If our Creator God is ultimately the author of Scripture, we can assume that there should be a kind of unity, you know, a connection between the parts.

This is a divine book given to us by the God of the universe.

And so basically this tool is saying, hey, one instinct you need to develop is the dogged discipline of asking, how does this relate to the gospel of Jesus Christ?

John Nielsen serves as the senior pastor of Christ's Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois, And he's also the author of a number of books,

including Understanding God's Word, an introduction to interpreting the Bible, which is part of the

Theology Basics series from Crossway. John, thanks so much for joining me today on the Crossway

podcast. Thank you, Matt. Good to be with you. So today we're talking about the how of Bible study.

But before we get into some of the tools that

you outline in this new book of yours, tools designed to help us normal, everyday Christians,

get into God's word and understand and apply it rightly, I wonder if you can just start by

reminding us a little bit about the why of Bible study. Why is it worth investing our limited time and probably maybe more

acutely our limited energy in Bible study on a regular basis? Yeah. To answer that question,

I think I'd start with just remembering what the Bible is, what a gift it is, we're created by a God who has not

chosen to remain silent. He's given us His Word, and that is the most, it is an eternally

beautiful gift, that the God who made us, has communicated with us, intentionally, clearly, perfectly, salvifically, that he does

not desire to remain unknown. He wants to be known by his creatures. And so I look at Bible study

as just responding, ultimately responding with gratitude to the gift of God's word that our creator has spoken

and he has not remained hidden from us. So even as we as Christians, most of us, all of us

listening would probably affirm what you just said. And we know that intellectually. But I think

sometimes we can still, even though we know scripture is meant to be this incredible gift to us, that intellectually. But I think sometimes we can still, even though we know

scripture is meant to be this incredible gift to us that helps us in so many ways, we can sometimes

feel pretty intimidated by the idea of studying the Bible for ourselves. And we can maybe prefer to let

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