How to Read the Bible

There is so very much we can say about reading the Bible. This seems like one of those topics that simply cannot be covered in one sermon. I have made reference before to a Barna Research group survey which indicates that such an incredibly low number of professed Christians in America ever actually spend time reading the Bible. Perhaps it is the case that we need to relearn how to read the Bible.

That’s the topic we are going to tackle today. In this series which has been working our way through the things that we do together in worship, perhaps one of the most important ingredients of the worship service centers on the reading of scripture. I will admit right up front that it seems like the best way to get through this topic today might feel less like a sermon and more like a lesson. We need to relearn some things about the Bible itself in order to know better how to read it. Here is what the apostle Paul has to say to his young student, Timothy, about reading and using the Bible.

2 Timothy 3:14–4:4 NIV

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Let me set this up for us. Here is my guess. We read a passage like this from the Bible; we affirm what it says—yes, scripture is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training—yes, the time has come when people turn away from sound doctrine and fill themselves instead with whatever their itching ears want to hear to suit their own desires. I can think of some people like that. I know people like that. That’s my guess. We hear these words and the first thing it does is trigger some thoughts of those other people we know who really ought to hear a passage like this because they could really use some rebuking and correcting.

a passage like this is something we prefer to take in as affirming for me, and is really aimed at people who I think get it wrong

I think this is where we need to begin, by admitting that a passage like this is something we prefer to take in as affirming for me—that I’ve got scripture figured out and that I’ve got sound doctrine nailed down—and this passage is really aimed at people who I think get it wrong—that they are the ones who need rebuking and correcting. Isn’t that true? We immediately react to the passage like this and think, “I’ve got a list of people in my head who could sure use the rebuke and correction of scripture because they are way off-base—but not me, I’m the one who has it pretty well figured out.”

the Bible becomes a sledge hammer with which we attack and clobber other people

the Bible is not a sledge hammer to whack other people, but a mirror to better see our own reflection

Follow along with this now. If that is the default reaction, then the Bible itself becomes a sledge hammer with which we attack and clobber other people. It becomes the weapon we use to justify knocking down others while propping up ourselves. It reduces us into this spiraling habit of proof-texting. Maybe you’ve heard that term before. Proof-texting is the way in which people selectively cherry-pick a few verses from the Bible, pull those words out of context from its biblical passage, and twist its meaning in order to suit their own desires. Uh-oh, it looks like I just circled us back to the passage we read today, which also has something to say about people falling into a pattern of suiting their own desires. Maybe, in fact, that’s us; this passage should point right back to ourselves. Maybe the point here is that the Bible is not a sledge hammer to whack other people, but a mirror to better see our own reflection.

Yes, that is in fact exactly what Paul is saying in this passage. Look again at the opening verses. Paul is aiming these words personally right at Timothy.

2 Timothy 3:14–15 NIV

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

These verses are packed with second-person singular pronouns (“you”). Paul is aiming this passage right at Timothy. Paul is saying to Timothy, scripture is first of all a mirror which points directly back to you. Paul does not tell Timothy that scripture is a tool to affirm and prove that he is right; he tells Timothy that scripture is a tool to rebuke and correct—first of all—Timothy; Paul’s protégé, his apprentice. Paul is reminding all of us in this passage that you and I are the ones who need the correcting words of scripture first.

we have no business using scripture to rebuke or correct anyone else unless we are taking the time FIRST to honestly and intently examine where it is scripture is rebuking and correcting us

Here’s the point I think Paul is making for us in this passage; we have no business using scripture to rebuke or correct anyone else unless we are taking the time FIRST to honestly and intently examine where it is scripture is rebuking and correcting us. As we move forward now looking at how it is we ought to read the Bible, we do this acknowledging that the corrective teaching of scripture comes first to us personally. It is not our weapon to attack others; it is God’s potter’s wheel which he uses to mold and shape and form our hearts and souls.

How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart

Now then, how do we read the Bible in a way which forms and shapes our lives as followers of Jesus? Let me spend the rest of our time here on a lesson which looks at two things: first, let’s relearn some things about the Bible itself—what is this book anyway?; and second, let’s work through a practical framework which helps shape the way we read scripture. And let me say that much of what I am drawing from for the rest of this message is a hugely condensed overview of a book called How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. It is an older book that has been around for quite a while. But I will also say that it is in its fourth published edition. So, even though it’s been around a while, it obviously seems to have some lasting enduring principles which are still relevantly applied today.

the Bible is a collection of books

We often refer to the Bible as a book. But of course that is not true. The Bible is a collection of books—66 to be exact. The bible is an entire library pulled together into one volume. The writings included in the Bible span over a thousand years from Genesis to Revelation including several authors along the way. So, how is it that this collection of writing spread out by so many year apart can all be pulled together into one collection we call the Bible? This is where we acknowledge what Paul says in our passage today; that all scripture is God-breathed.

the Bible is the infallible Word of God

We say that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. That the Holy Spirit inspired the various authors in its message, the the Holy Spirit was actively moving in the copying and rewriting of these books over the centuries in order to preserve its message, and that the Holy Spirit is still active in the hearts of those who read it yet today to receive and understand its meaning. Let’s understand something about what we mean when we say that this book is infallible. And I will say that not all Christians have the same understanding of this. Here in the Christian Reformed Church denomination we say that the Bible is infallible, but we do NOT say that the Bible is inerrant. Those are two different things. The be inerrant is to say that the Bible has no errors. We don’t say that here in this church.

In fact, the Bible has many errors. In the four different gospels there are discrepancies between the details from one gospel to the next. The Bible comes to us today as centuries worth of hand-copied manuscripts that were lost and torn along the way. Scholars have pieced the fragments of those manuscripts back together and run into discrepancies all over the place where the wordings from one manuscript to the next is different. Biblical scholars have had to make judgement calls in just about every single book of the Bible about what words the original authors actually wrote. And translators have had to make judgement calls about picking the right words which best express the meaning of those original Greek and Hebrew writings. The end result is that there are likely many more errors in the exact details and wording of the Bible than we even know about. But that’s okay; because in this church we make no claims that the Bible is inerrant. We say the Bible is infallible.

infallible means that the message and intent of the Bible cannot fail

Infallible means that the message and intent of the Bible cannot fail. Even with discrepancies and errors which have come along through the centuries of copying and translating, the message of God’s salvation coming to his people is preserved within this book in ways which cannot fail. The story of God’s faithful covenant love extended to his people has always remained in the words of scripture. The grace of God which calls broken sinners in faith to receive Jesus has always been preserved in the message of this book. God’s revelation of who he is and how he delivers salvation abides in these words. That is the infallible nature of scripture; that its message and purpose cannot and does not fail.

different genres — historical narrative, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, oracles, letters, gospels, parables, and apocalyptic allegories

In this collection of writings we see many different styles, or genres. There is historical narrative, poetry, prophecy, oracles, letters, gospels, and apocalyptic allegories. All of these things pull together into one message of God’s covenant love and salvation for the people he loves. And all of this is separated from the world of our time by over 2000 years now. So, let’s work though some guiding principles which help us take this ancient collection of writing with vastly different styles, and make sense of this as a message from God for us in our world today.

I know there is so very much we could say about this topic, but I have to boil it down to something helpful for us to take from here today. So, let’s work with two guidelines and two questions.

The first guideline is this: identify what you are reading. Sure, it’s the Bible, but dig a little deeper. Is it a book of the Bible that uses historical narrative or poetry or prophecy or a letter? Do we know who wrote it and to whom it was written as the original audience? Knowing exactly what you are reading makes a difference for how you read it. So, always back up and remind yourself of where a particular passage fits into scripture. Let’s workshop that. Today’s passage is is a letter. It was written by the apostle Paul and addressed to a young man named Timothy. We know that Timothy was probably being trained by Paul to be a leader in the church at Ephesus. That’s all good background information to keep in mind when reading these words of scripture.

The second guideline is this: identify how the passage fits into the Bible as a whole. There are consistent themes that show up all throughout the Bible; themes like grace and covenant and faith. Does the passage you are looking at connect in any way to any of these larger overarching themes that pull all throughout scripture. Let’s workshop this again. What are some of the bigger themes this passage is pulling at? Since Paul is writing to Timothy who is in Ephesus, I might want to lean there first. Here in 2 Timothy Paul talks about being equipped for every good work, but doesn’t say anything more about what those good works might look like. No problem, I figure Timothy already knows that because Paul already talked about that in his other letters which Timothy would know. In Ephesians 4 it says

Ephesians 4:11–13 NIV

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

This theme of sanctification which we see in 2 Timothy becomes filled with greater meaning and understanding when we line it up with the wider arch of scripture. Then we are reminded that our sanctification shows up in works which build unity among believers and emulate the example of Christ. Looking at the wider themes of the Bible helps us read the Bible in ways that connect the dots from one passage to the next.

Those are the two guidelines which help set the frame around what we read in the Bible. Now let’s consider the two questions we should ask when we read the Bible.

how does the passage point to a problem of sinful brokenness in our world?

Question one. When reading the Bible, what is the problem being expressed in the passage you are reading? Author Paul Scott Wilson refers to this as ‘trouble in the text.’ So often in scripture we see the naming of some kind of problem or struggle. In short, we are looking to identify the way a passage of scripture shows us the broken sinfulness of our world. Let’s workshop this with the very passage of scripture we read today. What is the problem being expressed in this passage from 2 Timothy which points to the way our own sinful brokenness is evident?

2 Timothy 4:3–4 NIV

3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

people turn away from God’s truth to suit their own desires

The passage points to a problem of sinful brokenness in our world. Start with that question; how does the passage point to a problem of sinful brokenness in our world?

how does God show up?

Question two. How does God show up? If you can read a passage of scripture and identify how the problem of sin is evident, then look for the way God steps in to do something about it. In every passage of scripture consider how God is active in the story. What does God do? How does God respond? What is the expression in the passage of God’s part? Alright, let’s workshop this again with today’s passage. How does God show up in these verses?

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God is thoroughly equipping his servants for every good work (through scripture)

Let me rephrase this so that it better expresses the action of God taking place here. God is thoroughly equipping his servants for every good work (through scripture). In this case it is an ongoing action. It is something that God has done, is doing now, and will continue to do. The teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training for righteousness we read about in this passage is not something that scripture does; it is something that God does through scripture. And the reason God does these things—according to this passage—is to equip his people. We’ve already talked about what it is God is equipping his people to do when we looked at connecting the dots from this passage to the wider arch of the Bible’s themes.

God’s Word is still the way that God chooses to teach, rebuke, correct, and train his people so that we are equipped by God himself to be formed into the kind of people he created us to be

It always amazes me how this ancient collection of writings that we call the Bible which spans across thousands of years remains today as something which is still so powerful in the lives of those who follow Jesus. God’s Word is still the way that God chooses to teach, rebuke, correct, and train his people so that we are equipped by God himself to be formed into the kind of people he created us to be. It comes by spending time in the Word of God.