Why Do We Study the Bible?

To Know God and Ourselves Better

Exodus 20:1–6 ESV

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

We see in the 10 commandments we must know God and what He has done for us, and honor God as holy before we can ever properly convey who He is to others or demand for the actions of the lost to align with the holiness of God. If we ourselves scarcely know God and honor God. How can we expect the lost to be concerned with it? If anything, they are more inclined to lend offense, as they consider what we’re teaching to be offensive, and something that we choose to follow only when it serves us. WHEN IT SERVES US, BUT WE ARE SERVANTS OF THE MOST HIGH GOD. We also see that God spoke all of these words and everything else into existence. We have a talkative God. GO TO TALKATIVE GOD IN BOOK

To know God and ourselves better, we must live in to who God is, and what He has called us to be. We get this picture in His Word. And the better we know Him, the easier it will be to model Him first, and teach Him to others second.

deuteronomy 6:4-9 “4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

In what is known as the Hebrew Shema, we see that God’s teaching of His people is laid out in an orderly fashion, to help us focus our walk. To know what God has set us apart for, we must first have it on our heart, then we can teach it to our household, and then we can share it with the community.

We must know the indicatives, or what God has done, before we can rightly perform or explain the imperatives, or what we must do in response to what He has done. In order to know God better, we must reverently reference His revelation of Himself to humanity. That is His word.

To Build Each Other Up

1 Corinthians 10:24 ESV

24 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

1 Corinthians 10:33 ESV

33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

To Protect Against False Teaching