(upbeat music) - Stephanie writes in to ask this. Hello, Pastor John, here's my question. The older women in my life are concerned with the way I study the Bible. They claim I take an academic approach to reading the Word of God, but I'm afraid it's the only way I truly know how to.

Nothing makes me more excited than to connect the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament. With many different colored pens, I highlight and underline verses and scribble notes about what God is revealing to me and whatever blank spaces are available in my Bible. I truly feel this is one of the ways I worship God, and I do feel the closest with Him while reading His Word and watching His divine story unfold page by page.

They say I should be reading my Bible more devotionally, not academically. They worry I am making more head knowledge connections rather than heart-changing connections. Can an academic study of the Bible be God-glorifying? - When I hear a question like this, I want to crawl inside the heads of the older women who have this concern about Stephanie, and I want to crawl inside Stephanie's head as well to see what's really going on there.

It may be that I would wind up being entirely on Stephanie's wavelength and would need then to offer counsel to the older women to have a different attitude, and I will come back to that, or it may be that I would find things in Stephanie's heart and mind that would cause me to caution her not to write off their concern.

So let me try to imagine the best of both of their concerns. And state them so that Stephanie can test where she fits into this. If I give these older women the benefit of the doubt for a moment, I would ask Stephanie if her excitement about connecting the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament might sometimes slip over into being an excitement more with intellectual insights than with God Himself.

Do the older women detect that there is perhaps a slight misplacement? And you need to be careful here because it's not black and white, it's not either/or, it's subtle. A slight misplacement of affections onto the process of discovery more than on what is discovered, or even more delicately, is there a slight misplacement of affections onto what is discovered more than the one who revealed it?

Nobody escapes this danger, nobody. Whatever they're doing, whether they're worshiping corporately or whether they're reading their Bibles, it is possible to delight in the process of giving God praise than in God. Some people enjoy singing praise to God more than they enjoy God. And so we all are vulnerable at these moments.

I'm very encouraged when I hear the way Stephanie talks because when she says, "I truly feel this is one "of the ways I worship God, and I do feel the closest "to Him while reading His Word "and watching His divine story unfold," I say, "Amen, amen." I'm glad she's talking that kind of language.

And the only caution that I might have as I try to imagine what these older women are concerned about is that Stephanie could develop a kind of fascination with the intricacies of redemptive history and with the typological structures of the Bible that may be disconnected from real life for these older women who aren't as fascinated as she is by those discoveries.

And it's so interesting, Tony, just this morning, God is so good, just this morning, I was devotionally plotting my way through 1 Corinthians 10. And in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is chastising the Corinthians for some bad behaviors and warning them. And the way he does it is by using the Old Testament people of Israel in Egypt, in the Exodus, in the wilderness at Mount Sinai, to help the Corinthians have right affections and right attitudes.

And it's this verse six that just struck me. It says, "Now these things took place as types." Now that, it's tupoi in Greek, types. And I think it's translated examples or something like that, which is just fine. But I think Stephanie will know what I'm talking about here because typology is one way that God, in his marvelous running of history, has caused the old and the new to be interwoven.

There are types, any types. And here's what it says. "Now these things took place as types for us that we might not desire evil." And I just stopped and I said, "Paul, you're amazing. You're saying typology is about emotions." That's what he says. "These things took place as types that you might not desire evil as they did." So amazing.

Now here's the question for Stephanie. These women that she's relating to are not excited about types. But I'll bet they're excited about desires for good and hatred of evil and seeing those kinds of changes. And so I'm just suggesting that Stephanie in her excitement maybe needs to work at helping others, like these older women, see the payoff.

The payoff for worship and the payoff for joy and the payoff for godliness. Instead of simply celebrating with many colored pens what she's seen, and these women are not on the same intellectual wavelength, they're not getting excited about the same things, but if you move through that, then they might say, "Okay, if Stephanie can get to worship, if Stephanie can get to joy, if Stephanie can get to godliness, if it's having those amazing effects, then we'll tolerate her strange way of studying the Bible." But let me close by giving Stephanie the benefit of the doubt here.

This is maybe not what she's bargaining for. Like, here I am cautioning her, and maybe I need to be cautioning these older women. So that's what I'm gonna end with. Give her the benefit of the doubt for a moment, and let me caution these older women who are minimizing, it seems, the importance of what Stephanie's doing.

The answer to Stephanie's question is yes. Can an academic study, and I might suggest to her, use another word beside academic, like serious or rigorous or detailed. The very word academic turns some people off. So I know what you mean. Can an academic study of the Bible be God-glorifying?

Answer, yes. You're an example of it, and I hope that I am too. I want to glorify God by serious, rigorous, detailed study of the Bible that owns up to all that God put there. But here's something we both need to remember. Some people are wired, just by God, in their genetic makeup, that if they themselves make that effort at detailed study, their heads shut down their hearts.

It does. I mean, as soon as they try their best to think hard, they start feeling cold. And for those of us for whom it works exactly the opposite, we just shake our heads and say, no, no, it doesn't work that way. And they say, well, it does work that way.

Now, if you put yourself in their shoes, if it works that way for them, they're almost inevitably going to assume it's gonna happen to you too, which is why their suspicion is built in to that kind of study, because it's their experience. And what we have to do, the best way forward, I think, and this is what I tried to do for 33 years in preaching, 'cause I did that kind of study, behind my sermons.

And I knew that there were hundreds of people out there who, if I dumped all my study on top of them, they would say, that is so boring. The best way forward that I know, and this is my advice to Stephanie, is that the one who is studying most rigorously also has to love most rigorously.

In other words, if others think that our study will damage us, we must prove to them that it does the opposite. So Stephanie should out-love them, out-rejoice them, out-repent them, and out-serve them. And how will they then be able to say that study is hurting her if all the evidence is in the other direction?

- That is good and balanced counsel, Pastor John, thank you. And thank you, Stephanie, for raising the question. We need your questions, so please send them in to us. You can send those questions in to us, and you can listen to old episodes, and you can see a constantly updated list of our most popular episodes of all time.

You can do all of that from our landing page at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, we are all in need of saving. We know that much, but what are we saved for? That's a question that's a little more complex, but no less important, and John Piper will explain what we are saved for tomorrow.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (silence) (silence) (silence)