How to Study the Bible

Selected Scriptures

And I want to talk with you really in a continuation of what we did this morning, on how to study the Bible. And again I just want to go back to what I said a minute ago, in order to praise the Lord in His Word we have to know what it says, really vital to praise Him in truth as well as in spirit, to honor Him in truth as well as with our feelings and our emotions. And in order to do that we have to know the Word of God.

This morning we touched on the fact that there are some requirements for those who would glean from the Word what God would have us to know. The Bible is not an open Book to just anybody, it is an open Book only to those who come fulfilling certain basic requirements. And we talked about the who of Bible study, who can really understand the Bible. And we suggested to you six principles really, a five and then a sixth which was prayer. A person must be born again, must be diligent in his study, have a great desire, must deal with sin in his life so that there's manifest holiness, and the filling of the Spirit of God who really is our teacher. And as you've examined your life if you understand those priorities and are willing to commit yourself to those priorities and bathe all of those in prayer, then you're the person who can understand the Bible, you're the person to whom God will open the pages of His Book and give you the truth.

Now I agree that even the unregenerate man may understand the a little bit about the history in the Bible, he may understand a few of the words in the Bible but he'll never have a Biblical knowledge in the sense that it works out in his living. He may get some head knowledge by reading and understanding and studying to a certain degree, but it'll never be the real kind of knowledge that the Bible talks about because it never works out in his life. And so what we're talking about is the fact that unless you fit the qualifications the Bible never comes alive in your living, and so consequently in the Hebrew mind you never really perceive it at all, you never really understand it until it takes place in your life on a day to day basis.

Now, given the who of Bible study let's look at the how tonight. And it's so hard to know where to begin with this incomparable Book. I don't know if you've ever really thought about the magnificence of the Bible and what a privilege we have in studying it but I hope for tonight at least you'll be able to focus in on some of the tremendous things that await you in the Scripture as you break it open.

I read some time ago an architects view of the Bible and I wanted to share it with you just as a beginning. "The Bible is like a magnificent palace constructed of precious oriental stone, comprising sixty‑six stately chambers. Each one of these rooms is different from its fellows and is perfect in its individual beauty while together they form an edifice incomparable majestic glorious and sublime. In the Book of Genesis we enter the vestibule where we are immediately introduced to the records of the mighty works of God in creation. This vestibule gives access to the law courts, passing through which we come to the picture gallery of the historical books. Here we find hung on the wall scenes of battles, heroic deeds and portraits of valiant men of God. Beyond the picture gallery we find the philosophers chamber, the Book of Job, passing through which we enter the music room, the Book of Psalms, and here we linger thrilled by the grandest harmonies that ever fell on human ears. And then we come to the business office, the Book of Proverbs, in the very center of which stands the motto, righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people. Leaving the business office we pass into the research department, Ecclesiastes. Then into the conservatory, the Song of Solomon where greet us the fragrant aroma of choicest fruits and flowers and the sweetest singing of birds. When we reach the observatory where the prophets with their powerful telescopes are looking for ‑the appearing of the Bright and Morning Star, prior to the dawning of the Son of righteousness. Crossing the courtyard we come to the audience chamber of the King, the gospels where we find four life like portraits of the King Himself revealing the perfections of His infinite beauty. And next we enter the workroom of the Holy Spirit, the Book of Acts, and beyond the correspondence room, the epistles where we see Paul and Peter and James and John and Jude, busy at their tables under the personal direction of the Spirit of Truth. And finally we enter the throne room, the Book of Revelation, and there we are enraptured by the mighty volume of adoration and praise addressed to the enthroned King which fills the vast chamber. While in the adjacent galleries and judgment hall there are portrayed solemn scenes of doom and wondrous scenes of glory associated with the coming manifestation of the King of kings and the Lord of lords." A quick trip through the Scripture. Oh, the majesty of this Book, from the creation to the culmination. How it behooves us to be diligent in our study.

How do we go about it? Number one, how do we really understand the Bible? Point one, read the Bible. Simple enough, read the Bible. This is where Bible study begins, with reading, and frankly a lot of people never quite get to this point. They ah, they nibble, they never really read it. They read a lot about it maybe and books here and there but they don't really read the Bible, and there is no substitute for reading the Scripture. We must be totally committed to reading it, that's where it all begins. And my suggestion to people is that you try to read through the Bible once a year. First of all we'll, we'll use the Old Testament as ... I'm referring there to the Old Testament, you start with the Old Testament, try to read through it once a year. There are thirty‑nine books and if you read about twenty minutes a day, :give or take a few depending on how rapidly you read, you can usually get through the Old Testament in one year.

I remember in seminary Doctor Feinberg who was a great mentor of mine and a wonderful man of God who knew so much about the Old Testament it used to just baffle the students, see. One of the students would try to trap him sometime and say to him uhm, Doctor Feinberg, what's in First Kings chapter 7 verse 34? Just pulling one out of the air. Held sort of mumble it in his mind in Hebrew, translate it and tell us what was there. He said to me one day, he said, I try to read a book a day just to keep up on things I said, what kind of a book? Any book, a book on art, a book on history, a book on somebody's life, any book. One a day so that I can stay up with things. I said to him one day, I said, with all of your reading a book a day and all of your study of the Hebrew and writing commentaries and teaching a full load of classes, do you have time to read the Bible? And he says, I read th Bible ‑ I read through the Bible four times a year, and 1'. have for I don't know how many years. That's where it all begins people and there's no substitute for reading the Bible. Start with the Old Testament and just read it through.

Now the Hebrew language is a very simple language, it doesn't have the, the lofty concepts of Greek, of, of Greek thinking, it isn't a theoretical language, it isn't a. conceptual language, it isn't a philosophical language with a lot of abstraction. It's a very simple, very concrete language. In fact as a student in seminary I found the study of Hebrew infinitely easier than the study of Greek. It is just not a complex language for the most part and it relates things in very concrete and simple terms. And so you can read through the flow and the narrative of the Old Testament for the most part ah, just at one sitting, just progressing through and each year going back through again and again in the Old Testament and, and begin to build a comprehension as you read. And I would suggest that as you read the Bible you, you mark in the margin a notation where you don't understand what it's talking about. And if you'll do that you'll find a very interesting thing will happen, you'll start out with a whole lot of things and as time goes on you can begin to check them off your margin because as you read and reread and as you progress from Genesis to Malachi you will find an understanding that will become yours and that'll answer some of those questions that you had. The ones you don't answer in your reading you can use for individual study in a commentary or another source to get the meaning. But begin by just reading it, don't be overwhelmed, ohh, how can I learn it all? How can I take care of every verse? Just begin and read through the Old Testament. And that's my suggestion that you do that every year, at least once a year.

Now when you come to the New Testament I have a different little plan and I've shared this with you but I'll give it to you again, for reading the New Testament. And by the way, I think the major thrust should be to read the New Testament. I, I really believe that, and it's based upon Scripture, in Colossians for example, chapter 1 and verse 24 Paul says, ah verse 25 rather, "That he was made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, Even the mystery hidden from ages and from generations, now made manifest." In other words Paul says, I'm called by God to give to you the mystery that's been hidden.

Now the mystery basically is the New Testament revelation. And Paul says, I am an apostle of the mystery in Ephesians chapter 3. So that the major thrust of his ministry was the new revelation. And he would allude to the Old Testament insofar as it illustrated and elucidated and supported the New. And so the message of the New Testament is the culmination of revelation, it is that which I embodies and engulfs all that is the Old and includes all that is the New. And so in a sense the New Testament will summarize for you the Old Testament as well as lead you further to the fullness of revelation. So when you read the New you must spend more time, for it explains the Old. And it is ... because it is written in Greek ah, a much more complex, perhaps more difficult in many cases to understand and some not always the case but in most cases it's a little harder because of its abstractions, because it talks in concepts rather than narrative stories. And so we have to give ourselves to a greater diligence in studying the New Testament, now here's how I've done it and I started this when I was in seminary. I started with First John, and I, I decided that I'd read First John everyday for thirty days. And that's, that's I believe the way to do it, the first day you just read First John. And for many people to sat down and read First John ah.... when they did that they found that was the first time they ever read a whole book all the way through. Many people feel the Bible is just a collection of verses.

You know I remember when I was a kid we had a plastic box on our kitchen table with verses stuck in it. Our daily bread thing Kind of deal, and you could stick them in any order you wanted, it didn't matter. You'd just pull them out, there's a good one, oh there's a terrific verse, and you could just pull them out and throw them up in the air and put them back in any order you wanted, but that's not the way the Bible was written. When a book begins it begins somewhere and when it ends it ends somewhere and in the meantime it's going there. And most people never read with flow, you need to learn to read a book, and so you sit down and you read First John, it takes you twenty‑five or thirty minutes, unless you're in remedial reading and then no telling how long it'll take you. But anyway, if you're in...if you're taking Evelyn Wood's course you can go like this four or five times and you're done. But the idea is to read it through the first day, second day, read it through, third day, read it through, fourth day, read it through, fifth day, read it through. You just sit down and read it.

Now about the seventh or eighth day you're going to start saying to yourself, you know this is getting old; I've got this stuff pretty well under my belt. But that's the tough part, you push through that and about fifteen or sixteen days, it used to kind of hit me, well I got this stuff, I'd push through a little for ... farther, and I remember when I hit the thirtieth day on First John I said, I don't quite understand this book and I went ninety days before I finished. Ninety days of reading First John straight through.

Now after thirty days, if you'll just stick with thirty you'll have a tremendous comprehension of that book. If someone says to you, you know, where in the Bible does it say, if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just...? You'll say, oh that's easy, First John chapter 1 ah, left hand page right hand column halfway down, see. Because you'll be able to visualize that, you'll be able to literally see that, in your mind'. People always ask me, why do you still use the King James, why don't you move to the New American or the New International‑? Because I visualize my Bible, I find things by where they are in my vision. In other words, my mind has taken a mental picture of a page and I can tell you ... I may not remember the chapter everywhere in the Bible but I can just about tell you where on the page everything is, people give me a new Bible and I am lost. I could wind up a Mormon if I changed Bibles. I, I can't find anything in another Bible. So the thing you want to do is to, is to rea...is to read a book through thirty times, and at the end of that thirty times you will really have that book in your mind.

Now basically this is what I do all the time, as I prepare messages, I just read through and read through and read through until the whole book just falls into my mind ‑ in a visual kind of a perception, that I see with my mind's eye. Now while I'm doing this I, I ... this is a thing I would suggest also take a little three by five card and write down the major theme of each chapter, the major theme of each chapter, okay? Now as you do that, you just write it on a card, everyday when you read the book just look at that card and run through that list. And what'll happen is you'll learn the content of chapters, you'll begin to learn what's in chapters.

Now, you say, I've finished First John for thirty days, now where do I go? Now I would suggest you go to a large book in the New Testament, remember all the time you're just reading the narrative of the Old, just reading it through twenty minutes a day. But now you go to a larger book, and I suggest that you go from First John to the Gospel of John. You say, but that's twenty‑one chapters. That's right, so you divide it into three sections, read the first seven for thirty days, the second seven for thirty days and the third seven for thirty, days. So at the end of those ninety days you have pretty well read ‑through and mastered the content of the Gospel of John.‑ And by the way, you've also had a little three by five card on the first seven chapters, the second seven and the third seven, cause there are twenty‑one, and so you've memorized the major theme of each chapter.

Now I remember when I started doing this it was really amazing how fast I began to retain the things in toe New Testament. I always wanted to be sure that I didn't wind up a concordance cripple, going around never being able to find anything in the Bible and having to look everything up in the back. Where is that verse? And so I wanted to learn these things and so I did the Gospel of John after I did First John, and you know to this day, and, and from when I taught it too, the Gospel of John, First John, these other books in the New Testament have stuck in my mind. Ah, I think about the Gospel of John and I think about chapter ... ah. somebody says, well you know, where is ah, Jesus and the vine, chapter 15, the good Shepherd, chapter 10, Lazarus, chapter 11, the arrest of Jesus, chapter 18, Jesus conversation with His brothers, chapter 7, ah, eat My flesh and drink My blood, chapter 6, the bread of life, chapter 6, the marriage at Cana, chapter 2, the woman at the well, chapter 4, Nicodemus, chapter 3, and it goes on and on, the judgment of, of the good and the evil, chapter 5 verse 28, 29, right hand page halfway down, left column, right there, see? I know in my mind where all of that is. And it just fits in. People say, ohh, what a scholar.

Listen, I read it ninety times, right? I read it ninety times And this is how you learn, you see, Isaiah says, you learn line upon line, line upon line, precept on precept, precept on precept, here a little and there a little. When you're going to study for a test You don't pick up your book and read through the notes once, shut it, and say, ah, I got that. Not if you're normal, not if you're like me. You learn by repetition, repetition, repetition, that's the way to learn the Bible. And then you might want to go to Philippians, and you might want to learn the Book of Philippians, another short book and then ‑ you might want to go back to Matthew, and then back to Colossians and then back to Acts, and divide it up like that and back and forth, a small and a large book. You say, but it's going to take a long time. No, in approximately two and a half years you will have finished the New Testament. That's pretty great. Now you're going to read the Bible anyway, you might as well read it so you can remember it. Most people say, well I have my daily devotions, and I read my passage for the day. And you say to them, well what was it? Uhm, let's see, uhm...Well what about a couple, three days ago? Uhh, hopeless, I can barely remember yesterday. You can't really retain anything by moving that fast, you must go over it and over it and over it, and if you believe it's a living Word it'll come alive in your life as you read it in a repeti ... in a repetitious manner. Now if, if somebody said to me, you know read the newspaper that way or read some novel that way, I'd say, I'm not interested. But this is living truth and it has a productive effect on your life when it's read repetitiously. You know uhm, if a great Hebrew scholar like Doctor Feinberg reads through the Old Testament and the New Testament four times a year, what must I need to do? I think about John Wesley who got up every morning of his life at four o'clock in the morning, get this, and read the Scripture in five different languages so that he might enjoy every possible nuance on the Scripture that he was reading. And he did it for three hours or so every single morning of his life. I remember when I was in London I went to his church and a man took us up a little winding staircase into a little tiny room where he went every morning and there lying on the desk were his glasses, little tiny glasses and his little tiny Greek New Testament and a couple of other books, the very ones that John Wesley had spent reading every morning of his life at four o'clock. And I think it's where it all begins in Bible study, right there.

Now some people say, well should you read it in the same version? Well generally yes, stick with the same version so you, so you have familiarity. Once in awhile I think it's good to stick in another version just to kind of elucidate it. I normally read of course in the, in the King James but just for my own edification I'll read invariably the N.A.S. passage or the N.I.V. passage New International Version, those two I think are the best available comparison translations. And this is where you have to begin. Now that's a simple method and that's all I'm going to say about it because I think it's pretty obvious. Just flow, reading through the Old Testament, you can read from Genesis to Malachi or you can follow some other format that you may have, a little reading schedule or whatever. But in the New Testament read repetitiously.

And by the way as a little footnote, it, it really will help you also if you read the book that I'm preaching on ah, when I'm preaching on it. Now you can't always do that cause you may go through it in thirty days and it takes me four years. But at some point in time when I begin to read a book or begin to teach a book that's a good time for you to begin to read it.

Now what question does this answer? Reading the Bible answers this question, what does the Bible say? And we need to know that, what does the Bible say? Well in order to find out what it says you need to read it, and then you'll find out exactly what it says. Now I'll tell yo another interesting thing that happens, and this is just a footnote, but when you begin to read the Bible, just reading it, just reading it you will find that your comprehension will increase in an incredible fashion. Because the Bible explains the Bible.

Now I don't know if you've analyzed my preaching, I know you've probably criticized it as to good, bad or indifferent, probably have a one to ten scale at home on Sunday afternoon, but basically if you analyze my preaching, and this is the secret, I'm giving it away folks right here, basically what I do is explain the Bible with another part of the Bible. That's invariably what I do, now you know and you can follow how, how I do that. And what got me onto this was when a dear man told me one time if I wanted to have a rich ministry, he said, here's one book you've got to have and he gave me a copy of a book called The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. That little book is a book that goes through all the verses of the Bible and give you cross reference verses that explain the meaning of that text. Now you thought I had all that stuff in my head, see. That little book was a tremendous thing.

This man said to me, you take your Bible and that little book and you can preach till you die. And it's a tremendous tool, why? Because it uses the Bible to explain the Bible. And that's what happens when you read. So you're reading over in First John and then you read in the Gospel of John, and you say, hey now I understand what he means in First John because that matches up with John chapter 15. Or you're reading in Philippians, you say; now I understand that because it's explained here. Well now I know what he means by that concept over there because I see it over here. And as you're flowing through the Old Testament, like we've seen for example we talked about divorce, right? Matthew 5:31 ah, you say ah, you have heard it said that when a man divorces his wife let her ... let him give her the divorcement papers or do the paperwork, but I say unto you if any man divorces his wife for any other cause than fornication he commits adultery, etc, etc. And now you're reading along in the Old Testament, you come to Deuteronomy chapter 24 and there you find exactly what Jesus referring...is referring to. Or you're reading along for example in John chapter 3 and you say to yourself, you must be born of the water and the spirit, what is he talking about, the water and the spirit? And somebody comes along and says, well the water refers to the water sac around the baby when the baby's born, you have to be physically born and spiritually born. No, because the Hebrews didn't call that a water sac. That's English. You say, well what does it mean, the water and the spirit? At the same time you're reading through Ezekiel, you come to chapter 36 and you find that Ezekiel says there's coming a day when men are going to be born by the water and the spirit, ah