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In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches on the importance of reading and understanding the Bible. He emphasizes that the Bible is a clear word that can be understood by everyone who comes to it. He encourages listeners to develop the skill of research and provides five tools to build a research library: a study Bible, commentaries, a Bible dictionary, Old Testament and New Testament surveys, and a systematic theology. Pastor Aaron applies the skill of research to three passages: Psalm 1, Matthew 21:1-11, and Colossians 1:15-20.
Takeaways
Takeaways
- The Bible is a clear word that can be understood by everyone who comes to it.
- Develop the skill of research to deepen your understanding of Scripture.
- Build a research library with tools like a study Bible, commentaries, a Bible dictionary, surveys, and a systematic theology.
- Apply the skill of research to gain deeper insights into specific passages of Scripture.
Sound Bites
- "The Bible is a clear word to us that is able to be understood by everyone who comes to it."
- "Understanding God's Word will still take time and effort."
- "A good study Bible is by far the single best resource that you can have to strengthen your life of reading the Word and applying it to your life."
Creators & Guests
What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?
Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.
Aaron Shamp (00:00)
Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children.
Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them in the doorposts of your house and on your city gates. So, like I said, today we are starting a new series, not starting a series, we started it last week. We started a new series last week called How to Read Your Bible. Now, why do a series on how to read your Bible? We teach the Bible every week at Redeemer.
So why talk about reading it, right? Well, because it is important not only that you guys hear the Bible taught once a week on Sunday mornings, but that you are able to read the Bible for yourself every day, every day of the week of the year, and so on. We read here in Deuteronomy that we are taught to be thinking about and soaking in the Scriptures all the time. So think of it this way.
If you want to be a great, if you want to grow in strength, physical strength, right? Whether you want to be able to lift a certain amount, run a certain speed, look a certain way, you're not going to get to that end point by lifting weights once a week. It's just not going to happen. You got to do it more frequently. You got to do it a lot. Similarly, if you want to have a healthy body, that's not going to happen if you eat a good meal once a week and then junk food the rest of the week. You got to eat a good meal every day.
multiple times a day getting that healthy food inside of you. And it's the same thing with our spirit. It's the same thing with our soul. And as we walk to grow closer to Christ, having a strong walk with Jesus Christ and becoming more like him is not going to happen if we only hear the Bible taught one day per week. This is great. This is essential. But you guys need to be able to do it every day on your own as well. So that's why we're doing a series on how to read the Bible, because I don't want you guys to just hear it from me.
but for you to be able to actually practice it yourself throughout the week. So, we do this because we believe the Bible has the power to transform lives, right? Not only listening to it on Sundays, but being in it day by day as individuals and in community through your groups. By being in Scripture regularly, it transforms our lives to make us look more like Christ and to grow more into the people that He desires us to be. So, that's why we do this series.
So the way that I'm doing this week by week is I'm going to give you guys a foundational truth that we believe about the Bible. So something that we believe about what is this book that we hear from weekly that we are to that we're going to read daily. Right. What do we believe about this book? And then introduce to you guys some skills and tools to be able to read it well and understand what it's saying and apply that to your life. One thing I'm doing in a series I'm I'm.
structuring the weeds of the series off of a Bible study method called the Seven Arrows Method. There's a book called Seven Arrows for Bible Readers. It's by two guys, Matt Rogers and Donnie Mathis. If you want to get that book and read it as we go through this series, it's great. Or if you want to get it at the end of the series and read it, that'd be great too. I'm not copying everything from that book necessarily, but we are using those seven arrows to kind of structure the way that we're doing this series. In fact, whenever you guys came in at some point, you should have gotten a bookmark.
that we made for y 'all that has the seven arrows on it to be able to stick in your Bible or hold on to somewhere to remind you of those as we go. And so today we're looking at arrow two. All right. So we're looking at a foundational truth. We're going to talk about that arrow and then we're going to apply it to scripture. So let's begin by looking at this, at the foundational truth that we're going to consider today. So this morning, the Bible is being taught not only in here to adults, but also to children in the back. Right.
Scripture is being taught here and it's being taught back there. We don't have something else different from them. We don't put them back there and just turn on veggie tales, but we teach them the Bible, just like you guys are learning it here. That's pretty cool when you think about it. Not only adults, but children as well. But not only here at Redeemer, but across the katiana, people are hearing the Bible being talked about in different types of churches with different types of people from all different backgrounds, from different educational backgrounds, from different cultural backgrounds, people.
are hearing the Bible taught and it's actually changing their life. But not only in Acadiana, across the country and across the world today, people are hearing the Bible taught not only, you know, like a Cajun, not only a Thibodeau is hearing the Bible taught today and understanding it and it changing their lives, but also men and women in South Korea and in Africa and in Europe and in Colombia and all over the world, men.
women, children from all these different backgrounds and so on, hearing the Bible taught and it is changing their lives. That is pretty incredible whenever you think about it, that this book has the ability to be clear to and to transform the lives of all these people. If we zoom out even farther beyond just today, the Bible has been doing this for centuries, being taught to men, women and children across the globe and they are understanding it. That is phenomenal.
That is incredible whenever we think about it across time, location, cultures and generations. The Bible is understood by all of them. It is being understood and applied to their lives and transforming their lives. What does that mean about this book? What does that mean about the way what we believe? So our first point today, the foundational truth is this, is that the Bible is a clear word.
The Bible is a clear word to us that is able to be understood by everyone who comes to it. We see this in Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6 is talking about the Lord's instructions. So this would not only be the law, like the Ten Commandments, but it will be all of God's words to his people. He is saying, I want you to understand this for yourselves. But also, he says to them through Moses, I want you to teach it to your children. God expects that his word is able to be understood by
the parents, but also the children of those who are hearing the word being taught. It's a clear word, and this goes on throughout generations. We see similar expectations in the New Testament. There's several different times in the New Testament, such as in the Sermon on the Mountain, some other places, where Jesus is in confrontation with either group of people, or it's usually some of the religious leaders, like the Pharisees or scribes.
And he says to them, you know, you guys read the law, you guys read the scriptures, and yet you don't understand this. He's expecting that they are able to read and understand. Now, we might say, OK, but it was different for them, you know, because we live in such a much more modern time. What is happening here and being taught on scripture is so far removed from us.
and time and culture that maybe they can, but it's not the same for us. Keep in mind that whenever Jesus in the Gospels is confronting people and saying, how do you not understand this? Right, so therefore, assuming that you can and should understand, he's speaking to people who are at the least 1000 years separated from the stories of the Exodus, from David, right? These stories, they were centuries separated too.
These are old stories, right? They had a lot of time between them in the New Testament period and what they read about in Genesis and Exodus, a lot of time in the past. And yet, despite all that time being passed, Jesus still says, you should be able to get this. He's assuming it is clear. It was clear back then. It is clear to you right now. And then even us today in 2024, the same is true. It is clear and understandable to us today as well.
So the Bible is a clear word. This is also incredible if we compare it to other religions. You know, a lot of other world religions do not believe that the that the truths that are at the core of their worldview are fully able to be understood or comprehended. Sometimes it's because they are they believe that what is at the core of what they believe about reality, they think that it is something that is just incomprehensible to humans. It is a
mystery that is so profound and deep and separated from our minds that we just cannot get it. Sometimes it's because their foundational truths are things that are just simply illogical, right? Sometimes it is something that is a truth or a doctrine that is there, but it is hidden from us and we are incapable of stepping across that separation to receive whatever that teaching is.
But in Christianity, in the Bible, that's not the case.
Instead of it being hidden away, it is revealed to us clearly so that we can understand it. Right. Once again, across all the time, cultures, generations and so on, it's not hidden. It's revealed. It is given to us. It's given to us in a way that we can understand. It's not incomprehensible, like so mysterious that we will never get it. No, it is given to us plainly in words so that we can grasp it and teach it even to children. The Bible.
a clear word. It is not hidden and incomprehensible, but it is able to be understood and known and impact our lives. Now with that being said, let me give you a couple of qualifications to that understanding or that belief that the Bible is a clear word, because I don't want us to hear that and then have some misunderstanding, okay? So three qualifications here to that doctrine.
The first one is that understanding God's Word will still take time and effort. It will still take time and effort. Sometimes we will come across passages where there is a meaning in the passage, whether that's a story, whether that is one of Paul's epistles, there's a meaning there that can be clearly understood, but that doesn't mean it's simple. That doesn't mean it's just going to jump right off the page at us. You remember last week if you were here,
I read from 2 Peter where Peter says to them, you know, there are people who will twist words of Scripture. And he says, there are people who do that with Paul's letters, too. It's interesting. Peter's referencing Paul's letters. And he's saying people do that with Paul's letters. They might twist his Scripture. And he says to them as well, he says, I know that some of them are hard to understand. Right. Even Peter tells us that some of Paul's letters are very complex. Right. Sometimes. It'll take time. It'll take effort.
Santification, that means the process of us becoming people who look more and more like Christ, is a process that takes time. So many of Jesus's parables about the kingdom of God are taught through the analogy of a seed, right? A mustard seed or some other kind of seed that goes into the ground and then over time it grows. Have you ever had a garden of some kind or planted something? You know that you don't plant a seed and then the next day, boom.
right, a watermelon, whatever else it is. It takes time. That's how the kingdom of God works. That's how God works. And he does the same thing with us. We don't become a Christian and the next day, boom, right, like we're exactly like Jesus. No, it takes a lifetime, right, of God working in us. OK. And a part of that process is us growing in the Word, growing in our understanding of the Word, of our ability to know what God is saying in it and apply it to our lives.
That is a part of that process. So, the ability to read God's Word and apply it well is something that will come over time, right? Like today, I am a much better Bible teacher than I was 10 years ago. And Lord willing, 10 years from now, I'll be way better than I am today. Why? Not because I'm special, but that's just how God works in this. Same thing for all of us. So, it'll take time and effort. Secondly, understanding God's Word will still take some help and resources.
I'm not giving you guys this series so that you no longer need church. We still need church. We still need to hear the Bible taught. We still need, you know, once again, I and every other preacher and Bible teacher out there still needs help. We still need to hear the word taught by other skilled Bible teachers as well. Right. So we still need help from from Bible teachers and those in in church authority. We need help from others.
This is why things like community groups, d -groups are so important because through talking to one another, it sometimes helps us to discover the meaning of Scripture. We need help from other people and we need resources as well. Right? Understanding Scripture, there is a clear meaning there, but sometimes we're going to need the help of other tools to make it clearer to us, easier to understand what is being said in the Word. We're going to talk about that more later.
The third qualification to the Bible being a clear word, understanding God's word will still take the help of the Holy Spirit and a willingness to obey. You need the help of the Spirit. Repeatedly in the Psalms we read the psalmist crying out to the Lord to open the eyes or open the heart to God's instruction. Similarly, in the New Testament, we see passages saying that we need the help of the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds and souls to receive God's word.
It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to to be able to comprehend and truly receive what God's Word is saying to us, right? We need the light of the Spirit in our minds. So we need to be open to the Spirit as well. We cannot just approach this as a pure scholar, right? Doing it all on our own with the rational powers that we have. We do it as as as disciples, as children of God receiving the Spirit of God to help us understand that. But also the second part of that,
A willingness to obey.
I do believe that it will be very difficult for us to truly grasp what Scripture is saying to us if we do not approach it in submission to then obey what it says. This is a point that Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes very strongly in The Cost of Discipleship, something that I, whenever I first read it years ago, honestly kind of, it made me sit back a little bit and I was like, I'm not so sure about this, but over time I've come to understand it and agree with Bonhoeffer. He was right.
that I do believe that understanding, comprehending, receiving God's Word and the gospel also comes with a submission to obey it. If we are approaching it without that posture of submission as judging God's Word by what we think, by what we believe, by what we want to do instead of allowing
that to be switched and God's word judging us, I do believe that if our soul is not ready to receive it, it will be incomprehensible. Right? So the Bible is a clear word, but that does mean several things. It means with it, it'll still take time and effort. We need the help of resources. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. And we need to have the right heart posture whenever we come to it. OK, so the Bible is clear to us. Now, what that means is,
some implications of that is it means that the Bible was clear to the people who were first hearing it. You know, it's interesting and if you've been a Redeemer for a while, maybe this is something that you've already started to understand and to grasp because we always try to do this, but it's interesting whenever you think about it that whatever we read in Scripture was first delivered to an original audience is what we typically talk about in
you know, Bible scholarship. It was originally delivered to a first people like Paul's letters to the Ephesians. There was a group of people that that was for the first time written to, specifically them. Now, there's a message for us as well, but it was originally written to them with a clear message to them. All of the Old Testament stories that we read about, there were people centuries ago who were the first ones to receive those stories, receive those teachings and instructions.
And there was an expectation that whenever they would receive it, it would make sense to them. They could apply it to their lives, you know, change their lives. That's pretty cool. Because I think that a lot of times if we're not taught to think that way, we kind of pick up the Bible. We forget all those people in the past and we just say, well, what does it mean to me? Right. If we understand the Bible is a clear word to people of all times and places, then we recognize, OK, we can't start there with that question. Say, what does it mean to me? We also need to take into consideration the
context of what it was written in. You see, because if I pick up the Bible and ask, well, what does this mean to me? And if what it means to me, what I'm reading in Colossians, for example, I'm reading something in Colossians and I say, this is what it means to me. If that is something different, or if that is something that would have not been understood or applied to the people who first heard the letter of Colossians written to them, there's something off there, right?
God didn't write Isaiah or he did not inspire Paul to write Ephesians or reveal even Revelation so that it would only be understood by people in 2024. But he wrote it to be understood by those first people and also apply to us as well. It was a clear message to them first and it is still a clear message to us today. Therefore, as a guide to understanding our Bible,
We need to make sure that what we believe it's saying matches what it would have said to the first people who heard it. Okay? So, our second arrow of the seven arrow questions that we ask in understanding Scripture is this. What did this passage mean to its original audience? What did this passage mean? Last week, we started by asking the first question, which is, what is this passage saying?
So I taught you guys that you would sit down and observe it, right? You would read it and try to see what is coming out of this and make notes of the interesting things, the questions, the repeated words and themes that were in that passage, right? And you would observe it. But then the next question to ask after that is you start to filter through those initial observations that you had is, well, what did it mean to them, right? To the original readers of Genesis, to...
the people who would have received Romans first, like that church that received that letter. Timothy, whenever he received those letters from Paul in 1 and 2 Timothy, what would it have meant to him? What was Paul trying to say to him? Because then that informs, okay, what he's trying to say to me. Now, of course, there's some work that's to be done in connecting those different messages, right? Because there is a broad...
span of time and culture in between, but at the core, the message will still match. The applications will still come out of the same message being spoken to them. So we need to ask, what did this passage mean to its original audience? With each one of these questions, I'm giving you guys a skill, a skill that you need to develop. I said this last week, I'm not offering you pills, but skills. There's no pill to take to quickly.
and immediately become a great Bible reader. Instead, we need skills to develop over time. So, to answer this arrow or this question, you need to develop the skill of research. Last week, we talked about the skill of observation. This week, the skill of research, of being able to take advantage of resources and tools at your disposal to mine out the meaning of Scripture. We are not architects.
whenever it comes to the Bible, but we are like archaeologists, right? An architect draws from a blank sheet of paper the structure that they have in mind. An archaeologist, on the other hand, digs through the soil or the dirt or whatever they are working through to discover a structure that is already there. When we approach Scripture, we do it like an archaeologist. We are taking the tools at our disposal to dig and look and research to find the message, like that structure that is already
down in there, and so we need to learn how to use the tools that we have. Like an archaeologist would use a shovel, a spade, a brush, and so on. And so we have to develop the skills of research. And so I want to give you guys five tools to build your research library. This is going to be super practical. Five tools to build your research library. If you're taking notes, don't.
rush and get overwhelmed and quit listening to take notes, we're going to post these on social media later this week. So make sure you're in our Facebook group, you're following us on Instagram, so you can get these in our post. So five tools to build your research library. First, and I kind of ordered these in terms of not greatest to least necessary, but most essential. So our first one here, if you came to me and you asked what
If I'm going to have one thing, just one thing, right? I've got a limited budget, a limited time, whatever it is. And so, I just need one tool to read the Bible well. What would that be? So, that's kind of the order that I'm listening these by. So, first, a study Bible. A good study Bible is, in my opinion, by far, like the best bang for your buck here. It is by far the single best resource that you can have to strengthen your life of reading the Word and applying it to your life.
What a study Bible is, is it is a Bible just like this one, right? But it comes with all these extra notes inside of it. So, you know, in a normal Bible like this, you have the text from top to bottom. But in a study Bible, the text is only going to go from like top to about three quarters down, and you're going to have all these notes at the bottom that are referencing what's happening up here that give you in very brief, bite -sized format, some helpful things to know about...
what they meant by this word up here, or maybe a little bit of background about something that's happening here, so it'll help you to grasp the text a little bit deeper. More than that, a good study Bible, at the beginning of every book, is going to have a little introduction. So, at the beginning of Philippians, for example, it'll tell you about the author, it'll tell you about the original audience, it'll tell you about the reason that the author wrote it, so it'll tell you, okay, so this is Paul, right? Okay, that's obvious, his name is in there.
It's going to tell you a little bit about Paul. It's going to tell you a little bit about the Philippians at that time. It's going to tell you why Paul wrote that letter to the Philippians and some of the big themes that we see in there and so on. But it's going to do it in maybe two or three pages, really, like I said, brief, bite -sized format. Some study Bibles also have extra articles thrown in here or there. And so a good study Bible, guys, is...
Don't overwhelm yourself too much with the tools I'm going to give you after this. If you just need one simple thing to start with, a good study Bible, what do I recommend? I recommend two that I think are both fantastic. You can't go wrong with either. One is the CSB that stands for Christian Standard Bible, the CSB Study Bible. Excellent Study Bible. I have a copy. Also a copy of the ESV Study Bible. ESV is just another translation, the English Standard Version. ESV Study Bible.
Their names are exactly what I just said, right? They don't have a different name. And they are both excellent tools. Both of them, I'm pretty sure the CSB as well. The CSB also has a lot of different other types of study Bibles available that may be specialized kind of like in one area more than the other. That I'm sure also great as well. But if you just want like that one awesome general resource, the CSB study Bible or the ESV study Bible, the price is a little bit steeper than what you pay for like a Bible like this one. But trust me, so.
worth it. Okay. So, that's the first tool, study Bible. A second tool to build your resource library would be commentaries. Commentaries are going to be like that text you get at the bottom of a study Bible, but a lot longer, all right? It is going to be a whole book that's about one book of the Bible, right? So, a whole book that's on the Gospel of Matthew, a whole book that's on Exodus, and so on. And it's going to go into a lot deeper format telling you about the background, the meaning,
Here's what people have kind of argued about this passage over time and so on. Commentaries can get very technical to where, you know, they like I went to seminary, some of them that still go over my head too. They get super deep into the language issues and so on. Or they can be on the other hand, what we call very devotional. What you guys want to look for is a commentary that's devotional. You want to look for one that's not going deep into the original language, that's not going super deep into the grammar.
That stuff is great, right? But just for our daily reading of Scripture, or even if you're taking like a month or two deeper into a passage, right? It's just it's not directly applicable. Those are resources that are made for scholars who are writing papers and doing PhDs and so on. OK, you look for something that's a little bit more on the devotional side, right? That's written for us normal people. If there is one series that I can recommend to you, it would be a series that is called The Bible Speaks Today.
It's a series that I've used in almost every single sermon series we have done over here at Redeemer. When we're preparing to go through a New Testament book or Old Testament book, I check to see what volume out of the Bible Speaks Today series they have for it, because it is like nine and a half times out of 10 amazing. All right. It'll give you some good background information, right? But not overwhelm you.
by getting deep into the weeds of the language or the history or the archaeology and so on, and then give you a super clear message that applies to today. Like I said before, it has always been the best resource for my preaching. And if I can recommend something to you that you can read this and grasp it without a seminary degree, that's what I recommend. So once again, it's a whole series. They have a volume for every book of the Bible.
The series is called The Bible Speaks Today. The general editor was John Stott before he died. So once again, we'll post this stuff later. Third tool, a Bible dictionary. So this is just like a normal dictionary that goes through, that has different entries and terms that gives you an explanation. We call them Bible dictionaries. They're really, they work more like an encyclopedia. So you remember in an encyclopedia, you open up to a section on Julius Caesar, right? Entry for Julius Caesar.
it tells you a bunch of stuff about him. A Bible dictionary does the same thing, but you can look up Bethsaida. You're reading in the Bible, and it talks about Jesus and his disciples going into a town called Bethsaida, and you ask yourself, what was Bethsaida? In a Bible dictionary, you can go look it up and read about it, and it'll give you a little bit of information. Or maybe it is you're wrestling with questions about a doctrine. It'll have some information about doctrine in there. It'll have information about...
themes in Scripture, places, people, and so on. A great Bible dictionary is an amazing tool. I recommend the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, which is edited by Mark Allen Powell. Phenomenal dictionary. I've used a few different ones, and this one is always just, it's not overly long. I like something that can get to the point while giving me what's the most relevant information. This one gets to the point, gives you the most relevant information, it's trustworthy, and so on.
This is so much better than just Googling your questions. Do not be careful with online resources. There are some great ones, and there are some that you should not trust. There are some that are good, but they're outdated. If one of the things we're looking for from these tools is historical information, for example, and you're reading a resource that was written in 1820, well, in 1820, it might have been great.
But in the 200 years or so since then, we've discovered some more things because the history, the work of history and archaeology and scholarship is continuing. And so, we've learned a lot more. Maybe we've clarified some things. Maybe we've tweaked and changed our understanding of some things. And so, you want to have what's the most up to date. Okay? So, that's why be careful with resources online, obvious things like Wikipedia, even online Bible dictionaries.
They might not be bad, but maybe they're just outdated, you know, and you can get better historical cultural information for something that's more up to date. Fourth tool is an Old Testament, New Testament survey. If you remember, I said, wherever you get a good study Bible, at the beginning of each book, they're going to tell you a little bit of the background of that book. What an Old Testament, New Testament survey does is it does that same thing, but just with a lot more information. In a study Bible, you're getting, you know, candies. They have like the king size and the fun size.
I've never understood that because to me the big ones are a lot more fun. Maybe that's just because I have a bad sweet tooth. But the study Bible is giving the fun size a little bit. An Old Testament and New Testament survey is giving you the king size. It's giving you a lot more information. I would recommend two books. I'm sorry, two books. They basically have the same title. It's just An Introduction to the Old Testament by Trimper Longman and Raymond Dillard. And the other one would be For the New Testament, An Introduction to the New Testament by Don Carson and Douglas Moore. Okay.
So that's four. Study Bible, commentaries, Bible dictionary, surveys. The last thing that I'll recommend is a systematic theology. Okay, you know, you might say, hold on, I thought you were trying to teach how to read the Bible without going to seminary and now you're talking about systematic theology. Hold with me here. Like I said, if you just want one thing, get the study Bible. You can't go wrong. But if you want to over, and you don't have to do this all at once, you can do this over years, right?
At some point, I think it's a worthy investment to get a good systematic theology. Here's why. You might read something one day in James or in Daniel or somewhere. You might read something in the Bible one day and you're trying to understand what this passage is talking about and you start to pull out a meaning and you say, okay, I think this is what it's saying. I think it's saying that sometimes God changes his mind. Let's just say that, right?
Sometimes God changes his mind, okay? That's what this passage seems to be saying. But then down the road, you're reading, you know, in Hebrews where it says that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And you remember how you were reading that passage somewhere else, and what you thought it was saying was that sometimes God changes his mind, but now this seems to contradict that. Oh, no. Is this a contradiction in Scripture? Right? Does this crumble?
my reliability in God's Word? If it's full of contradictions, I can't trust in it, I can't rely on it, right? Or is it a problem in our interpretation? You see, what a good systematic theology is going to do is it's going to help you to smooth out those things and to protect yourself from some of those bad interpretations because what a systematic theology is going to do is, let's say you're reading a passage and you think it's saying something about
condition of man. You think it's saying something about salvation. You think it's saying something about God or Jesus' second return. You can take out that systematic theology and what it's going to do is it's going to tell you, here's what the whole Bible says about that. Okay? Here's what the whole Bible says about God. Here's what the whole Bible says about the second return, about salvation, so that we can make sure that our reading of one passage is matching what the whole Word says.
That's what the word systematic means in systematic theology. It is taking a topic and saying, what does the whole scripture teach about this? Lastly, I would recommend the book called Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem. We're going to post all these resources for you guys later so you can take advantage of them. You can see the skill of research. I don't want you guys to get overwhelmed. I'm trying to make this as brief as I can, but...
but give you guys a lot of things to just take with you and work through and apply years down the road. It's something that takes time. Start with just that one simple tool, grow from there, and then add more tools to your library as you go and as you grow more and more comfortable with the skill of research. Because research is a skill. It's something that we can all do. It's just something we have to grow in over time. Let's talk about applying the second skill before we go.
So every week we are applying the arrows that we're asking and the skills that we're learning to the same three passages, a passage from Psalms, a passage from Matthew, and a passage from Colossians. So in the first passage in Psalm 1, we read this last week, in Psalm 1 it is talking about how happy is the one who does not walk in the way of sinners, sit, or, oh, I need Gideon. Gideon memorized and recited that Psalm 1, 1 a couple weeks ago, and now I'm forgetting it.
But, oh wait, hold on, I have it bookmarked. In Psalm 11, it says, how happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers? That's what we talked about, how we can read this and observe what it has to say. So, let's say you've moved on to the second arrow now and you're asking, you know, some of those things of what did this mean to the original audience? And so, you take out your study Bible. I told you guys this last week, you know,
I'm holding on to this commitment. I'm not going to use any resources that I don't think are also available to you for this whole series. Okay. So I want you guys to see how all of us in here, even if you don't have a seminary degree, you can do this. Okay. So I took out my CSB study Bible and I looked at what I had to say about Psalm 1. And what it talks about in there is whenever it says, how happy is the one who does not walk in and so on. Right. In other translations, it says how blessed is the one who does not walk.
stand or sit and so on. We might read that and say, okay, what does that mean? Like, how blessed does it mean that the person who doesn't walk with sinners, stand with scoffers, and so on, will be more blessed by God? Is that what it's saying here? When the notes of the study Bible, it explained, whenever it talks about how happy, that word happy or in other translations blessed, what it means is it's speaking to a state inside the person.
It's talking about the joyfulness that we have when we walk according to what God has taught us to do. In other words, it is the state of joy and happiness that we have because we have been blessed by God. So Psalm 1 is not telling us that the more that we obey, the more we will be blessed. No, it means that whenever we are blessed by God, so we obey Him in return, that there is joy in that obedience.
You learn that in a study of Bible, right? You guys can go pick that up in Mardell or Barnes and Noble today. That's what it says. And so, we would say the happiness described is the joyful result of one who's been blessed by God. Boom. Answer the second question, right? Isn't that great? And there's even more in there, right? Let's look at Matthew 21. In Matthew 21, 1 through 11, it is describing Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week before he is...
before he is crucified, right? And so it says, when they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples. So he sends two of his disciples ahead to go get a donkey, bring it to him, and then he rides the donkey into the city. You guys remember that story. I'm not going to read the whole passage every week. What we read in our study Bible, it says, you remember last week, if you look at verse five, it says, tell daughter Zion, see your king is coming riding on a donkey and so on.
and we recognize, oh, that's a quote from the Old Testament. In Error 1, you're answer to that question, oh, there's a quote from the Old Testament here in the marginal notes. It tells you that's a quote from Zechariah. Okay, that's pretty cool. There's a quote from Zechariah in here. Well, now we move on to Step 2, and you're reading from your study Bible. The study Bible also points out to us that within Zechariah, it talks about the significance of the Mountain of Olives to the arrival of the Messiah.
Oh, okay. So Matthew tells us Jesus arrives at the Mount of Olives and then he sends his disciples into the city to get a donkey that he's going to ride into Jerusalem. And Matthew tells us explicitly he did that to fulfill what was said in Zechariah 9. But him being at Mount of Olives, remember to people who were steeped in the words of prophecy would also remember another passage in Zechariah 14.
talked about the significance of the Mount of Olives to the arrival of the Messiah. Matthew was speaking to his original audience here of, look, Jesus is the Messiah, right? How incredible is that? We read that right there in our study Bible notes. So, in answer to that second question, we will say Jesus sent his disciples from the Mount of Olives, which was connected to the Messiah in Zechariah 14, in addition to Zechariah 9 being quoted. Lastly, we looked at
Colossians 1, 15 through 20. And whenever we read it last week, I pointed out to you guys, just wherever you observe this, on the surface, they're not getting too deep. And you look at it, you recognize that just in the text, the way that it was printed, that the words are different. You can see it here. We have normal paragraphs. And then all of a sudden, the text moves into stanzas. And so if you're reading this and you're taking notes, you would just say, interesting. The text changes.
Well, then you pull out your study Bible, and the study Bible tells us that scholars believe that verses 15 through 20 in Colossians chapter 1 is not actually, or should I say, wasn't actually written by Paul, right? But instead is an early church hymn, or maybe even an early church creed that Paul was then quoting to them. Paul was pulling from an early church hymn that they would have been aware of.
and then quoting it to them here in Colossians chapter one. And so, once again, that's just another way that digging into even a resource like just a good study Bible, without all that stuff, just a good study Bible, can help to give us a deeper meaning of the things that we are reading and the stories and passages and teaching and prophecies that we find in Scripture. Okay. Let me close today with this prayer that comes from the Book of Common Prayer.
about our reading in the Word. And the Book of Common Prayer says,
who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen. And so Lord, we do pray in response to this that you would help us to grasp, to inwardly digest and to meditate, to chew upon the words that we find here in scripture, that you might illuminate our minds to what they are saying to us so that we could have a true understanding of...
who you are, what you have done, and what you will do in our lives, and that it might transform our lives. Lord, for anyone here who hasn't been in your Word, I ask that you inspire them this morning to start reading in your Word. For anyone in here who has been doubtful that they can actually be changed by your Word, help them to see that there is power to transform here. Lord, let us be a people who not only hear and receive, digest the Word once a week, but every day of our lives, morning,
midday and evening, whether we're coming and going, whether we're sitting in our house, whether we're walking on the road, as it says in Deuteronomy, so we might be people who look more like Jesus Christ, who can then spread the message of the good news to the world around us. We pray these things in your name. Amen.