Institutes of Theology | Session 10 - Bible Study for Every Christian - Part 1

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Tonight, we are going to begin, as Lance said, a several week study on Bible Study for Every Christian. JI. Packer writes this, “If I were the devil, one of my first aims would be to stop folk from digging into the Bible.” Think about that for a moment. If you were the devil, you would do exactly what Packer just said. Your chief aim would be to direct people away from the Scripture, where they hear the Gospel, and if they are a believer, where their soul is fed, and they grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ. So why don't Christians often study the Bible? I won’t ask for a show of hands, not asking if you read. I'm asking, do you study the Bible seriously? And if not, why not? Why don't many Christians study the Bible? Well, there are a lot of different reasons that are given, but RC Sproul, in his book, Knowing Scripture, finds two myths that really underlie many of the reasons that are given for Christians, for men, not studying the Scripture. 

First of all, one myth is the Bible is so difficult to understand that only highly skilled theologians with technical training can deal with the Scriptures. Now, if you know anything at all about our heritage as Protestants, stemming back to the Protestant Reformation, you know that is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the Reformation, which taught, because the Scriptures teach, what's called the perspicuity of Scripture. That is, it is clear. Not everything is equally clear, but all those things necessary for salvation and your primary growth in holiness, all of those things are sufficiently clear in Scripture using ordinary means that you can understand it and you can grow in your knowledge of the same. Any literate person can understand the primary messages of the Scripture in their given context. It's not like the esoteric, absurd teachings of Eastern religion, where after you hike to the edge of the world, somewhere remote in the Himalayas, you find some aging guru, and the guru tells you that the meaning of life is one hand clapping. The Bible isn't like that. Sproul said, if we can read the newspaper, we can read the Bible. That's absolutely true. That's one myth. 

A second myth is the Bible is boring. The truth is, the Bible properly understood is filled with pathos and drama. The reason people sometimes conclude that it's boring is because the events in the Bible are set in such a different world from our own. And so to really understand the Bible, you first have to go back into the biblical time, understand it in its context, so that then it comes alive, and you can cross the bridge into our times once you understand that. What you learn is the people in the Bible are very much like us and like the people we know. And their lives unfold in amazing and dramatic ways.

I might add a third reason to Sproul’s that I think we don't study the Bible, and that is, I just don't know how. I don't know how to do this. How do I approach the Bible? My pastor does it, the other elders in my church do it, but I'm just not really equipped to do it. It's this third reason that I want to permanently remove in these next few weeks that we spend together. We're going to walk through a process, men, for studying the Bible that every single Christian can follow. There isn't one person here who can't do this. Oh yes, it's going to require some work, it will require some practice, just like any other skill, but you can do this. The approach we're going to look at is called Inductive Bible Study. Inductive Bible Study. It's an approach to Scripture that starts with the particulars, and from understanding the specifics and the particulars in a given passage, arrives at the general principle or meaning of an individual passage. 

You know, it's so important for you as an individual Christian to study the Bible. One illustration that's often been shared is this. Imagine for a moment that you decided you were going to study frogs. Now, why exactly you'd want to do that? I'm not sure. But for a moment, just assume that you decided you were going to study frogs. There are two basic approaches that you could take to study frogs. One of those would be to find one of the best experts on frogs and read everything that expert has written. And you could read in that expert about their life cycle, their habitat, their diet, etc. And you would learn a lot about frogs. But what's the problem with that approach? Think about it for a moment. The problem is that you are simply taking the expert's Word for it. You can never know for sure if his assertions about frogs are true or false. You're assuming that they're true. 

The other approach, instead of just reading an expert on the subject, is you could spend the next year personally studying frogs. You could spend days and weeks at the local ponds observing, taking careful notes of all aspects of their behavior. You could keep a couple of living frogs in your home (if you could convince your wife), so that you could continue to observe how they live and how they behave. After one of your little frogs there in the house dies, you could take its slimy little green body and carefully dissect it and study its anatomy firsthand. And when you're done with your study, you would have a thorough knowledge of frogs. Then you could supplement that if you chose to by reading some experts and see where maybe your conclusions were right or wrong. But you see how different that approach is. 

When it comes to Bible study, too many Christians opt for the first approach. They just listen to the expert. A far better approach in any discipline is a healthy measure of inductive firsthand study. Why is that? Howard Hendricks describes the benefit of personal Bible study in these words, “Knowledge that is self-discovered is stored in the deepest part of the mind and remains the longest in the memory. There is no jewel more precious than that which you have mined yourself.” That's absolutely true. It's true when it comes to the Scripture. And that's why I want to encourage you in this time to learn how to study and then to begin the discipline of actually doing it. 

Now, the process of inductive Bible study includes several steps. When we talk about the process, let me give you a couple of different sort of perspectives. Precept Ministry says there are three parts of the process. Observation, interpretation, and application. Observation, obviously, observing what's in the text. Interpretation, once you've observed what's there, making a decision about what it means. And then application, what am I to do with this? That's one way to dictate the process. Another way is that of John MacArthur. He says there are four steps in the process of inductive Bible study. There's observation (so you see there's a similarity there). Interpretation, again, the same. Evaluation, that means evaluation of the different views and of the maybe where you've landed versus what some of the commentators have said. And then application. Those are absolutely true. 

Now, the approach I'm going to take with you is kind of my own. It includes some of those, but this is what I would suggest to you. The first is preparation. Now, to be honest, that one really doesn't belong week to week as much. We'll talk about it in a moment. But I think it's important to say that if you're going to do inductive Bible study, there is some preparation that has to take place. Then observation, again, you see that's in all of them. Meditation, I think it's very important to think about and reflect on intentionally what you've learned in your study. And then interpretation, you land. What is this saying? What is this teaching? And then evaluation, you look at what others have said, it means against what you've said it means. And then finally, application, where you look at saying, okay, what am I supposed to do with this? So preparation is how you approach your study. Observation is what it says, what the text says. Meditation is thinking deeply about what you've learned. Interpretation, now I'm going to settle on what it means. Evaluation, what others say it means. And application, how it applies. Okay, that's where we're going. I'm going to take each of those and walk through them. Over the next tonight and two other sessions, we're going to work through these six steps.

Now let's begin then with preparation. How to approach your study of the Bible. The other five steps have to do with the text you're actually studying. This first step has to do with you and preparing yourself for careful study. So let's look at it. I want to begin though looking at the arguments. You know, as you think about preparing yourself, you've got to be motivated. You've got to be motivated by understanding that Bible study matters for you because it matters to God. So I want to lay down some arguments. Is every Christian, think about this now, is every Christian truly obligated not merely to read the Bible in some cursory way, but actually to study it? Or is this only the responsibility of elders and pastors and missionaries and seminary professors? In other words, does God expect you to study or not? Let me give you a few of the biblical reasons that I believe that God does expect you, as an individual Christian, to study the Bible diligently. Let me lay down some arguments that I hope will convince you.

Number one, seeking to understand the meaning and to apply the Scripture to life is a daily duty of both parents and children. In other words, God, at the very beginning of the Scriptures, makes it clear that individual believers are to care about what the Scripture means. Go back to Deuteronomy chapter 6. You remember, here is the Shema, the great command, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Now watch verse 6. That was Deuteronomy 6, verse 4 and 5. But look at verse 6. “These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.” That is, you as an individual believer are to be thinking about these things. 

You shall teach them diligently to your sons. In other words, you're to formally instruct your children on the Scripture. What does that requirement? Requires that you understand it. Then he says, “You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.” This isn't formal instruction. This is informal conversation throughout life about the Scripture and what God has said in the Scripture. And then he goes on to say in verse 8 and 9, you're to look for practical ways to apply the Scripture. Now all of that presupposes what? That you understand the meaning of the Scripture. Therefore, you have to be a student. It's required of parents. It's required of children. 

Secondly, reading, understanding, and applying the Scripture was a requirement for Israel's leaders. Have you ever thought about this? Deuteronomy 17. God said, when, through Moses, when there is a king in Israel, here's what the king is required to do. He needs to make a copy of God's Word for himself. Now it doesn't stipulate whether he has to do it by hand himself or to insure that it's done, but regardless, he has to have his own copy of the Scripture with him in the palace. And he is to read it every day. He is to embrace it, to seek to understand it, and apply it to his rule as king. Again, all of that implies an understanding of what it means, and that he would do that for himself.

Thirdly, a preoccupation with the Scripture has always been the practice of God's people. You look through the Scripture, and you find that God's people, true believers, have always cared about what the Scripture says and what it means. Joshua 1:8. “This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth.” I personally think he's talking there about reading. In the ancient world, you often read out loud. So he's saying, keep on reading, keep on digesting. But not only that, “You shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you'll make your way prosperous and then you'll have success.” In other words, read it, think deeply about it, and then do it. So all of that implies, again, study, careful, grasping of the meaning of the Scripture. Job 23:12, “I have not departed from the command of His lips. I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” Job wasn't, as far as we know, a prophet or a priest or a king. He was a believer, just like you and just like me.

Psalm 1:2, the righteous man, whoever he is, if he knows God, “His delight is in the Law of Yahweh and in His Law he meditates day and night.” That's just every ordinary Christian, every ordinary believer. Psalm 119:97, “Oh how I love your law, it is my meditation all the day.” Again, no indication that this person felt that way because they occupied some high office. Rather, this was a believer delighting in God's word. Second Timothy, chapter four, verse 13, Paul, when he's in prison near the end of his life, he says, when you come, Timothy, “bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus and the books,” books to help him study the Scripture and the parchments, meaning his copies of the scrolls of God's Word. Paul, as an apostle, nothing else to minister. He's in prison, he's going to die soon. As a believer, he wanted the Scripture so he could read and study it.

Number four, feeding on Scripture is the God-given desire and the God-given demand of every true Christian. Peter puts it like this, like newborn babies long for the pure milk of the Word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. That's not an option, that's a command from the apostle and ultimately from our Lord Himself that you, Christian, are to long for the pure milk of the Word. Like newborn babies, if you have children, you know exactly what that's like.

Number five. This is really something to think about. Christ rebuked the people in His time for not knowing the Scripture. Look at these texts. Matthew 12, verses three and five. “He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions? Or have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?’” Now, don't misunderstand what Jesus is saying here. His point is not that the leaders had never actually read this text. They obviously had. His point is that they had failed to truly consider its meaning and its application. In other words, they had failed in their study, not their reading. He makes the same point several times. Matthew 19:4, “He answered and said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?’” Matthew 22:31, “But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God?’” Matthew 12:26, “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the Book of Moses and the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?” In all those cases, Christ is saying this. If you claim to be a believer in the true God, he has given us His Word. We're going to look at it soon in Matthew chapter four, where at the temptation, Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. That's what matters most. And in all of these cases, he's saying to people, you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility not only to let your eyes pass over the words, but to truly understand what God meant. And that requires diligent and careful study. 

Number six, Paul commanded Timothy to immerse himself in the Scripture in order to grow in godliness. Look at 1 Timothy chapter four. 1 Timothy chapter four and look at verse six. “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus.” Now watch this: You will be “constantly nourished yourself on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following.” You know what he's saying? And I understand this very personally. As a teacher, if I'm a diligent student, I get far more out of the Scriptures than you get from me because I spend 30 hours a week studying, and you only get 45 minutes on Sunday morning. That's a huge blessing and benefit to me. But what he's saying to Timothy here is Timothy, in your own study of the Scriptures, even to teach others, you will be nourished yourself. What that means, brothers, is that as you study the Scriptures, your soul will be nourished in the same way. And you will grow, he goes on to say, you will grow, verses 7 and 8, in godliness. That's the connection between godliness in verses 7 and 8 and verse 6. It's the Scripture. You grow in godliness through an understanding of the Scripture.

Number seven, the daily discipline of prayer and exposure to the Word results in sanctification and spiritual progress. You know, guys, I have said for years that we understand this at a physical level. We understand that to sustain healthy physical life only requires a handful of things. Think about it. What do you really need to sustain a healthy physical life? Well, you need a certain amount of sleep, you need water, you need food, and you need air, oxygen. There are a few other things that help, but those things are the essentials that you cannot do without. When it comes to your spiritual life, the study and understanding of and application of God's Word is to your spiritual life what those other things are to your physical life. You can get along for a while without them. Think about it physically, you know, if you neglect your health, you get too little sleep, you eat junk food, you don't get enough water, you don't, you know, you're not getting enough oxygen in terms of you're not breathing deeply enough and all those things. You're not going to notice that very much over the first week, couple of weeks, even maybe a month or two, but given enough time, guess what's going to happen? It's going to take a toll on your health. It's the same thing with spiritual disciplines. 

You know, some guys, they start, and you know, like two days later, well, that didn't help. What if you did that at the gym? You know, go to the gym two days, well, that didn't help. What if you did that with trying to eat right or trying to get enough sleep? Well, that didn't help. No, it's the, what your spirit needs over the long haul for its help. Stay with it. The daily discipline is crucial. John 17:17, Jesus said, he's praying there, it's His high priestly prayer, and he says, “Father, sanctify them, make them holy by means of the truth. Your Word is truth.” Think about that. Jesus is praying for you, Christian. He's interceding for you, that you will be progressively be made more like him and more like your father. How? Through the Scripture. Sanctify them by means of the truth. Your Word is truth.

Look at 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3 and verse 14. He's saying, they're going to be deceivers. Verse 13. They're going to get worse. But you, Timothy, continue in the things which you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. From childhood, you've known the sacred writings that are able to give you both the wisdom that leads to salvation, verse 15, and verse 17, to equip you to do all that you need to do. Notice, in this text, the Scripture is what produces salvation, verse 15, and the Scripture is what produces sanctification in verses 16 and 17. That's what the Scripture does. 

Number eight, Paul directed his New Testament letters not only at the leadership of the church, but at its members. Look at 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 1. This is Paul describing his ministry. He says, “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart, we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness, or adulterating the Word of God. [we're not distorting it. But here's how our ministry of the Word goes] by the manifestation of truth.” That's what the right kind of teaching is. It's the manifestation of the truth. He says, in doing that, we are “commending ourselves [notice what he says] to every man's conscience in the sight of God.” In other words, Paul directed his New Testament letters, apart from three of them, the Pastoral Epistles, they were all directed at ordinary believers in ordinary churches. People like us. 

And then, number nine, New Testament believers were commended by God for being diligent students of the Scripture. We saw it in Acts 2, verse 42. The New Testament Church in Jerusalem was committed to, devoted to, preoccupied with the Apostles' teaching. That's the first church. It should be this church. It should be you individually. But turn over to Acts 17. This is a familiar passage, but I want you to think about this. Acts 17 verse 11. Luke writes, “Now these [that is the believers in Berea] were more noble minded than those in Thessalonica.” What made them more noble minded? “For [because] they received the Word with great eagerness [that's to be commended, but they also] examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” There is a wonderful reminder of the importance of every Christian being in the Scriptures daily. Here, Luke writes under the direction of Paul, first of all, an apostle, but ultimately under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and commends believers who are personally studying the Scriptures daily to see if what they're being taught is what the Bible teaches. That's your responsibility. That's my responsibility. And guess who the teacher was? The Apostle Paul. So, God commends those who are diligent students of His word. And God will commend you, men, if that's your commitment. It matters to him. So, those are the arguments.

But let's move on to the goals of Bible study. Again, if you're going to prepare yourself, you need to understand, what are you really trying to accomplish in Bible study? Let me give you goals in several categories. First of all, there is a mental goal in Bible study, and that is obviously to understand the Bible. In 2 Timothy 2:15, you want to handle accurately the Word of truth. In 2 Peter 3:16, Peter reminds his readers, Paul, “in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort as they do the rest of the Scripture to their own destruction.” You want to understand what the Bible really means, because guess what? The meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture. If you don't get the meaning of the Scripture, then you're not even really getting the Scripture. If you've distorted its meaning, that's what he's saying here. If you distort the original authorial intent of the passage, then you're not dealing with the Scripture. You just made that up.

To understand the Bible. A second mental goal is, and I already mentioned this, is to evaluate the teaching that we hear, Acts 17:11. In addition to a mental goal, however, there is also a relational goal, and that is to know our God. To know our God. Look at Proverbs chapter 2. Proverbs 2. There's an interesting statement here. There's an if-then statement. Okay, the if starts in verse 1, and the ifs continue to verse 5, and then you get the then. So notice what goes on here. 

“My son, if you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding. [In other words, try to understand what's there. Treasure it, receive it, believe it, seek to understand it.] If you cry for discernment, if you lift your voice for understanding, [now you're praying that God would help you understand. If you seek wisdom in the Scriptures] as silver and search for hidden treasures, [in other words, you're all in, you're invested, this matters to you above all things] then you will discern the fear of the Lord and you will discover the knowledge of God.”

There is a responsibility to be a diligent student. When you come to the Scripture, understand this, you're not just looking for mental knowledge, an intellectual apprehension of the truth, you're looking for your God Himself, because this is His self-revelation. This is how he has made Himself known to you. That's what you're seeking in seeking to understand the Scriptures. Jesus said in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me.” The Scriptures testify about Christ. They testify about our God. Philip Brooks writes, “The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees the worlds beyond. But if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that.” Did you see the contrast? If he looks through the telescope, he sees the worlds beyond. If he looks at his telescope, then he just sees that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond. But most people only look at it, so they only see the dead letter. Now, don't misunderstand. He's not talking about something mystical. He's saying, you're looking in the Scripture for God's self-revelation. You're looking not for an accumulation of facts, but to learn about your God.

Don't misunderstand the purpose of Bible Study. John Stott wrote, “A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs, because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible, because it speaks to us of him, our bridegroom.” Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I've often used the illustration that if you walked into my office and you saw me with a photograph of my wife, and I was poking holes in it and cutting it into pieces and putting it in the trash can and burning it with fire, you'd say, there's something wrong with his relationship with his wife. You'd be right. If you love the person, then what are you going to do with the image of the person? You're going to treasure it. In the case of the Scripture, it's not the image of God. It reveals God to us. And so if you love the person, you're going to love the book that reveals him, that makes him known. 

There's also a spiritual purpose to Bible study. And that is, first of all, to protect your soul from sin. Psalm 37:31, the Law of his God is in his heart. His steps do not slip. By the way, don't misunderstand that. That doesn't mean if you have in rote memory, put a Bible verse in your mind, that that's somehow going to be a magic like talisman that protects you, a rabbit's foot that protects you. No, he's not saying that. He's saying it's gripped you, that you understand the truth, you believe the truth, you're seeking to live the truth, then it will keep your steps from slipping. Psalm 119:11, “Your Word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you.” 

By the way, let me just stop there. This isn't in my notes, and I probably don't have time to say this, but I'm going to say anyway. You know, Paul talks about in the armor that he describes in Ephesians 6, that the way we fight spiritual warfare is with sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The word he uses for sword there is not that large two-handed sword that the Romans sometimes used. Instead, it's the little, short sword that a soldier carried into battle. And what he's saying is, when you're in spiritual battle, when you're in the midst of temptation, you can't take the whole Bible and use it. You've got to have little, short statements of Scripture that help remind you of the truth. I actually have it. I don't have my iPad up here with me, but in my iPad, I have a what I call a note called the Sword of the Spirit, where I have categories of struggles that men all have, right? Things like pride and selfishness and lust. And I have a list of references, and the verses are written out that arm my soul in the midst of those battles, so that when those temptations come, I can remind myself of the truth. That's what it means to use the Scripture. You know it, you understand it, and you seek to apply it in the moment of temptation. Or a decision that needs to be made, whatever it is. 

Spurgeon said, backsliders begin with dusty Bibles and end with filthy garments. It's just the reality. Whenever I find somebody who's caught up in sin, you know, they want some pixie dust. You know, fix me. And my question is always, okay, let's start with, obviously, you're a Christian, let's go there first, make sure you understand the Gospel, you have a Bible testimony. Then, let's talk about the spiritual disciplines in your life. What is your time daily in God's Word look like? What does your time of prayer look like daily? And invariably, I hear, well, you know, those that slipped, well guess what, brother? There's a correlation. I can tell you personally that when I neglect the basic disciplines of the Christian life, the siren song of sin gets louder. Those sins you thought were dead, they began to raise their head again. But if you will stay purposeful and disciplined, then it protects you. Psalm 119:38, “Establish your Word to your servant as that which produces reverence for you.”

Scripture also helps you grow in personal holiness. I mentioned John 17:17, Jesus' prayer, “Sanctify them by means of the truth. Your Word is truth.” First John 2:14, “I have written to you young men because you are strong.” How did that happen? How does someone become a spiritual young man who's strong as opposed to a spiritual baby? Here it is. The Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. 

Another spiritual goal of Bible Study is to be prepared for service. 2 Timothy 3:17 talks about, 16 is about all the Scripture being inspired by God. The next verse says, you know, it does all of these things in our lives so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. The Scripture will equip you to serve your God.

All right, so let's move on then to the prerequisites for Bible Study. If you're going to study the Scriptures, there are some prerequisites. The first one is very important. You must actually be a Christian. John 8.43, Jesus said, why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear my word. He uses a word in Greek for cannot, that is the word dunami. It means to have the capacity, to have the power, to have the ability. Jesus says, you don't understand what I'm saying because you don't have the power or capacity to hear my word. Why? Because you're still of your father, the devil. Jesus put it this way in John 10.27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” He's not talking about hearing my voice, hearing His voice in some, you know, Jesus just spoke to me. No, he's talking about the Scripture. They hear my voice in the Scripture, and they follow me. That's what believers do, but unbelievers don't. 

Turn over to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. “A natural man [that is an unregenerate man] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot [there's that word again] he cannot understand them. [Why?] because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.” You know what he's saying? He's saying to pick up the Spirit, if I can sort of use an analogy, to pick up the signals of the Spirit, you have to have the right antenna. I mean, right now, this room is filled with signals. Digital signals going everywhere. And we're not getting most of them. Most of them are passing us. Maybe you're getting a few in your phone right now. But most of them are going past us, and we're not getting them at all. We're missing the signal. It's as if nothing is being said. Nothing is being sent. Why? Because we don't have the right antenna to receive it. Unbelievers don't have the right antenna. If you're here tonight, and you just don't get the Bible, and you don't really have any interest in getting the Bible, of course, I don't know why you'd be here if that was true, but if that's true, brother, let me just tell you, it's because you may not have a spiritual antenna at all. You may not have the Holy Spirit within you who connects you to the Word of God. So, you have to be a Christian to study the Bible. Now, let me just put a caveat on that. Unbelievers can study the Bible and intellectually apprehend what it says, because it's, you know, it's understandable. But they will never understand it and grasp it in a spiritual life-changing way. It'll be dead to them. It'll be like information that you read, that just you understand with your mind, but you have no interest in, it makes no change in your life. So, that's what I mean by you must be a Christian. 

Number two prerequisite for Bible study, you must first confess your sin. James 1:21, turn over there with me. I think this is a very frequently misunderstood text. James 1. Let's start in verse 19. I think this entire paragraph, 19 to 25, is talking about the believer's response to Scripture. And that becomes very clear in the middle of the Scripture, but in the middle of this passage. But look at verse 19. This is interesting. This also is talking about the Scripture. “This you know, my beloved brethren. Everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” Now, James could just mean generally that's true. That's just true in the world. I don't think so. This is in a paragraph, as you're going to see, about the Word of God. What he's saying here is be quick to listen to God's Word and don't be quick to speak back to God. “Well, I think, well, I believe.” No, be quick to hear and slow to anger. They're going to be things you encounter in the Scripture. They're going to provoke your pride. They're going to make you mad. Don't be quick to anger. Be slow to anger, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. 

And then he makes it clear he's talking about the Scripture. “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness,” he says, putting aside, that's a familiar New Testament image of taking off dirty clothing. Metaphorically, it means taking off our evil attitudes, our evil behaviors that were part of our lives before Christ. Now don't misunderstand. He isn't saying you have to be perfect to receive the word. It's that you have to be willing to let go of all that's dirty in your life. You have to be willing to repent. You must be willing to let go of anything that the Bible tells you to let go of, no matter how much you currently cherish it, whether sinful acts, sinful thinking, doctrinal error. So notice what he says then, verse 21. Putting all that stuff aside, “in humility, receive the word.” Approach the Scriptures with repentance and humility, and then “receive the Word implanted which is able to save your souls.” But as you receive it, as you believe it, as you learn it, prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. So you must come to the Scripture—I must come to the Scripture—not only as a believer, but I must come without clinging to sin. I have to come with a repentant and humble heart. That's what he's saying here. To receive the Word. When you approach your study with repentance and humility, you are ready to learn. When that's your attitude, you're ready to be taught.

Look at 1 Peter 2. I mentioned this earlier, but just look at it. 1 Peter 2, verse 1. “Therefore, putting aside all malice [here it is again: putting aside all desire to hurt somebody] all deceit, all hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander, instead, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” So, prerequisites, a Christian, you've confessed your sin.

Number three, with an attitude of humility and dependence, you must pray for illumination. J.I. Packer reminds us that “one of the many divine qualities of the Bible is this, it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.” In other words, you have to come with the right spirit and the right heart. There's a great quote. I meant to bring it with me. I don't have my iPad with me, but on my iPad, I have a quote that I read a lot of times on Wednesday morning before I begin my study. I get up in my home study on Wednesday in my office typically by six or so, and one of the first things I do is often remind myself of this quote from John Owen, where John Owen reminds us that for us as mere humans to approach the Scripture without dependence on the Holy Spirit is terrible pride and arrogance. I have no right to come to understand it on my own. I have to come in this humility and dependence that says, I need the Holy Spirit to teach me. 

Psalm 119:18, “Open my eyes, the eyes of my heart, that I may behold wonderful things from your law.” Psalm 119:73, “Your hands made me and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn Your commandments.” You ever prayed that? Lord, give me understanding that I may learn Your commandments. Psalm 119:127, “I am Your servant. Give me understanding that I may know your testimonies.” Ephesians 1:18, “I pray [Paul says] that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know as you study the Scripture what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” And John, the apostle, talks in 1 John 2 about the anointing of the spirit, meaning he allows you to understand the truth of the Scripture. 

Guys, this is fundamental to our study. In fact, I can't stress it too much. Charles Spurgeon said, “It is one of the peculiar offices of the Holy Spirit to enlighten His people. He has done so by giving us His inspired word, but the book is never spiritually understood by anyone apart from the personal teaching of its great Author. You may read it as much as you will and never discover the inner and vital meaning unless your soul is let into it by the Holy Spirit Himself. You may have done well to learn the letter of truth, but you still need the Spirit of God to make it the light and power of God to your soul.” It's absolutely right. Unless the Holy Spirit is your teacher. If he grants you—you know what illumination is? It means the Holy Spirit allows you to understand the truth of the Scripture, not merely in an intellectual level, although that's certainly required, but at a spiritual life-changing level, where the truth grips your soul, changes how you think, changes how you live. Only the Spirit can do that. You can't, and I can't manufacture that. 

The Catechism asks the question, maybe you've taught your kids this question, why do I need Jesus to be my prophet? The answer is this, because I am ignorant and in need of a teacher. If that's not the Spirit you come to Bible Study with, then the treasures of Scripture are never going to open their door to you. You have to come with that humble contrite heart that says, God, I can't understand all that's here without the work of your Holy Spirit. Before you begin to study the Bible, always in a spirit of dependence and humility, ask the Spirit of God to be your teacher. That is my regular practice, because I get it. I am not able on my own to understand the Scripture.

A fourth is you must have access to a good literal translation of the Bible. The Bible was originally written in three languages. Do you understand that? Most people think two, and that's mostly true, but actually there are three. First of all, obviously, the majority of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. There's half of Daniel, from chapter two, verse four, the second half of verse four, through chapter seven, verse 28, that's in Aramaic, and two parts of Ezra are in Aramaic as well. And then the New Testament, of course, is written in Greek. Now, the Bible has been translated, as you know, from those languages into English in a variety of translations. So, what translation should you use? What is the best translation for serious Bible study? Well, before I can answer that question, you need to understand what's behind translations. 

There are essentially three translation philosophies. If you go to the website, to Amazon, or if you use Great Christian Books, or whatever it is you use, you will find a lot of Bibles and a lot of different translations. All of them fall into one of these three translation philosophies. First of all, there is the literal philosophy. This is called formal equivalence. And the people who translate with a literal translation philosophy or formal equivalence do their best to do word for word equivalence as much as possible. Here are some of the translations, the majority of them, [here, the speaker’s notes display a list of translations: the King James Version, the New American Standard Bible, and the English Standard Version] and I could add now the Legacy. 

By the way, I think you understand the Legacy Standard Bible some of you have. That is essentially the New American Standard 95 translation with changes made by the faculty of the Master Seminary. And so the major changes in the Legacy Standard Bible from the New American Standard 95, two major changes. One, and the biggest change by far, is taking the word Lord in all caps in the Old Testament, which is actually in Hebrew “Yahweh,” God's personal name, and putting Yahweh in the text. That's the number one change. The second most frequent change in the New Testament is changing servant to slave, where the Greek word doulos appears. There are other changes as well, but its base, its foundation is the New American Standard 95, and then those changes are made on top of it. So it could fit in here as well with the New American Standard. That's literal formal equivalence.

The second translation philosophy is called dynamic equivalence. So formal equivalence are literal and then dynamic equivalence. Those who approach translation in English this way are looking for idea or concept equivalence. In other words, they're saying not what is the Greek word, what is the English word that best corresponds to that Greek word? No, they're saying, let's translate the Greek word into its essential meaning or idea, and then let's find the English word that we think fits that. So it's kind of like, you could think of it like this. It's kind of like taking the Greek word, going to Greek thought, going to English thought, going to English word. Whereas formal equivalence is going Greek word as much as possible. You can't always do it, but as much as possible, Greek word to English word. The dynamic equivalence Bibles would be the New International Version, the New English Bible, the New Living Translation. There are others, but that gives you an idea. 

The third translation philosophy really isn't a translation philosophy, although some of the paraphrases try to make it that. It's paraphrase. And really what you have with the paraphrase is the author's interpretation of the original. For example, the Living Bible, you know, when I was growing up, that was really popular. Well, you know, a guy on a train, and with the best emotives, just sort of paraphrased the English Bible for His children. So you're not really getting a translation. It's somebody's paraphrase. It's somebody saying, this is what I think it means. 

So let me show you what that looks like. Let's take one verse. First Thessalonians 1.3. Here are the different ways that these philosophies approach that verse. Let's take the NAS. It's the most literal formal equivalence Bible that, you know, the legacy that we have in English. Here's how it translates it. “We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and the presence of our God and Father.” Okay? If you were to look at the Greek text and you could read Greek, there would be some word order changes, there would be a few things like that, but you would see a formal equivalence between Greek and that verse in English. 

Here's the ESV, also a formal equivalence translation. “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, let's take it one more step. 

The NIV is kind of a moderate dynamic equivalence Bible. Here's how they translate it. “We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father [now watch this] your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” See what happened there? In Greek and in the formal equivalence Bibles, it's just an “of” relationship. Work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope. But the NIV says, we don't think that's clear enough to our English readers, so we're going to translate that into an English thought. And so they make it work produced by faith, labor prompted by love, endurance inspired by hope. 

Here's the NLT, new living translation. “We always thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly. As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ.” You see what's happening? We're getting farther away from the literal words in the original language. 

And here's a paraphrase, Phillips. We are always thankful to God as we pray for you all, for we never forget that your faith has meant solid achievement.” You see what happened there? “Your love has meant hard work, and the hope that you have in our Lord Jesus Christ means sheer dogged endurance in the life that you live before God, the Father of us all.” Now again, there's a place for paraphrases, guys, but you have to recognize what they are. They are really like commentaries. It's somebody saying, here's what I think it means. So that's not something you want to use for Bible study. You want to get as close as you can. If you don't know Greek and Hebrew, you want to get as close as you can. And even those of us who do, want an English translation that gets as close as we can to the original. And that's why we use the NAS 95 here at Countryside. And it's why I would urge you to use it as your primary study Bible. 

Again, if I could show you the Greek and you could read it, you would see there is more correspondence between those first two and the original language than there is between the others. And you can see that. You can see what they do with it, even as it unfolds. So if you're going to interpret the text of Scripture, you want the text that gets you closest to the original. You don't want a translation that is making interpretive decisions for you. And with that in mind, the best English translation to use is, as I said, the NASB 95. Or the Legacy, of course, because it's really the same text, just with some changes. All right. So there's another prerequisite. You must have access to a good literal translation of the Bible.

And number five, you must be willing to work hard. Second Timothy 2:15, be diligent. You've got to expend yourself in Bible study. For what I do on Sundays, when I was preaching twice a Sunday, Sunday morning and Sunday night, two different messages, for 20 years, I spent 30 hours a week studying so that I could be prepared to teach. It's hard work to understand the Scripture. I'm not suggesting you need to study 30 hours a week. I'm just saying, it takes effort to get to the meaning of the Scripture. Why don't we study the Bible? RC. Sproul again writes, We fail in our duty to study God's word, not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it's work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem, he writes, is that we are lazy. Newspapers are easier to read than the Bible is to study. Be diligent. Be diligent. As one person wrote, never let good books take the place of the Bible. Drink from the well, not the streams that flow from the well. I love that. Drink from the well and not the streams that flow from the well. 

I've mentioned this story before, and some of you have heard it maybe more often than you like, but some of you haven't. When I was starting to teach my daughters some of the basics of Bible studies when they got into their teenage years, I wanted them to understand how many Christians abused the Bible. So I decided one morning that the best way to teach them that was rather than saying it, to do something that was kind of like a parable. And so that morning after breakfast, I told them that we had our, when the kids were young, we'd have breakfast together and we'd have our time in the Word and prayer connected to breakfast. And so after we finished breakfast, I told them that I'd been particularly encouraged by an article that I'd read in the Dallas Morning News.

So that morning I said, you don't need your Bibles. I'm just going to read an article from the newspaper and make some comments. So I found an article in the front page of the Dallas Morning News about an aging rock group appearing at the American Airlines Center. I think it was the Eagles, if I remember right. And that's great, okay? I don't have anything with Eagles. But I began to read it, and I would periodically stop and sort of wax eloquent about the spiritual lessons in the article, lessons that had absolutely nothing to do with what the author intended when he wrote the article. For example, the article mentioned that they had worn suits for this concert. That was a very un-Eagle thing, like of them. So I eagerly explained that that means if they dress that way, this is a reminder that we need to dress certain ways for worship. And I found all kinds of spiritual lessons in this article as I was working my way through. And I was very serious about it, teaching them like I was teaching them the Bible.

And when I first started, my daughters, they trust me, and so they were initially kind of nodding their heads, and then they started looking like, what's going on? Kind of a quizzical look. And after a while, they started looking very confused, and then making uncomfortable glances at each other. It was so fun to do this, because they're kind of, you know, out of the corner of their eye, they're looking at each other like, what's wrong with dad? So I stopped and said, what's bothering you? And their response was, one of my daughters' response was, dad, we don't think that's what the article means, which is exactly what I wanted them to say. And then I gave them the classic Christian response. I said, well, that's what it means to me. At this point, with growing exasperation, one of my girls said, dad, you can't do that. And of course, I agreed. And then I helped them see that what I had just done to the newspaper, many Christians do to God's eternal word. They rest it from its context and make it say whatever they want it to say.

We don't give the Bible meaning, men. It means something whether we get it or not. It means what the original authors, and by the original authors, I mean the original human author and because of the nature of the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the divine author who's directing that human author, what they intended it to mean. That's why studying the Bible is so important. Please don't ever say again, that's what it means to me. It means something whether it means that to you or not. So that's the goal. The process of inductive Bible study is to get to what does the Bible mean, not what does it mean to me. 

Now, the process of inductive Bible study, as I've said, includes preparation, observation, meditation, interpretation, evaluation, and application. I've already defined those for you, so I won't go back over them. We've started on the preparation side. We looked at, okay, if you're going to be prepared, you need to know why it's important to study the Bible, the arguments. You need to know the goals. What are you trying to accomplish? You need to know the prerequisites. We looked at those if you're going to study the Bible. Now, the rest of these six steps, the other five have to do with the text you're actually studying, and that's what we're going to begin tonight. 

The first, or I'm sorry, the second step, but the first step in the real heart of study is observation. Observation. This is what theologians call exegesis. Exegesis is simply this. It is the careful reading, thought, and analysis along with all available tools to systematically study the details of the text in order to arrive at its meaning. In other words, the goal of the observation step is to discover what the original author intended to say. That's what you're trying to do in observation. You're observing the text of Scripture with one goal. What did the original author mean by this? Now, you're really answering the question, what does this really say? 

Now, in this process, sadly, when you look at church history, there are many examples of ancient sermons and interpretations that are allegorical. You know what that is? Allegorical interpretation. They see in every passage four or more different levels of meaning. For example, here, they would say an allegorical interpretation like that of Origen, for example, the Church Father, would say that every reference to the city of Jerusalem actually has at the same time, in the same text, four levels of meaning. There is, if it mentions Jerusalem, it's talking about the historical city, literally. But at the same time, in the same verse, it's also using Jerusalem allegorically to talk about the Church. And again, in the same passage, the same verse, it's using the word Jerusalem in a moral sense to speak about the human soul, and it's speaking about an eschatological heavenly Jerusalem. All of those at the same time. Well, you can see how this really messes up the meaning of the Scripture. But this is what was common in, sadly, a number of the early Church fathers. But with the Reformation and a new day dawned, not only for the doctrines of salvation, but for the priority and treatment of the Word of God.

By the way, let me just stop and say, there were some very bright lights along the way. You know, you had the early Church father Chrysostom, who was a faithful, John Chrysostom, who was a faithful expositor of the Scripture. You had other examples along the way. But when you come to the Reformation, you find the absolute rejection of the allegorical method. Here's Luther. I love Luther. I mean, he was a believer, but he had his issues, I know that. But he saw some things very clearly. Listen to him on the allegorical method.

“Origen’s allegories are not worth so much dirt, for allegories are empty speculations, the scum of holy Scripture. Allegories are awkward, absurd, invented, obsolete, loose rags.” And here's my favorite. “Allegory is a sort of beautiful harlot who proves herself especially seductive to lazy men.” That is so true, that's so true. He believed instead, as did the other reformers, that a proper interpretation of the Scripture must come from a literal understanding of the Bible. 

Now, let me define literal. I'm going to use that word from time to time. Some people jump on that word and say, oh, that means you don't believe there are figures of speech in the Bible, you don't believe there are metaphors, you don't believe there are, of course we do. That's in every writing. You know, there are those sorts of things in all kinds of human writings. What we mean by literal is normal interpretation. In other words, we're going to interpret the Bible just in a normal way like we would any other piece of literature. There's no ecclesiastical way to interpret the Bible. We look at the words and the grammar and the historical setting just like we would any other document. That's what we mean by literal. The Bible student should consider things like the historical conditions in which it was written, the grammar, and the context. Again, Luther put it like this. He said, “The Holy Ghost is the all-simplest writer that is in heaven or earth. Therefore, His words can have no more than one simplest sense, which we call the scriptural or the literal meaning.” John Calvin also placed extreme importance on studying context, grammar, words, parallel passages. One famous sentence of his explains this approach. I love this. He says, “It is the first business of an interpreter to let the author say what he does say instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say.” Guys, if you forget everything else I said tonight, if you'll remember that sentence, it'll put you on the straight and narrow. Don't come to the Bible making the author say what you think he ought to say. Come to the Bible to discern what the author actually said. That's your goal. You're a detective. You're trying to get to the authorial intent.

Now how do we approach this process? We do so systematically. I love the way Luther again illustrates it. This is the way to study the Bible. He says, “First I shake the whole tree that the ripest fruit may fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch, and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.” You know what he's saying? He's saying when you're studying a passage, you start with the passage, and you're looking at the whole thing, and you're looking for what's there, and then you just keep diving deeper and deeper into sentences and phrases and words to understand the meaning of the text. 

What are you looking for during the observation stage? What are you trying to observe? Well, we follow an approach to Scripture that's called the grammatical historical method. What does that mean? Meaning is found in the grammar, the historical setting, the words that are used, just like normal interpretation of any other document, in other words. We don't believe the Bible has like hidden messages, you know, woven into every third letter, you know, you put together and it forms some message. No, it's a document like any other human document, like your contract, like your mortgage statement. It may be hard to read in places, but the words and the sentences mean something, and you're supposed to discern what they mean. The author's original meaning, men, is what we're trying to discern. And that meaning can only be understood by understanding the grammar, the words, and the context, the historical setting.

So in observation, then, we're looking at, here's what we're observing. First of all, we're looking at context. And by context, I mean two things. I mean, first of all, historical context, the setting of the book in human history. For example, if you're studying 1 Peter, you can't ignore the fact that Peter is writing with the rising tide of Roman persecution caused by Nero's blaming the Christians for the burning of Rome. You have to know that. You have to know something of the historical context to fully appreciate the warnings and the encouragement and the comfort that's found in 1 Peter. You also, not only want to look at the historical context, but the Biblical context. The relationship of the paragraph or the section to the surrounding passages, the rest of that book, and to the entire message of Scripture. So in other words, to interpret a passage, you're looking at its immediate context, you're looking at the section it's in, you're looking at the book it's in, and then how that fits into the overall meaning of Scripture. 

You're looking at context, and secondly, you're observing content. And content comes by looking at syntax. By that, I mean the relationship of phrases and clauses to one another. Now, I know some of you who, like, hated English or are having, like, cold chills right now. Don't. We'll get there. I'll explain it. It's actually going to be very, very helpful for you. I actually taught college English, so I can get you there. And so, stay with me. But let me just say, the only way you can really understand anything is by understanding the relationship of the phrases and clauses in a given sentence to each other. You do that naturally. We'll talk about that. But I'm going to help you, hopefully, strengthen that.

And then words. The exact sense of the words that the author intended. Words have lots of senses. If I use the word cool, that word can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. So if you're interpreting a document, you don't look at the word cool and go, you know what meaning I really like for the word cool? I like, like, hip. You know, that's the meaning I like. Well, who cares what you like? What did the author intend? What sense of the word did the author intend? That's what you have to do as you look at the Scripture. Spurgeon, quoting a writer he'd read, writes this, Most read their Bibles like cows that stand in thick grass and trample under their feet the finest flowers and herbs. That is, that's so true. Don't hurry the step of observation.

Now, to accomplish the steps under observation, I'm going to recommend a few resources. I'm going to give you the name of the print resources, but most of these are available digitally if you prefer that, all right? You need a good study Bible or two. The two I would recommend would be the MacArthur Study Bible and the ESV Study Bible. Just keep in mind that the ESV Study Bible is trying to appeal to the widest possible audience. So they'll put views in there that I don't believe have any real basis. So just be discerning. Read the biblical text and accept it as God's word, but when you get to the notes, and that's true for the MacArthur Study Bible too, you want to be like the Bereans. You want to see if it's what the Scriptures teach. By the way, I have to put in a plug for the MacArthur Study Bible because in God's goodness, I got to be a part of that project. I actually wrote the first draft of the notes for Romans and Revelation. I oversaw a team that did the bulk of the New Testament, and grace to you. So I love the MacArthur Study Bible. I was married to it for a number of months of my life. So I highly recommend it as your primary study Bible tool. 

You need a concordance. Now, this today, computers have made these really obsolete. So I'm not sure that you need. If you're not a computer guy, then pick up a print concordance. Strong's Exhaustive, New American Standard Exhaustive. What you have in a concordance is you have a list of all the references in the entire Bible for every English word. And beside each Biblical occurrence is a number. That number is keyed to the Hebrew and Greek dictionary in the back. So without knowing Greek and Hebrew, you can know when different Greek and Hebrew words are translated into English as the same word. You can trace not the English words, but the original words through the Bible, and you can look up the meaning of the original Greek and Hebrew words. So a concordance can be very helpful if you're into print and not digital. Those are some options for you to consider there. 

Also, again, encourage you to have a Bible dictionary. If you want a one-volume, Merrill's, the New Ungers Bible Dictionary, Merrill Ungers, is very good. If you want the heavy-duty variety, you can get ISPE, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, in five volumes, and Merrill Tenney's, the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia Bible, also in five volumes. But for most of you, that's probably overkill. The, a good Bible dictionary would be fine. Just one, one. What that does is it allows you to look up all the proper nouns in the Bible and learn about them, like people, places, things, Abram, Epaphroditus, the Tabernacle, the Altar of Incense, Feasts, Passover, et cetera. So, it's a really helpful tool to explain those things to you. A topical Bible is also very helpful. 

A topical Bible allows you to read in one place what the Bible has to say about particular topics. A topical Bible will have topics like love, and under love will be a lot of references from the Bible about what's said about love, hate, grace, God's eternality, et cetera. A couple of topical Bibles, Nave's topical Bible. I really like MacArthur's topical Bible. That's actually Torrey's topical textbook. And when I was at Grace To You, we added about 10% more entries and updated it. It's a really helpful resource.

If you prefer computers, which most of you do, you can buy many of these books via Kindle if you want to do that, or my recommendation would be to get Bible software. The two sort of leading Bible softwares out there today are Logos and Accordance. Lagos is sort of the 900-pound gorilla. A lot more resources available. It's pretty slick. I have both of these, and I use both of them for different reasons, but Logos has a really neat feature in that you can take it with you on your other devices, your iPad or your iPhone or whatever, and have access to all those things. Not only on your computer but in these other devices as well. Or if you don't want to spend the money, because it can be pretty expensive, you can get free Bible software, and I've given you an address there where you can access that. But the Bible software will give you a shortcut to all these things.

Like concordance, it used to be so laborious to break out your concordance. And it's got the word love, and it's got every place in the Scripture the word love occurs. And then you'd have to look at that reference and go to your Bible and look it up and then come back over here and look at the reference and go here and look it up. Whereas with the Bible software, you just hover over the verse, and it pops up and it's there. Saves a lot of time. So if you can afford Bible software, I highly recommend it, particularly for reference works. I'm not a big digital book person, because I hate to tell you this, but they can go away. I spent some money with a Bible software program that's now out of business, Bible Works. It was the hot thing. All the seminaries used it. You know, I spent money to buy books and it's gone. And all the books are gone. So don't put all of your eggs in the digital basket, because even these gorillas, like Logos, can go away. So just think about that. So you need those resources.

Now, let's come to get started on the process itself. When you're beginning the process of observation, you always have to keep in mind the big picture. You're going to be looking at a paragraph. Let's say you decide to study the Book of James, or you decide to study the Book of 1 John, which you probably wouldn't do since we just did that. But you decide to study one of those books. You're going to be looking at paragraphs in those books. You can't lose the big picture as you're studying. This isn't really something you do week to week. It's something that's always in the back of your mind as you're studying a given passage. Always remember the big picture. What is the big picture? Well, remember the Bible's history. Don't forget it was written over 1,500 years. From the time of Moses, the first five books were written in 1445 BC at the time of the Exodus, to 95 AD when John penned Revelation. That's the span over which the Scripture was written. It was written by over 40 different authors. There are 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. In our English Bibles, the Old Testament is cut up a little differently. Same content, cut up a little differently in the Hebrew Scriptures. We talked about that last semester. The process by which the Bible came to us, it started when God commanded the men that he chose to write His words. They wrote those words in what we call the original autographs. In other words, the actual scroll or piece of parchment on which Jeremiah wrote, or the Apostle John wrote, the actual first one. We don't have any of those. They don't exist. 

So how did we get our Bibles? Well, take the letter to the Church in Ephesus, for example. When the Church in Ephesus got that letter from Paul, guess what they did? What would we do if we got a letter from the Apostle? We would make copies for people in our church. People would come up maybe and spend part of their week copying that letter word by word, so they had a copy in their own homes. Then we would send that original to other churches in our area, and they would do the same thing and make copies. And so pretty soon, you have copies of copies of copies in there. They're everywhere, but because they're embraced as inspired, they're very carefully and meticulously copied. So those copies were made. Today, we have more than 25,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament. Those are copies of copies of copies of copies that have come down to us from the beginning. By the way, so much of our New Testament can be reproduced from the writings of the early Church fathers, who quote those letters in the early days of the Church. And you can piece most of the New Testament together from the writings of the early Church fathers, even if we didn't have the manuscripts, but we do. We have an abundance of wealth of data.

What about the Bible's authenticity? As you study it, remember historically, the Bible is an authentic document. How do we know that? Well, we have more manuscript copies of the Bible than any other ancient document. We have 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament. The second largest number for an ancient document is Homer's Iliad with 643 manuscripts. In addition, the Bible's manuscripts, the Biblical manuscripts that we have, date closer to the original document when it was written than any other ancient document. The time gap between the original writing and the copies we have. With the Iliad, the earliest manuscript we have was 400 years after the Iliad was written. So how many of you in your classes in college said, oh, I don't believe that, I don't believe Homer wrote that? Of course not. 

But look at the Scriptures. The New Testament, we have a fragment, I've seen it, a fragment of the Gospel of John that dates to 25 years after his death. We have, as I have on the screen here, we have 100, we have books that were written within 100 years of when they were originally written. We have 150 years as the gap for most of the New Testament. You can see again, we are rich in terms of both the number of copies as well as the closeness of the copies we have to the original writing. So it's authentic. The basic reliability of the New Testament documents is not in question if you're unbiased.

Theologically, we don't embrace these 66 books because some church council voted on them. Okay, let me say that again. We do not embrace these 66 books because some church council voted them in. The church councils received them because they met certain criteria, but the chief reason we believe the Bible is that Jesus affirmed the Old Testament to be God's Word. He again and again quotes the Hebrew Old Testament. He speaks of them using the language of the Old Testament, saying the Law and the Prophets, or the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, the normal references to the Hebrew Scriptures. And he said they were the Word of God, that not one letter, not one stroke of a letter would fail until all was completed. He also said his words were God's words. 

And he pre-affirmed or he pre-authenticated the New Testament by choosing the men under whose oversight it would be written, the 11 apostles plus Paul. And how do we trust Jesus? Well, he validated all His claims, how? By rising from the dead. He said, don't believe a thing I say, don't trust my authority, unless you tear down this temple in three days, I raise it again. And that's exactly what happened. So we believe the Scriptures because we believe Jesus Christ. We understand the reliability, the authenticity of the documents, and theologically we embrace them because of Jesus. 

So what is the Bible about? Again, remember the big picture. As you study a given passage, you're always thinking this. What's the theme of the Bible? If you want to see this laid out, go listen online. I did a message on John 17. The theme of the Bible is God is redeeming a people by His Son, for His Son, to His own glory. That's what the Bible is about. The purpose of the Testaments, the Old Testament says, He's coming. I mean Genesis 3:15. The Redeemer's coming. Somebody's going to come and deal with sin. And over and over again, we see why He needs to come, because of the mess that mankind makes with his sin. The New Testament is, He came, the Gospels, and then this is why He came and what it meant, Acts and the Epistles, and He's coming again, Revelation. So as you study a given passage, don't ever lose the big picture. Don't ever lose sight of what's really going on, how that text fits into the larger context of Scripture. So always remember the big picture.

Secondly, choose a Biblical book. You're going to study, this is obviously ideal. If you've never really studied through a book of the Bible before, I would encourage you to select based on three criteria. This isn't on the slide, so you can jot this down. Three criteria. Number one, choose a book whose content and theme you believe will be spiritually appropriate for you. For example, don't start with Timothy. Don't start with Titus. Why? Because those books are written to pastors. Now, that doesn't mean they can't be beneficial. They can be. If I were to teach them in our church, they would be beneficial. But don't start there. Start with a book that's appropriate for you. They're all spiritually beneficial, but not as appropriate as other books. Secondly, second criterion, choose a short, manageable book. You know, don't choose Luke. You'll spend, like John MacArthur did, eight years, you know, studying it. Third, choose a New Testament book. Why?  Well, because it's going to be easier for you as a beginning student. The new, as it's often been said, “The new is in the old, concealed. The old is in the new, revealed.” So start with a New Testament book. Choose a book you're going to study. You know, just think about it, pray about it, and go to a book that you think is going to be helpful. You want to look at the life of Christ? Maybe start with Mark. It's the shortest gospel. Work your way through. Of course, we're studying the life of Christ in Matthew on Sunday morning. If you want to start with an epistle, start maybe with Philippians. The theme of Philippians is basic Christian living. You're going to learn some basic principles there. So James, the effects of true saving faith in a life. Every paragraph is going to drive home that theme. So start with a book that makes sense for you to study. 

Thirdly, read about the book's background. Now in biblical studies, this is often called the book's introduction. If you look in a study Bible, you go to James, in the beginning of James, it will have introduction. That's the theological term for the background of that book. Who's the author? To whom is it written? When was it written? Why was it written? All those things. So before you start to study a book, you want to read about the book's background. By the way, you should do that with any book. Mortimer Adler, who was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, wrote a book called How to Read a Book. Just out of curiosity, how many of you have read How to Read a Book by Mortimer? Yeah. And that's what he says. You know, any book, doesn't matter what it is, you start by getting the larger picture of what the book's about before you get into the book itself. So a good way to do this is read the introductory notes in a good study Bible. Get you the MacArthur Study Bible, read the introduction. If you have another study Bible, read the introduction. It'll give you things like the title, the author, the date, the background and setting, the historical and theological themes, the interpretive challenges in that book, and an outline of the book. So it just gives you an overview. So choose a book, read up on its background.

Number four, read through the book multiple times. Now, I would suggest, and all the sources I have read would suggest no fewer than five times you should read through the book. And John MacArthur suggests 30 times. So there you go. Five to 30 times you read through the book before you're really going to study it. If you study a larger book, you may want to break it down into, you're reading into sections. You know, if you're studying Matthew, break it down into, you know, look at the outline in the front of the study Bible and pick the first section and read that. And read that multiple times. And then go to the second section and read it multiple times. This read through, you want to know what's in this book, okay? You're reading through to get the big picture. What's here? What's it about? What stories are here? What teachings here? Who's in this book? And read it with a first-time attitude. As you read it multiple times, don't just make it drudgery. Read it like you've never read it before. You're looking at it in a fresh way. To help that, I would encourage you to read from different translations. This is where you're not studying yet. You're just trying to get the sweep of what's in there. So read from some of those different translations, even dynamic equivalents, even paraphrases. Just know what they are. And get that picture of what's in this book.  Read quickly. Don't labor. Don't look, you know, protect yourself from reading the notes in the study Bible. You know, every verse you read. You're trying to get the basic content of what's in that book. Do it repeatedly in different versions. You're trying to get the flow of the author's thought. 

Number five in your study. Identify the paragraphs in prose or the sections in poetry. You say, uh-oh, you just lost me. Okay, let me show you. Turn with me. Let me show you the difference. Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter six. Now, somehow, your version, whatever you have, will show you that verse 9 through verse 13 of Isaiah six is poetry. You see how there's a lot more white space around it than the other paragraphs? That's telling you it's poetry. The way it's lined up, the way it's indented, the way that you have all that white space. It says the translators looked at the original language and believe this is poetry. Okay? Now, look at chapter seven of Isaiah verses one through six. Do you see the difference between that and the other text? They're telling you that's prose. That's not poetry, in other words. Prose is anything but poetry. So, you got poetry, and you got prose.”

Now understand that because of the writing materials in the ancient world were so costly, the manuscript copies of Scripture that have passed down to us, those manuscripts often are not, in fact, they're not broken down by chapter, paragraph, or verse. In fact, sometimes there's not even a break between words. They're just melted together because that was to save space because of the cost of the writing materials. The chapter and verse divisions were added to our Bibles less than a thousand years ago. In fact, the first-time chapter divisions were given in the Bible was in the year 1277 AD by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who did a version of the Scripture and broke it into chapters for easily locating where you were. The first verse divisions were actually the Geneva Bible in the mid-1500s. So those are new inventions to help us get around in our Bibles. Those are not in the original text. So remember then that the paragraph breaks are not inspired. They're just the educated, informed suggestions by our translators. 

Now what tools can you use to identify paragraphs and sections? Let's start with prose. Okay, how do you know what a paragraph is? What the translators believe a paragraph is in prose? Well, some styles of the NASB and the ESV put the prose in paragraph form. Look in your Bible and see if verses are buried, verse numbers are buried in the middle of the paragraph. That's a paragraph form. They're telling you, we believe that paragraph is a single unit of text. It's a paragraph. It's one idea. But a lot of the Bible styles put every verse number, even in prose, out on the left-hand margin. Mine's that way. If you looked at my Bible, you would see that every verse is on the left-hand margin. The verse one, the number is out there. Verse two, the number is out there. Verse three, the number is out there and so forth. Now, if your Bible is like that, how do you tell a paragraph break? What the translators think is a paragraph break. They bold the number of the verse. So, for example, if you have a version of the Bible, I should say, that has all the verses out to the left-hand margin, look at Isaiah seven and look at verse three. You see the number three is bolded? That tells you the translators think a new paragraph is beginning there. The next time you come to a bold number, that's where they think the new paragraph begins. So that helps you know what they think is a unit of thought. Why is that important? It's important because the lowest sort of study unit in our Bibles is a paragraph. Why? Because you learn this in English class. A paragraph is the smallest unit that has one basic thought, that's trying to communicate one basic idea. So when we study the Bible in church, when I'm teaching you, we study by paragraphs because that's where the thought is. That's where the one unit of thought is. So that's why those paragraph markers are important. As you're studying the Bible, you may disagree. And maybe you study and a commentator agrees with you. But that's at least a good starting place. It's what the translators thought was the paragraph unit. 

What about with poetry? Well, both the New American Standard and the ESV arranged poetry by putting all the verses on the left-hand margin to show sectional breaks. The ESV puts an extra return, an extra white space between one stanza of poetry and another stanza of poetry. The NAS shows those breaks again by making the verse number bold. So you just have to learn what your Bible is doing. But they're trying to tell you where the paragraphs are. And as I said, the principal feature of a paragraph or a section of poetry is a unifying theme. It's developing one idea, and that is the most natural way to break your study down. When you're studying, you're studying paragraphs. Not individual words, not individual verses or sentences. You're studying paragraphs because that is the unit of thought being developed there.

Now where do you begin? Now that you've identified that one paragraph or section, where do you begin? Well, I'm assuming you've already read at least five times that passage in the flow of reading the entire book, and now you need to go back through it. But this time, you're going to go back through it with a pen and pencil in hand. And Lord willing, next time, we'll talk about what you're doing when you're going back through that paragraph to really study it.