How to get the most out of the Bible:

 

Introduction- I own a number of Bible commentaries. These are large books, which have been written to help serious students of the Bible to go deeper into the scriptures and pull out more understanding. I have one set of these when stacked together stands over 1 foot high! The writer of this particular commentary (Adam Clarke) was fluent in 5 languages. He spent over 40 years studying the ancient texts and doing research in order to complete his writing.

 

   He as well as countless others over the years have given their entire lives to the study of the Bible yet none of them would ever say they had truly mastered it. The Bible is unique in that a child can understand it’s basic message and apply it in a powerful way to affect the rest of their life. It is at the same time so deep and complex that you can give your entire life to studying it and never fully learn all that it has to teach.

 

   Studying the Bible is not that difficult. Even I can do it! The following are some basic tools to help you to study the Bible with great affect in your life. You will discover that studying the Bible is like mining for gold or diamonds. You will discover some of the valuables right close to the surface, yet no matter how deep you go, there is always more.

 

   Keep this thought is you mind as you begin. Think about a cell phone for a minute. You pick it up and dial a number and hit the send button. A signal goes out and bounces off of an antenna. It goes to some other place and gets kicked around through a computer or two. It gets shot up to space and bounced off a satellite or two. It then ends up coming back down to earth and after a few more steps, and several miles of fiber optic cables, ends up at your friend’s phone where it rings and is hopefully answered.

 

   To be honest, I have not the foggiest idea HOW it all happens. It just works. Little kids use cell phone’s all the time. They don’t know how they work. They have just been shown how to push the right buttons. There are smart folks out there doing all the engineering and putting the systems together. We end up trusting in invisible signals going out and working in ways that we do not fully grasp or comprehend but we know it works.

 

   Following Jesus will on some levels be like that. We will learn how to push the buttons that the Lord shows us to push and get the results that He says we will get. At some point however, we will begin to grow in our faith and understanding and the Lord will take us deeper and deeper into the knowledge available to us in the Bible, also known as the word of God. Christians often simply say ‘The word’.

 

   I guarantee that the following tools will get you going in the right direction in understanding the word of God. I am just a country boy from Montana and not some big brained know it all. I do know this though, the message of the Bible and the power of God through Jesus Christ have totally and completely changed my life! I have seen the same change; through the same means, take place in the lives of many others as well.

 

   I have prepared a message that simply tells the overall story of the Bible as one continuous story. We often time miss the point when we break it all down into sections. Please take the time to read ‘The Bible as one story’ before you begin your Bible study. It will help you to have the background to keep things in context and follow the flow.

 

   I hope and pray that you find these tools useful and that you come to experience the life changing power of God’s word for yourself. The water is fine. The invitation has been given. It’s time to dive in!     

 

 

 

Prepare your heart--- God is not obligated to give us answers, reasons or rational for anything. God is God. He is not there to answer to the demands of mankind. We will get nowhere by approaching God in an irreverent and arrogant manner. The Bible is God’s word and He is more than willing to open the eyes of our understanding if we approach him with the right heart. It is all right to have questions and even doubts but we must have a humble heart so that God can work with us to begin clearing them up. If we find that there are issues with the word of God, I can assure you the problem lies with us getting it and not with God.

 

Understand the concept of Translation--- The Bible was originally written in languages other than English. That means that it had to be translated. Do you speak another language? If you do, you will find that translation from one language to another makes life interesting. I lived in Japan for many years and learned to speak Japanese enough for everyday conversation. If I were to say the word ‘Okii’ in Japanese it could be translated to English as ‘Big’. It could also be translated as, giant, huge, enormous, colossal, gigantic etc. We would choose to use one of these words over the other depending on the next tool for reading the Bible called….

 

Context---Have you ever hear someone angry because his or her words were taken out of context? When we read even a short sentence it is possible to change the meaning entirely if we take it out of context. A sentence like, “Billy hates his mother to wake him up for school in the morning”, could be completely misquoted by someone saying, “I heard Billy hates his mother." You can see how foolish this is.

 

   Bible college students spend a lot of time learning about Bible hermeneutics and exegesis. These are big fancy words meaning the science of interpretation and breaking down passages for deeper meaning but they boil down to common sense most of the time.

   Most people who parrot the phrase, “The Bible is full of contradictions, errors, and mistranslations", have never read the Bible in the first place.

 

   One little old lady reads the Bible from cover to cover 3 or 4 times per year and testifies daily of all the new things she has discovered and how it is changing her life day by day. Another person scoffs and goes into a spiel about how he can’t believe the Bible because it is so loaded with contradictions and errors. You will have to look for yourself but I personally have read the Bible many times and I can honestly say that I have never found a single supposed ‘contradiction’ or ‘error’ that was not cleared up upon further examination. Some parts are admittedly difficult but I have found the problem is generally a problem with me, not the Bible. --- Believe who you want, I'm stickin' with granny!

 

   I have asked people many times to tell me the errors and contradictions they are referring to only to be told that they don’t know exactly, but they know they are there. In reality, they just WANT to believe they are there. It serves a useful purpose to believe that. If the Bible is not true and accurate, then God’s will and authoritative word cannot be known. If God even exists, but His will is not known, then he cannot hold me accountable for the way I run my life. I can always plead ignorance if there ever is such a thing as a day of judgment. Mark Twain once said, “It is not the things in the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me, it is the things I DO understand.” In other words, he was troubled by the fact that he was not living up to the things in the word of God that he clearly understood. He didn’t wish to waste his time squabbling about the part he was confused about.

 

The Bible was intentionally written to be translated--- The Bible is currently translated in written form into at least 2,233 languages and dialects. Each of these languages have believers. They all have churches. They all tell the same Bible stories. Think of just how huge that is! Jesus said, “Go into all the earth and preach the gospel to all nations.” This is a serious translation issue! All nations in the Greek language that the New Testament was written in, is actually ‘TA ETHNE’. Can you see the Greek word ETHNE looks like our English word ethnic? In other words, Jesus said to His followers, “Go into all the world and teach all the various ethnic groups.” He didn't just mean go to the 230ish 'countries' of the world- all nations means all people groups in the Bible.

 

   Jesus talked about His mission on earth as preaching the ‘Kingdom of God’. He came at a time when a large part of the world was controlled by the Roman Empire. The Romans came and conquered much of the same territory, which had earlier been controlled by the Greeks under Alexander the Great. It is interesting to take note that Jesus never once spoke against the Roman Empire, even against their well-documented brutality. Even when He was being tried in their court system, He never uttered a word against them, even though they were violating the vast majority of the things He taught, stood for and demonstrated with His life.

 

   Jesus basically ignored the Roman Empire. He had His sites set on building HIS kingdom. He said He would build a kingdom that would have representatives from every race, every ethnic group and every language on the earth! It started there in Jerusalem. He had just twelve students. They made many blunders and failed their master many times.

 

   Now, 2000 years later what do we see? We see every word that Jesus ever uttered coming to pass right before our eyes! The Bible tells us that mankind would continue to build empire after empire, kingdom after kingdom, philosophy after philosophy. They would all come and go but Jesus would all the while be building His kingdom quietly in the background under mankind’s radar screen- right under most people's noses! It's a good thing YOU didn't miss it!!!

 

   The Bible message was recorded in the Bible in such a way that it’s message would be able to stand all the stretching, pulling and rigors associated with translation and still remain fully intact and potent! How do I know it’s true? I know it is true because I have seen the Bible impact and change live with my own eyes in Japan, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Sudan, Australia, Alaska, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Iraq and many other places as well. I have seen the power of God’s word change lives in the big city. I have seen it in the Jungle. I have seen it impact the rich. I have seen it impact the poor.

 

   We often hear people in the English speaking parts of the world argue over which translation is most accurate and best. I have my opinions on that but the bottom line is, “I don’t sweat it!” It is the blood of Jesus on the cross that opens the door for our salvation and there is enough of that blood in all the English versions to save anyone who will read it with an open heart!

 

   As for translations, you will get the overall message and point of the message in any of them. Back to the Japanese word ‘Okii’. No matter what English word I used, you would know that it meant ‘Big’. There is a place for serious study to really nail down whether the passage context favored using large or gigantic over just plain, big. You get the picture. Just read it with a pure heart and you will do fine.

  

Literal and Figurative speech / Historical background--- Much of the Bible is written as poetry. These sections often times use flowery speech and word pictures. Dr. Walter Martin talked about Psalm 91:4 where it says, “God will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will find refuge…” He points out that God is not a big feathery chicken! The poetic language refers to the manner in which God will protect his people even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing. If you don’t understand when you are reading poetry that words are used in different ways than everyday speech, you will certainly misunderstand some of these passages. You may even go out and boldly declare that God has feathers and wings- It says so in the Bible!

 

   Other sections are just recordings of historical fact. In these, some provide commentary on what was right or wrong about the conduct of the individuals involved, other passages just simply tell what happened. Some sections are more obscure and mystical with a lot of metaphors and hidden meanings. These sections are admittedly much more difficult and can be a challenge to understand. Yet, even in these passages, there is nearly always a very simple overriding message that is very clear, even if some of the details are hard to grasp. Leave those for the engineers. It doesn’t have to stop you from using your cell phone, as I already pointed out above.

 

   The last sentence I wrote could be a bit confusing for a person that started reading this in the middle. That person would have no knowledge of the conversation that proceeded the point where they started reading. This can make a very big difference. The person reading the cell phone comment could still most likely get the gist but would get it better if they would go back and read the part that was written earlier.

 

   We use the term, ‘9-11’ very often these days. When we use the term in our everyday conversation we don’t bother explaining it to the person we are speaking to each time we use it. We assume they have knowledge of the Subject. Who hasn't heard of the events of September 11th, right? But over time these statements begin to fall out of society’s collective consciousness as they are replaced with newer ones. Perhaps only half of America’s population could grasp the significance of phrases like, “Remember the Alamo" or "A Day which will live in infamy.”  Someday, 9-11 will need to be explained to a generation that will not remember it. The same was true in Bible times. Some things were common knowledge at the time but we have no idea what they are referring to. We can still generally get the idea from the context but we could get even more if we did research on the historical events of the time. In virtually all of the historical events referred to in the various Bible passages, the research has already been painstakingly done already by others and we just have to pick up the books written on those subjects to get up to speed.

 

Idioms --- Did I just say, “Get up to speed”? That means to catch up in your knowledge whereas you were up to that point lagging behind. We use these little phrases all the time without even thinking about them. 1) It came out of left field. 2) Lets get down to brass tacks. 3) That’s where the rubber meets the road. Number one come from baseball. Number two from furniture upholstery and number three from the modern automobile era. None of them need explaining to the native English speaker. We either have knowledge of their historical origins or at least enough ear for context to discern their basic meaning. Just remember that every language has the same kind of phrases. We can generally get the basic message and just keep right on reading, but there is always more if you are willing to delve deeper into some of the background behind some of the original Bible language. There are a large number of such study helps available. To be honest, it is fun to study some of the original derivations of these idiomatic phrases in English. Some of them have very interesting stories.

 

Here is an example: Go the extra mile

 

Jesus said, “If a man compels you to go a mile, go two miles instead. (Matthew 5:41)

We use this phrase itself as an idiom in English. You might hear someone say, “He sure is appreciated around the office. He is always going the extra mile.” The person using the phrase may not know they are referring to the words of Jesus. The person who reads his Bible every day may not know that Jesus was using an idiom Himself based on the realities of the world and times in which He was living.

 

The Romans who were in control of Israel at the time had a law, which stated that a Roman soldier could at any time force or compel a local person to carry his pack for a mile. They were not allowed to make the person go more than a mile so that they would drive the people to hate them more than they already did. When Jesus told the people to go two miles instead of just the one it also had an even greater message. If the big thug forces you to carry his pack then, he is the boss. He is using the Roman law for his own selfish purposes. You are the victim. He is the boss. But if you just keep you big mouth shut and sing a nice song of praise to the Lord as you happily walk along, you will complete that first mile. Now suddenly, as you keep on walking, the shoe is on the other foot! The big thug is now worried that he is going to get into serious trouble for making you walk more than a mile and risks being severely disciplined for his actions. So by simply keeping your heart focus on the wisdom of God, you really teach old thug face a lesson.

 

   You see, there is reading the Bible and then there is reading the Bible! But actually, you still have one more very serious step to go. You read the passage. You get the point. You understand another layer of meaning beyond the surface. But if that is where you stop you risk just filling your head with trivia. It will make you feel smug and superior. You will be able to display your superior knowledge and intellect or maybe win a million dollars on a game show by answering the last question. But it will not bring you closer to God. It may even make you further from God in the sense that the biggest issue between God and mankind is man’s pride.

   The step still missing is…

 

Life Application---This is what it’s all about. I have heard people describe it like this. A very brilliant student is interested in telescopes. He finally gets one for Christmas one year. He is very excited and goes up to his room with it. Several hours later he has the whole thing completely disassembled and spread out on a table. He begins to study each and every part of it until he is perfectly satisfied that he understands exactly how it works. He then calls a friend and goes out to a movie. Several months later his mother is still hounding him to clean that junk off of his table and clean up his room. He never did actually use the telescope to see the moon or stars or find a planet or two.

 

   Jesus told his hearers to walk an extra mile when someone forces you to walk one mile. How does this apply in your life today? There are not a lot of Roman soldiers walking around forcing people to carry their packs. Are we therefore excused from any need to follow through on these words of Jesus? Are we going to study, analyze, pick apart, and scrutinize the verse, or are we going to use it to profit our lives as God intended? How do we respond when a boss tells us to do something that is in our mind above and beyond the call of duty? Do we get furious because we are being treated like a doormat? Do we outwardly do what we are told but inwardly grumble over the injustice of the order? We have our rights! We need to stand up for what is right, just and fair (for us).

 

Getting down to it--- The first thing to keep in mind when reading the Bible is to simply ask yourself good questions. These are some questions that you need to take into consideration. 1) Who was the person speaking to in this passage? 2) Was the speaker speaking with authority as a representative of God or was it just a person speaking his or her own mind in a conversation? There are hundreds of individuals whose various conversations are recorded in scripture. All of them are useful in their own way but not all of these are instructions from God in themselves. Herod ordered all the boys in Bethlehem age two and under to be killed. This is recorded because the event has significance in the telling of a story that is spiritually relevant. It does not mean that God likes what he said or did. It is just a historical fact. 3) Are there any commandments associated with the passage for me to follow? 4) Are there any promises that I should lay hold of? If so, are there conditions for the promises? 5) Is the message of this passage intended just for those listeners present at that time, or is there a more universal and timeless application to the message that applies to me as an individual today? Sometimes the answer to that question changes over time. You will read a passage and have no life application seem apparent to you and then after some passage of time you see it again and it becomes a life changing verse to you. This happens because over time the word of God becomes literally alive to us. We begin to see principles connecting to one another that we were before unable to grasp. The more time you spend reading God’s word, the more these insights occur and the pieces begin to connect.

 

Prayer and God speaking---If you sincerely want to know the meaning of a passage of scripture and are really desirous to know God and what His will is in your life, you will find for yourself what millions of Christians already know-God speaks to us through His word. Prayer is the key to studying the Bible. When we pray, we are admitting to God our dependence on Him. We are making it clear that we want to know His will. We want to know Him. We want to know His ways. We want to know what He wants us to do and how He wants us to be. We bring our questions to Him. We bring our concerns to Him. We can even bring our doubts and anger to Him if our attitude is at the same time humble and respectful.

 

   After we are finished talking to God, as prayer actually is, we can expect that He will in turn speak to us. As we quiet our heart before Him, He will often bring a Bible story or particular passage to mind that has a direct relevance to what we had been praying about. We look up the passage and as we read it again, we not only see the passage having meaning for then and there but we see it apply to our own life here and now!

 

   I have heard an airline pilot tell how God ‘spoke to him’ to give him wisdom to solve an in flight dilemma by bringing to mind a verse of scripture. I have heard similar stories from a professional baseball player, a computer expert for BP oil, a chemical petroleum engineer for Exxon, and who knows how many others? Sometimes God speak a word through His word that directly brings understanding or a solution. Other times God shows us a change in view point, attitude or perspective that opens our eyes to see things that we were otherwise unaware of.

 

  

Other methods and tools of Bible study---I have certain ways of studying that help me to get more from my reading. You will find tips and tools that may be different from mine, but I will give a few suggestions and you can adjust these to your own way of studying. I use my own modified version of a type of study called the ‘inductive method’. I don’t really care what the fancy words are. I just want to get the most out of my reading. I bring up the fancy words here only to point out that there are assortments of Bible study methods out there. Each one has its own unique features that people have found helpful. If you don’t like my style, you can look into some of the others.

 

Here are a few tools that will help you to be able to study the Bible and make some of the methods listed below a lot easier. The good part about these is to remember that a lot of very dedicated people have given tens of thousands of collective hours of research into providing these tools so that we can benefit from their hard work. We would be wise to take advantage of these incredible resources!

 

Concordance--- A concordance is a very cool tool. Let’s say you want to look up a scripture. You remember a portion of it but not the whole thing. You have no idea where it is but you know it is in the Bible somewhere.

 

  You open your handy dandy concordance and in a few seconds you know exactly where the passage is located. For instance you want to find that one place in the Bible where Jesus talks about the narrow road but you don’t know where it is. The key word in this case is ‘narrow’. You look up the word narrow and it gives a list of scriptures that contain the word narrow and a little bit of the sentence so that you can identify which one is the one you are looking for. The list would include all the scriptures that contain the word ‘narrow’ beginning in the Old Testament and continuing in the order that they appear in the Bible. Next to the listing would appear an abbreviation for the name of the book or section of the Bible a Chapter number and then a verse number.

   Most Study Bibles have a concordance in the back. These are usually limited to the words that people are most likely to look up. There are other concordances that are ‘exhaustive’ concordances. These contain every single word in the Bible and every place in the Bible where that word appears.

 

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance---This is by far the most common and popular of these. It goes one step further in that it also ties each word to its corresponding word in the original Bible languages. Each English word is assigned a number. Each Greek word in the New Testament is assigned a number. Each Hebrew and Aramaic word of the Old Testament are assigned numbers. When the verse is looked up in the Concordance it is also possible to see which word was used in the original language that was translated to English in that case. You can then take that number and go to the Greek or Hebrew section and read a detailed definition of that word and all of it’s potential shaded of meaning and nuance. You will find for instance that many times the Bible uses the word love. We have just one word in our language. In Greek at least 3 words are used but all translated love in English. Agape is the kind of Love that a parent has for a child. It is also the kind of love God has for His children. Philos is the kind of love shared by brothers and sisters as well as close friends. Eros is what we would refer to as romantic love.

   Sometimes it is very useful to take a word in the Bible and see where it used throughout the Bible and to see what other words in the original language were translated into that English word. You can then look at each of these original language words and get even deeper understanding.

   Many times you will hear a Pastor speak in a sermon referring to the original Greek or Hebrew and point out some tid-bit of deeper meaning. Most of the time, the Pastor simply took the time to look it up in his Strong’s Concordance. So can you.

 

Nave’s Topical Bible--- The Naves topical Bible is valuable because sometimes we are interested in studying a certain idea or theme that does not necessarily always use the same word. This is a tool for helping us to find related themes by looking up their key concept or idea. We can then see related scriptures associated with that idea all together in one place. If we are studying salvation and look it up in the concordance we would only find references that used the actual word ‘salvation’. The Nave’s reference would expand the idea to include other words such as God providing; help, rescue, atonement, find, save etc.

 

Study Bible---My personal favorite study Bible for getting started is the Thompson chain reference Bible. It comes in a variety of English versions but it provides a unique chain system where key topics are organized in a way where we can follow the idea where it appears in the Bible from the beginning to the end. A chain number appears next to a particular verse in the Bible. You can go to the back and see the whole chain listed in one place or you can see the next verse in the Bible on that topic or the previous verse on that topic. This Bible also has cool things like maps showing where all the Bible locations were back in bible times as well as what they are today. It has a large section that shows archeological discoveries with Biblical relevance, often times with cool pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

Topical---Pick a topic such as; God’s forgiveness of sin, God’s mercy, Eternal judgment, Being born again etc. You then find the relevant passages in the Bible that relate to topic. This can also be used for individual words such as; Cross, Sin, Salvation, etc. They can be expanded to broader themes such as; End times prophesy, Holy Spirit baptism, Qualifications for church leadership etc.

 

Biographical---Pick a particular Bible character and follow their life through the Bible. Learn what they did right. Learn what they did wrong. Learn what God commended them for. Learn what God criticized them for. Study Bible heroes, Bible villains, Kings, Prophets, Leaders, Prophets, etc.

 

Inductive---Most times devotional study is talked about as a kind of inductive study method. Pick a short passage and read it thoughtfully and prayerfully. Ask the Lord to help you dig into the passage and get the key thought for the day out of it. As you read the passage ask yourself questions like who, what where and why? If the passage is written to a particular individual or group, is there a concept or idea attached that has application in my life as well? Is there something in my life that this passage is speaking to? Can I summarize the basic message of the passage in everyday language? After you read the passage, summarize it in your own words in your mind. You can watch a two hour movie and then tell your friend 'about' the movie in a few minutes. Try to read the bible in such a way that you 'watch the passage' and then ask yourself, what the points were and how you can see those being applied to your life.

Devotional--- Sometimes people find it easier to buy a daily devotional guide that has an assigned passage for the day and some helpful reading to go along with the passage. Any Christian bookstore can help you in choosing one that will suit your personal interests.

    Be careful here though that you do not let these devotionals become your only Bible reading. They can make us lazy. It is like momma bird bringing back the food to the nest for us. This is not always bad but it is better if we go dig for ourselves also. We must keep in mind that we grow in Christian maturity by not solely getting the spiritual food that is palatable to us by just pick and choosing what interests or appeals to us. We also need God to forcefully kick us in the backside at times and tell us what we need to hear whether we like it or not.

 

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 A Final note: We have an idea of Jesus in our society that sees him as this warm fuzzy, always positive person who made people always feel love, acceptance, and tolerance. Jesus sometimes was very stern, very forceful and there are things he did not and does not tolerate! His words actually drove crowds away at times. He challenged even his closest friends to the point where they seriously thought about abandoning ship.

   As a brother in Jesus, I ask that you make up your mind to let Jesus speak even the hard words to you. Let him get into your heart and use His word to dig and probe every nook and cranny of your selfish, rebellious, stubborn, proud, and corrupted heart! Yes, he will tell you the warm fuzzy stuff too but I warn you. At some point, actually at many points, Jesus is going to get in your face and offend you. You can let him do the work that he identifies that needs attention or you can shut his word out and not change. Trust me, you will do much better to go with Jesus than to go your own way.

 

Links to really good Bible study method sites:

 

Each new day ---- http://www.eachnewday.com/index.htm

Cross Walk--- http://bible.crosswalk.com/Information/MethodsofBibleStudy.html

 Precept Austin--- http://www.preceptaustin.org/

 

God Squad---http://www.godsquad.com/discipleship/inductive.htm