Everybody loves show and tell.  It’s that time in elementary school when you get to show all your friends something that really excites you, and then explain why it’s so exciting.

That’s why some of our blog posts will be given to showing you how to study the Bible, and others will focus on telling you how to do it.  Our hope is that by frequent showing and telling, you will be encouraged to practice these skills in your own study of God’s Knowable Word.

On Thursday, I began a series of posts on the Wisdom of Proverbs.  Even though Thursday’s post was a broad introduction, it still involved some weighty Bible study techniques. So I want to briefly comment on the key principles of Bible study demonstrated there.

1.  Know what the Bible says about the Bible.

We should read the Bible the way God wants us to read it.  Therefore, as we approach any passage of Scripture, we ought to know what the Bible says about the Bible.  On Thursday, I referred to 2 Timothy 3:16, which tells us that every passage of Scripture is useful.  Thus any Bible study we do ought to provide some sort of practical instruction, correction, or training in righteousness.  A Bible study that fails to provide practical help is incomplete.

Also, Jesus himself clearly stated in Luke 24:44-47 that the entire Bible was about Him.  He specifically referenced four components: his death, his resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, and the proclamation of these things to all nations.  So every Bible study ought to lead us to Jesus by illuminating one or more of these four areas.  If we haven’t seen Jesus, we haven’t rightly understood the text.

These two things are not all that the Bible says about the Bible; they’re just the two points I focused on in Thursday’s post.  Please feel free to leave a comment below about other sections of God’s Word that can help us in our study of any passage.

We’ll pick up two more principles tomorrow.