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(upbeat music) Principles for Bible study. - I want to welcome you to our daily
drive time devotions. This is day four in our look together through Romans
chapter 13, and we're going to do something a little bit different today.

We talked yesterday about the phrase, "Give everyone what you owe him. " That
phrase is a phrase that is a reminder of some of the principles or rules of
Bible study that help us to study the Bible in a way that doesn't bring out
false meanings. This verse brings up the importance of handling the truth of the
Bible with wisdom and with care.

The truth of the matter is, it is easy to twist the Bible to say what you want
it to say. And so it's important to be aware of certain rules. There are so many
words in the Bible that you can put this phrase together and that phrase
together and sort of make it say what you want.

But if you take good stock of these important rules of Bible study, it protects
you from doing that. It is amazing to me how people will even throw out rules of
common sense in order to try to twist the Bible to say what they want. You can't
just ignore all the rules for understanding a language or a book when you pick
up the Bible.

As you get to know the word, it is vital to understand a few simple guidelines
of Bible study. By knowing these guidelines, you're able to spot anyone who's
twisting the truth of the word. And it also helps you to make sure you're not
going astray in your understanding of the word.

In our foundations study at Saddleback Church, we talk about seven or eight
different rules or principles for Bible studies. We're going to take a look
together at four of them today. The most violated rule of Bible study has to do
with this verse, this phrase, "Give everyone what you owe him.

" It's an illustration of how we sometimes violate this rule for Bible study.
I'm going to save that most violated rule of Bible study in our day for the last
and mention three others first. And these all have to do with 2 Timothy 2.

15. The Bible there says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a
workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.
" How do you handle accurately God's word, the Bible?

Well, let me give you four rules that are important. Rule number one is you
understand the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. That's one way to
handle God's word accurately.

Obviously, God has given us more light in the New Testament, more understanding
in the New Testament. So you understand what you read in the Old Testament in
light of the New Testament. The Old Testament can sometimes be a scary place
without the light of the New Testament.

You might picture it like this. The Old Testament is like a dimly lit room
filled with treasures. But the New Testament brings more light into that room.

It allows you to see the real beauty of the treasures contained in the Old
Testament. For instance, the sacrificial laws in the Old Testament. They can be
very confusing.

Why would God want all those sheep and cattle killed? And why all that blood?
But as soon as you read in the New Testament about Jesus' sacrifice for us, His
blood being spilled for our forgiveness, the light goes on.

As soon as you read in Hebrews that His sacrifice is the one-time sacrifice for
all and no other sacrifices need to be given, it helps you to understand why God
did that in the Old Testament. He was looking forward to what Jesus was one day
going to do on the cross. Rule number one, understand the Old Testament in light
of the New Testament.

Rule number two, you understand unclear passages in the light of clear passages.
Now, people violate this rule all the time. They find one verse in the Bible
that they don't understand and they decide how to interpret it.

And then they try to make every other verse in the Bible, it might be hundreds
of verses, fit with this unique interpretation. For instance, 1 Corinthians 15,
29 says, "Now, if there is no resurrection, "what will those do who are," and he
uses this phrase, "Baptized for the dead. " We don't know for certain what Paul
meant by baptized for the dead.

Several possible interpretations center on the fact that Paul is referring to
what some people were doing at the time. He's not directing us to do the same.
The truth is, though, cults and false teachers will often take a verse such as
this and make it seem that the Bible agrees with what they've already been
teaching.

For instance, they might say, "What this verse means is that you should be
baptized "for your relatives in order to assure them "a place in heaven. " But
to say that, you'd have to set aside many, many, many clear verses about
salvation, being a decision for everyone that you must make for yourself,
someone else can't make that decision for you, and many clear verses about
baptism, being a decision that I make after I've committed my life to Christ, as
a symbol, a picture of what Jesus has done in my life. You let the clear
passages about salvation and the clear passages about baptism help you to
understand this unclear passage, not vice versa.

It's our pride sometimes that wants to discover something new in the Bible that
no one's ever discovered before. Listen, if after 2,000 years of studying the
Bible, you discover something that somebody's never discovered before, guess
what? You're wrong.

What you think you've discovered, if somebody hasn't thought of it in 2,000
years, you're just flat wrong. Realize that you understand clear passages and
the power in them, and then you help that, let that bring light to the unclear
passages. Rule number three that we're looking at together in this drive time
devotion today is you understand words and verses in the light of their context.

You don't pull a phrase out of context, you always understand it in the light of
the context of what's set around it. For example, Luke 12, 19 says, "Take life
easy, eat, drink, and be merry. " Now, does Luke 12, 19 mean that we're to be
party animals?

We're supposed to eat, drink, and be merry? Well, you might think that until you
realize that the next phrase says, "For tomorrow you die. " You see, if all you
read is the eat, drink, and be merry part, you might say, "Well, the Bible says
be party animals.

" But it's good to know that that's not what it's saying. This is not a
commandment, this is a warning. If I just take life easy, if I just sort of
ignore my responsibilities, I might face death even tomorrow.

So I've got to live for what God's given me to live for today. There are so many
words on so many subjects in the Bible, it's easy to take a few out of context
to prove just about anything you want. So always go back into the Bible and
check the context of something that somebody's teaching.

If you hear a new thought, somebody teaching something new and it doesn't quite
seem right to you, first thing to do is to check the context. Well, there's a
fourth rule that I want to look at together today, and it involves this phrase,
"Give everyone what you owe him. " The fourth rule is you understand personal
experience in the light of scripture.

You don't understand scripture in the light of your personal experience. This is
probably the rule that believers break the most often. We tend to understand
scripture in the light of personal experience.

We make our personal application of scripture into a command for everyone to
follow. And an example is this phrase, "Owe nothing to anyone," Romans 13, 8.
You might read that and think, "You know, I owe thousands on my credit cards,
and I need to do something about that.

" And the application for you is to pay off your debt and to cut up your credit
cards. Now that is a good, God-honoring application. But then suppose from your
experience, you say to others, "The Bible teaches here in Romans 13, 8 that
every Christian must cut up their credit cards.

" No, it does not. The words credit card are not the original Greek. It might be
that other believers can handle having a credit card without going into debt,
paying off their balance each month.

The Bible is the truth, and your application of the Bible is a way of living out
that truth. Now, you can accurately say, "This verse helped me to make some
tough decisions, the decision to cut up my credit cards. " But it is not
handling God's word accurately to say, "The Bible says in Romans 13, 8 that you
can't have credit cards.

" This, by the way, is where we often get legalistic. We take our personal
application of Scripture and we try to force it on other people. You understand
personal experience in the light of Scripture.

You don't let your personal experience become the Scripture, become the Bible.
Now, as we've talked about these rules for Bible study today, I'd like to take a
minute to pray together for our personal understanding of God's word. These
rules are fairly simple, you can see.

And that is because God wants His word to be understandable. As we've walked
through Romans together to this point, we've walked through some difficult
passages. And some of the things that I read in the Bible, I am going to have to
ask God about when I get to heaven.

But 99% of what I read, I see that here's something I can act on today. God
doesn't want us to overcomplicate His word. He wants us to understand His word
so that we can live His word.

Let's pray that He'll give us strength to do that. Our Father, we thank You for
the Bible. We thank You that You inspired men like Paul to write down Your words
by the power of Your Holy Spirit.

And that these words are not only true, they are perfect because they come from
Your heart. They are Your words to us, Father. And we are grateful.

And we pray for personal understanding of Your word. Many, most of the verses
that we read, we immediately understand. It's just a matter of living them out.

Some verses that we read, it takes some time to understand. Help us to realize
that Your word is worth thinking about, pondering. And some verses that we read,
we may never understand on this planet, but God, we trust You.

We trust You. We trust that Your word is true. And we ask that You help us to
understand Your word in a way that helps us to live out Your word, to be
examples of Your word.

Father, thank You for the Bible. Thank You for Your truth. Help us to be light,
living out Your truth in the world today.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, tomorrow we're going to end this look at
Romans chapter 13, as we look at some incredibly important verses, verses 11 to
14.