For my little sister Penny:)
You are the company you keep. That's a phrase often told to teenagers to help them to remember to choose their friends cautiously. But there is even a far better company to keep and anyone can choose this company. It is that of God Himself. This can be done in two major ways; through prayer and reading the Bible. An excellent theologian I thoroughly enjoy listening to is Dr. R.C. Sproul. He has a radio program called Renewing Your Mind. He is currently teaching from a series called Five Things Every Christian Should Know. Last Tuesday he discussed how to study the Bible.
I have a little sister who is in Russia right now. She has the rare privilege of teaching elementary students the English Language in their Moscow Economic School. I know my little sister also likes to listen to Dr. Sproul, so when I heard this on the broadcast I went back through the radio program again and copied down all the details of how to read the Bible as a small gift for her. Her name is Penny. She just had a birthday last week. Happy birthday, Penny. Oh, by the way I'm proud and amazed at your courage and ability to be so far away from all your many family members so you can work with children and strive to bring hope to Russians through your Christlike example.
If you ever wanted to read the Bible through, logically thinking you would start at the start and then read straight through to the end, right? Not necessarily. God used many individuals through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to write down the sacred scripture. Each book, or to simply describe--section, is written for different reasons. All to honor God but sometimes the information within a book can be overwhelming. Here's what R.C. Sproul recommends.
You want to start by getting the basic outline of the Bible. This will give you an overview of what the Bible is about. For the old Testament the following books would give you a good background:
Genesis
Exodus
Joshua
Judges
I & II Samuel
Ezra
Nehemiah
These are written in narrative form thus they keep your attention through drama and telling of a story.
The next phase consists of 2 of the 12 minor prophet books:
Amos
Hosea
Then it is recommended to read from the major prophets of the Old Testament. Dr. Sproul considers Jeremiah the simplest to understand so it is good to begin there:
Jeremiah
Isaiah
Ezekiel
Daniel
Then you should get in to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament:
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Psalms
Proverbs
After that you fill in the rest of your reading with the rest of the books in the OT.
When you start to read through the New Testament it is recommended to start with the Gospel of Luke. Luke was a Doctor and he told of the life of Jesus in great detail. He wrote the most descriptive narrative of Jesus' birth. He also wrote the book of Acts which tells of the Church and the Apostles after Jesus ascended into Heaven.
Then Dr. Sproul recommends to read from the writings of Paul who wrote many of the NT books:
Ephesians
I Corinthians
Then read I Peter to get some teaching from the Apostle Peter.
Next I Timothy which is written by the Apostle Paul. After that read two others he wrote--Hebrews and Romans.
Then you go back through and read the rest of the NT.
Dr. Sproul says in order to be a good student of the Bible you need to make sure you write notes in your Bible. Use a pen and a highlighter. Make notations by verses you want to remember or even memorize. Use a Bible commentary. Some study Bibles have the commentary within them. There are also commentary books written by famous theologians. Dr. Sproul recommends the New Geneva Study Bible (recently renamed the Reformation Study Bible). There is also a good study Bible I've heard of by Bible teacher Kay Arthur called the Inductive Study Bible. Sproul also encourages us to check out the concordance in the back of the Bible. A famous concordance that is a completely separate book is Strong's Concordance. You can also go to PhpBible.org on the internet to find a concordance. It will list all the times a word is found in the Bible. He also encourages to listen to the Bible spoken in audio. He recommends Max McClain tapes or CDs. Hearing the Bible spoken with expression helps you understand it better. You can purchase these CD's or tapes at the Renewing Your Mind ministries website at Ligonier Ministries.org. Dr. Sproul says that when you read the Bible, read it existentially; that is, read it as if you were "in that person's shoes". Finally, one last excellent suggestion. Dr. Sproul wrote a book over 25 years ago called Knowing Scripture. This gives more helpful advice in understanding the Bible.
Who knows? This is just the beginning of March. Maybe we'll all get excited and read the Bible through by the end of the year. This should be the New Year's resolution of every Christian anyway. And the Bible commands parents to teach the Holy Scriptures to their children. And if for some reason, you stumbled across this site and have literally read this long blog all the way to this point, why not check out the Bible. After all, it is the biggest selling, most controversial book of all time.
Posted by Linda at March 05, 2005 02:31 PM