How to Study the Bible

Today I’m continuing the blog series I started a few weeks ago. It’s a primer on how to study a Bible passage, as well as how to teach that passage in a way that is clear and compelling. I’m calling the series “Backstage Pass” because I’ll be taking you “backstage of the pulpit” to see what goes into the writing of a sermon.

As I previously said, I realize not everyone will become a vocational teacher of the Bible. Nevertheless, all Christians will spend their life studying the Bible; it’s what we do.

But how do we go about studying the book that God wrote?

O – I – A

I suppose many methods can be employed to study the Bible. I’ll admit that upfront. Yet not all methods are equally helpful. There are some ways to go about Bible study that go with the grain of the passage; they glide. They do not feel forced and manipulated because the interpreter cooperates with the text.

However, there are some ways of studying the Bible that are not at all helpful. In fact, we could say they don’t necessarily force a square peg into a round hole, but rather they batter it in with a sledgehammer. In short, they do violence to the Bible.  

Several years ago, a co-worker taught me a helpful acronym. He used it to explain (in broad terms) an effective process for studying the Bible. I’m not sure where my friend first learned the acronym. (A quick internet search shows that others are using the acronym too.)

The letters are O – I – A. I use this process each week when I prepare sermons. As I’ve written before, that’s a process stretched over twenty hours. But it certainly doesn’t have to take that long. Not that I do this overtly each morning, but when I read my Bible devotionally every day, the process lasts a little over 20 minutes.

The “O” stands for observation.
Observation is the first step to understanding a passage. To observe a passage well, you need to spend time looking at it—a lot of time!

For me, this most especially happens during the translation stage of sermon preparation. But you do not need to know how to read the original languages to accurately observe a passage. Observation can be done very effectively using only English Bibles, especially if you compare several good translations. When I’m in the observation phase, I write down as many things about the passage as I can, as well as noting what questions I have about the passage. If I’m able to answer my own questions through more observation, great. If not, I revisit them later. Sometimes I eventually learn the answers to my questions and other times I don’t.

If you get stuck in your observations and need some questions to get you going deeper, consider asking a few of these questions of the passage:

1. What is this passage saying about the character of God?
2. What is this passage saying about the grace of God?
3. What is this passage saying about the way people are saved?
4. What is this passage saying generally about people?
5. More specifically, what is this passage saying about Christians?
6. More specifically, what is this passage saying about non-Christians?

The “I” stands for interpretation.
Once you have spent sufficient time observing the passage, the next step is to determine what the passage means. This is interpretation, the necessary outworking of careful observation.

To assist in the interpretation stage, it’s helpful to consult other Christians who have also observed the passage, especially those who have studied the passage in depth. Think about it like this. If you come up with an interpretation for a passage that, after 2,000 years of church history, has never before existed, then you’re probably wrong. That’s why during the interpretation phase I typically consult several Bible commentaries on the passage. Three very helpful commentary series for pastors and non-pastors are: The Bible Speaks Today (Intervarsity Press), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan), and God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company). Also, the English Standard Version Study Bible is a tool I regularly use.

I know some people tend to pooh-pooh Bible commentaries (yes, a very technical term). They do this, I think, because they believe using commentaries is unspiritual. An interpreter, they say, should go to the source—God, not man. I agree that we should not prioritize commentaries to the exclusion of listening to God. Indeed, the best, highest, and most authoritative source to help us understand what one passage means is to use other Bible passages to shed light on it. Let Scripture interpret Scripture, the saying goes.

But I don’t think consulting commentaries is necessarily unspiritual. I think quite the opposite is true actually. If it’s true that God has given the church “pastors and teachers” (Ephesians 4:10–11)—which he has—then it is our spiritual duty to be learners. Before we teach, we listen to learn. Again, we are not the first people in church history to study any one passage.

The final letter, “A,” stands for application.
Once you have observed the passage and rightly interpreted it (i.e., you know what it means), now you have to apply the passage to your life, and possibly the lives of others.

During the application phase you should be asking questions like, “Based on what this says, what am I now supposed to do?” and “How should I be different because of this passage?” and “How am I meant to feel in light of the truth in this passage (hopeful, encouraged, sobered, repentant, etc.)?”

You should notice something about the way I worded these questions. They all have some variation of the phrase “based on what this passage means . . .” That’s intentional. The point of biblical application is that it flows naturally from what the passage means (i.e, it’s proper interpretation). Perhaps this is obvious to you, but I mention it because it’s not obvious to many people, and even when it is, it’s quickly forgotten.

Crafting applications that arise out of the main thrust of a passage is one of the most challenging aspects of studying the Bible. Too often applications come either from a minor or peripheral aspect of the passage. But even this is better than applications that have no basis in the text, which is sadly all too common.

If you get stuck on finding the proper applications, you can go back to some of the questions I listed above related to observation. For applications, you can rephrase them “Based on what this passage says about the character of God, I/we must do what?” This tends to jog some good ideas.  

Don’t Skip Steps

When studying and teaching the Bible, it’s crucial to not skip any one of these steps. Consider an analogy from health care. If you are sick, then you surely want a doctor to spend time observing you before she interprets your particular issues and prescribes a solution. You don’t diagnose cancer and prescribe a treatment plan after a 3-minute exam.

Additionally, another error could arise by overemphasis in the opposite direction. You don’t want your doctor to spend hours and hours (which means dollars and dollars) observing you but never come to an application.

The same is true when working with a biblical text. We must observe it, interpret it, and then apply it.

One final comment before leaving this subject until the next post in this series. In a sense, this three-step process is not only linear. It’s circular. In other words, we keep going through iterations until, in the case of health care, the health challenge is resolved, or in the case of a sermon, the passage is taught.

So, if you don’t have a “teaching assignment” already on the calendar. Just pick a short passage to try. And let the observation begin . . .

[Photo by John Towner / Unsplash]

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Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth?

In last week’s post I explained a few reasons why I believe the best diet of preaching consists of “expository sermons.” In expository sermons, the point of the Bible passage is the point of the sermon. This type of preaching is over and against “topical sermons.” In topical sermons, the theme of the sermon is what drives the passage (or passages) used.

I won’t repeat the reasons for why I believe expository sermons are best, but I thought it might be helpful to illustrate what the preparation for a topical sermon might look like, at least a very particular kind of topical sermon. The type of sermon I have in mind is an “application-heavy topical sermon,” especially one done within the context of the “attractional church.”

Say what? Application-heavy? Attractional church?

It would take a while to unpack these terms in detail, but in short, when I say “application-heavy,” I have in mind sermons that focus primarily on what we are supposed to do. So, for example, sermons titled “4 Steps to Living without Anger” or “3 Ways to Thrive during Trials.”

And when I say “attractional church,” I have in mind churches who view the Sunday worship service primarily as a way to reach the un-churched (or de-churched) within their communities, especially by providing a highly polished worship service that is presumably attractive to outsiders.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to reach outsiders. Moreover, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to teach the Bible in such a way that you give clarity regarding how to live. But think about something with me for a moment. Think about what happens to someone’s view of the Bible and Christianity and the gospel when he or she listens to this type of application-heavy preaching for a decade or so? If you spend years listening to preaching that is primarily designed to tell you what to do, how might this shape (warp?!) your understanding of the Bible and Christianity?

In his book The Prodigal Church, author Jared C. Wilson argues that application-heavy topical sermons become the “new legalism.” The old legalism was one of don’ts, while the new is one of dos. Both of these, however, “are just flip sides of the same legal coin” (84). Without a strong gospel focus, neither avoidance of sin nor pursuit of obedience will please God (Hebrews 11:6).

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The remedy, Wilson argues, is Christ-centered expository sermons, that is, sermons that see every passage of the Bible as pointing to our need for the Savior and how we have that Savior in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It sounds strange to say it, but this type of sermon—a Christ-centered expository sermon—was the type of sermon Jesus preached in Luke 24 on the road to Emmaus. So Luke tells us, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v. 27).

And what was the audience’s response to this Christ-centered expository sermon? “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” (v. 32).

In my own experience as a pastor, after listening to a decade of these kinds of Christ-centered sermons, I can personally attest that people do change, and they generally change for the better. This has happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to others. When we deepen our faith in the gospel week after week, we are only then able to live or apply the Bible appropriately. Remember, according to Hebrews 11 it’s “by faith . . . by faith . . . by faith . . . by faith . . . by faith . . .” that great deeds are done.  

Most of my ministry experience has not been in the attractional church where topical sermons reign. There was, however, a brief stint in college where this was the case as I helped in a local youth group that was part of an attractional church.

Nevertheless, because my experience with the attractional church is limited, I thought I would end this post by letting Jared Wilson himself share how he learned to preach application-heavy topical sermons in the attractional church. He has since left this way of preaching behind, but his recounting of his early days in ministry is a telling one and one that illustrates perfectly what I hope myself and others will avoid as we prepare sermons. Wilson writes,

“Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.

“Ever heard the Bible explained that way? It’s a handy mnemonic device that certainly has some truth to it. But does it get at the heart of what the Bible really is?

“While being trained in the ministry, I learned how to craft sermons from listening to a lot of messages from our youth ministry, and from asking some pastors to help me. The gist of the enterprise was this: I needed to come up with a spiritual topic or “felt need” to address, something practical that my audience would be interested in or otherwise just needed to know. After identifying the topic, I needed to draft three or four sermon points, and these needed to be points of application, things my audience could actually do. The emphasis was constantly on practical application, not merely on intellectual information. The sermon needed some handles.

“When my practical steps were listed, I needed to find biblical support for them. Anything that could not be supported with Scripture had to be rewritten or abandoned altogether. Every sermon had to be, in the parlance of the times, “Bible-based.” (It is not uncommon now even to see on the websites of some attractional churches that their messages are “Bible-based” or that they offer “truth based on the Bible.”) So then began the work of digging through the concordance to find Bible verses that might match and support each point.

“It was typically a good idea to find a verse that used the wording similar to the message point, and if you found something close, you could always tweak the message point to match the language of the verse or, alternatively, look at the verse in other Bible versions to see if the wording in one of those versions better matched the wording of the message point. . . . In the end, it was common to see a sermon that contained references from multiple Bible versions—the result of searching for just the right wording.

“It took me years to unlearn this approach to preaching. But in the end I began to discover that the approach was very much upside down. I had learned to preach by making the Bible’s words serve what I wanted to say rather than by making my words serve what the Bible says. To teach and preach in this way is implicitly to say that the Bible can’t be trusted to set the agenda, and that my ideas are better than the Bible at driving changing in my audience. . .

“I’ve also come to see the Bible in a different way. I’ve always believed it was God’s Word, of course, and that makes it living and active (Heb. 4:12) and perfectly capable of making us complete Christians (2 Tim. 3:16–17). But I had been treating it more as a reference book than as a story, and more as a manual of good advice than as an announcement of good news. (Jared C. Wilson, The Prodigal Church, 71–72)

[Picture by Jazmin Quaynor / Unsplash]

OTHER BLOG POSTS ABOUT PREACHING

Why Expository Sermons?

A few weeks ago, I was invited to take my children to a college basketball game. And here’s the really cool part: we were even invited to the locker room to hear the pre-game speech. Last summer, I officiated the wedding of one of the assistant coaches.

During the pre-game speech, I couldn’t believe all the basketball jargon used. If the other team shifted to a “full-court press,” Coach wanted his team to run “Milwaukee,” and if they got around it, then they should, of course, do what?

The team shouted, “Trapeze.”

I didn’t know what he meant by either “Milwaukee” or “Trapeze.” Nor did my kids. But he knew what he meant and so did his team.

I suspect, however, if we had visited a basketball practice during the fall as the players were learning, that the coach explained all this in more detail. This would have been necessary for the freshmen, as well as a helpful refresher for the upperclassmen. On our own, no one knows what obscure jargon means, much less how to apply it. All of us need a coach to bring us along as we learn something new.

Today I’m continuing a blog series I started a few weeks ago. It’s a bit of a primer on how to study a Bible passage, as well as how to teach that passage in a way that is clear and compelling. I’m calling the series “Backstage Pass” because I’ll be taking you “backstage of the pulpit” to see what goes into the writing of a sermon.

As I mentioned the other week, I realize not everyone will become a vocational teacher of the Bible. In fact, few will. Moreover, James told the early church “not many of you should be teachers” (3:1a). Nevertheless, all Christians will spend their life studying the Bible; it’s what we do. So, we might as well spend some time talking about how to do it well.

What Is an Expository Sermon?

At our church, we have two teaching pastors, Jason Abbott and me. As teaching pastors, we have the primary responsibility to lead the preaching and teaching ministry of our church. For us, this often looks like rotating each Sunday who is preaching. When we first explain this to people, many find it a foreign concept. Indeed, having two teaching pastors is a rare church model, but I could name several other churches that do this effectively. And over the last three years, our congregants have seemed to enjoy it.

Jason and I typically preach what are called “expository sermons.” Perhaps some of you have heard this term before. For others, it’s as foreign to you as “trapeze” was to me.

Let me explain what expository means. To borrow a definition from Mark Dever, “In expository sermons, the main point of the Scripture passage is the main point of the sermon.” Simple enough, right? What the passage says (in the main), the sermon should also say. Jason and I typically preach expository sermons through one book of the Bible at a time. When we finish one book, we typically move on to another, while rotating between Old and New Testament books.

The other common type of preaching is a “topical sermon.” In a topical sermon, the particular topic in view is what drives the Bible passage (or passages) covered. An example of a topical sermon might be a sermon on godly families or the deity of Christ or how to solve conflict as a Christian.

Why We Preach Expository Sermons?

I wouldn’t say there is anything inherently wrong with a topical sermon. Again, we preach them from time to time. But I do think a regular diet of expositional preaching is the better choice. Here are two reasons why.

First, most Christians read their Bibles this way, that is, we read one book at a time, and when we finish one book, we go to another. I don’t know any Christian who reads topically, at least as a rule. Thus expository preaching—when done well—models for Christians how to effectively read the Bible. I’m convinced this, by the way, meets a great need in the church. Good preaching doesn't just feed; it teaches how to fish.

Second, we don’t want to skip parts or themes of the Bible. This is a temptation inherent to topical preaching. It’s so easy to avoid topics when you are the one choosing what topics to preach. When this happens, it’s not necessarily sinister. In fact, it almost never is. But apart from some outside influence to keep us balanced, we would all tend to favor our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. It’s human nature. And so, without a commitment to expository preaching (an “outside influence,” if you will), I fear I would avoid things with which I need to deal. Having to preach the next passage simply because it’s the next passage—whether I want to or not—tends to make me, as a preacher, and the congregation as listeners, well rounded. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16, God inspired all of the Bible, and it’s all profitable to us. (For a longer explanation of why I preach this way, see a post I wrote called, “Spring Loaded Camming Devices and The Expository Sermon.”)

How Long Does It Take You to Prepare?

It takes me around 16–20 hours to write most sermons. This includes the time to study, write, and practice delivering the message. A breakdown of this time looks roughly like this:

   2   hours to translate the passage
   2   hours to record notes and questions from my translation
   4   hours to study commentaries
   2   hours to listen to several sermons on the passage
   2   hours to fill out my sermon “pre-qualification list” (I’ll explain this in later posts)
   4   hours to write the sermon
   1   hour to edit the sermon
+ 1   hour to practice delivering the sermon
= 18 hours           

Here are a few other things worth mentioning about the process. Most of the time, because Jason and I work in a co-pastor model that shares the weekly preaching responsibilities, about 25% of my sermon preparation occurs two weeks before I preach, while the remaining 75% occurs the week in which I preach. We typically plan the preaching calendar (both speaker and passage) about 9 months in advance. Also, we do a sermon debrief every Monday morning at 9 am. At those meetings, we talk about what worked well the previous Sunday, what we need to improve upon, and we pray and plan for the upcoming sermon.

As you prepare your own lessons about the Bible, I don’t expect you’ll do everything we do. You don’t have to know what trapeze means to enjoy a game of pick-up basketball. Moreover, churches free up pastors to do gospel teaching full time, and this allows us to really commit to the craft. Nevertheless, hopefully this post gives you a sense of what many pastors do those other 39 hours in a week!

In the next “Backstage Pass” post, I’ll dispense with this background information and get on with sharing the tools I’ve been promising. 

To read the first post in the series, click here. [Picture by Roshan Yadama / Creative Commons]

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Do you really need to know how to teach the Bible?

Today I’m starting a new blog series. It’s something of a primer on how to study a Bible passage, as well as how to then teach that passage in a way that is clear and compelling.

I’m calling the series “Backstage Pass” because I’ll be taking you “backstage of the pulpit” to see what goes into writing a sermon. Pretty exciting, huh?

I know, it’s not near as cool as meeting Bono before a U2 concert or going to the locker room before a Philadelphia Eagles football game. Still, every few weeks or so during this winter I’ll do my best to share something helpful about how I go about studying a passage of the Bible and how I craft a message around that passage.

Let me also mention what the series won’t be. This will not be a series about how to study all the different kinds of passages in the Bible. This means I won’t cover the issues involved with interpreting a proverb versus a prophecy, and a pastoral epistle versus an apocalyptic vision. I’m leaving aside these genre- and Testament-specific questions. If you’d like to study these types of questions, check out How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart.

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Instead, what I’m going to focus on in this series are the general tools for studying any one passage and how to teach that same passage.

But before I begin this series, though, let’s tackle the obvious question. Do you really need to know how to teach the Bible?

Well, yes and no. I realize that not everyone will become a vocational teacher of the Bible. In fact, few people do. Moreover, James told the early church “not many of you should be teachers” (3:1a).

However, all Christians will spend their life studying the Bible; it’s what we do. So we might as well spend some time talking about how to do it well.

Additionally, many Christians will occasionally find themselves in a situation where they have to understand one specific passage and say something helpful about it. In short, they have to teach the Bible. Perhaps this teaching will occur at a friend’s wedding, an adult Sunday school class, or a children’s devotional before a sporting event. Or maybe you’ll have to teach when a Jehovah’s Witness comes to your door to talk about John 1:1 or when your child asks you at the dinner table, “What does it mean that ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23)?”

You can, of course, make something up on the spot, but what if you need to study more? What will you do? That’s what this series will be about.

And even if any of those teaching situations never happens—which I find unlikely in the course of thirty or forty years of following Jesus—still, we are to be those who teach and preach to ourselves. What we learn in the Bible, we need to apply to our own lives.

For all these reasons, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the strategies that I use so that you can use them too.

Though I won’t post about this every week so as to not burn you out on the topic, stay tuned for several more posts in the next few months.

[Picture by Todd Poirier / Unsplash]

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