Deepening Our Understanding: The Importance of Bible Study

The goal of this time together will be for all of us to increase our ability and our skill as interpreters of the Bible so that we can read that book for ourselves and understand it and be able to deal with it in a responsible, a mature, and a diligent way. [00:00:15]

Every year the results are the same; the Bible continues to be the perennial national best-seller of all of the books in print. But the cynics, of course, respond to that by saying, yes, everybody buys a Bible, everybody owns a Bible, but there are precious few who read it, and even less who diligently study it. [00:02:08]

People will say to me frequently, "I don't study the Bible because it simply is no longer relevant to our culture. Why should I give myself to intensive study of such a thick book and of so many obscure things that cover history that took place so long ago about a Jewish nation of which I'm really not all that interested?" [00:04:38]

Melville was using the artistic device of symbolism in that book to say something about the Bible, and he was saying it with tears, that he had been born and raised in a home where the Bible was treasured and where biblical values were inculcated into the children, but as he became a man, he grew into a sense of frustration. [00:09:13]

When Luther and the protestant reformers set forth the principle of perspicuity of the Scripture, they were saying that the Bible is basically clear or essentially clear, and what they meant by essentially clear was, "clear with respect to the essentials." Clear with respect to the essentials; that is to say, a child who has an ability to read at perhaps a fifth grade level can make his way through the Bible. [00:14:27]

The basic message that Luther was speaking of is the basic message of redemption, the message of salvation, the message that says to us that we as human beings are created by a holy God and that after God has created us, in many ways, we have violated the trust of that creation, we have, in a word, sinned against God. [00:15:14]

God is not an elitist. I remember I was speaking on one occasion, giving a lecture -- it wasn't a sermon even -- it was a lecture to a group of people who had asked me to come and explain to them the relationship of the old covenant to the new covenant, and I was going through all the stipulations and formats of the Old Testament covenantal structure. [00:18:14]

Certainly there's nothing in human history more obscene than the cross of Christ, for in that moment, all of the filthy ugliness of sin was compacted by imputation onto the back of Jesus of Nazareth. When Christ hung on the cross, in and of Himself, He was the Holy One of Israel, beautiful; but by imputation, once the sin of the world was laid on Him, He was the incarnation at that moment of obscenity. [00:19:47]

It's primitive because God cares enough about His fallen people that at times He lisps; He condescends to speak to us in our lowest state so that the simplest child, the most primitive savage can understand the gift of eternal life. You know, in the academic world, we understand something: that to simplify difficult matters without distorting them is the true mark of an excellent teacher. [00:21:00]

The first reason why we should study the Bible, not just read it or casually examine it devotionally, but why disciplined study should be our goal is this: because dear friends, it's our duty, I know that, speaking of obscenities, that the four-letter word that's become perhaps the most despised obscenity in our culture today is that four letter word, D-U-T-Y, duty. [00:23:32]

God does, in fact, require of each of His people, not just of the priests and the prophets or the scholars and the theologians, He requires of each one of us that we be diligent in the study of His Word. [00:24:27]

But it's not enough to speak of duty; with that duty comes a sacred privilege, our Lord told us that He came that we might have life, and we are also told that the Word of God is life. So God requires this study from us not just because He's a stern taskmaster like Pharaoh that won't give us any straw for our bricks, but He requires it so we can live. [00:26:40]