How to Study the Bible

Faith-filled message.

Well, good morning.

And happy new year.

This is your first time here.

You might be wondering why I said that.

If it's because I actually believe the start of the new year is September 1st, not January 1st.

And uh here we are a few days into the new year because so much of life shifts and changes.

Those of us with kids in the home and even our seasons and Labor Day and all of those things as football starts up.

And what happened last night with that game, by the way?

Is anybody from Western Michigan here today?

Do you guys need hugs after the service?

I mean, what the heck?

That was wonky.

I actually went to bed early last night, but I woke up this morning and I could not believe how many people are talking about it.

But it's good to have you here.

My name's Tim.

I get the privilege of being one of the pastors and want to say hi to everybody that's streaming in online or watching later on demand.

And as always, uh a warm welcome to all of our friends that are watching from First Lutheran and Alginac as we are going to be looking at this whole idea of how to read our Bibles today.

Does anyone actually struggle with reading your Bible?

Would you admit that?

Like sometimes you you set out to want to have a private devotional time, a daily time with the Lord, and it always seems that distractions come up.

It always seems like there's maybe another book to grab or another email to answer or another social media app to scroll through.

And it's interesting to see how difficult it is for us to open our Bibles.

And then when we do, when we read the pages of scriptures, oftentimes we're confused by what's in the Bible.

Anybody ever have that experience?

So you open it and you're like, what is this?

You're like, that's why I come on Sunday mornings because you'll take passages of Scripture and you'll help explain and bring it to light, which is actually part of the role of a pastor, is to proclaim the Word of God and to help people understand what is in the pages of Scripture.

And the more that I do this, the more I realize it's important for a church to not only proclaim the Word of God on Sunday morning, but also to teach people how to read the Bible for themselves.

And I obviously get to do this for a living, so I spend a lot of time digging into Scripture and knowing how to research Scripture and knowing how to tie things together.

And what a joy for me to be able to share some of that with you today.

And so, just so you know, uh we're all in the same page on this.

Like it's often difficult for us uh to read the Bible and to understand what scriptures are saying.

And so I hope that you walk away from today's message, challenged and encouraged, and most importantly, realizing that this is the way that God speaks to us and how much he would love nothing more than to help you develop that daily habit of Bible reading.

This is what the Bible says it says the Word of God, our Bibles, are actually living and active.

So I want you to think about that for a moment.

It's not like anything else written on the planets, it's not like any other book that you have on your bookshelf, or maybe you're one of these people that listens to audiobooks, or anything else that you read or comprehend.

The only thing on planet earth that has the ability to speak into your life, into your soul, is God's word.

That's what the scripture is saying.

And it's sharper than a two-edged sword, and it and the reason it does that is because it pierces our hearts.

It actually has the ability to convict us and to show us if there's things in our lives that are not pleasing to God, and if there's things that maybe we need to give up.

At the same time, it also shows us how much we are loved and valued by our Heavenly Father and everything that He has done for us through His Son, Jesus Christ.

And so it has this incredible ability to speak into the deep parts of our lives and to help us draw close to our God.

It also tells us this is that all scripture is breathed out by God.

And so as you open your Bible, as you read your Bible, God is literally speaking to you.

He's, in a way, he is breathing on you his life-giving message.

And not only is he doing that in that moment, we also know that our Bibles are flawless.

There's no errors in Scripture.

The Bible tells us that.

He, God, is a shield to those who take refuge in him.

And here's the caution for all of us: is that we do not add to his words.

Instead, when we go to our Bibles and we open our Bibles, we allow God to dictate to us how we are to live our lives.

Not the other way around.

And unfortunately, there are churches and entire church denominations that have moved away from this.

That now believe that the Bible is open to what they would say is cultural interpretation.

And so that there's things in the Bible that don't apply to us 2,000 years since Christ died on the cross anymore.

And so now it's the role of the pastor to kind of assess the times, and that they now have the ability to interpret the scriptures according to what they think it should say.

And I would submit to you that's a very dangerous place to be.

In fact, I never want to be in that place.

I want to be a church that goes to God's word and allows God's word to give us the boundaries and the guidelines for how we live our lives.

And so here at Shepherd's Gate, we would say that the Bible is authoritative, that it has the authority to speak into our lives and dictate how we are to live as his children.

That it actually has everything that we need for salvation.

And sure, we have questions, sure we have doubts, sure, there's there's things that maybe we don't fully understand or questions that aren't answered in the Bible, but God has given us everything that we need for our lives.

Again, it's living and active.

And of course, all of Scripture ultimately points to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And that's important.

That's important for us to know that.

From a historical standpoint, uh, the Bible was actually written over 1,500 years.

Think about that.

What a collection.

From 40 different authors in three different languages, and yet you put all of that history together, and it still tells one unified message from beginning to end, Genesis to revelation, of who Jesus is and what it is that He's come to do for you and for me.

Now, it wasn't actually that long ago that our church started going through books of the Bible.

In fact, the first book that we ever went through was Nehemiah in 2018.

And since then, uh throughout the years, we have been walking through books of the Bible together, and it's been amazing to watch your response.

It's been amazing to hear from you how much you enjoy when we systematically go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, and nothing gets skipped over.

And it's kind of fun to do this together as a church.

Now, I love putting this slide up on the screen.

And do you know why I like putting this slide up on the screen?

Does anybody know?

This is what I call the job security slide for me.

Because if we just stick to books of the Bible, I'll be about 150 years old before we get through them all as your pastor.

And if you are interested in any of the ones that we've done in the past, you can actually go on our website, click the box that says Books of the Bible, and you can actually go back and watch any of the sermon series that we've done.

Here at Shepherd's Gate, we actually started the book of Exodus back in January.

How many of you were here back in January when we started the book of Exodus?

Okay.

And I know that you all remember every single sermon that we did in that sermon series.

Amen?

Right?

You remember all of those things?

No, life has happened.

Uh, the summer has happened, things have come into your life.

And so uh because we're gonna be picking up uh in chapter 13, I wanted to give you a brief preview, just a short clip uh to catch you up if you weren't here, but to remind you of what we've done uh at the beginning of this year.

Let's watch this together.

We finally got the mama beat you.

And now Moses is super happy, and all the people are super happy, and all of you that have read into chapter 13 know that the way this all ends is nobody complained, they didn't get in any trouble, they didn't worship any false gods, and they went right into the desert, right to the promised land, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Amen.

And if only it was that easy.

If you didn't know, I was being facetious in that video.

In fact, if they would have just left uh uh left Egypt and gone straight into the promised land, the book of Exodus would be a whole lot shorter.

But what's gonna be fascinating about these next 12 weeks is it's gonna be very convicting.

Like we're gonna read some passages and we're gonna see the people of God saying and doing things that you're gonna shake your head and go, what were they thinking?

Like they got to see these miracles.

God part the Red Sea and water come from a rock and all these other incredible things that take place, and yet they kept moving away from God and they kept disobeying God, even putting false idols and worshiping other things.

But what we're gonna do is we're gonna put it up against our own lives.

It's gonna be a mirror that we're gonna look at and we're gonna say, are there areas of our lives that we are doing the same exact thing?

And we want God to convict our hearts.

We want God to give us the boundaries and the guidelines about how He wants us to live our lives because He knows what's best for us.

And in so doing those things, we also get reminded of the mercy and the patience, the insane patience and the grace and the forgiveness of our God.

Amen.

And so, here, if you're brand new to Shepherd's Gate, or maybe you started in the summer, one of the things that we encourage people to do as we launch into this next season is to actually bring your own Bible to church.

In fact, if you don't have a Bible, we give out free Bibles every every single Sunday.

They're available in our West lobby right after the service.

Grab one of those, put your name on it, bring it back with you, bring a highlighter, bring a pen that you would go through scripture with us together because we do believe it's living and active.

We do believe it is God breathed, we do believe that this is how God speaks to you.

Now, what I find fascinating about 12 weeks, 12 weeks doesn't seem that long, does it?

And I did a little research on this.

Do you know that in 12 weeks you can go from being a bum on a couch to running a 5K?

How many would love to run a 5K in 12 weeks?

You can actually lose 5 pounds in 12 weeks.

That's one of my goals, just so you know.

And my wife agrees with this goal that I lose five pounds in the next 12 weeks while simultaneously gaining 5% muscle growth.

You can form a new habit.

You can be a completely different person 12 weeks from today.

But what about a 12-week spiritual challenge?

Stay with me.

Imagine this.

For 12 weeks, you're in church every single week.

You know statistics, most people only go to church twice a month now, it doesn't matter what generation you're from.

Why?

Why not?

Come to church every single week for 12 weeks.

This is big for us.

We actually want you to read the text that we're going to be going over in church before you come to church.

So, starting this week, this is the start of this week, we want you to read into chapter 13.

Why would we want you to read the text before we preach on it here at Shepherd's Gate?

Who knows?

Does it make our job easier?

We want you to read it before you come here because we want you to wrestle with the text.

We want you to read it and read it again and read it again.

And if you're in, if you're in a marriage to read it with your spouse, if you're dating someone, to read it with the person that you're dating, if you're engaged, read it to the person that you're engaged to.

And what'll happen is, is you'll pause and you'll see things come out of the text and you'll be able to discuss it together, or if you're doing this on your own, you can do it that way.

And when you come to church, do you know that you will actually be more engaged in the sermon if you read it before you come?

And who wouldn't want to enhance their worship experience?

No, we just like coming and hearing what you came up with, Tim.

No, we want you to grow in your relationship with the Lord.

And again, we're gonna look at ways that you can engage in this uh further on in the message.

Also, after the service, so the Sundays in between, we actually have dig deeper questions.

You can find them on the app.

If you haven't downloaded the Shepherd's Gate app, make sure you do that.

Or here's a screenshot of what our website looks like.

So Exodus part two, there's the reading plan, which tells you the text that's coming up, and there's the dig deeper questions that then help you process what you read and what you heard in church.

And so what you're doing is you're incorporating the word of God into your life throughout the entire week.

Instead of waiting for Sunday and the next Sunday and the next Sunday, that God now, through His Word, becomes a part of your daily routine.

And the really cool part is that we do this all together.

And not only are we doing this on Sunday mornings, our kids are learning the same exact thing, going over the same exact text on Sunday morning in our kids' program.

They're just learning it at a kid's appropriate level.

And there's actually family questions in there for you, dear parents, to ask your kids on the ride home or later on at home during the week so that you're engaging with your family and you're investing in your family, which is another one of our huge values here at Shepherd's Gate.

And so we want to give you all of the resources to be able to help and equip you to do these things in your home.

Now I'm gonna say this.

And this isn't gonna be new for those of you that have been around, but we believe that men are called to be the spiritual leaders of their home.

And so, husbands, fathers, this is a great opportunity as we start this new year to lead your family, to make this a priority, to bring your Bible, having your kids see you bring your Bible to church, singing the songs as we enter into worship, showing them that being in church is a priority for you and for your family.

And I'll be honest with you, this summer has been tough.

I have not done a very good job of leading my family spiritually.

Any other dads want to say that it's been a little rough?

In fact, I know that I could do a whole lot better job and be more intentional with the kids that God has placed in my life.

The last time that we posted something on this thing called Instagram was back when we were going through the Zag Zender serving challenge.

And here's a you know a picture of my family at the at our little breakfast nook table in our house.

Now, I want you guys all to know that I have the perfect family.

My kids are absolutely perfect, they never fight at the table, they go along with everything that my wife Lisa and I say.

They love doing these devotions together as a family.

They never get up from the table, they never throw food, they never fight, they never beat each other up because they're pastor kids, and pastor kids are perfect.

No, absolutely not.

It is as much of a struggle for me as I know it is for you, but it's something that's worth fighting for, amen?

That they see and they hear the value that we place on pouring in and investing in their spiritual life.

Why?

Because this is what God told us.

He told us it was our priority parents.

These are the commands that are beyond our hearts, that we are to impress them upon our children.

That we need to have spiritual conversations when we're at home or we're walking, the neighborhood, or we're driving in our cars.

Look at what it says there.

When you lie down and when you get up.

So when you go to bed at night that we're talking about God, when they wake up in the morning that we're including God as part of our family routine.

This is how you know the scripture isn't talking to pastors and church workers because nobody wants their pastor to tuck them in at night.

Amen.

And it's really weird if your pastor's in your kitchen in the morning when you wake up.

No, parents, it's your responsibility.

God has entrusted you into their spiritual care.

And you might be wondering, okay, I get this, I understand this for devotionals in the home, but what kind of church is Shepherd's Gate Church?

What kind of church is and people get confused when they come here.

Do you know that?

People are like, are you part of a denomination?

Are you not part of a denomination?

Tim, you're kind of a weirdo pastor.

Like now you got this other bald guy that looks just like you, and you know, they're just kind of like trying to figure things out.

And this is what I always tell people.

I worship, and our church worships like a charismatic.

Did you know that?

We're not afraid to clap.

Sometimes people come and are like, wow, you guys clap a lot.

Well, the Bible says you can clap.

People say, Well, you guys raise your hands.

Some people do.

You raise your hands and worship.

What's that all about?

Well, because the scriptures encourage that.

The songs that we sing sometimes even tell you to raise your hands and worship.

And when I use the word charismatic, I just say that we have modern songs and we're not afraid to embrace our emotions and respond out of gratitude of what it is that God has done for us.

And then I say this: I kind of like preaching like a Baptist.

Because we go through books of the Bible and we'll have a sermon that goes 30 to 35, sometimes 40 minutes.

Because I just think that, you know, people that spend seven to nine hours a day on their cell phone don't need to be part of a 60 minute service.

You can make it 65 and 70 and sometimes 75 minutes on a Sunday morning because your spiritual life is that.

Important.

But the foundation of everything that we do here at Shepherd's Gate is part of the network of churches that we're connected to, and I'm going to get into that.

This is what we believe as a church.

We are a Bible-believing and Bible-teaching church.

Because we believe this is how God speaks to you.

We believe that the Bible is inspired, that there aren't any errors in the Bible, and that it cannot fail or mislead you.

What God wrote, He intended to write, and it's good for you and it's good for me to follow His instructions and His commands.

When it comes to our corporate worship services, the preaching of God's word and the administering of the sacraments is actually the centerpiece of every single service.

Everything else that we do in a worship service complements those two things because we believe God speaks through his word and we believe that God comes to us through the sacraments.

Now it's a big churchy word, and you might wonder what that means, and how many sacraments do you have at Shepherd's Gate?

We have two sacraments: baptism and communion.

It's why we frequently have and participate in holy communion, because we believe God comes to us and he not only forgives our sins, but he strengthens our faith.

And so we do that often, two times, sometimes three times a month.

We also baptize infants here at Shepherd's Gate because, again, it all goes back to this.

We believe it's what God is doing for us, not what we're doing for God.

And so as God comes to us, he is the one giving us his good gifts that we then now receive as his dearly beloved children.

It doesn't mean that we don't baptize adults either.

If you haven't been baptized, we'd love to have you baptized.

We baptize people of all ages because we believe that's how God brings us into his family and calls us as his own.

Amen.

Here's another important distinction.

We preach both the law and the gospel.

Well, what does that mean?

And there's different views of this in different churches because there's churches that they have a list of things that they won't talk about.

There's things that they kind of skirt around.

When you preach through a book of the Bible, when you preach God's word, you will instantly quickly find God's law, which is to convict us, which is to help us know what is right and wrong.

Simultaneously, God shows us over and over again the gospel, which is the good news of what it is that Jesus Christ has come to do and what he has done in the finished work on the cross when he stretched out his arms and our sins came upon his body.

He breathed his last breath, and then three days later rose from the dead, so that you and I can actually be forgiven and actually enjoy life this side of eternity.

Now, the joy that we experience doesn't mean that life all of a sudden gets easy for the believer.

In fact, I would sometimes argue that our lives get more complicated and more hardships come in because the devil's not happy when people belong to God.

That joy that comes into the life of the believer comes from a place that only God can bestow upon us.

And it's his joy, it's an eternal, spiritual joy and peace that he can only give.

And so these are kind of the important things to think about.

If you're looking for a new church, or maybe you've been checking Shepherd's Gate out, or you've always wondered, so what is going on and how do we do these things?

We are convicted by God's word and how he leads and guides our life.

Now, I want to explain to you what I believe is going to be important for all of you as we do start this new year and we get through Labor Day and things really start revving up this fall is how do I study the Bible?

How do I study the Bible?

And some of you want to know, like, Tim, how do you study the Bible?

And here's the ways that I would encourage you to do it.

Step one, you have to find a quiet place free from distractions.

Seems easy, doesn't it?

What is a distraction?

The phone.

Oh wow, interesting.

What else?

TV?

Life?

Kids?

Any parents out there?

I know a mom, she has her devotional life in uh in a closet.

It's the only place she can hide from all of her kids.

But she needs that time with the Lord.

She needs her soul to be fed.

You find that quiet place, you do whatever you can.

Maybe it's waking up earlier in the morning, uh, which means you have to go to bed earlier at night.

Maybe it's during the day, during a lunch break.

Whatever that is for you, find that quiet place.

And then here's the thing: pray.

Ask God, invite him into the situation and say, God, would you open my eyes to receive what it is that you have for me in your word?

Would you push any distractions that I may have on my mind aside and help me to focus on you and my relationship with you in this moment?

Step three.

Read the text slowly.

Why would we want you to read the text slowly?

Yes.

Because we live in this fast-paced, constant, chaotic world where things are just all around.

Emails going off, apps going off, people calling, texting, everything's available at our fingertips.

And you really do to embrace this, you've got to live counterculture.

You have to, for this part of your day, just set aside all of the technology, all of the distractions, and hone in on the Bible and God breathing over you.

You read the text slowly, you read it again, and you read it again, and you read it again.

This is what I do when I'm preparing for a sermon.

And the first question is simply to ask, what is the text saying?

It might be easy to write out, okay, here's the characters, here's the place that things are taking place, these are the things that we're discussing, and as you're writing these things out, it's helping you digest the text.

Now, here's the fun part.

Here's the part that I think a lot of people don't realize what you can do is that you can actually drop yourself into the story.

Make yourself an eyewitness as you're reading scripture.

And one of the things I encourage people to do is actually to close your eyes.

And as you're doing that, you're actually meditating on the word of God.

You start to embrace your five senses.

The first one's easy.

What do you see?

Is there something that you can go and touch?

Is there something that you can taste?

Is there food being offered?

You know there's a lot of scriptures on food in the Bible?

What do you hear?

What are the sounds that you hear?

What are the smells?

You ever notice there's a lot of animals in scripture?

What's the last one?

Did I get them all?

I got all five?

And as you do that, as you're as you're allowing yourself, you're slowing yourself down, you're immersing yourself in God's word, you will be surprised at all of a sudden what begins to form in your devotional life.

This is important.

Look for Jesus.

Where's Jesus at?

Where's he in the text?

Where is he speaking?

Where is he showing up?

Look for law and gospel.

What are the texts that point to conviction?

And wow, man, I read this and I and I can feel the Holy Spirit bringing to mind something in my life that maybe is a stumbling block, something that I can just sense God is wanting me to confess and turn over to Him.

Where's the text that tells me once again and reminds me of how much I'm loved by God, how much He wants to work deeply in and through me.

How valuable I am to Him.

And then finally, just ask, what does this mean?

I know the characters, I know the place, I've engaged my five senses.

Well, now, how do I use this now in my everyday life?

What's interesting in being a pastor and having the opportunity, which is such a humbling opportunity to be able to preach God's word, is many of you have told me over the years after service, you'll say stuff like this man, the message today, you are directing that message right to me.

How many of you ever thought that or said that to me?

Look at all the hands.

And you know the reason why?

It's because I was directing it to you.

Because I came to your house and I read your emails and I peeked through the windows of, no, that's impossible.

Why are you saying that?

You're saying that because that's a reflection of the Holy Spirit working through me to bring God's word to life into your life.

That's the power of the Word of God.

And so here's what's so cool about Scripture.

There's one interpretation.

Okay, we're not gonna sit here and make Scripture say things it doesn't say.

We're not gonna change things that make us uncomfortable, we're not gonna redefine anything.

We're gonna let God do that.

So there's one interpretation of Scripture, but there's many applications, which is why people can come together and for some people they can say, oh man, it really hit me this way, and it hit me this way, and it hit me this way, and it hit me this way.

That is the power of God's word being proclaimed.

That's the power of God's word being preached, and people realizing just how much He speaks to us through His Word.

And it all comes down to this.

This is why Jesus said these words.

The scriptures that we have, the traditions that have been passed on, the stories, the person and work of Jesus, these have been written down so that we would believe that Jesus actually is the promised Messiah.

That Jesus is who he says he is.

He is the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

And he's the one that we can put our faith and our hope and our trust in because he loves us.

And he never stops pursuing us and working out his perfect plan in our lives.

Amen.

So what do you say, church?

It's a new year, it's a new season, it's a new opportunity to form these new habits, to get into God's word and to watch what happens next week and the week after and the month after.

And I pray to look back 12 weeks from now and go, wow, look at all that God revealed to me.

And look at how much God drew me closer to Himself during this time.

Amen.

Will you bow your heads and close your eyes with me this morning?

Heavenly Father, I thank you for my friends that are gathered here today, those that are watching online.

God, in the opportunity to once again be reminded that you are the word-made flesh.

You love us.

You have never stopped working your perfect plan in any of our lives.

And that even though we stumble in many ways, we neglect the reading of your word, we don't often stop and pray and invite you into situations and try to handle them on our own.

And yet, in those moments and in those times, you still are beside us, you still are leading us.

And by your grace and your mercy, you forgive us.

So, God, individually in our families and in our church, we just ask for your blessing upon these next 12 weeks.

That it would be an incredible time for us as a community of believers to dig into your word and to draw close to you and to watch as you draw close to us and you speak into our lives.

We love you, we thank you, we pray all these things in your most holy and precious name.

Amen.

Amen.

At this time, we're going to continue our worship service by the receiving.