How to Study the Bible - Week 3 Session 1

Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law... Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes... Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law. — Psalm 119

Learning to read the Bible with a purpose so that we understand what it says, what it means, and what it means for us.

Why This Class Matters

This class is important so that we might learn to access the Scriptures ourselves in order to make them accessible to others. We want to understand what the Scriptures are speaking to us—what God is revealing about Himself, and what He is teaching us about how we are to live—and then to share those things with other people.

In our first week I shared about the different forms of revelation: general revelation, special revelation, and personal revelation. General revelation is what Paul speaks of in Romans 1 and David in Psalm 19—the heavens declare the glory of God, and His invisible attributes are clearly seen by the things that are made, so that we are without excuse. From general revelation we learn that God is, that He is intelligent, and that He is powerful. But general revelation has its limitations.

So we move to special revelation, where God has chosen to speak to us in a language we can understand. Through special revelation He reveals what He is like—His nature—and what He likes—His will. Beyond that is personal revelation, for there are things lost in translation, and so Jesus comes to give us the fullness of the revelation of who God is.

What God Does Through His Word

It is primarily through the Scriptures that God wants to speak to us. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, so that we would be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. — Ephesians 2

God made us to do these good works, and He equips us through the Scriptures. He also uses His word to encourage us: "Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4). There is not a week that goes by that I don't see things in the world that make me realize how much I need the comfort, encouragement, and hope of the Scriptures.

The word also brings sanctification. Jesus prayed, "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth" (John 17:17). Paul says God washes us by the washing of water by His word (Ephesians 5). The psalmist asks, "How can a young man cleanse his way?"—and answers, by taking heed to the word of God (Psalm 119:9). Instruction, encouragement, comfort, sanctification, growth—all of these come through God's word.

From Knowing to Doing

Last week you went through devotional Bible study. Remember the tips: identify the truths in the passage, examine yourself in light of the truth, pray and plan to obey, and obey with the Spirit's help. As you make God's word a regular part of your life, you will find that He has an awesome way of testing you. When you discover from Scripture that you are to forgive others even as Christ forgave you, I guarantee that within the next several days God will challenge you to grow in that area.

We will fall short of God's perfect standard. But through becoming aware of what God is calling us to, being tested, failing, confessing, and repenting, we grow more and more into Christ's likeness. Gathering around the Scriptures is not merely an intellectual endeavor where we gain more knowledge; it is the process by which God renews our minds and conforms us to His image.

There is a real danger that knowledge can stay in the head and never move down into the heart and become part of our lives. Throughout the ages there have been people with expert knowledge of the Bible who do not live these things out and do not fulfill the purpose for which God called them. The aim is that we would become doers of the word and not hearers only—the wise person, as Jesus said, does what He taught.

Reading the Bible with Purpose

Tonight we move from devotional Bible study into what I'm calling purposeful Bible study—reading the Bible with a purpose. We do this so we may be transformed, encouraged, sanctified, and grown in Christ's likeness, but one essential aim is to gain understanding. We want to understand what the Scriptures say.

I'm reminded of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. He is reading from Isaiah, and Philip asks, "Do you understand what you are reading?" The man replies, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" So Philip gets up into the chariot and explains the Scriptures to him. We want that same understanding—to know who God is, what He is like, and what He likes, so that we can grow.

The aim is to understand what the Bible says, what the Bible means, and what the Bible means for me. This corresponds to observation, interpretation, and application. Observation is simply looking at the text to see what is being said. Interpretation—the realm of hermeneutics—asks what it means. Application asks what it means for me.

The Danger of Application-Heavy Reading

Devotional Bible study, as you probably noticed, is application-heavy—we look for truths to believe and commands to obey. That is good and important, but there is a danger in always coming to the Bible only asking what it means to me. We also need a good understanding of what is being said and what it means.

I'm sure you've had conversations where someone says, "This passage spoke this to me," and you look at the text and it doesn't say that at all. We want the correct observation and the correct interpretation that move to a logical application flowing right out of the text. Here at Cross Connection, and at many churches like ours, our focus is expositional Bible teaching—we take the text and let the points of application flow logically from it, not from something we grabbed out of the air.

Every Reader Has a Purpose

Purposeful Bible study is a simple process of reading the Scriptures, moving from the general to the specifics, to determine what the text is teaching us. Every time we read a body of text—the Bible, a news website, a novel, a recipe, a contract—we read with some purpose in mind. You don't mindlessly read; there is always an aim.

You read a novel for entertainment; you read a recipe to find specific information. You come to each kind of text with a certain lens. My goal is that by the end of this class you can come to the Bible with a goal and a purpose.

Think back to grade school and reading comprehension. They would give you a paragraph and then questions to test how much you pulled out of it. A good teacher will tell you the first thing to do is not read the text, but read the questions first. Then, as you read the text, you are already looking for the answers. During COVID, when I had to be my children's teacher, this transformed how my kids handled reading—once I showed them to read the question first, they began reading the text through the lens of that question. That is reading with purpose.

Step One: Always Begin with Prayer

How do we do this? Our first step is always the same: we begin with prayer. Why? Because all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, useful for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, so that the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Because this text is inspired by God, we trust that God can open our understanding.

What do we pray? "Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law" (Psalm 119:18). But David's prayer continues: "Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes... Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law... Incline my heart to Your testimonies." These are great prayers—you are simply praying the Scriptures back to God.

I confess that after 25 years of studying the Bible, my process has become almost second nature, and I can slip into autopilot and forget step one. There are too many times I find myself two or three hours into preparation, hitting a brick wall, plowing gravel, unable to break the text apart—and then the still small voice of the Spirit says, "Why don't you pray?" I pray, "God, open my eyes that I may behold wonders from Your word," and suddenly the light goes off and the Lord makes it clear. Always begin with prayer.

Step Two: Rely Upon the Holy Spirit

If the Scriptures are given by inspiration of God, then God can reveal what He wants me to understand. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths" (Proverbs 3:5–6). So often I lean upon my own understanding, especially with twenty years of teaching notes cataloged in my head—and yet I still find myself running into a brick wall and needing to return to the Lord.

Why is this so important? Jesus said in John 16, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth." If God is real and Jesus is true, we can trust that the Spirit of truth will guide us into all truth.

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God... Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God... comparing spiritual things with spiritual... But we have the mind of Christ. — 1 Corinthians 2

I love verse 13—comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The Spirit helps us make connections, brings to mind things we forgot we knew, and directs us in our studies. Sometimes He directs us to the right commentary or the right verse. There have been so many times I knew there was a verse about something but couldn't find it, and I prayed, "God, would You help me find this verse," and it was as if the Lord shone a bright light right on it.

Step Three: Read—and Read Well

We must get to the point where we actually read—not just large chunks, but prayerfully, asking God to help us comprehend what is being said. This is what reliance on the Holy Spirit looks like.

Sometimes we need to read very slowly, word for word, in multiple versions. We have a tendency to become skimmers, not deep readers, because our culture trains us through headlines and Facebook scrolling to consume information quickly without thinking. We need to slow ourselves down. I was diagnosed with dyslexia in fourth grade and made it through high school on Cliff's Notes. My brain still skips words—especially the little word "not," which has huge implications. I will read a sentence five times before going one word at a time and realizing the word "not" was there. In my Bible program I now have "not" appear in big red bold letters. Slowing down to read every word helps you see what is actually there.

We must also read systematically—following a plan that takes you through whole books of the Bible, not jumping randomly from Proverbs one day to the middle of Nehemiah the next. If you read that way, you will not grow in your understanding. Pick a plan: read through the New Testament in 2023, spend three months in the Gospels, a month in Acts, the Minor Prophets, or the whole Old Testament over a year—whatever it is, go through the text systematically so you understand the flow.

The Big Story and Helpful Resources

Along these lines, it is important to begin to understand the metanarrative of the Bible—the big story from Genesis to Revelation. As you read through, you start to grasp where events take place and who the people are, so that when you hear a name like Jehoshaphat, Ruth, Boaz, or Zephaniah, it actually means something. This does not happen in a weekend or even a year; it takes time.

I highly recommend making Bible teaching a regular part of your life. I cannot recommend my friend David Guzik more highly—his teaching at enduringword.com and the Enduring Word app, where you can read or listen to his commentary. Another is Ray Stedman, who goes through the whole Bible verse by verse. I also taught through a book of the Bible a week for 66 weeks, and that audio is still on our website if you want a one-hour overview of each book.

Reading Carefully and Meditatively

Reading carefully means looking for key words, repeated words, and repeated phrases. In Ephesians 1, circle every "in Him" and "in Christ" and you see a repeated concept. In 1 Corinthians 13 the repeated theme is love. In Hebrews 11 it is faith—by faith Abraham, by faith Noah, by faith Moses. As you go through the Epistles, watch theological concepts about salvation: you have been saved, you are being saved, you shall be saved.

Reading meditatively means spending time mulling over what you read. This is where Bible memorization is helpful. Many say they can't memorize, yet they still remember songs word for word from their youth—it's not that you can't, it's that you haven't worked at it. The easiest way: use the voice memo recorder on your phone to read a whole Psalm, then listen to it 20 or 30 times. After about a week you'll have it memorized. I've memorized large sections of Scripture this way. Then, as you drive, you can meditate on the Scriptures and be amazed at how much you draw out of them.

Phase One: Before You Read

All of this brings us to reading purposefully, also called active or interactive reading. Researchers have found that when students have a specific purpose or goal in mind, they are more likely to retain what they read. We break this into two phases.

Phase one is what you do before you read: identify the type of literature you are reading. There are different genres—history and law, poetry and wisdom, prophecy, gospels, and epistles. A simple map: hold up your hand. The five fingers represent the five sections of the Old Testament, and the spaces between represent the four sections of the New Testament.

The Old Testament sections are: the Pentateuch (law/history)—the first five books; the History books—Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther; the Poetry books—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon; the Major Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah (with Lamentations), Ezekiel, Daniel; and the Minor Prophets—Hosea through Malachi. What makes a prophet "major" or "minor" is simply the size of the book; the Major Prophets are wordier—they're like me, they speak too much.

The New Testament has four sections: the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; History—Acts; the Epistles—Romans through Jude (the Pauline epistles through the general epistles); and Revelation, which is prophecy or apocalyptic literature.

Why does this matter? Because the genre informs how you read. Last week's devotional Bible study is especially helpful for the Epistles—Paul's letters, 1–3 John, 1–2 Peter, Jude, and James—looking for truths to believe and commands to obey. Tonight we'll look at what to use for prophecy, gospels, and other genres.

Establishing the Purpose of Your Study

Also in phase one, establish the purpose of your study. What are you looking for? Beyond truths to believe and commands to obey, here are some others, with their technical names (which you don't need to memorize): What does the passage teach me about God? (theological questions). What does it teach about salvation? (soteriological). What does it reveal about Jesus? (christological). What does it say about the church? (ecclesiological).

So you might ask: What is the church, how is it led, what is its purpose? Or: How am I saved, who can be saved, who cannot? Looking for very specific things is how we start this whole process. Phase one, then, answers two questions: What kind of text am I reading, and what exactly am I looking for as I open this passage?

Phase Two: While You Read

Phase two is what you do while reading: you ask questions, answer the questions, apply the text, and summarize and synthesize. We'll work through all of this in detail in the second hour and do some exercises together.

A few books I recommend, though you don't have to get them: you already have How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart; they also wrote How to Read the Bible Book by Book, a guided overview of every book; and How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, an older but essential work that teaches you to break down any text. A friend recommended Adler's book to me about fifteen years ago, and it revolutionized how I consume data—especially in school, when you're handed twenty books to read in four months, which is impossible until you learn to break it down.

So for purposeful Bible study: first, determine the kind of text and the filter—the questions—through which you'll read it; second, read the text prayerfully, slowly, carefully, and repeatedly, working to answer those questions as you go.

With that, we'll take a ten-minute break. When we come back, we'll go through the specific questions we look at the text through and some sample questions, and then we'll do some exercises together.