Knowable Word

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3 Common Mistakes in Bible Reading

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As a reader of this blog, you are most likely somewhat committed to personal Bible reading. That is a wonderful commitment, but are you aware of some of the most common mistakes we can make, so that you’re prepared to avoid them?

Wyatt Graham has a helpful post explaining some pitfalls he regularly sees:

  1. We read without hearing from God.
  2. We don’t read through a whole book of the Bible.
  3. We forget about the divine author.

He makes some terrific points along the way, such as:

Biblical books communicate ideas. Each of the four Gospels presents Christ from four different angles. Paul’s letters have a purpose. And so on. Like any book that we read today, if we do not understand its beginning, middle, and end, we miss the point. 

Check it out!

Introducing a New Way to Read the Book of Exodus

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The Risk of Reader’s Bibles

Last week, I spoke with a Vice President of major Bible publisher, who informed me that some reader’s Bibles have not yet provided an adequate return on the investment required to publish them. I do not know if this situation is widespread across many publishers, or many versions of reader’s Bibles. But I was deeply saddened to hear that even one of my favorite reader’s Bibles has not yet proven “worth it” to its publisher.

So please indulge me with a brief commercial, advertising my favorite reader’s Bibles. Though I list them here in the order of how much I like them, every one of these reader’s Bibles would be worth your investment.

  1. NIV Sola Scriptura (4 volumes)
  2. ESV six-volume (without chapter and verse numbers)
  3. ESV one-volume
  4. CSB one-volume
  5. ESV gospels

I have little doubt the CSB five-volume would also be worth your investment; I just have not yet acquired it for myself. There is even a way to introduce your children to the concept of a reader’s Bible. Publishers have taken great risks to present God’s word to us in these non-traditional ways, and they ought to win medals for having done so. I believe a reader’s Bible is the best prescription I can give for increasing your delight in God’s word.

I don’t think I can overstate the value of clearing out the clutter that has accumulated over centuries in presenting God’s word in printed form. Though a reader’s Bible may appear novel and jarring—on the page, it really does not look like the sort of Bible you are accustomed to reading—we must remember that even our “traditional” Bible presentations are nothing like the original manuscripts would have appeared to the original readers. The New Testament was written with all capital letters, no punctuation or spaces, and certainly no headings, verse numbers, or cross-references. Modern versions of the Bible have drifted far from the original look and feel. So why not continue finding new ways to present the Scripture in ways that increase the reader’s joy in this glorious literature?

Introducing Exodus: A Novella

With that purpose in mind, I am thrilled to introduce you to a passion project I’ve been working on for some time. With the help of a professional book layout designer, I have developed a version of the book of Exodus designed to look in every way like a modern novella. Exodus is one of the greatest narratives in the history of the world, but the drama of it can be lost amid the standard double-column format, distracting verse and chapter numbers, and myriad footnotes or study notes.

But what if we could read this glorious narrative the same way we read our favorite novels? What if the book was presented in a way that visually presents the gripping plot arcs, follows the highs and lows of the action, and encourages you to keep turning the pages to read? And read. And read. What if the visual design encouraged you to spend an entire afternoon in this divinely inspired, deeply engaging story of redemption? And yes, I’m including all the laws and tabernacle details when I use such adjectives as “greatest,” “glorious,” “gripping,” and “engaging.”

DOWNLOAD EXODUS: A NOVELLA

I present to you Exodus: A Novella. Exodus is one of the best, true stories you could ever read, and here it is presented in a format that underscores why the world has been so captivated by it. You won’t find any verse numbers or footnotes, though a few names are translated in brackets to reveal wordplays. There are chapter numbers, but not the traditional ones. Instead of 40 “chapters,” somewhat arbitrarily determined, the Novella has 7 chapters, following the narrative’s natural literary divisions. It has page numbers, part titles, and page headers, just like the average novel you might pick up today. But unlike the average novel today, this spirit-inspired text is guaranteed to change your life again and again.

My biggest regret is that I was unable to secure permission from a Bible publisher to use a popular translation. So you’ll have to live with my own translation of Exodus, which has been a work in progress for nearly 20 years. In no way do I insinuate that my translation is any “better” than the ones you are used to; it is simply a fact that copyright laws prevent me from using most of the translations you might be familiar with. I didn’t want to delay the project any further by pursuing permission from every Bible publisher out there, so I moved forward with my own text. But if you are a Bible publisher and would be interested in permitting me to use your translation for this purpose, please feel free to contact me to work out the details.

While I’m on the topic of copyright, I’ll mention that I’m licensing Exodus: A Novella under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. This means that you are free to print, copy, adapt, and distribute this work in any way you like, as long as you credit the work to the original creator and distribute it under an identical license. So, no need to request permission if you’d like to print it out, give it away, or do something else with it.

DOWNLOAD EXODUS: A NOVELLA

Here is a preview of the Table of Contents and prologue (what you might know as Exodus chapter 1).

If you’d like to download and read the complete novella, click the button and enjoy!

DOWNLOAD EXODUS: A NOVELLA

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How to Approach Books of the Bible You Don’t Like

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What do you with a book of the Bible you don’t particularly like? Or one you find terribly confusing, boring, or out of reach?

Rebekah Matt has some very helpful advice: Study it. Sounds simple enough, and she gives some very useful suggestions for how to go about the task.

Several months ago, I deliberately chose my least favorite book in the Bible for the women’s Bible study group at my church… I had a theory that a deep study using reputable resources would give me a new appreciation for why God had included this particular book in his Word. At the same time I was deciding to tackle this unliked (by me) book, I discovered that my friend Sara had been doing a Bible study at her own church on a different book, the one that’s the butt of many Bible reading plan jokes: Leviticus.

It was perfect timing for my as yet untested “study-it-to-love-it” theory. Sure enough, Sara and the other women in her Bible study had been having a very positive experience with Leviticus.

She then tells the story of recently diving into her own least-favorite book she had previously and intentionally avoided.

Check it out!

The Glories of Grammar

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Eight years ago, I attended the Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference for the first time. Afterward, I shared my reflections on the best and worst parts of it, which mostly had to do with how imitable the various speakers were in their presentations. This past week, I attended the final T4G and wanted to share with you my favorite moment of the event.

This pastor’s conference has had many highlights over the years of its existence. One of the most talked-about benefits of attending is all the free books attendees receive (this year I got more than 20). But free books are not enough to justify the cost of traveling to Louisville, Kentucky, renting a hotel room, and being apart from family for a few days. No, the primary draw for me, as for many others, is the extravagant time spent in God’s Word under the the instruction of world-class teachers and preachers.

And my favorite moment of the event came during John Piper’s talk on the connection between Christ’s grace to forgive our sin and Christ’s grace to help us kill our sin. Piper’s talk was masterful, and I commend to you the entire thing. He set out to explain why it is a failure to understand and preach grace if we understand or preach only the forgiveness of sins and not also the holiness that results in the Christian’s life. This is like reminding people constantly of what they have been saved from without giving them something else to live for. It neglects the fact that Christ’s precious blood paid not only for our sins but also for our holiness. Piper demonstrates the idea from the text of 1 Peter 1 and 2.

At the end of the talk, Piper gave five reasons why preachers often fail to preach this message today. Why so many tend to stop at the grace of forgiveness without the accompanying grace of transformation. And his first reason is simply that we might not even be aware of the connection between these two aspects of grace. We may have failed to see it in the scripture because we haven’t yet paid close enough attention to it.

Then my favorite line comes around 38:30 in the video: “Nobody ever showed you how to read the Bible by looking for in-order-thats and becauses and therefores and participles, and you missed GLORIES because you missed grammar!”

And Piper is spot on. There is unbelievable glory here, if we would only have someone to teach us how to look for it.

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Piper for helping me to see this particular point, which was my highlight of the conference. May it encourage you to continue seeking Christ’s glory through observing even the fundamentals of grammar.

Do Bible Translations Matter?

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Of course they do, otherwise most people reading this blog would have no access to the Scriptures. But Ryanvda has some excellent points to consider on the matter, as he answers a number of questions he regularly hears on the topic. On one level they really matter, and on another level they really don’t.

When we compare a bunch of good Bible translations, at that level, which one we pick does not really matter all that much. For example: If you compare the NIV with the ESV with the CSB, no outright winner emerges. We might have preferences (the CSB for me!), and those preferences might even stem from certain convictions – but for the most part, we are choosing between pretty healthy translations! 

Check it out!

God’s Word Fulfilled in the Book of Kings

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Once I complete my New Year’s speed read of the entire Bible each year, I have made a practice of pursuing Joe Carter’s brilliant Bible reading plan: Choose a book of the Bible, read it 20 times in a row, choose another book of the Bible, read it 20 times in a row, repeat. For the last few months, I’ve been simmering in the book of Kings (treating 1 Kings and 2 Kings as a single book).

On my first few trips through the book, I began to notice that the fulfillment of God’s words appeared to be an important theme. So during my 7th time through it, I created a list of every time the text draws attention to God’s words coming to fulfillment. I included a few other counter-cases (such as counterfeit prophecies that are not fulfilled, and conditional promises of God that go unfulfilled when the conditions are not met), but mostly stuck to tracking verse references for the prediction and for the prediction’s occurrence.

Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay

Here is what I found:

  • 83 specific examples of God’s words being fulfilled. (This averages to nearly 1.8 fulfillments per chapter!)
  • 11 of those examples are fulfilling words spoken earlier in history, recorded in other books of the Bible.
  • 72 of those examples have both the prediction and the fulfillment narrated with the book of Kings.
  • 8 counterfeit examples, where someone makes a prediction, in the name of either themself or Yahweh, that does not come to pass.
  • 2 examples of Yahweh’s predictive word being recorded, but the fulfillment itself is not narrated.

When I read a book of the Bible 20 times, my end goal is to draft a concise statement of what I perceive to be the book’s main point. I am not yet ready to do that for the book of Kings, but I imagine this overwhelming theme of God’s word being fulfilled will play a major role. Since the first few and last few examples have to do with God’s promise to be with the king and people if they walk faithfully with him, the thrust of the book does appear to be an explanation of how the exile should not have been a surprise to anyone. The ejection of the kingdom from the land could have been prevented and was in full accord with the word of God to his people over centuries.

If you are interested, you can find my complete list in this document.

The Main Reason for Studying the Bible

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Trevin Wax has quite a thoughtful piece called “Don’t Miss the Main Point of Bible Study.” In it, he addresses the common temptations to study the Bible for education or daily inspiration. Such things are worthless, unless they draw us nearer to the Lord to behold his face, that we might break forth into exultation of his glory.

The task of Christian theology isn’t one of invention or establishment; it’s about discovery and explanation. We’ve stumbled across something real, and as we behold with awe the wonders of this reality we seek to expound on it faithfully, trusting that what we’ve seen will change us. “We are changed into the one we see,” said Gregory the Great.

Wax is right. This is something we must not miss. Check it out!

What People Thought About Reading the Bible in 90 Days

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Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash

One of the things I love about our annual Bible reading challenge is hearing what the participants thought of the experience. Here are some quotes from those who entered the drawing, introduced by the length of time it took them to read the entire Bible:

54 days: Kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet where you can’t eat too much; you keep going because you always have room for more.

85 days: It was a sweet way to start my day, and again I discovered a flow of thoughts and themes that I miss when reading smaller sections.

66 days: I loved it! I have read through the Bible many times over the last 20 years, using various translations, but I have never tried to read the entire Bible so quickly… Reading the whole Bible through in this way was more like reading an historical novel or biography – I could hardly stop reading! Reading swiftly helped me see more clearly than ever before how the thread of redemption runs through the whole story of God’s relationship with mankind. As I read, my faith in Jesus as my Lord, Redeemer and Messiah has grown stronger, my understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life became clearer, and I gained courage to follow Him more intimately. Telling others about the Kingdom of God becomes easier when you understand God’s story more fully. What a joy!

68 days: I really enjoyed reading it quickly like this. It allowed me to see the 50,000 foot view. I did get confused with all the characters reading this quickly (Kings and Chronicles-I’m looking at you), but it was a great was to see the big picture.

83 days: This is my second year reading (third listening), which gave me the confidence that I’d be able to do it again. I liked the challenge this year as well. I feel like every year I do this I’m able to make more and more connections between the Old Testament and the New (without a study bible or notes telling me references), which feels really cool! I think it just generally makes me realize this is a BOOK and God’s story (and ours!), as opposed to “let’s read a Gospel, or let’s read a certain book of the bible and talk about missions, or friendship, or discipleship or some other topic…). Overall a good experience that I hope to do again next year.

81 days: Overall it was a great experience. it started out well, then about a month in got hard and overwhelming with the amount of reading (I wanted to quit at one point). As I got to the New Testament it got easier. Reading larger portions of a books or even finishing books in one sitting was helpful to see the overall picture/theme of each book. However, there were many times I wanted to think through the text or had questions, but due to time was not able to.

78 days: One advantage of rapid reading is that you get to see the theme of the book clearly rather than the specific details. Makes it easier to identify Jesus’ role in each book. Unlike bite sized bible reading, reading in volume changes the way I retain lessons/values. Sometimes, “less significant” things get bumped by “more significant” ones until only a handful of lessons can be recalled after reading. It is easier for me to see the timeline of events in a book if I read large chunks of the Scriptures daily. You get to appreciate the bigger picture. I’d definitely do this again and again. Reading the Bible in volume saturates the mind and relieves the soul. Why did I not do this while I was young?

77 days: Amazing! I was dreading the O.T., but actually found so much depth there and saw things I would never have seen otherwise. I noticed curious themes emerging between prophets that I would not have noticed without this fast reading. Also, because I did that audio version, I have noticed that I have more of the Bible on command in my mind. I was talking with a friend about an issue and was able to seamlessly draw together an OT and NT source because they were fresh in my mind.

90 days: This is my 4th year, and each year I choose a different translation. Each year, different things jump out at me.

What Not to Do with Difficult Passages

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Elliot Clark has a wonderful piece entitled “6 Wrong Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages.” I am certainly guilty of a few of these. How about you?

  1. Avoid hard texts
  2. Exaggerate their significance
  3. Assume correct interpretation is simple
  4. Assume correct interpretation is inaccessible
  5. Research texts like a cold technician
  6. Query the Bible as judge and jury

Clark’s counsel is both concise and practical. For example, regarding point 2:

As I recently prepared to teach from 1 Timothy 2—one of the most controversial chapters in the Bible—I was struck by Paul’s primary command: urging prayer in the church. This focus is often obscured by the more controversial aspects of the chapter. Yet if we spend all our time thinking about a Christian’s relationship to government or women’s roles in the church and never address our calling, posture, and purpose in prayer, we’ve missed the main point. We’ve made the reader’s questions and concerns preeminent.

These errors are worth your consideration. Check it out!

Congratulations to the Winners of the Drawing

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Responses have been collected, and the drawing has now been completed. Winners have been notified via email. So if you see your name below, please check your email for a communication from me. If I don’t hear from any of the winners in one week’s time, a new winner will be selected to take their place.

Grand prize (Logos 9 Silver base package): Camila E.

Second prizes (copies of Knowable Word 2nd Ed and Sowable Word – coming later this year): Elizabeth H, Anthony H, Scott Y.

Congratulations to all who participated in this year’s reading challenge. Soon, I will share some of the comments participants submitted regarding what they thought of their 90-day readthroughs.