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Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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Best Advice: Never Read a Bible Verse

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Writing at the Stand to Reason blog, Greg Koukl explains what he believes to be the most important skill for Bible-believing Christians:

If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart, one useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life, what would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I’ve ever learned as a Christian?

Here it is: Never read a Bible verse. That’s right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph at least.

Koukl goes on to explain a simple method for clarifying the meaning of any verse: paraphrase it in your own words, then read the surrounding paragraph with the inserted paraphrase. Demonstrating this method, Koukl debunks popular but false readings of quotable verses:

  • John 1:3 – “Apart from him” cannot mean “With the exception of Jesus.”
  • Colossians 3:15 – “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” cannot mean “Let feelings of peacefulness in your heart be the judge about God’s individual will for your life.”
  • John 12:32 – “If I be lifted up from the earth” cannot mean “If I be exalted before the people.”
  • John 10:27 – “My sheep hear my voice” cannot mean “Mature Christians have the ability to sense My personal direction for their lives and obey it.”

Koukl’s great article will challenge you never to read a Bible verse apart from the paragraph surrounding it. And I highly recommend this practice.

Check it out!

HT: Justin Taylor

Panel Discussion: Bible Study for Ordinary People

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Last week I had the privilege to join a live panel discussion about Bible study for ordinary people on Innovate 4 Jesus live. Joining me was Rebecca Van Noord, editor-in-chief of Bible Study Magazine, and Nate Smoyer, Team Lead of Partnerships and Advertising of Faithlife, makers of Logos Bible Software.

Over the course of the hour, we hit many topics, such as:

  • why we should study the Bible
  • what inductive Bible study is all about
  • how to teach children to study the Bible
  • how to use commentaries well
  • what we’ve seen work well in our churches
  • how pastors and church leaders can encourage good Bible study

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3007&v=ahZxZJRubLM

This discussion was surreal for me, as Bible Study Magazine is my favorite magazine. It was so much fun to have this discussion with Rebecca Van Noord, BSM’s editor-in-chief. I see her photo inside the cover of every issue, and there she was for me to interact with!

Check it out!

Two-Word Summaries of Every Bible Chapter

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In DiscipleMakers, we train our collegiate missionaries to both master and be mastered by the Scriptures. One exercise we use involves chapter summaries. Within their first three years, new missionaries are expected to read the entire Bible and create a list of summaries for every chapter. Though there’s a difference between a summary and a main point, we need to master the “what” of Scripture before we can be mastered by its “why.”

In 2014, Pastor Gregg Peter Farah blogged his way through every chapter of the Bible, summarizing each chapter in one or two words. You can find the results on his blog.

Along with the two-word summary, he included a one-sentence “big idea” and a brief “next step” attempting to apply the chapter. While Farah’s extreme brevity occasionally misses the mark, I think much of the time he absolutely nails it. For example:

Ephesians 2
SUMMARY
Incomparable riches

BIG IDEA
The more we grow in our faith the more we will see and understand God’s outrageous love for us.

NEXT STEP
Keep growing and going with Jesus. Have a hunger to know him more and be ready to be overwhelmed by his blessings.

Remember, he is summarizing (observing), not interpreting. So his Old Testament summaries don’t say much about Christ or the gospel. This often leads his application to be not as rich as it could be. But for brief, clear statements of what each chapter says, Farah does well.

The blog format can be difficult to follow, requiring much scrolling to find particular chapters. But if you use his search bar (upper right) to find “Bible summary [name of Bible book]”, you’ll make it easier.

Check it out!

P.S. For DiscipleMakers staff: No plagiarizing these great summaries!

HT: Jeffrey Kranz

 

Free Ebook: Taking God at his Word

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Taking God at His WordUntil July 14, Crossway is giving away Taking God at His Word by Kevin DeYoung as a free ebook. This book is a short, clear, and powerful explanation of what the Bible says about the Bible. If you read ebooks, you should get this one.

Download it from Crossway by completing their short questionnaire and joining their mailing list here. (You can always unsubscribe if you don’t want their emails, right?)

You can find my review of the book here.

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Using the Bible in the Homosexuality Debate

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The debate on same-sex marriage rages not only in the U.S. government but also within the church. Confusion abounds regarding whether God approves or opposes same-sex unions.

Last month, The New York Times took a few of the key Bible verses used in the debate, along with explanations from a proponent for each side. This article is not the final word on the topic. It doesn’t necessarily represent the most sound articulation of either viewpoint. But it shows us, without a doubt, how critical the Scriptures are to the debate. One cannot truly claim to follow God without submitting to his word.

But how do we know if we’re interpreting it correctly?

The article touches on Romans 1:26-27, Leviticus 18:22, Matthew 19:3-6, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.

Are these teachers reading each passage in context? Have they observed carefully enough? Are they doing justice to the authors’ main points? Is their application sound?

Read, study, and consider. How would you respond to each? (Please note: Trollish comments, or those that don’t address the Scriptures, will be deleted.)

Check it out.

Thanks for visiting Knowable Word! If you like this article, you might be interested in receiving regular updates from us. You can sign up for our email list (enter your address in the box on the upper right of this page), follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed. 

The Coming Fizzle

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Erik Raymond has another insightful article this week about how to prevent a gospel-centered fizzle out. He’s concerned for the next generation of Christian pastors and Bible teachers, and he’s wondering whether we’ll be able to replicate the great teaching we’ve been hearing for a generation. Will we learn not only how to repeat what we’ve been told, but also to draw new conclusions from the same old texts on our own?

It’s one thing to have been able to say you have been to the restaurant and eaten a meal, but, if you don’t know how to get there yourself then you’ll never be able to eat that food again, much less take someone else out to enjoy the same experiences. My concern is that too many have been piling into Sproul’s theological minivan to go eat a feast but never learned how to actually find their way to the meal.

He writes of how important it is for us to learn to read, interpret, and rightly apply the Bible on our own. I couldn’t agree more.

Check it out!

Why We Don’t Read the Bible

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Erik Raymond proposes 5 reasons why many of us don’t read our Bibles:

  1. It makes us uncomfortable
  2. It’s too hard
  3. We are undisciplined
  4. We think it is stale and lifeless
  5. We have a dysfunctional relationship with God

Did you notice what’s missing from the list? “We’re too busy.” Raymond doesn’t buy that for a moment, and I think he’s right. We always have time for what we value the most.

Raymond’s conclusion:

Let’s be honest: if you don’t read your Bible it is because you don’t want to read your Bible. And to bottom line this further, this is indicative or your relationship with God. We cannot separate a love for the Word of God and the God of the Word.

Do you want to read your Bible? If not, why not?

Raymond’s article explains each of the reasons with helpful action steps of repentance. Check it out!

Samson and the Prostitute of Gaza

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Miles Van Pelt has an intriguing article about Samson and the prostitute of Gaza in Judges 16:1-3. He observes the text carefully, drawing out allusions to Sisera with Jael and the Hebrew spies with Rahab. He shows how Samson prepares the way for David, as John the Baptist does for Jesus.

In the end, he concludes that Samson was not pursuing immorality but God-ordained conquest of the Philistines by staying with the prostitute. I can’t say I fully agree yet without further consideration, but Van Pelt magnificently piqued my curiosity and drove me further into the text. That makes his article well worth reading.

Check it out!

The Delicious, Undiluted Word

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Tim Challies draws a comparison between drinking his coffee straight and hearing the Bible taught straight (section-by-section rather than jumping around verse to verse).

Then one day we visited another church in the area and an amazing thing happened: The pastor simply preached a text. He opened the Bible, he told us what it said, and he told us why it mattered. It was a tough text, but he did not water it down or run from it. He felt no need to add to it or adapt it. He just preached it. And it was amazing. Once we had tasted that undiluted Word, we realized how delicious it really was. We were ruined to anything less. We still are.

He’s absolutely right about how delicious the undiluted word is.

But he couldn’t be any more wrong about coffee, though. The foul stuff poisons no matter how one takes it.

Check it out!