Equipping Eve: How to Study the Bible

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Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

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Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

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But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

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Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

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No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

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My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

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Well, hello ladies and welcome to Equipping Eve. I'm your host Erin Benzinger and this is the show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth from God's Word.

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We say we do that and we do do that so that you can stand strong and firm on that Word in an age of deception.

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And deception is all around us and I don't just mean the Joel Osteens and the Joyce Meyers and the Beth Moores and all of their crazy, unbiblical teachings.

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There's deception in the world. There is temptation in the world to love the things of this world and to take our eyes off of Christ.

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Ladies, if our eyes are not fixed firmly on the Savior of our souls, oh, we will wander down a rabbit hole that will be so detrimental.

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Now, of course, if we've been saved by Christ, we take comfort in knowing that He is the one who seals and assures our salvation.

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But ladies, that does not mean that we just go and live like the world. No, no, no. If we have been saved by Christ, we are now slaves of Christ.

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He has given us new minds, new hearts, new desires and we desire to serve Him and to serve

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Him well. And we do that by studying and following His word so that we may be sanctified and that we may grow in likeness of Him so that we may grow to look more and more like Him each and every day.

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Ladies, is that the desire of your heart? I hope it is. I hope it is. I hope that's your daily prayer.

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That is my daily prayer for myself and for my brothers and sisters in Christ that we would desire to be more like Christ so that that desire as an outworking of that, we would open

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His word and read it. We would pray and commune with our God that way. We would love and treasure and cherish times of study in God's word, whether that's personal study or whether that's corporate worship, where we gather together not just to sing psalms.

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No, no, no. Worship is not the singing of psalms. That simply acts as a support system for the primary mode of worship in the corporate worship service, and that is the preaching and proclamation of God's word.

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That, ladies, is worship in the corporate worship service. The psalms are just decoration, if you will.

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We could have a corporate worship service without music and it would be okay. But the music is there to add to the worship and praise of our

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King. But that worship needs to be Christ -focused. You know, so many psalms today, written today, and even some of the old hymns are very me -centered.

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They might be Arminian in their theology and they talk about making a choice and a decision for Christ, in which case, congratulations, you are responsible for your salvation.

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So those are wrong. Or they may just be singing all about me. Hey, guess what

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I'm going to do? I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that because I'm so fantastic.

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No, no, no. No, no, no. Christ is fantastic. Christ is amazing. Christ is the one to be glorified.

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Christ is the one who should be elevated in all things, not just the preaching and proclamation of his word, but also in the psalms that we sing.

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If Christ is not elevated above all, we shouldn't be singing that psalm. If that psalm is more about me and what

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I will be doing, then that psalm needs to go. So anyway, that was a tangent

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I didn't plan on. I guess that's the definition of tangent, isn't it? Kind of, sort of, anyway.

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So what I wanted to focus on today, ladies, and we touched on it early on during my tangent, is the study of God's word, the study of the

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Bible, Bible study. I receive a lot of emails and messages and questions about, you know, how do we study the

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Bible? Do you have a women's study that you can recommend, a book written by a woman that would be good for me to read and help me study the word?

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And, you know, to be very honest, ladies, I don't recommend Bible studies written by women.

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In fact, there are very few actual Bible studies I would recommend. I typically recommend a different type of study that might not be written up in a book for you to follow that would be peppered with anecdotes and stories about Beth Moore's husband that nobody actually cares about, but rather focus on the word of God.

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And so I thought we would just talk today, you know, what if you don't have a little

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Bible study book with little questions to answer every day to help you study the word?

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Does that mean you can't study? Does that mean, you know, your Bible study has been stymied?

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I don't have a book with questions one through five for Monday and six through 10 for Tuesday.

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What am I going to do? You know, when we become reliant on that type of a format, it demonstrates a gap in our understanding of what it means to study the word.

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I used to be part of a rather large quote -unquote Bible study that I would definitely not recommend.

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And I would hear from ladies that the study would typically run September -ish through,

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I don't know, May, you know, it ran through the school year, if you will, and took summers off. And towards the end of the summer,

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I'd hear women say, when we came back in September, they'd say, Oh, I'm so glad we're starting up again. You know,

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I just really got out of the habit of studying my Bible this summer. And I do not understand that.

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I don't understand. Because that tells me that you are not studying the

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Bible because you desire God's word. You're studying the Bible because you have a piece of paper with questions on it that you have to answer.

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And you feel like you can check it off of your list for the day when you've done it. But when you don't have that paper with questions on it, you don't know what to do.

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And even if you don't know what to do, then you would still be desiring the word and you'd be getting into God's word and reading it and figuring out how to study it on your own without those little questions.

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Because in reality, those little questions are not necessarily helping you know God's word better.

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I would actually challenge any one of those women in that particular Bible study to tell me what they actually learned over the course of a particular year and a particular study.

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And I can guarantee you that probably 95 % of them, if not more, could not actually tell me what they learned, even though they answered every single question along the way.

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So while there may be some benefits in that type of study, I don't think it's the best type of study, the best method of study.

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So what do we do? What do we do? Well, then you also have people who, like I said, they want these books and they become dependent on what does this man or this woman have to say about the

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Bible. Well, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, but that should not be our primary content.

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The Bible should be what we're studying, not studying books about the Bible. Does that make sense? So what we need to do, ladies, is we need to make sure that we are thoroughly familiar with the text that we're studying, the actual biblical text and its full context.

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So it was interesting, when I started thinking about addressing this topic, all of a sudden several websites that I trust and follow and look to and maybe don't agree with everything they post, but for the most part, we agree on the essentials, started posting articles about Bible study.

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And so I've been kind of saving them and looking at them and noticing similarities between them. You know, everyone is going to have their own process that works for them.

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But what matters, ladies, is that we're in the word and that we're seeking to see and to understand and to know what

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God is saying in his word. Studying the Bible is not about what does this mean to me?

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What can I get out of this? No, no, no. What is God saying in his word? That never changes.

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That has one meaning. And when you understand that by default, you will understand how that applies to your life.

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Because when you have a better understanding of who God is and what he's doing, what he's saying in his word, it just falls into place that we understand how that applies in our lives as Christians.

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So the first article I'm going to take you to is called the CSGMA Bible Study Method.

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And I found this at glorybooks .org, which is a ministry that is based around the ministry and teaching of Dr.

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Greg Harris, who happened to be one of my professors at Master's College. So I like a lot of what they post.

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And all of the articles that we touch on today, ladies, I will be linking to at the

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Equipping Eve blog. So you'll be able to find that if you go to equippingeve .org. You can click the link to the blog, and it will take you to the resources there.

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So this article, the CSGMA Bible Study Method. Let's see.

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They start, and they kind of explain how they came up with this method. And they say it's called

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CSGMA Content Summary God Attributes Man Attribute Gospel Application. And it was funny when

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I came on this article, I thought, that's exactly what I've been telling people. Very similar, anyway.

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And so it was a very interesting divine coincidence, if you will.

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So they say, we've put it into a pray, read, study format. We did not set out to reinvent the wheel.

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And this is a hodgepodge of some other formats mixed with some experience and tweaks in our own ministry. So they say, it's important to approach

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God's Word with a prayerful attitude. We all have our own thoughts, ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives. So we must come to God's Word prayerfully, asking the

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Holy Spirit to teach us what is right and true about the scriptures. Again, that's so important, ladies.

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When we come to study, we must pray first. We should pray first and ask that we would not impose our pre -existing thoughts and our experiences and our

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American background or our whatever country you're living in.

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Don't impose that on the biblical text, because that's not the original context and historical setting of the scriptures.

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And so it's important that we prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to teach us what is right and true, so that we are getting, as I said, what

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God is saying in His Word, not what we want Him to say. They go on, James also teaches us to come to the scriptures humbly and submissively in 119.

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Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. We should also spend some time thanking

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God for His Word to us. Absolutely. It is only because of His Word, they write, that we can know Him in the finished work of Christ.

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Take some time before you begin to study the text to read. Read the text multiple times.

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Read the text in several different translations. Not a bad idea, but we're limited in our trustworthy translations here, so perhaps you just read the

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NASV and the ESV. Read the text out loud, they say, and that's an interesting tip that a lot of us don't do.

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I don't even typically do this, but you hear the text, you pick up on different things when you are reading it out loud, and especially the epistles,

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I think, are interesting to read out loud, because you think these were letters written by the apostles, you know,

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Paul wrote a letter to the Colossians, and it was read in the assembly, and so it was read out loud.

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That's how the original audience heard it, and so I think that's a really interesting tip. Read the text out loud.

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Read the passages before and after the text you will be studying. The importance of knowing the proper context when studying scripture cannot be overstated.

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I agree 100%. Context is essential. You don't just sit there and read two verses, and those are the verses

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I'm going to study. Now, perhaps your pastor, when he preaches exegetically, he focuses on one or two verses for the entire sermon.

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My pastor does that, but those pastors also read to you the entire context, and as they preach on those two verses, they are tying it in with the context, the verses preceding and the verses following those verses, so that you can see the whole picture of what is being said in the text, so proper context is key.

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The writers also say it's a good idea to study through one book at a time, and this will help with understanding the proper context.

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As you begin with your initial reading of the text, this will be a good time to mark the phrases you don't understand, and take this opportunity to begin to define some words you may not know.

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Resist the temptation to be a lazy reader and read over those words you do not know. Each and every word means something to the text and is there for a reason.

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It's imperative we know what each word means, and those tips, ladies, I think are really essential, and it may mean that you take longer to study through a book or a passage, but that's okay.

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It's God's word. Isn't it worth taking the time? Okay, so here they get into kind of the nitty gritty of how they would recommend studying, and you don't have to follow this.

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This is just one method that is out there. So they say content.

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The first part of studying the scripture passage is to identify the content. Content is simply listing the facts.

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Do not add your opinions, but let the Bible say what it says. So sit down.

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Make a list. You know, what is this passage talking about? It's very simple. List the facts.

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Then summary. In this section, you will summarize your content statements into at least two summary statements, but no more than four.

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We believe this process of grouping the content into ideas will aid greatly in the understanding of the scripture. Grouping verses together to form a factual statement can be tricky in some places, but relatively easy in others, and don't get discouraged.

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Be sure to use your content statements. Then they move on, and the G portion of their CSGMA method is

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God's Attributes. One of our goals is to help our students and ourselves learn to consistently and accurately look for God in the

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Bible. We can see him in the scriptures even when there is not a quote God is statement in the passage.

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So we ask questions like where do you see God in these verses? How do you see God working? Why is God doing this? You know, think of the book of Ruth, you know, or think of James where Jesus Christ is not by name mentioned, but is present.

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You know, what does this passage tell me about God? What is God doing? Who is

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God in this passage? What attributes of God do I see in this passage? And then move on and look at man's attributes.

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The Bible does teach us about us, and it is important and vital that we see the contrast between us and God.

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The writers of this article say it will help us to see our need for him and just how far he has gone to reach us.

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With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will see things like our selfishness, our inability to accomplish those things to which God has called his children, what

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God can do through someone surrendered to him, and more. And so it is essential that we contrast what we see about God in the passage versus what we see about man.

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You will come to a very, very high view of God and realize just how low man is, and that's vital, vital, friends.

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And then application, gospel application. After looking at the facts of the passage and listing God's and man's attributes, we need to examine how these verses apply to us and make the application personal.

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But you cannot do that, as I said earlier, ladies, until you've done the other steps. You can't do that until you've looked at the content, you've read the context.

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Perhaps you've even gone and studied, there are lots of resources, handbooks and whatnot that tell us the context of that book.

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What was the time in which it was written? What was happening in David's life when he was writing a particular psalm?

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There are some Bibles that even have little background sections to introduce each book. The MacArthur Study Bible has that included and it's so helpful.

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I think you can even get those backgrounds on gty .org if you don't have one of the study Bibles. It just gives you a perspective so you can see properly

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God's attributes and man's attributes and then you can make that gospel application. So that's one method.

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It must be, ladies, when we go to the application portion of our study, and we do have to touch on that, but it must be biblical.

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This is not a to -do list. Okay, what do I need to do based on this passage so I can check that off every day and be a good

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Christian? But it should drive us to a dependence on God. In the midst of this, you can pull in trusted commentaries.

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Those are always, it's always a good idea to do that, but not until you've spent time in the actual passage.

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This goes back to we don't want to study what a man says about God's word. We want to study God's word.

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I'm not putting down commentaries or teaching at all, at all.

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I heartily encourage you to go to those resources, but pull out these observations on your own first.

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There is another helpful article that appeared, and this one is found at ParkingSpace23 .com,

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another website that I very much appreciate, and it's called Bible Study You Can Do.

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And so you'll see a lot of similarities in the steps that they give here. They say, first, prepare your heart.

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Simply, you must be holy. In order for you to approach a holy book and then apply holiness when finished, your heart must be cleansed to receive its truth.

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In other words, pray. Pray that God would give you a clear mind, a clear heart, and that he would show you what his text is saying.

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The second thing they note in this article is read, read, read. Open your Bible and read. Then re -read.

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Then re -read again. You'll be surprised how much you missed on the first go around. And again, this might be helpful.

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This is where it might be helpful to read the text out loud if you are in a position to do that. Third, they say, write out the intent of the text.

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Too often during Bible study, we want to jump straight to the application for us. In various places throughout scripture, that might be good.

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However, you must first ask, what was the original intent of this passage?

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How would the original writer intend for us to understand this and how would the original readers have understood this? So this kind of goes back to the content.

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What is happening in this text? What do we see about God and what do we see about man? Then they say, state the intent of the text generally as a timeless truth.

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This is the way that this particular article approaches the application piece. So you have the intent of the passage, and then you pull it into a timeless truth.

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The timeless truth is the original intent generalized and applied to your situation, says this article. They're using the example of Judges 13.

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Ask yourself, what am I doing with the privilege God has given me, et cetera, et cetera. Once you see the true application from the original intent, then go and do.

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And again, this should drive us to a dependence on God. It's not, oh, I can do that. Okay, good.

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We're good to go. Thanks, God. I'm done here. No, no, no. It's, oh, Lord, I can't do that on my own.

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I see what you are telling me to do through your word, but I can't do that on my own.

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I can't do that without your sustaining strength and power and enablement of your

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Holy Spirit. And so, again, ladies, we'll link to this article at equippingeve .org,

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but I hope you've seen kind of common themes here.

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And so pray, read the passage, reread the passage, read it again, read it again, read it again, make your observations, and then pull out your application as a timeless truth.

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There's another article called A Personal Bible Study Method. I don't know what, this might be on Glory Books as well.

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And this one lists steps such as observation, context, genre, understand the genre.

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Are you reading apocalyptic literature, are you reading poetry, are you reading history? Oftentimes we see some of these seeker -sensitive pastors, they go to the historical books of the

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Old Testament and they pull out weird applications that don't make any sense because they've misused the genre of the text, they've misapplied the application and timeless truth, etc.,

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etc. There's a host of problems there. It helps us to understand, this can all be part of your observations that you're making about the text, the literary style, textual criticism, grammar, lexical study, again, understand like that first article we looked at, what words do you not understand?

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Go look in the dictionary. If you have a concordance, it's going to help to use that.

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If you have a concordance, it will help you to use that and understand the original word, the original language,

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Hebrew, Greek, and see what that word actually means. And then summarize the text that you've been studying.

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And then another article is found at Michelle Leslie's website, michellelesliebooks .com.

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She calls it 10 Simple Steps to Plain Vanilla Bible Study and this is a helpful article written by a fellow lady, a fellow lady, that doesn't even sound right.

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Anyway, my friend Michelle, she lists, again, very similar steps.

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She reminds us of the perspicuity of scripture, that it is clear and understandable, especially for believers, she says, because of the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit. And so that's important to remember. You can understand scripture because God has given you the

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Holy Spirit who enables us to understand. She tells us to pray. She says to read it like you would any other book.

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You don't just pick it up and read one sentence in the middle of a paragraph. No, no, no, context, context.

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She suggests maybe a Bible reading plan would be helpful. She says to understand the background and setting.

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Again, as we said, look at some of the outside resources, commentaries and whatnot that you can go to to help understand those things.

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She says to take notes on the text, to listen to good preaching, and that's a point

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I wanted to make. Ladies, it's supplemental to your study of the actual word. Listen to good preaching.

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Find good commentaries. Good preaching, we talk about good preachers here all the time, and so you know some of those that we recommend.

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And this isn't just even podcasts and audio sermons that you can listen to, but turn to some of the old guys, for lack of a better term, whose sermons are in print.

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Turn to the J .C. Riles and the Charles Spurgeons, and what do they have to say about the text?

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Turn to John Calvin. I recently studied through Titus by reading through, working through John Calvin's sermons on that book, and they were wonderful.

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They were marvelous and so easy to understand and just really helps you get a great understanding of the text.

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A great tool, ladies, that you might want to think about getting is a book that is called

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Commentaries for Biblical Expositors, and this is by Dr. Jim Roskup, and this was a required reading for a couple of my classes at the

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Master's College when I was going through the Master's of Biblical Studies program there.

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And what this is is a collection with brief summaries of commentaries for every single book of the

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Bible. And what Dr. Roskup has done here is in his summary, it really helps us to see what kind of commentary this will be.

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Will this be on more of a layperson level? Will this be more of a scholarly, you know, writing in those crazy academic journal commentaries that maybe most of us would just be more confused by?

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Will this take a liberal stance on its interpretation of the text or a more conservative historical grammatical stance on its exegesis?

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This is a really, really wonderful resource, and I recommend it to people quite often.

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You don't have to be a student to benefit from this resource. So you think, oh, what's that commentary there that's recommended in that article?

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Let me see if Dr. Roskup has taken a look at that, and it will help you know if it's one that might be worth your while to pick up and use for your study.

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And so I'll put a link to this book as well. Again, it's called Commentaries for Biblical Expositors by Dr. Jim Roskup, and I've found it immensely helpful over the years.

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So go to the commentaries, go to trusted preachers, but most importantly, ladies, go to God's Word.

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Go to God's Word because by the gift of the indwelling

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Holy Spirit, you can understand it. People say, oh, I don't read the Bible because I don't understand it.

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Then you might have a bigger concern, and that might be salvation. Not that we understand everything perfectly, but it is the common testimony of Christians that when they were saved, suddenly they could pick up the same

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Bible that they may have read previously, and it suddenly made sense. And that is the

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Holy Spirit, ladies. And God's Word is such a treasure, and God's Word is something we should desire to know, to love, to understand, that we should keep it in our hearts.

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And in all of this talk about the Bible, we've not gone to scripture, ladies. So turn with me to Psalm 119, and I won't read through all of Psalm 119, obviously, but let's look at some of the truths about God's Word.

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As contained in God's Word, the psalmist says, how can a young man keep his way pure?

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In verse nine, by keeping it according to your word, that's why the word is important, so that we can walk in the ways of holiness that our

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God wants us to walk in. He prays, do not let me wander from your commandments, your word

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I've treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes.

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With my lips I have told of all the ordinances of your mouth, and I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches.

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I will meditate on your precepts and regard your ways. I shall delight in your statutes. I shall not forget your word.

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The testimony of the Word of God in Psalm 119 is amazing, ladies, and I encourage you to sit and read this and ponder these verses.

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And something that I did at one point, as I went through and started underlining the different ways in which

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God's Word is described in Psalm 119, and so you see just the comprehensive nature of his word just by the way it's described in this one psalm.

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In his ways, his precepts, his commandments, your righteous judgments, your statutes, your ordinances, your testimonies, your word, your word, your precepts, your testimonies, your commandments, and it's always attributed to God.

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Revive me according to your lovingkindness, verse 88, so that I may keep the testimony of your mouth.

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Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven. Your faithfulness continues throughout all generations. You established the earth and its stands.

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Verse 64, the earth is full of your lovingkindness, O Lord, teach me your statutes. Do you see how it's linking lovingkindness of God with his word?

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Verse 105, we all know this one well, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

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The word of God illumines us to the truth of God. Your law is truth, verse 142 says.

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Ephesians 1, verse 17, Paul writes a prayer.

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He says that he prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him.

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I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe.

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That is by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God will point us to Christ and his word, the

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Holy Spirit will always point us to Christ. It will illuminate the scriptures so that we can understand

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Christ. Isn't that worth your study?

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Isn't that worth your time? Ladies, I hope you're studying

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God's word. I hope you love and treasure God's word.

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And so until the next show, get in your Bibles and get on your knees. And get equipped.

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Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no -compromise radio production.

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If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com. Or you can check out one of our two websites, do notbesurprised .com