How to Study Your Bible, Part 3

Please see Part 1 and Part 2 for the rest of the Study Notes.

Click here to download PDF: How to Study the Bible Part Handout

Bible Study Step #3 – Investigate the Text for Clarity

This step is a bridge between observation and interpretation. Remember that observation is seeing what the text says. Interpretation is discovering what the text means by what it says. Investigation helps us to get from what the text says to what it means.

As we observed at the end of our last lesson that, after prayerfully reading the text in context and observing what the text says, we may still have unanswered questions. Many things will be clear, but perhaps a few things are still hazy. We may need to do some detailed investigation of the text. Where do we go to bring clarity to our understanding of what the text says?

How to Study Your Bible, Part 2

If you haven’t read Part1, you missed the Introduction and Bible Study Step #1: Prayerfully Read the Text in Context.  Then go to Part 3. 

Click to: Download the PDF handout

Bible Study Step #2 – Observe the Text in Detail.

The way we read and study the Bible flows from what the Bible is. The Bible declares about itself that all scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim. 3:16), that it is our spiritual food (Matt. 4:4), that it gives life (John 6:63), that it makes us wise for salvation through faith in Christ (2 Tim. 3:15), and that it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:17). If we believe that, then we will want to get the most out of it.

How to Study Your Bible, Part 1

Click here to download PDF: How to Study the Bible Part 1 handout

Introduction:

Probably most of you have heard the adage, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” It’s more beneficial in the long run to provide knowledge and skills to help someone help themselves than to give them a direct solution or a handout. Applying this idea to Bible study, I suggest that although it is good for me to spoon-feed you the truth of God’s word, it is better for you if I can teach you how to feed yourself the word of God. Peter writes,

“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” (1 Peter 2:1-3).

What does that scripture say should be the desire of all born again believers?

What benefit does feeding on the word of God have for us?

We are certainly privileged to live in a time and place where the Bible is so available to us. We not only have access to the word of God in our own language (which many in the past and even today have not), but we even have multiple good translations and study bibles available. We are privileged that most of us today are literate. Yet even with all this available, I fear that many Christians today are spiritually malnourished because they either lack the motivation or the skills to feed themselves.

What do you want to accomplish in this series of lessons?