Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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What the Olympics Taught Me about Bible Study

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This week marked a significant milestone for me: the first time since 1994 that I’ve gotten to follow the Olympic games with any regularity.

I love the drama.  Ryan Lochte wins gold in the Men’s 400 meter individual medley, but Michael Phelps fails to medal in the event.  Phelps goes on, however, to win more medals and become the most decorated Olympian in history.  The USA women’s gymnastics team wins gold, but reigning world champion Jordyn Wieber fails to advance to the all-around competition.  Four badminton teams are thrown out of the games for throwing their games.  A Korean archer with poor eyesight helps his team win bronze.  22-year-old Kayla Harrison overcomes a history of sexual abuse by a previous coach and wins the first ever US gold medal in judo.

The drama is inspiring, but also challenging.  Why isn’t our study of God’s Knowable Word equally inspiring?

Why is it that we’d often rather do anything other than read God’s Word?  When we do read it, why does it feel like such a chore?  When we get together in groups to discuss the unbreakable Scripture, why can’t we think of anything to talk about?  Why can church seem routine and lifeless?  Where is the drama that inspired a generation to turn the world upside-down (Acts 17:6)?

God has revealed his Son to us through the Bible written by his Spirit.  In the Bible He lets us in on what he’s thinking.  He tells us what to expect about the future.  He fills in the back story to our existence.  He advises us about how life works best.  His Word is the most influential book in history.  How can we recapture the drama?

Here are some ideas:

  1. Read a lot of Scripture.  Keep the big picture in mind.  Consider taking an afternoon to read a whole book of the Bible in one sitting.   Just read lots of it and keep going.  As you understand the scope of the whole, each detail takes on new life.
  2. Read it lots of times.  Over the past two weeks, I’ve read the same two chapters over and over again.  I read them and didn’t understand them at first.  So instead of moving on, I decided to try it again and again.  I’ve now read them dozens of times in a row, and they’re starting to make sense.  What was once confusing has become exciting and impactful!
  3. Talk to others.  God puts us in community on purpose.  Others will have insights you don’t have.  So plug into your church, find a Bible study group, talk about the sermons.  Ask people what they’re learning from the Word, and share what you’re learning.  The drama of God’s glorious plan through Christ will infect you with joy.
  4. Put yourself into the story.  Picture what the characters went through.  How would you respond in similar circumstances?  What would you feel, desire, fear, or hope?  Remember that Bible characters were real people, experiencing life much as we do.
  5. Focus on Jesus.  You don’t have to be innovative.  You don’t have to make the Bible exciting.  All you have to do is get out of the way and let Jesus show his glory.

The Olympics are exciting, and I can’t wait to see what will happen over the next week.  But the glory of men will wither; does anyone even remember the medalists from 1994 anymore?  God’s Knowable Word will remain forever (1 Peter 1:24-25).

How’d You Do That? (7/31/12)

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On Monday and Tuesday, we examined Solomon’s third purpose for writing the book of Proverbs and sought to apply it.  How did I get to those specific applications?

Whenever we study a passage of the Bible, I find it helpful to think in the three categories of Head, Hands, and Heart.  Each of these categories represents a way in which I can respond to a text.

Head applications identify ways I need to believe what is true.  They help me to identify false beliefs so I can repent of them and choose to adopt God’s perspective.  Examples are “God is more powerful than my enemies,” “Jesus is God and became a man to die for my sins,” or “God wants his people to be part of a church.”

Hands applications identify ways I can act upon what is true.  They help me to identify ungodly behaviors so I can repent of them and live in obedience to God’s will.  Examples are “I shouldn’t gossip about or attack my enemies,” “I can take steps to get to know my neighbors better and reach out to them,” or “I should join a good church and get involved in the community there.”

Heart application identify ways I must become more like Jesus.  They help me to identify wicked or foolish desires so I can repent of them and develop more Christ-like character.  Examples are “I must love my enemies as Christ did for me,” “I can trust other people because Jesus knows what it’s like to be misunderstood,” or “I must stop trusting in myself and instead find ways to serve others.”

The first three purposes of Proverbs correspond to these three areas.  Solomon wants us to know wisdom (head), do it (hands), and always improve at both knowing and doing (heart).

When you read and study the Bible, are you growing in all three areas?

Don’t fall into the trap of overly theological (head), ethical (hands), or pietistic (heart) reading of Scripture.  Keep a good balance of all three, and see how much God will do in your life through his Knowable Word!

And don’t feel like you have rely on yourself alone to grow as a Christian.  Join a Bible study, or get more involved at your church!  Others can help you in all three areas in ways you never expected.

Everyone Has a Bible Study Method

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I’ve been blogging for a few months now, talking a lot about different principles of Bible study.  Look out for this, pay attention to that, consider these things, etc.  Today I’d like to show my cards a bit by revealing a shocking truth: I follow a Bible study method.

A method?  Yes, a method.  How do you respond to that word?

Does it make you nervous or is it a relief?  Does it make you feel like a piece of cookie dough jammed onto the tray or does it give you hope?

Whatever your reaction toward the idea of a method, I’m writing to propose that, like it or not, everyone has a method for Bible study.

Some methods are unintentional and informal.  For example:

The Divination Method

  1. Open the Bible
  2. Drop your finger into a random place
  3. Read what you find
  4. Trust this is God’s will for you today

The Support Group Method

  1. Read a passage of the Bible
  2. Close the Bible
  3. Consider (or discuss, if in a group situation) how you feel about what you just read

The Prayerful Method

  1. Ask God to bring to mind a passage of the Bible that will address your current problem or need
  2. Listen to what thoughts are put in your mind
  3. Look at those passages for encouragement or help

Other methods, however, are quite intentional and formal.  For example:

The Cross-Reference Method

  1. Read a passage of the Bible
  2. Highlight the key words or phrases in that passage
  3. Look up another passage that this one reminds you of (the cross-references in the middle column of your Bible really help with this)
  4. Look up another passage that the second one reminds you of
  5. Look up another passage that the third one reminds you of
  6. Repeat until you run out of time

The Word Study Method

  1. Decide which topic you’d like to study in the Bible
  2. Identify one or more key words that represent your topic
  3. Search the whole Bible for passages that use those keywords (something like Bible Gateway)
  4. Read each verse that comes up
  5. Compile all the components of your topic
  6. Live in light of what you learned

The Expert Method

  1. Read a passage of the Bible
  2. Read a commentary on that passage of the Bible
  3. Believe and act upon what the commentator wrote

My point is this: everyone who reads the Bible has a method for studying the Bible.  What is your usual method?  Are you even conscious of how you study the Bible?

My secondary point is this: not every method is a good method.  In other words, many methods do not result in correct interpretation.  If, as we believe, the Bible is God’s Word to us, shouldn’t we make sure we understand it?

In future posts, I’ll lay out my method more explicitly.

Why We Study the Bible, Revisited

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Not long ago, I posted a number of reasons for why we study the Bible.  They came down basically to the fact that understanding the Bible accurately enables us to know Christ better and find life in him.

Desiring God just posted a short video interview with D. A. Carson, where he covers similar ground.

You read it here.  Now go listen to the man who’s been doing it faithfully for many decades.  Learn from his example and draw near to God as you study his knowable word.

Why We Study the Bible

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Why should we study the Bible?  Couldn’t we just listen to God’s voice inside us?  Even if we ought to use the Bible, shouldn’t we just read it, expecting the meaning to become apparent?  Doesn’t all this “Bible study” stuff get in the way, slow us down, quench the Spirit?

Let me give some reasons why it’s important that we learn how to study the Bible:

1.  Knowing Jesus is eternal life

Jesus said it himself in John 17:3.  He wants what’s best for us, and what’s best for us is for us to know him.  He prayed accordingly the night before he was killed.

2.  The whole Bible is about Jesus

Jesus said it in Luke 24:44-47.  Phillip realized it early on (John 1:45).  Peter declared it much later (1 Peter 1:10-11).

3.  The Bible was written that we might know Jesus and have eternal life

Romans 15:4, John 20:30-31, 1 Peter 1:11-12, Rev 1:1.  It’s an old book, but it was written with you and me in mind!  It wasn’t written to us, but it was written for us.

4.  God thinks it’s noble when we examine the Bible to know Jesus better

Paul explained the main point of the Bible in Acts 17:3.  Some Thessalonians rejected this message (Acts 17:6-7), but the Bereans eagerly searched it out in the text of the Bible (Acts 17:10-11).

5.  It takes hard work to understand the Bible

Some parts are hard to understand, and those who are untaught or unstable will distort them (2 Peter 3:16).  We must be taught well and given a stable foundation if we are to understand the Bible and know Jesus.  Granted, many parts of the Bible are abundantly clear (John 14:6, Acts 4:11-12), yet they, too, are commonly twisted.

6.  We need God’s Spirit to understand the Bible

Our sin and rebellion against God infects everything about us, even our thinking.  No amount of hard work and no foolproof method will guarantee that we interpret the Bible rightly.  Countless universities have courses taught by learned professionals who miss the whole point (see #1-3 above).

But when we trust in the Jesus revealed in the Bible, we receive God’s Spirit, who helps us to know Jesus better (1 Cor 2:6-16).  Those who believe have access to the very mind of Christ because they have his Spirit.

On this blog, we want to help you know Jesus.  We do that by helping you learn to study the Bible.  Let’s keep working to master the methods, but above all, let’s keep our focus on Jesus as we do so.

How’d You Do That? (7/16/12)

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In yesterday’s post, we fleshed out Solomon’s first purpose for writing Proverbs.  In so doing, we examined an important component of biblical poetry: parallelism.

We saw the importance of observing Genre here and here.  Now that we’ve noticed that we’re dealing with poetry, we can appreciate the implications.

English poetry and Hebrew poetry have some similarities and some differences.  Knowing them up front enables us to read the Bible rightly.

Similarities
  1. Uses lots of imagery
  2. Attempts to evoke feelings
Differences
  1. English poetry is (often) driven by meter and rhyme
  2. Hebrew poetry is primarily driven by parallelism

English poetry sounds…poetic.  It has a bounce, a rhythm.  For example:

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II.2.30)

Hebrew poetry generally doesn’t have the “bounce.”

To know wisdom and instruction,
To understand words of insight (Prov 1:2, ESV).

Bible translators often format the text differently to signal poetry (lots of white space, parallel lines indented together, etc.).  Because of the lack of meter and rhyme, however, translators often disagree whether certain Bible passages are prose or poetry.  Just look at the book of Ecclesiastes in a few different versions, and you’ll see that there is little consensus on whether some sections are prose or poetry.

What’s the point?

When you read poetry in the Bible, remember not to isolate individual lines.  Instead, we ought to read parallel lines together, for it’s in their parallelism that we get the poet’s intentions.  Also, expect lots of figurative and emotive language.  The poet wants to communicate a point, but he wants to do so beautifully.

How’d You Do That? (7/4/12)

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In yesterday’s post, I tried to demonstrate an important principle for how to study the Bible: correlation.  Correlation is the process of linking different passages together to understand what the Bible has to say about a topic or idea.

When it comes to correlation, it can be pretty easy to make a number of errors:

  1. Cross-referencing too soon: Sometimes when we read a passage, we immediately jump to all the other passages that come to mind.  As we jump from place to place in the Bible, we can feel like we’ve had a good Bible study.  The danger, however, is that we can jump so much that we failed to understand any of the specific passages in their context!  Numerous cults use this technique to justify their teaching, while making it seem biblical.
  2. Isolating a text from the whole Bible: Sometimes we can get so focused on one passage that we develop an imbalanced understanding of a certain topic.  Without connecting this passages to other passages, we might over-focus on one side of an issue to the exclusion of the complete biblical perspective on it.  I find it really easy to commit this error when I’m having a disagreement with someone, and I want to over-emphasize my perspective.
  3. Connecting passages unhelpfully: Sometimes we can connect different passages for no other reason than that they use the same word.  When we do this, we miss the fact that different authors might use the same words in different ways.  We read a certain meaning into various texts rather than drawing meaning out of them.  We often commit this error if we search for a single word in a Bible search engine, and then assume that every verse that turns up must apply to the particular question I’d like to answer.

How do we correlate various Bible texts accurately?

  1. Make sure you understand the passage at hand in its context.  That means identifying the author’s main point before you jump to any other texts.
  2. Once you’ve identified the main point, then look for other passages that speak to the same main point (which may include using the same words, but it also might not).
  3. As you look at other passages, make sure you understand the main points of each of them in their own contexts.
  4. Allow each passage to nuance your understanding of the idea.
  5. Make changes in your life to obey what you have learned from God’s Knowable Word!

Sometimes the Point is Clear

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Some Biblical authors are very clear about why they wrote their books.  When you study these books, don’t feel the need to be particularly profound.  If you don’t get to the stated point, you’re probably missing something.

  1. Proverbs – to know wisdom, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction, to give prudence, to understand a proverb (Prov 1:1-6).
  2. Luke – to give an orderly account, that we might have certainty concerning the things we have been taught (Luke 1:1-4).
  3. John – so you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and have life in his name (John 20:30-31).
  4. 1 John – so you may know you have life (1 John 5:13).
  5. Jude – to encourage us to contend for the faith (Jude 3).
  6. Revelation – to reveal Jesus Christ and show his servants the things that must soon take place (Rev 1:1).

Please feel free to comment if I missed any.

Why We Should Care Who the Audience Is

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In yesterday’s post we considered who the primary audience of Proverbs was.  Why bother?

The main reason is because, although the Bible was written for us (1 Cor 10:11), it was not written to us.  Every book of the Bible was written by a particular person, for a particular group of people, in a particular situation.  We put ourselves in danger of misunderstanding the text if we don’t first understand these historical circumstances.  We must put ourselves in their shoes.

Imagine if I showed you a letter in which I wrote the sentence “You’re making me go crazy.”  How would you read that line if you knew I had written the letter to my child?  To my employee?  My neighbor?  My wife?  My pet snake?  A customer service rep at a store from which I made a significant purchase?

At the office where I work, we maintain a quote board for just this purpose: to catalogue the random statements which, removed from any context, become hilarious.  We have entries on the board like:

  • “Did you forget the pot this morning?”
  • “If you’re gonna die, it’s nice to do it at home.”
  • “I’m going to do number two tomorrow, but it’s going to take me a while, because I haven’t done it in awhile.”
  • “The longer I live, the more I don’t want to.”
  • “I keep trying to say funny things to get on the quote board.”

When it comes to studying the Bible, let’s keep the original audience in mind.  Otherwise, we can miss the point.  For example:

  • Genesis (as a book) was prepared for a nation of people who had just come out of centuries of enslavement and were trying to figure out their identity.  It was not primarily written to people who were examining the origin(s) of all things.
  • Daniel was written to Jewish exiles in Babylon and Persia to help them understand how God could possibly still be in control.  Daniel’s predictions were largely intended to prepare these people, and their converts, for the coming Messiah (King of the Jews).  It worked, since some from that region knew what to look for at just the right time (Matt 2:1-2).
  • Revelation (and it’s rich symbols) was not primarily about 21st century events.  The book would have made sense to believers in churches scattered across Turkey in the 1st century AD (Rev 1:4).  We ought to read it accordingly.

Whenever you approach a book of the Bible, make sure you find out who the original audience was (as much as is possible) and do your best to put yourself in their shoes.