How to Study the Bible First, OBSERVE their home. What do I see in the Word? Now, this step involves EXPLORATION. This is where Bible study starts. These are four steps in studying the Bible. This step involves Exploration. It is like you are a detective, or you are on a journey, and you open up the Word, and you take a chapter, a paragraph, a verse of Scripture, and you begin to look for everything. What do you see in there? You look and you look. You are doing your Observation thing. Your goal is to discover what text is saying. Imagine you are in the audience that, for the first time, is reading this particular letter, and you hear it. What are you feeling? What are you seeing? What is sticking out to you? You are looking at the whole text from their shoes. It is a question of Content. What do I see? Exploring like a detective through this particular passage in God’s Word. That is step number one. Second is to UNDERSTAND their home. What does it mean? This step involves INTERPRETATION, not just seeing what it says. We want to know what it means. Not just seeing that they are holding hands, but what does it mean in that culture. Not just seeing that they are shaking the glass, but what does it mean in that CULTURE? Not just seeing that they are bobbling their head, but what does that mean? We are asking those questions. Not just what do I see, but what does it mean? This is a question of Context. We are asking, “Okay, what did that mean in that day for Paul to say this, or Moses to say this, or the psalmist to say this?” What does that mean then? We need to ask these questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How to Understand their home. What does it mean? Question of Context. Then we bring it back home. Thirdly, how does it RELATE? This step involves not exploration or interpretation, but it involves IMPLICATIONS. In other words, we want to see how the text travels. We all know that we don’t live in the culture of the first century in the New Testament, and we don’t live in the cultures of the Old Testament. This text has to travel, almost like crossing over a bridge or taking a flight back across the ocean. Okay. How does this text Travel? What are the implications here? This is a question of connection. How does this Word connect to life in the 21st Century? Bring it back home. How does it Relate? Then, finally or Fourthly, APPLY it in your home. What do I do? This step involves APPLICATION. Okay. I have seen how the text TRAVELS - NOW, we have landed! We are on the Other Side of the BRIDGE. How does this text transform my life? Now, the problem is, what I want you to realize is, most of the time when we study the Bible, this is where we start. We open the book, and we are asking the question from the very beginning, “Okay. How does this Apply to my life?” That is a good thing in the sense that we want to know how the Word applies to our lives, but if we run toward Application first, we will miss out on the whole point of the passage through Observation and Interpretation, and, as a result, we begin really looking at the Implications of what that means for us, and we will begin to misuse the Bible. We can’t start with Application. We end with Application. This is a question not of Content or Context. It is not a question of Connection, BUT a Question of Conduct. How do we ACT on it? It is a half-sheet of paper, and on the front it says, “Studying the Bible from Their Home to Our Home.” You see these questions. Observe their home – what do I see; understand their home – what does it mean; bring it back home – how does it relate; and apply it in your home – what do I do? The goal is that you would be able to walk away and understand what we are talking about in each four of these steps and be able to sit down, whether you use this or you adapt it to be something else that you like that accomplishes these things. My goal is that you would be able to walk away have this in front of you with a text of Scripture, and be able to really study the Bible - with this half-sheet, be able to really uncover the truths of God’s Word in all Four of these steps. We are going to Observe, Interpret, and Relate OR then Bring it Back home, and Apply it in our home today.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 19:19:56 +0000
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