Three Parts of Bible Study

Hello everybody, my name is Dean Davis and this is “Multiply,” the podcast that provides a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters. 

One of the greatest experiences for a new follower of Jesus is to discover the stories, the wisdom, and the truth contained in God’s word, the Bible. As a new believer, I loved to listen to people tell stories from the Bible and teach from God’s word. I also loved to read the Bible for myself. I was thrilled by what I discovered about Jesus, his wisdom, authority, and righteousness. It seemed that as I first started walking with Jesus, I paid attention to every word I read in the Bible.

But later in my life, I became much more casual in my reading of the Bible.  Sometimes, instead of reading to discover, I read because of duty. I tended to read whole paragraphs and even chapters without paying much attention to detail. This is not helpful!

As a village church planter, you have been taught the 3 major parts of Bible study: observation, interpretation, and application. To observe is to pay attention to the big picture and the small details of a Bible passage. To observe is to notice what is important and significant in what you read.

To interpret is to discover what something means. Sometimes one word has many meanings. When we interpret the Bible we determine what the Spirit-inspired biblical writer meant by the words that he wrote down. Interpretation is very important if we want to truly understand God’s word.  

But observation and interpretation is not enough. We are commanded in James 1:22 to not merely listen to the word, but to do what it says. If we are to be doers of the word of God, we can’t stop with interpretation, we must move on to application. To apply the word is the third step of Bible study. Once we interpret the word and come to understand its meaning, we must make plans to apply the word of God to our lives and the context in which we live.

I’ve been reading God’s word on a regular basis for 54 years. Over that period of time I have notices a sad truth about most Bible readers. We rarely practice all three steps of Bible study. Sometimes we read, but we fail to observe well. Sometimes we observe well, but we don’t take time to interpret a Bible passage to discover what it means. And often we are not very intentional about applying the Bible to our life and our situation in the world.

Oh, but when we do all three of these steps to Bible study, we experience the glorious liberty and joy that is the birth-right of the children of God. We have peace because we have discovered something about the heart of God and his will for our lives. And not only have we discovered something new and fundamentally true, we have begun to put that truth into practice. Living out the word of God results in blessing for ourselves, for our family, and for our community.

So let me encourage you today. Don’t just to read the Bible, take time each week to also interpret the scripture you read and make concrete plans to put what you learn into practice.  As you do so, you will experience power, wisdom and joy in your life and ministry.

This has been “Multiply.” And I’m Dean Davis asking, “Who will you share this encouraging word with today?

#EncouragementForVillageChurchPlanters #BibleStudy