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EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 140 books. Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
Psalm 119:165 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
165 Abundant peace belongs to those loving your law,
and for them there is no stumbling block.
Literally billions of men and women have a Bible. However, while they may own a Bible and even carry the Bible to their church meetings, can they honestly say that they love God’s Word? Is a person’s claim that they love the Word of God true if they are irregular and inconsistent in reading and studying it? Certainly not, the claim would be false based on their actions. On the other hand, there are former atheists, who had absolutely no respect for the Bible, who now read and study it daily now that they have converted to Christianity. They have grown to love God’s Word, and now are very much like the Psalmist, meditating on the Word of God “all the day.” Let us now look at some roadblocks in our next few blogs on this subject that has gotten in the way for some, so that they had not read and studied their Bible consistently.
INEXPERIENCED AND UNSKILLED BIBLE STUDENT
Experience is knowledge or skill gained through being involved in or exposed to something over a period. I am not mechanically inclined. My father died when I was four, I had no older brother to train me, no uncles, and so I grew up without learning how to repair go-carts, mini bikes, cars, or motorcycles. I also never learned how to fix things around the house. All of my friends through life had these skills, which was a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because I had a friend that would repair things for me. I was always clumsy around tools and had no real self-confidence in this area.
The same is true for Bible study. If we have always been told that the Bible is easy to understand, just interpret it as you read it because it is straightforward, we were extremely misinformed. Here again, is what the apostle Peter said about the apostle Paul’s writings, “also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Pet. 3:16) This is not the apostle Peter that Jesus found on a fishing boat, whom Jesus said ‘be my disciple,’ or the apostle Peter that denied Jesus three times. Rather this is the apostle Peter 35-years later, who was one of the main leaders of the entire church, who had decades of study and teaching under his belt, not to mention being an inspired author himself. This experienced and highly knowledgeable, wise apostle Peter, felt that some things in Paul’s letters were “hard to understand.” We are 2,000 years removed, of a different language, culture, and historical setting, and we are going to be so bold as to say, the Bible is easy to understand. Peter also said the ‘untaught were distorting the Scriptures.’ There is the important correlation if you are untaught; you have no choice but to distort the Scriptures. Sadly, Peters last words should be a wake-up call for all of us, ‘distorting the Scriptures, to our own destruction.’ One thing that this book will bring its readers is this; we will acquire the skills on HOW TO STUDY YOUR BIBLE. We will also learn how to use the Bible study tools as well.
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