Hebrews: What It Taught Me About Studying the Word

Here it is, the last of the Hebrews posts, although there’s no doubt that many posts in the future will have some relationship to Hebrews. I spent over a month in the book of Hebrews, reading each chapter several times, taking notes, listening to sermons on the passages. I even checked out a Bible commentary on Hebrews from the library but honestly had no idea what I was looking at so that didn’t last long.

Believe me, I’m not sharing this to say “oh, I’ve got it figured out.” I had it all wrong for a good long while and it was only by God’s grace that he led me to Hebrews and opened my eyes to His Word. It’s all God. I’m just hopeful that what I’m sharing here may offer you some encouragement. I’m sure there are plenty of people who could tell you more about studying the Bible than I could. I’ve barely even begun. But I do think I may have a unique perspective since I’ve never even considered seminary or preaching or anything like that. I’m pretty much an everyday normal guy who’s a Christian and is learning what that means and trying to be pliable and let the Word of God mold him. That’s me.

But somehow when I dug into Hebrews, God used that to make me fall head over heels in love with His Word and now I just can’t get enough of it. So I’m hopeful to discuss here what changed and what practical things we can we do when we open our  Bibles to see more than just old words on a page.

First some background: I grew up in the church and ever since I could read I was encouraged to read the Bible every day. Eventually, at some point several years ago, it started to feel pointless. I would trudge through a chapter each day with my mind a million miles away on what I would be doing that day or whatever. So for awhile, I stopped reading my Bible on any sort of regular basis. I sometimes wondered why I got nothing when I read the Bible.

This past fall God seriously got my attention and made me see my need for Him and His forgiveness. I knew that I needed to be reading the Bible so I picked it up and started trying again. And there definitely was a difference between then and my previous experience. I still struggled with my mind drifting, but the fact that I actually wanted to hear what God had to say generally meant that something would stick out each time I read that provided food for thought.

Then my friend David and I decided that we would read a book of the Bible and discuss it together a few weeks later. He picked Hebrews (which I had just read a few weeks prior and had almost the entire thing fly right over my head). David’s been through seminary and will soon be the associate pastor at our church so I figured he definitely had a big head start on me in understanding Hebrews, so I tried to just jump in and learn as much as I could.

And so off I went and I was in the book for more than a month, reading pretty much every night. I normally approached it something like this:

• Read the next chapter straight through without worrying about taking notes, just trying to get a feel for it.
• Read the chapter again trying to understand somewhat the overall theme.
• Read the chapters from the Old Testament that are referenced in the chapter. There are lots of references in Hebrews so I found myself in everything from Deuteronomy to Psalms to Jeremiah to Exodus as I tried to gain some context for what the author was saying.
• Read the chapter slowly, paragraph by paragraph and underline any thoughts or phrases that strike me.
• Read through the chapter slowly again, perhaps underlining more things. But at the end of the paragraph write a summation in the margin of the key things that God is showing me in that paragraph.
• After pretty much marking up the whole chapter, I read through it one final time, reading my notes alongside it.

Of course, this is a lot more work than just breezing through a chapter and moving on with your day. So how did I get so much out of Hebrews? Here are some things that I think made the difference:

1. Confession. I could not truly want to hear from God or be able to hear from God with sin in the way between us. There were times when I came to Hebrews and started to read and just wasn’t feeling it and pretty much every time it was because there was something I needed to confess to God and make right with someone – spouse, child, friend, whomever. Sin stands between our minds and God’s Word and we needed to confess our need for God before we can expect to be able to understand anything that He says in an applicable way.
2. Prayer. I prayed before reading that the Holy Spirit would speak to my heart through the Word of God. I believe if that if we desire to hear from God, He absolutely honors that request.
3. Desire. I wanted to understand what God was saying in what I was reading. I’d go further than that to say I desperately wanted to  understand. And when you want it really bad, you search hard, you look at phrases to try to soak every last drop out of the Word of God. You read a chapter as many times as needed until the meaning starts to come out and soak into you.
4. Saturation. Reading nightly was great and thoughts of what I read often went through my mind during the day. But I also found that memorization was a huge help in meditating on the Word. So I found verses that seemed to be a bit more than I could grasp and I memorized them, then thought about them during the day as I drove to work or heated up my lunch. The more that those words ran through my mind, I found the Holy Spirit revealing meaning that I did not understand when I read them before. I also listened to a sermon series on Hebrews by John Piper which helped bring outside perspective. Really, I found that the more ways that I could get into Hebrews and have it in my mind the more that I was able to understand – the more it became a part of me.
5. Sharing. As I saw and was convicted of truth, it was hard not to want to share – and that’s because God’s Word is meant to be shared! So I often found myself bubbling over to the point where I had to let Tiffany know what I just saw or incorporating the lessons of Hebrews into Ian’s bedtime Bible story. And of course this blog came about because I wanted to have somewhere else to share. God’s Word when it is alive and active in us is designed to be spread.

At the end of reading Hebrews, I felt compelled to write a letter to God at the end of the book (the last page was mostly whitespace so it worked out well). I want to share that with you just so you can see what this Word can do:

Heavenly Father,

Thank you beyond all words for the truth You reveal of Your Self in this book and for the warnings, exhortation, and encouragement that You give. Through this book I see:

1. You will shake the heavens and earth in final judgment (chapter 12), leaving only those who cannot be shaken.
2. Jesus Christ, forever priest (chapters 7 and 8) is the only unshakeable foundation. Only those who enter through His priesthood remain.
3. To enter through Christ’s priesthood into the unshakeable Kingdom of God we must draw near to God (else we shrink back and are destroyed).
4. The sacrifice of Christ provides forgiveness of sin and cleansing of conscience so that we may have confidence to draw near to God.
5. It is only through faith that the sacrifice is applied to us, forgiving our sin, cleaning our conscience, and giving us trust in the everlasting city that is to come.

Now we are sojourners on this earth. Soon we will reach the everlasting city. We must persevere and run to win, believing that soon we will obtain it.