what we would do, a little different than what we are typically involved with. I'm going to talk about Bible study here just for a little while. Larry, do you mind passing those things out? You're sitting right there. We'll come to these here in just a few moments. Some weeks ago in our study of Romans, I made some passing comment on the importance of knowing the scripture, of reading the scripture through on a regular basis, and that certainly is an important part of our Christian experience. We claim that the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice. We make that part of our creed. Before too long, I think we're going to be looking at the Westminster substandards once again, and that begins with its statements concerning the scripture. Inspired by God, given by God, authoritative, and I say it marks the rule for our faith and practice. Everything in the scripture is for our benefit, for our good, for edification. It's important, therefore, that we know the scripture. And certainly those of us that are fundamental, those of us that are orthodox, we need to bring this into the realm of practice as well as within the sphere of our creed. So today I thought I would address this just a little more from the perspective of a question that was asked as we read the Bible. Again, I suggested that you get in the habit of reading your scripture through on a regular basis, knowing what the book says. And the question was asked then, or raised, that as we read, I don't always seem to be getting anything from it on that basis. Don't don't feel guilty there. All right, don't feel guilty I want to talk today a little bit about the different reasons that we read the scripture and different ways Ultimately then that we can study the scriptures together. Now. I've given you a little handout here that I'll address in just a moment Analyzing the theological message of a book. It's one Particular approach that we can use and we'll talk a little bit about that methodology But I'm going to make some general comments here first of all if it is true all right if it is true that the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice we believe by that that it reveals to us everything that we need to know for our eternal destinies what we need to know about salvation what we need to know about God this book reveals to us and we take that very very seriously it's part of our faith it's our rule for faith It's also our rule for practice, what we live day by day. The Bible becomes our guide. It is our map, if you will. It defines for us the course by which and in which we are to walk day by day. Now, if that's true, it behooves us, therefore, to know what this book says. And if we profess and desire to live the book, we have to know what this message is. Now, it's important, therefore, that as we come to the Scripture, no matter what the purpose is for which we are coming to it, no matter how we come to it, to read it, to study it, we must always approach it, first of all, with the due reverence for what we have here. This is a special book. This is God's revealed Word. It reads, as far as the words are concerned, just like any other book. The words are the same. But nonetheless, this is what God has revealed to us. It's not an ordinary book. Every part of it is given by inspiration. Every part is revealed. That is, it's not man's imagination. We learn that the scripture was not given of any private interpretation. Remember that statement that Peter makes? That word interpretation does not have the idea of hermeneutics or how we interpret, as we think of the word interpretation. That word actually has the idea of origin, that there's nothing in the scripture of any private origination. These Old Testament prophets did not make up what they were saying. The apostles in the New Testament did not make up what they were saying. It was not of any private origination. Everything in this book was given by divine revelation, the impartation of that truth to man. And man, whether he was the prophet or the priest or the apostle, became simply the vehicle through which the Lord gave these truths to all of us. So we come to this book realizing then that it's not an ordinary book. It's a divinely authored book and therefore everything that is given is given on purpose. And I think that may be where we come to our first difficulty. If we believe that Paul says that all of this is given by inspiration, is profitable for doctrine, for instruction, for correction in all of these issues, that everything was given by purpose, what happens then when we come to those places in our Bible reading where those things are not on the surface? And we start our Bible reading, right? You get in this habit of your Bible reading and this is good and then all of a sudden you come to your reading in Chronicles and here's all of these genealogies. Somebody begets so-and-so, and somebody begets so-and-so, and on and on and on and on it goes. Person after person begetting somebody and then somebody else. And you read that and you say, what in the world? I'm not seeing any great significance in this. What's the purpose of this? And you go back and here's this thing, right? All scripture is given by inspiration. It's profitable for doctrine. And then you start feeling guilty because you don't see the profit. And you start feeling bad about yourself because you don't see what the significance of that is. And then you go your way and give up. Many times you just give up and go back to the daily bread. And you read that little story and little Bible verse on the end that salves your conscience. You people don't do that, but some people do. Some people do. That's their Bible study. Read a nifty little story. There's nothing wrong with a story. I like stories. With a little Bible verse on the end and you've had your devotion. for the day. And then we wonder why we don't know the Bible. Now, first of all, I want to say that as we read the Bible and come to those portions, don't feel guilty and don't give up if you don't understand what it means. At least on the surface. The solution is not to force some meaning upon it. And this is the way some people handle the difficulties. If I don't see the significance of so-and-so begetting so-and-so, or this particular event, or whatever. Well, then we start to use our imaginations. And we let our spiritual imaginations, as it were, run wild. And we start seeing and making up these spiritual significances as to the meaning of this, the meaning of that, and start seeing all of this weird stuff. And I've heard preachers do that. You ever been to hear a sermon, maybe? You come to what appears to be an obscure text, or even what you thought was a clear text. Here's this whatever, and you say to yourself, man, I never saw that in that text. I never saw that in that text. How does he get that? And we elevate this guy as a spiritual insight. And many times he made it up. Many times he made it up. You didn't see it because it was not there. The solution to handling these... I'm serious. I'm serious. Preachers do that sometimes. Not me, of course. You understand what I'm saying. But the solution to these difficulties is not just to plug in our imagination and to see what we can figure out. There's going to be sensible ways and legitimate ways of interpreting the scripture even on these issues. And I'm going to talk about that for a little bit. Now, I just jotted down here this morning as I was thinking of this. Several different ways and approaches that we can come to the scripture. Different reasons. And I think we want to start there. There are different reasons that I read the Bible. There are different reasons that I read the Bible. There are different reasons that I come to study the scripture. That I want to meditate upon the scripture. And the purposes are not always the same. But nonetheless, I have to come every time I come to this book, realizing that it's a special book. I come, therefore, to this book with reverence. I come to this book prayerfully. Even if I'm on my normal Bible schedule reading, as I try to get through this Bible on a regular basis, a yearly basis, or a two-year basis, there's nothing sacred. There's no mandate that says we have to read the Bible through on a yearly basis. That's not a mandate. If you want to take it through two years, if you want to take it every six months, you know, fine. The point is that we need to become familiar with what this book says. But even when I'm on just that survey reading through this book, I realize that this is God's Word. I come to it with prayer. I come to it with the desire that the Spirit of God would illumine my mind, would open my heart, and give me the understanding that that I need. The Holy Spirit is, as we talked about before, the ultimate teacher that we have. We're Protestant. We believe in the priesthood of the believer. We believe that every one of us as believers in Jesus Christ, having the Spirit of God dwelling within us, have the right and the obligation, have the duty, the privilege, to come to this book, to read it for ourselves, to interpret it, and to allow the Spirit of God to make the application for us. So I always come to this book, and I recommend that we come to this book. Not casually, not flippantly, but that we come to it in due reverence, realizing that it is God's Word, and that our hearts, as well as our heads, might be open. There's nothing wrong, all right? As Orthodox Protestants here, there's nothing wrong with asking God that our heads might be opened as well as our hearts. We want our hearts open, but we want our heads open as well. We want to understand as much as we can, intellectually, what is going on. Alright, so, while I say that, first thing, I do recommend, and this is what generated this whole line of thought I do recommend that we get in the habit of reading the Bible through on a regular basis reading it through on a regular basis now again you can pick your own schedule it takes it takes only about four chapters a day to read it through on a yearly basis you can make I say your own schedule now there are various recommended ways of doing this. McShane's schedule is printed for you there in the back of your devotional book, Eagle's Wings and whatever else. We've got McShane's schedule there. Sander has that one-year bible that you have. That will take you through it on a regular basis. My personal feeling All right, my personal feeling is I don't like the one-year Bible. My personal feeling is, bless his memory, I don't like McShane's schedule. It'll take you through the Bible. But one of the reasons that I try to be on a schedule for reading the Bible through on a regular basis over and over again is to give myself an overview of what that book what that book is about. And if I'm reading one chapter in Genesis and one chapter in Matthew and one chapter, I'm getting it all done in a year's time. But I'm not sure that the continuity of that particular message is really fixing in my mind. So I like to stick in a book. I like to stick in a book myself. And you do it other ways. Sometimes I'll start with Genesis and work my way through Revelation. I will start with Matthew and work, and then go back to the Old Testament. Sometimes I'll start with Malachi and work backwards, and sometimes I'll start with Revelation and work backwards. This year, you know what I'm doing this year? This year I'm reading Genesis and then Matthew, and then I'm going back and forth. You can do whatever you want. You see, there's no particular value in that, except I would recommend that we do it book by book. It's my desire. It's my objective. It's my objective in trying to read the Bible through. Not to get a devotional thought either. Now if that happens, fine. My heart is open. I'm praying that God will open my heart and that He'll speak to me even when I do this. But this is not your devotion, whatever you think that means. This is not your inductive Bible study where you're getting into great detail. The purpose of reading the Bible through here on this basis, as I'm suggesting, as I do it for myself, is that I might just get a constant overview of what this book is about. If this book is my guide for life, If this book is my guide for life, I don't know what's going to happen day by day. I don't know what's going to happen day by day. But if I've read this book and I know the message of this book, and I say, oh yeah, this is going to be, Paul addresses this in Corinthians, or this is a truth that is developed, I have a basic idea what these books are about. I have a basic idea what these books are about. And I think that is a great value to us. And again, you go to the typical Christian. And ask him what this book is about. What's the theme of this book? Or what's the primary focus of Zephaniah? Zephaniah? Oh, I thought that was just for sword drills. And we just don't have any clue. Alright? As to what these... We never read them. Alright? We never read them. But if I get in the habit of just reading the book, not, as I say, to construct a sermon, or not to even get a devotional thought, although I'm not opposed to that, you know, my heart's going to be open to it many times. There's been many times that if I'm doing my Bible reading, not looking for a sermon, just to get this overview of what this book is about, what this book is about, where is this book going, what's the message here, I'll come to a text and pass it. Man, I'd like to preach that. I'd like to preach that maybe. And so I just jot that down and I give myself a thought there. I've got a section in the back of my Franklin planner here, sermon thoughts. And it's all filled with that stuff. Hopefully Kearns is going to be gone here soon, so I don't forget this. And I'm anxious to preach this. That comes, and that's fine. I don't look at it at that point. I don't stop everything and say, let's come back. No, you just keep on going. And if I read something I don't understand, it's not the purpose, it's not the objective of this particular perspective of the Bible reading to stop and figure out what all the difficulties are. If I come to those genealogies, I'm going to have a question. Why are these genealogies here? Why are they here? Make a note to yourself. I've got to come back and figure this out. I've got to come back and figure this out. And we'll do an in-depth study of that book's message. But you just let it go. You don't let that bother you. You come to a verse. You don't understand what it means. Fine. Fine. Don't throw your hands up in despair and say, what's the use? What's the use? Just let it go. Just keep reading. We're trying to get an overview of what this of what this book is about. So reading your Bible through on this regular basis, where you're taking these large chunks, is not a substitute for your personal Bible study. That's not the purpose of it. It's not the substitute for your daily meditation, if you will. Although, again, I say you want your heart to be open and the Lord speaks to you. Obviously, that's your desire. But from a simple objective. I want to read this so that I know what this book is about and that we know where the chapters are. This always surprises me. This always surprises me. We used to do this thing, maybe some of you have heard it. I haven't done it in a couple of years now, but we used to do this thing for the summer radio, 20 questions from the Bible. You ever hear that thing? We'll try to find out what the object is or whatever it is. I've had people come to me and say, man, how do you find that in your Bible so fast? I say, hey, we don't even have our Bibles there. That would be cheating. All of this is by just our memories. Our Bibles aren't open. We don't do that. And they say, how do you do that? And they seem to be amazed that we can figure out what chapter that object is in. And I say, you know what? The person just reads his Bible. That's the kind of stuff that just happens naturally. This will happen naturally. As you read this book over and over and over and over again, you'll know that in Deuteronomy 21 it talks about taking in a forward woman and making sure she pairs her nails. That's hardly something that you're going to live by. That word pair actually means to let your nails grow, and so I could get someone to bite your nails and bring you to that issue. You don't do that anymore, Sandy. Sandy's a biter of nails. Doesn't anymore, so I salute her. Pair does not mean to pair off. It means to let grow. It means to let grow your nails. But that's, I say, hardly a preaching text, I think. But I know where it is. That comes to my mind because I read that this morning. Don't be too impressed. I read that this morning. But that's how that works, all right? And that has its benefits. That has its benefits to get the overview of what this book is about. So I would recommend that you approach it from that standpoint. And again, if you want to follow that type of schedule where you're all over the place, that's fine. That's fine. But as I look at my yearly Bible read, and I try to read it at least once a year on the schedule, sometimes I just get taken up in it. Sometimes you just get taken up in it. I find, oh man, I read 12 chapters today instead of four. You know, that's fine. Usually the way, it seems like I'll try to start always on the first of the year, and it seems like I'm done with it by the middle of summer, end of summer. And then you start over again. There's no rule that says you have to start at the beginning of the year. Just keep doing it. This is just something that you do on a regular, regular basis. I don't know how many times. I couldn't tell you the truth how many times I've read the Bible. I'm not saying I understand everything, because I certainly don't. But you start to get a feel. You start to get a feel for what this book is about. And that's important. That's important. This is our life book. This is our life book. And it's a shame if we just have our little verses here and there that we take out. I don't like this index card mentality. I'm going through this kind of trouble. So you go in your file box and say, where are the verses that deal with this particular issue? Well, you know, that serves its purpose. Santer has this little thing, what's it called, that Allison gave you for doing this thing. Remember? God's Promises or whatever. It's got nifty little stuff in it. It's all Bible. It's all Bible. You know what I'm talking about? God's Promises or whatever. Good, good things. A little taken out of context. But it's going to be a shame if the only Bible reading you ever do is say, all right, what's my trouble today? All right, the kids are beating up on me, so all right. Here's the verses that deal with kids beating up on you. You understand? That's good, but you're going to miss a lot there. Read your Bible through on a regular basis. What happens when you read something you don't understand? Not to worry. Make a note saying, I don't understand it. Come back and deal with it. But you let it go and you're trying to get the overview. That's the purpose. That's the purpose. Alright, then you have the more devotional studies. And again, I would recommend that. Where you're dealing with smaller portions. Where you're taking the time now to meditate and pray through each of those sections. You're praying that the Lord would open your heart and give you specific understanding. Give you something to live by that day. Whatever, however you want to approach it. But now you're looking at it, and you're reading it, and you're meditating, and this is going to be a smaller portion, I would think. Again, you can still be in a habit of doing it on a scheduled basis. Again, I don't like this idea of, what do I need from God today? No, that's chronic. Open your Bible and throw your finger down. We believe in the providence of God, but that's not providence that you just open your Bible and throw your finger down and say, Lord, speak to me today. It needs to be a regular basis. But there needs to be that time where we're taking smaller portions and praying through them, meditating upon them, contemplating what does this mean? And what does this mean to me? What's the implication of this? And that's not a substitute. I'm not doing that at the same time necessarily that I'm doing my overall Bible reading. Alright, you with me here? Alright, now, when I come to do serious Bible study and I would recommend this I would recommend that you get in a habit on top of your daily reading schedule on top of your On top of your devotional meditation upon the Word of God that you've got some studies going on all right some in-depth detailed studies of Of the scripture I'm going to be suggesting one way to do that in this Analyzing the theological message of the book, but that's not the only way So hang on to that and we'll deal with that in just a moment. Let me just be suggestive here. I'm not going to develop these right now, but let's say I want to take a topic and I can do a subject study or a theme study. I trust that you all have concordances. Every believer ought to have a concordance. I don't know how ultimately you can do any real Bible study without having a concordance. Many of you have online programs on your computers that work very nicely. But you need to have some concordance. Say you want to study what faith is. So you start looking through the various passages of scripture. Maybe in one book, or in the Old Testament, or the entire Bible. You bring all of these issues together. These passages that deal with a particular subject. And you start to get a handle now. a feeling as to what this means. What does faith mean? What does the Bible teach me about faith? What does the Bible teach me about trust? Well, you look up your words for faith, believe, start bringing those passages together and organizing that according to that. And that does you good. That does you good. I would recommend sometime doing analysis of some of the key words. There are some words uh... in the bible that are used over and over again that just stand out as being key words uh... that if you know what those words mean and you come to some passage where that word occurs it automatically gives you insight uh... into what is involved there i've done this with you before i know a couple summers ago we talked about this in detail and uh... i gave you instructions as to how even without knowing hebrew or greek just using the english tools uh... you can do an effective word analysis, a word study, getting a handle, a definition of these words. And many times you people or other people, students and people here in the church, come to me Or they come to Alice from the Kearns and they have their Bible and say, what does this verse mean? And you're asking what this verse means. And I look at it and say, oh, I see the pivotal word in there. I know what the key word is. And as soon as I know what that key word is, it opens up the meaning of that particular verse. And you can do that. It doesn't take a knowledge necessarily of the original languages to do that. That helps. But not necessary. It hurts my feelings to say that as a language teacher. But you don't have to know Hebrew or Greek to be able to do that kind of a thing. But that helps. That helps. Now, what I'm going to suggest today, and go over some of the procedures here, is doing a book analysis and looking specifically for the theological message of the book. And the beauty of this, the beauty of Bible study, And the beauty of this book is that I don't care what level, I don't care what level it is that we're coming to this book. There's going to be a message here for every one of us. We all have different skills, alright? God has called me into a particular ministry. And in the nature of my calling where God has put me, I'm dealing with the languages and grammar and all of this stuff and so I have that ability, God-given and training to get and deal with this at a particular level. Alright, let's face it. We're called to do something. You people can do things I can't do. I can do something here that you can't do. We're part of the body of Christ. We talked about that. We all have our place. And I understand. So we all may not be able to come to this and deal with it at the same level. That's fine. That's fine. That's the beauty of this book. It's the inspired word of God, and I don't care what level we approach it. There is going to be, if our heart is open, and we're praying for the Spirit of God to speak to us, and to teach us, there's going to be a message here for us. If we have the heart to receive it. I'm not talking about levels of meaning. I am not talking about different levels of meaning. I don't like that horse. that horsing around with the scripture to making, well, it means at this level it means this, at this level it means this, and you can only look at it this way. No, no, no, no. The scripture means one thing. I believe in the singularity of meaning. Otherwise we have subjective nonsense. And it's incapable of being understood. I am not a neo-orthodox. The idea of neo-orthodoxy is that it denies the objectivity of this book. I'm being very simplistic, but it denies the objectivity of this book. It's just a subjective message. We're all priests. And here's the perversion, you see, of good biblical truths. We're all priests. You see, we all have the right, we all have the ability to come to this book and to be taught of it. That we do. That we do. But don't confuse that with the right to make up the meaning. Alright? This is an objective revelation. This business of my coming to a passage and I say, well, here's what this means to me. What does this mean to you? What does this mean to you? Well, and then we say, well, it means this to me, it means that to you. Fine. Here's this personal encounter that we have with God. And God's speaking to us subjectively. Let's be very, very careful here. Let's be very, very careful here. This is an objective message. It's an objective message. I believe in personal experiences with the Lord. And I believe in the Lord speaking to me personally from this book. But that does not give me the right to make up what it means. It doesn't give you the right to make up what it means. This business, well it means this to me and that to you, and we'll go our way, we'll just agree to disagree. And everybody has the, no, no, be very careful. You want to be very careful. Meaning is going to be, meaning is going to be, singular ultimately. Now there are going to be some passages that are ambiguous perhaps and we have to realize that if we are being honest with the interpretation that there still may be different implications that are seen from that text. That will happen. That will happen. But let's not fall into this place where we just get into this idea of... And this has become... I'm just kind of talking on top of my head. I'm sorry, visitors. Usually I'm organized. Usually. But this thought just came to my mind. We have a lot of these in-home Bible studies going on today. And this seems to be the big evangelical thing. And I know various churches even that cancel their Sunday night services so that people can get little study groups. You get little study groups, you start talking about the Bible. Listen, a lot of what goes on in that is utter and total nonsense. It's neo-orthodoxy. Read this passage. Tell me, what does this mean to you? How's the Lord speaking to you here? Well, it means this to me, it means that to you. Be careful. This is not something that's just to generate all of this nonsensical thought. Alright? No, no, no, no, no. There's an objective message here. And it's the purpose of Bible study, not just to get some nifty idea. Oh man, look. It is to get down to what God's intent was and what God's meaning was here in this book. That's the objective. Not for me to subjectively come up with something. I'm never impressed with novelty in Bible interpretation. Alright? I'm not impressed with novelty. We've been at this, this Bible's been here a long time for us. And when I start seeing interpretations and implications drawn from this text that have never happened in the history of the church and all of a sudden now, bingo, bangle, here's what it means. I'm suspicious of it. Alright? Because God's not playing that kind of game with us. Alright? Not playing that kind of a game. The meaning here is singular. The meaning is intended is my objective not just to have some esoteric existentialistic experience As to what this book does to me at any particular moment I want to find out what God is saying and once I find out what God is saying What did God mean when he said this? Then we can draw the implications and the applications from our for our life at that particular moment. But I'm saying there's different levels of study. When I say there's different levels of study, there are not different levels of meaning. There's not different levels of meaning. That a layman can see this level, a preacher can see this level, a professor can see this level. No, no, no, no, no. There's one meaning. We can look at that, we can study that at different levels of operation. But we're all dealing with the same truth. There's surface exploration, if you will. There's deep mining, if you will. Different levels that I can look at it and study it. But the meaning is going to be ultimately one. The deeper I look, the more I investigate, I may have insight that helps explain. And that's good and that's proper. And that's why we do this. But we're not looking for different meanings. You can contrast this perhaps with what the apostle says as he makes the difference between the milk of the word and the meat of the word. What's the difference between the milk of the word and the meat of the word? Is it different in substance? No. We're not giving different nourishment. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. but in a little different style of presentation, if you will. But we're not changing the essence of the nourishment using that imagery of what's involved. Okay, having said that, look on the back side. You don't have all that stuff written down, do you? The only side you have. Analyze the theological message of a book. There are times when I want my study to focus upon a given book. What is this book about? What is this book about? Now, not just an overview, but can I take possession? Can I take possession? of this book of the scripture. What is its message? Why now, when I have discovered these things, I don't see why that fit there the first time. Why that genealogy? Why that statement? Why this? Why that? Now we're going to see if we can get down to it and figure out why the Lord says what he says in each of these given books. And I would recommend it first, if you want to try this, that you take a smaller book. You know, I wouldn't use Chronicles maybe as my first shot at this if you've not done this kind of study before. Take a smaller book and see what happens. Now, I've just outlined for you here some recommended steps in doing this kind of approach. First of all, read the book completely. If possible, read the book through in a single setting. This will allow you to overview the general message and direction of the book. Try to determine the purpose of the book, that is, why was it written. See if you can read the book all at one time. I think sometimes what happens in our Bible study, we get in this habit, well it's four chapters here, three chapters here, and everything becomes segmented and compartmentalized, we forget what we read the next day, we don't get the connection. If I'm going to do now a theological analysis of the book's message, As much as possible, see if you can read the book all at one setting. And read it more than once, before you do anything else. I'm going to suggest some other steps here. But many times when I do this kind of approach, I'll just read that book over and over and over again. Not necessarily looking for anything, but looking for everything. What is impressing me here? Where is this thing going? Am I getting a general feel? for the direction. Why is this book written? Just read it over and over again. This is going to take time. You understand what I'm suggesting here? It's going to take some time for you. This is not just a one-time, one-day deal. You're going to have to determine that, alright, I'm going to work on the message of this book. I'm going to dictate whatever time I need. If it takes you a year to do this, it takes you a year to do this. If it takes you two years, it takes you two years. Don't put yourself under bondage here as to when and how often. Here's a type of Bible study and we're going to take this book and we're going to develop it thoroughly. And the first step is to read the book over and over again. And every time you read it, you're going to see things you didn't see before. Things that you read the first time and say, man, why is that there? Pretty soon it's going to be, hey, okay, I see why that's there. It fits here, it fits there. Alright, that's the first step. Read the book analytically. Look for specific themes. Now, I've just made some very objective categories here for you to look for. It's not limited just to these three categories, but you know, here's a starting place. It's a starting place. What does this book reveal about God? What is this book teaching me about God? It is the purpose of special revelation as God reveals himself. This is a book of self-revelation. What does this book teach me about God? What does it teach me about God? Who is He? Does it list any perfections of God? Any attributes of God? Any characteristics of God? What does it have God doing here? Do I see God exercising judgment? Do I see God as creator? Do I see God as ruler? Do I see God as whatever? In this book, who is God? And what is God doing? And just make those kind of notes. Direct statements, figurative statements. Just pay attention. I would recommend either having a Bible. I'm just trying to be very down to earth today. I would recommend having a Bible that you're not afraid to mark in. Get a Bible that you're not afraid to write in. Or, again, some of you have computers. What I like to do now is just print out the whole text. on just paper where I'm not afraid to mark on it. Get a copy of that text, of that book, that you're not afraid to mark on. I would recommend getting colored pencils. I don't know how you can do any thorough Bible study without colored pencils. That's just my opinion. You get some colored pencils and you make a little code for yourself. Now as you read through the book, Let's say every characteristic about God, every time I see a characteristic about God or a perfection of God, I'm going to mark that in blue or whatever. And so I put a little circle at the top of my page. Blue equals statements about God. And I read the book just for that purpose. The only thing I'm going to look for now is I read the book. God is this, or God does this, and so you mark it. Then you look for another theme. What does the book say about Christ? What's the messianic message in this book? So you take a different color, you put your little code there, a little circle, whatever that color is, equals statements about Christ. And now I'm reading the book again. Where does this thing say something to me about the Messiah? What he does? Who he is? Is it a prophecy if it's in the Old Testament? Is it a type? Is it whatever? And you just start making these codes. Other theological themes. What does it say about man, sin, judgment, salvation? Just make a little color code there. And you go through and now here's sin. What does this book say about sin? So sin is black. You use black for sin. And you start coloring all the reference about sin. Terms for sin. Illustrations of sin. sinners, what have you. Alright, you do that. Alright, now it may be that as, now I say what I've given here are just starting points. I certainly want to look for these things. I certainly want to look for these things. But there may be other things as I've read this book. You know, this book says a lot about, a lot about love. Alright, what about love? I see that word love occurring over it. We'll start marking that word. Alright, start marking that word. Where does that word, where does that concept occur? And you've got that coded for yourself. All right, and you just do this. And you start to see certain patterns develop. All right, the number three, after I read the book, and who knows how many times it takes to do that. All right, who knows how many times it takes to do step number two there. But we're in no hurry. All right, we're in no hurry. This is not For you people, you're not accountable to me here. I have students do this, and they're accountable, and so I put them on a deadline. This is your assignment. You have to have done this by XX day, but you're not under that pressure. Nobody's telling you you have to do this by such and such a date. I don't know how long it takes, but you just do it, and you have fun. You're having fun, and your heart is open as you're doing this. This is good. This is good. But after I mark all those themes, then number three. We note the major emphasis. Determine what theme is most frequent. How are you going to do that? You can do that immediately now. You look at your colors. You look at your colors. That's why I like colored pencils. You look at your colors. And if I see red occurring, man, every time I look at it, it's red, red, red, red, red, or blue, blue, blue, blue, blue. There's only one orange here. Well, that predominance of that color tells me, hey, this is a predominant theme in this book. And it doesn't take a lot of a lot of training or a lot of sense, if I can talk it down to you here. It doesn't take long, if you can discern colors, you can see what theme is the most predominant. That's all it takes. That tells me something. This book, if I read the book Hosea, and I see this marriage illustration coming through I've got that mark because that was something that struck me. Let's mark every time I see something about marriage and this kind of relationship. And I see that occurring here and here and here and here. That's something unique about this book. Here's part of the message of this book. And I start to formulate ideas then as to what is the most common themes. What are the sub-themes? Be there, observe what themes occur throughout the book and what themes occur in particular And again, that becomes a very visible thing if I'm using this color coding kind of stuff. For instance, I'm in a class right now where I'm dealing with Genesis, talking about Genesis. And we often remark that Genesis is the book of beginnings. The start of something. Genesis is the book of beginnings. Well, that's interesting. But when you start actually looking in Genesis as to what it says about beginnings, There's nothing that begins after chapter 12.