10 4. How to Study The Bible
4. How to Study The Bible
INTRODUCTION The class will repeat the first Psalm in concert. Name the books of the New Testament, beginning with Matthew and going to Revelation, then from Revelation back to Matthew. Give some thought on bounding each book in the New Testament. By this is meant: name the book that is on the right and the one on the left of the book you are bounding. For instance, take the book of Acts. It is bound on the left by John and on the right by Romans. Think of the position of each book in this way and be able to give the location at once when asked.
(A suggestion: In class work, such drills as the above should be given in each class meeting until all the books of the Bible have been learned and can be at once located. The teacher should also suggest from time to time Scriptures to be committed to memory and recited in the class.) THE RIGHT MOTIVE IN BIBLE STUDY In Psalms 25:14 we have these words: "The friendship [or secret] of Jehovah is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant." This has reference to a fear that comes from love and respect. If we are eager to know his will and live it, we can learn it.
Christ says: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." He also says: "If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself." (See Matthew 5:6; John 7:17.) In 2 Timothy 3:7 it is declared that there are some "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." The trouble with them is given in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 : "Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." We must love the truth and desire to live it, otherwise a strong delusion or working of error God will send us. In 2 Peter 3:16 the writer speaks of "some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction."
Christ gives the full secret in John 8:31-32, when he says: "If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Jesus here introduces the idea of actually abiding in and living what you already know of the truth as the guarantee of learning more of the truth. And this is the thought in John 7:17. I give you the translation from "The Twentieth Century New Testament": "If anyone has the will to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching is from God, or whether I speak on my own authority." our motive is wrong if we do not desire to learn in order to live as God’s word directs us. If this is our motive, we are living, we are doing, what we already know of God’s will. This is the road that leads us into a knowledge of God that saves. "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (See John 17:3.) This knowledge comes from living God’s word. "And hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (See 1 John 2:3-4.)
Get the point here:True knowledge of God and his Son come from actually living their teaching. If we say we know them when we have not lived their teaching and tested it, we lie. In 2 Timothy 2:15, Authorized Version, we have this command: "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing [or handling aright] the word of truth."
Whatever God has tried to tell us is of vital importance to man. Let me impress upon the student to never allow himself to pass by lightly anything God has tried to get him to see. There is a reason for God’s wanting him to see a certain thing, else he would not try to tell him.
We want now to observe how hard Jehovah has tried to get us to see the difference between: THE OLD COVENANT AND THE NEW COVENANT A new covenant promised. The prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31-34 was made about six hundred years before Christ was born: "Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." The covenant that was made when God brought Israel out of Egyptian bondage was the one written on the two tables of stone and known as "The Ten Commandments." Read 1 Kings 8:9; 1 Kings 8:21 : "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when Jehovah made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt." "And there have I set a place for the ark, wherein is the covenant of Jehovah, which he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt." This prophecy is declared fulfilled. Turn to Hebrews 8:6-13 and you will find, in A.D. 60, that this very prophecy made by Jeremiah six hundred years before Christ was born is declared to be fulfilled. The priesthood changed, making it necessary to change the law.Hebrews 7:12 says: "For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law." We are under a different law from what they had under the old covenant.
Christ is mediator of a new covenant.Hebrews 9:15 : "And for this cause he is mediator of a new covenant." Read all of these verses and you will see that this new covenant could not go into effect until after our Lord’s death.
Christ was born and lived and died under the old covenant.Galatians 4:4-5 says: "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." For this reason Jesus was circumcised when eight days old according to the law (Luke 2:21); his mother offered "a pair of turtle doves or two pigeons" for her purification when Christ was thirty-three days old according to the law (Luke 2:22-24; Leviticus 12:1-8); he observed the Passover (Luke 22:14-15), also the Sabbath, and taught that not a "jot" or a "little" should pass from the law till it was fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-18); hence, he had those whom he had cleansed to offer what Moses commanded for their cleansing. He would not allow them to disregard the least command of the law. (Matthew 5:17-18; Mark 1:40 The law was fulfilled when he died on the cross.Colossians 2:14 : "Having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross." (Read also Ephesians 2:14-15.) And while dying on the cross he said: "It is finished." (John 19:28-30.) The double purpose for which Christ came. In Hebrews 10:9 we have the words of the Psalmist fulfilled in Christ: "Then hath he said, 10, I am come to do thy will. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second." The second covenant, or new covenant, could not be established until the "first covenant" was removed. This was our Lord’s first work—viz., fulfill and end the first covenant that he might establish the second. The law was to last until the second covenant was established. In Galatians 3:23-25 we have these words: "But before faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. So that the law is become our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor." Could anything be plainer than this? The apostles were made ministers of the new testament. Study 2 Corinthians 3:6-14. Paul declares: "Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant." He says they were not made ministers of "the letter," referring to "the ministration of death, written and engraver on stones." Note that he used the expressions, "passeth away," "done away in Christ," in speaking of the old covenant. The law itself taught that when the new covenant was established we were then to live under the new and not the old. Study Galatians 4:21-31 in connection with the first five verses of chapter 5. Those who now try to live under the old are in rebellion to both the old and the new. And as Paul says in Galatians 5:4 : "Ye are severed from Christ; ye are fallen away from grace." The Old Testament taught when the Messiah came we must hear him as our Lawmaker. In Deuteronomy 18:15-19 we have the prophecy of Christ’s coming, and to him we would then have to listen. In Acts 3:22-26 it is taught that this prophecy had been fulfilled and that we must now hear Christ in "all things whatsoever he shall speak unto you." God reaffirmed this in the transfiguration on the mount. (See Matthew 17:1-8.)
"The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17.) Who cannot see the importance of recognizing the difference in the two covenants, that we are now under the new, not the old, and that grace and truth come to us through the new? Under the new covenant we are dead to the law and can be married to Christ. We could never be married to Christ under the old. (See Romans 7:4.)
AN IMPORTANT RULE IN BIBLE STUDY
Notice who is talking.
Notice under what dispensation the talking is done.
Observe what is said and who is being addressed. (Read Matthew 25:31-46.) Who are addressed in verses 3436? Who is speaking? Who are addressed in verses 4143? How would it do to exchange these words and make the latter apply to the former? You get the importance of this rule from this example.