Reason helps to understand scripture, to [music] apply it, to communicate it clearly. But it has no authority to discard it when it becomes inconvenient.

[00:26:06]This balance, which the American theologian Albert Utler identified, [music] named and made famous decades later as the Wesian quadrilateral, articulated four sources of theological authority: [music] scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, but not as four equal sources of equivalent weight.

[00:26:25][music] Scripture was always the primary norm. the one that evaluates, corrects, and judges the other three. The other three were means by which scripture is more adequately understood, applied, and lived. I'll give a concrete example of how this balance works in real world reading so as not to remain on an abstract level. [music] You are reading the book of Job, especially the long and eloquent speeches of Job's three friends who argue with impressive sophistication that he must be suffering as a direct consequence of some secret unconfessed sin. Their argument is rationally coherent within a system of symmetrical moral retribution. The thesis is logically consistent. [music] Extreme suffering implies specific guilt of equal magnitude. It is a reasonable inference within a simplified theology of moral cause and effect. [music] The problem scripture itself in its entirety and narrative structure completely discredits this interpretation. God at the end of the book rebukes the friends directly and unambiguously.

[00:27:25]You have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job did. The book's own prologue, which the friends do not have access to, but the reader does, reveals that Job's suffering was not punishment for any sin, but the setting for a conversation between God and the adversary about the nature of genuine faith. [music] If you let reason be the arbiter, you can accept the logically consistent argument of your friends as the most reasonable interpretation of human suffering. If you let scripture be the norm, you are forced into a much more complex, much more intellectually demanding, [music] much more uncomfortable, and infinitely closer understanding of the real experience of human suffering that has no easy explanation. In the 21st century, this point by Wesley is perhaps more urgent and more necessary than at any other time in Christian history. We live in an age in which reason, particularly scientific and empiricist reason, [music] has achieved the status of supreme and uncontested arbiter of virtually everything, including [music] religion. An entire generation has learned as an automatic reflex to read the Bible by first asking, [music] "But is this rational? Is this empirically verifiable? Is this compatible with my contemporary scientific and philosophical understanding?" Wesley would say these are legitimate and important questions [music] and reason is a precious and indispensable tool for answering them honestly. [music] But they are not the first questions and reason does not have the last word. The first question is always what is God saying here? And the last word belongs to scripture. Sixth point [music] experience as confirmation when the Bible burns within you. It was the evening of May 24th 1738. It was almost 9:00 at night. John Wesley was sitting in a meeting of a group of believers on Olders Gate Street in London. One of those smaller intimate gatherings without the glamour of large crowds or the prestige of a university setting.

[00:29:15]Someone was reading aloud Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, a text about the justifying work of God's grace through faith in Christ.

[00:29:22]And then something happened that Wesley described in his personal diary with words that have become over the centuries one of the most quoted and beloved passages in the entire history of Protestantism.

[00:29:33]I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I trusted in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation. And I was given the assurance that he had taken away my sins, mine, and [music] had saved me from the law of sin and death. The expression strangely warmed heart has become the quintessential symbol of all Wesleyan spirituality. It represents the precise moment when what is known intellectually descends into the heart and becomes a lived personal and unshakable certainty, not merely doctrine known and mentally assimilated.

[00:30:04]But what most people don't realize when they hear this story is the deep context of that historical moment. Wesley didn't arrive at Aldersgate as a blank slate without any prior spiritual history.

[00:30:15][music] He had spent years, decades, studying the Bible with all the intellectual seriousness he possessed.

[00:30:20]>> [music] >> He had been ordained an Anglican minister and taught with dedication. He had gone as a missionary to the Georgia colony in the United States with all the confidence of someone who knows the correct doctrine and knows what to preach. And he had returned from America humbled, spiritually empty, feeling that he had preached to others a gospel that he himself had never experienced inwardly at the deepest, most personal, most real level. The Alersgate experience didn't come out of nowhere.

[00:30:47]It didn't fall from the sky without precedent. [music] It crowned years of serious, honest, and persistent Bible study. It was the [music] moment when what was already in my head correctly finally descended to the place where God had always wanted it to reach my heart.

[00:31:02][music] And this is precisely the role that Wesley attributed to experience in his method of Bible reading and spiritual life. Experience does not create truth. It confirms truth.

[00:31:12]Experience is not the primary source from which you draw your beliefs. It is not an oracle that dictates doctrine. It is the place where the truth you discovered in scripture becomes real, alive, personal, and operative in your daily [music] life. It is the difference between knowing the chemical formula for water and being thirsty and actually drinking water. The two disciples on the road to Emmas said, "After talking for hours with the resurrected Jesus without recognizing him, [music] were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?" Luke 24:32 Wesley returned to this image repeatedly throughout his writings and sermons.

[00:31:51][music] The word that burns, not because you generated this burning emotionally through an effort of self-suggestion, not because the meeting was very lively or the music was very touching, but because the very spirit of God kindled within you the fire of a truth that scripture proclaims, and the spirit applies to the heart. Pause. The tone changes, becoming more careful, precise, and [music] sober. But Wesley was extraordinarily careful on this point and that caution is just as important as openness to experience. He identified a real and serious danger that he called enthusiasm. A term that in the 18th century had a specific porative connotation. The tendency of certain sincere religious people to take their own emotional experiences as supreme and independent spiritual authority above scripture and above reason. to say that the spirit told me or [music] a god revealed to me as a way to justify behaviors or beliefs that the Bible clearly does not support and often contradicts. Wesley had seen this happen in his own movement. [music] People who driven by genuine emotional experiences but interpreted irresponsibly arrived at doctrinal and practical conclusions that caused real and sometimes irreparable harm to Methodist communities and the people involved in them. [music] His answer was clear, firm, and consistent.

[00:33:07]Experience is real. It is valuable. It is part of a healthy Christian life. But it needs to be tested. Tested by scripture first and foremost and definitively informed by the historical tradition of the church. Evaluated by sound and balanced reason. If your experience says one thing [music] and the Bible says another, Wesley had no hesitation whatsoever. The Bible is right [music] and experience needs to be re-evaluated, not glorified. Experience authenticates and confirms what scripture already clearly states. It has no independent authority to teach what scripture does not say, much less what scripture contradicts. Let me ask you something in complete honesty. When was the last time you felt your heart truly warmed while reading the Bible? Not during a moving service with beautiful music? Not after a charismatic preacher?

[00:33:58]During silent reading, alone with the text open in the presence of God?

[00:34:02][music] If this never happens, or if it hasn't happened for a long time, perhaps the issue isn't the Bible. The Bible is the same book that set Wesley's heart ablaze in Altersgate, that transformed Augustine in Milan, [music] that liberated Luther in Wittenberg, that moved Spurgeon in London, that transformed millions of ordinary people in all ages and cultures throughout 20 centuries of Christian history. Perhaps the issue is the attitude chakra you bring to it, and that's exactly what this entire video is trying to change.

[00:34:31]Seventh point, the reading that produces holiness. The only destiny Wesley accepted. [music] We've reached the most important and most challenging point of this entire episode. The point that renders all the others useless if you don't understand and accept it. [music] Everything Wesley taught about Bible reading, prayer before opening the text, careful comparison of parallel passages, slow and attentive meditation, a community of mutual responsibility, the balanced use of reason, openness to confirmation through experience. All of this had a single possible destination, a single result that Wesley considered worthy of all this effort and all this discipline. It wasn't about becoming a good theologian [music] capable of discussing sotiology in sophisticated intellectual circles and impressing pastors with your references. It wasn't about becoming a disciplined and systematic Bible reader, punctually fulfilling your annual reading plan and not missing a day. [music] It wasn't even about feeling good, spiritually nourished, and satisfied during your morning devotions, going out into the day with the comforting feeling that you had done what you should. The only destination that Wesley considered genuinely worthy of all this method was holiness. Wesley used an expression that seems simple and familiar but carries immense and demanding theological and existential weight. Inner and outer holiness. Not one without the other.

[00:35:50][music] Not inner or outer according to convenience. The two inseparable operating in simultaneously complimentary and mutually verifying directions. Inner holiness. The progressive and continuous transformation of the heart, of desires, of motivations, of the deep tendencies that determine who you are when absolutely no human being is watching.

[00:36:12]Outer holiness. A life that visibly expresses and embodies this inner transformation in concrete daily relationships, in financial and economic choices, in dealing with the poor and marginalized, in work ethic, in integrity of word, in commitment to justice. For Wesley, one without the other was spiritual fraud, of opposite but equally serious forms. Inner holiness without outward holiness is a privatized and self-indulgent spirituality. A relationship with God confined to the prayer closet that produces no visible and verifiable fruit in the real world. That does not alleviate any suffering. That does not undo any injustice. That does not lift up anyone who has fallen. [music] It is the believer who has profound and moving experiences with God in the prayer room and treats servants cruy or systematically ignores the poor who live next door or lives in excessive comfort while others suffer misery nearby.

[00:37:06]Outward holiness without inner holiness is pheriseical moralism. A set of correct and observable behaviors generated by the effort of the human will without real and profound transformation of the heart producing pride well disguised as piety and judgment of others.

[00:37:22]>> [music] >> well disguised as keen spiritual discernment. The Bible read in Wesley's way should produce both dimensions from the inside [music] out organically through the power of the spirit working through the living word in the open heart. Wesley [music] wrote in a letter to Methodist preachers that he perceived they were falling into a worrying pattern of superficiality.

[00:37:43]What has greatly harmed you in the past and I fear still does today is the lack of reading. I have hardly ever known a preacher who read so little and perhaps by neglecting [music] it you have lost the taste for it. That is why your talent in preaching does not grow. It is exactly the same as it was 7 years ago.

[00:38:02][music] It is lively but not profound.

[00:38:04]There is little variety. There is no breadth of thought. Only reading can supply this with daily meditation and prayer. The phrase that keeps stopping me and won't let go is this. It's alive but not profound. Alive but not deep.

[00:38:19]Enthusiastic but superficial, noisy but [music] empty, speaking with apparent passion about transformation without being personally transformed. Preaching eloquently about holiness without growing in holiness. Teaching others about loving one's neighbor without truly loving the neighbor within reach.

[00:38:36]Wesley was describing a pattern that is widespread epidemic in contemporary Christianity, perhaps more so than in any other historical period. Ministries that grow rapidly in numbers but do not grow in real spiritual depth.

[00:38:49]Congregations that increase in size and organizational complexity but do not change in collective character.

[00:38:55]Believers who accumulate impressive biblical knowledge but do not visibly increase in genuine love for their neighbor. In patience with those who are difficult, in concrete generosity towards those who have nothing. And Wesley's diagnosis was accurate and direct. Shallow reading produces a life without depth. And true depth only comes when you read with the right attitudes, within the right method, with the right destination, firmly in mind, and clearly in sight. I'm going to leave you with the most important question in this entire video. The question Wesley would ask you directly if he could be here right now in this room looking you in the eyes. Are you different today after years of reading the Bible than you were before you began reading it seriously?

[00:39:39]Not in accumulated theological knowledge. Not in more sophisticated spiritual vocabulary. Not in the number of verses memorized. Not in the number of chapters read per week in a concrete and verifiable way. Are you more patient with difficult and irritating people than you were 5 years ago? More merciful to those who repeatedly make the same mistakes? More honest in business, taxes, and relationships? More concretely and sacrificially generous with your money? more capable of genuinely loving people who don't love you back. More present and attentive to the vulnerable people around you, not in distant [music] news, but in your immediate life. If the honest answer given without selfdeception is not very different [music] then Wesley would say that something is profoundly wrong not in the Bible which remains the same transformative and living book it always was but in the far method mang by which you have been reading it and the pontio's posture with which you have been approaching it because the Bible works it transforms it is as Wesley said with unwavering conviction a means of grace a [music] living and active channel through which God works in the human soul. That is what it promises.

[00:40:49]That is what it has produced when dealt with by the right attitudes. Wesley spent over 65 years being progressively and visibly transformed by the word. Not because he was born a flawless spiritual genius. Not because he had a perfect childhood or a life without crises, failures, and serious mistakes. He had many of them all. But because he opened the Bible every day as someone who had a single fundamental question.

[00:41:13]>> [music] >> God, what do you want to change in me today? And then he waited for a real answer. [music] And he obeyed what he received, even when it was inconvenient, even when it cost him something real.

[00:41:25]Even when it contradicted what he preferred to continue being and doing.

[00:41:29]This is Wesley's method. [music] It's not technically complicated. It's existentially radical. Because the rarest thing in the world isn't biblical intelligence. There's biblical intelligence available in abundance in books, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

[00:41:43]The truly rare thing, the thing Wesley possessed [music] and that produced the extraordinary life he lived is a genuine willingness to be changed. A willingness to approach the text without an outgoing agenda, without prior reservations protecting what you don't want to give away, without the part of you that has already decided not to change what is most precious and most comfortable to keep as it is. And it is this disposition cultivated every morning before each verse in silence before God that separates reading that informs from reading that transforms forever. [music] Before we conclude, here are two warnings that stem directly from what we studied today. Warning. One, biblical [clears throat] knowledge is not synonymous with biblical transformation.

[00:42:24]You may know the names of the twel apostles by heart, the precise difference between justification and sanctification, the detailed historical context of each Pauline epistle, the main positions on the millennium, and still have a hard heart, fully intact pride, anemic love for your neighbor, [music] and close relationships destroyed by a lack of humility and mercy. Wesley would be the first to tell you with love and firmness. Accumulated information without active and continuous surrender is the most sophisticated [music] and therefore most dangerous form of religiosity without transformation. It is possible to use biblical knowledge as an elegant shield against biblical transformation and many people do so without realizing it.

[00:43:05]Question, what was the last verse you read that concretely changed in a way that was visible and verifiable by people around you a real decision in your life? Warning [music] two, a method without surrender is a ritual without transformative power. You can methodically implement all the practical steps we studied in this video. Fixed reading [music] time, prayer before opening the text, careful comparison of passages, slow meditation, participation in accountability groups, and still come away from the text exactly as you went in. If you didn't arrive with a real active and honest willingness to be changed by what you will find, [music] the method is the container. The prior surrender is the content. Without content, the most elaborate and sophisticated container is absolutely useless. Question. If you were to open the Bible right now at this very moment, with your entire life as it is today, with all your current standards and all your areas of resistance, [music] would you be genuinely willing to hear something you don't want to hear? Not in abstract theory, in the real concrete practice of today. This was the third episode in our series about how John Wesley read the Bible. Today you learned that Wesley didn't read to learn more.

[00:44:15]He read to become more like Christ. In the fourth and final episode of this series, we will discuss the most profound aspects of reading the Holy Scriptures, something greater than any method. Don't miss it if episode 3 challenged you. Share this with someone who needs to hear it. Not to boost your channel's metrics, but because it could be the start of a real and lasting change in the life of someone you genuinely love. Leave a comment below with the question that impacted you the most today. I want to read and answer it personally. [music] The conversation continues in the comments. Third, you subscribe to the channel and activate the notification bell. The final episode of this series will be the most practical, the most historical, and the most inspiring of all four. And before closing, I leave you with the words that Wesley would pronounce every morning before every verse, before every chapter. Here I am far from the busy paths of men. I sit alone. Only God is here. In his presence, I open and read his book. [music] For this sole purpose, to find the way to heaven. May you open your book like this today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life. Until the next episode of the series, How John Wesley Read the Bible.