Does anyone in here want to be rich?
How about famous? A show of hands for those of you who'd like to be famous.
Okay, on a related note...
How many of you have your own bible?
How many of you read it regularly?
Joshua 1:8
8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Don't worry, this isn't going to be a message about how you should read your bible more. Just know that its a given that reading your Bible is very much important.
Instead I want to focus tonight on getting the most of your reading.
Who here has been sitting there, minding your own business, reading your bible and this verse just pops out at you and your all "that's cool." or "that doesn't make any sense." Or your sitting in church (or youth group) and your pastor throws out this verse that makes you wonder if that really means what he thinks it means, or you don't really see the connection between one thought and the next. What do you do then?
Well, I don't know about you guys but I suppose a great deal of the time I, at best, just circle the verse in my notes and move on. Because when I'm cleaning out the back of my bible I totally reread my notes, and when I see that circle I know exactly what it means right... window cleaning story? I don't know if it fits here....
So, we are called, even commanded, to study the bible, to meditate on it, to do our best to live by what it says, but we don't always understand what it says. What then?
What kinds of tools do we have to help us understand the bible?
1. Teachers (parents, pastors, mentors)
2. Commentaries and Devotionals
3. Dictionaries, Concordances, Cross-references
Now, when I was a child, I spoke as a child, and I acted like a child... anyway, I was part of a homeschooling program that believed (much to their credit) that all learning should be related back to the bible, so each month we'd have a key verse that would relate in some way to whatever we learned in various topics such as language arts, history, medicine.. .etc etc. But the important part is that at the beginning of each month we would sit down and make a "Meditation worksheet" where we'd take that key verse and go through a series of steps in order to gain understanding and to better learn what that verse meant.
Meditate on it day and night
Now this, I think this is bible study 101. This is how I first learned to study the scriptures.
Note that some of the steps may make you go "what seriously? How is that going to help?" But at the end of the day its God that grants each of us wisdom and understanding if we diligently seek it, and like what it says in Joshua when it says to "meditate on it day and night." The idea behind meditation is that its something that is rattling around in our heads all day long.
1. Copy the passage
2. Ask questions
3. Word Studies (definations, other uses of the same word)
4. Look up cross-references (
5. Write a paraphrase (write it in your own words)
6. How will I apply it to my life today and next week.
7. Draw a picture
So, lets dig into a passage of scripture using this methodology and see if we can't gain understanding.
Luke 5:33-39
33 They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”
34 Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?
35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”
36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.
37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.
38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”
