Study God's Word

Introduction

Does anybody like mysteries? There's something about trying to figure out what is happening. The people who discover the truth about what happened in a crime are called detectives.

Does anyone have a favorite detective? They search for clues and piece them together to find out the truth. When I was a kid like you, I like to read detective novels. One of my favorites was called the Hardy Boys. They always got into a little bit of trouble as they discovered the truth.

When you read the Bible, sometimes there are things in it that are hard to understand. We want to know what the writers of the Bible are saying about God. That's how we learn about God and get to know him better.

We become detectives searching through the Bible to discover truth about Jesus. And many times it's quite an adventure. Let's take a look at how to study the Bible and find out about Jesus.

God's Word Guides Us

Why is the Bible so important and why should we study it?

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIrV

God has breathed life into all of Scripture. It is useful for teaching us what is true. It is useful for correcting our mistakes. It is useful for making our lives whole again. It is useful for training us to do what is right. By using Scripture, a man of God can be completely prepared to do every good thing.

Psalm 119:105 NIrV

Your word is like a lamp that shows me the way. It is like a light that guides me.

Matthew 4:4 NIrV

Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Man doesn’t live only on bread. He also lives on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

Finding Your Way

Start with Prayer

The Bible is what God says to you. That's why we ask him to speak to us as we read and study it.

Talk to God like you would talk to your best friend.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand what you study.

Ask God to make something stick out to you.

Know What's There

The Bible is one book with 66 smaller books.

It has two testaments, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament looks forward to Jesus and the New Testament tells us who Jesus is.

The Old Testament and New Testament have groups of books in them, like the Major Prophets, books about Israel's history, the Gospels, and Paul's letters

Use part of your study time to learn the order of the books, how to find Bible verses, and know where things like the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount are.

There are stories, poems, rules, prophecies, and other types of reading. Knowing how to understand these helps you understand what you read.

Read, Read, Read

Read a whole story, chapter, or section once.

Read it slowly, looking for repeated words, words you don't know, and what it's talking about.

Read each word or a couple of words. Take note of what you don't understand.

Going Deeper

What do I see?

As you start studying what you have read, you want to go deeper than just reading. You want to see things you wouldn't notice if you are just reading.

Just like wearing a scuba suit and diving into the water, swimming deeper and deeper, you want to look for things you didn't notice when you read your passage.

Are there things you missed? Do you notice anything you didn't notice before? These are all questions I ask myself when I study the Bible more deeply.

Look for repeating words, bigger words that talk about God, people, places, things you don't know about. All of these give clues to understanding what the Bible is saying about God and you.

What Did It Mean Then

The last book of the Bible was finished and 95 AD. That's 1926 years ago! The first books of the Bible were probably written around 1400 BC. That's 3326 years ago! That's a very long time for us to know what it was like to live back then.

Because there have been so many thousands of years, so many lifetimes, ago that the Bible was written in places and times we don't understand, we must do our homework to discover what it was like back then.

For us to understand what the Bible writers were saying we need to know what their life was like and everything around them. They talk about things they knew very well that we need to learn about before we can understand what they're saying about Jesus.

Things like Passover, shepherds, the way kings lived, temples, how people traveled, where cities and nations were, and all kinds of other things they knew that we must learn about. Then we will understand what they were saying about Jesus and God to their friends.

What's It Mean Now?

When we learn about the world of the Bible writers and how they were talking about God to their friends, then we can figure out how our world is like theirs.

Illustration: We can make a bridge from their time to our time. After understanding the truth about God they were sharing with their friends, we can use things in our world to make the same truth about God. Bridges connect one thing to another where we can't walk on our own.

We have to bridge the giant gap between their world and our world. But the truths about God are bigger than their world and our world. The same things they say about God that were true then are still true today.

So the bridge we are traveling from their world to ours is the same truth about God. That's what we're trying to learn. The whole Bible is all about Jesus. We just have to be able to see it.

What Do I Do?

We can learn a lot of true and neat things about Jesus as we study the Bible. But that doesn't help us live for him. We need to take what we learn and use it in our lives.

So how do we do that? We take the truth about God and we figure out what it means for our friendship with God, how we treat our friends, our parents, our sisters and brothers, and even strangers.

When our friends are mean to us, the Bible tells us how to handle that. It teaches us how to treat our parents. The more we learn about God the more we know what to do.

So when we study the Bible, look really far down and learn about the world of the Bible writers and our world, and the range of truth about God, we look for ways to take what we learned and use it in our lives.

Getting Help

When you get stuck

There will be a lot of times you don't know how to answer the questions you have. What is Passover? Where is Rome? Many of your questions are answered in different places.

So let's talk about what you do when you get stuck. When you don't know how to answer your questions, there are a few places you can go. Not everyplace will answer every question you have. But they will help with many of them.

Study Bible

There are Bibles that help you study all things you don't know, and they make them just for kids like you. The people make them so you will understand them better.

I know some great study Bibles for kids that I can tell your parents about if they don't have one for you. So if you think that will help you study the Bible, just ask your parents if you can get a study Bible for kids.

Study Bibles give you shorter answers for some of your questions. They talk about the people, places, and some things in the Bible. They explain what they mean and why they are important.

One of the best things about study Bibles as they come in one book. When I study the Bible, I have thousands of books that help me learn. But a study Bible is a great place to start.

Ask Dad and Mom

Another great way to study the Bible is to do it with your parents. They are studying the Bible like you are. And sometimes they know answers to questions you have.

A family that studies the Bible together learns about God together. There are times that you need to study the Bible for yourself. I find that studying the Bible is a lot of fun. I like finding the answers to my questions.

Studying for yourself, asking your parents questions when you don't know the answers, helps you to grow in Jesus. You learn about him and every time you discover an answer to your question, it's like opening a present on Christmas day.

Plus, your parents can read the books you can't read. If your study Bible and your parents can't answer your question, they can read things you can't read yet. They can help answer questions after they find out the answers.

Ask Pastor

Sometimes one of the best things you can do is ask Pastor. He studies the Bible for a living. He may have answers to your questions that no one else has.

Pastors answer a lot of questions from everyone. Maybe your parents are getting answers for their questions from him. So when you study the Bible, Pastor is one of those people who can help you.

But you want to make sure to try to answer your question before you go to your parents and Pastor. If you don't do your own work to try to answer your question, you won't learn how to find out for yourself.

So when you have tried your hardest, ask your parents, and still have no answer, sometimes Pastor can help you in your study.

Look at Books

If all else fails, there are people who study the Bible even more intensely than all the other adults I've talked about. They study the Bible so hard that they are the ones who write books the adults look at.

Some of these people who study so hard even I don't understand when I try to read their books. They are so deep into the parts of the Bible they study that they don't always make sense to the rest of us.

But I have found that when I read their books I still get something out of it that I can use to understand the Bible better. You're going to need help if you have to use these books to help you. Your parents and others can help you read these books and understand what they're talking about. All you have to do is ask.

Conclusion

Sometimes when you read the Bible it's really hard to understand what they are talking about. When this happens, you need to be like a detective who searches for answers. If you do everything you can to find the answers you are looking for, you will probably find them.

Just remember all of the steps I showed you today and you will usually find answers. The more you learn about the Bible, the more you learn about Jesus. After all, that's what we want to know about, right? But we don't just want to know facts about Jesus. We want to know him like we know our friends.

Studying your Bible will help you to know Jesus. Never be afraid to ask questions and learn. The most important step you can take is to pray and ask God to show you the answers. Let's pray and ask God to help you today.