How to Study the Bible

the Scriptures have been breathed out by God. The supreme source for the content of Scripture is not some person who's spinning out yarns and myths from his own perspective, but the claim that the Apostle is making here, the apostolic claim, is that the source of Scripture is God Himself, that God breathes it out. We'd probably all agree that studying the Bible is an important part of spiritual growth. Yet many of us, if we're honest, find it challenging to read the Bible on our own.

So how can we grow in confidence to study God's Word for ourselves? Hello, I'm Dave Terrio, and this is the Monday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm glad you've joined us. Today we begin a study of Dr. R.

C. Sproll's series, Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow. And the first thing we need to grow is very simply, we need to know how to study the Bible. Dr. Sprohm will teach us how to do that in just a moment.

But before that, we'd like to let you know that if you call us with a donation at 800-435-4343, or give a gift at renewingyourmind.org. you'll be able to receive lifetime downloadable access to the complete teaching series. You'll also receive the e-book, Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow, as well as one of our crucial questions booklets, How Should I Live in This World. These additional materials are a great way to go deeper into the topic of spiritual growth. and you'll have a chance to support this teaching with a donation.

But now, here's Doctor Sprohn. I want to look first of all at what the Bible says. About the importance of Bible study.

So, I'll direct your attention initially. to Paul's second letter to Timothy. to the third chapter.

Now it's important for us to understand the context in which the Apostle writes the admonition that we're going to read in a few moments. That Paul is at the very end of his life. He stands. Accused by the Roman government, he is under a death sentence, and he is awaiting his imminent execution. And so his final.

advice to his disciple Timothy is contained in this second letter to him. And so as we read it, we observe that what Paul is instructing his disciple Timothy to do, by extension, has enormous relevance for us.

Now he says in chapter 3, in verse 12, Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus. will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse. deceiving and being deceived.

Now that's the immediate context in which he gives the following exhortation. He's talking about how facing persecution is the lot Of every Christian and the Christian community. And Paul, in the midst of this violent persecution under the Emperor Nero, is saying to Timothy, Hey, things are going to get worse. And worse. And people are going to come along who are impostors.

who will seek to defraud you, to lead you into falsehood. Who will deceive the people of God, and they themselves are deceived. And so, this problem of deceiving people by distorting the truth of God. is one that presents itself as a major problem in every generation and for every Christian community. And the apostle following after Jesus is profoundly concerned that Christian people be solidly rooted and grounded in the truth.

so that they may not be deceived. and led astray by false teaching. And then in verse 16 he says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

Now this is the Bible's claim. to divine inspiration. I remember when I was a little boy. And there was a fellow in our community who was a couple of years older. Than I was, and he was something of a bully, and he used to make fun of me and hurt my feelings.

Call me names, and sometimes I'd come home crying to my mother and say, He said such and such about me. And my mother would wipe away my tears and she had her favorite. response to this. She said, when people talk like that about you, son, she said, Consider the source.

Now when we talk about the source, here is the key text. First of all, when Paul says all Scripture, he's saying here all the graphhe.

Now the graphhe is the word that was used in antiquity to refer to the Old Testament.

So at the very least, Paul is claiming that all of the writings of the Old Testament are inspired of God.

Now, elsewhere in the New Testament, we see the similar claim that would include the New Testament writings as well in this same category of scripture. But what Paul is saying is that scripture. is inspired of God, all of it.

Now. The word that is used here, that is translated by the English word inspire, is a word that has doctrinal ramifications and consequences. and it's a decent translation, however. To be very precise and very technical, the word that is used here in the text is translated by the phrase, God breathed. And it refers to God's breathing out.

rather than God's breathing in. When you use the term inspire, that means to breathe into something. But the text here has to do with God's breathing out. and we breathe out when we speak. Our words are carried, as it were, on the waves of the air that we breathe out.

And so what Paul is saying here is that the Bible, that the Scriptures have been breathed out by God. That is, he's making a statement about the origin of the content of those things that are found in sacred writ. That the source, the supreme source for the content of Scripture is not some late first century or second century redactor or editor or some person who's spinning out yarns and myths from his own perspective. But the claim that the apostle is making here, the apostolic claim, is that the source of Scripture is God Himself, that God breathes it out.

Now, the doctrine of inspiration speaks about how God, through the Holy Spirit, superintends the human authors in such a way that they are inspired by the power of the Holy Ghost to ensure that what is written is in fact. what has its origin in the very mind of God.

So the Bible is the Word of God that comes to us through the means of human authors, but humans who are not just engaged in speculation, but authors who have been empowered and superintended by the Holy Ghost to ensure that what is produced is nothing less than the Word of God. That's why the prophets in the Old Testament could preface their teaching by saying, Thus saith The lore Alright, well then Paul says All of the scripture is given by this God-breathing, this inspiration of God, and it is profitable for what? What's its practical value? What good is it? What's the use?

Why should we be engaged in Bible study? It's profitable for doctrine.

Now what does that mean?

Some people, you know, in our day and age, say, oh, we don't need to be worried about doctrine. Doctrine divides. No, doctrine instructs. Doctrine gives you the foundation for your very life. What the Bible is, is doctrine.

The Bible gives you the content of divine truth. That's what doctrine is all about. To despise doctrine is to despise the Word of God. It's profitable for doctrine.

For reproof.

Now, this is something. we, even after we are converted, still need to be corrected. If we're going to grow in our sanctification, we need to have our sins revealed to us. And you know, again, I mentioned a little while ago about using our critical apparatus when we are examining theories and so on. I was a philosophy major in school, and one of the things that we were taught constantly was to analyze, to examine, to critique everything that we wrote and not just take something as being absolutely true simply because it was printed on a page, but we had to subject it to rigorous criticism.

and I have found, however, that when I come to the pages of sacred scripture, something different happens.

Now I'm the one who is subjected to criticism because I am underneath the Scripture. The Scripture is not underneath me. And there is no worse arrogance than to seem that we can stand over and above the Word of God and subject it to our critique. Rather, it subjects us to its critique, and it is profitable for this reproof that we may be corrected. for reproof, for correction, and for instruction.

in righteousness. To what end? What is the ultimate purpose? comes in the final clause. Let the man of God may be complete.

thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Now Paul was writing to Timothy, and said, Timothy, Get in the word. That's where you will get this profit that will make you a complete. Christian. If you neglect the study of God's Word, your life will be incomplete. you will be missing out.

On this vast resource, this treasury of truth that is contained within it.

Now, finally, To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. And the word disciple in the New Testament, mothetes, in the Greek, means simply learner.

So anyone who would be a disciple of Christ Must be a learner of the teaching of Christ. And we get the word discipline from that. In this regard, just like anything else, if I'm lacking self-discipline, The best thing I can do is to place myself under the discipline of somebody else. If you have struggled to be disciplined in studying sacred scripture, then let me suggest to you that you get in a class. Get in Bible study fellowship or a group like that where you're engaged in a regular process of Bible study.

I would like to ask those who are present in the studio audience today: how many of you? Have read. Every single word that's printed In the Bible. Let me see your hands. All right, that's about half of the group that's assembled here.

Now, let me just say to those who are listening on radio that the people who are assembled in this room today are people for the most part who have been Christians for years. And they're devout Christians, and they are people who come on a regular basis to these lectures because they're so much interested in adult Christian education. And yet only 50% of this group have completed the entire text of sacred scripture.

Now, I say that for a reason. Incidentally, in groups that I speak to around the country, This percentage that we have here today is extremely high. The overwhelming majority of Christians who have been Christians for 10 years. have never completed their entire reading of sacred scripture. And I want to ask the question this morning, why?

Why would that be? You would think that we would take to the Scripture like a duck takes to water. I mean, if we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, how would we want to go another day without making sure that we hear every single word that comes from the mouth of God?

Well, I think that the biggest reason many of us fail To complete the reading of the entire scriptures is how we go about it in the first place. Most people Endeavor to read the Bible initially. from cover to cover. And they start with good intentions with the book of Genesis. And there's a basic familiarity, at least with some of the stories and narratives that are found in Genesis.

And Genesis, by the way, is basically narrative. It tells us historical events. It tells us stories about people like ourselves, about the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, about the drama of the life and the trials of Joseph, for example. It's like reading a novel. It's very gripping, absorbing, and interesting.

And then we move from Genesis into Exodus. And again, the flavor of narrative and drama continues. And we've all seen the movie The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston playing Moses.

So we have a basic familiarity with the conflict between Pharaoh and Moses and the children of Israel and so on. That's part of the fabric of our cultural history. And so there's a certain familiarity, and we read that and we're comfortable. And then all of a sudden, as soon as we finish Exodus. we run smack dab into Leviticus.

And Leviticus Goes over and over these minute laws about the dietary regulations and the prescriptions for Hebrew worship in the desert and so on, things that are completely foreign to us. And it is frankly Tedious reading.

Now, at the same time, I have to say, those details that are found in books like Leviticus and Numbers. are extremely rich in how they point forward to the New Testament and to the coming of Christ. But for the person who's just beginning to read through the scriptures, There is no framework, no skeleton to hang one's hat on to understand these things. And so people become discouraged and they sort of drop out from the program. They'll stop in the middle of Leviticus or Numbers or Deuteronomy.

Now, here's how I relate to that. When I enrolled in college as a freshman, I had to declare a major. And I thought the thing that I would like to learn about was history, because I had liked history in grade school and in high school. and so I signed up as a history major in college. And my first course in college in history was the history of civilization.

It began with the Sumerians and the Akkadians and the Egyptians and the Chinese and everything and went from antiquity. all the way up to World War II. In my first semester, my first course in history. I made a D in the course, and at the end of that course, I changed my major because I got lost. I was overwhelmed with details.

overwhelmed with facts. I had no basic outline of the history of the world to sort out all of this myriad of detail. that was new to me. It was really a knowledge explosion that I was simply not prepared for. And then I discovered later on that once I had a skeletal outline of the history of Western civilization, of the major movements that took place in the major epochs of Western history, then I was able to fit things in, sort it out, and come to an easier understanding.

But to have knowledge, first you have to have the outline. You have to have the basic structure, and then you add to that structure and build on the structure in order to complete your knowledge. And so, the way I recommend that people study the Bible, particularly for the first time, is to do it like this: start reading at Genesis. Read Exodus. Then move to Joshua, to Judges.

To 1st and 2nd Samuel, to Ezra and Nehemiah. That's how I tell people to read the Old Testament. And that's a very, very small portion of the Old Testament. But what is it that I've just advised people to do? I've given them A Historical Overview.

Of the Old Testament. It's an introduction to Old Testament history, starting way back at creation, going through the patriarchs, going through the Exodus, going through the conquest of Canaan under the military leadership of Joshua, drama, interest, reading like a novel.

Okay. And then at the end of the book of Joshua, we enter into that interim period where Israel is led not by a king, but by charismatically endowed individuals who were called judges. And the book of Judges is a really exciting book to read. And then at the end of Judges, we read 1 and 2 Samuel, where we learn of the transition from this loose federation of tribes led by judges over to the kingdom that is established with Saul and then with David and Solomon and so on, so that we get a sense of what is going on in Jewish history. And then you read about what happens during the exile and the return from exile with Ezra and Nehemiah.

And so after that, you have that overview. Of Old Testament history, then you can go back in and plug in the rest.

So that you can fill out the skeletal framework.

Now, the second stage that I advocate for people who are studying the Old Testament at this point is after they first read Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, that phase two for the Old Testament is to read Amos and Hosea. Two short books that are called minor prophets. In the Old Testament, there are twelve minor prophets. But two of the most famous and most important of the minor prophets are Amos and Hosea. And by reading those two books, a person gets a taste of the prophetic literature.

a taste of what the prophet's concerns were. In the nation of Israel. Then I ask that they read Jeremiah, who's one of the major prophets. I mean, you have Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. But I think the easiest of the four to start with is Jeremiah.

and so I recommend that people read Jeremiah. And then I asked people to read Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. Not tackling the book of Job yet, but looking at Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, two very short books in the Old Testament, that introduce you to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Because we have. Wisdom literature, the poetic books, we have the historical books, and we have the prophets are the divisions that we find in the Old Testament literature.

And then finally, I recommend the reading of the Psalms and the Proverbs, although I have a different. kind of technique for the Psalms that I'll mention in a few moments. And so that's the way I would approach the reading of the Old Testament. And then, of course, the next stage is you fill in the blanks, what you haven't read before.

Now you have the structure and the framework to go back and read Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the other prophets and so on.

Now, I do the same kind of thing with the New Testament. I suggest that people read one Gospel first, and my recommendation is that they read, first of all, the Gospel of Luke. We're at least familiar with the Christmas story, the narratives that introduce the birth of Jesus. And Luke's writing is extremely rich, and it was written especially for Gentiles, and that's who we are. We don't have to have all the knowledge of the Old Testament literature.

The allusions that are made, for example, in Matthew's gospel might escape us. We don't get those so often in the Gospel of Luke. Plus, Luke, as an author, wrote two books in the New Testament. He wrote a sequel to the Gospel called the Book of Acts. And so we can see.

By reading Luke's Gospel, The continuity between the life of Christ and then the experiences of the apostles in the early church that are recorded in the book of Acts.

So I would say, read first of all, Luke. Then second of all, Luke's second volume, namely the book of Acts. And then I recommend that people read. The book of Ephesians. which is their introduction.

to Paul's teaching. And then to First Corinthians. Because 1 Corinthians is so filled with practical issues that arose in the early church that Paul addresses in the Corinthian congregation. Then I suggested people read 1 Peter to get a taste of Peter's concerns and then the first epistle of Paul to Timothy, Because this is one of the so-called pastoral epistles of the New Testament. And then graduate to two big books, the book of Hebrews, Which is one of the richest books in all of Scripture to communicate the person and work of Christ to us.

And then finally, to read Paul's magnum opus, his great theological work. The Epistle to the Romans. And so it goes like this: Acts, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, 1 Peter, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, and Romans. And then, just as we've done in the Old Testament, go back and read the rest of the New Testament books after you've familiarized yourself.

Now, as a practical method, I often say to people. You may want to combine your reading of Old and New Testament literature on a system. What I used to do was I read so many chapters in the Old Testament and so many chapters in the New Testament. every day. Until I completed the study of scripture.

And my discipline was to do this: to read one psalm. Each day. to read five chapters from the Old Testament every day. And four chapters from the New Testament, which gave me really ten chapters in all. Six from the Old, four from the New.

And remember, the Old Testament is much larger. than the New Testament.

So even with that process, I would finish the New Testament before I would finish the Old Testament. But I think that this is a helpful scheme to follow, even if you're a veteran Of Bible study. And finally, I would say to people that if you're going to be a student of the Bible, you have to read the Bible existentially. And what that means is this: not that you adopt the philosophy of existentialism, but that you become involved in what you're reading. You don't just sit back as a spectator, untouched, unmoved by the text of Scripture, but get in the socks, get in the shoes of Abraham.

Ask yourself, how does Jacob feel when he encounters God in this particular incident that is recorded in Scripture? What does this word say to me? How does it penetrate my life where I live today? That's what I mean by reading the Bible existentially. If we venture existentially, as Dr.

Sproll says, into the Word of God, how powerful that could be. A Wrinkle in Time author, Madeleine Lengo, once wrote that the reason we read The reason human beings study the art of storytelling is because it will help us to live our lives more fully, more courageously, and more freely. But if it is so natural for us to venture into stories existentially, to find truth in fiction, How much more freedom and courage can we find in truth itself? As a reminder, if you enjoyed this lecture you can receive lifetime downloadable access to the teaching series as well as the e-book Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow. and the Crucial Questions booklet, How Should I Live in This World?

Just give us a call with a donation at 800-435-4343 or give a gift online at renewingyourmind.org. Your support helps us get the truth of God's Word to more people around the globe.

Well That's the first of the five things every Christian needs to grow in lessons. And tomorrow, Dr. Sproll will introduce us to the second thing we need to know, how to pray. I hope you'll join us here on Renewing Your Mind.