Ask the Pastors Season 8 Episode 1: "I’m new to Christianity; where should I start with Bible reading?"
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Welcome to Ask the Pastors, a segment of the West Hills podcast, where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host, one of the pastors, and I'm joined by our lead pastor, Will. Let's go. And Pastor Thad. Hey everyone. What season is this? Season eight? 18. I don't know. Season 18. You've been around for a little longer than we have. We have a great list of questions, numerous questions from Emma. Emma, thanks so much for sending in your questions. She writes, "I'm new to Christianity. Where should I start with Bible reading?" And then sent Pastor Will a email with excellent list and multiple categories of questions. But for this podcast, we want to tackle specifically her category of, is it Bible study questions? So her list is, she's got a few here to read them.
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She writes, "How can I build consistent spiritual habits like prayer and Bible study? What is your advice for starting Bible study? Where should I start reading? Do you have a translation you recommend? What's the proper way to study the Bible? How do I apply the Bible to my life? What does it mean to meditate on God's word? What is the benefit of scripture memorization?" And lastly, she follows up, "Do you have any external tools you recommend for Bible study? I've heard of things like commentaries, devotionals, study Bibles, et cetera. What are these things exactly and do you think they're helpful? I've heard arguments against specifically devotionals that they only give you an out of context snippet of the Bible and a human interpretation." What's your take on this? Whew.
(01:50):
Awesome. Where would you like to start? Yeah. And I was so encouraged to get the email and so encouraged when Emma came and introduced herself to me after church here recently and asked if we could get together and talk more about all of this and just shared a little snippet. I hope to get more meeting actually later today when we're done recording. Hear more of her story and what God's been doing in her life, but just feels like she's newer to faith and wanting to go deeper. And so super exciting. Obviously exactly what we've been praying for a long time, for all the time. As a church is that we see God doing that kind of work in people's lives. And so it's just exciting when you see it. So maybe just go in order and see how far we get, see if we can go.
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I sat down and I tried to actually just give her a one sentence answer to ... She had 32 questions. I think she's got six or seven in the Bible study category, 32 total. Got Christian living, salvation, gospel, prayer, et cetera, et cetera, miscellaneous. So we'll try and do the Bible study and see how far we get. So I've got a one sentence and then maybe kick it to you and let you expand, give your, and then-
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And give two sentences. Go
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Back, you get two more and then I'll get three. Yeah.
-
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So her first one is Bible under, again, all under the Bible study is, how can I build consistent spiritual habits like prayer and Bible study? And my one sentence answer was, honestly, I say the best way to build them as habits is to simply do them. Once you have committed to and been consistent with a daily quiet time, it's kind of the nomenclature in the Christian prayer and Bible study. Once you've developed and really been consistent, developed consistency with a daily quiet time for about, what do they say it takes to really develop a habit? It's like three weeks. Is
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That right?
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Am I making that
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Up? Something.
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Seven times. If you go to the gym every day for three weeks, then eventually it's like that's what you're used to. And it's like the fourth week, it becomes normal to you. And it's like to not go to the gym feels weird. So again, this is why we call them spiritual disciplines,
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Is you're looking to develop that discipline with it. It starts to become habitual. And not just habitual like, okay, I take my medicine, but again, oh yeah, I need this in my life. My life does not feel right if I don't get this time with the Lord every day. So again, I mean, maybe that's an oversimplified answer of just do it, but to me that's how you build a habit is you just do it and do it long enough consistently and do it while it feels like discipline and hard and uphill battle so that over time it feels natural and normal and even desirable.
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Yeah. I mean, that's my gut reaction first. Just get in the habit, find whatever time works best where you have the most seemingly uninterrupted time and then do your best to remove distractions from it. There's some people who have the habit of they're not going to look at their phone until after they've done their Bible reading or something like that. But simply again, building the habit. And I would add two other aspects that might fit into some of these other categories would be with someone, like find someone you can read alongside with.
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I was going to see, I figured you were going to say ... I was going to say that if you didn't, and with all pretty much all my rest of my answers, community is going to come up.
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Yeah. So again, what that provides for you is just accountability, not in a shameful way, but like we're doing this together. If you want to go, whatever the saying is, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go with others. And so
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Invite someone either who's looking to get into a Bible reading habit or ask someone who's already has that habit developed and you go along with them. And I would also add, this will be later as well, but a plan can be helpful of like, "Hey, on January 17th, this is what you read." And again, it can be helpful for some people to have that sort of checklist, although that's not anywhere in the Bible. You have to do this. But for some people, it's helpful. Brian and I were talking earlier about like how going to the gym and seeing all the weights can be very overwhelming, but if you have a plan and know what's due, that could be more helpful going in
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Structure. Are you talking about that as a metaphor or
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A little bit? No, Amanda and I are looking at a gym. Yeah, subscription.
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It's a real thing, man. The culture and like is this like the meathead gym where I'm like, everybody else's a professional bodybuilder. Anyway, but there's probably a metaphor to be made there with this as well. But I was going to go back to one ... Fed, you mentioned the consistency that community ... You gave me a hard time about alliteration, but here we go, sees community and the consistency that helps build. But I would say in addition to consistency, you also get the competency because
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Someone who is a couple steps ahead of you in their walk with the Lord and again, I mean, discipline, we use the word discipline for a reason, you kind of feel bad like saying it like that there are better and worse people at praying, like prayers, better and worse Bible students, studiers of the word, but it's true. There really are. There are people that are just not good at praying, to be honest, and need help. And it's a spiritual muscle that you develop over time. So doing it with others and that kind of spiritual workout routine and spotting on the bench. We could really build out the analogy. Paul makes the analogy with training for body, for some value, but training spiritual for godliness is a term.
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I shouldn't did the subscription. Is that what you're saying?
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Let's talk. Yeah. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You definitely should do it. That's the advice. All right. So are we good? Number two? Yeah. What was number two?
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Number two, what is your advice for starting Bible study? Where should I start reading? And do you have a translation that you'd recommend? Do you want to start on this
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One?
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Yeah, I can
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Start. Okay. I would suggest starting in the New Testament, specifically the gospels. My first suggestion would be Gospel of Mark. I believe it's the shortest of all the gospels, but pretty friendly in reading of that, that-
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Simplest too, most kind of just, I'm just giving you the facts about Jesus. Not a lot of interpretation, not just fact, fact, fact.
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So I think that lends itself to being a nice introduction to reading through a whole book of the Bible. And I would also just add with that to start small in a sense of don't necessarily feel like you have to read through the whole gospel of Mark in one sitting, but shortly. I'll give two translations that I think are just helpful to do. One is what we use on Sundays, which is the English standard version or the ESV. Very readable. It's very word for word based from the original language. The other one would be the Christian Standard Bible, which is a little bit more though for thought. And so I think those are probably two of my favorite translations out there that they're not clunky when you read them, but they get the meaning of the original text. Was there a third part to it?
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No. Advice for starting. Yeah. Where should I start? David translation.
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Yeah. So gospel of Mark would be my first suggestion and then one of those two translations.
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I like those. I just, slight variation just to be different. I also mentioned obviously ESV here at West Hills. We had a whole podcast that we did was a year or two years ago on different Bible translations and which is best in that. How's
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The pastor's number two?
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The number two from what season?
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First.
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No way. The second-
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I said number two when I looked it up and sent it earlier.
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Okay. Maybe we've done multiple. And anyway, that seems like just a year two. Let me confirm. Maybe that's after we changed the title from Ask the Past Tour to Ask the Pastors. I
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Think so too.
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We did it pretty ... Yeah. Well, I guess it's been a couple years, but anyway, and so we talk about why we use ESV at West Hills, but to Thad's point, it's a good balance of closeness to the original text languages, more literal translation, but also readability in English and our kind of thought by thought kind of thing.
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And I think it's like technically a high school reading level is where the ESB technically falls. Oh, interesting. CSB is more like seventh, eighth grade, middle school.
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Interesting. Okay. So another one that I've just more recently read with last year as a family, we were working through the chronological Bible plan, and that was with a new living translation, the NLT. And I really liked that. I really liked some of the ways that they would render things. I think it's probably more like the CSB, which was helpful for obviously my kids who aren't even close to middle school yet, although Ellery's fourth grade, so maybe, but she's at reading at that kind of level. So like, yeah, more of like a middle school type of probably or even level. So I like the NLT.
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My only other thing, so you mentioned starting in Mark. I also agree gospels. I think starting with Jesus can't go wrong. I started preaching when, as lead pastor and picking the sermon series, our very first book that we did was Mark for that reason. And I still, yeah, I mean, hearing you reason for that, I would say either Mark or Matthew. I think Matthew's the first. And I mean, to me, you could start there as well. And for some people that it might be a little bit more Matthew helpful because he does flesh some of it out and he does explain himself a little bit more than like Mark does. Mark, sometimes just giving you the facts, Again, depending on how much help you feel like you need from the author to interpret what Jesus meant by that thing he just said. Matthew could be helpful, but I think either of them are great.
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I feel like the kind of probably most popular answer is John. A lot of people will say starting John's gospel. And John ... Anyway, we could talk more about why too or not. It's not a bad suggestion at all. Still, again,
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Gospel- I think any of the gospels are great. Still gospel.
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Maybe Matthew
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Or Mark for a starting
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Point. I mean, John, I think the reason that people, with John, the real benefit there is he more than the others, obviously he's really ... I mean, he tells you at the end of the book, "Oh, by the way, I've written this whole thing so that you will believe." My purpose in writing this is evangelistic to get you to believe in Jesus. And so for someone who's near to the faith, that really accords well with that. But there's just a lot, there's a lot in the Matthew, Mark, Luke, we call the synoptics, meaning seen together. There are lots of overlap, 80 or 90% of the stories are all shared between them versus John has lots of ... The majority of what's in John isn't in the others and vice versa. So he's a little bit of the outlier. So anyway, that's part of why I lean toward Matthew Mark is just you're going to get most of, as you're watching through the Chosen or whatever.
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Probably most of those stories are coming more from Matthew, Mark, whatever.
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The only other thing that I have on this one, where do I start is, and advice for it is I just said I'd recommend starting small, modest. Again, go back to our gym thing, don't put all the weights on the bar and kill yourself kind of thing. Don't go and try and plan to spend an hour and a half at the gym every day when you're starting out. You set a goal of 20 minutes, 30 minutes every other day, or whatever it is. And then if you find that, man, I just crave more. I set out this plan, like you said, have a plan. I set out this plan of doing one chapter a day, five days a week, because that's going to get me through the whole New Testament in a year. And I know that's the plan, but I just crave more. I just read Mark chapter one and I feel like I can't stop there.
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I've got to read chapter two. I got to know what happens next. Then to me, it's like, we'll do it. But better to start more modest rather than to load up the bar with the weights and then be disappointed when you can't lift it.
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And then I also, this is where I roped in the community thing of reading it with others. And yeah, just we'll reiterate that with every single one of these points. So what was number three, third?
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Well, if I could just add- Oh, please. I would totally agree just personal experience. When I first became a believer, I had somebody that pointed me to ... I had read my Bible and he was, "Where would you like to start?" And I was like, "I'm not sure." And then he recommended the Book of Mark. And it was just such a action, practical story of the life of Jesus and you just can't go wrong with it here, any of the gospels.
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It's
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Good. Next question writes, "What's the proper way to study the
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Bible?" Well, I can start in this one. I mentioned to Emma that, again, in community I think is ... And part of, even in saying that, one of my first thoughts and responses is proper way to read the Bible is in community, is the recognition that the Bible was written to communities. Every single gospel, every single letter, every single ... And fact check me on it, maybe there's one of the Old Testament books, obscure or whatever that's like a written ... Well, I guess you have Philiman was ... Phlemen's written to a guy, but even then-
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But for the benefit of
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Other people. Even then, I think you have to go back and reread it, but I think he's saying, "Oh, by the way, read this to everybody." It's all communal. And so I think if the Bible is written to communities and written to be read by communities, then we just have to be real careful about knowing our cultures, predisposal to atomize everything and individualize everything, personalize. And it's just like, no, it's not all about you. And especially if you're just starting out, you just got to know I'm not going to naturally know how to best understand and interpret and apply and whatever, I'm going to need help. And I would go beyond that to say there's even a danger to, just like in the gym, you lift the wrong way, you're going to pull muscles, you're going to do ... So having a trainer kind of thing, spiritual, biblical kind of person who you're walking aside.
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But I produced for our discipleship groups years ago here, just a short two and a half page document called How to Study the Bible that I shared with them in response to this and would be happy to share with any podcast listeners who want it. But one of the things I did in there was to try and help, as we were facilitating these discipleship groups of three to five guys, three to five girls, gals in the church, meeting together over the course of a year, praying for one another, accountability, walking through scripture together, just to try and give them something objective to say, "Okay, I'm reading through the New Testament this year, how do I do it? How do I get the most out of it? " And so, I did work, not alliteration this time, but an acronym so that I'm not going to spend too much on it.
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Again, I'll send it to you if you want it, but I've got kind of a mini paragraph on each of these and going deeper. But the acronym was praise. And with the idea being that Bible study ought to lead us to praise,
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That's really the goal of stunning God's word is not to just, "Okay, well, I read that, check the box, whatever," but to deeper relationship and deeper awe and wonder and worship of God for who he is and for what he's done and how he speaks to us. And so the goal is praise, but the acronym, so pray is the P, read, ask, bring your questions, engage critical engagement with it, interpret, study, employ, put it into practice in your life. So I just, again, two pages of just breaking that down and giving you some questions to ask as you bring to the text, giving you some questions to ask of the text, giving you some questions to ask of yourself that might help with your employment and application and things like that. So yeah, I'd be happy to share that or I don't know if we can still link and show notes or whatever documents, but yeah, and there's tons of great ones.
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I mean, there's tons of different acronyms and whatever out there for how to study, but thoughts you have on ...
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Yeah, no, I think that acronym praise kind of summarizes a lot of what I would suggest. I would also add what could be helpful in starting out would be a good either study Bible to help answer questions along the way as you're reading. I don't understand what this means or culturally it doesn't have any equivalent to today. So a good study Bible could be a good resource. I know in some of the extra biblical category that we'll get to, like what are some of those outside the Bible resources? There are some helpful devotionals as far as like walking through. They're going through the whole of scripture that are also helpful along the way just to, again, provides a little framework, gives you some questions that go alongside whether you're asking the questions or it's asking the questions of you. That could be of benefit as well.
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Yeah. And the other resource that Emma mentioned in her later question that we'll get to, but commentaries, that one might be a little much for someone who's brand new to this. However, I mean, you and I, I mean, there's lots of great commentaries at lots of different levels out there. They're not all these 700 page scholarly whatever. Very accessible. There's some that honestly that are so good as I just think about having recently gone through Galatians and one of the series in particular that really stands out is the Christ, is it Christ-centered exposition series? I mean, even for me, like in my own personal, one of my favorite series is Kent Hughes is the editor for the Preach the Word commentary series. And I would say, I think that would be totally appropriate, helpful for even a newer Christian. Basically, all it is with some of those is a pastor has turned his sermons on that book of the Bible into a book, into commentary and compiled it.
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And so if you think about, that would be another thing I guess worth in addition to commentaries is like sermons. So like- We'll listen to- If I recommend to Emma today when we meet, start in Mark, I probably ought to, "Oh yeah, and by the way, I preached through Mark six years ago. Here's our website. Go on and as you're reading a chapter, listen to this because the whole goal of a sermon is to unpack it, exposit it, explain it to you, and then help you apply it and give you some questions, some food for thought, what it might look like for you to take this and be a doer of the word, not just a hearer of the word." So sermons, anyway, those are all good resources.
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Next one is, how do I apply the Bible to my life?
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First thoughts on
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This one? Yeah. I would equate this a little bit to the last one, some of those asking questions, like one of the question, what does the text demand my response that as we're reading through the Bible, one of the questions we should be asking is how do I apply this to my life? Is it convicting me of a certain sin that I need to ask forgiveness? Is it reminding me of some truth of the gospel that I've forgotten? Is it teaching me something about Jesus a new aspect about him that I can give him praise for that we believe that as Christians filled with the Holy Spirit, when we engage with scripture, there should be a response. It isn't always a turning of repentance. Sometimes it's a affirmation of something we already knew. Sometimes it's a comfort of a verse, but something that we can take with us.
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I would also just state, as you're reading, try to find either a verse or a truth from those verses that you can ... This will maybe in a little bit, but to apply to your life to take with you through the day. So it's not just, I've read this and I've moved on, but when I was in college, I used to write it on a three by five card, just take it with me- Put it in your pocket. ... or whatever it was so that I could pull it out later on and remember it. I like
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That. That's good.
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I like that. Yeah. I mean, in addition to, again, I just kept harping on in my answers to or in this one sentence email to frame up our conversation for today was community again, because I feel like so much of, as I look back on even my own experience of taking God's word, applying it to my own life, probably some of the best help that I've been offered along the way has been from other believers who as I'm external processing or whatever at life group or whatever it might be, youth group back in the day or whatever, FCA in college and saying, "Here's what I'm going through. Here's my prayer request. Here's what I read in God's word today," whatever it might be. And then having others, "Huh, well, have you thought of this? " Or,
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"I wonder if God's trying to teach you this. " And so I just think, yeah, I mean, like Bible says in the abundance of many, there's wisdom in the abundance of many counselors, just having many sets of eyes. And again, if we think about God's spirit dwelling in his people, plural, and in others, why wouldn't you want to expose yourself to as much of his spirit as possible? And so that's a big one just even in terms of applying. And I just pointed out with this, because I think we get so individualistic and me and God and whatever, but especially when it comes to something like this. Well, it's my life and I'm applying it to my life and it's not their life. And so there could be this tendency to, okay, we can all read it together and we'll read it and study it in community, but then I've got to go and take it and apply it on my own in my life and situation.
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It's like, but even that, we're not called to live our lives in solitude and segregated out from the body. So I think even that, and flat out asking like, "Hey, especially if you're newer to the faith, y'all know God's word better than me. Here's this guy that I'm dating. What do you think? Should I be dating him or should..." I don't know. I think that's all helpful. The other thing that I had just mentioned to her briefly here was, it's just related to that is, and she's got a whole nother section on prayer, but you can't divorce the two. And this is where I would say, specifically with Bible application is where prayer is so important. And you touched on that already, Thad, but just asking God himself, who is a person to personally reveal to you how he wants this word, this verse, this chapter that you, all of his word to come to bear on your life in day-to-day practice.
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"God, would you make your well known to me and how you're calling me basically to change. Think about you walk in on a Sunday and we ask and want and pray that God would change hearts and that people would walk out different, even those who are saved and believers.
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And
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Maybe it's not, hopefully for most of us, like that death to life change transformation every Sunday, but we all still have a little bit of that death, that a little bit of that sin still in us and we want to be changed from one degree to glory to be more like Jesus every time. So praying Saying that that will be the case in God, how do you want to use your word today to do that for me? And asking him to reveal that and then just pausing long enough, carving out time, quiet time, in your busyness, in your daily life and hustle and bustle to actually listen. It's like, don't ask God to speak to if you don't intend to listen.
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So doing that. And Emma's got a whole nother section under Christian living on how do I know God's will for my life. And so that's, again, touches on, gets into a whole nother conversation of knowing God's will. But suffice it to say, I think that has got to be a part of this equation of applying the Bible to your life is praying and ask God, how do you want this? And that's why a lot of times in sermon, not every week, but after a sermon even, we'll pause and I want to give you a moment to just pray and ask God, how do you want this word, your word, the Bible that we've just studied together, heard? How do you want to apply it in my life specifically and change me for it?
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Yeah. And I would, just as you described, start with prayer, read the Bible, and also use that as a way to end that time with the Lord whenever it may look like to pray in response to it. Lord, help me. You've revealed this to me. Would you now help me to live out in light of how it is that you've led? So start with prayer, read the Bible, meditate, close the prayer in response.
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Yeah. Meditation. What does it mean to meditate on God's word and if's their next one?
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Free to go. Meditate.
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Yeah. I would say with meditate to dwell with, to sit in the text to, again, that I described earlier, the taking a note card with me in college as I did, that was so that I could meditate. So something came to me that I could sit with it longer throughout the day, more than just I've read and I've moved on, but I'm sitting, I'm dwelling in. For some people, meditation looks like I'm going to go even deeper in whatever has been revealed through commentaries or study notes or devotionals, but really thinking through, thinking not just through, but thinking about all of the different ways and implications that God is directly speaking to you in that present moment. Last night our life group were reading through Hosea and I got really stuck on one particular part that I hadn't really reflected on, but someone said something and about the tenderness of the Lord and his kindness to us.
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And I just externally processed meditating out loud to the rest of my group about the Lord's tenderness to sinful people. And in doing that, it moved me in that moment. And I think with meditation, it's a lot more sitting still and dwelling on than quickly moving past. So you're kind of get to a stopping point and thinking, for me at least.
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Yeah, agreed. That's I think a really good definition. And I don't know that I have much to add to it, sadly. So to clarify, it doesn't mean sitting with your eyes closed and legs crossed.
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Oh, that's exactly what I was doing.
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Thumbs and middle fingers and chanting om to the universal whatever. I think one of the things maybe ... Well, two things on that. One is that there are, I guess, more ... I don't know what you want to call them, mystical kind of strains of Christianity that have ... Is it the ... I won't remember it. Not the Lexio Davina. There's sub movements within Christianity that do emphasize meditation
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More so, and even somewhat of an idea of ... I don't know how much of it is, again, kooky and maybe adopted too much from some of the Hindu stuff of your guru giving you a mantra and then you chanting that word or whatever. But some of it is, "Okay, I'm going to take this one word or this one phrase or whatever and just say it over and over and over again for an hour." And it opens up the spiritual experience. So anyway, but I think one thing that does, even in making the joke about the Eastern meditation kind of thing that I think really stands out to me about this idea of Christian, distinctly Christian meditation is it's actually the opposite because the goal as I have understood it of what most people think of when they think of meditation is emptying your mind to become one with the universe or something.
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The goal of Christian meditation is to fill your mind with God's word. So again, whether that means a word or a phrase that you're chanting, chanting, chanting, but one way or another, it means I'm not trying to empty and become some vessel for what ... It's like, no, I mean, God's already spoken, but God his word. So yeah, meditate on it and fill your mind, your heart. Joshua one: eight, meditate on this book of the law day and night and may be careful to do all in it, all that's in it and prosper. So yeah, anything else on meditate?
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Mm-mm. Sounds like that flows really well into scripture memization,
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Just
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Memorize Joshua E.
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I think they're definitely related.
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What's the benefit of scripture memorizations, yes?
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I mean, memorization empowers you to be able to meditate because then you memorize it and then you can take it with you throughout the day and think and ruminate. Ruminate and just chew it like a cow, chew it and throw it up and eat it again and chew it and you just getting every possible nutrient out of that thing. So
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Don't throw it up. Don't throw up God's word. Just chew it and just keep- Keep chewing on it. Yeah. But the benefit of scripture memorization, here's what I said. Twenty four seven access, whether that's for the purpose of ... I just tried to think of some just many applications where this has been beneficial for me, whether that's for the purpose of evangelism, being able to call a verse to mind, to share with an unbeliever and you're in the checkout line at Schnucks and whatever. And even just your ability to be able to do so, to call God's word to mind in a conversation, communicate something to that person implicitly about the high, high value that we place and that we ought to place rightfully on God's word. I mean, in the same way that, I don't know, like an unbeliever comes up to nine out of 10 Christians at Schnucks and, "Are you a Christian?" Yeah.
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Okay.
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What's a verse from the Bible? If you got nothing, if your worldview claim is that God has spoken to humanity and we've got it in a book, but I haven't even spent the time, I don't care enough to ... I mean, maybe I've read it, flipped through it, let somebody else talk about it for 30 minutes a week while I sit and pretend to listen. If it's not important enough to you what God has said, that I have committed any of it to the deepest part of my heart, my soul, even my mind, whatever. Anyway, I got too far on that. So evangelism, encouragement-
(38:42):
For yourself and others.
(38:44):
Exactly. I was going to say, whether that's ... Yeah, for another, when I'm doing a hospital visit, a pastor or just someone says, "Can you pray for me? " And being able to pray and pray God's word over them. Again, this is not just my words. These are God's words. Here's what he's already said that he's promised to you, whatever. And so encouragement to others, but like you said, edification for myself. Again, encouragement, pick me up when I'm down, but even just, you don't have to be having a rough day. I mean, just that ability, it empowers meditation. So the ability to now dwell on and just savor a beautiful truth or promise from God's word all throughout the day. I mentioned defense. We have an enemy. What did Jesus do when Satan attacked him in the wilderness and temptation? Quoted, Deuterteronomy. Hey, what book we're in now on Sunday mornings.
(39:47):
So three times, I mean, Jesus goes right to scripture, quoting scripture that clearly he's memorized. So warding off spiritual attacks, temptations, et cetera. Memorization keeps God's word fresh on the top of our minds and over time begins to shift our perspective so that we are learning to see all of life through the lens of his word and truth. And that's good.
(40:14):
It's like we're thinking God's thoughts, not just my fleshly sinful human nature thoughts, but like I'm filling my mind and my heart with God's word and therefore his heart, his thoughts. And so I'm seeing the world through his eyes more and more. And oh my gosh, I mean, yeah, that's why it's important. I don't know. Other benefits you'd say?
(40:38):
Yeah. I would just reiterate all of those. And even with, I guess, two aspects to memorizing scripture. One, just use what you're regularly reading through and see if there's some verse in there that you want to remember and write it down and again, put it in a notes app or whatever. Or I was trying to pull up the list. There's a book, some of the D groups read called Habits of Grace, but he's got two different scripture memory sections. One of all things to remember about the gospel that draw your minds back to that, as well as just like 20 verses that every Christian should know. Finding a list like that. Again, it's not perfect. Christians should just memorize scripture, but to give a good starting point, otherwise it could feel overwhelming of like, "You've got all of these verses. Where do I even start?" But try to find a good list like that and even create your own list as you're reading and say, "This is something I want to remember." And so write it down.
(41:48):
And if you have it, you can pull it up on your notes app, you're sitting instead of scrolling on TikTok or whatever, you can spend some time.
(41:54):
Now that you mentioned that, I also put together my own list of what I believe is some great verses to memorize. So again, if somebody wants that, happy to share. And then what was the other point you just made right before the Habits of Grace, you said something that I was going to say something else about too. I don't know. Must not have been that. Not that deep. Yeah. Anyway, oh, you said as you're going through, as you're reading, pick things away. That's what we're doing in our current D group. Our leader training group is we're reading through the New Testament this year and hey, five chapters this week, there's got to be something in there worth memorizing. So just pick some.
(42:42):
Something worth meditating on. So that's what you're going to memorize. I'll share one other quick thing. I was recently convicted listening to a pastor talk about his sermon prep. His sermon prep, again, it starts Monday morning after the Sunday sermon, but he tries to memorize through each passage he's preaching, not just to say, look at how smart I am, but he wants to be reviewing it, thinking on it, dwelling on it, meditating it all throughout the week. And whenever he gets the Sunday sermon, he then starts the next week and start memorizing through the next section. And again, he doesn't necessarily go back and do the recall of that, but at least throughout the week he's doing some serious work of remembering the text.
(43:25):
Maybe I'll get there one day. I'd be-
(43:28):
Short passage. I could just- I'd be preaching to it verse a week.
(43:33):
Two, three verses a week. Whole chapters of Deuteronomy. I'm thinking about when I've done three chapters of numbers all together. Anyway-
(43:43):
He's currently preaching through James very slowly, so you go. No, that makes it easier.
(43:47):
Do
(43:47):
We have time forour last
(43:48):
Question?
(43:48):
Knock
(43:49):
It out.
(43:49):
Okay. She writes, "Do you have any external tools you recommend for Bible study? I've heard of things like commentaries, devotional, study Bibles, et cetera. What are these things exactly? And do you think they're helpful? I've heard arguments against specifically devotionals and they only give you an out of context snippet of the Bible and a human interpretation." What's your take on this?
(44:09):
We touched on it already and I have a section on that in my thing that I already shared with Emma as well about study Bibles I would recommend, commentaries I would recommend. Do you want to, I don't know, add some thoughts on
(44:32):
It? Yeah. I would say Emma, your comment on devotionals is well founded. There are a lot of really bad devotionals out there. I think that's one of the difficult things. You can go to Amazon and type in Bible devotional and you're going to see a whole lot of bad ones. And so again, I think that's well founded. We could give up a list and Pastor Will probably has a really good list of devotionals you could give of where to even look for those. I would just say there's certain publishers that are really helpful in their devotionals and commentaries and resources on the Bible of like Crossway is a really big proponent. Lifeway has a lot of Bible studies as well, P&R publishing. So again, I could just list off a bunch.
(45:33):
Anything that's going to be recommended by gospel coalition.
(45:36):
Yeah. Desiring God. Desiring
(45:37):
God, any of the trusted
(45:39):
Resources. And so I guess what I would add outside of that is if I was to give a category for where I would start with a good study Bible, I think that's such a valuable tool. Again, it's got the Bible and so that's good. And then it's got additional helpful notes. What's
(46:01):
Your favorite?
(46:03):
My favorite, they don't make it anymore. It's the ESV Gospel Transformation Study Bible. It's my favorite. It's the one, I've used it for years, really love it, how to apply the gospel pretty much in each section of scripture. And I find it so helpful. Outside of that, my second would be the Reformation Study Bible, specifically student edition. I give it to our teenager and I just find it so helpful. It gets rid of some of the extra stuff. I've heard really great things about the just general CSB Study Bible as a whole, as well as their ... So that's good. The ESB, I will say, has a lot of information, perhaps even too much information at times.
(47:02):
I think we had a whole nother episode, didn't we, on commentaries? So maybe we just refer that. But I thought we did. Anyway, you've heard my hot take on ... I think the ESV study Bible is garbage personally. I've got it and I'm reading it again now. I don't know. I think what you're looking for is a study notes that answers your questions. I think nine times out of 10 when I'm reading ... And maybe it's written for ... Clearly it's written for someone else who has very different questions than me, because I'm reading the ESV Study Bible and I come to a thing where I'm still obviously trying to question and think critically about it. "Oh wait, wait, remind me, what is that word? Or where is that place? "Or," Huh, I thought Jesus said this here. "And it's like, I'll check the study notes and it's like, you got nothing on that?
(47:53):
Absolutely nothing. A lot of information on other things. And there's tons of information on stuff that like, who cares? Anyway, I'll get off it. But yeah, I hate the ESV study Bible personally. The Reformation I've read and thought was okay. The
(48:08):
MacArthur?
(48:08):
But I haven't done the student one of the Reformation and I haven't done the, what did you call it? The Gospel Life-
(48:16):
Gospel Transformation.
(48:17):
Transformation. I haven't tried that one or the ESV, so I have to check those out.
(48:22):
I would say the ESV John MacArthur Study Bible's a good one.
(48:26):
I mean, that's the best. I haven't tried the CSB either, so maybe I try that. But I have a copy of that. I need to try that.
(48:34):
I would add one more.
(48:35):
MacArthurs is as good as I feel. I find MacArthur to be helpful. 90% of the questions I'm asking.
(48:44):
Again, it's a different translation. The NIV. Again, I think that's a fine translation. Grace and Truth Study Bible. We got that one at a conference.
(48:53):
Almoers,
(48:54):
Right? Yeah.
(48:54):
I
(48:55):
Find that one helpful. I'll often pull it off my shelf when I'm preparing for something like, " Hey, what does this say? "In my stack of five, maybe study Bibles that I'll reference if I need some extra help, not in a commentary.
(49:08):
Yeah. I mean, if I was going to give a shout out for commentaries quickly, I mean, you can't beat free. So I would say-
(49:18):
Matthew Henry?
(49:18):
TGC. Oh. No, Gospel Coalition has a free online commentary series. Most of them are good. But David Guzik, I'm a big fan of David Guzik, Enduring Word Commentary Online. I think he's done every book of the Bible now. And they're just, again, mostly his sermon notes kind of thing. Like you can pull up and listen to it, watch a video of him preaching the sermon on Deuterteronomy one or read the transcription online kind of thing. But yeah, he's very helpful. His commentaries are really good. And one of my favorite has been Warren Weirsby, so not free, but worth it. If I was going to say to any congregant who says, "I want a commentary that will help explain and make practical for me any book of the Bible, and I'm looking to spend under 100 bucks so I don't have ... " We've got commentary sets of each book has 300 pages and you're spending thousands of dollars, but I would say Warren Weirsby has all the New Testament, 600 pages, all the Old Testament, 700 pages, whatever it is, and all of it.
(50:38):
And again, it's his sermons. It's his sermons on, so he's going to go at different paces. It's like he's going to lump four chapters of numbers together in one sermon, but you're going to get enough of the commentary of the ... And again, it's more with a mind toward practical personal application for his church member, congregant hearing the sermon, but it's an excellent. So he's a very just faithful kind of bridging that gap between the written word and then God's people and bring it to bear on their lives. But yeah, we've mentioned other commentary series.
(51:15):
If you'd like one that kind of bridges the commentary, but also devotional and sometimes we use, it's the God's Word for You series where, I mean, again, it's walking through books of the Bible, here's the verses. But at the end, it's got reflection questions, which again can be helpful, but I think those are kind of the best sort of devotional if you're going to do something that it's actually walking through a book of the Bible versus it's just this topical topical.
(51:43):
If you're going to do topical, I mean, the ones that I know you might have others, but that we've recommended before, Paul David Tripps, New Morning Mercies, Everyday Gospel, those two from him are good. I mean, there's probably lots of others. Alsterbeg, he's got
(51:59):
Truthful Life, a couple of those that are helpful. DA Carson's got two that are good. But again, those are kind of following a certain pattern versus completely random.
(52:11):
What's the old Puritan one that everybody loves? The Valley of Vision. Valley of Vision. That's prayers. That's prayers. So in similar vein of, I guess, of devotional types of extra biblical
(52:26):
Materials. It's a great one to add to
(52:29):
Your- If I can just give a quick shout out for two or three other resources. One would be ... So there's concordances as well, just to put that on. Concordance is like a Bible dictionary. Any word used in the Bible that you want to find every other time it's used, you type it into biblegateway.com/concordance, whatever, and it's going to tell you, "Here's all the places that the word faith, that's a lot." But anyway, you got that. But I was going to say, so we reference all the time on the podcast. I've just very been blessed by gotquestions.org in terms of if you've got a specific question, they've got thousands of entries into that like, how does free will and predestination? And it's going to give you a one-page 10 paragraph kind of answer with tons and tons of scripture. And it's very, I find that I've never read anything that I was like, "That's not true on that site." So gotquestions.org.
(53:37):
Openbible.com is kind of like a better version of a concordance that I'm using all the time in sermons, to be honest, where I just, if I just type into open bible like, what does the Bible say about God loves the oppressed or something like that. And it's going to have categorically from top hit, because you can vote on it. It's just like crowd- Crowdsourcing. It's like you vote on what the best answer is and it rises to the top. If you want a verse about God- That
(54:15):
Could be good or-
(54:16):
God's care for the oppressed. This is the most relevant hit and then all the way down.
(54:22):
So that's hugely helpful. And it's just the Bible. I mean, there's no interpreting. It's just here's verses of the Bible that hit on that topic. Then the last one I'll mention is biblehub. Is it comm or org? Org. Org. And they're specifically their interlinear software or whatever interface. So basically to say, once you want to go deeper and you get hungry and get that appetite, even as a new believer, if you literally just Google for interlinear Bible James chapter four or Deuteronomy chapter three, you're going to ... It's going to be the first hit, biblehub.org, and you click on it and you can see the Hebrew text with English word for word now, literal translations of each word, phrase, verb, structure, whatever, right above it. And then ... Sorry. And then you can hover over it, you can click on it, you can interact with it, you can go links to the concordance of every other time that specific Greek word is used in the Bible.
(55:47):
So it's a very powerful tool, so highly recommend that as well. Anything else?
(55:55):
That's all of them. YouTube, look at the book, John Piper, he's just walking a couple verses. Yeah. He draws on it with his Apple Pen. Love it. Just really helpful and Bible recap podcast. It's a Bible reading plan where there's a podcast explanation that goes with each- More high level. Yeah, high level
(56:14):
Stuff. Yeah. Chunks at a time. Good stuff.
(56:18):
Thanks Emma.
(56:19):
We did it. Under an hour? Close. Under an hour, yeah. Under an hour, seven questions, lots. That's everything you need to know about studying the Bible.
(56:29):
Part two coming up.
(56:30):
Authoritative. There's no part two needed. It's authoritative.
(56:34):
No, just kidding. Thanks, Emma. For this week's episode of Ask the Pastors, remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills by asking them online through our website at www.westhillstl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening and we'll catch you right back here next week.