Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible
As the shortest book of the Old Testament, Obadiah may not receive as much love as some of the better-known heavyweights. But it has much to teach us about the kingdom of God.
In particular, according to Jeffrey Stivason, this dense book shows us that God’s kingdom is an opposed kingdom, a victorious kingdom, and a gracious kingdom. Stivason’s reflections on these themes in Obadiah are well worth your time.
One of our greatest failures in Bible study is our tendency to treat the text atomistically.
We look for inspirational words or sayings, while failing to grasp how the author used those words or sayings to persuade his audience of a message. We love to grade the behaviors of Bible characters. We distract ourselves with endless word studies. We fail to grasp the context.
For example, we treat Daniel and post-conversion Paul as “good” and Jacob and Samson as “bad.” We think of “Immanuel” as little more than a prediction of Messiah. We apply “don’t be anxious about anything, but … make your requests known to God” as a generic encouragement for the Christian life.
But how much changes when we form a habit of boarding a passage’s train of thought!
When you observe well, and you ask and answer good interpretive questions, you are going somewhere. These skills are not merely academic exercises. They have an end goal: to determine the author’s main point.
And the way you pull together all of your observation and interpretive work is by capturing the author’s train of thought in the text.
If we fail to capture the train of thought, it will be very difficult either to get to the main point, or to have much confidence that what we’ve got is in fact the main point. We’re left with only guessing, or landing on whichever atom in the text excites us the most.
So please understand: the value of the train of thought lies in its power to surface the author’s main point. When we have captured that train of thought, we are well on our way to mastering the text. Which, frankly, is primarily a matter of clearing out the rocks and weeds so it can master us.
By “train of thought,” all I mean is: How does the author get from the beginning of the passage to the end of the passage? How does he shape his message in such a way as to bring his readers along with him, to persuade them?
We can capture this train only after we’ve gotten lots of good answers (from the text!) to our interpretive questions. We then investigate those answers with further questions. We circle around and around, back and forth between observation and interpretation, like a cyclone—all funneling into the author’s single main point.
As we follow this process, we start to see the shape of the author’s argument. The author wanted to persuade his audience of something, and our task is determine what that was so it can shape our hearts and lives as well.
Because the train of thought has to do with the text’s shape, in your notes it will typically look like an outline. But it’s not simply an outline of the contents. It’s not a list of what the passage says. It is a list of conclusions—or sometimes a list of commands—that capture what the passage means.
The train of thought can be an outline as simple as this, for Ephesians 2:1-10:
Here are three more quick examples I’ve given from other texts. And here are two examples drawn from narrative texts. See our interpretive book overviews for examples of what it looks like to follow the train of thought over entire books of the Bible.
In your Bible study, please do not fail to capture the train of thought.
Amid calls to censor the Bible and remove it from school curricula, John Stevens proposes that the problem is not with the Bible but with what and how we instruct our children. Here is a taste:
The real question is whether God intends [the sexual and violent bits of the Bible] to be kept from children. I suspect that we are shaped more by a romantic vision of childhood that owes more to Rousseau than Scripture, and Victorian notions of childhood innocence. In most of the world, and certainly, in Bible times, children were familiar with harsh reality and the simple ‘facts of life’ from a much earlier age. After all, families shared a single room and yet there were multiple children! Kids on farms know a lot about sex.
God commanded parents to teach the Law to their children and make it part of daily life. They were to talk about it. This includes the vulgar and violent parts, which are crucial to the identity shaping of the people of God. The Bible does not shy away from reality. Most of the time God’s people lived in threat of violence & in proximity to idolatry with its sexual immorality. The Bible is not sentimentality but realism. It is the fallen world seen red in tooth and claw. Israelite children were not to be isolated from this, but taught how to live faithfully in it and resist its temptations…
I think we need to be on the front foot and stop hiding reality from our kids, but truly teach them the Bible (in an age-appropriate way) and not shy from preparing them for the real world.
Stevens’s argument is well worth considering. As a father, I enjoy reading some children’s Bibles to my children. But I have always sought to give them a steady diet of the entire Bible.
In Romans 6:1, the apostle Paul asks a crucial question to clarify a potential misapplication of his gospel: “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” In other words, does the grace of God give believers permission to continue in their sin without ever having to change?
By no means!
Misconstruing God’s grace in this way was not unique to Paul’s mission or Paul’s gospel. This problem is not a strictly Pauline one. Consider Jeremiah’s fiery words in the Jerusalem temple of his day, shortly before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar:
Thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel: …Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?
Jeremiah 7:3-11
The people of Israel committed all kinds of sin against their God, yet they trusted in God’s grace to get them through. They believed God’s grace was big enough to prevent them from having to actually change their behavior.
So the Lord goes on to tell them to look at the ruins of their previous sanctuary in Shiloh (from before the Philistines conquered them centuries earlier). This temple would end up the same way.
Of course, we must be careful to preach Christ and him crucified whenever we lead Bible studies and teach the Scriptures. The good news about the Christ is the center of all of God’s revelation.
But we have misunderstood that message if we make it sound in any way as though people won’t have to change. As though coming just as they are means always remaining just as they are. As though repentance (change) were not the indispensable companion to belief (Mark 1:15).
I’ve found we must use caution with such phrases as “struggling with sin.” If by that phrase you mean that it is hard to put sin to death—but you are making progress in that direction—then well and good. Keep on keeping on!
But if by that phrase you really mean, “I’m sad about it, but I’m just going to have to live with it for the rest of my life,” then please reconsider what the whole point of the “struggle” ought to be (Col 3:5, Titus 2:11-14).
Check out Kevin Halloran’s excellent piece called “The Psalms: A Tool for Cultivating Godly Emotions.” In the article, Halloran explains two ways the Psalms can help us:
There is much good advice here.
In recent posts, I’ve been trying to help you get the most out of the interpretation phase of your study. We’ve considered different uses for different types of questions, the power of implicational questions, and the best place to find answers to your questions.
Another way to think of the value of implicational questions is that they help us to grasp how the original audience would have applied the text. When we ask our questions with the original audience in mind, we’re more likely to land on the true message and proper application of the text.
Our understanding of a text will be strongest—and therefore our application will hit home with greatest force—when it is very closely connected to the author’s primary intent for his audience.
So we do as much as we can to put ourselves in the shoes of those who first read this text, and to consider what this passage calls them to believe, love, or do.
To do this, we must pull together all of our work in observation and interpretation so far. All our questions and answers, along with our work on the context: historical, biblical, and literary.
In Proverbs 31:1-9, King Lemuel’s mother offers him wise counsel for kings and rulers. She tells him what not to do with his strength (Prov 31:3) and mouth (Prov 31:4-5), and she promotes what he ought to do with his mouth (Prov 31:8-9a) and strength (Prov 31:9b). There is a time an place for forgetting (Prov 31:6-7), but during one’s exercise of kingly rule is not it (Prov 31:4-5).
Thus far my observation, with some progress on definitive, rational, and implicational questions. But how would the original audience have applied this poem?
It may be tempting to go directly to contemporary application, considering how we make use of our own strength and mouth, and whether we employ them to wise, selfless, and just ends. Such time would certainly be profitable, but perhaps a less direct route will lay an even stronger foundation for application.
The book of Proverbs is something of a manual for training up nobles and rulers in Israel. When Solomon speaks to “my son” in chapters 1-9, he is speaking not only to his direct heir but also to all the youth among the nobility (see where Prov 4:1, 24:21, etc., where the “sons” are either plural or are not in direct line to the throne). So if we apply every passage directly to the Christian “everyman,” we lose something of the book’s focus on training leaders.
The people of Israel hearing Proverbs 31:1-9 may not have immediately considered how they used their own strength or mouth. After all, many of them would be in the category of those for whom it would be appropriate to forget their poverty (Prov 31:6-7)!
Instead, upon hearing this text, they would be far more inclined to consider what sort of king they need to rule them in wisdom. They might expect their king to take this poem more personally than they themselves do. And if he wouldn’t, they would keep waiting and watching for another such king to arise.
Such consideration of the original audience helps us to see Christ more clearly in the text. And since we have been united to him through faith, it remains appropriate to apply the text to us today. But having gone through Christ to get to application, we’ve ratcheted up the urgency and persuasiveness.
In order to determine a text’s implications on the original audience, we must be able to identify who that original audience is. Such identification is quite tricky for narratives, for at least two reasons.
The first reason is that we often don’t know who the precise audience was. It would be difficult to nail down exactly which generation was the first audience for Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, or Esther. We can’t be too precise about the audience for some of the gospels, as we’re not told. In all such cases, we must remain fuzzy, though it still helps to know “these people needed a king,” or “these people must have been Jewish Christians.”
The second reason the identification is tricky is that we often confuse the text’s audience with the text’s characters. So when studying the sermon on the Mount, we might find ourselves putting ourselves in the shoes of those who were present, listening to the sermon as Jesus preached it. But instead, we ought to put ourselves in the shoes of those reading the book that Matthew wrote.
So the implications of the text on the characters within the text might help you to understand the text. But what’s even more significant is to grasp the implications of the text on those who first read the text.
When you can clearly answer the question of “how would they have applied it?” you’ll be far more likely to get a strong answer to “how should we apply it?”
The Logos Word by Word blog recently published a piece I wrote entitled “How to Develop a Culture of Bible Study in Your Church.” In the post, I encourage church leaders to have a method, train a few, raise their expectations, set them loose, check in, and reproduce.
Here’s a taste:
There is one question I receive more than any other when Christians discover I’m involved in a collegiate discipleship ministry: What materials or resources do you use?
I appreciate the eagerness behind the question, as folks generally aim to improve their own efforts to make disciples of Christ. But sadly, my answer doesn’t usually satisfy the inquirer.
The Bible. We use the Bible to make disciples.
Here is a thoughtful piece by Ty Kieser called “Potential Dangers of ‘Applying Scripture to My Life’.” In it, Kieser explores three faulty assumptions that can make the practice of application go very wrong.
Kieser makes some excellent points that ought to be considered. It is for many of the same reasons that I generally avoid the question of “How do I apply the Bible to my life?” and frame application more as “How does the text instruct me to change?”
I might quibble with a little of Kieser’s rhetoric. At times it sounds like he believes we shouldn’t change personally but only get swept up in the Lord’s story. But by the end, he clearly wishes change for God’s people as they draw closer in relationship to him. But that really is but a quibble, as I would heartily cheer the sort of application he wishes for more of.
The book of 1-2 Kings has some strange incidents in it. One of them is when Elisha curses forty-two “small boys” for calling him “baldhead.”
23 He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” 24 And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.
2 Kings 2:23-24
What is going on here?
Crossway recently published a wonderful piece by Gary Millar, excerpted from his commentary, where he explains the historical and covenantal context for what’s happening in this episode.
Is this a shocking incident? Yes it is… But this incident is also one that fits perfectly with the flow of 2 Kings 1–2, in which we see very clearly how God not only works in the darkness but will not be silenced, continuing to speak through this prophet. It is the response to this prophetic word that determines whether God’s people experience blessing or curse.
I’ve always been puzzled—but fascinated—by Proverbs 30:15a:
The leech has two daughters: Give and Give.
Prov 30:15a, ESV
The NIV puts the “gives” in their mouths rather than in their names:
The leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!’ they cry.
Prov 30:15a, NIV
Regardless of whether “give” is their label or their lingo, what is going on in this proverbial saying?
The next stanza, about four things that are never satisfied, certainly relates.
There are three things that are never satisfied,
Prov 30:15b-16, NIV
four that never say, ‘Enough!’:
the grave, the barren womb,
land, which is never satisfied with water,
and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’
The demands (or names) of the leech’s daughters are parallel to these four things that never say “enough.” Just as the grave is never satisfied with the size of its membership, and fire never decides it’s time to pack up and go home—so also there are leech fathers and daughters who will always demand more and more and more.
Okay, that makes sense, but what is the point? What wisdom is the sage trying to teach here?
These sayings about perpetually dissatisfied things come right between two stanzas about a generation that rejects the wisdom of ages past. A generation that believes itself to be on the right side of history, having developed beyond the antiquated wisdom of its ancestors.
There are those who curse their father
Prov 30:11-14
and do not bless their mothers.
There are those who are clean in their own eyes
but are not washed of their filth.
There are those—how lofty are their eyes,
how high their eyelids lift!
There are those whose teeth are swords,
whose fangs are knives,
to devour the poor from off the earth,
the needy from among mankind.
The eye that mocks a father
Prov 30:17
and scorns to obey a mother
will be picked out by the ravens of the valley
and eaten by the vultures.
So what is it that drives such a generation to reject the wisdom of previous generations? To curse and mock fathers and forefathers?
Could it be an insatiable drive for more? A perpetual lack of satisfaction?
Or is it the other way around? Is it the rejection of ancient wisdom that causes the perpetual dissatisfaction of a generation of leeches? Such that, when you lose your grounding in the reality of God’s world, you have nothing left but to make increasing demands of the people and the world around you?
The leech has two daughters. Not only in ancient Israel, but quite alive and well today.
