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Transcript 182D — Personal Bible Study
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I know you say many different times that people should read the Bible a great deal, as just general reading. But what I wanted to know is, how would you go about studying a particular book? And where should someone start studying, as opposed to just reading? I'll take my answer on the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you very much. Good night.
The question is raised concerning this matter of studying the Bible. Actually, when you are reading the Bible, you are beginning to study the Bible, because in order to really become acquainted with the Bible, you have to take the time to read it.
For example, when you read about Abraham somewhere in the Bible, if you have not ever read Genesis 12-20, or thereabouts, where God gives us a lot of information about Abraham, then when you read about Abraham in Romans 4, you can't really appreciate why God is saying what He is saying.
When you read about David, in Acts 2:31, this won't really mean anything to you unless you have ever read about the life of David in the Old Testament. More than that, as you read the Bible you become sensitive to the way God speaks. You become increasingly sensitive to the demands of the Word of God on your life. And you're not really wasting your time a bit. You really are studying.
Now for another way of studying, I would suggest that you do this. Get a concordance. And there are a number of them that are available. I would suggest that you invest in a good concordance, one that covers all the words of the Bible. It may cost you a bit more, but it would be a very worthwhile expenditure. There is Strong's Concordance, there is Young's Concordance, and there's one that is not quite as complete, Cruden's Concordance.
Now take a verse, or if you want to, take a word. Take the word faith, for example, or take the word sin, or transgression. Pick out any word that you would like. And look in the concordance for the word faith, if that's the word you're studying. And you will find there all of the verses in the Bible that have the word faith in them. And look up these verses that are named, and see what the verse says.
Now some of the verses that you will read do not really help very much. You won't be able to tie them in with anything. But if you look up all of the verses with the word faith (and this takes time, studying always takes time), you will find that pretty soon a pattern will emerge. You will see how God uses that word faith, again and again and again. Or whatever word.
Or do this. Find a verse that you're wondering about, and look up key words in that verse. If it has the word death in it, look up other references to death in the Bible. If it has the word sea in it, look up other references to the word sea. If it has the word kingdom in it, look up other verses that have the word kingdom. And in this way you're going to find related passages that integrate into the verse that you are studying. This is just another way of reading the Bible in a way, although in another sense it is a directed kind of reading, where you are focusing especially on certain aspects of Bible truth.
Whatever you are doing, whether you're just reading, with a pencil in your hand, or whether you are looking up key words, or examining a verse, trying to find other verses that have similar phrases in it (and you can do these things through a concordance), you will be getting more and more acquainted with the Word of God. The main thing that I want to underscore is that there is no short-cut. There is no short-cut. You have to spend time.
And don't be bashful. Don't feel too heroic if you spend a few hours some night. Do this again and again. Now one of the things you can do is, when you hear a question answered, for instance on this program, write down the verses referred to (and I do try, when I answer a question on this program to give proof texts), if you're interested in the subject at all. Write them down. And then, in your spare time, in your private study time, look those verses up. And examine what they say. Don't trust me, what I say. But examine what these verses say, and see if they indeed teach what you have been told. And this is another way to get deeper into the Word of God.