How to Study The Bible Part 3

This is Chris Hughes with the Christian Perspective Podcast with Chris Hughes, where we encourage our listeners to engage the culture with Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds, so enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Man Talk, brought to you by TAWCMN, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where they're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination and challenging men to take their God-assigned role.

Here's our hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Welcome back to Man Talk Radio. Will, it's so good to see you today, buddy. How are you? Likewise, Roy, I tell you, it just seems like the weeks just fly by, and here we are again, and it's getting a little hot outside, but that's okay.

Yeah, today wasn't too bad, though. It's funny, the time is flying. I was just speaking about that very thing today with a colleague. I said, you know, it's amazing how, in some respects, how quick this last year and a half has been, but in other respects, when you think about what all you've been through and what we've been through, it's not been so quick, but it sure has, in some respects, flown by, and it's the weeks and just continue to click off. And one friend said, wait till you get older.

I said, well, if it gets any faster, I don't know what I'm going to do, to be quite honest. Well, see, I think God has given us this time while we were in COVID and, you know, isolated from each other and everything. This was an ideal time for, I think, the believers to get themselves together in the sense of giving more time to God because you couldn't go anywhere.

Right. So, you know, and so we're continuing, you know, what we talked about last week, week before and how to study the Bible and see God gave us that time. And I wonder how many truly took advantage of it, because if you're not equipped, you know, with the word of God, then you will be defeated. Even though God says you're an overcomer and 1 John 5, 4 and 1 John 4, 4, he says you're an overcomer, even our faith. So if we don't exercise what God has given us, then how can we be victorious in this day and age?

That's a great question. Well, I think most people, if you look around and listen and watching the attendance at churches and now the church starting to open back up, I would guess, venture to guess that the majority of people probably haven't dove any deeper than they were prior to the pandemic. I agree. And there may be some that were seeking answers and trying to find biblically why we're going through what we're going through, but I don't believe that the numbers have gone off the chart as relates to people doing more personal time, more Bible study.

I would probably say that prayer time may have gone up just because there's a lot of people that were worried about family members and that sort of thing. But you have to wonder even about that because there are so many distractions as we've talked about in the past. But it is good to have you back, Will. It's good to be back together as always. And for those of you who don't know, Will and I actually worked together, which is a blessing in itself. And we've both been working remotely for quite some time. Amen. We're certainly looking forward to someday getting back in our office, but it's good to be back today. And what we want to talk about and for those of you who missed the last couple of weeks, we were going through Tim LaHaye's book, How to Study the Bible for Yourself, which was kind of the lead in that Will was giving that hopefully men and women have jumped in deeper. But if you haven't, it's never too late.

That's the great part. We're here to encourage you to do that and give you some methodology to that process. And in fact, speaking of methodology, chapter four, Will is about? Methods of Bible reading.

There you go. So, and, you know, he starts off and he talks about when we read the Bible. And of course, some of you listeners may have been doing this for a while, but he talks about reading the Bible by books. In other words, don't go into the Bible and cherry pick, you know, those things, those things that you want to apply to your life versus those things you don't or those things you believe versus those things you don't believe and versus those things that apply today versus those things that don't apply today.

And when we start doing things like that, I think what we get into is we allow ourselves simply to be pinned down by the enemy because we're not structurally facing the word of God, the way God would intend us to. And this is why he said, study to show thyself approved. When you do that, you are not approving yourself unto man, but you're proving yourself unto God.

Right. And what better way than to study his word as his word tells us and that the study to show thyself approved, right? And, you know, we think about study at most people, especially as they get older in life, think, well, I understand things.

I know things. But, you know, what I find will every time I read, there's something that I didn't pick up before or God reveals something new. And so one of the things we want to talk about as we lead into this is before you start reading, before you start studying, what's the first thing that first thing to do? We should pray. And so during prayer is when you start making that individual connection to God. Prayer is important, I think, because it you just won't take the Bible, put it down and say, OK, wherever it open, that's where I'm going to start study.

Right. So we take and I think when you do that, you're not giving God his due diligence. You know, when when we just open it up and just say, I'm going to start here, you know, it's it's almost like we are not taking the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the God of all creation seriously when we're not taking some type of structured approach. And of course, we talked about this with the Christian Fellowship Group at work. And at the end of that, God blessed me to say to the group that there's three things that you need that are a must when it comes to studying the Bible.

Of course, we're going to talk about reading here in a minute. But the three things you need is a Greek lexicon. You need a Hebrew dictionary and you need a very, very good concordance. Those three things are an absolute must when it comes to studying the word of God. You can have all kinds of additional resources, but I think those three is essentially all you need.

Sure. We one of the things will always comes to mind when we talk about praying ahead of time, you need to you're invoking the Holy Spirit to give you that awareness. Right. When you're when you're praying to God, you're invoking the Holy Spirit to come be a part of that meeting, part of that reading time, part of that study time. So the Holy Spirit resides in us. But if we basically are given our due diligence and our due time with God, it invokes the Holy Spirit to become more present and give us those nudges where we need to be, what we're reading and and actually to basically give us the interpretation of the scripture and the full meaning. Right.

Absolutely. So when you read, according to Tim LaHaye, he says read by books and read it repeatedly. And you know, the reason for repetition is what? Because you'll miss something or you may get a little distracted. We all do that when you're reading.

It's easy to do if you've taken too much content. And that's why in the past, we've talked about it, make it qualitative, not necessarily quantitative. And so I think multiple times God unveils something new to you and then can bring another piece to you. And also, if you think about his his perfect timing, as we often talk about, you may not be ready for the thing he needs to deliver to you the second time or the third time. So when you come back through it, he knows exactly when you need to for it to be revealed to you.

Right. Well, so that to me is why you got to go through it two, three, four times and even listen to it after you read it. I use the audible Bible to will as an opportunity to reinforce what I've what I've read. I'll go back and listen to it on the Bible app. And see that that should be an encouragement to those who are in their car a lot. You know, they could put that on and just let the Word of God just saturate them instead of, you know, them listening to other things they could, you know, just just let their soul be soaked with the Word of God. But reading it repeatedly also, I think, suggests, Roy, that a person we in order for us to understand anything that we have to read it several times.

This is just like almost when we catch on to things. If someone say, Do you understand what I mean? And you go, Yeah, and then you go away and you go, What did they say? I didn't really quite understand everything. So we make an assumption on what they say. And I think that's how so many divisions occur. So many divisions occur when people misinterpret what another person is saying. So, of course, the same thing can go come with the Word of God, you can read something misinterpreted, and it doesn't fit well with your spirit. And so all of a sudden, you want to internally reject it, just because you don't understand, right, and you make a good point, well, if it doesn't fit well with your spirit, then that should be your indicator to call time out. If something's not setting with your spirit, then you need to call time out and go back and read it again and ask for God to give you peace about what you're reading.

And also to give you full understanding of what it is he wants you to take from that reading, especially if the if the unsettledness there means to the point you've misinterpreted, most likely you misinterpret or, or it could be something that's conscious on the consciousness of your soul and spirit that you out of line somewhere. And see, and that's that's setting up for the number three, which is read it by need, he says. So if we have some type of need in our spirit, or during our course of the day, that God, we want God to fulfill a particular need, then we seek in the Word of God for the answer to whatever that need is that we're seeking. So the need is is good. And this is not to say the need is greed, because we can attempt to try and, and consume the Word of God too fast, or too much of it at one sitting.

But it goes back to what you said earlier, it's not quantitative is qualitative is what you want. You want qualitative results as a result of giving God time. And Will, I'm glad you talked about read it by need. And one of the things that Tim LaHaye talks in here, so it must be a very, must have been a big issue at the time of the writing and continues to be I'm sure with men and women today, is if you lack assurance of salvation, he recommends that you read First John every day for 30 days, First John every day for 30 days. And see, First John is one of those books.

It's almost like when you talk about reading, reading the chapter of the Bible or book of the Bible entirely, you know, don't just read and again, extract certain verses, but go through and read the whole thing. And see, when he said read, read First John, First John is written to the little children. And so the little children indicates from Scripture that these are young believers in Christ Jesus. So he's addressing the young believers, those who are just coming to the knowledge of being born again. And so because he further within that chapter talks about young men, and then he talks about the older men or the mature men. And so each one of these groups have matured in such a way that God is going to address whatever their need is in reference to the text according to their growth. So the mature, they're able to do X. Those who are young in Christ, the young men, they are able to do Y. And of course, the young ones, they're just suckling milk. So they still need to grow.

Right. And I would even build on that, Will, and you may have been a believer or father of Christ for a long time and just not been in the Word regularly. And that happens, and we see that all the time, Will, when we get an honest response. And we ask our men when we're meeting in groups, you know, let's be transparent. How many people read daily? How many people read two times a week or three times a week? And oftentimes, some only read once a week.

So you could be at any point in your walk with Christ as it relates to the length of time you've been a follower of Christ. Again, never too late to start. Jump on board, start reading, get some routines put together, and we'll come back and revisit what that looks like here in a few moments. But remember, read it by need is one of the options.

Read it repeatedly is certainly one of the directives so that you can take in and God can speak to you multiple times. And then when we come back, we'll talk about step number four in this particular group. So thank you for joining us on ManTalk Radio.

We'll be back in just a few seconds. TAWCMM would love to have you join their community of men for breakfast every first and third Friday of every month. They have Bible discussions and fellowship after the best breakfast in town. The meeting location is at their gracious Host Church First Christian Church in Kernersville 1130 North Main Street in Kernersville.

They have a hard start at seven o'clock and a hard stop at eight o'clock. First time visitors eat for free. Join your hosts Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Affordable chiropractic in High Point. As you might tell from their name, affordable chiropractic, even for the cash patient. Dr. Jeff Fricke has been caring for patients in High Point for 34 years. Physical therapy such as ultrasound and spinal decompression for disc conditions such as herniation, comprehensive care for auto accident injury patients with no out-of-pocket expense. Remember, affordable chiropractic on West Lexington Avenue in High Point.

Call 336-885-1987. Back to ManTalk Radio and we are talking about how to study the Bible because a lot of you who have been COVID bound in the household, perhaps you have not taken advantage of the time that God has given you. And so we want to go through and give you some just some general things to look for from Tim LaHaye's book, How to Study the Bible for Yourself, and to research things, how to research it, how to read it, how to study. And it will make you a much more fulfilled believer. Because when you're doing the will of God, God is pleased with that. And you get this sense of satisfaction and joy. I don't know about you, Roy, but I know I do. And that's how I know that I'm in step with the Lord.

Yeah, I agree with you, Will. And in the same way, it's a comforting, it's a peace, it's a reassurance, it's just in its knowledge, and it's arming ourselves for the day to day things that are coming at us, right? And when we're in the middle of those battles or something comes on, there's a scripture comes back. For those of us who don't have the Bible memorized, the first five verses like you do, Will. I don't have the whole Bible. But it helps in so many ways. And you're right.

And I think maybe the word I'm looking for is intimacy, true intimacy. And you think about the influence of the Holy Spirit in the writing of the scriptures, you know, and just the time period. And, you know, like the Gospels, it's what, 60, 80 years after, I guess, Jesus's resurrection that the Gospels were written somewhere in that timeline. And it's amazing. And then the similarities and the stories and just from different perspectives from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And just, it's quite impressive. Quite impressive.

Yeah. And see, when Roy was talking about earlier about reading 1 John, that is a book you can read and really reread that many times. Actually, you can read it 30 to 45 days. And you'll find different things in it as you read it. Because when I say different things, I'm talking about applications, how to apply it to your life. There's only one interpretation of the Word of God, but there are many applications. So we need to have that understanding. So 1 John and then the Gospel of John.

Both of those kind of go hand in hand. So after you've finished reading 1 John, then go over to the Gospel of John. And from that point, I think there are other ways in which you can look at how to read the Bible.

But he gives a very good reading plan in here. And that is to read the smaller books first from the New Testament, then go to the Gospels, and then read the historical books, such as the Book of Acts in the New Testament. And then, you know, from there, you can pick up reading things like the poetic books of the Bible, that of Job, of Psalms, of Proverbs, of Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. You know, you can pick those up and then start reading it. But for you advanced study goers and readers, I recommend also that you read the Scripture according to the chronological order in which it's written.

That's a real key. And I'm telling you, when you read it chronologically, and you can find chronological reading, all you have to do is just go on the website and put in Bible books in chronological order, and it'll give you a chronological order of the books. And when you read it in that way, it's almost you're following the Bible historically. So there won't be any gaps in between books, even some of the small, what they call minor prophets, you know, Hosea, and Zachariah, and Malachi, and books like that.

Right. Will, you know, I use Everyman's Bible, which is an NIV version of Everyman's, and it's built around men. Some of the themes between the chapters and some of the points that I've showed you are built for men. So men, if you're listening, Everyman's Bible is a great Bible for you to be reading, as well as one of your versions in the NIV. As Will talked about earlier, you need to have multiple resources, and I would encourage you to have a King James version as well, because there's some scriptures, for whatever reason, that didn't make it into the NIV.

There's a miss here or there, or an omission, but it's always good to look at multiple versions. But one of the things it says about 1 John in the Everyman's Bible, it says, what's the point of 1 John? And the author has said, love God intensely, and the rest of life straightens out.

Love God intensely, and the rest of life straightens out. So folks, if you're listening, that's a popular statement. That's a powerful, powerful statement.

Amen. That goes back to, I think, Matthew 6 and 33, Roy, when Jesus said, seek ye first the kingdom of God. I mean, that basically describes the verse that you just read, because when you're seeking God, everything else is going to fall into place. God's going to give you the tools that you need. He's going to put the people in your life.

He's going to marry you up with those individuals that you can help or assist as a believer who has been walking this journey for a long time. And we all need somebody. We can't walk this journey alone. Yeah, we talk about that quite regularly, about accountability group, men that are to fellowship with for the men that are listening. And the ladies, that holds true for you as well.

You really need a network of those two, three, four people around you that are lifting you up, that are holding you accountable and speaking truth into you and not afraid to speak truth into you. And if you when you read the Bible, when we talk about reading the Bible entirely now, if if we were on TV and I said, show me the hands. And we have a live studio audience that is. And we say it and I said, show me the hands of all of you out there who started reading the Bible from the beginning and you got to Leviticus and all of a sudden you skipped over Leviticus. How many hands would go up? OK, OK.

So if you if your hand went up and I can't see your hand, but if it did, you're not alone. Because when we get to the Levitical laws and it's a bunch of them and a lot of that, when we read it, it sounds repetitious to us. Such and such begot such and such and such and such begot. And then we get all into the laws, do this, do that, do that. And we start reading the genealogies and the chronologies. And it's like, oh, my goodness, you know, I can't even pronounce half these names.

So we just we just do the best we can, Roy. And then we just skip over the rest. So and when I started reading, I did the same thing.

So I know I'm not alone. But when you read, you need to read entirely, read the entire Bible and and start with the one year plan. And then you can extend that out to a three year plan, as Tim LaHaye talks about. And he's got a nice three year plan in here.

Yes, he does. He's got got some good recommendations. And I think one of the things, too, I'd like to encourage you is to read Proverbs and Psalms every day as part of your reading. You start your day in Proverbs and then finish up in Psalms in the evening time. And I think that's in our masculine Maximize Manhood book that we've been studying. Also, I think Bishop Larry Jackson has a book he's put out with that very thing, Proverbs for the morning and the Psalms for the evening.

And it's a 30 day just keep rotating back through. So it's he's pulled all the scriptures in and and basically give you easy tool to do it with. You can carry alongside with your Bible. So and the thing about Proverbs, Roy, is Proverbs is one of those books to where the first or second verse may not connect to each other. So so this is the Book of Wisdom is another book is what they call it. But it it so you can actually extract verses from Proverbs to make that application to your to your life. You may not it may not be such that you get six or seven verses in a row that tie together. Right.

You know, to make a complete thought or a thought in which God is blessing through Solomon. That's a great point, Will. And how many we've we've used Proverbs quite a bit. Right. And in our ministry. So it's a great point.

Great point. And that may be one of those life versus that jumps out at you. God said, this is your this is yours. You embrace it. This is your life verse.

Absolutely. And one of those is Proverbs 14 12 that says, All the ways of a man are pleasing in his own eyes. Notice the emphasis on pleasing.

See, so if if it pleases, I wish you could see Will's face. If it pleases an individual, then they're going to go out and do it. See, because because, again, what the mind is telling them to do is you can justify your action by going out and do this. And of course, the mind can justify anything it wants to if given enough time, you know, and enough frequency. We could just come up with all kinds of excuses.

But I like what Tim LaHaye says in his book, make no exceptions when it comes to your reading. Right. And then and, you know, folks, if you are really desire some of achieving a goal or something, you're going to make time. You're going to make time. There's no so we don't want to sit here and soft sell and be accepting of excuses or reasons for not doing it. We're just calling on you to do it. Absolutely.

You know, just do it. Pull out that Bible and and you know, a person can tell how much you study by the condition of your Bible. Now I have the very first Bible that I received. I still have it. And I bought that back in 1972. It's when I purchased that Bible. And when you look at it today, it's I have a duct tape, quack, quack. I have a duct tape, the binder because it's it's just falling apart.

And but it has a lot of notes when I go back and I look into the margin of those notes. And it just take me back mentally of sitting under our pastor in Fayetteville. And he was a blessing to me and still is. And how God have laid such a rich foundation for me to stand on through the teaching that God used him to teach us. And so many now pastors have come out of that church as a result of God using him in a mighty way.

That's great. And I'm sure that you've told him many times what an impact he's made in your life. Absolutely. And then consequently, what an impact that's made in so many men's lives.

Absolutely. So many and women as well in the church. So Will, what's the number one message that we've tried to deliver the last three sessions? The whole message is, is don't let your Bible sit on the shelf and collect dust. Get in there, read it, pray before you read and get a structured study plan. Don't just haphazardly opening God's word because you have to remember, folks, this is a holy Bible, not just a Bible because the definition of Bible simply means a collection of books. But this is the holy Bible.

This is God's word that he used for the purpose of getting men off of the sidelines, as Roy liked to say, and putting them into the game. Folks, we hope you're getting back into the game. Thanks for joining us again. We'll talk to you next week. We'll pick this up.

God bless. As we wrap up today's show, be assured that TAWCMM, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, is building a community of men that are Christ followers with the desire to be servant leaders in their homes, communities, churches, and work environments. Check out our website for upcoming events and regularly scheduled meetings. Drop us a note for topics that you would like to have us visit in the future. Thank you for joining us on Man Talk today. Visit us at www.tawcmm.com. Men walking the talk. This is the Truth Network.