Sermon Tone Analysis

How to Study the Bible (Scripture)

This series outlines four principles of effective Bible study.

Each week, one aspect of the SOAP (Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer) method of study will be highlighted, giving a simple and practical way to stay engaged in the Word.

Through the study of the Bible, God gives us a means of hope, knowledge, understanding, and connection.

(Scripture) The Bible is our authority.

It is important to study it, not only to gain academic knowledge, but to allow it to guide our lives and give us hope.

We can better understand God and have our faith strengthened when we read and study Scripture.

Scripture is the S of the SOAP Bible study method.

Observation, Application, and Prayer complete the acronym and will be discussed in the weeks that follow.

Why should we study Scripture?

Sometimes it can feel confusing, boring, or useless, but in this passage, we are encouraged by Paul’s words that “everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (v.

4).

The point of studying the Bible is not to gain only academic knowledge but to receive a message of hope.

This passage shows us we can gain strength from reading the stories of the generations before us, of Jesus’s life on earth, and of the early church.

As we read and learn from these words, our faith can be sustained by the hope of God, his faithfulness through generations, and his active presence in the lives of all different kinds of people.

The New Testament may seem more straightforward and easier to understand, but in our passage, Paul emphasizes the validity, authority, and importance of the Old Testament.

He follows Jesus’s example of quoting Old Testament Scripture to prove a point.

is not just Paul’s conclusion to his teaching in the previous chapter, but it is his conclusion to the entire book of Romans.

It is an urging for the Jewish people and non-Jewish people (Gentiles) to live and worship God together in unity; the unity of the gospel.

In just these few verses, he quotes from four different Old Testament books—and from four major parts of the Old Testament.

In verse 9, Paul cites from the Historical Books (repeated in ), in verse 10 from the Law (), verse 11 from the Wisdom Literature (); and verse 12 from the Prophets ().

It is clear that God wants us to utilize the entire Bible to encourage our faith and learn more about him.

The Bible is one of the main ways we can learn about God, who he is, and what it means to follow him and be a disciple.

It is a way to engage with God on a deeper level.

You can read the Bible on a surface level and still glean from it, but any relationship grows the more you learn about the person and the more you spend time engaging with their heart or message.

In our instance, it is through the Bible that we find our most clear communication of God’s message and heart for us individually, for the specific people in the Bible, and for humanity in general.

If we follow God, it only makes sense that we would want to know more about him.

Spend time talking about how we develop close relationships in everyday life and then make the connection that many of those same ways are how we grow in relationship with God.

The debate about the accuracy of Scripture is not new, but for the Christian, we have faith that it is indeed authoritative truth for our lives.

Charles Wesley had a logical argument: “The Bible must be the invention either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. 1.

It could not be the invention of good men or angels; for they neither would or could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ when it was their own invention.

2. It could not be the invention of bad men or devils; for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell to all eternity.

3. Therefore, I draw this conclusion, that the Bible must be given by divine inspiration” (Robert W. Burtner and Robert Chiles, A Compend of Wesley’s Theology [Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1954], 20).

People in your congregation may have questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible.

This clip from scholar N.T. Wright is helpful in clarifying some issues with the historicity of the Bible: https://youtu.be/gSPJD9fp_lM.

The beautiful way Scripture brings hope is illustrated well by Nik Ripen.

In his book The Insanity of God, Ripken spends time talking with people who have experienced violence, imprisonment, and other forms of religious persecution because of their Christian faith.

He was told a story about 1950s Communist Russia, when three pastors were organizing house churches.

Recognizing that the young people in these churches—meeting primarily for worship with their own families to ensure security—had no concept of the larger body of Christ, the pastors took the risk (and were later imprisoned for it) of inviting the youth of the house churches to meet together and encourage one another at a “youth congress” in Moscow.

“At the beginning of the conference … the young people were given an interesting challenge.

None of them had owned a Bible.

… So, in an off-handed way, the three pastors decided to determine how much Bible truth was present in the group of young people.

They said, ‘This will be like a game.

Every day this week we want you to gather in small groups.

And we want to see how much of the four New Testament Gospels—Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John —you know and have memorized.

In your groups, see how much of the Gospels you can recreate.’

… At the end of the conference … the young people had recreated all of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with only a half dozen mistakes … from memory.

It became clear to me in an instant why and how the Christian faith had survived and often thrived under decades of communist oppression in the Soviet Union.

I also understood what had enables so many Russian believers to remain strong and faithful” (Nik Ripken, The Insanity of God [Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2013], 164-65).

Scripture can be our strength and our hope, in all circumstance.

We can better understand God and have our faith strengthened when we read and study Scripture.