How Do I Study a Specific Topic in the Bible?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We have been talking a lot in the last two weeks
00:00:06.160 | about Bible study, and we have a question today
00:00:08.160 | about how to read scripture on a specific theme.
00:00:11.240 | Rosemary in Kentucky asks this,
00:00:13.400 | "Hi, Pastor John, lately, a friend and I
00:00:16.080 | "have been discussing a specific topic
00:00:17.720 | "that is prevalent throughout the New Testament.
00:00:20.120 | "I have not done much personal study on the topic,
00:00:22.620 | "and my first thought was,
00:00:23.940 | "I'll just search for some articles about the topic
00:00:26.080 | "on desiringgod.org or the Gospel Coalition
00:00:28.640 | "and find out what the Bible says about it that way.
00:00:31.360 | "Though I have tremendous respect for both organizations,"
00:00:34.480 | thank you, "and many others that teach sound doctrine,
00:00:37.320 | "I feel like I am taking the easy way out
00:00:40.540 | "in reading the conclusions other people have come to
00:00:42.780 | "after studying the scriptures themselves.
00:00:45.480 | "So my question is this,
00:00:46.880 | "how should I go about studying a topic in scripture
00:00:49.480 | "in a comprehensive way that would allow me
00:00:51.640 | "to have a firm grasp on what the Bible has to say
00:00:54.480 | "about a topic without relying solely on the study
00:00:57.680 | "and teaching of others to establish my own understanding?
00:01:02.240 | "But to do this, where do I begin?"
00:01:05.800 | - I love this question,
00:01:07.600 | because I think many people sell themselves short
00:01:11.480 | when it comes to what they are able to glean
00:01:14.020 | from the scriptures for their own spiritual enrichment
00:01:17.240 | and depth and for their life
00:01:19.440 | in a complicated, morally complex world.
00:01:23.200 | I think most of us doubt our capacities
00:01:26.660 | to find answers for ourselves,
00:01:29.240 | and others of us are lazy, let's be honest,
00:01:34.040 | and we want somebody else to do the work for us,
00:01:36.440 | and so we try to get a quick answer from somebody else
00:01:38.960 | rather than do it ourselves with rigorous study.
00:01:43.600 | I mean, it is remarkable, I think,
00:01:45.560 | that the Bible, by and large,
00:01:48.320 | says it's not gonna give its riches
00:01:51.040 | to people who don't dig.
00:01:53.660 | Listen to Proverbs 2, three to six.
00:01:58.240 | "Yes, if you call out for insight
00:02:01.200 | "and raise your voice for understanding,
00:02:03.540 | "if you seek it like silver
00:02:05.720 | "and search for it as for hidden treasures,
00:02:09.580 | "then you will understand the fear of the Lord
00:02:12.680 | "and find the knowledge of God,
00:02:14.560 | "for the Lord gives wisdom.
00:02:16.920 | "From his mouth come knowledge and understanding."
00:02:19.680 | That doesn't sound like a lazy pursuit.
00:02:22.160 | It sounds like an old prospector in the gold rush
00:02:25.140 | desperately wanting to find his fortune
00:02:27.520 | by working morning till night panning for gold,
00:02:31.640 | and that's the picture that we're supposed to see here,
00:02:34.820 | search for it as for hidden treasure.
00:02:38.520 | The flag waving over the Scriptures
00:02:42.360 | is the word from Jeremiah 29, 13.
00:02:45.880 | "You will seek me and find me
00:02:49.000 | "when you seek me with all your heart."
00:02:54.000 | So I'm excited that we're talking about
00:02:59.960 | the possibilities for just ordinary lay people doing that.
00:03:05.400 | So I love the question
00:03:06.560 | because of the hopefulness that's in it,
00:03:09.200 | and the advice I have to give
00:03:10.960 | for studying a topic on your own from Scripture
00:03:13.920 | is painfully simple.
00:03:16.160 | There may be complex aspects
00:03:19.940 | of the application of this principle,
00:03:22.600 | but in my life, this simple counsel and practice
00:03:27.600 | has made all the difference.
00:03:30.240 | So here it is.
00:03:31.640 | Once you know the topic that you want to investigate,
00:03:36.640 | money maybe, or marriage, or pick your topic,
00:03:43.060 | politics, pick out a few key words
00:03:48.060 | that relate to that topic,
00:03:52.520 | and use a concordance,
00:03:55.420 | that's a book that lists all the uses
00:03:57.400 | of all the words in the Bible,
00:03:58.740 | or better, have a simple Bible program.
00:04:03.480 | You can get them inexpensively or even free
00:04:06.580 | that enables you to do word searches,
00:04:09.380 | have a Bible program,
00:04:10.900 | and either with a concordance
00:04:12.660 | or with a word-searching function of a Bible program,
00:04:16.540 | look up all those words in the Bible,
00:04:21.540 | or in some part of the Bible.
00:04:23.220 | You might want to restrict your study to Romans, or Matthew,
00:04:26.220 | or everything Paul wrote, or everything Peter wrote,
00:04:28.780 | or the New Testament, or indeed the whole Bible.
00:04:31.580 | Just don't bite off more than you can chew at any one time.
00:04:35.780 | So now you have clicked your button
00:04:37.740 | or you've looked up the word in the concordance
00:04:40.860 | and you have 10 or 50 key words in verses,
00:04:45.740 | so 50 verses or so that you've got to read.
00:04:49.180 | Now, what do you do with that list?
00:04:51.740 | But that's the key thing.
00:04:52.980 | What do you do with it?
00:04:54.100 | I'm going to give you seven things to do with it real quick.
00:04:57.660 | One, make discoveries as you read them and jot them down.
00:05:02.660 | You will make discoveries.
00:05:05.600 | Number two, make connections between the discoveries
00:05:09.940 | as you keep reading and jot those connections down.
00:05:13.100 | This is where insight begins to really snowball.
00:05:17.080 | Regularly, when I do this,
00:05:20.460 | I see this use of the word here in Romans.
00:05:23.380 | I see this use of the word in another part of Romans.
00:05:25.460 | I see this use of the word over in 1 Corinthians.
00:05:28.820 | I see this use of the word over in 1 Timothy.
00:05:31.780 | And by that time, I've got five fresh insights
00:05:35.300 | about the reality I'm looking for.
00:05:38.100 | So first, discoveries, second, connections,
00:05:40.300 | make connections, here's third.
00:05:42.340 | Take time to think about these connections
00:05:44.860 | and jot down your ideas.
00:05:47.300 | Many people have the notion that simply reading
00:05:50.240 | and observing the Bible causes insight and wisdom.
00:05:53.860 | It doesn't, it doesn't.
00:05:55.820 | You've got to think, you've got to think over.
00:05:58.860 | Paul said to Timothy, "Think over what I say to you
00:06:01.940 | "and God will give you understanding."
00:06:03.560 | So first, discoveries, second, connections,
00:06:06.400 | third, think, here's number four.
00:06:08.200 | Trace out the leads that you find.
00:06:11.200 | Trace it out into other scriptures
00:06:14.080 | that shed lots of light on the verses.
00:06:17.200 | Now, what I mean here is there are things about your topic
00:06:21.320 | in other passages of scripture that you can't find
00:06:25.440 | by simply the word connections that you just looked up.
00:06:29.360 | You have to spot connections.
00:06:31.520 | The way you see them is, oh, in this verse, it says this,
00:06:35.400 | and now you've got a new word to look up,
00:06:37.040 | and you click on that word and you find five other verses
00:06:40.080 | that didn't have your original word in it
00:06:42.600 | and yet have lots of insights.
00:06:44.520 | Or you might see in a little footnote,
00:06:46.800 | a little A, B, C, or D attached,
00:06:49.000 | a footnote that says,
00:06:50.560 | "Look at these verses about this issue."
00:06:53.560 | So trace out the leads that you find.
00:06:56.360 | So number one, discoveries, number two, connections,
00:06:59.260 | number three, think, number four, trace,
00:07:01.760 | and here's number five, write these things down.
00:07:05.040 | Be writing, writing, writing,
00:07:06.520 | either in a file on your computer
00:07:10.160 | or like I do often with a folded half sheet of paper
00:07:13.400 | that I'm doodling on, I'm constantly writing
00:07:16.560 | because when I write,
00:07:18.360 | I'm able to hold more things in my head.
00:07:20.960 | Without writing, everything tends to be a muddle.
00:07:23.480 | It's just so complex, and so people that aren't writing
00:07:27.280 | really aren't gonna go very far
00:07:29.000 | in bringing a coherent picture of some reality.
00:07:32.400 | So if you're really serious,
00:07:33.560 | that you want to discover what the writers at Desiring God
00:07:37.520 | and the writers at Gospel Coalition are saying,
00:07:39.960 | you gotta do your own writing.
00:07:41.720 | You can't just hold it in your head.
00:07:43.760 | Only Einstein could do that.
00:07:46.320 | Einstein, they said, could look at the same thing
00:07:49.240 | from 118 different angles in a few weeks.
00:07:52.120 | Well, no way could I ever do that.
00:07:55.200 | I've got to write down those 118 things on paper
00:07:58.680 | if I'm ever going to do it.
00:08:00.880 | So that's the number five, writing.
00:08:02.900 | Number six, consult now, now,
00:08:07.100 | some commentaries or Bible dictionaries
00:08:09.360 | or books written on the topic
00:08:11.280 | because now, because of all that you've seen,
00:08:14.160 | you will be a much more competent dialogue partner
00:08:17.440 | with this author, and you will have a lot more confidence.
00:08:20.960 | You'll know the kind of questions to ask.
00:08:22.920 | And the last thing I would say is preserve.
00:08:25.480 | Preserve what you've seen,
00:08:26.920 | either in the document and the file
00:08:28.980 | that you're creating online
00:08:30.960 | or a piece of paper you're gonna file somewhere
00:08:33.600 | because how sad to do an hour or two or three
00:08:36.960 | of study on something, have lots of wonderful insights,
00:08:40.220 | and a week later or a year later,
00:08:42.000 | you don't remember anything that you saw.
00:08:44.940 | That's really, really sad.
00:08:46.400 | That's bad stewardship, so preserve it.
00:08:49.800 | But underneath those seven pointers is a main point,
00:08:53.560 | namely use the word search feature of a Bible program
00:08:58.160 | or use a concordance.
00:09:00.000 | Nothing yields more fruit in a coherent understanding
00:09:03.860 | of a topic across the Scriptures
00:09:06.160 | than looking at all the different ways
00:09:08.480 | the Bible speaks about it,
00:09:10.120 | and you find those with word searches.
00:09:13.640 | - Yeah, painfully simple, as you said at the beginning.
00:09:16.200 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:17.040 | And if you don't have an electronic Bible that you use
00:09:20.040 | or if you don't have an electronic Bible
00:09:21.880 | that you like to use, please check out esv.org, esv.org.
00:09:27.820 | It's a beautifully designed and free online resource
00:09:30.480 | for you to use.
00:09:32.020 | Well, we have run up against the weekend again,
00:09:35.200 | and I encourage you all to subscribe to our podcast
00:09:38.280 | to keep up with us, and you can find our audio feeds
00:09:41.320 | and search our past episodes,
00:09:42.700 | and you can even reach us via email
00:09:44.660 | with a question that you might be facing in your life.
00:09:46.720 | You can do all these things through our online home
00:09:48.400 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:09:52.960 | I am not sure what's next on the docket,
00:09:55.600 | but we plan to return on Monday, Lord willing,
00:09:59.280 | always Lord willing.
00:10:01.160 | And until then, I'm your host Tony Renke.
00:10:02.800 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:10:05.440 | We'll see you on Monday, Lord willing.
00:10:07.980 | (upbeat music)
00:10:10.560 | (upbeat music)
00:10:13.140 | [BLANK_AUDIO]