Think about the last Bible class you sat through. Think about the last sermon you heard. Now ask yourself two questions. Did it teach you something true about the nature and character of God? Did it teach you something you must do, or stop doing, to be acceptable to Him?

For a great many Christians, the honest answer is no. Not because the class was wasted. Not because the preacher was wrong. But because those two questions were never actually the point of the lesson.

That should trouble us.

What Scripture Says Bible Knowledge Is For

Open the Bible for any reason you want. Study the seven churches of Asia. Study prophecy. Study the culture of first-century Corinth. There is nothing sinful in any of that. But Scripture itself names two purposes that stand above all the others, and they are the two purposes most often skipped or unknown.

The first is knowing God. Jesus said plainly, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Not eternal life as a reward for knowing about God. Eternal life defined as knowing Him. Hosea warned a nation, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6), and he was not talking about trivia. Paul, near the end of his life, still counted everything as loss for the surpassing worth “of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” and said his ambition was “that I may know Him” (Philippians 3:8, 10). If the apostle who wrote half the New Testament had not arrived at knowing God and still made it his aim, that aim should be sitting near the center of every study we lead.

The second is knowing how to live acceptable to Him. Paul prayed that believers would “be filled with the knowledge of His will” for one stated reason, “that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work” (Colossians 1:9-10). Scripture is described as profitable “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Knowledge of God’s commands was never meant to end in the notebook. It was meant to end in obedience.

A Hard Question About What We Actually Teach

Now go back to the classes and sermons you have sat under. How many of them circled back to either of those two things? Some addressed church doctrine. Some worked through denominational error, or a difficult passage, or a practical life issue, or an annually themed program the congregation wanted to run. None of that is wrong. Congregations need instruction on many fronts.

But if a Christian can sit under years of teaching and never be pressed toward knowing who God is or knowing what pleases Him, something has quietly gone out of order. Paul described people who were “ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). That verse was written about false teachers and those who followed them, but the pattern it describes is not limited to false teaching. A congregation can be sound in doctrine, correct on every controverted point, and still leave its members full of information about the Bible while starved of the two things the Bible exists to give them.

This is not an accusation against any teacher. Most who stand in a pulpit or lead a class love God and want to feed His people. But loving intent does not guarantee right priority. A teacher can prepare for hours, cite a dozen passages, and hold a room’s attention, and still never once ask the room to consider who God is or what obedience to Him requires of them this week.

What This Should Change

If the goal of Bible reading is a relationship with God and obedience to the commandments of Jesus, then our teaching should be built around those two things, not around whatever happens to interest a particular teacher or fill a particular hour.

This does not mean every lesson must be an exhaustive study of the nature of God or a checklist of commands. It means those two questions should never be far from the center of what a congregation is fed, week after week, until its people can say honestly that they know God better this year than last, and that they know more clearly what it takes to please Him.

The next time you open your Bible, or the next time you prepare a lesson for others, ask the two questions first. What does this passage teach me about God Himself? What does it require of me if I intend to be acceptable to Him? A study that cannot answer either question may still be useful. But a lifetime of studies that never answer either one will leave a Christian informed and unacquainted with the God he claims to serve. And that Christian’s faith will be shallow or fail when trials come.

EPG Ministries welcomes your thoughts on this post.

Have you heard this teaching before today?

Does your church study this way?

How will this change you?

Let’s engage with one another to show our determination to do our best for the Lord.

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Earnestly Pursuing God