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Why Study Ezra

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Have you ever read Ezra? Have you bothered to study it? If not, Jesse Johnson thinks you should.

After explaining one of the Bible’s most incredible prophecies (Isaiah 44:24-45:1), Johnson says this about Ezra:

The proclamation is that Israel would return, and is what is fulfilled in the book of Ezra.

Ezra is worth studying because it is a full-color illustration of Yahweh’s sovereignty. Nearly every chapter speaks of the meticulous application of that sovereignty for the purpose of rebuilding Israel. Nehemiah will focus on rebuilding Jerusalem’s physical architecture, but before God gets to that, Ezra first describes the rebuilding of Israel’s spiritual architecture, namely the temple and the priests.

The most remarkable thing about the book of Ezra is that despite their zeal in the return, and despite the miraculous nature of God’s prophetic word, the return doesn’t go well. In fact, it ends in failure.

He concludes:

Study the book of Ezra. As you do, the more you are in awe of God’s meticulous sovereignty, let that impress upon you that for those apart from Christ, they don’t need a miracle. They don’t need a new start. They need a new heart, which only comes through New Covenant.

This analysis is great. Check it out!

Why the Church Needs Malachi

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Mark Fugitt has a very helpful post on the book of Malachi. He encourages us to see more in this book than a memory verse to inspire capital campaigns (Mal 3:10).

Like all self-serving humans, Christians are apt to use particular Scriptures to further their own causes, and Malachi has become sadly typecast as a result. However, the book is so much more than this one liner. God wasn’t needing money and calling His prophet Malachi to start a capital campaign when He revealed what became the final book before the long, dark night of the souls waiting on redemption. 

Malachi is a book about corruption and justice. It begins with the people’s hopeless state of sin and the consequences of it. By the time we get to the famous verse about bringing all the tithes into the storehouse of God, we realize that giving was only one of the things they had forgotten. Godly institutions like marriage and sacrifice had become shams of their former redemption.

Fugitt briefly explains the book’s context, flow of thought, and main point in a way that promotes vibrant application to our generation. I commend this article to you.

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The Differences Between Law and Wisdom

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The relationship between law and wisdom is a tricky topic that requires careful thought. Too many fall into oversimplification, as though law has to do with right or wrong, and wisdom has to do with the gray areas of life. Or as though law communicates universals and wisdom (especially Proverbs) offers only probabilities.

So robust thinking, that makes sense in plain language, is hard to find.

Here is an excellent post at Beautiful Christian Life that offers you just that—robust thinking in plain language.

Though I don’t have any strenuous disagreements, I would prefer to give less weight to theological frameworks in shaping the presentation of what the law is. But the author’s presentation of wisdom is terrific.

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Help Your Teens Study the Bible

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Do you have teenagers in your home? Or will you soon have teens in your home? I’m less than 2 months away from the milestone, so I was delighted to see this great advice from Katherine Forster (herself a teenager) in her article “5 Tips for Helping Your Teens Study the Bible.”

  1. Lead by example
  2. Include them in your study
  3. Make it part of the family routine
  4. Provide materials
  5. Remember the Lord does the work

Her first tip is particularly convicting, but all five are timely reminders. See the article for further explanation.

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Let’s Think Straight About Commentaries

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Christine Gordon and Hope Blanton have written a thoughtful piece on the role of commentaries in Bible study: “Yes, Bring Commentaries to Bible Study.” I appreciate their willingness to push back on an idea we’ve trumpeted on this blog (though I doubt they have our blog specifically in mind):

Others have been warned that commentaries present a direct danger to their personal Bible study. Naysayers caution Christians that reading the words of others may prevent them from thinking their own thoughts and coming to their own conclusions about Scripture. The vital steps of observing the text and interpreting it for ourselves, they worry, may be missed if we allow others to do it for us.

The objection is initially well-stated: Commentaries indeed pose a direct danger to personal Bible study. I would only clarify that the danger is not that we’d allow commentaries to do the vital steps of observing and interpreting for us. The real danger is that the vital steps of observing and interpreting the text would go undone altogether—yet we wouldn’t notice on account of the secure embrace we feel from the opinions of the experts.

This is why we are more than eager to recommend good commentaries that promote observation, interpretation, and application of the text. We must remember that a commentary is like gasoline. It will get you where you want to go, if you possess a working engine. But if you’re prone to drinking it straight, you ought to label it as poison.

And this gets at the overwhelming agreement I have with Gordon and Blanton. Because they arrive at the same place I do, even if they’re more sensitive to different dangers along the way than I am:

Instead of preventing beneficial study, good commentaries can protect us from heretical interpretations, correct our personal biases, and help us come to the conclusions God intended when he wrote his Word. When used judiciously, these resources give rich, deep material for the Bible student, leading to informed observation, accurate interpretation, and appropriate personal application.

Commentaries also give us windows into the historical context of the people to whom the books were written…

Yes, we must still do the work of observing and interpreting the text. But with commentaries we can do so in an informed way, with a clearer understanding of the way the first hearers would’ve understood the passage…

Just as you would carefully select a Bible teacher or pastor for orthodoxy and trustworthiness, so you must be deliberate in your use of commentaries…

Read the Bible passage multiple times. Linger there before you open the commentary. Get a good idea of the story, teaching, or principles. Try to form a few questions—things you don’t understand or ideas you’d like to investigate. Then bring these questions to your commentary. Commentary writers—your brothers and sisters who have labored to understand the Word in a detailed and careful way—will help to clarify the text and encourage you as you read.

I couldn’t agree more if such regulations were shouted at me from atop Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. If more people used commentaries this way, I would lay my cloak at their feet to ease their journey. If it were the case that people used commentaries as conversation partners with regard to the text, instead of as teachers independent of the text, the world would be a happier place.

Gordon and Blanton model such wise use of commentaries for us. They give examples of how commentaries can help us to to find answers to our interpretive questions that are assumed in the text. I might argue that some of their other benefits of commentaries could simply be acquired by studying the text in context—though, once again, good commentaries will be helpful conversation partners, pointing out arguments or trains of thought we may have missed. There remains much to commend in this article.

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Don’t Judge Matthew 7:1

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The latest issue of Tabletalk magazine has a helpful article by Tim Witmer on Matthew 7:1. Witmer tackles the popular usage of the phrase “Don’t judge” and shows it to be a misuse of the verse’s context. Of course this verse is not saying that we shouldn’t make moral judgments about people!

However, Witmer also avoids excusing an attitude of judgmentalism among believers in Jesus Christ. Correlation with other Scripture passages clearly denounce any attitude of superiority or invulnerability.

Witmer’s point could be further strengthened by an analysis of the train of thought in Matthew 7:1-12. His article is a good example of why context matters.

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What We Lose When We Collapse the Four Gospels Into One

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Petar Nenadov has a very thoughtful post at the Gospel Coalition, entitled “What We Lose When We Collapse the Four Gospels Into One.”

Consider this:

As a father, I see how most resources for young children don’t teach them to read entire books of the Bible, especially when it comes to the Gospels. Children’s books about Jesus tell stories without saying which Gospel account they come from. Books that helpfully summarize the whole Bible, such as The Jesus Storybook Bible or The Biggest Story, collapse the four Gospel accounts into one as well. They don’t explain how Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John differ from and complement one another.

So what do we lose when we collapse the four Gospels into one? I believe we lose at least three things: the author’s unique perspective, the artistry of the story, and the apologetic of the life of Jesus.

If you’re looking for a children’s resource that does not do this, you may find Mark’s Marvellous Book by Alan Mann a great place to start.

Nenadov’s post has much useful insight. Check it out!

Outstanding New Testament Book Overviews

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When we want to study a passage of the Bible, we will not get it right unless we have grappled with the main idea of the entire book. And that requires doing our homework to research, as best we can, the author, audience, occasion, and structure of the book. That research is what we call a book overview.

The best method for researching this historical background is to read and re-read the entire book many times in a row. Nothing beats developing your own deep familiarity with the text as a whole.

The second best method is to find articles or commentaries that can stimulate your thinking and highlight things you could never see or grasp on your own. The trick is to find articles that give you more than trivia. Knowing possible dates and theories of authorship and reception are only as helpful as they enable you to grasp the text’s main idea and flow of thought. The trick is to find articles that illuminate the persuasive genius of the authors of Scripture. What arguments were they making, to whom, and to what end?

For this reason, I keep have kept this page bookmarked in my web browser for years. Daniel Wallace is a first-rate New Testament scholar. He specializes in New Testament manuscript tradition and curation, and he understands the persuasive power of these inspired texts.

On that page, you’ll see an article by Dr. Wallace for every book of the New Testament. Each article contains an “introduction, argument, and outline” for the book.

In the “Introduction,” Wallace thoroughly addresses every credible hypothesis for who wrote the book, when he wrote it, how he wrote it, whom he wrote it to, why he wrote it to these people at this time, and what the main theme is. Wallace evaluates the arguments made by various scholars in light of both internal (within the book itself) and external (early church writings about this book) evidence. By the end, Wallace typically reconstructs the situation and circumstances of the book, with a clear view toward how these circumstances shape our understanding of the book.

In the “Argument,” Wallace guides us through the entire book, tracing the train of thought and showing us the transitions from one major section to the next. If the details of Wallace’s evaluation get to be too much for you, this birds’ eye view of the book’s rhetorical strategy is must reading.

In the “Outline,” Wallace attempts to represent the main sections of the book in standard outline form. I usually find Wallace’s outlines to be the least helpful part of his article, as they’re too detailed, almost exclusively observational, and too modern (they look like the outline for a modern academic dissertation instead of that for an ancient piece of literature).

Every time I prepare to study a New Testament book, I read Wallace’s article on that book. I might skip some of the tediousness of the “Introduction,” though I always give full consideration to his proposal of the book’s Occasion, Purpose, and Theme. I savor the “Argument,” as I find the greatest usefulness here. And I scan the “Outline,” but don’t get too hung up with it. I usually find other sources to be more helpful in clarifying a book’s true rhetorical outline.

You, too, might want to bookmark this page as well for the next time you prepare to study a book of the New Testament.

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OT Narratives: Pointers to Christ or Moral Examples?

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There is an ages-old debate among interpreters of Old Testament narratives: Were these stories written to point us to the coming Messiah, or to provide moral examples to imitate or avoid?

Early in my ministry, I was a strong proponent of the “Christ-centered” approach to interpretation. And though I haven’t lost my fervor for seeing Jesus in every Bible passage, I’ve come to realize that such an approach really doesn’t need to be set in conflict with seeing OT characters as exemplars of what to do or not do. I don’t think we can read Hebrews 11 or 1 Corinthians 10 and conclude otherwise.

So we don’t have to pick one of the two approaches. We should expect both to be true. A Christ-focus without moral examples will fail to connect to people’s lives. An exemplar focus without Jesus will ultimately produce legalism or moralism. But both together provide a robust biblical view of the Christian faith and life. Let’s only first seek to understand the passage’s main point for its original audience, then connect it to Christ, and then apply it specifically to our lives.

And here is a great article, where Jim Savastio makes this very point for preachers. Any serious student of the Bible, not only preachers, will benefit from his thoughtful argument.

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What Does It Mean to Be Born of Water and the Spirit?

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Here is a cogent and brief article from D.A. Carson on the phrase “born of water and the Spirit” in John 3:5. Carson observes the text in light of Jesus’ argument to Nicodemus. He compares and contrasts the statement with another statement in the same discussion. He explains why some common interpretations don’t fit the context. And he explains the Old Testament imagery that Jesus draws on, and which Jesus expects Nicodemus to have understood.

The question is important, because it lies at the heart of Jesus’s explanation of “born again,” of new birth, of regeneration…

Many people think the question Nicodemus poses shows that he is a rather dimwitted literalist. But that’s almost certainly too harsh. You don’t get to be called “the teacher of Israel” (John 3:10—possibly a title) if you can’t spot the odd metaphor. When he hears Jesus say that to enter the kingdom one must be “born again,” I suspect Nicodemus understands Jesus to mean that we are not good enough to enter the kingdom: we must start over, have a different origin, spring from a different life. Nicodemus thinks Jesus is going too far: people can’t really start over or claim a new life, boast of a new birth, or enjoy a new beginning.

This is world-class Bible study. Check it out!