Study the Word

Introduction

Our life should be described as the life of a disciple. A disciple is a full fledged follower of Jesus who is giving him their all. It is a person that as it says in Luke 9:23 “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” A disciple is someone that has died to self to live for Christ.

A lot of you have recently made the commitment to be disciples which is your true calling in Christ, salvation is the first part of being a disciple but the life of a disciple does not end at salvation.

Tonight I want to turn once again to the Psalms to get a glimpse of the life of a disciple that flows into so many areas of life. This is Psalm 111.2

Psalm 111:2 ESV

Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.

Those who delight in the great works of God study them. This is referring to all that he has done and will do, including saving you. We see these works throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Disciples are to be people of the word, letting it permeate our souls and spread throughout every area of our life. Our study of the scripture should influence our relationships, our actions, our worship, our core beliefs. It should fundamentally shape who we are.

In light of this verse I wand to look at the context of our study and how to study.

Context of Study

The context of our study is what area of life it occurs at. I want to show you 4 areas of life that we can study the word of God in. Through these areas we can find a full well rounded study of his word. There is also a biblical prescience for all of them.

personal

The first area is our personal study of God’s word. This is when we study the Bible on our own. Our quiet time. Through personally studying the Bible we can see things that directly pertain to us and we can grow in our knowledge and have specific applications.

Personal study also allows the most time to study. There is nobody that you have to coordinate schedules with, there is no waiting for certain days of the week. You can do it daily! I encourage you to do it daily.

Before the reformation era of the church the right to read and study the Bible yourself was taken away. The Bible was only written in Latin so only the educated people of the church could read it. Through this the right to be in the Bible for yourself was taken away. During the reformation this freedom was regained though not instantly because it had to be translated. This was near the same time of the printing press and it was able to spread like wildfire. People could study the scriptures themselves with more ease than ever before. Today it is even easier! Everyone here has a Bible in their hands, we all have access to the Bible freely through phones, churches, and organizations. More than just that we have the ability to readily have notes and commentary that connects us deeper with the Bible.

The Bible has great power and a disciple is someone that is committed to studying it often through personal Bible study. Through this we can let the word of God dwell in us richly!

small group / discipleship

The next context is twofold. It is within a small group or in a discipleship relationship. This brings other people into the picture with you. When you study in a small group you are able to get several people all with different backgrounds going to the text. This can help you see things that you may have missed if you were on your own. For example you might be reading something that Paul wrote and it drives your mind towards joy because of some anxiety that you have had in your life while someone else mind is drawn to suffering because of a situation that they were in. Through this you can both profit as you can relate it to situations that you haven't faced with someone that has.

More specifically in a discipleship relationship, which is simply an older Christian with a younger Christian, you can learn from someone who has been reading their Bible longer and that has more life experience. I encourage you all to have a relationship like this and I can help you find one if you want. Through this you can learn so much more from them but they will also learn too, they will learn by seeing the passage in a new way through a younger mind.

age group

The next level is studying with people in your age group. This would be what we call youth that you are at now. These people are a similar age as you that are faced with similar things as you and live in a similar place as you.

Studying scripture in this way allows you too have accountability with each other because you all hear the same thing and study the same scripture here then for the most part you go to the same schools or the same sports the next day. Think about this, if a scripture that we study says not to do something and you all say that you want to obey that scripture and then one of you doesn’t the next day the others should call you out! This is Christian love!

Studying with people you age also helps build unity. Let me tell you, there will never be a time in your life again where you are around people your age as much as you are now. Aside from Courtney yall are the closest people to my age that I see all week. This is a blessing for you all and an opportunity to grow together and to unite for Christ to change this town.

whole church

The final group is the whole church. It says in Hebrews 10:25 “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” This is referring to the church. We are to not neglect to meet together. Church is the most vitally important thing for a Christian. Going to church is not required for salvation but someone that is truly saved will be in church.

Church is where the whole body of Christ can come together and worship through the word. It is studying the word with everyone from the youngest Christians to the oldest. It brings unity to the body of Christ and it brings glory to God.

The biggest issue I see these days regarding the church is that it is mostly older and your age group doesn’t like the style. Here is the thing with this though, it is not about you! This is a selfish way to approach church. Church is about glorifying God and through that we do receive blessings but not feeling content in it is a good thing because we should never be content in it until we are in the heavenly worship.

Today’s churches are striving harder and harder to please and entertain your generation but the problem is that they are leaving the Bible behind. If the Bible is not the main focus it is no church. Sermons over movies is nowhere close to a real church. Don’t get confused and wrapped up into this entertainment. Study the word with a true church. This is how Christ intended us to be.

How to Study

So we have talked a lot about our need to study in several different areas of life as Christians. The question is now how do we study? Well there are two approaches that I want to recommend to you.

The first is what I call raking. This is simply reading through bigger sections of scripture. You aren’t deep diving but you are getting the idea of what is going on in the passage. Through this you are able to see the grand story of the Bible. You also have a general knowledge of a lot of scripture which helps a ton when you finally do study. For example lets say you have raked through the whole Bible, you now go to study the book of Matthew, you are going to recognize the quotes as being from the Old Testament. If you just went straight to Matthew this would be a tougher thing to understand.

I recommend you start personal study with raking. This will add value to all the other study that you do and help you build general knowledge about a lot of scripture while digging deeper in the other context. Start raking in the New Testament doing a chapter or two a day.

The second approach is called digging. When you rake you cover a large area but not very deep, digging is when you stop on an area and dig down. This approach can be used in your personal study and even in small group/ discipleship settings. There are many different ways to study the Bible but what I think is the best approach is called the inductive Bible study, it is super simple and it goes like this.

observe

first you observe. What does the passage say? Is there some form of repetition? This is simply looking at the facts of the passage. Through looking at these facts you can build a base understanding of what is going on in this passage. It is always beneficial to read the passage a few times as it is not that big so you can make the most observations that you can. I also recommend that you write these down.

This step comes first because it is the foundation for the other steps. It is ok to go back and forth a bit too.

interpret

After you have your observations about the passage you move to interpret. This is asking what the passage means. In all steps you want to use context but especially here! You want to ask what the purpose of the passage is? How it fits with the surrounding verses? Observe could be compared to the question what? where interpret could be compared to the question why?

As you are probably noticing this method seeks to ask a lot of questions and to answer them.

apply

Finally you want to apply. This builds off your interpretation. Now that you know what it means what do you do with it? That is what this step is for. Sometimes the answer to this is clear and sometimes it requires more thought. Sometimes the application is to simply sit back in awe of who God is and in that knowledge. Most of the time it is something that you need to do. Take the command and make it relate specifically to you in your life.

Paul often says something to the effect of do everything in love. That is a simple command and after we filter that through the other steps and fully understand it we should know that we should do everything in love. What is the first step for us in this? Maybe it is to show love to someone specific, maybe it is to put up reminders around you, maybe even memorizing that specific verse.

Through this study we not only know what the passage says and means but we also shape our lives by it.

Conclusion

So to wrap up our teaching time tonight I want to look back at the verse that we started with, Psalm 111:2 “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”

If you thing the works of the Lord are great and you want to delight in them like a true disciple then you are called to study them. Study them on your own, study them with an older Christian, study them with a small group, study them with your youth group, and study them with the whole church. Rake them and dig into them, Observe the words and find meaning in them, and most of all apply them to your life. If you do all these things and never apply them then you have wasted your time.

Psalm 111:2 “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”