How to Study the Bible - Week 3 Session 1

No, it's good. How many of you found this exercise to be challenging? How many of you enjoyed doing it, though? Good! How many of you will maybe use this in the future? I hope that you will, because we're going to build upon this tonight as we get into another method for studying the Scriptures.

This was devotional Bible study, and we're going to look at something else tonight as we get into the Scriptures together. But before we do, let's begin with prayer.

Father God, I pray that you would open our hearts and our minds to receive from your Word, but also to receive from your Spirit. Holy Spirit, we pray that you would continue to instruct and teach every single one of us in what we are to believe and how we are to live according to your Word. Lord, not only open our ears and our hearts to receive what it is that you want to speak to us, but enable us by your power. Even as we're going to talk a little bit about tonight, Holy Spirit, you do give us power to do the things that you desire us to do. God, you are working in us to will and to do your good pleasure, so we pray that you continue that work and that you teach us tonight. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, I am very glad that all of you are still here. Hold on; I have to make sure my little controller works. I'm glad that you all came back for week three, and from the show of hands, many of you worked on the homework. We will collect that at the end of our first hour. When you take a break, I'll have you bring it all up and leave it up here with me.

As you're coming in tonight, hopefully you signed off that you're here. Mark, can you start that sign-in sheet going around so that people can initial that they are here if they have not signed in yet?

As I like to do when we start each week, I'm going to review a little bit about what we have looked at already. What we've considered before as we've been going through this is important because we want to learn to access the Scriptures ourselves in order to make them accessible to others. We want to be able to understand what the Scriptures are speaking to us and what it is that God is revealing to us about Himself.

God is teaching us about how we are to live, and we want to be able to share those things with other people. In the first week, I shared about the different forms of revelation: General Revelation, Special Revelation, and Personal Revelation.

General Revelation is what Paul talks about in Romans chapter one and what David discusses in Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God; the Earth shows forth His handiwork. Day after day, creation is speaking. Paul says in Romans chapter one that God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, so that we are without excuse when it comes to knowing that God is intelligent and powerful. That is what we learn from General Revelation.

However, as I shared, General Revelation has its limitations. We need to move from there to Special Revelation. God has chosen to speak to us in a language that we can understand. Through Special Revelation, He reveals what He is like in nature and what He likes—His will. God, through Special Revelation, is speaking to us and desires that we look into the things He is revealing about Himself, His nature, and His will so that we can get to know who He is. Ultimately, God wants to have a relationship with each and every one of us. He created us to live life in connection with Him, as I talk about many times here at the church.

Through accessing the Scriptures, we get to know what God is like and what God likes. Moving beyond that, we enter the area of Personal Revelation because there are things that are lost in translation, shall we say. Jesus comes to give us the fullness of the revelation of who God is and what God is like. He is revealing Himself to us so that we might know Him more fully. It is primarily through the Scriptures that God wants to speak to us.

He has given us the Scriptures; all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is useful for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, so that we would be thoroughly equipped and ready for every good work. God wants to make us ready—furnish us, as the King James Version says—for every good work. The Scriptures say in Ephesians chapter two, "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." Paul goes on to say, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works." God made us to do these good works, and He enables us and equips us through the Scriptures.

Not only does He use the Word of God to reveal who He is, what He is like, and what He likes, but He also equips us through His Word. Additionally, He uses His Word to encourage us. A passage of Scripture that brings us encouragement is found in Romans chapter 15, verse 4. Paul writes, "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."

I don't know about you, but there is not a week that goes by without seeing things happening in the world, whether they are far away or right near me, that make me realize how much I need the comfort, encouragement, and hope of the Scriptures. We can encourage ourselves through the Scriptures. The Scriptures bring sanctification. Jesus prayed about this in His high Priestly prayer in John 17, verse 17: "Father, sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth."

Paul, in Ephesians chapter 5, says that God wants to wash us by the washing of the water by His Word. He is cleansing, transforming, and changing us; He is renewing our minds. The psalmist asks the question in Psalm 119, verse 9: "How can a young man cleanse his way?" The answer is by taking heed to the Word of God. God uses His Word to transform us.

Sanctification comes through the Word; encouragement and hope come through the Word; growth comes through the Word. Our growth in Christlikeness is facilitated by God's Word, which makes us more like Himself so that we can display His glory in this world. All these things come about through the Word of God: instruction, encouragement, comfort, sanctification, and growth—all of these things through God's Word.

The Word of God is an essential aspect of our relationship with the Lord, and we need to learn how to engage with the Scriptures. Last week, you went through the devotional Bible study, so if you remember the tips for Bible study, they include identifying the truths in the passage, examining ourselves in light of those truths, praying, planning to obey, and then obeying with the Spirit's help.

One of the things you will discover as you begin to make God's Word a regular part of your life is that it becomes a habit. You will study the Bible devotionally or in one of the other ways we will explore over the next several weeks. God reveals what is doctrine—the truths that we are to believe—and what are His commands—the truths of who we are to be.

We are to obey, and then God has this awesome way of testing us. When we discover that we are to forgive others even as Christ forgave us, as we saw in the passage in Colossians last week, I guarantee there will be a time within the next several days where God challenges us to grow in that area. It is a reality that we will fall short of God's perfect standard. However, it is through the process of coming into the awareness of what God is calling us to and then being tested in it that we can confess, repent, and ask God to enable and help us the next time.

As time goes by, we continue to see that we are growing more and more into Christ's likeness. We are fulfilling the things that the Scriptures say, and that is ultimately what God wants to do in my life and in yours. Gathering together as the people of God to go through the Scriptures is not just an intellectual endeavor where we gain more knowledge about what the Bible says. It is through that process that God is hopefully renewing our minds and transforming us so that we begin to be conformed into His image.

The whole aim of going through the Scriptures together—whether we do it corporately on a Sunday morning, on our own, or in a small group—is that we would begin to work these things out. We would become, as we saw last week from James, doers of the word and not hearers only. As Jesus said, it is the wise person who does what He taught. The aim is that we would begin to look more and more like Christ in the way that we respond to others and the way that we live our lives. That is what God wants to do.

As I have shared, there is a real danger in gaining more head knowledge of who God is without it moving from the head down into the heart and becoming a part of our lives. There have been plenty of people throughout the ages who have a great expert knowledge of the Bible, yet they do not live these things out. They are not fulfilling the purpose for which God called them, nor are they fulfilling what God wants them to do in this world.

So tonight, we are going to move from devotional Bible study into what I am calling purposeful Bible study. Our aim with this is to begin to read the Bible with a purpose. That is what we are going to try to do.

What we're going to be looking at tonight is reading the Bible with purpose. Why do we want to read the Bible with purpose? Well, because we want to be transformed more and more into the image of Christ. We want to be encouraged by the Scriptures, as we saw in that passage. We want to be sanctified; we want to be growing in Christlikeness. All of these things are important.

One of the essential reasons we read the Bible with purpose is so that we can gain understanding. We want to understand what it is that the Scriptures say. In thinking about this, I'm reminded of a story that you may have come across before in the book of Acts, chapter 8. There, we are introduced to a man who is simply called the Ethiopian eunuch. The Ethiopian eunuch is on the road going from Jerusalem down to Gaza. Philip, this evangelist, attaches himself to the man who is riding in a chariot and reading through the Scriptures from the scroll of Isaiah.

Philip asks him, "Do you understand what you're reading?" The eunuch replies, "How can I understand unless someone shows me?" So, Philip gets up into the chariot with him and begins to explain what the Scriptures are saying, helping him understand their meaning.

We want to understand so that we can really know who God is, what He is like, and what He likes. This understanding allows us to begin to grow. What we are working to do is to understand what the Bible says, what the Bible means, and what the Bible means to us.

Next week, we will expand upon this because we will be getting into another method for studying the Bible called inductive Bible study. Purposeful Bible study is somewhat of a format of inductive Bible study, but what we will look at next week will be a little more in-depth, expanding upon this even further.

The aim in inductive Bible study is to learn or understand what the Bible says, what the Bible means, and what the Bible means to us. As we will discuss more next week, this involves observation, interpretation, and application. You can write that down, but we will talk a lot more about it next week. Observation, interpretation, and then application. So, what the Bible says is observation—just looking at the text and trying to break it down.

It is important to take apart a passage to see what is being said in the interpretation. What does it mean? This is where we get into the area of hermeneutics, that big word that maybe you didn't know how to pronounce. Hermeneutics is interpretation, and exegesis, which was also mentioned in chapters one or two, involves observation. What does it say? What are the basics of what is being said there? Then, what does it mean? That's interpretation. Moving from there to application, we ask ourselves, what does it mean for me? What is the application I need to come away with?

In our devotional Bible study, as you probably already noticed, we were application-heavy. We were trying to look at what truths we should believe and what commands we are to follow. This focus on application is important, but there is a danger in always trying to figure out what the application is and what it speaks to me. While that is a crucial step in the whole process of inductive Bible study, we also want to have a good understanding of what is being said and what it means.

I'm sure you've had conversations with people who share, "I was reading this passage of Scripture, and it spoke this to me." Then, when you look at the passage, it doesn't say that at all. We want to ensure that we have the correct observation and interpretation that leads to a logical application directly from the text.

In a few weeks, we will discuss how this whole process is moving toward being able to share this with someone else. When you're sharing with others, the focus we have here at Cross Connection Church, and many churches like ours, is what we call expositional Bible teaching. Expositional Bible teaching means we take the text, and we want the points of application to flow logically from it. The application should come directly from the text, not from some strange idea we just pulled out of the air.

All of these steps we are going through are designed to move us in that direction—exposing what the text says and what it speaks directly to us. So, what does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to me? This encompasses the whole process of observation, interpretation, and application.

So, what exactly is purposeful Bible study? It is a simple...

The process of reading the Scriptures involves moving from the general to the specifics to determine what the text of the Bible is teaching us. It’s a simple process that we will break down into very simple steps tonight. We will transition from the general text of Scripture to the specifics of what is being said in this passage. What does it say? What does it mean? What is the application? What does it mean for me?

Every time we read a body of text—whether it’s the Bible, a news website, a novel, a recipe, or a contract—we are reading with some sort of purpose in mind. Hopefully, you don’t mindlessly read. What would be the point of reading something if you’re not trying to get something out of it? For example, when you come to a novel, the point of reading it is likely for entertainment. That’s the purpose there, and it’s perfectly fine. I read novels, and you probably do as well.

However, if you read a recipe, you are looking for specific information. The way you read a recipe is different from how you read an article or a novel. When approaching different kinds of texts, we have a certain lens through which we interpret what is being said. It may be for entertainment, to gain understanding, or for some other reason. Regardless, we always come to a body of text with an aim or a goal.

What I want you to be able to do by the end of this class is to approach the Bible with a goal or purpose. So, how do we engage in purposeful Bible study? If you rewind back to when you were in grade school, one of the things they taught you was the focus of reading comprehension. Typically, you would be given a paragraph or a page to read, followed by questions to assess how much you were able to pull from that text. A good teacher would instruct you that the first step is not to read the text but to read the questions first. By doing this, when you start to read through the text, you are already looking for the answers.

Those questions remind me of my own experiences with my kids. We had quite a fun time—I'll call it fun now—during the whole COVID situation when I had to be my children's teacher for a period of time. My kids were in sixth grade, fifth grade, second grade, and third grade, and trying to relearn third-grade math was very challenging for me.

Later, I focused on helping them read with comprehension, which was really hard until I started to show them to read the question first. By doing this, they could approach the body of text through the lens of the question they had in mind. The whole concept of reading comprehension is important; you need to look at the text with the question in mind. This is what we mean by reading with purpose, which is what we will do here tonight.

I will move somewhat quickly through a lot of this material on purpose because, at the end of our class tonight, we will have an exercise. We will break up into groups and work through this together. Reading purposefully is all about trying to read for comprehension and to understand what is in the text we are examining.

So, 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. It is useful for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, so that the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped and ready for every good work. Since we believe this body of text is inspired by God, we trust that He is able to open our understanding so that we can glean from His Scriptures what He wants to speak to us.

Always begin with prayer. What exactly do we pray? I keep going back to the words from Psalm 119: "Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from your law." If you read Psalm 119, which is the longest Psalm in the Scriptures, you will find that the prayer of King David continues. Not only does he pray, "Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from your law," but he also prays, "Teach me, O Lord."

Lord, the way of Your statutes, so open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law. Teach me, O Lord, who is our teacher. He’s saying, "God, I want You to teach me what is the way of Your statutes." But also, he says, "Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law." I think these are great prayers to pray. You're simply praying the Psalms, praying the Scriptures. If you pray like this: "Lord, give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law. Incline my heart to Your testimonies," David just keeps driving this home. God, You're the one who's going to teach me.

I will delight myself in Your commandments, which I love. I will meditate on Your statutes. So, step one is to pray. Begin every single time when we sit down before the Word of God by simply coming to God and saying, "God, would You open my eyes that I would behold wonders from Your law? Teach me Your ways. Give me insight. Give me understanding into what it is that You want me to comprehend from this text."

That’s step one. You should never begin a Bible study without prayer. However, in saying that, I will confess that there have been many times when I sit down as a pastor preparing to teach at a conference or preparing to teach here, and I just start with the process that has become second nature for me. After 25 years of studying through the Scriptures, I have a certain process that I go through in my mind as I'm coming to the text. I can find that I can just kind of go into autopilot, if you will, and totally forget to do step one: pray.

There are way too many times—I hate to confess it, but it’s very true—that I start my Bible study without asking the Lord to help me comprehend what it is that You want to speak to me first, and then what it is that You want to share with Cross-Connection Church from this passage of Scripture. I can't even count how many times I have found myself two or three hours into preparing to teach, feeling like I'm hitting a brick wall over and over again, or like plowing gravel. It’s as if I can't seem to break this text apart.

I still have those times, and then it is as if this little still small voice of the Spirit says, "Why don’t you pray?" It’s like, "Oh yes, Pastor, you should pray." Then I just simply pray, "God, open my eyes that I behold wonders from Your law."

Life can be amazing, and I won't say incredibly, because it's not incredible; it's totally credible. All of a sudden, it's like the light goes off, and the Lord just makes it clear to me after I go to Him in prayer. It's almost as if He is true from the Word.

So, always begin with prayer. Step two, and I think this is just as important as step one, is to rely upon the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are given by inspiration of God. If they are given by inspiration of God, then I believe that God can reveal to me what it is that He wants me to comprehend or understand from the text.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart; lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." So many times, I find myself leaning upon my own understanding, especially when it comes to my understanding of Scripture.

I've had the privilege of teaching the Bible for more than 20 years at this point. I've taught through every book of the Bible, and there is like this catalog, if you will, of information in my head from things I've taught in the past. I also have a huge catalog of notes that I've already taken on passages of Scripture. It's easy to rely upon that and to depend on my own understanding. Yet, many times, I find myself plowing gravel and running into a brick wall. I need to go back to the Lord and ask Him to open my understanding so that I can grasp what it is that He is speaking from this passage.

Why is it so important to rely upon the Holy Spirit? Well, Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 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. For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you."

The Spirit of Truth will guide us into all truth. If God is real and if Jesus is true, then we can trust that the Spirit of Truth will guide us into all truth and teach us all things. Therefore, we need to rely upon the Holy Spirit and ask Him to give us understanding of the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul, in First Corinthians...

Chapter 2 contains a long passage of Scripture that is theologically important regarding the work of the Holy Spirit. It states, "But we speak the wisdom of God and the mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory."

As it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

We have the Spirit of God to guide us into all truth and to teach us all things. I love the passage in verse 13 that compares spiritual things to spiritual, as it helps us make connections. The Holy Spirit brings to mind things we may have forgotten or didn't even realize we knew from the Word of God. He directs us in our studies, so it is essential to always begin with prayer and rely upon the Holy Spirit in our study of the Scriptures.

It is crucial that we start with prayer and ask God to direct us by His Spirit, who He has given to teach us all things and guide us into all truth. Inevitably, you will find yourself at a crossroad where you may have a hard time understanding what the text says. As you call out to the Lord, asking, "God, would You help me to understand? Direct me by Your Spirit," He will begin to make those connections. Sometimes He will lead us to the right commentary or the right passage in a commentary, or He may direct us to the right verse in the Bible. There have been so many times...

I know there's a verse about this, but I can't find it. I just say, "God, would you help me to find this verse?" It's as if the Lord shines a big bright light right there. There it is! That's the verse that you're looking for. So, God, help us to understand.

Step number one: pray. Step number two: rely upon the Holy Spirit. Step number three: read. We need to reach a point where we read—not just large chunks of Scripture, but that we read prayerfully. As you're reading, pray, "God, help me to comprehend and understand what is being said here." This is what reliance upon the Holy Spirit looks like.

We read prayerfully, but sometimes we also need to read very slowly. What I have been showing you to do is to read in multiple versions over and over again. That slow reading is very important because we have a tendency to become skimmers rather than deep readers. The culture we live in has trained us to be skimmers, where we take in a ton of information constantly and very quickly. We have so much information coming at us all the time.

Whether we realize it or not, we've been training ourselves through headlines on the news, on websites, or by scrolling through Facebook. Please don't do that; it'll make your life terrible. We quickly consume information without really thinking thoughtfully about it. So, we need to slow ourselves down and read slowly, word for word.

I've shared with you before that I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in the fourth grade. I was a horrible reader all through high school. I did not read a single book that I was told to read in high school. I made it through school with Cliff's Notes. If it wasn't for Cliff's Notes, I probably would not have made it through grade school. But by God's grace and Cliff's Notes, I made it through school.

After that, I started to grow in my reading, but even still today, the problems I have with dyslexia are still there. One of the major problems is that my brain, for some reason, completely skips words as I'm reading. Certain words are invisible to me, and there is one word that is really invisible to me, and it's very...

The word "not" is a small word, but it has really big and important implications in a text. I will be reading something, and in my brain, it will go, "This doesn't make any sense." I’ll read it again, and it still doesn’t make any sense. I’ll read it again, and it still doesn’t make any sense. Then, I’ll have to go one word at a time, and I’ll realize, "Oh, that’s why the word 'not' was there," and I didn't see it like five times.

In my Bible program, I have set it up so that every time the word "not" shows up, it appears in big red bold letters. This way, I can see that the word "not" is there because it is very important. Slowing down and reading very slowly and intentionally through every word helps you to see what is there that sometimes we skip over. We need to read repeatedly.

I have already talked about this: read systematically. What does it mean to read systematically? I want to get you into a routine where reading through the Scriptures becomes a regular part of your life every single day. This is why we have the listening plan and the daily Old Testament program, where you can listen through the Scriptures. This helps you get into the process of going through the whole Bible or the whole New Testament in a year.

Reading systematically means you have a plan that you follow every single day to go through the Bible. Does it mean that you have to read a chapter a day? No. If you have a reader Bible, read a paragraph a day. I don’t care what it is, but systematically going through whole books of the Bible is important.

Avoid jumping around randomly. For example, one day you wake up and decide to read in Proverbs, and then the next day you choose to read in the middle of the book of Nehemiah. The following day, you might wake up and think, "Today, I’m going to read Matthew Chapter 5," and then the next day, you switch to 2 Kings Chapter 7. If you read the Bible that way, you are not reading systematically, and you will not grow in your understanding of the Bible.

So, pick some sort of way to go through the text systematically. Maybe it is going through the whole New Testament in 2023. We will be in 2023 very quickly, and you could do the listening plan, which will start in Matthew Chapter 1. January 1st is a Sunday this year, so on Monday, January...

You will pick up in Matthew chapter one and go through one chapter a day. You might say, "All right, I'm going to go through the New Testament this year," or perhaps, "I'm going to spend the next three months reading through the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John." Alternatively, you could decide, "I'm going to spend the next month reading through the Book of Acts," focusing on Acts chapter 1 through Acts chapter 27, reading through it systematically. You might also choose to read through the Minor Prophets, which we'll discuss in a little bit, or even the Old Testament over the next year. Whatever it is, pick something and begin to go through the text so that you start to understand the flow of what is happening.

Along these lines, it is very important to begin to understand what is called the metanarrative of the Bible—the big story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. What is the overarching story of the Bible? As you start to consume and understand the flow of the whole text, you will begin to grow in your understanding of where different events take place and who some of these people are. For instance, when you hear the name Jehoshaphat, even though it is a unique name, it will actually mean something to you. You will remember who that person was. Similarly, when I mention Ruth or Boaz on a Sunday morning, you will recall that story from the Book of Ruth. When you hear the name Zephaniah, you will know something about these individuals.

You only really gain this understanding by reading through the entire text of the Bible and seeing the bigger story. This is not something that happens in a weekend or even in a year; it takes time. Listening to the Scriptures and reading the Scriptures is essential for understanding. I highly recommend making it a regular part of your life to listen to Bible teaching. I cannot recommend my friend David Guzik's teaching highly enough. His teachings are available on his website, enduringword.com. You can also get the Enduring Word Bible app, where you can read through his commentary or listen to him teaching through it.

You can listen at double speed if you want, or if you need to slow it down, you can listen at quarter speed, even if he sounds a bit off. Whatever you prefer, listening to the Scriptures and beginning to understand what they teach is incredibly helpful. I will try to remind myself to make a list of some good Bible teachers that you should consider listening to.

Online, one of the resources I recommend is David Guzik. Another is a man by the name of Ray Stedman. I will provide more information about that in a couple of weeks. He goes through the whole Bible verse by verse, book by book. He has a teaching series that covers the entire Bible in a year. I think the audio for this is still available on our website. I taught through a book of the Bible each week for 66 weeks, and you can listen to one hour of teaching for each book of the Bible to understand the overarching story.

Learn to read systematically and carefully. What does reading carefully mean? As you read through the text, look for key words or phrases and identify repeated words or concepts. For example, in the book of Ephesians, chapter one, the phrases "in Him" and "in Christ" are repeated numerous times. If you read through Ephesians chapter one and circle every instance of "in Him" or "in Christ," you will notice a repeated idea or concept in that passage.

Similarly, in First Corinthians chapter 13, known as the love chapter, the repeated concept is love. In Hebrews chapter 11, the repeated word is faith. Phrases like "by faith Abraham," "by faith Noah," and "by faith Moses" emphasize faith throughout the chapter. It states that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

As you go through the Epistles, you will notice a recurring concept about salvation. Paul uses phrases like "you have been saved," "you are being saved," and "you shall be saved." This theological concept appears throughout the Bible. Sometimes, you may choose to do a study focused solely on words related to salvation. We will discuss this further as we continue tonight.

Reading carefully involves looking for repeated words, phrases, and theological ideas or concepts in the text. Next, read meditatively. What does that mean? This is where you spend time thinking about what you have read.

To meditate in a biblical sense is to mull it over in your mind, and this is where Bible memorization is really helpful. Now, how many of you would say tonight that you're not very good at memorizing things? Quite a few of you. Yet, you probably still remember songs word for word from your youth. When you hear them come up, you can just sing along all day long because you remember the songs from your youth.

I don't think it's true that you couldn't memorize something; it's just that you haven't worked at it to try to memorize. I will say that the easiest way to memorize Scripture is to use your smartphone. Most of you probably have one, and if you do, it has a voice memo recorder. Just record yourself reading an entire Psalm. For example, Psalm 1 says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight

Active or interactive reading involves reading with a purpose. You are trying to find something specific in the body of text. So, how do we do this? We will break it down into two phases for reading purposefully.

Phase number one is something you do before you read. Before you read, you need to identify what type of literature you are going to read. If you have been reading through Gordon Fee's book, or if I have mentioned this in the last couple of weeks while reading through the Bible, you will notice that there are different genres of scripture. These include history and law, poetry and wisdom, prophecy, gospels, and epistles.

You may wonder where these genres fit. Generally, this is a good map, and I will make this available on the website so that you can access it. In the Old Testament, there are five sections of scripture. If you hold up your hand, you can visualize this with your five fingers. Most of you have five fingers, so we can use them to represent the five sections in the Old Testament, while the four major sections in the New Testament will be represented in between your fingers.

Here are the sections: The first five books of the Bible in the Old Testament are known as the Pentateuch, which includes history and law. This is represented by your thumb. Moving to your index finger, we have the history books of the Old Testament, which include books like Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

Next, we move into the poetry books, which are represented by your middle finger. This section includes Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. Following that, we have the Major Prophets, represented by your ring finger. This includes Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, with Lamentations also included among them, as it is attributed to Jeremiah.

Finally, we get into the Minor Prophets, represented by your pinky finger. The distinction between Major Prophets and Minor Prophets is based on the size of the books. The Major Prophets are more wordy, while the Minor Prophets, which include Hosea through Malachi, are shorter.

In summary, we have the Pentateuch or law, the history books, the poetry books, and then the Major and Minor Prophets. In the New Testament, we have the Gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John provide the history of the New Testament. We also have the Acts and the Epistles, which include Romans through Philemon, known as the Pauline Epistles, and extend through Jude. The last book is Revelation, which is classified as prophecy or apocalyptic literature. Thus, there are four sections in the New Testament and five in the Old Testament. This is how we break it down.

When we come to different texts, we will see tonight that there are various things to look for when purposefully studying them. I will show you how we do this as we go through the material.

Phase one, before you read, is to understand what you are reading. Are you reading prophecy, Epistles, or Gospels? This understanding will inform how you approach the text. Last week, I mentioned that a devotional Bible study is very helpful when reading through the Epistles, which include all of Paul's letters, as well as the letters of First, Second, and Third John, First and Second Peter, Jude, and James.

As you read through the Epistles, looking for truths to believe, commands to obey, and doctrines is very beneficial. We will also explore what to use for studying prophecy and Gospels tonight.

Phase number one is to identify the type of text you are reading and to establish the purpose of your study. What are you hoping to achieve? Last week, we discussed looking for truths to believe and doctrines, as well as truths to obey and commands. However, what are some other things we might look for when studying the Scriptures?

Here are some considerations: What does the passage teach me about God? These are what we would call theological questions. What does the passage teach me about salvation? These are soteriological questions. What does the passage reveal about Jesus? These are christological questions. What does the passage say about the church? These are ecclesiological questions.

You don’t need to remember those big words. Simply put, what does the Bible say about God? That is theology proper, particularly when discussing God the Father and salvation.

Soteriology is the study of salvation. Christology is the study of Jesus. Ecclesiology is the study of the church. So, what is the text that I'm reading? What does it teach me about the church? What is the church? How is it led? What is the purpose of the church? What does it reveal about salvation? How am I saved? Who can be saved, and who cannot be saved? Is there even a good answer to that question?

Looking for very specific things is how we're going to start this whole process. In phase one, we want to determine what kind of text we are reading. Is it an epistle, a gospel, law, or prophecy? What is the purpose for which I am examining this text? What am I seeking out in this body of text?

In phase two, while you are reading, you will be asking questions, answering those questions, applying the text, and summarizing and synthesizing. We will go through all of this tonight in the second hour in just a few minutes. While reading, use the questions you have formulated for your purposeful Bible study as a filter through which you examine the text.

There are a few books that I want to recommend to you, though you don't have to get them. One of them you already have: "How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth." The same authors, Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart, also wrote a book called "How to Read the Bible Book by Book." This book is a guided tour of every book in the Bible, providing a brief overview of each one.

The third book, "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler, is a very old book and is essential if you want to become a better reader. It teaches you how to break down any body of text. A friend of mine recommended this book to me about 15 years ago, and it revolutionized the way I consume information when reading. One of the things it really helped with was in my schooling programs. At the beginning of a semester, they would give you a stack of books—here are the 20 books that you have to read.

To read over the next four months, if you've ever gone through the process of trying to read 20 books in four months for a class, it's impossible. You can't do it. What he teaches you how to do is break it down so that you can read all of that data really quickly. If you're interested in how to read data better, Mortimer Adler's book is really helpful.

For reading the Bible and understanding it, these two books from Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart are very helpful for what we're doing with this whole purposeful Bible study. Number one, we're determining what kind of text we're reading and what the filter is through which we're going to look at this text. What are the questions we're going to ask?

Number two is just reading through the text prayerfully, slowly, carefully, and repeatedly, with those questions in mind, trying to answer them as you go through whatever it is that you're reading.

With that, we're going to take a 10-minute break. If you have questions, text them to 760-814-1223. During this break, please sign in on the paper in the back to indicate that you are here. I know I just dumped a whole bunch of information on you, but it's going to become clearer in our second hour. We will also do some exercises on this together in the next hour.

So, take a 10-minute break, and when we come back, we'll jump in. Text any questions that you have.