How to do Bible study — Part 1: What is effective Bible study?

This is the first of three articles on how to do Bible study, each building on the other. Here’s what we hope to cover:

Part 1 — explores what Bible study is, the objective, and what is required to study our Bibles effectively.
Part 2 — shows the essential techniques for building an understanding of a passage using practical exercises to assist in developing helpful skills.
Part 3 — looks at how to do more detailed, “verse-by-verse” study, and how to record the information.

Before we begin: some assumptions, background, and intentions

I assume that the reason you are reading this is because you would like to do Bible study but not sure how, or have found it difficult in the past, so you are looking for some advice or tips. My intention is to provide you with a method for doing effective Bible study. What do I mean by effective Bible study? John Carter says, “The mind insensibly is affected by the stream of thought passing through it, and it is desirable to have the stream as pure as possible. A mind familiarised by pictures of evil is not strongly fortified if sin should assail.” (John Carter, The Letter to the Ephesians, p 123). The “Bible study” that is important, then, is thinking about the Word of God and its principles as much as possible rather than “pictures of evil”, as John Carter describes it, and drawing upon it in daily life. I’m not claiming to provide the definitive guide to Bible study. I will simply provide my own approach to Bible study, but I believe others follow this or a similar approach, too. What follows is based upon a very old set of notes I wrote for a talk on how to do Bible study at a Bible school many years ago. I have used these same notes (and methods) for the School of the Prophets here in New Zealand for many years. The thing is, this method of Bible study can be applied any time we open God’s Word. What’s more, anyone can do this.

What do we mean by “Bible study”?

“Bible study” sounds academic, and it can be. It sounds like hard work, and it is. God’s Word is certainly not like reading a novel, a history book, encyclopaedia, or a text book; it’s different. It isn’t a simple read. I’ve had people say to me, “I can’t do Bible study because I’m not academic”. Too many assume that Bible study is academic — made up of lexicons, concordances, commentaries, and esoteric reasoning and deep investigations into the meanings of words from ancient languages such as Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek. Theologians and theological colleges make their living out of this belief. But, if we think about it, God wouldn’t have left a book that only serves academics. God’s Word itself says that acceptance with God lies not with the “many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Cor. 1:26–29). His intention is that people understand and know Him (John 17:3; Jer. 9:24; Psa. 19:7; 2 Tim. 3:15–16). The Bible was written so that anyone can read and understand it, and develop a skill in “rightly dividing” it, being moved by it, and changed by it.

Can you read? You can do Bible study

Anyone who can read can study the Bible. Let me go a step further: anyone who can simply hear the Word of God and is able to think about its meaning can study the Bible. For millennia Bibles were not available to the public; only the Levites and priests had access to the few hand-written copies of the Old Testament. For long periods of history most people were illiterate; but, they could listen. Even in the apostles’ day, most did not have access to a physical copy of the Scriptures, but listened to those who read from a single copy they had obtained. They lived in an aural society, and people learned to memorise and mull over the words they heard read aloud. Many committed large portions of the Bible to memory. We have lost this skill because we have such easy access to not just one Bible, but many versions of that Bible. Nevertheless, today, anyone who can read can study the Bible. The word “study” simply means the applying of time and attention to gain an understanding of a subject. Those two ideas are key to effective Bible study:

Giving our time
Applying concentrated attention on understanding what the Bible is saying.

Essentially, Bible study is reading and thinking. Most can do this. It just takes the desire and effort to do it.

Why does Bible study seem so hard?

Why, then, is Bible study difficult? Well, it’s not hard to study the Bible, the fact that it’s a problem is more an indication of our motivation.

An acquired taste!

Psalm 34 says, “taste and see that Yahweh is good”. But, it’s an “acquired taste”; it’s not something that comes naturally. We have a nature that seeks to gratify itself, and Bible study to one that hasn’t developed a taste for it appears uninteresting and hard work for little immediate pleasure. There’s a million other things we naturally would rather do! It’s only when we genuinely know our need for God’s Word that we are motivated enough to even begin the process. I know of people who, with good intention, began the process, but got bogged down, not making head nor tail of what the passage was about, or just not able to be excited by what they have read. “It’s not like what the speaker at the Bible school could bring out of it. Maybe I’m just not cut out to do this Bible study stuff!” The benefits of God’s Word do not come without effort.

Seeing eyes and hearing ears

The parable of the sower demonstrates how the Word of God is received by different people. The wayside is those who “understand it not” (Matt. 13: 19). The stony ground is those who hear the Word and even rejoice in understanding, but it lasts only a little while, for it is not deeply rooted. And, the seed sown among thorns is the mind that’s distracted by the cares of this life. But the good ground is he that heareth and understandeth (v. 23). Christ provides the “secret” ingredient that those of the “good ground” have that the others don’t. In Matthew 13, when the disciples asked Christ why he spoke in parables, he gave the answer:

“Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.” Matthew 13:11-16.

You can hear the irony here—even sarcasm! God says: These people can’t be bothered listening to Me; they wouldn’t go out of their way to to repent and convert to Me because that would mean I’d have to heal them—and they’d never want that! They are simply not interested enough. Christ spoke in parables as a filtering mechanism. Those that weren’t earnest lost interest. Those like the disciples, even though they often didn’t understand, persevered—seeking to know. They had minds like the good soil, “which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15). Are we good soil? It’s a choice not a condition. It’s up to us to be good soil.

Seek and you shall find

Proverbs 25 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter” (v. 2). The words “thing” and “matter” are the same Hebrew word, debar, which can mean “thing” or “matter” but is usually translated “word”, and can refer to God’s Word. So, God conceals; we are to seek it out. He is looking for those that seek — not just for a while, but persistently, earnestly, honestly — and they shall find (Matt. 7:7–8; Jas. 1:5–6).

Two kinds of Bible student

James describes two kinds of Bible student (James 1:23–25):

those who give up
those that persevere.

The first man (vv23–24) studies, but he sees the truth about himself reflected in the Word, and doesn’t like what he sees. So, when he finishes his study, he doesn’t take it to heart and he’s not prepared to make any changes: he straightway forgets what manner of man he was, so he’s not a doer of the Word. It’s like stony soil. The second man looks at the Word with a different attitude; he sees it as something that can liberate him — it’s for his life, so he persists with it, despite it being hard. This man changes, because he’s a doer of the Word, and, therefore, is blessed (v.25).

It’s always hard at the beginning; don’t give up

What this means is, that when we start our Bible study project, we shouldn’t give up just because we can’t see it clearly, or find it uncomfortable. Bible study is like anything; laying foundations is the hard part. If you have watched how a house is built, at first it seems to take forever, there’s surveying, pegs, measuring, holes made, trenches dug, boxing set, reinforcing wire and mesh laid and tied in, concrete poured. The place looks messy and like nothing is happening for a long time. The next time you look, all the framing is up, then the roofing, then the cladding, and it looks like things are moving along fast, and you get a better idea of what the house will look like. It’s the same with Bible study. It takes time laying those foundations. It looks like no progress is being made, but it is. It’s hard slog, “measuring”, “digging”, “pouring”. Once all that hard work is done, suddenly, you can see the framework and can start filling in the details. Finally, you can see the colours, the trimmings, the little special features that set the distinctiveness of the building that gives it character. Like any building project, it requires certain methods and skills that aren’t understood or acquired naturally; they must be developed. And, before the foundation of any building is laid, there needs to be a plan, and before the plan, an objective or goal. The same is the case with Bible study.

The purpose and objective of Bible study

So, what is the objective of Bible? There are several answers we could give to this question; here are some of them:

To learn more about God’s purpose (Acts 20:32)
To learn more about what God would have us do (2Tim. 3: 15–17)
To learn to think spiritually (Psalm 1:1–2; 119:33–34, 103; Col 3:1–2)
To build our faith (Rom. 10:17; Acts 20:32)

Really, Bible study assists us in all these things, but the overall and purpose for Bible study is:

to come to know God.

Christ says, himself, that it is life eternal to know God (John 17:3). There’s only one place that we can go to find out about Him, and that’s His Word. The Word is the expression of His will, His mind, His character, as well as a record of examples of what He has done, and how He deals with humankind. We often see in the Law of Moses the refrain, “for I am Yahweh”, meaning, you are to do this thing because this is what I think like (e.g., Lev. 11:44,45; 18:2,4-6, 21, 30; 19:3, 4, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 25, 28, 30-32, 34, 36–37; 20:7–8, 24; 21:12; 22:2–3, 8, 30-33; 23:22, 43; 24:22; 25:17, 38, 55; 26:2, 13, 44–45). Sometimes this expression is used as a declaration of what God is like (Exodus 6: 2–8; Malachi 3:6). Again, God often declares through His prophets that His actions are for the purpose that people “may know that I am Yahweh” (e.g., Ezekiel 11:10–12; 12:15–16, 20; 13: 9, 14, 21; 36: 11, 23, 36; 38: 16, 23). So, in our study of God’s Word, we are endeavouring to come to know God, to understand His ways (Psalm 103: 7; 147: 19–20). We want to learn to think like Him, to speak like Him, to act like Him. Jeremiah says it like this:

“Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23–24)

This is very important, because it affects the way we read and think about God’s Word. So, not only is “knowing God” the purpose of Bible study, but it is also the objective for Bible study. Bible study isn’t about accumulating knowledge so that we become an expert! Bible study should create a different spirit than that; it creates a humble spirit in a person, the same spirit that was in God’s son — one that elevates God, not self. Having “knowing God” as our motive and objective for Bible study means something else, too. We are building a relationship with God. That’s why the Word of God and prayer are so often together in God’s Word. Watch out for the next article in this series, where we will look at the essentials for good Bible study — and it’s not as hard as you think! It takes effort, but it’s not hard.

Image credits:

Feature image — Bible and study books: by Congerdesign on Pixabay under CC 0
Stream through woods: Photo by kata bijak yang terdalam found in Google Search free for re-use. The photo has been modified.
Woman studying: Photo by LUSI on RGBstock.com free for use. The photo has been modified.
Bible and glasses: by Boesmantjie on Pixabay under CC 0
Food tasting: Food Trades School, State Library Victoria Collection found on Flickr under CC 2.0
Foundations: The Bullitt Centre, Seattle under construction, by the original uploader was Erudy at English Wikipedia under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Bible Study How-tos

How to do Bible study — Part 1: What is effective Bible study?

Before we begin: some assumptions, background, and intentions