An edited extract from Boston’s Works, vol 2, giving lessons from what he has said on the Shorter Catechism answer to the Question: How is the word made effectual to salvation?
1. Prize your Bibles and read them diligently in your families and by yourselves.
And look on that exercise as a means appointed by God for your souls’ good. “Search the scriptures” (Jn 5:39). Alas, the dust on many people’s Bibles will be a heavy witness against them at the great day, which should stimulate us all to peruse them carefully.
2. Prize the preaching of the Word, and attend on it conscientiously and remember that neglecting it and deserting it is not such a light thing as many think it is; it is the spiritual means which the Lord uses in converting sinners and edifying saints.
And it is necessarily productive of the most terrible consequences to those who despise it.
3. Let not the one jostle out the other. God has joined them; do not then put them asunder.
Do not think that, because you hear the preaching, you may neglect reading the Bible; nor sit at home unnecessarily on the Lord’s Day, thinking you do as well with your Bibles as attending the preaching of the Word. For as the preaching sends you to your Bible, your Bible should send you to the preaching, if you would listen to it (see 1 Cor 1:21). And the Bible is read in vain if it does not inspire you with a sincere love to the preaching of the Word.
4. The Word is necessary for saints as well as sinners.
It is false growth by which people grow beyond it, either in preaching or reading, before they get to heaven. Indeed all such growth and progress is an absolute delusion.
5. Look to the Lord Himself to make the Word effectual.
And labour to believe the Word so that it may profit your souls. For without faith, the Word will be unprofitable to you; and without the influence of the Spirit, you will reap no benefit by it.