How Do You Bible? Part 3: Research

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Abba, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Abba, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  Ezra 7:10 (ESV) For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. CONSIDER THIS We read God's Word. We ruminate on God's Word. We rememberize God's Word. Today we come to the fourth formative, Spirit-empowered way of engaging God's Word: study. The R-word is research. The Bible is a complex book. In fact, it is sixty-six books. It was written on three different continents, in three different languages, by forty different authors, and over the period of some fifteen hundred years. Still, miracle of miracles, the Bible reveals a single, unifying, underlying, and overarching story. As has been said, the waters of Scripture are shallow enough for a baby to play in and yet deep enough for an elephant to drown. The Bible is the most significant and important book in the history of the world and is easily the best-selling book of all time. What could be more worthy of our investment than a lifelong study of the Word of God? It seems like a slam dunk. Sadly, it is not. Johann Bengel, acclaimed eighteenth-century New Testament scholar, aptly wrote, "Apply yourself wholly to the text; apply the text wholly to yourself." Most of the engagement I have seen with the Bible over the course of my life so far begins and ends with Bible study. I would like to suggest that our involvement with Scripture does not begin with study. It begins with the kind of engagement identified so far. I see these practices of reading, rumination, rememberization, and research as sequential. They describe, for me, a practical agenda for applying the whole of ourselves to the whole of the text. Listening and hearing (and re-scribing) the text, meditating and ruminating on it in our heart, and rememberizing—slow loading it into our heart and mind for long-term memory—feels like an embodied application of our whole selves to the Word of God. Only then are we ready to research. Some wince at the term as it conjures up images of writing a term paper for social studies. The word research simply means, "to search again." Think of it less like science and more like treasure hunting; less like a term paper and more like panning for gold.  So why not begin with studying God's Word? I like to think I am inviting the Lord to speak directly to me through the text on its own terms. I want to hear the text in its native voice of revelation before I seek to mine it for its information. I am not offering hard-and-fast rules here, but speaking from my sense of wisdom. This influences my choice of the term research over study. In my experience, study tends to be what I do when I want to master a body of knowledge. I do not mean this in any negative sense. I do not view the Bible as a knowledge text but as a wisdom text. I read the Bible in order to search for and grasp the revealed wisdom of God.  As I am living with a text, the Spirit will spark my curiosity, which prompts me to research the text; making observations and asking questions. I want to search out the context. I want to search out the meaning of original Greek or Hebrew words using online tools (BibleHub and BibleGateway are great). I want to understand where else in Scripture these words are used. I want to understand what saints and scholars have written about particular texts over the centuries. In doing this, it is critical to recognize and appreciate that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Were it not for faithful scholars digging deep wells into the biblical text for centuries much of this would not be possible. All of this helps in the task of applying the whole of myself to the whole of the text. For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. I see the whole fivefold pattern here in this text about Ezra. Set your heart toward the Word of God = Read, Ruminate, Rememberize. Study it = Research. Do it = Rehearse. And only then might we dare to stand and teach it. THE PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION Lord Jesus—Word of God from before the beginning—our Great Teacher, Teach us your way of research—of re-searching the Scriptures. Give me a heart for your word, like Ezra, and then let my heart merge with my mind so that I might discover the deep things of God. Let it be like that search for the treasure buried in a field and all the joy of finding it. And let this learning lead me into the humility of wisdom and not the pride of knowledge.  It will be for your glory, for others' gain, and for my good.   Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen!