How to Study the Bible - Week 2 Session 1
February 24, 2023 · Pastor Miles DeBenedictis
In this teaching
This first session of Week 2 lays the foundation for studying Scripture, explaining why believers should regularly access God's Word—to know God, grow in faith, and be transformed—and what it means to rightly handle the Bible as diligent, doing students rather than mere hearers. It sets up the practical method of devotional Bible study to be taught next.
- God created us for relationship and reveals Himself chiefly through Scripture, so eternal life begins now as we come to know Him through His Word.
- The Bible is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, working a slow but real transformation in us by the Word and the Spirit.
- We access the Scriptures personally in order to make them accessible to others, fulfilling Christ's commission to know Him and make Him known.
- Scripture brings salvation, growth, blessing, wholeness, holiness, sanctification, and fruitfulness; faith comes by hearing the Word of God.
- 2 Timothy 2:15 calls us to be diligent workers who rightly divide the Word—study takes labor, but yields understanding.
- It is possible to know the Bible academically yet not know God; the difference is being a doer of the Word, not a hearer only.
Readable is a lightly edited reading copy; Verbatim stays close to the spoken words. The audio and video are the record of what was said.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. ()
Before we learn how to study the Bible, we must see why God's Word matters—and what it means to truly handle it.
Beginning at the Ground Level
Tonight we begin at what I would call the real ground level, a very foundational approach to studying the Bible. It's called devotional Bible study, and as I share the process with you, you'll probably find it very simple—almost so simple that it becomes difficult, because we often expect studying the Bible to require far more than what I'm asking of you.
I want to start at the very lowest level of studying the Bible so that you can begin using this and have it become something you practice on a regular basis. These are the very same tools I use every single time I open the Scriptures. I'm currently reading through Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, a chapter a day, using the exact method I'll show you tonight. After you do this twenty-five or thirty times, you no longer write down each step—it becomes second nature. Some of what we'll cover over the next eight weeks will look technical and hard to wrap your brain around, but as you break the text down into propositions and look at how one sentence connects to the next, it will change the way you read and understand the Bible.
What This Book Is
Some of you have seen a Gideon New Testament. In its opening pages there's a wonderful, succinct description of what this book is:
The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, and the Christian's charter... Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully.
My hope is that you would become one—sadly among the minority in the American church—who consistently reads through the Bible, hopefully daily, even just a few minutes, so the Word of God comes into your heart. The point is not only to know what the Scriptures say, but to know the God behind the Scriptures.
God Wants to Be Known
I hope you recognize that the God of the universe—the first and the last, the King of kings, the God of all glory—created you and intends to have a relationship with you. He wants to reveal Himself to you, and one of the chief ways He has chosen to do so is through the pages of Scripture. If we want to know what God is like, we must go to the Scriptures regularly.
Jesus said in , "This is eternal life, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Stepping into eternal life is not something that only happens after you breathe your last; you begin to experience eternal life now as you get to know God through His Word, His Spirit, and prayer. For some of you the Word is already a daily habit. My hope is that by the end of this class, time with God in His Word will be a regular part of life for the great majority of us—something we desire more than our necessary daily food. For many, fear holds them back; they worry they can't understand it. But the same God who inspired the Scriptures can teach us the Scriptures by His Holy Spirit, which is why we always begin in prayer, asking Him to open our eyes to behold wonders from His Word.
A Bible in Every Language
Several years ago at a conference I picked up a book labeled "Holy Bible," opened it, and found every page blank. It was from The Seed Company, an organization connected with Wycliffe Bible Translators, working to translate the Scriptures into more than two thousand languages that still do not have them. Some of those languages have no written form at all—only a spoken one. Missionaries learn the language and culture, build a phonetic alphabet, and then translate the Scriptures and teach people to read.
Imagine having no Bible in your language—what that would mean for you, your family, your church. Most of us here have more than one copy. I have at least ten Bibles on the shelf behind my office desk. Yet according to Barna research, only about a quarter of Christians in America read the Bible daily. That's not very good. When we look at the problems in our culture and even in our churches—no church is perfect; if you think you found the perfect church, you ruined it when you walked in—one major reason is that God's people have not had God's Word in their lives in a big way. My desire is that the Word of God would become more important to every one of us.
Tools for Daily Reading
I've mentioned the Listening Plan. If you go to thelisteningplan.com, you can subscribe and receive a daily email every weekday with the passage—for example, . You can listen to the passage, speed it up, or click to read it on Blue Letter Bible. There are links to David Guzik's Enduring Word commentary, My Utmost for His Highest, and Spurgeon's Morning and Evening. About 2,500 people use it daily. There's also a Daily Old Testament plan that works the same way, currently going through Hosea, and when it reaches Malachi it simply returns to Genesis and keeps going.
My oldest son recently asked me how many times I've read through the whole Bible. I honestly couldn't give a number, but it's been quite a few times. Certain passages are more well-worn, especially the Epistles. The method I'll teach tonight is most applicable in the Epistles, which make up the largest section of the New Testament.
Profitable for Four Things
Let's return to . Scripture is profitable for four things: doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Doctrine is the plumb line that establishes what is right and true. The moment you set that true line, it exposes—or reproves—everything out of alignment. The Bible is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to reveal the thoughts and intents of our hearts. That can be uncomfortable, but it is purposeful. God wants to reveal where we are in relationship to Him so that we would be reproved, and then corrected—brought back into right relationship.
God made us to live in connection with Him. Because of the sin of , sin spread to all humanity—proven by the fact that we disobey His commands—and we are separated from Him. He sent His Son to make it possible for us to be brought back. But He doesn't stop at the relationship; He wants to transform us. says God transforms us by the renewing of our minds, so our lives display His good and perfect will, bringing Him praise and glory.
The Slow Work of Transformation
This is a process. If you've walked with the Lord more than a week, you know you're not where you'd like to be; sometimes we even backslide. I heard a story, possibly from Max Lucado, of an old gardener whose grandson told him he no longer found the Bible interesting. The grandfather handed him a basket and asked him to fill it with water. "It's a basket—it won't hold water," the boy said, but he ran it under the faucet anyway. Three times the grandfather sent him back, and three times the boy returned with an empty basket, frustrated. Finally the grandfather said, "Yes, but it's cleaner than it was when I gave it to you." Having God's Word go through us continually may feel futile, but over time God is cleansing us, even when we don't see it.
I have thirteen years of photos of my children—65,000 of them—and I can scroll through and watch a child grow until my thirteen-year-old son is now taller than me. Day to day there seems to be no change, but the transformation is real. That's what happens in each of us as the Word goes into our hearts and minds. We rarely see it, but an old friend who hasn't seen us in years often does: "There's something different about you." The longer I pastor, the more I realize that far more important than growing in Bible knowledge is that the fruit of the Spirit grows in our lives—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. That matters more to me than any gift of the Spirit, and it comes about by the work of the Word and the Spirit.
Access, in Order to Make Accessible
Why this class? We are learning to access the Scriptures in order that we may make them accessible to others. God wants you to know Him and to make Him known. His commission was given to His disciples—not only the apostles—and a disciple is a follower of Jesus. He has commissioned each one of us to know Him and make Him known.
You don't need to know every answer to every question about a passage. You only need to know what you know through your own study. As you share even the small things, your understanding grows. And we have the added benefit of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said He would not leave us without an instructor; the Spirit guides us into all truth. As we ask God to open our eyes, He begins to make connections between passages—what we call correlation. The Bible is a vast hyperlinked text with tens of thousands of cross-references, and God connects them for us, revealing Himself more fully.
In high school I learned printing and graphics on offset presses, where you combine four colors—CMYK. When all the colors come together, the picture becomes clear. When you pull Scripture together as a whole—the whole counsel of God—Christ's nature and God's likeness become clear to us.
Learning by Teaching
When I was asked in 1999 to teach the junior highers in the room just down the hall, I felt completely unequipped. I said yes mostly out of a nagging sense that God wanted me to do it—greater than anything my youth pastor, Tony, could have said. The first day I taught from , on Valentine's Day 1999, I felt like a complete fool, certain an elder would walk in and accuse me of teaching heresy. None ever did. But about six months later my understanding of the Scriptures had grown bigger than at any time in my life—because I was studying to access the Word for myself so I could make it accessible to others. My early notes are rudimentary, ground-level, and surely borrowed from Chuck Smith and Warren Wiersbe, but I learned the Bible better than ever because I was sharing it with someone else. That's where this class is going—not just so you'll access the Bible for yourself, but so you'll share it with somebody else.
Why We Access the Scriptures
As says, "As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby." We grow in faith as we access the Scriptures. Just before that, says it is the Word of God that makes us wise to salvation. You would not have known the reality of who you are as a sinner before a holy God had He not revealed it in the Scriptures. God has given each person a conscience that either accuses or excuses us—we've all felt it—but we needed God's Word to reveal exactly what the problem is and what the solution is. We are born again "not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever."
says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly... but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper." If we want blessing, wholeness, holiness, and fruitfulness—and biblical blessing and prosperity are likely different from what your unbelieving neighbor imagines—they are all connected to the Word of God.
says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God"—not reading, but hearing. So simply listening to the Listening Plan grows your faith. God also cleanses us by His Word; says He sanctifies and cleanses us "by the washing of water by the word." says, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You," and "How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word." Jesus prayed in , "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth." God's aim is that you and I would be transformed and sanctified by His Word.
Rightly Dividing the Word
What are we seeking to do? Open to : "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The King James says "study to show yourself approved," and the NIV says "correctly handling the word of truth." The person who correctly handles the Word is a diligent worker who studies it. It takes labor; it doesn't come easy. But as we invest the time, we grow in understanding so that we may make the Scriptures accessible to others.
Doers, Not Hearers Only
We are not merely seeking head knowledge. I have met people who knew the Bible far better than me whose lives were wretched. It is entirely possible to be an expert in New Testament or Old Testament studies, even to quote the original languages, and not be a Christian. Read the blog posts of Princeton Theological Seminary—considered one of the greatest seminaries in America—and you'll find many people who know the Bible and don't know God. It is possible to know the message and miss the One who inspired it.
The difference is found in : "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." The hearer only is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like. But "he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it... this one will be blessed in what he does."
Jesus said in , "Whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock"—and when the storm came, it did not fall. says, "Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it." says, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." And says, "By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." So we endeavor to become workmen and workwomen of the Word who rightly divide it—not merely to know who Daniel or Nebuchadnezzar or Nimrod was, but so the Word becomes part of who we are and transforms how we live.
Exercised in the Word
The author of Hebrews says something striking in chapter 5: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God... For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Some have been Christians for decades and ought to be teachers, yet still need the basics. God's focus is that we become those exercised in using the Scriptures—people who know how to do the Word.
With all of that, we now move from the why to the what to the how. After our break, we'll get into devotional Bible study—a very practical method for simply consuming the Scriptures so that they become part of our lives and our lives are transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ. That is what God wants to do for us.
This week, there was a sign-in sheet on a table as you were coming in the door. If you had not checked off that you were here, we will start passing that around with a pen. You can check in that you are here tonight. If your name is not on the list, that means you are not in the system, and we want to put you into our system for the class so that we can keep a good track of everybody going through this class.
At the very end of the sign-in sheet, there are some blanks. Please write your name legibly, both first and last name, as well as your email address. Write it so that I can understand it, because I will put your name into the system, and then you will receive an email to fully register for the class. This does involve a $15 charge for the book. You'll notice we have a big stack of books here; our publisher got all our books here today. When we take a break after the first hour, feel free to come up and grab one if you haven't gotten a book. There should be enough for everybody who has registered for the class.
If you got a book last week and started reading through it, I want to commend you for beginning to read. I'm not going to track everybody's progress through this as a textbook. If you were taking my class at the Bible College, this would be one of three books that you would have to reread and do a book report on. However, I am not going to ask you to do a book report, so I encourage you to read through the book. You will discover that there are some terms being used, such as exegesis and hermeneutics, along with a number of other terms that you may not have seen before. I understand they may be challenging; you might have to look them up online, and they may not make complete sense to you at the beginning. However, hopefully, you will get the gist of what is being talked about.
There are some technical things that Gordon Fee discusses in this book, but I have found it to be very helpful. Over the years, many of my students at the Bible College have commented in their book reports that they learned a lot of things they did not know, even after having taken some classes on what we call inductive Bible study, which we will be looking at in this class.
As we go through, we will explore one of the methodologies tonight. We will be looking at another methodology, starting at what I would say is the real ground level, a very foundational level. What we will look at tonight is called devotional Bible study. As I share with you the process for devotional Bible study, you will probably find it to be very simple. The process is almost so simple that...
It becomes difficult for people because sometimes we're expecting that we're going to need to do a whole lot more than what I'm asking you to do in devotional Bible study. What I want to do is start at the very lowest level of studying the Bible so that as you begin to be introduced to this, hopefully, you start to use it regularly.
As I shared last week, if you were here, I'm teaching you the very same tools that I use every single time I open the Scriptures. I'm currently reading through Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, just a chapter a day. As I go through it, I'm simply using the exact same method that I'm going to show you tonight to read through the Scriptures.
What ends up happening is that after you do it 25 or 30 times, it becomes something that is just second nature. You start to read the Bible in that way. The different things that I'm going to teach you over the next eight weeks may look very technical and kind of weird, making them hard to wrap your brain around. However, as you start to break the text down into propositions at a time and look at how the text connects from one sentence to the next, it will change the way that you read and understand the Bible. You'll find that you begin to understand it more deeply.
Some of you have probably seen one of these; this is a Gideon New Testament. If you go to a baseball game, sometimes they will be standing outside PETCO Park handing these out. I remember when I was in high school, as I would leave Orange Glen High School here in Escondido, there would be Gideons outside handing these out. A friend of mine gave me one of these years ago, and in the opening pages, it has a little blurb about what the Bible is. I've always found this to be a really clear and succinct description of what this book is that we have.
The Gideon New Testament says, "The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, and the soldier's sword."
The Christian's charter here is that Paradise is restored, Heaven is opened, and the Gates of Hell are disclosed. Christ is its grand subject, our good, the design, and the glory of God is its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully. It is a mind of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. It has given you life, and it will be opened at the judgment and remembered forever. It involves the highest responsibility; reward will come for the greatest labor and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.
I think that's just a very clear statement about what this book is. My hope is that you will become one, sadly among the minority in the Christian church in America, who actually take the time to consistently read through the Bible on a regular basis—hopefully daily, and maybe even more than once a day. Spend even just a few minutes opening up the Scriptures to have the Word of God come into your heart, so that you might know not only what the Scriptures say but also come to know more fully the God who is behind the Scriptures. He desires to reveal Himself to you in a way that you really grow in the relationship with Him.
I hope you recognize that the God of the universe, the First and the Last, the One who was and is and is to come, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the God of all glory, created you and intends to have a relationship with you. He wants to reveal Himself to you, and one of the chief ways He has determined to do this is through the pages of Scripture. If we want to get to know what God is like, then we need to make sure that we go to the Scriptures on a regular basis to get to know Him.
Jesus said in , "This is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Stepping into eternal life is not something that necessarily has to happen only after you breathe your last in this life. You begin to experience eternal life now as you get to know God through His Word, spending time with Him in His Word, spending time with Him in prayer, and getting to know Him by His Holy Spirit. Hopefully, that's what you will begin to do now. I assume there are probably some of you here already.
Who it is, your pattern, is a part of your life already—a habit, really—that the Word of God is a part of your daily routine. My hope is that by the end of this class, the greater majority of all of you here will find that spending time with God in His Word is more a part of your regular daily routine. As the Scriptures speak of it, it becomes something that we desire more than our necessary or daily food. Hopefully, that is what it becomes for us.
Now, for a lot of people, it's not that they don't want to read the Bible, but because they find the Bible to be something that causes them a little bit of fear. They worry that they won't understand it or that they can't understand it. The awesome thing is that I believe the same God who inspired the Scriptures can teach us the Scriptures by His Holy Spirit.
As we'll talk about tonight and as we'll talk about every single week when we gather together, the place that we always start when we open the Scriptures is by going to God in prayer and asking Him to open our eyes so that we may behold wonders from His Word. So, before we fully get started tonight, let's pray and go to God, asking Him to lead us into His Word.
God, I do thank You for Your Word. It is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It has the ability to reveal to us not only who You are but who we are in relationship to You. It also reveals how we are to come before You and how we can enter into a relationship with You. Lord, Your Word constantly directs us back to You.
I pray that tonight, as we open the Scriptures and consider how we should approach these things, You would teach us. Teach us from Your Word, but also teach us some practical step-by-step things that would enable us to more effectively open Your Word, to understand who You are and what it is that You desire. As I talked about last week, Lord, You reveal Yourself to us—Your nature, what You are like, and Your will, what You desire.
I pray that as we take time together corporately here, whether it's on a Sunday morning or here as we are right now on a Tuesday night, or if we're doing it individually in the morning or with a small group of friends or prayer partners, You would open our eyes to behold wonders from Your Word. That we would know You more fully and grow in our relationship with You.
So, I ask that You would stir in the hearts of every single person here a desire to get into Your Word and to have Your Word begin to come into them. That they would abide in Your Word and Your Word would abide in them.
I believe you begin with desire. My favorite scripture says that You work in us to will and to do Your good pleasure. So, would You work in us to desire Your word? We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen."
Several years ago, I was at a conference. At many pastors' or Bible conferences, they have an area where various groups, ministries, and organizations set up tables to inform attendees about their work. I walked past a table and saw a book sitting there that said "Holy Bible" on it. I picked it up and opened it, only to find that every single page was blank. This was for a group called The Seed Company. The Seed Company is an organization connected with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They work with organizations and missionaries around the world to translate the scriptures into the more than 2,000 languages that still do not have the Bible translated into their language.
Some of those languages not only lack a Bible translation but also have no written language. They have a spoken language, but no one has ever created a written form for them. The missionaries who go to these communities learn the language and the culture, and then they build a phonetic alphabet so that these people can write the scriptures and learn to read, in addition to receiving translated scriptures. It is an amazing thing that these Bible translators do. The goal has been to get God's word into the languages of peoples all around the world.
Although we have amazing technology today, in many cases, it still requires missionaries to go to these people, learn the language, and record the scriptures. Imagine what it would be like if you were unable to have a Bible in your language that you could read. What would that mean not just for you personally, but for your family or for the church you are a part of? What if there were no Bible in your language?
I was talking with some of the pastors earlier today, and just on my shelf right behind me in my office at home, I have probably no less than ten different Bibles. The reality is that most of you here tonight likely have more than one copy of the scriptures in your language. However, the sad reality, based on research done by a group up in Ventura called Barna, is quite different.
Research shows that only about a quarter of Christians in America read the Bible daily. That's not very good. If we look at the problems we see within our culture, as well as the issues present in the church, I will be the first to confess that there are problems in every church, including ours. No church is a perfect church. If you think you have found the perfect church, you ruined it when you came through the doors.
We are not a perfect church because we are not perfect people. One of the reasons for the problems in many churches is that God's people have not had God's Word in their lives in a significant way. My desire is that we would see the Word of God become more important to every single one of us.
I shared with you last week about the listening plan, and I want to bring it up here on the screens tonight. If you go to the listeningplan.com, you can subscribe to this service, and it will come directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe to it on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. I need to put the link for Spotify up there as well.
Basically, if you subscribe to this via email, every weekday, Monday through Friday, you will receive an email that looks just like this. For example, on September 27, 2022, our reading passage was . If you click on the link, it will take you to where you can listen to the passage: "Apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope." You can listen to the passage, and you can even speed it up if you want it to go faster. Alternatively, you can click to read the passage, which will take you to Blue Letter Bible. We will talk more about this website at a later time.
There are also other resources available, such as the Enduring Word Bible Commentary by my friend David Guzik. You can look at his commentary on 1 Timothy and read through his insights on the passage. His commentary is excellent, and we will discuss it more in the future. Additionally, there are daily devotionals like "My Utmost for His Highest," which I will talk more about later, and "Morning and Evening" with Charles Spurgeon, another daily devotional.
This service is available to you for free. We currently have about 2,500 subscribers who go through this every single day on a regular basis. I also mentioned last time the Daily Old Testament, which covers the Old Testament in the same way. You can subscribe to this as well. If you go to the archive on the website, today's passage is , which looks very similar because it is essentially the same format.
Identical but for September 27th, we are now going through the book of Hosea. For the Daily O2 Old Testament, it's almost all the way through the Old Testament because it has been going for several years. When it gets to , which is the last book of the Old Testament, it will go back to . It will just keep going through, and if you have already gone through the Old Testament with it, you can go back to Genesis and keep going through it.
My oldest son was recently asking me how many times I have read through the whole Bible. I am not sure that I could answer that question, but I can tell you that I have read through it a number of times—quite a few times at this point. There are certain passages that are a little bit more well-worn, if you will, in my Bible, especially in the Epistles, which we will talk a lot about tonight. The method of study that I am going to discuss is probably the most applicable in the Epistles. The Epistles are the largest section of the New Testament. From Matthew to Revelation, the 27 books of the New Testament include a little bit more than half that are Epistles. What we will look at tonight will be very helpful in understanding what they are saying.
As we go through what we are discussing tonight, we will do questions a little bit differently. If you have questions as I am talking, text them to 760-814-1223. Those will come directly to me on my phone, and I can look at them during our break to address some of the questions. We will probably also open it up to pass a microphone around to ask some questions as we start the second hour of our discussion.
Let me start where we began last week with a passage of Scripture from Second Timothy. If you have your Bible, you can open to that passage, or maybe you already know it well. Second Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, states that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. I talked about last week how it is profitable for four things that Paul mentions in this letter: for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.
Doctrine is that plumb line, just like the plumb bob up there on the screen. It establishes what is right and true, and immediately when you establish that true line, it exposes or reproves everything that is out of alignment. If you have read the Bible before...
You realize that the Bible is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. It is able to reveal the thoughts and intents of our hearts. It shows where our heart is and where our life is, and it reproves us, demonstrating that we are out of alignment. Now, that can be uncomfortable. It's likely that you have read passages of Scripture before and felt a little uncomfortable about what they say regarding who you are or what they expose about your relationship with God. All of that is purposeful; that is God's aim. He wants to reveal where we stand in relation to Him so that we would be reproved and rebuked, but all of that is for the purpose of correction.
God wants to bring us back into a right relationship with Him. As I have said many times before here at Cross Connection Church, God made us to live life in connection with Him. Because of the sin of , sin has spread to all humanity. We all prove that by the fact that we disobey God's commands, which is at the very ground level what sin is: disobedience to God's commands. Because of sin, we are separated from Him, and He has sent His Son to make it possible for us to be brought back into a right relationship.
He corrects that, but He also wants to transform us. says that God transforms us by the renewing of our minds so that we would show or display what is His good and perfect will in this world. Our lives should begin to be lived in such a way that brings praise, honor, and glory to Him, walking out His will. That is what God wants to do in my life and in your life, and that is a process. It doesn't happen immediately.
Every single one of us here in this room knows that if you've been walking with the Lord for more than a week, you realize that you are not where you would like to be in your relationship with God. You would like to draw nearer to Him. Unfortunately, there are times when we are not moving forward but rather backsliding, and that is a reality of the Christian life. Hopefully, this class will serve as something to kind of be like a goad, pushing you in the direction of seeking the Lord more fully, so that you would grow in that relationship with Him. As you do, He begins to transform us completely. I heard a story.
Years ago, I came across a story by Max Lucado about an old man who loved his garden. He spent hours each day tending to it and taking care of it. People would come to meet with this old man to glean his wisdom. Often, he wouldn't say much; they would simply spend time with him.
One day, one of his grandchildren approached him and began to talk. This grandfather, the gardener, had shared with his children and grandchildren for many years the importance of God's Word in their lives. However, his grandson, now a young adult, expressed that he no longer found the Word of God interesting or helpful and didn't want to read it as much anymore.
As the grandfather worked in the garden, harvesting some of the produce, he emptied a basket and asked his grandson to take it over to the hose and fill it with water. The grandson looked at him and said, "But it won't hold any water; it's a basket." The grandfather insisted, "Just go and fill it with water." Reluctantly, the grandson complied and ran it under the faucet for about thirty seconds before returning to his grandfather.
The grandfather then said, "No, no, go do it again." The grandson hesitated but knew arguing wouldn't help, so he went back and filled it for another minute or so. When he returned, his grandfather asked him to do it again. By this time, the grandson was frustrated but went back and ran water through the basket for about five minutes. He returned and said, "It doesn't hold any water."
The grandfather replied, "Yes, but it's cleaner than it was when I gave it to you." It may seem futile to have God's Word going into us continuously, regularly, on a daily basis. We might wonder why we are doing this, but over time, God is transforming us. He is cleansing and cleaning us, which is what He desires to do, even if we often do not see it.
I was talking with Pastor Garrett just a few hours ago about the impact of technology. Because of smartphones, I have 13 years of pictures of my children, from the moment they were born until now. I can scroll through these memories, and I currently have 65,000 photos on my phone, which is very much a Millennial thing.
I can actually select that I only want to see pictures of Ethan, or I only want to see pictures of Addison, my daughter, or Evangeline, or Elliott. I can scroll through their entire lives, where I have pictures of them almost daily. You can see the transformation of this child into now my son, who is taller than me and looks like a man, even though he is only 13.
As I scroll through those pictures, I can see the change. There were days when it felt like there was no change taking place, and even for a parent, sometimes it seems like there is no change. However, there is a change that is taking place, and that's what is happening in each of us as we are growing more and more into the likeness of Christ. As His word goes into our hearts and minds, He transforms us. Oftentimes, we don't see it because it seems to be a very slow, incremental process.
The amazing thing is that we bump into an old friend or relative who hasn't seen us for years, and they are often the ones to say, "You know, there's something different about you." They may not be able to put their finger on what it is, but they can sense that something has changed. It may just be a minor change to us, but it's a major change to others as they see the production of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
It is my conviction that the longer I do this thing called pastoring a church, the more I realize that far more than you growing in your Bible knowledge—which I do think is important and helpful—what truly matters is that we see the fruit of the Spirit growing in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control should be evident.
I hope and pray that these qualities begin to be seen in your life and mine. We should be able to notice that we seem more patient than we did a year ago, or that we seem more joyful or more at peace than we did a year ago. That is far more important than being able to quote something from Zechariah or Zephaniah, or even knowing who those prophets are. The increase of love, joy, peace, patience, self-control, gentleness, kindness, and faithfulness is what truly matters to me.
These qualities are much more important than any gift of the Spirit you might have, such as prophecy, tongues, or healing. I care very little about those things in comparison to the growth of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control, and that growth comes about through the work of the Word.
The spirit of God in our lives is why these things are so important. He has given us His Word, which is useful for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. This equips the man or woman of God thoroughly for every good work.
So, why this class? Why are we doing this? I talked about this last week, but I think it's important to touch on it a little bit again today. This class, what we're doing here tonight, is so that we might learn to access the Scriptures in order to make them accessible to others. God wants you to know Him, but He also wants you to make Him known. His commission, which I went over last week in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, was to His disciples—not just to the apostles. They were to the disciples, and a disciple is a follower of Jesus. Over time, you become an obedient follower of Jesus.
He has commissioned me, Pastor Mark, Pastor Nick, and Pastor Jason. He has also commissioned Henry and Lorraine. He has commissioned each and every single one of us. Ralph, He has commissioned you. He has commissioned us to know Him and to make Him known. Therefore, we want to access the Scriptures ourselves so that we can make them accessible to others and share that knowledge with other people.
You don't need to know every single answer to every single question about the passages of Scripture that you will read tonight or tomorrow morning. You only need to know what you understand about the Scriptures through your study. As you begin to grasp what God's Word says, even in the very small things, and you start to share that with others, your knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures will grow.
We have the added benefit of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "I will not leave you without an instructor; the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth and teach you all things." As we seek God, who inspired the Scriptures, and ask Him to give us insight into the Scriptures, we can pray, "Open our eyes that we may behold wonders from Your Word." The Holy Spirit of God begins to make connections from one passage to another. We call that correlation, and we'll talk about that more later.
Remember that graphic I showed you last week that looked kind of like a rainbow? The Bible is this huge hyperlinked text, where there are thousands—tens of thousands—of places where the Bible speaks of other passages or points to them.
Other locations help you begin to make those correlations. God connects the scriptures together for you, and now you see God revealing Himself more fully to us.
I had the privilege, when I was in high school, of learning Printing and Graphics. I learned how to do printing on big offset presses. When we would print in colors on an offset press, we used four colors: CMYK. When you put all of those four colors together—basically, the primary colors red, blue, and yellow, along with black—the picture becomes clear. When you pull the scripture together as a whole, the whole counsel of God, Christ's nature, and God's likeness become clearer to us. This clarity comes only as we begin to read the scriptures, study them, listen to other Bible studies, and engage with other people in understanding the scriptures.
We want to access the scriptures so that we can make them accessible to others. When I was asked to teach the Bible to a group of junior hires in a room just about 45 feet from here back in 1999, I did not feel equipped or adequate for the task. I simply said, "Okay, I'll do it," but I felt somewhat pressured. I didn't really want to do it, but it wasn't my youth pastor, Pastor Tony, who was pressuring me. It was this nagging sense that God was telling me, "I want you to do this," and that was much greater than anything Pastor Tony could have ever said to me.
I remember the first day I got up to teach out of on February 14th, Valentine's Day, 1999. I felt like a complete loser and fool, and I had no idea what I was doing. In the back of my mind, I thought that no doubt one of the elders would walk in and listen to me teach, and they would say, "You're teaching heresy," and get upset. None of them ever did show up; they probably should have.
What I began to find, about six months later, was that my understanding of the scriptures had grown bigger than at any other time in my life. Why? Because I was studying the scriptures to try to access them for myself so that I could make them accessible to others. I know for a fact, because I still have the notes, and praise God there was not a recording device in that room at that time. I still have the notes on my computer from those Bible studies.
They are very rudimentary and ground level. There's hardly anything deep out of those passages, and there's surely a whole bunch ripped off from Chuck Smith, Warren Wiersbe, and all kinds of other people. However, I will tell you one thing: I began to learn the Bible better than I ever had before because I was sharing what I was learning with someone else. I'm going to kind of dip your toe in this; that's where we're going with this class. We're not just doing this class so that you will begin to access the Bible for yourself, but so that you will begin to share that with somebody else. We'll get there a little bit more, and that might cause your blood pressure to increase now, but God will be with you.
So, why do we access the Scriptures? As I shared with you last week, a verse from First Peter chapter two states, "As newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby." We grow in our faith as we access the Scriptures. Why are we doing this? So that we would grow in our understanding of who God is, that we will grow in our understanding of what God has called us to, and that we will grow in our understanding of who we are in relationship to Him. As newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.
Now, the interesting thing is that just a few verses before that, in First Peter chapter one, it says that it is the word of God that makes us wise to salvation. The word of God not only serves as this food or pure milk that we grow thereby, but it is also the very thing that helps us to know how we are to be saved. Paul talks about this in one of his letters to Timothy as well; the Scriptures make you wise to salvation. You would not have known the reality of who you were as a sinner before a holy God had God not revealed that to you in the Scriptures.
You might have known that you broke the conscience that you have. Paul tells us in the Book of Romans that God has given each human being a conscience whereby it either accuses or excuses us. We've all experienced that. We do or say things without any sort of Bible telling us what not to say or what to say, and we realize that we feel bad about what we just did or said. That's your conscience; it's accusing you.
Sometimes it excuses us. We feel like, "Well, is that an okay thing?" I think it's an okay thing. It's kind of like an umpire saying "safe" or "out." We have this conscience within us that might tell us we are not in the right place, but we need God's Word to reveal to us exactly what the problem is and what the solution is.
We are born not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the Word of God, which lives and abides forever. It is that which makes us wise unto salvation; it is that which helps us grow in our faith. In , we read, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night."
We will talk in the future about what meditation is. This person meditates upon God's Word throughout the day and night. They shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.
The Word of God helps us to grow in our faith. It helps us to be aware of what salvation is all about. It brings salvation, but it also brings blessing. How many of you would like to experience God's blessing? I think probably all of us would. Hopefully, you all raised your hands. How many of you would like to be prosperous in all the things that you do?
Now, again, we could do an entire study on what biblical blessing and biblical prosperity are. I want to suggest that biblical blessing and biblical prosperity are probably different from what your neighbor, who doesn't go to church, thinks prosperity and blessing are. There are differences in those things, but I would assume that we all want to experience God's blessing and God's prosperity.
If we want to experience blessing, then it comes through God's Word. If we want to experience wholeness and holiness, those things are connected. Wholeness and holiness are going to be found in God's Word. If we want to experience fruitfulness, it says right there that he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.
So, if we want to be fruitful, if we want to be whole, if we want to be holy, if we want to experience blessing and prosperity, all of those things are connected to the Word of God. God's Word helps us to grow.
Increases our faith. Paul, in , says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." I appreciate that it doesn't say faith comes by reading and reading by the word of God; it's hearing. Simply listening to the listening plan or the daily Old Testament and having God's word in your mind and heart is going to grow your faith. It's going to transform you. God, just like that water in that story going through the basket, cleans us by His word.
Sanctification, which is that cleaning process, is described by Paul in , where he says that God sanctifies and cleanses us by the washing of water by His word. "Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you." How shall a young man cleanse his ways? By taking heed to the word of God. All these are found in the longest Psalm of Scripture, .
God's word is essential for all of these things: for salvation, for growth in faith, for blessing, for wholeness and holiness, for sanctification, for fruitfulness, and for the increase in growth of faith. These things are essential. Jesus prayed in , verse 17, "Sanctify them by your truth; your word is truth." God's desire, Christ's aim, is that you and I would be transformed and sanctified by His word.
So, that's kind of the "why." Why do we access the Scriptures? But what is it that we are seeking to do? What is it that we're going to try to accomplish as a result of what we're doing here tonight and what we'll be doing over the next several weeks in this class?
If you have a Bible handy, open to Paul's letter to Timothy, specifically . We were in 2 Timothy just last week as well, and just at the beginning of the class a moment ago. But , not chapter 3, but chapter 2, verse 15. This verse, for many years, was, and I believe it still is, the foundational verse for Calvary Chapel Bible College.
says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker that does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The King James Version says, "Study to show yourself approved unto God, as a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The words "rightly dividing" in...
The New International Version correctly handles the word of Truth. The person who is going to correctly handle the word of Truth is a diligent worker who studies it. If we want to correctly handle this holy book, then we need to be diligent in our study. It takes work; it is labor, and it does not come easy. However, as we invest time in it, we will find that we grow in our understanding as we rightly divide and correctly handle the scripture.
For us to access the scriptures personally, and ultimately make them accessible to others, we need to be able to correctly handle them by rightly dividing them. This requires studying them on a regular basis and doing the work of a laborer who is not ashamed before a holy God. What is it that He wants you to do? He wants you to get to know Him so that you might make Him known. The way to do that is through the word of God.
So, what are we doing? We are studying to show ourselves approved unto God. However, it is not only about knowing these things mentally. I have met some people in my life who knew the Bible far better than I did, yet their lives were absolutely wretched and horrible. It is entirely possible to be an expert in New Testament studies or Old Testament studies and not be a Christian.
It is totally possible to know the scriptures in their original languages, to quote them accurately, and to understand their history and context, while still being far from God. All you have to do to prove this is read Princeton Theological Seminary's blog posts. You will see that there are many people at Princeton Theological Seminary, which is considered one of the greatest seminaries in the United States, who know the Bible but do not know God.
It is entirely possible to know the message of the Bible and miss the one who gave it and inspired it. There are far too many people who fall into that camp. I have met some of them, and it is striking how well they know the Bible and how little they know of God. So, what is the difference? I think one of the major differences has to do with adherence to what the brother of our Lord James said in .
Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. He observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. He forgets what he looks like.
But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty, the Scriptures, and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. Now again, let me ask that question: How many of you want to be blessed in what you do? Hold your hands up high. I want to make sure there's no one not raising their hand. Okay, so I think we all want to be blessed in what we do.
The word of God calls us to become doers of the word and not hearers only. A hearer only and not a doer of the word is a person who deceives themselves. But if you are a doer of the word, you will be blessed.
Let me read to you the words of Jesus from Matthew's Gospel, chapter 7, The Sermon on the Mount, verse 24. "Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise individual." How many of you want to be wise? Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken them to a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded upon the rock.
In Luke's Gospel, chapter 11, verse 28, Jesus said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it." Jesus says those who will be blessed are those who hear His word and keep it. In , He states, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them."
In , we read, "Now by this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments." If we are doers of the word and not hearers only, what is it that we are endeavoring to do? We are endeavoring to become students, workmen, and workwomen of the word of God who study to show ourselves approved unto God, correctly handling and rightly dividing the word of truth.
But we are not only doing that so that we know all the various ins and outs about who Daniel was and what he was all about as he lived in Babylon back in the 6th century BC.
Nebuchadnezzar was one of the great names of the Bible, along with Nimrod. It doesn't matter whether or not you know who these people were and what their lives were all about. If you do not know God and do not get to know who He is, you must become a doer of His word. We want to be those who are students of the word, who rightly divide the word of God so that it becomes a part of who we are and transforms the way we live. We become doers of His word so that we exercise ourselves in it.
The author of the book of Hebrews says something striking in . He states that, "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, some of you have been Christians for multiple decades—20, 25, 30, 35 years. The author of Hebrews says that by this time you ought to be teachers. Having been around here so long, it's like you should be almost an expert. You've been in multiple Bible studies a week for year after year. By this time, you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you again the first principles, the basics, the ABCs of the oracles of God. You have come to need milk and not solid food because you are a baby.
For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a mere baby. Solid food belongs to those who are of full age, mature, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. The focus of the authors of Scripture and God, who inspired the Scriptures, is that we would become those who are exercised in using the Scriptures. We need to know how to do the Scriptures.
With all of that, we now want to move from the why to the what to the how. What we're going to talk about here tonight, as we continue, is a very practical method for simply consuming the Scriptures. We will take a break for about ten minutes, and then we will get into devotional Bible study. Our goal is for the Scriptures to become a part of our lives and for our lives to begin to be transformed more and more into the likeness of who Jesus Christ is. That is what God wants to do for us.
Take a 10-minute break until five, or until five of eight. If you have any questions, text them to 760-814-1223. When we start up the next hour, we'll begin with some questions and answers.
Scripture in this teaching
18Passages opened in this message
Related teachings
12Other messages that open the same passages