Part One: Biblecornerstonewla.org/uploads/...god_notes_session3.pdf · SESSION 3 Reading the Bible, part 1 Fall 08 . CORNERSTONE WEST LOS ANGELES WALKING WITH GOD: SESSION THREE Bible:

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Discipleship Pathway

Walking with God Part One: Bible

SESSION 3

Reading the Bible, part 1

08 Fall

CORNERSTONE WEST LOS ANGELES WALKING WITH GOD: SESSION THREE Bible: Reading the Bible, part 1 2

Introduction We’ve seen that we walk with God by listening and learning to His Word in the Bible. We’ve also

gotten acquainted with the overarching story of God in the Bible, which gives us context to the

different parts we read day to day. But context doesn’t help us if we aren’t good listeners. Today

we’ll explore how to listen well to God so we understand him and draw close to him.

LISTENING AND READING For a lot of people, the idea of reading reminds them of school assignments or skimming

articles online. When these people hear about “reading the Bible,” we put it in the same

category. This isn’t all bad: we do want to study the Bible and think clearly about what it is

telling us. But that approach has two negatives:

• Impersonal learning: The word “reading” can make time in the Bible sound like it’s

about gathering facts and not about knowing God personally.

• Intimidation: The word “reading” can make time in the Bible sound like it’s academic,

and only for people who were really good at school.

We learned last time that the Bible is God’s personal communication to us. That means reading

the Bible is listening to God speak. The idea of listening has better connotations:

• Personal learning: The word “listening” helps us understand that we aren’t just looking

to gather facts from the Bible, or to entertain ourselves—we’re relating to God through

every word.

• Encouraging: Even if we don’t always listen well, we all know how to listen. The word

“listening” helps us understand that the Bible isn’t just for experts or academics—it’s for

anyone who is willing to listen.

When you open up your Bible, try to think about it as listening to God. This will usually help you

not only study the Bible, but also approach it as a way of knowing God personally.


Listening Well: POIMA Listening is something we do every day. While we don’t often listen as well as we could, we all

know what good listening looks like: paying attention, not being distracted, maintaining good

eye contact, asking good questions, genuinely trying to understand what the other person is

saying. When you think about it, good listening even includes the way we get ready to listen to

someone, and what we do with the things they say once we’ve heard them.

In this class, what we’ve done is take all these different steps of listening—from paying attention

to acting on what you hear—and put them into an acronym: POIMA.

Preparation: am I ready to listen?

Observation: what is God saying?

Interpretation: what does it mean?

Meditation: how do I internalize what it means?

Application: how do I act on what it means?

When listening to someone we love and value, we typically walk through this process. It’s not

different when listening to God. The rest of this section we will walk through POIMA to see how

we can listen to God well in the Bible.


Preparation If a good friend called and said, “We really need to talk,” what would be on your mind as you go

to listen to him or her? You’d probably wonder what they are going to say and think about your

relationship and what’s going on in your lives before you meet them. These things put you in

the right frame of mind. When you get there, you’ll be ready to listen!

When hearing from the God who made the universe, it makes sense that you would take a

moment to get yourself in the right frame of mind. Below are ways to prepare to listen to God.

AN ATTITUDE OF NEED Without God’s help, we won’t grasp anything that Scripture teaches about reality. We can study

for hours—and learn all kinds of facts—but without the Holy Spirit, we won’t be able to listen and

understand what God has to say.

In light of all this, we need to approach God with an attitude of need. This can look like a quick

prayer, a mental reminder of Who it is that is speaking, or a quick moment of silence. Whatever

it looks like, we must remember that, without God’s real-time interaction with us, we won’t have

“ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4; Mark 4:9).

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not

speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will

declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take

what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said

that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:13-15


DEALING WITH SIN Conversations get difficult when there is an elephant in the room that you haven’t brought up.

When you have un-confessed sin that is a part of your life, or you have sinned against another

one of God’s children and haven’t repented, you’re not in a position to listen well.

Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with

meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. James 1:21

Sometimes when you feel like the Bible is “dry,” it’s actually because you’ve set your heart on

listening to something else instead of God. Putting aside all other allegiances is important when

you want to listen well to the God of the Universe.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up

into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 1 Peter 2:1-3

AN OBEDIENT HEART When you plan on disobeying God, or on evaluating His words to see if they fit your desires, you

set yourself up to listen poorly. God blesses those who listen to Him with an eye to obeying His

Word.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if

anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently

at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once

forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of

liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will

be blessed in his doing. James 1:22-25


Observation Observation is its own step, before interpretation. When you listen well to someone, you don’t

start by assuming what they mean—you start by listening to the words they say. Only then is it

okay for you to put together what they mean. When it comes to the Bible, we have to observe

what God has said before we think we know what he means. Read on below for more about

observation.

WHAT IS OBSERVATION? We can’t understand something we don’t pay attention to. If we want to listen well to anyone,

we’ll pay close attention to the specific words they use, their train of thought, and how what

they are saying now fits into what they’ve said earlier.

Observation can sound clinical and academic, like doing homework or filing paperwork. Good

observation is anything but. Mortimer Adler (author of How to Read a Book) said that what

brings out the inner reader in all of us isn’t education but being in love:

“When men and women are in love and reading a love letter, they read for all

they are worth. They read every word three ways; they read between the lines

and in the margins. They may even take the punctuation into account. Then, if

never before or after, they read.”

Observation isn’t making a dry and formal list. It’s paying close attention out of love. The God of

the gospel is speaking to us! When we pore over his words, we are set up to interpret him well

and see his voice transform our lives.


MAKING OBSERVATIONS Like Adler says, when we apply ourselves we are naturally good at observing (and

interpreting!). Below, we’ll walk through some of those natural steps we take as good listeners

so we can hone our observational skills.

It looks like reading with a zoom lens: we pay attention to the small details and the large

context; to the words God uses and the way he uses them.


OBSERVING HISTORY The story of God has different twists and turns. Our place in the story isn’t the same as King

David’s place, for example, or Moses’ place. When we read about the Civil War, we instinctively

recognize how it fits into the history of America, and react accordingly. We need to do the same

when we listen to God.

Practice: how does observing history impact how we listen to the following passages?

4Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not

eat these: The camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is

unclean to you. -Leviticus 11:4

31“Behold, the days are coming, declares theLord, when I will makea new

covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,32not like the

covenant that I made with their fathers on the day whenI took them by the

hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they

broke,though I was their husband, declares theLord.33For this is the covenant

that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares theLord:I will

put my law within them, and I will write iton their hearts.And I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.34And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor

and each his brother, saying, ‘Know theLord,’for they shall all know me,from

the least of them to the greatest, declares theLord. ForI will forgive their

iniquity, andI will remember their sin no more.” -Jeremiah 31:31-34


OBSERVING GENRE Genre is another name for the form someone uses to communicate. Most of the time we

recognize genre subconsciously: when you pick up a newspaper, you instinctively read a front-

page story differently than an editorial; you read the comics with different expectations than

classifieds.

The Bible contains many different genres: narrative, prophecy, proverbs, wisdom, poetry,

prayer, epistle (letter), and more. These are less familiar to us than what we find in a newspaper,

so it’s helpful to be conscious about what genre God chose to use in different part of the Bible.

Practice: how does genre impact how we listen to the following passages?

The fear of theLordprolongs life,

but the years of the wicked will be short. - Proverbs 10:27

2And theLordsaid to Joshua, “See,I have given Jericho into your hand, with its

king and mighty men of valor.3You shall march around the city, all the men of

war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days.4Seven priests

shall bear seventrumpets oframs' horns before the ark. On the seventh day you

shall march around the city seven times, andthe priests shall blow the

trumpets.5And when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, when you

hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout,

and the wall of the city will fall down flat,and the people shall go up, everyone

straight before him.” - Joshua 6:2–5

8“Or what woman, having ten silver coins,if she loses one coin, does not light a

lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?9And when she

has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with

me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’10Just so, I tell you, there is joy

beforethe angels of God over one sinner who repents.” - Luke 15:8–10


OBSERVING STRUCTURE We use the phrase “train of thought” to describe the flow of our ideas—how they connect, and

how one leads to another. When we communicate to others, we use that same train of thought.

Each sentence, paragraph, and larger idea is connected to what came before and what comes

after. Loose ideas are cemented together into a structure that helps us communicate.

Miscommunication happens when someone doesn’t understand our train of thought. If they

don’t pay attention to the structure of what we’re saying, they can easily miss our point. When

we listen to God in the Bible, we want to observe the train of thought—and that means paying

attention to the flow of what He’s saying.

Practice: how does observing God’s train of thought help us listen to the following passage?

6Forwhile we were still weak, at the right timeChrist died for the ungodly.7For

one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person

one would dare even to die—8butGod shows his love for us in thatwhile we

were still sinners, Christ died for us.9Since, therefore,we have now been

justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him fromthe wrath of

God. -Romans 5:6-9


OBSERVING SENTENCES AND WORDS Communication happens when specific words are put in a specific order. Each word, phrase,

and sentence has a goal: to express a particular thought. When we listen well, we don’t “skim.”

We pay attention to each word, each phrase, and each sentence, so that we receive everything

the speaker is expressing.

Listening to God in the Bible is no different. We want to observe sentences and words so that we

don’t miss anything He is saying.

Things to look for:

• Comparisons and Contrasts (Romans 6:23; James 3:3-6)

• Relationships (e.g. cause and effect, Romans 5:1; “so that…” John 3:16; “If…then…”

1 John 1:6)

• Figures of Speech (Psalm 119:105)

• Nouns and Verbs (Colossians 3:1)

• Conjunctions (2 Timothy 1:7)

If we imagine the biblical text to be like a brick house, then conjunctions are the mortar that

holds the bricks (phrases and sentences) together. One critical aspect of careful reading is

to note all of the conjunctions (“and,” “for,” “but,” “therefore,” “since,” “because,” etc.). Our

tendency is to skip over them— but don’t do it! Without the mortar the bricks fall into a

jumbled mess. Grasping God’s Word, p. 35


Conclusion Walking with God means listening and learning from His Word. Preparation and observation are

the natural, important first steps to hearing God speak in scripture.

Application Questions What are ways you need to prepare to read your Bible?

What can you do to observe more as you read God’s word?

Documents

Part One: Biblecornerstonewla.org/uploads/...god_notes_session3.pdf · SESSION 3 Reading the Bible, part 1 Fall 08 . CORNERSTONE WEST LOS ANGELES WALKING WITH GOD: SESSION THREE Bible: