by Keith Bassham
Editor of the Baptist Bible Tribune, 2002-present
Once you determine to read the Bible systematically, it is easy to see the value in the same approach to study. And lest you think a seminary education or hours poring over dusty texts are a prerequisite, all that is essential for serious Bible study is probably available to you right now.
In fact, you can study the Bible very much like your teacher or preacher does with little more than your mind and something to write with. This is true because in your study you are essentially going to produce a sermon or lesson in miniature as you go from observation (what does a passage say?) to interpretation (what does a passage mean?) to application (how do I put the passage into practice?).
I used to teach homiletics at Baptist Bible College. The word homiletics comes from two Greek words that mean “the same” and “to say.” When we preach or teach the Bible, we are saying the same thing the text says. Here is an example using a simple text.
Philippians 4:6 – Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
Now, it would be helpful for a fuller understanding of this text to know something about the human writer (in this case, Paul the Apostle), the first people to read this text (in this case, members of the church in Philippi), and some other background material about Greece, letter-writing, and other subjects from the first-century Mediterranean world. However, even without extensive information on these issues, you can still read and interpret a text like the one in front of us.
You could begin with a simple restatement: “Paul is telling the Philippian believers that they should not worry, but rather they should pray to God with thanksgiving and requests.” You could even make it more practical by making it personal: “Christians should not worry, but pray to God with thanksgiving and requests.” An even more explicit proposition would be, “I will not worry, but pray to God with thanksgiving and requests.”
Haddon Robinson, a preacher and homiletics professor, describes this movement as going from the “then and there” to the “here and now.” It is important to the application process, but there are some potential landmines, so when you do that be sure of your footing. For instance, you wouldn’t want to interpret an Old Testament text containing instructions from God to Israel about killing off Canaanites in the same way.
However, there is a “wartime” passage we can work on — Ephesians 6:10-12, and it illustrates how to use your mind and some writing materials for a study. The first step is to do a mechanical layout, or what some call a structural diagram. This is a phrase-by-phrase chart of the text to show the grammatical relationships. To begin, copy the text phrase by phrase, placing independent clauses (complete subject/predicate constructions) toward the left, with the subordinate phrases more to the right. I usually set the connecting words (and, but, etc.) off to themselves and line up ideas that I think are equal in weight. See the Tribune digital edition for a sample layout of the text.
The task is much simpler with the aid of an electronic Bible text and a word processor making liberal use of the Enter and Tab keys. You don’t have to be a grammarian to do this, by the way, but a brush-up on some basics will help, especially if you had to think hard to remember what a subject and a predicate are. A Bible with paragraphs clearly marked will also help keep the chunks bite-sized.
Stripping away all the details on the right side of the page, you can see the main thrust of the text is, “God wants us to be strong, and we are to take His armor, because we fight a spiritual battle with Satan.” The layout of the text shows me there are two main ideas Verses 10-11a are all about God’s strength. Verses 11b-12 are all about the devil, or Satan. If I wanted to organize the text at this point for a teaching outline, I might have something like this:
God’s Strength Against the Devil
I. God’s strength is available to all of us
A. We are to be strong
1. We are to be strong in the Lord
2. We are to be strong in the power of his might
B. We are to put on the whole armor of God
II. God’s strength is necessary because Satan is our enemy
A. God’s strength helps us stand against the wiles of the devil
B. God’s strength helps us fight Satan’s organization
1. Satan’s organization is not flesh and blood
2. Satan’s organization is supernatural
a. Principalities
b. Powers
c. Rulers of the darkness of this world
d. Spiritual wickedness in high places
Note a couple of things here. First, I emphasize the strength of God in this text. I do that because that is how God arranged the wording. He does not say, “Remember that the devil is a powerful and crafty enemy, and you need the strength of God.” Rather, he says, “You need to be strong in the Lord and take His armor …” The strength of God is the emphasis, and remembering that gives us strength.
Second, just about any text of the Bible, indeed, any well-written text, can be studied in this way in order to find the central thoughts. Mr. Haddon, mentioned above, calls it the Big Idea. Mastering the skill will provide a lifetime of productive Bible study.