“I study my Bible as I gather apples. First, I shake the whole tree that the ripest might fall. Then I shake each limb, and when I have shaken each limb, I shake each branch and every twig. Then I look under every leaf .”– Martin Luther, the great reformer.
Looking at Luther’s quote above, we see the following. He shakes the whole tree (i.e. study the Bible as a whole), then he shakes each limb (study it book by book), he shakes each branch (Chapter by Chapter Study) and every twig (studies short passages, paragraphs, verses and sentences), then he looks under every leaf (Word Study). This is the approach that we will use.
We can study the Bible using any of the following methods. We can change them around as we see fit in different seasons of our lives. We have arranged them from the top to bottom in terms of how much volume of the Bible is involved in the study. It covers from reviewing the entire Bible to focusing only on a single word in a passage. This system of organization is not perfect since we have to do cross references that may involve the entire Bible even when we are doing a word study. But this arrangement greatly helps in memory and general understanding of the methods.
1) Entire Bible: Survey the entire Bible to do
i) A Topical Bible Study,
iii) Biographical Bible Study,
iv)Â Study of Types.
2) Book by Book Study: You can do a
3) Chapter by Chapter Study:Â
i) Chapter Overview
ii) Chapter Analysis
4) Paragraph by paragraph or sentence by sentence or verse by verse :
5) Word by Word
i) Word Study
