As you continue to grow in your faith you will begin to desire to go deeper in your understanding of God’s word.

Your personal devotional time and being a part of Bible study at church will not be enough. There will be topics that you want to understand more, questions that aren’t answered at church, etc.

You will want to begin studying more on your own. Not just devotionally reading the Bible, but rather intentional studying of the Scriptures. 

You’ll want to consult resources and find out what Christian scholars and leaders are saying about a particular topic or passage. You’ll want to research the historical and cultural context of the Bible to help you get a deeper understanding.

You may have questions about what the Bible has to say about specific topics or theological questions: divorce, money, sex, family, philosophy, evolution, other religions, etc.

Or, you may desire to understand specific books of the Bible better and choose to do a study of a specific book.

Both are great ways to study the Bible. You can try doing a book study and then alternate with a topical study.

Have you every listened to some body preach and you keep reading the Scripture passage they are referencing and wondering, “How did they come up with that?”

Happens to me ALL the time. The problem is sometimes people will read INTO the Bible passage what they think it means based on their preconceived ideas. This is called “eisegesis.”

What they have failed to do is to try and discern what the original author intended his words to mean and what they meant to the original audience.  This is called “exegesis.”

Doing the former leads to really bad interpretation and sometimes some bad theology. The latter leads to solid biblical interpretation.

Studying the Bible well means learning a few principles that will guide you to rightly studying the Scriptures.  The videos posted here will help you get started!

The Bible is not just one book. It’s actually 66 different books written by over 40 authors over the course of 1300+ years, and written in 3 different continents, in 3 different languages.

Some of those books are historical narrative. Some are poetry. Some are genealogies. Some are law and legal code. Some are personal letters. Some are apocalyptic (dealing with end times with wild and crazy imagery). Each of these genres must be read in different ways in order to understand their meanings.

In addition to understanding the genre, one should understand the literary and historical context of each book and individual passages within each book in order to have good, solid Biblical interpretation.

These videos will help you on your journey to a better reading and understanding of the books of the Bible.

One way of studying the Bible is by studying an entire book of the bible.

What’s the advantage of that? Well by reading and studying an entire book of the Bible you get a better understanding of the literary and historical context of the passages rather than just a snapshot.

Think about looking at a photo that has been zoomed in. You may see the face of the person who is at the center of the image, but what you’re missing is all that is happening around him at the time of the picture!

He may be in the middle of some natural disaster (earthquake, flood, fire) with all the destruction happening around him.

Or, he might be surrounded by his family and pets relaxing in a beautiful grassy yard.

Or, he may be about to jump out of an airplane.

But, you missed all the details that tell a bigger story because the picture was zoomed in. If you zoomed out, you’d see everything surrounding him and you’d get a fuller story. A bigger story. More understanding of what the expression on his face is telling you and why.

That’s what studying an entire book of the Bible will do. You will get a deeper understanding. A fuller understanding of what God is trying to communicate through His word.

In addition to studying the individual books of the Bible, a second way of studying the Bible is topical.

Topical Bible study simply means you are studying the Bible in its entirety regarding a specific topic. 

You can pick a topic based on something you feel the Spirit of God has been speaking to you about – putting in front of you a lot lately.

You can choose a topic that you have a particular interest in like relationships, money, warfare, sex, anger, divorce, etc.

You could choose to study a specific doctrine of the Bible or Church theology like grace, faith, salvation, heaven, hell, hope, the Trinity, the End Times, etc.

Then, after choosing a topic you search the Bible to find ALL of the places that topic is mentioned and taught and see what it has to say. 

You also can consult other resources and see what other scholars and Bible teachers have to say about what the Bible teaches on the subject.

These videos will give you some guidelines on how to do a topical Bible study.