You don’t have to go to church to hear good Bible
teaching. You may, in fact, hear or read the best Bible teaching outside of
church. Christian books, radio, television, and the internet provide us with
more Bible exposure than ever before.
Yet, we may be the most Bible
illiterate generation in our history. How can this be?
One possibility is that we have become spiritual consumers who don’t believe we
can feed ourselves. Our spiritual food is digested, processed and spoon fed to
us by someone else.
Good Bible teaching is needed. It is part of discipleship. It affirms what we
believe. It challenges us to walk more closely with Christ—and it should also make
us hungry to search the Scriptures ourselves.
Below are three principles that will help you to understand God’s Word for
yourself:
When Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13, for example, that “I can do all things though Christ who
strengthens me.” He didn’t mean that he
could become a millionaire or fly off a building in red and blue spandex. You
can know what he meant because Paul wrote in a context that makes the meaning
clear. The verse before it (Philippians 4:12) and the verse after it (Philippians
4:14) tell us that he was talking about being able to live with contentment
through Jesus whether in abundance or in need. What great truths we miss when
we forget about the context! Be sure to
determine the meaning of a passage by reading the verses surrounding it.
2. Ask questions, and then move on. Educators know that something
happens in our brains when we hear or read what we don’t understand. We tend to
stop right there. How many times have you sat in a meeting or in a classroom
and missed 20 minutes of what was said because you were stuck on one thing that
you didn’t get? It’s not your fault. Your brain did it. Your question became a
road block.
Here’s how to get around it: turn what you don’t understand into a question. Write it on a piece of paper, and then move on. It’s that simple!
Your brain will allow you to pass, as if to say “Okay. We’ll get that
later.” Keep a notebook of questions if you want—or not. Pray for God to show
you the answer in His time and see what happens. Part of understanding
Scripture is knowing that you won’t understand everything. That is okay!
3. Don’t go beyond what is written. Not every motive or purpose
is explained in Scripture. Some teachers and theologians read their own
interpretations or guesses into Scripture and teach opinion as if it were fact.
This can color how we understand
Scripture when we hear it. Gideon, for example, a judge in the Old Testament,
is popularly known as having been a coward, an opinion derived from one verse:
Judges 6:11: “The angel of the Lord came
and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the
Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press in order
to save it [hide it] from the Midianites.”
Normally when Bible experts draw
conclusions that are not clear from the text itself, we tend to think, “Oh, I
guess they must be right because they know more than me.” Not true! More than
likely, they just heard it from someone else and accepted it as fact, just like
you are tempted to do.
Scripture never calls Gideon a coward for hiding the wheat as he worked. If anything, hiding his goods in a wine press from marauding bandits made him a genius. That too, however, is an opinion. It’s best to understand Scripture simply by what it says, not by what it doesn’t say.
* If you are interested in a study, online or in a group that teaches you in simple terms how to read and study for youself, let me know.
