How To Understand And Apply The Bible, Lesson 1
Read with me from God’s Word. Psalm 19:7-14
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
Let’s pray: God thank you for the opportunity to study your Word. Make it clear to us what you’d have us to know about you, and how to apply that knowledge, that we might live for you. Give us attentive minds and willing spirits. God we love you, in Jesus name, we ask these things. Amen.
Welcome to 30 minute classes, a course of 15 Bible classes, all about 30 minutes each. This course is “How to Understand and Apply the Bible.” In this first lesson, we’ll go over the schedule, talk about resources, and introduce the subject. If this class is being taught to others, I’d encourage you to spend most of the time in this first lesson just getting to know the students—sharing testimonies and swapping contact information. So, that means that this first recording, this Introduction, will not be the usual 30 minutes, it’ll maybe be half as long.
Alright, this course is “How to Understand and Apply the Bible” and the goal is to build your confidence in your ability to feed yourself God’s Word. I love what Jeremiah, the prophet, wrote, regarding God’s Word: he said. “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.” That’s Jeremiah 15:16. I want that to become our verse for this course.
I want us to know where to find the food (that God’s words, the Bible), AND how to feed ourselves (that is, how to understand and apply it). Jesus said in Matthew 4:4 that we don’t just live on bread alone, but we feed on every word from God’s mouth. It’s the Christians steady diet. Or, at least it should be. And I promise that once you do make it your steady diet, you’ll start to crave it—it tastes that good. David said in Psalm 119:103: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" Once you get a taste for God’s Word, you’ll want to eat it all day long.
So, we want God’s Word to be for us like it was for Jeremiah, a joy and the delight of our hearts. So, we are gonna learn over 15 lessons where to find God’s words and how to eat them up. It’s gonna be SO good.
[By the way, I’ll encourage you to bring your Bibles to class every week. Obviously, it’s kind of the focus of this study, so you’ll want to have one with you. If you don’t own one, I’ll give one to you. And also be prepared to do some reading out loud in class. Don’t worry, everyone will be called to read, so if you stumble through it, that’s okay. Because we’ll all be stumbling around together.]
Alright. So, let’s look at the lessons and I’ll make a few comments on each. And I know this is maybe the boring part where we kinda read through the course syllabus
Lesson 2: The Bible’s Authority, Inspiration, Inerrancy and Infallibility. Now, I know some of these lesson titles include some theological words, which may sound a little intimidating, but we’ll take our time with these, we’ll go slow, and make sure we all get the concepts.
BUT we will spend a couple weeks on the attributes of the Bible. We’ll kinda go over the Doctrine of Scripture, to get us going. Which means we’ll start with the Bible’s authority. Because God is God, his words have authority. We’re obligated to do what they say. Which also means, if we’re not obeying God’s words, then we’ve got a real problem. Jesus says it best, I think, when he asks “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you.” [That’s Luke 6:46]. If you call me God, he’s saying, then do what I tell you. Obey my words. So God’s words have authority. We’ll also talk about the inspiration of Scripture. Now this is not that the writers of Scripture were inspired by God, in the way that maybe an artist might be inspired by a beautiful meadow, or a bowl of fruit. The inspiration of Scripture means that the words were breathed out by God, and that’s a little different. Paul writes to Timothy that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” And then we’ll talk about Scriptures’ inerrancy and infallibility, meaning that the Bible is without error, and it’s incapable of erring. Because it’s God’s words, it always tells the truth.
Lesson 3: The Bible’s Sufficiency and Clarity, Completeness and Effectiveness.. Okay, more big theological words, but we’ll be sure to slow down, explain all these concepts. And I like to start with these deep theological truths to just kinda set the table. I want you to see, [if we’re gonna continue with Jeremiah’s feasting] I want you to see the buffet that’s before us. The Bible is so appetizing, so satisfying, and hopefully these first few lessons over the doctrine of Scripture will leave you really wanting to devour God’s Word.
So the Bible is sufficient. It gives us everything we need for faith and life. Paul reminded Timothy “how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” And Peter wrote that God has “granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us.” God’s words are sufficient.
And God’s word is clear. So, the clarity of Scripture. The Bible is for everybody, for simple people like us, not just for pastors and theologians. If you can read for comprehension, you can understand the Bible’s message. When people say they don’t understand the Bible, a lot of times what they’re really saying is, “I just don’t like what it says.” The message is just that clear. So, we talk about the clarity of Scripture. Next, the Bible is effective. It does exactly what God sets it out to do. We read in Isaiah, “my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” It’s effective.
Alright. So, we’re gonna get after it those first few weeks, and I really got to move a little faster through these. My goal here is to just look at the Lesson briefly. Just a little introduction. In Lesson 4 we’ll ask, “How Can We Know That The Bible’s True?” We’ll look at some evidences—some evidence from our own experience, we’ll look at science, we’ll look at miracles, we’ll look at prophecy. We’ll make sure that we feel confident in the authenticity of Scripture.
Ok, Lesson 5. “Why Study the Bible?” A couple reasons: Because God’s word is the source of all truth. In John chapter 17, verse 17, Jesus prayed to God saying “Your word is truth.” God’s word is the source of all truth. Everyone’s searching for the meaning of life. It’s right there. God’s word.
Another reason why we should study the Bible is happiness! Everyone’s searching for truth, but everyone’s also searching for happiness. Well, in Luke 11:28, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” The word for ‘blessed’ in the Greek means happy. Happy are those who hear the word of God and keep it. So, that’ll be Lesson 5.
Moving on to Lesson 6. “Who Can Study the Bible?” We said earlier that the Bible is for normal people, not just pastors and theologians. But it does require a certain posture, even a certain spiritual condition, and we’ll talk more about that. Lesson 7: “Practical Rules for Understanding and Applying the Bible.” So finally we’ll start to get a little more practical. We’ll get into things like: how do we let Scripture interpret Scripture, we’ll get into the different genres, what to do with things like prophecy, etc.
Alright, from here, Lessons 8 through 13 will get really practical. We’ll talk about “How to Understand and Apply the Bible According to Passage” and “How to Understand and Apply the Bible by Topic” and then along with those we’ll have a couple lessons of studying the topic and the passage. So, we’ll actually choose one passage and study it. AND in the same we’ll choose a topic and study it. We’ll actually see how you might, with a Bible and Journal, actually break down a passage or topic. And really make sense of it, so that ultimately you can share it with someone. You know we study the Bible for ourselves, so that we can fill up on it. But really, we want to feed others. That’s what discipleship is all about. So we’ll provide some real examples of studying the Bible, in action.
Then Lesson 14, that next to last lesson, we’ll try to get us going with our own “Personal Bible Study Plan.” We’ll look at some tools, some resources to help with that. And then, Lesson 15, we’ll close out the course, and I’d like to see make some commitments. Sometimes, saying it out loud, or writing down our commitments, can help us stick to it. Anyway, 15 lessons. A lot of content. It should be awesome!
Now, let’s be real for a minute. Studying the Bible is work. It’s gonna take effort on your part. Some people have read the Bible, but not many have studied it. People read from their phones all the time for leisure. But study suggests work, hard work, like labor. And honestly, a lot of people are just lazy. I’m guilty myself. We don’t always like labor. And what do we know about labor from the Bible? We know we were created to work, but after sin came into the world, what happened to our work? It got difficult. Adam was told to keep the garden and work it, but when he fell, and sin entered the world, his work got hard. There were thorns and thistles. And we shouldn’t think that Bible study is immune from the curse. Isn’t that an interesting thought. That all of our work, even Bible study, got more difficult. So, we’re gonna talk about motivation in this course. We’re gonna need each other, for encouragement and accountability.
But you’re here! You’ve started this course, and sometimes that’s the hardest part.
And last of all. As we didn’t already feel some of the urgency for studying the Bible. Let me make us a little more nervous. You should know, and be prepared, that studying the Bible will bring things up in our heart, it’ll bring things out, it will reveal a lot about our spiritual condition. How we respond to the Bible is telling, it says something about where we’re at spiritually. Jesus once said, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” Now, that’s a scary thought. It’s saying that if you’re not receptive to the Bible, it might be because you’re not yet a Christian, and we’re gonna lean into that in this class. No shame, no judgment, but you’d be surprised at how many of us in church aren’t Christians. We think we are, but we may need to ask ourselves: have I given my life to Christ? Am I a Christian? And what better opportunity, here among friends, others who are exploring the Bible, exploring our faith. We’re all rooting for each other. Let’s make sure that we confess Jesus is our Lord and Savior. And if not, let’s talk about it; let’s pray over it.
Now, again, don’t hear that as, oh my gosh, I struggle with Bible study, does that mean I’m not saved? No, not necessarily. But, at the same time, let’s recognize the spiritual dynamics going on here. Let’s use this class, this learning to study the Bible, to really press into the Lord. There’s no one rooting harder that he is.
Alright. So we opened with a great passage, a Psalm that’s all about God’s Word. It says God’s word is perfect, it’s sure, it’s right, it’s pure, it’s clean, it’s true, it’s to be desired more than gold, it tastes better than honey, it warns us, it rewards us. This is that feast that we have before us, inviting us to dig in. This is God’s Word and he wants us to eat it up.
Ok. Thanks for listening to this class. Hope you’ll continue on to the next lesson, as we continue to learn ABOUT God AND how to live for him.
SOURCES:
Frame, John. The Doctrine of the Word of God. P&R, 2010.
MacArthur, John. How to Study the Bible. Moody, 2009.
Sproul, R.C. Knowing Scripture. InterVarsity Press, 2009.