How to Read

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And if you�d like to learn more about No Compromise Radio, probably the best thing to do is go to the website, nocompromiseradio .com, or if you want to listen to sermons, they�re at bbcchurch .org.

Bbcchurch .org. We�re in Hebrews right now, Hebrews 6, going into chapter 7, that great section on Melchizedek, Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness. If you would do me a favor, maybe you could go to iTunes and rate No Compromise Radio.

And if you think it�s five-star worthy, go ahead and give us the five-star rating. That would be helpful. I don�t know how helpful we gave up trying to dominate the podcast world several months ago.

Recommended Books and a Random Stack of Notes

All right. Well, what are we going to talk about today? Yeah, that�s a good question. That�s what I�m wondering. Well, if I have a couple books to recommend today, let me give you three books to recommend.

Every Sunday night when I would preach, I would always recommend a book, and today I�m going to recommend three books. First one, Recovering the Reformed Confession, Our Theology, Piety, and Practice, R. Scott Clark.

I think you�d be encouraged to read it. Interesting stuff about Reformed confessions, about quest for illegitimate religious experiences, and everything in between. Number two, The Christian Faith by Theodore Beza.

The Christian Faith by Theodore Beza, I think you�d be encouraged with this kind of little mini-systematic theology. And then the last one, The Assurance of Faith by Louis Burkhoff. Louis Burkhoff, The Assurance of Faith.

Three books we�re recommending today on No Compromise Radio, and for a gift of any size. Just kidding. In front of me, I have What Makes a Good Book, all right? What Makes a Good Book. Doesn�t that seem like it�s a nice tie-in today?

We�ve gone from having no idea what to talk about to me seeing books on my desk recommending three of them, and then now picking up a piece of paper. It is, this is luck. This is serendipitous. This is fortune.

This is fate. This is chance. This is, this is radio. Good books are written, not so much for children as written by people for who have not lost their childhood. Why is that there? There�s a C .S. Lewis quote there.

I always skip that. I don�t do C .S. Lewis quotes or Richard Baxter quotes on this show, or G .K. Chesterton. So I�ve recommended three books, and I�m going to recommend three authors not to quote. You can quote them if you want.

I just personally don�t quote them unless I�m going to critique them. Good books have life. Good books have profound, have a profound kind of morality. What is this? All right. Well, here�s what it says.

How to read a book. Do not try to read fast. Read at your normal rate or slower. All right, well, let�s turn this into Bible reading. How do you read your Bible? Typically, people read their Bible too fast.

I will say that. They�re reading too fast, and they�re not thinking big picture. So remember, we�ve got Jesus, eternity past, slain before the foundation of the world. We�re looking back, because of Luke 24, seeing what the Lord has done in the person of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, and we�ve got to think to make those things happen.

If you just read too fast, and you just read the words on the page and not think about their local context, i .e., their immediate context, and then their paragraph, chapter, book, where it fits in the canon, one author of God, and one author that is God in the entire corpus from Genesis to Revelation, if you read too fast, it�s trouble.

I don�t really know why anybody would try to read fast, except if you said to yourself, �I have to read my five chapters today, and I�m reading through the Bible in a year, and I just have to get through that section.

That would be a reason to read fast. Or if you thought, �You know what? Chapter a day keeps the Bible boogeyman away, and keeps Krampus away, and therefore I better read it, so I kind of get energized.

It doesn�t matter how much you read if you understand it not, understand no-got, no-have-got understanding. It doesn�t matter if you read a lot, and you don�t know what you�re reading. Skimming the Bible, I did have a how to read the Bible in 60 seconds a day, or whatever, some dopey thing.

So take your time when you read the Bible. And if you use the same Bible, and you read the same sections for a while, you�ll become very familiar with those, and then you can go on to the other sections.

For me, the way I do it, this is the Be Like Mike moment, virtue, morality, Be Like Mike. I read the Greek section in the morning, the passage that I�m going to be preaching that particular Sunday, and even though I might not know Greek perfectly, by the end of the week I know that passage a little bit better, and could probably read it without any helps.

And then I try to read something in the New Testament about the Lord Jesus, and sometimes I�m studying this, that, or the other, and then I�m going there just to rehearse. To remind, to, and when I mean rehearse, rehearse these truths that I need to be reminded of, because every day when I wake up, I still have a hangover, and that is a theological hangover, a sin hangover, harmoniological hangover, and I think that I merit God�s grace.

I think that my legal standing is earned. I think that I have to be saved by grace and then keep myself by works. I struggle with all those and more. So, try not to read the Bible too fast. Read at your normal rate or slower.

Marking Key Words, Themes, and the Structure of an Argument

Now, this part�s interesting. Read with pen or pencil in hand. Underline passages and terms as well as allusions, not illusions, but allusions, which the author seems to be most interested in. Now, when I�m studying Hebrews 6 and 13 to 20, I�m seeing promise, promise, promise, promise.

When I�m in Hebrews 3, rest, rest, rest, rest. When I�m reading Numbers 35, and I�ve read all of these recently, refuge, refuge, refuge, city of refuge, refuge. When you see the key words, you realize often, oh, there�s the theme.

Why is he repeating this? And you say, well, I don�t know the Greek word. I don�t think you really need to know the Greek word. You�re not going to go too far off if you see the English word promise five times in Hebrews 6.

I don�t know the number, but let�s just say it�s five. It�s probably going to be the same word, and if it�s not, it�s close to the same meaning anyway. At least it puts you in the same ballpark, and you�ll realize, okay, okay, promise, oath, is there a difference in Greek?

But what�s the point? That God is condescendingly giving us as creatures more reason to believe His Word. I mean, He could say, �My Word is true, therefore believe it. I�ll say it one time, that�s it.

And of course, that would be enough. But God really wants us to get this point so that we might, Hebrews 6 .18, stand firm and stand with great hope and have an encouragement to know that God keeps His Word.

So, how does God keep His Word? He would just say it because He is immutably holy and trustworthy and faithful. But if He gives us a promise and then He gives an oath, those things are designed so that we might really understand, yes, this in fact is true.

So help me, God. So help me, I am God. That would be a good way to translate the promise and the oath. But anyway, when you have a pen in your hand, then I think you deface books. I never try to mark with a pen.

It�s almost like a venial sin to me. Pencils, I like to mark with pencils. You can tell my old books have yellow highlights in them because I would never highlight a book with yellow these days. The last 20 years, I would never do it.

But the first few years of my Christian life, I did a lot of yellow highlighting and I would take the page with actual books and bend down the ear of the page so I would have it, you know, marked for special recall.

Now if you want special recall, at the front of the book, here�s what you do. I write down when I finished it, so I would say January 2018, and then I rate it. And I�ll give it an A I�ll give it a C, I�ll say first half of the book is A, second half is C, and this is my rating.

So it�s A through F. I pretty much don�t read F books. I guess if I had to, I could, you know, if it�s a false doctrine book, why even rate it? It doesn�t deserve a rating. But then in the very front, if there have been 20 things in the book that really stand out to me that just need to be remembered, well, if you read a lot of books, how are you going to remember those?

So if you go to the front of the book and you say page input 20, dash, so that�s page 20, dash, Calvin�s great discussion on the link between justification and sanctification, yet keeping categories separate, okay?

Then when I think, all right, I know in Calvin he said that, but where did he say it? I go to the very front of the book and it�ll say, you know, 9, 20, 28, 42, 78. Those are all pages with a little description after that.

So that�s how I read that. With pen, you can make mistakes and it�s hard for resale. With pencils, you can change it. I only write with pencils now in books. And if you�re around me and you try to write with a pen, you might see me give you kind of a look.

Always read the preface and any other introductory material. This will tell you what the author thinks he is doing and may give you valuable insight into his presuppositions, the methods he employs, and so forth.

So here it says, read the preface or introductory material. If you get a book and you think, well, I�ll just skip those things and just get right to the point, you might not understand it as well. And I think when you�re reading the New Testament, I think you need to understand the Old Testament, right?

So let�s just pretend. When you�re a kid, you say, �Betend. Let�s just pretend. I actually heard a radio host today driving in here to the church building. He said, �I�m really a-scared. He was talking about the New England Patriots, I think, and Gronk, but he said, �I�m really a-scared.

I thought, well, I�m really scared or I�m really afraid. But if you are petrified and you are afraid and scared, you�re a-scared. Irregardless. Regardless. I know. I know. I�ve just seen if you�re paying attention.

I�m here to serve. I know the New Testament�s, the preface to the New Testament is not all the Old Testament. But if you think about it as important information to know, that will help you. Number four, use the dictionary or other reference works for all words and concepts you do not understand.

Write down the definition that applies above the word itself. I think that�s excellent. And I know our listeners know what propitiation is. But if you don�t know what propitiation is and you�re reading your Bible and you�re in 1 John 2, propitiation for our sins, 1 John 4, John 3, I don�t know where else propitiation is used, but I know it�s used in those three places, then what do you do?

You look it up. And these days, especially if you�re reading electronically, you just right-click and it�ll say �look up� and you�ll find the word, and it�s very, very simple. And then you could go, oh, sometimes translated expiation, sometimes propitiation, and that would give you a hint into a theological controversy.

Which one is it and why? And then you could study that on your own. By the way, Leon Morse�s Apostolic Preaching of the Cross is an excellent book. And by the way, when I�m talking about books here today, since that�s the subject matter at hand, I�m looking at the books in my study right now.

And there are quite a few books. Some I have at home, some I have on my computer. But there are quite a few books here. I�m not ready for a theological purge, by the way, but that�s a different show. And one of the things when you look at all those books, I say regularly to people, would you rather have all these books here as I try to teach you the Bible, or would you rather just have me and the Bible teaching you the Bible?

And here�s what I�m after when I�m talking about that. Are you a biblicist or not? That is to say, is it just you and the Holy Spirit, and He, the Holy Spirit, illumines your mind? Or does the Holy Spirit illumine your mind and you study in light of the Holy Spirit�s work in the Church from the foundations of the Church with the apostles and prophets to now, let�s say we�re at the roof or the chimney because the Church has been being built for many thousands of years.

And then you say, well, He, the Holy Spirit, has helped guide interpretation, and there is a biblical tradition that�s important. When we typically hear of tradition, we�re afraid of it. We�re scared of it.

But there�s tradition that�s good. If the tradition is teaching something outside the Bible, i .e. purgatory, last rites, a virgin conception of Mary or something like that, then we don�t believe it. But if the Church teaches rightly about the deity of Christ, and we look at the Apostles Creed, and then we look at Nicene Creed, and we look at the Heidelberg Confession, if those things have been teaching the Bible correctly, then that�s good.

I don�t want to just revisit things. I mean, okay, what does this verse mean to you? And then here�s Hebrews 6, �Impossible to restore them again unto repentance. Does that mean you can lose your salvation?

Instead, I have all these books in my library for a reason. What have they said over the years? I mean, if your pastor says something different than John Calvin, your pastor might be right. But really?

Knowing him? Of course he could be right. But let�s just pick a doctrine like election, and you see, all right, it�s not only found in Paul, it�s not only found in Peter. Ephesians 1, 1 Peter 1, John 6, the Lord Jesus talks about it, Acts 13, 48.

This is a doctrine that�s taught by Jesus, Peter, Paul, Augustine, Augustine, scared, Calvin, Zwingli, Olivianus, Knox, Owen, etc. And so you think, well, my pastor thinks that�s not good to teach. So I�m going to take all those guys and say, well, you know what?

They could be wrong, right? It�s not that these men are infallible. But the Spirit of God has been building His church for quite some time. And if you�re a dispensationalist, He�s been building the church for 2 ,000 years.

If you�re not a dispensationalist, He�s been building the church for even longer. Either way, we have a lot of Bible that we can learn from who�s gone before us. See Ephesians 2, see Ephesians 4. All right.

Number four, use a dictionary to write down all words and concepts you don�t understand. Oh yeah, back to that. I have friends who do that very thing. When they hear something, a pastor saying a word, I mean, if you�re a pastor or you�re word that�s complex, then I think you should say, in other words, that is to say, the definition is.

But if he doesn�t say that, I say you write it down and go look it up, and when you look it up and research it, you�ll remember that word. Just to give you an illustration, when I became a Christian, one of the first things I did in regards to this idea, I don�t think it was the first thing I did chronologically, but in terms of trying to be a better student, I thought, well, I know Jesus has forgiven me, but there are other words used, and those words are used to make me understand the fullness of this great salvation that the Lord has accomplished.

And I would look up a word, redemption. And then you see how Israel is redeemed out of Egypt, temporally, physically, and that�s a good way to think about our eternal spiritual salvation redeemed, not out of a land, but out of our depravity and Satan�s scheming.

And redeemed was a good word. Reconciled, you think, okay. Reconciled is a good word. We were estranged and now we�re reconciled based on the work of Christ Jesus. Ephesians helps us with that, and so does 2 Corinthians with other verses.

What about propitiation? We talked about that earlier. So in my mind, I always think I understand what propitiation is. God�s holy, therefore His wrath is poured out on sin. Jesus received that, intercepted it for us, absorbed that wrath in our place.

Even though He didn�t deserve it, He took it for us because He loved us, gave His life for us. The Father loved us by sending His Son. And then I go, okay, I�ve got redemption down. I�ve got reconciliation.

I�ve got propitiation. I understand justification. I understand forgiveness. That gives me the different facets of the diamond of redemption and salvation found in Christ Jesus. Number five, how to read a book.

Underline major organizational words such as first, second, etc. This will help you understand the structure of the author�s argument. Now, when I was first a Christian, I was told verbs are important for Pauline epistles and other epistles, and they are.

They�re very important. But you need to see these connecting words because therefore, a for, that is F-O-R, because now, finally, these particles, these connectors will lend themselves and will give great hints to what the Bible teaches if you understand, you know, on one hand, on the other hand.

If you read NIV, for example, I don�t know about the new one, the 2011, but the 1984, if you read James 1, you will see that a lot of the connecting words, the fors and ands and buts, are not found in James 1, sadly, because then you read James 1 as a proverb when you shouldn�t read it as a proverb, a New Testament proverb, because there�s all these linking words, and these linking words are very important.

Number six, after reading a chapter, immediately review it and locate the thesis. Most chapters contain one sentence or paragraph on the brief section which says in a nutshell what is going to be or has been discussed.

Underline the section and write the thesis in the margin. And I think that part�s good. When you�re coming to review, that solidifies things in your long-term memory. When my kids were little, we would teach the Bible at dinner time, let�s just say five nights a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, and I would go through Exodus.

So I would be in Exodus chapter 18, 19, and then I would say, all right kids, before we go into Exodus 19, what did we learn yesterday? What happened in Exodus 18? Then we go through, discuss, what about God?

What about sin? What does God do with sinners? And then now it�s off to Exodus 19. So repetition is the mother of all learning, as some have said, and that�s an important thing to do, is if you can repeat or think of the main theme, right?

So if I told you Leviticus 16, you should say Day of Atonement. If I told you Exodus 12, you should say Passover. Exodus 3, sandals off, holy ground, burning bush. If I were to say to you Matthew 1, genealogy, Hebrews 7, Melchizedek, those things are good, and the only way you�re going to remember them is if you review them, right?

Because there�s so much information. Now, the Bible will seem smaller as you study more. It will seem more wonderful and more magnificent, but it�ll seem smaller. That is to say, you can get your arms wrapped around it, and you think, okay, if I can figure out the themes for all these books, then I can know it better, know the author better.

But then you�ve got all these themes in all these books, right? There�s just so many of them. So what do you do? You just take one at a time. So start off with a particular gospel or a book that you want to study.

Why pick something that seems not as exciting to you? I know all the Bible is supposed to be exciting, and it�s all God�s Word. But pick something that is especially neo-Orthodox for you. Oh, just kidding.

You know, you�re wanting to study that particular aspect of God�s character and nature and promises of love, whatever it might be, and then study that. My problem was when I went to get my MBA, I began taking, you know, management information system classes, and it just was a wreck.

I should have took classes that I wanted to take in advertising and sales and those things. That would have been much, much more better, I�m scared, than just taking these baseline classes that made me just drop out.

Anyway, when it comes to the Bible, why don�t you study things that really are exciting to you? And you think, I want to study the power of God. God is almighty. Well, then, go to Matthew 8 and 9 and look at the almighty God, the incarnate God, healing people and taking care of issues of nature.

It is surprising. It�s comforting to know that�s your God. Well, what have we talked about today? Today has been reading books, reading literature, reading the Bible, reading biographies. I want you to be a reader, Christian, because this is how God communicates.

In the last days, God has spoken to us in Greek and Hebrew letters, Luther said, with a little bit of Aramaic in Daniel and in Esther. But that�s how God speaks now, so we should probably be book learners.

Folks are dumb. Where I come from ain�t had any learning, but you can always learn. I�ve learned so much more. Now as a Christian than I did before I was a Christian, I�m very, very thankful. My name is Mike Abendroth.

This is No Compromise Radio. You can write me, Mike, at nocompromiseradio .com.

We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.