Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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The Benefits of Waiting to Use Commentaries

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Colleen Searcy believes it’s in your best interest not to reach for commentaries too quickly in your Bible study. Ryan and I tend to agree with her. As do Stephen Kneale and John Piper, among others.

Searcy compares commentaries to Google Maps, highlighting how much more knowledgable we become of an area from a paper map vs. a GPS app. And in the process, she keenly identifies three major benefits of not using commentaries too quickly.

  1. Holding off on commentaries encourages engagement with God and with others.
  2. Doing the work helps you remember.
  3. You learn to recognize landmarks and patterns that are woven throughout the Scriptures.

There is much here worthy of your consideration.

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Developing a Culture of Discipleship

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While learning how to study the Bible is one crucial part of Christian discipleship, it is not the only part. So I’m happy to zoom out from my usual narrow focus on learning how to study the Bible to highlight this article about how to cultivate a culture of discipleship in the local church.

The concept of “discipling” is often shrouded in mystique, and Jeffrey Wiesner does a wonderful job making it more accessible. He covers the following topics:

  • What is discipleship?
  • What is a discipleship culture?
  • What commitments inform a discipleship culture?
  • What practices shape a discipleship culture?
  • What metrics evaluate a discipleship culture?

This longer article is well worth your time to help you and your church obey Jesus’ great commission to go and make disciples (Matt 28:18-20).

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The Beatitudes as Invitations

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I bet you’ll really enjoy Joshua Greever’s study of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12. He shows how the literary context and the allusions to the Old Testament shape the way we ought to read these famous verses. And when read properly, they are not universal promises to all sorts of good or nice people; they aim to shape us into mature Christ-followers.

We need to identify what the Beatitudes are in order to discern how they function. We must see them as Jesus’s invitations shaped by the Old Testament, directed to the empty, and intended to produce faith in Christ. When we read them rightly, we see them as Jesus’s good and gracious gift pointing us to the blessed life.

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What Does it Mean to “Keep” the Book of Revelation?

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Revelation 1:3 declares:

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

Justin Dillehay looks to the rest of the book to speak for itself about what it means to “keep” this magnificent book, and he lands on three key applications: hear it being read, keep God’s commandments, and keep your eyes fixed on who Jesus is. Here is a taste:

Can you imagine a group of Christians sitting and listening to the entire book of Revelation read aloud in one sitting? I can, because I’ve been a part of such a reading several times. And John is right; it’s a “blessed” experience! You should try it. Gather a group of friends and carve out about ninety minutes to just sit and read together. It won’t remove all the book’s difficulties. But prepare to be amazed at the connections and the patterns you’ll notice when you hear it all at once, the way the original hearers likely would have.

Don’t become a prophecy fanatic who obsesses over Revelation while neglecting the rest of the Bible. But please, for your own sake, don’t stop reading this book. It’s the only book in the New Testament that explicitly pronounces a blessing for the one who reads it. So, keep reading it.

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Reading the Gospels as Wholes

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Sadly, much reading and teaching of the gospels breaks the text down into tiny chunks, covering only a single scene or saying at a time. Jeannine Brown argues that this is not the best way to read them.

something important is lost when that’s as far as we look. Each Gospel writer has shaped their story of Jesus in ways that emphasize specific themes and messages about Jesus, and there is great value in studying a Gospel in its entirety to see and hear these messages clearly.

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When Life is Hard

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I appreciate Glenna Marshall’s advice: “When Life is Hard, Keep Reading Your Bible.” She urges us not to stew in our sadness, turning inward, analyzing the feelings, attempting to fix them. Instead, she calls us to look beyond ourselves, to God’s word.

Fascinatingly, God’s word might not even have the exact answer to “fix” life’s current hardness.

We often feel the need to dissect our sadness, to turn it inside out in an effort to understand it. We believe that if we can just understand it, we could fix it. But life isn’t always so easily fixed. Brokenness is rarely quickly mended. Suffering is often long and draining. It’s not wrong to seek to understand our sorrows, but sometimes what we need is to turn our gaze outward. We need to look to something solid and unchanging. Someone solid and unchanging

Marshall demonstrates the value of seeking the Lord through his word, which puts all the hard things into perspective, even if they’re not fixed.

She talks about finding companionship and guidance. One thing I would add is that the Scriptures also give us the vocabulary to lament the hard times. The Lord has entered into our suffering, and he gives us words to help us process it with him.

So along with Glenna, I urge you: Don’t approach the hard times as times to pull yourself away from God and his word. Run toward him to find resources to help you through.

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A Plan for Reclaiming Bible Literacy

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I am very grateful for Jen Wilkin’s recent article at Christianity Today about “The Great Omission” in our churches’ discipleship efforts.

…we have forgotten that discipleship requires learning. We have reduced its definition to attendance, service, giving, relationship-building, and mostly peer-led, feelings-level discussions. But at its most fundamental level, discipleship is a process of learning—of renewing our minds to no longer conform to the world.

We tend to view the Great Commission as a call to make converts, when in fact it is a call to make disciples—learners. It explicitly requires teaching those converts to be learners who obey all that has been commanded. According to Jesus, we are to replicate by passing along the good deposit that was passed along to us.

Conversion happens in an instant. Discipleship, on the other hand, is the work of a lifetime.

We have raised a generation of people who don’t know the Bible. And this biblical illiteracy has dramatic theological consequences, such as 28% of evangelicals believing that ““Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God,” and 47% of them believing that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”

Wilkin issues a much-needed challenge to our normal ways of conducting Christian growth, along with a wise 5-point plan well worth considering.

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What is “The Word of God”?

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John Samson has a helpful article about what exactly we’re claiming about the Bible when we label it “the word of God.” He addresses inspiration (being breathed out by God), authority, sufficiency, and clarity. He writes about the Spirit’s role and the various philosophical and external supports for the conclusion.

He writes:

This is not an academic issue.

If Scripture is inspired, then it is not optional.

If Scripture is authoritative, then you do not get to edit it to fit your preferences.

If Scripture is sufficient, then you do not need to chase every new spiritual trend to find what God has already given.

If Scripture is clear, then you can read it with confidence, not paralysis.

And if Scripture is God-breathed, then when you open the Bible, you are not merely studying a text. You are hearing the voice of God.

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The Surprising Benefits of Daily Bible Reading

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I’ve shared many posts over the years outlining the many benefits of frequent Bible reading. I still was delighted and surprised by some of the insights on this list by Kevin Carson and Howard Eyrich. In addition to the usual “strengthen your faith” and “deepen you relationship with God,” they observe some benefits I haven’t fully realized myself. Blessings such as:

  • #4: It equips us for special battles
  • #7: It fosters a habit of consistency
  • #9: It prepares us to encourage others

What I most appreciate is that daily Bible reading is not just for you but also for others, by equipping you to serve them better. What a terrific motivation for reading God’s word every day.

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The Value of Structure

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Jon Nielson writes about the benefits of what he calls the “construction tool,” or finding the structure of a biblical passage.

Finding the structure helps you to avoid a misplaced emphasis, wandering thoughts, and literary abuse. Discerning the structure helps you to find the author’s outline and emphasis, and to discover the right application.

Far too often, as we read and study the Bible, we place a lot of emphasis on things that just happen to jump out at us as we read. Perhaps a certain word strikes us from a passage; all of a sudden, we become very focused on that word and begin to think about it as the most important part of the passage. That can often be very dangerous. It is the structure of a passage that actually shows us what the author is emphasizing—not just what happens to jump out at us as we read. Careful work with the construction tool to discover the structure of a passage is key to seeing what the author is building toward—the key point that he wants us, the readers, to focus on.

Nielson’s advice is quite helpful, which is why we’ve written much about structure on this blog.

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