Welcome to our Wednesday night session on studying the Bible and really digging into the text.
Topic of Study
Ok, so we’re here in session number four on what we’ve covered about the Bible.
So far we’ve seen it is:
Complete - we’ve got the right 66 books - nothing is left out, nothing was put in that shouldn’t be.
Accurate - the manuscripts demonstrate that we’ve got the right words that were inspired by God.
Internally Consistent - the Bible recognizes itself as being inspired by God and is completely consistent.
Historically Precise - archaeology confirms that the Bible is correct related to kings, rules, locations, governors, etc.
Under Attack - Satan wants nothing better than to undermine the Bible, and has been trying to undermine what God said from the very beginning.
Then on Sunday we covered the keys to interpreting the Bible.
The first is the metanarrative - the grand story that the Bible is all about.
Remember, the Bible is all about God showing us who he is, what he is like, and then telling us about the redemption he’s working in the world.
So from the moment sin entered the world in Genesis 3, God has been promising full redemption for everything in the entire world. He’s going to get everything back to the way he designed it to be.
And he’s doing that through his son, Jesus Christ.
So when we approach the Bible, we approach it to learn about God and also to learn about the story of redemption.
So we don’t yank verses out in isolation - instead we look to what they mean in the context of the larger redemption story.
The second key to interpreting the Bible is CONTEXT.
I’ve put that in all caps intentionally to yell it out.
Context is so critical - what do the verses before a verse say, and what do the verses after a verse say? What is the context of what is being said?
Sunday we looked at a few examples, including the verse about where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them - not about church at all, but rather about church discipline and judging people within the church who are living in sin.
So we always have to understand the context of what we’re talking about.
So that brings us now to starting to work through the Bible.
We talked about how you have to start by reading, then you make observations and ask questions about particular verses. We’re going to do that in a few minutes here.
Resources for Studying the Bible
One of the amazing things about living in the world today is the huge amount of resources we’ve got to learn about the Bible.
So you’ve got all kinds of Bible software - Logos is expensive but amazing, e-Sword is free and pretty good, and then you have resources like www.esvonline.org that has plenty of places for notes and study.
You’ve got books and resources and of all things, you’ve got Google! Now, be careful basing your theology on Google because you can get a little confused with it.
But one thing I would highly recommend for all of you is a good study Bible - they’re not super-expensive, and can help pull a lot of different resources into one place.
I’ve got a picture here of two pages from a really fantastic study Bible and just wanted to show you the kinds of things that are in these things.
First, obviously, you have the text of the Bible. This one is arranged in paragraphs, though, because sometimes the verses can get a little confusing because a lot of times they will break up sentences.
Second, you have headings that tell you about the story.
In the middle here are cross-references - the tell you other places in the Bible to go review a lot of the same themes and concepts. Cross-references are great to help you find context, because we always want to get the whole picture of what the Bible says, not just a little piece in isolation.
Then you have study notes down here - these study notes provide a lot of context and Christian teaching about a number of topics. If they’re written by good people, you have a lot of good information from other sources that you can put together.
Then you’ve got the pieces I like - the pictures. Maps, diagrams of what Jerusalem looked like, and then charts to help categorize different things.
A good study Bible is worth a whole lot of other books, because you can learn so much all on that one page instead of having to try to dig through lots of other resources.
So that’s a fantastic tool for you to begin with as it relates to studying.
Digging In
Ok, I’m going to pass out these sheets that have our project for this evening on them. We’re going to be taking a look at four verses and digging into them together, so get ready.
These four verses are the start of Hebrews 1, and are packed full of good theology.
Let me read these verses briefly for us:
“God, who at sundry [various] times and in divers manners [different ways] spake [spoke] in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath [has] in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged [purified] our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high: being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”
These are verses that are telling us about Jesus.
Let me read for you a better translation of these same verses to help us grasp more of what we’re talking about:
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”
So we want to study these verses. Where do we start?
We start with the standard journalism questions - who, what, when, where, why, how.
So we make observations and ask questions based on that.
Let me give you an example here.
This may seem really basic, but a great observation about these verses is that God spoke. That may seem insignificant, but it isn’t.
When someone is speaking, it’s usually because they want someone to listen. I mean, if you see someone who is homeless speaking to no one, you’re probably going to think something is wrong.
So God said something, which necessarily implies he wanted someone to listen to what he had to say.
In addition, God spoke words - he didn’t speak general thoughts or generalities.
There’s a whole group of philosophy of language called Deconstructionism which says that words really have no meaning at all.
Recognizing that God spoke words helps us see that words have to have meaning, because God used them to speak to us.
Now, you don’t have to know all of those implications to understand that God said something. But that’s an example of a good observation from this verse.
A good question - what did God say? How did he say it? He said it through the prophets.
Sometimes it is helpful to draw a picture as well.
So here’s an example of a drawn-out version of these verses.
God used to speak this way - God to prophets to fathers - to the generations ahead of us.
But now God is speaking in a totally new way - God to his Son to us directly.
That’s huge - and tells us that God is now speaking directly.
And his son is the exact imprint of his nature, so really it’s God to us directly, no more intermediary.
Boiling it all down, Bible study is just this - it’s making observations, it’s asking questions, it’s drawing pictures. It’s then taking those things and finding the answers.
So for example - what does it mean that Jesus is the heir of all things?
Then you would take and look at some cross references - from my study Bible, a cross reference was Matthew 28:18, where Jesus said he had been given authority of everything in heaven and earth.
So being the heir of everything means it all belongs to Jesus. And that also shows Jesus is God.
Do you see how this is working?
And during this process, the Holy Spirit will begin to highlight particular verses for you. So you’ll see a particular verse or section jump out.
Maybe you want to take that and memorize it, or do some additional studies on it, within its context.
God uses his word to speak to us that way.
One other critical, critical point. Bible study is never to be an end in itself. You don’t study the Bible so you can just say you’ve done it each day.
The goal of Bible study is to get to know God himself.
The Bible is one way of doing that - but don’t ever make it a rule that if you haven’t studied at least __ minutes a day, something is horribly wrong with you.
The question isn’t are you studying your Bible; the question is are you moving toward knowing God more deeply. That will involve getting into the Bible, but don’t measure yourself by the Bible - measure yourself by getting to know God.
Practicum
So what we want to do now is take the next 10 minutes and do this with these four verses. I’m going to put the journalism questions back up here
Now, this is a project just for you. This isn’t something you work on with your neighbor, but something you should take the pen in your hand and write down observations and questions.
And remember the story I told on Sunday - the seminar professor who gave his students one verse and said 25 observations. They struggled to get there, but a lot of them came back with 23 or 27. And then he said 25 more observations. The Bible is limitless, and there’s always more depth if you keep searching.
If you finish early or just run out of things, you can also work on the survey about the youth ministry and get that filled out.
But I really want us to focus on this. I’m going to do the same thing, and then we’re going to discuss the observations and questions we found in these verses.
Ok, go.
Summarizing
Ok, so great observations and questions - this is something y’all are doing great at!
Practically speaking, how can this work?
Get a spiral notebook or a bound book.
Great way to start is 5-5-5 or 10-10-10. Prayer, Bible reading, asking questions.
Build those three into your schedule - writing down prayer requests and issues, reading your Bible, and then writing down questions and observations.
If you’ve never done this before, start small, but begin to build up.
This is do-able and y’all have a fantastic start - let’s dig into this as we dig into God’s Word together!