I am, by request, doing a study in Romans with the guys and I wanted you to see this one in particular because it talks about study methods.

 On August 11, 2019, Pastor Jon's sermon was:

"A couple of things I wished I had known about reading the Bible."

I am quite sure my Pastor's learning and understanding came at great expense in theology school. The irony is, I already knew these things. I learned them in the school of hard knocks. At this point, I have been seriously studying and looking at scripture for twelve years. In the process of doing that, I wrote about what I saw, tried to get an accurate picture of who God and Jesus are, and asked God a lot of hard questions, and they were all answered.

A friend of mine asked me how do you study?

What Pastor Jon delivered that Sunday morning was a clearly worded, concise technique for study. So I included that information along with my overview of the first chapter of Romans.

By the way, I realize that I could be writing to trained theology students and those who may never pick up a Bible, so I try to keep it intelligent and yet simple.

Back to my former Pastor Jon's notes.

1. The Bible was written for us, not to us.

   This is a significant statement, as it moves scripture out of the hallowed halls of religion and into our hands. It removes the sterility that we have imposed on scripture, and it is a unique perspective from which to start any Bible study, making scripture very personal.

2. The meaning of the text is embedded in its original, historical context.

   So the question you should ask next is, what does that look like for us today?

   Perhaps at this point, I should tell you that the Pastor's overall theme was, understanding the writings of the Apostle Paul, based on his letter to Philemon. In the study on Romans - that I have included, I cover, to some degree, the historical context of the Book of Romans. A massive piece of evidence comes from Romans 1:1, where Paul begins his typical introduction. Here he says, I Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ. Again, I cover this in the study below.

   This thought process also works exceptionally well when studying the book of Romans.

3. The Bible is a context-rich form of communication.

   What does that mean? It means that everything you read in scripture, especially in the New Testament, has an initiating question or point of conversation. For example, the Revelation is filled with context - (It is a book written to Jews, using terminology that would have been common to them, and yet it applies primarily to us today. The imagery is nothing new, although, we, for some reason, struggle with multi-headed beasts.)

   Context is what links us back to the original thought and intent.

   Chuck Missler used to say, “it is an integrated, coded, message system.” That means that the messages in the scripture, though thousands of years apart, are integrally linked by God into one all-encompassing picture, in which God wins.

Pastor Jon's tips: (Every week, he had tips. These are designed to give you a practical way to put the sermon into action.)

• Get a Bible reading plan – like the You Version app.

  In reality, this means being deliberate in your reading. If necessary, force yourself to invest time daily.

• Dig into the Bible passages that make your radar go off, and then dig a little deeper.

  I have a friend who seems to bounce back and forth in scripture; I understand why he does it, but when he asks questions, they are combinations of various thoughts and contexts, and sadly, he is often confused. The moral to this story is to get focused.

  No one is telling you to ignore boring passages; however, when you find a scripture that speaks to you, dismantle the verse; look at the Hebrew or Greek definitions of the simplest of words in a concordance, and find their meanings. Then, look for other comparative examples of the same thing.

  A tip - Since much of what we read is prophetic, you need to understand that prophecy is not a one-time event to the Jewish mindset. The Jews looked for and found acceptance in the patterns and repetition; therefore, when reading something prophetic, look for the parallels and previous examples. The Books of Daniel and Revelation are good examples of such similarities.

• Read for transformation.

  Try to understand the author's original intent; this will be necessary for us to apply the text to our lives today.
  As the Pastor spoke about these things, I could not help but think about two things.

  1. It required an expensive school to teach him these methods.

  2. I developed these same methods through reading and writing.