Ezra 7:10 – Study

Daily Devotional Bible Verse

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. (Ezra 7:10 ESV)

The question for me (Jordan) has never been “Why study the Bible?”, but “How do I study the Bible?” There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of books written on this subject, and many of them are tremendously helpful. It has been a perpetual quest of mine to find the perfect method of Bible study. So much so, that at one point I even had a color-coded highlighting system (I used pink for the Holy Spirit)! Though I was taking the Bible very seriously, I was approaching it from a misguided understanding of what it was that I was actually studying.

You see, I viewed Scripture as if it was in an academic vacuum or laboratory and myself as a research scientist tasked with dissecting its words with my Greek and Hebrew scalpels. This is what happens when we have a respect for Scripture, but not a right view of it. In my study, careful though it was, I stood over the Bible in interpretive authority. What I didn’t truly understand was that it is not us who stand above Scripture, rather it is Scripture that stands above us as our authority.

When we approach the Old and New Testaments it is crucial to apprehend that, in a sense, we don’t read the Bible, the Bible reads us! The end goal of Scripture is not a purely academic understanding and recitation of God’s living truth but to be both transformed and conformed to it, and our interaction with it should reflect that. When you approach Scripture remember that you are approaching the powerful words of the living God. Meet him in humility.

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out (Proverbs 25:2).