Intro to Bible Study

Intro

Illust: Now everyone knows the first time you want to drive, you just get in a car and start driving. Who cares what signs mean, who cares who is in the way or what others think. You have the right to drive the way you want.

Guys, there isn’t a right way of driving a car. As long as driving makes you more loving, you can drive however you want.

You know one time I drove right through a red light one time. There was a person walking in the crosswalk. He yelled at me “you can’t drive like that!” Can you believe that? How dogmatic? I yelled back “That’s your interpretation.” Each of us have the right to interpret driving how we want.

What is wrong with everything that I’m saying?

Not only is there a right way and wrong way to drive, it matters to everyone what that is. To get driving wrong is extremely dangerous.

Not only is it dangerous, but you actually probably won’t get very far like this. If you are ignoring the rules of driving you will also be ignoring directions.

Most of you when you have tried reading the Bible have just jumped right in. That is good courage! Proud of you for that! However, I wouldn’t be surprised if something went wrong. You got confused, you got nervous, you got bored, you got scared. I know that’s not because the Bible is confusing, boring, or scary.

It’s probably because you don’t know either 1) the rules of the road or 2) the map of the city.

The Plan: 3 Weeks

This week is the drivers handbook - You need to know the rules of interpretation.

Next week is the map of the city - You need to know your way around the Bible.

The last week is driving practice - You need to get in there and start doing it.

The Driver’s Handbook of Bible Study:

Know the Activity: Understanding Bible Study Terms

Basic idea of driving.

Definitions of Bible Study:

Hermeneutics (Herman - Ootics) - The science and art by which the meaning of a Biblical text is determined.

The historical-grammatical method - Technique used to discover a text’s original meaning by analyzing the grammar and historical context around a passage.

3 Steps of Bible Study:

Observation: What does it say? - Read

Interpretation: What does it mean? - Study

Application: So What? - Do

What is the most important?

Well that’s like saying: What’s the best ingredient in the cake? The Milk, flour, or eggs? - If you are missing any of them your cake just sucks.

Know the Instruments: 4 Things Needed for Bible Study

Some things you are going to need when you get in the car.

Paper - Do not settle for a digital study of God’s word. You need to remove distractions.

Prayer - You need the Lord’s help to interpret his word.

Pen - This keeps you accountable to make sure your Bible moves beyond observation into the next steps.

People - At times you will encounter hard passages, confusing phrases, or historical references that don’t make sense right away. This is why God has provided the church to instruct and pass down how we have interpreted the Scriptures since Christ.

Study Bible Notes

Commentary

Other People in the Church

Know the Rules: 6 Principles for Interpreting the Bible

This is lanes, stop signs, and beliefs about the road that will enable you to drive well.

However, sometimes we need to see a bad example to know what a good example is. I am bringing along the fool to help us out.

1. It can be understood.

The one thing that will kill your ability to drive is the belief that you never will be able to learn.

God wants you to understand his Bible.

Deuteronomy 29:29 ““The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

Two Types of People that the Bible is Written To:

Children (Deuteronomy 6:6–7 “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and 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.” )

The Simple (Psalm 19:7 “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;”)

THE FOOL: I’m just not smart enough to read it for myself. It’s too complicated. I trust my pastor. God is so incomprehensible so I won’t bother. “Fool it’s not that you aren’t smart, you’re just prideful and lazy.”

The Bible is plain. It is clear. Yes, it has challenging parts that take work to understand and make you reliant on God for help (ex. Zechariah, Daniel, Revelation). But the Bible is not meant to be confusing.

Romans 15:4 “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

2. The goal is to understand the authors meaning.

This means I think about the guy who wrote this and I am trying to think to myself: What is his main point? What did he try to communicate? Why did he say it that way?

Notice it is not what “I” think or what “I” feel about this passage. My thoughts and my feelings have nothing to do with what he intends.

Time for a Bad Example - Maybe you have heard this:

Bible studies where everyone shares “what it means to them” rather than what it means.

I use to open up to random places and just ask for God to speak to me.

Here is the problem with that…

THE FOOL: “God, I want to do whatever you want me to do!” *Flips to a random part of the Bible.

Deuteronomy 13:2 “‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’”

Yes, the Bible is unlike any other book. But some people have this view that the Bible is a mystical book.

People tend to confuse spiritual with mystical.

Mystical is a subjective communion with a higher power.

Spiritual relates to eternal and unseen things.

Mysticism is very common in our culture thanks to New Age Spirituality. It is a false religion about emptying yourself. And Christian Culture has borrowed alot of ideas from that in some ways.

Bible study is not about emptying your mind, it is about filling it with the goal of what the book says.

The Bible is spiritual in the sense that it’s story is so powerful, so moving, so good, that it transforms people. It’s just that amazing.

But it is not mystical in the sense that it is changing, with hidden alien codes, like a spell book with words that if uttered right, promise power. People see it like a magic book and not like a epic story book.

Illust: A student took the Bible being “living and active” to say that it is a mystical book. He thanked me later because he said that weird mystical view of the book stopped him from learning what it actually said.

Now, if you have been ministered through that, I am not saying that is fake.

God Using Error:

God has ministered through donkeys.

He has ministered through Judas.

But just because God can work through error does not mean we should tolerate error in our lives.

2 Peter 1:20–21 “knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

The divine author, God, used human authors. Both God and the human author had a unified purpose in their writing. Each passage has one goal.

You need the Holy Spirit to understand the meaning of the text, but that has been confused in some ways.

The Holy Spirit will not give you some hidden, divergent meaning.

The Holy Spirit is not your feelings.

Galatians 5:17 “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

He can convict you and influence your feelings. But often with the Holy Spirit convicts me, my feelings don’t feel good.

Your feelings are not trustworthy.

There is only ever one proper interpretation of a passage.

A passage may have multiple applications and implications, but it only ever has one interpretation.

3. Context is the key to interpretation

Context is anything that surrounds whatever you are studying.

For every verse you read, that verse is in a chapter, in a book, which is in a certain historical period, written in a certain kind of style and genre, which is in a special part of God’s story.

When you die, if someone wanted to know everything about you, they would study not just you but the context around you. What events happened in their lives that would have influenced them? COVID. What people are around them? How have their friends and family influenced them? You wouldn’t just study one day of their lives, that day had days before and days after. How did that one day fit in?

My professor of Old Testament always said: “Have you ever been confused reading a verse in the Bible? Read the verses before and after. 90% of challenged are solved that way.”

Most heresies and most wrong doctrines and most bad applications have been started from getting context wrong. When you pluck up a random verse and not realize who it is written to and why, you can dangerously misapply it.

THE FOOL: He bought a locket for his girlfriend, The Foolette.

Ex. Mizpah Lockets

Genesis 31:49 “and Mizpah, for he said, “The Lord watch between you and me, when we are out of one another’s sight.”

This is not two lovers. This is some dude who has beef with his old and grouchy uncle. It’s not a blessing in Scripture, it’s a curse!

How do you keep context in mind?

Three horizons:

Historical Context - What time period is this? The Bible often references things that were culturally significant at the time. It’s like watching Stranger Things and seeing it reference the 80’s. Even though you didn’t live in that time period you can still connect with the story.

Literary Context - What time of literature am I reading? - I approach textbooks very differently from how I approach storybooks vs. how I approach coloring books. Poetry does not work the same way as narrative. Sometimes the Bible commands something and sometimes it describes something.

Redemptive Context - What part of God’s story is this? - All of the Bible points to Jesus. But sometimes God deals with different people in different ways. While he is always the same God, you want to be cautious with misapplying things. Ex. Leviticus - If you think you have to apply that by taking it literally then you are going to be discouraged and confused. But you can see God’s love for you in that he made a sacrificial system to pay for your sin that Jesus fulfilled.

4. Every detail of every book matters.

The grammar part of our grammatical historical method. The types of words chosen don’t just matter a bit, they matter alot!

Matthew 5:18 “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Ask yourself: why did he say it that way? Why did he include that? But not that?

Example: The Bible rarely describes how people look unless it matters.

David we only know he is ruddy but he is also handsome.

THE FOOL: His friend is about to join the military. He confronts him and says “You can’t do that! The Bible says in Exodus 20 that you shall not kill!

The Fool is foolishly negligent in his grammar study. Had he read slower, he would have seen that the word is not “you shall not kill” (qatal) but rather “you shall not murder.” (retzach)

Murder is always described as a sinful action of taking another life.

However, God commanded Israel to kill evil nations that were doing wicked things. It was an act permitted by the institution of government to enact God’s justice.

Every detail matters. Be slow and humble with your study.

5. Clear passages are used to interpret unclear passages.

Sometimes we encounter hard passages. While some parts jump out with clarity and

Numbers 12:1–9 “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth. And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” And the three of them came out. And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. And he said, “Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed.”

This shows there are two categories for prophecy: Clear, face to face, and dark sayings. This does not change the fact that all could be understood! It just means you should probably do basic math before you do calculus. You should probably study Genesis before Revelation.

Scripture is progressively unvieling it’s story. You should watch a tv show by starting at the beginning and working your way up because characters and plots are introduced the whole way through until they all culminate until the end.

Let me be very clear: Applications are based on clear passages.

The Fool: he reads Isaiah 6:4–7 “And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.””

The Fool believes if he kisses a burning coal then his sins will be forgiven.

The fool learns that prophetic books use illustrations and images to communicate spiritual truths the hard way.

Had he read clear parts of Scripture, he would have seen Christ was sacrificed upon the altar of the cross for his sins and all who come and receive his sacrifice as a free gift in your heart. That is how you are forgiven. The altar and the coal is a symbol that would have communicated to someone in the Old Testament that they are forgiven by the shedding of blood in their place.

Take it slowly and be precise.

One last point. The most important one of them all…

6. The Bible is about the glory of Jesus.

Everything in the Bible wants you to have the following:

A low view of yourself.

A high view of Jesus.

We don’t like the sound of that first one. What? Am I supposed to hate myself? I struggle with guilt and shame as it is. I always feel like I’m worthless. I want to read the Bible to get encouragement!

The Bible is not going to encourage you by telling you how good you are it’s going to encourage you by telling you how good Christ is.

The Bible does not want you to think about yourself more, it wants you to think about Christ.

John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,”

We are naturally self-centered. When I watch a TV show or movie, I always identify myself with the most righteous and cool person.

That happens with the Bible. I often read a passage that describes a righteous man and I take that passage to either describe me or tell me what I should strive to be like.

THE FOOL: He reads Psalm 1 and his first thought is “wow, that guy sounds cool. I should strive to be like him.”

Psalm 1:1–2 “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

Here is an example of a clear and unclear passage interpretation:

1 John 2:1 “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Every verse of the Bible can be divided into two categories:

Law - Commands that show you how perfect you must be to live with God and prove to you that you can’t be. (Low view of man)

Gospel - Passages that describe how good Jesus is, how he earned eternal life and how you can rejoice if you are in him. (High view of God)

When I read about laws and commands to the Israelites, I realize I cannot keep those but every law is a description of Christ. When I promises to Israel if they obey, I realize only one Israelite ever obeyed and he has earned those promises. When I read the curses they deserved for disobeying, I realize that’s what Christ endured for my sake because I deserve those for my imperfections.

Even when the Bible is silent about Jesus or he is absent, it cries out for him.

Illust: Talking with Kyle.

Conclusion

Final Illust: Waking up at 4:00am and walking to the DMV to take my permit test.

What motivated me to finally drive? Love.

I was afraid, it seemed like work. But I just wanted to see Jamila that badly. And I knew she wanted to see me.

Learn to read the Bible for the sake of your relationship with Christ.