Bible Basics (Pt. 2)

All right. Thank you for sharing favorite restaurants, things you like to eat.! We all love food. Not in a problematic way, but we love food, and rightly so.

! I would say, as Americans, we have the best food in the world. Best food in the world. There are other places in the world that have a good dish or a good dessert, but top to bottom, meal in, meal out.

We can find something good to eat here. So we love food. Grateful to the Lord for food. We don't have the healthiest food, but the best food. The best food. Not for your heart, but for your soul.

So as human beings, we are made up of both body and soul. And I think that actually explains why we enjoy food.

Animals eat food. Animals need food. I don't think any animals enjoy food. Like, if you serve them a steak raw versus medium well, they wouldn't really know a difference. They're just wanting to consume it.

We, as human beings, enjoy the food that our body consumes. And spiritually speaking, our soul needs food just as much as our body does.

Obviously, the food that our soul needs is not a physical food. It's not any temporary meal. But our soul does need to be sustained.

Our soul does need to be fed and nourished just like our body does. And what is the spiritual food? It's the Bible. It's God's Word that sustains us and grows us and keeps us alive and makes us effective for Christ.

And one of the biggest problems among Christians is that they don't know how to feed themselves. There are Christians who are saved and who love Jesus and who go to church.

They appreciate good sermons. They appreciate good books. They know good teaching when they hear it. They enjoy biblical songs. But when it comes to reading the Bible on their own, they can't do it well.

They can't seem to be able to figure out how to do it consistently or how to properly understand what God's Word is saying. And there are missionaries that go home every year never to return to the mission field.

Many of them burn out. Many of them are fleeing persecution. Among those who burn out, what missions agencies are saying is they're summarizing it as they failed to be able to feed themselves spiritually.

They loved the Lord. They gave up their lives here in America to go overseas to share the gospel. And they burned out because they weren't able to keep their soul well fed.

One of Christians' biggest problems is they don't know how to feed themselves. The Bible can be overwhelming. There's a lot here. It's a big book. There's a lot of words in it.

It can be overwhelming if you don't know where to start or don't know how to read it well. And it can kind of be like trying to eat a whole steak in one bite. The problem isn't the steak. The steak is good.

The problem isn't your desire to eat the steak. That's also a good desire. The problem is an inadequate ability to feed it to yourself. And so maybe that's you spiritually tonight.

You know that the Bible is good. You have a desire to read it and understand it. But you're not quite able to put all the pieces together and read it on your own and understand it and be benefited by it.

Maybe you're confused. Maybe you don't know where to start in the Bible. Maybe you start reading the Bible. And five minutes in, you're lost. You get distracted. Your mind wanders. You lose focus.

You forget what you're reading. Or maybe you're here tonight. And you say you love the Bible. But you've really never committed time to actually reading it.

You would call yourself a Christian. You would say you love the Bible. You enjoy hearing biblical teaching. But you don't actually spend any time reading God's word.

And if I can just speak very directly to you, your actions speak louder than your words. And that's true of all of us when it comes to the Christian life. Our actions speak louder than our words.

We don't want to be people who say, yes, the Bible's true. We love Jesus. We love the Bible. But never actually read it on our own. And so I hope whatever category you're in that tonight will be helpful for you as you pursue a knowledge of God through his word.

The Bible is the most important book in the world. Because it sends the most important message in the world that sinners who are headed for hell for all eternity can receive forgiveness and grace through the death and resurrection of Christ.

That's the most important message. It comes through the Bible, which makes the Bible the most important book in all of the world. Reading the Bible is difficult work.

There are passages that are difficult to understand. There are books that are challenging to understand. But God gave it to us to reveal himself to us. God wants you to understand his word.

God wants all of us to be able to understand his word because he wants us to know him. So our title tonight is How to Read Your Bible. And I want to give you nine pieces of advice to help you read your Bible well.

So we're going to have nine points tonight. We're going to be flying. We're not going to be in one passage like we usually are. But I hope to be helpful for you tonight. So number one, pray for help.

Pray for help. And if you've got your Bible, go ahead and open with me to 2 Peter chapter 1. The first step to good Bible reading is praying for help.

And we won't look at this verse in particular. But if you just are taking notes and want to write it down. Psalm 119 verse 18. 119 verse 18.

It's a prayer by the psalmist. And a prayer is simply, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

It's a prayer for God to open the eyes of our mind, The eyes of our heart, So that we can understand his word. This is where good Bible reading starts.

It's a prayer to God for help in understanding what his word says. So if you're in 2 Peter chapter 1, I want to look at verses 20 and 21.

The Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible. So God is the author of the Bible. The Holy Spirit is the person within the Godhead who is responsible for inspiring Scripture.

And so we see this in places like 2 Peter 1. Look at verse 20. Peter says, Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

So what he's saying is, No teaching of the Bible comes from someone's own ideas. And he says that again in verse 21. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.

So this was not man's idea. Whose idea was it? He says, But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

God is the ultimate author of Scripture. Men wrote down his word as they were carried by the Holy Spirit. And so in every passage of Scripture that we read, there are two authors.

The divine author, God, and the human author. Whoever the human author was who wrote it. Peter or Paul or Jonah. But the Holy Spirit is the ultimate source of Scripture.

The one who inspired Scripture. And the reason we start here, the reason I'm making this point, is because if you are a believer, if you've been saved by Christ, and have placed your faith in Him, you have the Holy Spirit dwelling within your soul.

You have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. And so what that means is, we have the author of this book living with us. We pray to Him for help in understanding it.

We pray to the author of this book to ask Him to help us to understand what He's written. And so what we pray for, is we pray for insight, and we pray for delight.

Pray for insight, and pray for delight. Insight is understanding. Help me understand what this passage says. Help me understand what this chapter says.

And then delight. We pray that we would desire God's Word. It's possible to read and understand without enjoying God's Word. We want to rejoice in the truth.

We want to delight in God's Word. And God loves to answer those prayers. Now, what the Holy Spirit does is His function is to point people to Christ.

That's what Jesus said He would do. He will guide you into the truth, and He will glorify me. So the Holy Spirit is like a spotlight on Jesus. And so if He inspires the Scriptures, we would expect the Scriptures to be focused on Christ.

And so I said last week that the Bible is not an end in itself, meaning this isn't just a textbook that we study so that we can get an A on the test. We study it because it points us to Christ.

And this is what Jesus Himself said about the Bible. So let's look at that. Go with me to John chapter 5. John's the fourth book of the New Testament. Written by the Apostle John, who was one of Jesus' closest disciples.

And Jesus here is going toe-to-toe with the Pharisees, His opponents who opposed Him and ultimately put Him to death.

Jesus had very direct words to speak to these Pharisees. And if you look with me at John chapter 5, verse 37, Jesus says, The Father, so God the Father who sent me, has Himself borne witness about me.

And so Jesus is saying, The Father who sent me testifies that I was sent by Him. And then He says this about the Pharisees.

His voice, so God's voice, you have never heard. His form, you have never seen. And you do not have His word abiding in you.

These are strong statements. He's speaking to the men who devoted their lives to studying the scriptures, but they did not believe in Jesus. And He says to them, You haven't heard God's voice.

You don't have His word abiding in you. You haven't seen God face to face. And here's His reason for saying that. How does Jesus know that? For or because you do not believe the one whom He has sent.

He says in verse 39, You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me.

Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. Jesus is saying, you guys have poured yourself into the scriptures. You guys have devoted your entire lives to studying God's word.

That's a good thing. But the scriptures talk about me. And yet you don't believe in me. And so we don't want to be like the Pharisees.

The Pharisees made the Bible its own end. They worshipped the Bible. They did not worship the Savior of the Bible. They did not worship the Savior that the Bible points to.

They viewed scripture as an end in itself. And so as we study the Bible and as we talk about the Bible, we don't worship the Bible. We worship the God of the Bible because this is His word and it points to His Son.

And so Jesus says, this is about me. And so we read the Bible, we study it so that we can know Jesus. So that we can know who God is and we can understand it.

Not because of training, not because of intellectual abilities that we have, but because the author is with us. If you're a believer, the author is with you.

He can bring clarity to the confusion you have about what He has written. He can bring clarity to your mind. Miscommunication is a major problem.

We miscommunicate with each other all the time. It can be as simple as misreading someone's tone or misunderstanding what they said or someone speaking unclearly. And if there is miscommunication, the best thing to do is to go to the person who said something and say, hey, what did you mean by that?

That will clear up any confusion you have because you're talking to the one who said the thing you're confused about. What would be unhealthy or bad is to go to someone else and talk about it, what they might have meant, what they said that was rude, instead of going directly to the source and asking for clarity.

That's what we're doing when we pray for help. We are going to the source and asking for clarity. We're saying, in effect, help me understand what you meant by this verse or this chapter.

God wants you to understand His Word. Number two, read it regularly. Read it regularly.

2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 says, All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

If you want to be a complete Christian, read your whole Bible. If you want to be completely equipped for any situation that God has in store for you, read the whole Bible.

There's a guy by the name of A.W. Tozer who is now with the Lord. He died, but he wrote this and it's helpful. He said, It takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian.

It takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian. Such a good statement and so true. There are several different places in the Bible where it talks specifically about reading the Bible regularly.

A couple of those places are Joshua 1 and Psalm 1. Both of those places say that it is good to meditate on the law of the Lord day and night.

Constantly thinking about God's Word. Constantly reading it. Constantly going over it in your mind. There are some studies that have been done that show that if anyone, but especially teenagers, reads the Bible on their own four plus times a week.

So not including church, not including a small group, but on your own reading the Bible four or more times a week. That it brings a lot of measurable benefits to your life.

And my aim in this is not to get you to be like, Hey, read the Bible because good stuff will happen to you. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's an observable difference in people who read the Bible regularly.

There's stability that comes to their life spiritually, mentally, emotionally. And that's what God actually promises in His Word. In Psalm 1, He's talking about this guy who meditates on God's Word day and night.

And He says, He is like a tree planted by streams of water. There's stability, there's structure, there's strength that comes from reading the Bible regularly.

Number three, read it together. Read it together. Now, personal Bible reading is important.

We also need to make sure that we have help from others who understand the Bible better than us. So as pastors, that's what we're here for for you. Me, I'm here particularly for you to help you understand God's Word.

But there are friends you have that might know the Bible better than you. Your parents hopefully know the Bible better than you. Your Sunday school teachers, go to them, have them help you read the Bible. And so we have the Holy Spirit as believers who can help us understand God's Word.

But we've all got blind spots. We all have weaknesses. We all have sinful tendencies that we can't see in our own lives. We need someone else to say, hey, I think what you're doing is sinful here.

I think you're weak in this area. You need to strengthen this. We need help from other people as we read Scripture. And I can't tell you how many times that I've been able to understand Scripture better just by having a conversation with someone in our church.

And if it's an older person who's experienced more of the Lord's kindness than I have, the Lord's been kind to me, but there are people in our church that have more experience than me. They've lived more life than me.

They've seen God work for them in ways that I have not. And they encourage me. They help me understand the Bible better through their example. And this doesn't just include people you can talk to.

This also includes resources you can read. I encourage you to get a study Bible if you don't have one. I love the MacArthur Study Bible. I love the ESV Study Bible. Both of those are great.

Good books you can read. We handed out a few of them to Lyric tonight. Read those good books. They're helpful. And the best books help you understand the Bible better. Number four, read it in context.

Read it in context. The simplest way to think about context is what is around what you're reading.

So if you're reading a sentence, what comes before and after that sentence. If you're reading a paragraph, what comes before and after that paragraph. And the reason that context is so important, this is true of anything you read, but especially the Bible.

The reason context is important is because context is actually what gives meaning to individual words. It gives meaning to individual words.

And so if you think about individual words, a word by itself actually doesn't have any meaning. It's got some potential meanings.

It's got some definitions of what it could mean, but until it's plugged into a context, until it's used in a sentence, it doesn't have any actual meaning.

Okay? So a couple of examples. examples. The word green. What could the word green mean? Well, we could be talking about the color. Could be talking about a golf green.

Could be talking about being envious. Could be talking about being sick. Could be talking about recycling. Could be talking about being inexperienced or young.

Okay, there's six possible definitions right there. What does that word mean by itself? It doesn't mean anything. Until you put it into a sentence. So if I said I am green.

Okay, we're narrowing it down. I'm not a golf green. So we can scratch that meaning off. We're narrowing down what this word could mean. Or the word back. Am I talking about your back or the back of the chair or the back of the room or the back wall or the back in the past?

What does that word mean? Well, nothing until we put it in a sentence. Until we use it in context. So we need to understand context well in order to understand the Bible.

And again, this applies to any literature. There was one time Pastor Michael from the stage on a Sunday morning said this and I quote, I beat my wife all the time.

Unquote. Direct quote. That's completely out of context and it sounds really bad, right? We're like, is this what senators are for?

Like should we call a senator or report this to someone? Like I don't know, I feel like someone should report this but he was talking about pickleball. He was playing pickleball and he said, when we play pickleball, I beat my wife all the time.

So context drastically changes the meaning of that sentence. If I quote it out of context, it does not sound good. So context is important. It gives meaning to words.

Context is king. Okay, a couple of examples from scripture. In Matthew 4, there's a quote and it says, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.

Sounds like a great promise. It was said by Satan. Satan himself was tempting Jesus with that statement. When you understand the context, you recognize that's not a promise, that's a temptation.

Let's say you're considering robbing a bank. Ask your parents before engaging in something like that but let's say you're considering robbing a bank and you're like, let's see what the Bible has to say. I'm just going to open up the Bible randomly and see what it says about me potentially robbing this bank.

And you open to John 13, 37 and Jesus says, what you're going to do, do quickly. Good to know. Good to know. Got to get in and out, fellas.

In and out. If you rip that out of its context, you can make it apply to any situation you want. Or Romans 14, 2, this is my life verse.

The weak person eats only vegetables. Again, life verse. I just stay away from all vegetables, actually. That verse is not talking about physically weak, it's talking about spiritually weak.

A weak conscience. But if we just rip it out of its context, we could mess with the meaning a little bit. So all that to say, context is important. We need to know the context because that will determine the meaning of that verse.

And when you think about context, there's kind of a spectrum of context. There's near context and there's far context. And there's a spectrum of that. So when we think about near context, we're talking about words and phrases and sentences.

We step up from there to the level of paragraph and then chapter and then book. And so you can expand out and the biggest context would be the Bible.

Obviously, the whole Bible is its own context. As we think about what the author intends, we're trying to understand what's called authorial intent.

Authorial intent. It's the O-G-A-I. Authorial intent. What is the author trying to tell us? What is the author trying to communicate to us? What does he want us to do?

What response is he seeking? Sometimes the biblical author will make a statement that's not a command, it's just a statement of fact, but he wants us to respond to that in a particular way.

And if we don't respond, if we don't obey, we're actually being unfaithful in our reading. And Lacey, my wife, has actually taught me more about this than anyone else in my life.

Because she will make these wonderful statements like, the trash is full. That's a statement of fact. If I respond by saying, that's an interesting observation.

Maybe we need to get a bigger trash can or a bigger bag. How full is it? I can break down. This is a present tense verb. The trash is full. It's currently full right now.

What is her intent? Get up and take it out. That's your job. Take out the trash. I'm a hunter-gatherer, trash-taker-outer as my role as a man.

But she's intending for me to hear her statement of fact and she wants me to respond. And so the biblical authors will say things like, Jesus Christ is Lord.

That's a statement of fact that's true whether you believe it or not. That is a fact. the author wants you to submit your life to him as Lord. The author wants you to respond in repentance and humility under his lordship.

So we want to read it in context. Number five. We want to read it God-centeredly. Read it God-centeredly.

So as you're reading the Bible, it's a helpful question to say, what does this passage teach me about God? What does this passage teach me about Christ? What does this passage teach me about the Holy Spirit?

God is the main character of the Bible. It's all about him. What are you learning about him? How should you respond to him? And sometimes obedience looks like just being amazed by who God is.

God is holy and he hates sin. I believe that fact. And that's the response the author wants from me is to believe who God is and what he does.

So read it God-centeredly. Number six. Read it quickly. Read it quickly. The Bible is a piece of literature.

It's more than just literature but it is a book. And so we read it like a book with rules of grammar and how we approach other books. It's a divine book but it is a book.

And so we need to read through it fairly quickly and read through it often so that we get the big sweep of the entire plot line. This is how movies are intended to be watched.

It's just one sitting straight through. The director is wanting you to pick up on things that he laid down in the beginning and see those connections at the end. Lacey and I in our phase of life we're not good movie watchers right now.

It's just by the time we get the kids to bed we've got like 40 minutes of attention. And so it takes us a while to watch movies. We watched The Patriot recently. Anyone seen that? Oh wow.

Not many of you. Okay. So it's great American film. Mel Gibson. Anyway. So it took us two weeks to watch The Patriot. That's not a good way to watch any movie.

And by the time we got to the end there was like a big like plot twist surprise thing and I was like who actually is that guy? Like I completely forgot who the characters were by the time we finished it.

So the Bible has one storyline. It's got one plot. And so reading through it quickly is good. Paired with number seven read it slowly.

Read it slowly. Obviously you can't do these two things at the same time so don't hurt yourself but read it slowly. The Bible is a book but it's not merely a human book.

It comes from the divine mind of God. And so every word is carefully chosen. Every word weighs a pound. That's a metaphor Jackson.

Every word is weighty. And so we need to pay attention to every single detail. Every single word that's mentioned. And maybe you have a friend who talks a lot.

Don't point at them. But maybe you have a friend who talks a lot and you've kind of figured out like if I just kind of I can kind of zone in and out while they're talking a little bit. Pick up on the big things they're saying and I don't really miss much.

The Bible is not that way. Every single word that God puts in here has meaning and it carries the storyline along so we need to pay careful attention to it.

There's one author who compared reading slowly to sitting by a fire rather than just walking close to it. So if you've been outside on a cold night next to a fire the way you get warm is by sitting next to it for a long period of time and the heat warms up your bones.

If you just kind of walk around the fire occasionally you're going to feel the heat on your skin but you're not going to get warm. And so reading the Bible slowly is like sitting by that fire and warming even down to the inside of you.

So read it quickly read it slowly. I try to do both of these things in my Bible reading so what I'll do is I'll just read through the whole Bible as fast as I can. I've done this as fast as 90 days I've done this around 6 months or 8 months not 6 or 7 but 6 or 8 and then I'll alternate the next time I go through it I'll go through it slowly where I'm just reading like a chapter or 2 at a time and it could take me a couple or 3 years to get through it.

So I try to do both of those things. Number 8 read it from your heart. Read it from your heart. And go with me to Psalm 119.

Psalm 119 will be in verses 9 through 11. The book of Psalms is right in the middle of your Bible. If you just cut it in half you'll likely be in the book of Psalms. The psalmist was reflecting on memorizing God's word and I want you to look at verse 9 with me.

Psalm 119 starting in verse 9. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

Verse 10 With my whole heart I seek you let me not wonder from your commandments. Verse 11 pay attention to this. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

The way to live a holy life is to store up God's word in your heart. And so the psalmist is viewing his heart like a box that he is putting scripture into that he is storing scripture up in so that he can call it to mind when he needs it.

So that he can remember what God's word says when he comes across a situation that needs divine wisdom. We need to memorize scripture.

This is a good practice for us to be engaged in. If we memorize scripture we can have the Bible with us even when we don't have our Bible with us.

We can have the Bible in our hearts even when we don't have our physical Bible in front of us. And so a hypothetical question here that will hopefully help you examine your heart with this.

If the Bible was to be outlawed in our country hopefully that never happens but if it were to be made illegal in our country and the Bibles were confiscated and they were burned how much scripture would you still have with you?

How much truth would you still have in your heart? It would be what you'd memorize what you'd meditated on. And I don't expect all of us to memorize the whole Bible or anything like that but truly how much truth would you have with you in that moment?

And that may seem like an unrealistic circumstance for our country but there are missionaries and pastors in China especially when persecution was really bad there the Bible was completely outlawed.

They would piece out a Bible they would rip out books and pass them around so they could stuff them in their pockets they would have Matthew for like a month and they'd trade with someone else they would study God's word over and over and over again and if they lost the Bible they had it with them in their heart they memorized books of the Bible they memorized chapters of the Bible and so we can talk through the plot line of our favorite movie we can recite specific situations in TV shows that we like but we can't always do that with scripture and again our actions speak louder than our words with that what truly matters to us what's truly important to our lives lastly number nine obey it obey it Bible reading isn't finished until we obey if you understand the Bible perfectly and don't obey it you're not a good reader of scripture a good reader of scripture surrenders to the text submits his life to the text as we think about obedience obedience doesn't earn

God's love it reveals ours so obedience does not earn God's love it reveals ours it shows where our heart is if we love God we will obey him we will keep his commandments and obedience is the most difficult part of Bible reading because it requires us to change our lives it requires us to confess sin requires us to pursue righteousness which we don't always want to do and so asking the question what does God want me to know and what does he want me to do in light of what I've read what does he want me to know or do the Bible is not a textbook that needs to be analyzed it's a revelation that needs to be submitted to this isn't a textbook that we're just studying for class we are seeking to submit our lives to what this book says it's speech from God to us that we must surrender to reading the

Bible well is good for your soul and it leads to obedience which will lead to people coming to Christ people should see your life people should hear you talk and they should see the impact that the Bible has made on you the impact that God has made on you through his word so I want to conclude with just three suggestions for you to help you read the Bible better this week hopefully these nine things will help you read the Bible well for the rest of your life here are three things that I want to give you that will help you read it better this week I got these from Pastor Michael who has talked about these things and I think it's really helpful so I'm just going to steal what he says he says you need a plan a place and a person a plan a place and a person you need a Bible reading plan and it doesn't have to be anything fancy doesn't have to be anything super formal a plan helps you answer the question what am I going to read today what am I going to read tomorrow and so it could just be I'm reading through Mark today's chapter two tomorrow's chapter three you don't need to have that written on a piece of paper you just that's your plan or it can be more formal where you've got a list like the one we have back there you can scratch it off as you go but what is your plan if you don't have a plan you're not going to end up reading scripture it's not going to become a part of your daily routine so you need a plan number two you need a place where are you going to read your Bible and time is also involved in this when are you going to read your Bible maybe it's at your desk or your kitchen table or in your bed before you go to sleep at night maybe it's first thing when you wake up in the morning maybe it's the last thing you do before you go to sleep whatever works best for you in your schedule where will you read God's word find a place and it will help trigger your mind to read God's word when you're there and thirdly you need a person who's going to help challenge you who's going to help encourage you to read the Bible you guys could be doing the same plan or a different plan but someone you can talk to and say what did you read today what did you read last week that you still remember what stood out to you what in your life needs to change we can help each other do a better job at reading

God's word so these nine things should help you long term reading the Bible these three things finding a person a place or sorry having a plan a place and a person will help you read the Bible better starting this week okay let me pray for us and we'll be done our father you are good to us we are sinners who are needy and have no claim on your grace and that you've kindly revealed yourself to us you've kindly spoken to us in your word as we thank you for that we pray that we would not squander the blessing you've given us we pray that we would not waste our time in our brief lives here on this earth but we would be good students of your word because we want to know you so I pray for the students here that that would be their desire if they don't have that desire I pray that you would make yourself known to them give them faith in Christ so they delight in your word as one delights in great riches it's in Christ and we pray amen