How to Study the Bible

so second Timothy chapter 2 and we're going to spend a little bit of time understanding how to study the scripture so second Timothy chapter 2 verse 15 study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth father thank you for this time thank you for the opportunity to look into your word may you use this time for your glory it's in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray amen second Timothy 2:15 is the only verse in the Bible that actually commands you to study the Word of God and so given the importance of that verse we need to pay careful attention to what it tells us as to how to study the Word of God so it says study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed then notice the last phrase rightly dividing the word of truth if we're commanded to rightly divide the word of truth it means the Bible must have divisions in it so let me tell you something that this is what I was taught many years ago when I was first Saved I was given the understanding that the Bible is God's love letters to men and because the Bible is God's love letters to man you can simply pick any old place in the Bible anywhere you go and it is applicable to you now you should think very carefully about that all the Bible is true 100% of the Bible is true but it's a very different thing to say that all of the Bible is applicable to you today so for example did Noah have to build an ark and the answer is he did do you need to build an ark today you don't because what happened after the flood what happened after the flood does God put a bow in the clouds and promised never to flood the earth again so is it necessary today to build an ark it's not was it necessary for Noah it was do you need to offer an animal sacrifice for your sins today you don't there's no verse that would say that you should are there a bunch of verses in the Old Testament that say that people at that time had to offer animal sacrifices for their sins there are what I want you to simply notice is this when 2nd Timothy 2:15 says study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth there are divisions within the Word of God in other words God never changes god's word is always true but God's command to people at different times do change he does give different commands at different times so get with me Genesis 1 Genesis 9 Leviticus 11 will do something really simple here but just to make the point Genesis 1 verse 29 and God said behold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you it shall be for meat now it talks in that verse about herbs and it talks about trees it's obviously talking about plants and it says at the end of the verse that to you it shall be for meat me-80 the word meat can simply mean food it doesn't always mean animal flesh so in Genesis 1:29 when God creates Adam what was that it was supposed to eat he was supposed to eat a vegetarian diet clearly right he was only given plants now look with me at Genesis 9 Genesis chapter 9 Genesis 9 verse three every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you even as the green herb have I given you all things well the green herb is a reference to what God gave in Genesis 1 but Genesis 9 is the new revelation at that time that every moving thing that liveth shall be meat get Leviticus 11 Leviticus chapter 11 Leviticus 11 verse 1 and the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron saying unto them speak unto the children of Israel saying these are the beasts which he shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth and when you read the rest of Leviticus 11 it's going to say some animals are clean and some animals are unclean now think very carefully about what you've seen Adam is Genesis 1 Noah is Genesis 9 it's only eight chapters later but it is 1600 years later there was a passage of time and God changed his program for men when you go from Noah to Moses that's a period of time and God gave new instructions at that time so let me just ask you this question then as you decide what you should eat today what should you do Genesis 1 Genesis 9 Leviticus 11 should you try to do all of them if you pick one of them how do you pick one and on what basis do you pick one get first Timothy 4 first Timothy chapter 4 the correct answer is that the way you should eat today is not Genesis 1 and it's not Genesis 9 and it's not Leviticus 11 first Timothy 4 verse 1 now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils notice verse 4 for every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with Thanksgiving so today which animals are clean and which animals are not clean according to that verse every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused so 1st Timothy 4 which is during the dispensation of grace gives different instructions than what was given to Moses under the law now what you may be thinking is this you may be thinking well duh that's obvious right in other words Genesis 1 Genesis 9 Leviticus 11 that's all Old Testament everyone knows that's not for us today because the New Testament is for us today and what I'm going to suggest to you is that if you simply take the view that the New Testament is for you today that you're not paying careful attention to what the Word of God says so look with me at Hebrews 9 Hebrews 9 and one of the great confusions today within Christendom is simply the question of what part of the Bible is addressed to us today look at Hebrews 9 verse 15 and for this cause he the he in verse 15 is Jesus Christ from verse 14 and for this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that run to the first Testament they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance so verse 15 establishes that Jesus Christ is the mediator of the New Testament look at verse 16 for where a testament is there must also have necessity be the death of the testator for a testament is a force after men are dead otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth so we know what a testament is a testament is what is commonly called a last will and testament or a will it's the document someone signs that governs what happens to their property at their death now if you think about that so notice carefully what verse 16 says for where a testament is there must also have necessity be the death of the testator does a testament take effect at the moment you sign it obviously not verse 17 for a testament is of force after men are dead otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth if you sign a will it doesn't take effect until you die as long as you're alive you can revoke the will you can revise it you can execute a codicil it's not until death that the last will and testament takes effect so let's consider what we've seen in Hebrews 9 verse 15 said that Jesus Christ was the mediator of the New Testament verse 16 in verse 17 said a Testament doesn't take effect until death well if that's the case if Jesus Christ is the mediator of the New Testament and it doesn't take effect until death what does that tell you about Matthew Mark Luke and John the content has to be Old Testament in nature when you read Matthew 1 is it talking about his death or his birth it's his birth and what Matthew Mark Luke and John are about are they are about by and large the Lord's earthly life nothing without with me just carefully for a minute you have probably been told at one point or another that you should get a red letter Bible someone has probably said that to you and the reason why is the words of Christ are in red letters and so it highlights what's most important Matthew 4:4 says man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is it okay if you just read the read letters is that what God would have you to do or is that a man's teaching I would tell you that's a man's teaching you don't need just the read letters you need all of the scriptures but what I'd encourage you to notice is this the words of Christ that are in red letters there are Old Testament in nature 95% of the time there are some things in red letters that he said after he resurrected but the vast majority of them are Old Testament here with me Galatians 2 Galatians chapter 2 and while you're getting Galatians 2 I want you to just think through something with me people sometimes have the idea well it's all the Word of God it's all something I should apply is that the way you think about things like medicine you know in other words if you if you have the flu should you take chemotherapy drugs right if you have high blood pressure should you take medication for diabetes you know in other words what you should do is you should evaluate what you do in life is you take medicine for the condition that you have and maybe here's a better illustration can I just drive up and down my street look at everyone's mailbox and just grab the things I like is that legitimate I mean that's a felony right but can I tell you that that's what happens in other words what people do as they go through the Bible they find a verse that speaks to them and they say that verse is for me Psalm 37 verse 4 delight thyself in the Lord and He will give thee the desires of thine heart and what people are doing is they're grabbing a verse that they like irrespective of its context because it's not something that is addressed to them now you're in Galatians 2 notice verse 7 Galatians 2 verse 7 but contrariwise when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter some are troubled by that verse because if you say to them there's more than one gospel in the Bible they lose their minds there's not more than one gospel in the Bible well what do you do with that verse it says there's more than one gospel in the Bible it says the gospel of the uncircumcision was given to Paul and the gospel of the circumcision was to Peter now our uncircumcision and circumcision the same thing I mean youyou can't say they are right what is that what is the prefix on mean not if you say something is unusual you are saying it's not usual so if Paul has the gospel of the uncircumcision it can't possibly be the same thing as the gospel of the circumcision if you say that they are then the words on the page don't mean anything and you can just believe whatever you want and what God bothered to preserve is just silliness because we're gonna believe whatever we want but what I would suggest to you is that if God spoke the world into existence out of nothing right that's what he did was it hard for him to preserve his own words for a couple thousand years was that just such a difficult task that he couldn't do it well don't be silly right the Bible you have is what God wants you to have and I'm talking of course about the King James Version it's without there he's preserved it for us so if the Bible says there's more than one gospel and we sort of think there isn't we should change our thinking so we believe what the verses say we shouldn't change the verses to suit our preferences we should change our thinking to match what the Word of God says I'm gonna give you an example get-get second chronicles seven second chronicles chapter seven cent chronicles chapter seven verse 14 this is a verse that is one of the most widely used verses today as to how people should pray 2nd chronicles 7:14 if my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land now you can see why that verse would appeal to people because they look out at their country and they say things are a mess and what we need is we need God to heal our land and so we're gonna claim 2nd chronicles 7:14 if his people will humble themselves and pray and seek his face he'll hear he'll forgive our sin and he'll heal our land and wouldn't that be grand and so people grab verse 14 and they view that as a prayer promise for them today now by the way 2nd chronicles is written where it's over here it's in the Old Testament it's at the same time people were offering animal sacrifices it's at the same time where they were eating a Levitical diet at the same time where there was a little vertical priesthood to the nation of Israel should you have a measure of caution before you just grab that verse and you say that's what God's doing today Lumia vs. our team what does it end with it ends with a semicolon can you imagine that so what people do is they grab a verse that they like and it's not even a full sentence they just grab the part of the sentence they liked is that legitimate I mean it's it's really not we ought to read the whole sentence so now let's go up to verse 12 let's just get the context and the Lord appeared to Solomon by night Solomon of course is the king of Israel and Judah and said unto him I have heard thy prayer now notice what it says and have chosen this place to myself for in house of sacrifice so what it talks about God choosing this place to himself for in house a sacrifice does that mean the United States what does it mean it obviously means Jerusalem right now verse 14 we know is a continuation of verse 13 so we need to read verse 13 to understand how verse 14 operates verse 13 if I shut up heaven that there be no rain or if I command the locusts to devour the land or if I send pestilence among my people see all those if conditions their condition verse 14 verse 14 is based upon those so if you grab verse 14 you need to be dealing with locusts or you need to be dealing with drought or I need to be dealing with pestilence you can't just grab it for any purpose now notice verse 15 now mine eyes shall be open in mine ears a tenth in other words I'll listen to the prayer that is made in this place so let's take verse 15 for what it says in 2nd chronicles 7 what did God actually promise to do he promised to listen to prayers of a certain kind but only if they were made in a certain place right read it again just make sure you see it now mine eyes shall be open in mine ears a tent unto the prayer that is made in this place well if you don't stand in that place what relevance to second chronicles 7 have and the answer is none verse 16 for now have I chosen and sanctified this house what house is he talking about that's the temple that Solomon built then my name may be there forever in mine eyes and mine ear shall be there perpetually hopefully you're grasping the point what people do too often with the Bible is they look at it as a list of phrases and promises and they can just flip through there and they can grab anything that appeals to them and they say that verse is for me because they like what it says I've taken second Chronicles as an example because second chronicles 7:14 is one of those famous verses that christened them today people grab it all the time and they grab that verse and they say if we do this verse it's like a fulcrum right in other words we found this lever and if we pull this lever then we can get God to move right if we humble ourselves and we pray and we seek his face if we do those things then God has to hear from heaven forgive our sin and heal our land right it's a promise there it's a lever we can pull that and we can get the result we want but do you realize frankly how intellectually dishonest it is to grab part of a sentence and say we're gonna use this to move God because the first part of the sentence really doesn't apply to most of what people are talking about and when you read the very following verse it specifically limits that promise to prayer that is made in this place which has nothing to do with North America one of the I'll just give you this encouragement you can decide for yourself what many people do is they read the Bible figuratively they look at the words on the page and they decide what it means based upon what they want what they wanted to say and my encouragement to you would be did you realize how sort of ridiculous that is I mean did God did he write down and preserve his words or did he just write some random thoughts for you to manipulate however you want to accomplish your purposes when he specifically says this promise is limited to prayer made in this place does that mean anything or is it just is it fluff can you just ignore it think of it this way you ready faith cometh by what faith cometh by hearing and hearing by well if that verse is true spoiler it is if faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God then there is no true faith apart from the Word of God in it then that follow if faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God then there is no faith without the Word of God so I'll give you an example I can't tell you how many times this happens someone will stand behind a pulpit and they'll say God has spoken to the leadership of our church and he's told us that what we need to do is we need to build this massive building and so what we're doing is we don't have the money to do that but we're gonna step out in faith based upon what God has told us to do and that's exactly what people do but do you realize how illegitimate that is faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God does proverbs have some verses about not incurring debt it does but what has happened in that instance is people have this vision this idea that they want to do right what I'd like to do is I'd like to build a bigger building I want to increase our ministry so we're going to do this and what we're gonna do is we're gonna step out and we're gonna trust God to accomplish this listen you're not trusting God if what you're doing is you're disobeying his word if his word suggests you shouldn't do it you can't manipulate him by what you decided to do as well I want to do this and I'm gonna claim I'm doing it by faith and now God you need to come along and join me and what I've decided to do it's not faith it's religious manipulation is the point my encouragement you get Ephesians 3 my encouragement to you is to go by what the Word of God says and not to go by man's opinions man's traditions things like that so get Ephesians 3 in Ephesians 3 is the chapter in my opinion that most of Christendom gets wrong and they get it wrong in a way where they don't really understand what God is doing today and so I'll tell you this and then we're gonna look at the verses what Ephesians 3 demonstrates and I'm gonna say beyond doubt is it demonstrates that Paul received new revelation that no one previously had let's see if that's true am i making that up or is that true verse 1 for this cause i paul the prisoner of jesus christ for you gentiles if you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of god notice which is given me so the dispensation of grace was given specifically to paul which has given me to you word how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery what most of Christendom believes is they believe that in early acts all is a rebel he's persecuting the church he's stubborn but once God saves him on the road to Damascus in acts 9 then what Paul does is he immediately starts doing the exact same thing as Peter and if that's the case then what happens is Paul's epistles Romans to Philemon and Peter's epistles and the Hebrew epistles first Peter 2nd Peter James Hebrews for a second and third John they all say the same thing because what Paul was doing as he was doing the same thing as Peter he just came along later because he was stubborn but what does verse 3 say about that how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery what vert what verse 3 means is that Paul received the mystery by revelation from God now think about that carefully with me did Paul need revelation to preach the exact same thing Peter was preaching and the answer is obviously not what Paul was doing prior to getting saved is he was persecuting the kingdom church because of what they taught in other words he was persecuting them on the basis of their doctrine for him to do that he had to know their doctrine obviously right in other words what Paul was doing the reason he's on the roads Damascus is there are these Saints there and Paul thought they were heretics because of what they believed so he went to the chief priests he says give me letters because I'm gonna go persecute these people now think about what that means then when Paul says in Ephesians 3 3 how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery Paul can't possibly be talking about what Peter was doing because Paul wouldn't have needed revelation to know it he already knew it now look at verse 5 which in other ages was not made known well can you say that Paul was preaching the exact same thing as people before him when the mystery in other ages was not made known and obviously it wasn't made known because it hadn't been revealed verse 6 that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel you've got Ephesians 3 yet Matthew 15 Matthew 15 verse 22 so we're looking at Matthew 15 I mentioned earlier that people typically think that what goes on in the Gospels is the same thing as Paul's writings is the same thing as Peters writings it's all the same well look at Matthew 15 verse 22 and behold a woman of Canaan so that's a Gentile woman came out of the same coasts and cried unto him saying have mercy on me O Lord thou son of David my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil but he answered her not a word and his disciples came and besought him saying send her away for she crieth after us verse 24 but he answered and said I am NOT sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel then came she and worshipped him saying lord help me now notice verse 26 but he answered and said it is not meat it's not proper to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs what Ephesians 2 is going to tell you if you read Ephesians 2:11 to 13 it's gonna talk about time past and but now there's a difference between how things operated in time past compared to how they do today in the but now in time past was there a difference between Israel and Gentiles there was Israel was God's chosen people Gentiles were not Ephesians 2 says that Gentiles were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel strangers from the covenants of promise without hope and without God in the world in other words the the the plight of Gentiles was hopeless in time past with the exception that they could join themselves to Israel they could precis into the nation of Israel but if they didn't do that they were without God in the world now verse 26 here can you see it in Matthew 15 it is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast two dogs what the Lord is saying in Matthew 15 26 is he saying this distinction right here who's the children the children is Israel when the woman of Cain and the Gentile woman comes to him for blessing and he says it's not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs what he's saying is the the blessings that I have are intended for the nation of Israel I can't just take them and give them to you you're a Gentile dog and he wasn't sinning when he said that he wasn't lying everything he said was true everything he said was loving everything he said was accurate but that was a correct statement of the circumstance in which the Gentiles found themselves verse 27 and she said truth Lord get the dogs into the crumbs which fall from their master's table she's saying in other words I can be blessed through Israel even though I'm not one of the children of Israel and you'll see in verse 28 that he healed her and I go back to Ephesians 3 verse 6 seasons 3 verse 6 that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs now let me just ask you a question does Matthew 15 sound like the Gentiles are fellow heirs where the woman of Canaan comes to him from help he answers her not a word he ignores her she continues and then what he says to her essentially is if I were to help you it would be the equivalent of taking the children's bread and throwing it to dogs does that sound like she's a fellow heir well it doesn't it's the exact opposite of that now what does that tell you about the idea that what happens in Martha Mark Luke and John it's the same thing as what Paul does you can't possibly believe that if you believe the words on the page see here's here's what you have I mean here's the reality of it during the Lord's earthly ministry he says a number of times you make the Word of God of none effect through your tradition and here's what happens people and churches and denominations what they have is traditions they have ways that they think about things they have pet doctrines they believe and what happens most of the time is when there's a verse that disproves their doctrine you know what they change they change the verse and not their doctrine because they want to hold on to their doctrinal tradition and what people generally do what Christendom generally does is the whole New Testament Matthew to Revelation says the same thing and the only problem with that is that the verses don't say that the doctrinal statement may say that the seminary may say that the radio preacher may say that but the Bible doesn't so you have a choice don't you you either go by the Word of God or you go by man's tradition get Ephesians three verse eight Ephesians three verse eight unto me Who am less than the least of All Saints is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ get Matthew 10 we're coming back to Ephesians beget Matthew 10 Matthew chapter 10 verse 5 these twelve this is the twelve apostles these twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them saying go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel now Paul is not one of the twelve when the Lord in Matthew 10 when he sends out the twelve he specifically says to them go not into the way of the Gentiles and the reason he told him not to is what were Gentiles at that time they were dogs aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel strangers from the covenants of promise he didn't want them going to Gentiles Paul says in Ephesians 3:8 that this grace was given unto him that he would preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ so his Paul's ministry the same as the twelve I mean he tells the twelve don't go to Gentiles Paul says in Romans 11 13 in as much as I am the apostle of the Gentiles Peter and Paul had different ministries get Ephesians three let's look at verse nine Ephesians three verse nine and to make all men see what is the Fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world have been hid in God now you know from 1st Corinthians 2 that the word mystery means hidden wisdom Ephesians 3:9 says that this mystery that was given to Paul from the beginning of the world was hidden God if that's true which obviously it is did Abraham know it did Moses know it did David know it did Isaiah know it did John the Baptist know it did the 12 know it if it was revealed to Paul and before being revealed it was hidden God from the beginning of the world it is impossible that anyone else knew it and it's impossible then that Paul's preaching is the same as Peters let me just think about this logically for a minute if Peter is preaching something and he has no knowledge of the mystery which he doesn't and then Paul receives that revelation from the Lord that's different they can't be the same and what happens with most of Christendom is an attempt to pretend that those Gospels which are different are actually the same so we started in 2nd Timothy 2:15 about study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth we have to rightly divide the word of truth because God has put divisions within it so I'll close with just this this thought then what would have happened if Noah had said god I hear what you're saying about building the ark but you know I don't think I need to cuz acts 16 says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved if I just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ everything will be fine what would have happened to know if he hadn't built the ark I mean he would have drowned right what would have happened under the Old Testament if someone said well you know I know there's a command in Leviticus to offer an animal sacrifice but you know in the future Jesus Christ is gonna do that so what do I got to do it for I mean I'm just I'm just gonna pass right it's so sort of gross right it's messy so I'm not gonna do that what would have happened to that person they would have died in their sins right in other words you can't just cavalierly ignore what God has said to you and not have a consequence to that when God told Noah to build an ark if Noah had not built an ark you would have drowned the people that were under the Old Testament law if they didn't follow the Old Testament law and do it a commander to them they would not have had faith and they would have died and gone to hell and if today when you decide as well you know what instead of Paul's gospel I'm gonna do Peters gospel I like John the Baptist gospel a lot I'm gonna do that well that's not what God has written to you so just to be clear here's how you get saved today in acts 16 Paul is in a jail in Philippi and the Philippian jailer asks the question that is the most important question you'll ever hear and it is what must I do to be saved and Paul answered that question and he said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved he didn't tell me at water baptized he didn't tell him to give money he didn't tell him to join a church he didn't tell him to keep the 10 commandments what he told him to do was quit trusting in your own righteousness believe what the Lord Jesus Christ did when he died on the cross for your sins you trust the payment that he made for you and God will save you that's how salvation works today it's that simple it's an instant it's not a lengthy process it doesn't take a lot of time all that it takes is you and your inner man you have to decide I'm not gonna trust my own righteousness for salvation I'm gonna trust exclusively in what Jesus Christ did when he died on the cross for my sins you gotta get that right you get that wrong there's no fixing it right you get you die and you believe the wrong gospel what do you is there like a second chance is there like a control undo key where you can like just go back and undo it there's no such thing so you have to get that right during this life let's go ahead and we'll pause there and we'll pick up at 11 o'clock father God thank you for your word we thank you for preserving it for us we thank you for the clarity and simplicity of the gospel we pray all these things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ amen

Channel: Columbus Bible Church

Views: 2,170

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: YZiuTJSov0U

Length: 42min 33sec (2553 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020