Knowable Word

Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible

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Just Keep Reading

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Erik Lundeen has some surprising advice for those who come to something in their Bible they don’t understand: Just keep reading.

If you’re like many attempting to read through the Bible this year, you’re at a crossroads. You may falter, burning out (as the story often goes) in a difficult section of Scripture like Leviticus and failing to establish a Bible-reading habit. Or you may make it over that initial hump, and regular Bible reading moves from being a checked box to a customary part of life.

I want to help you have the latter experience. I want to offer advice based on years of reading the Bible cover to cover and processing such experiences with others who’ve attempted the same. My advice boils down to this: As you read, keep going and don’t worry too much about understanding. That will come.

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Yes, Context Matters

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Stephen Kneale agrees with us that context matters.

Whenever we read the bible it is important for us to put any passage into context. We must put it into its canonical context – making sure we are clear where this passage fits within the wider book and where that book sits within the scriptures as a whole. We have to put the passage into its literary context – making sure we put the sentences in the context of the paragraphs which sit in the context of sections that are part of larger books. We have to think also about the historical context – what was going on at the time of writing that has impacted what this writer is saying and why…

If that is right, we want to hear God on his own terms. Which is why we very much don’t want to take him out of context. To do that is to twist his words. It is to miss his words. It is to misunderstand him. It is to misunderstand what the creator of the universe has determined is needful for us to know

Kneale discusses the person who comes to the Bible with a particular question, finds a verse that sounds about right, and then makes use of that verse to speak to the issue in question without considering whether the author intended to speak to that issue. These are wise reflections.

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Why Four Gospels?

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Ben Hicks asks why we have four accounts of Jesus’ life. Why we need four accounts of Jesus’ life. Since they present Jesus in different ways, does that mean they’re all contradicting each other?

Of course not! With a simple, everyday story, Hicks shows how different accounts of the same person can live in harmony with one another.

Imagine you find yourself at a funeral. The funeral is for a man you never met, but was the father of a close friend so you go to show your support. At one point in the afternoon, you find yourself standing in a circle with three adult grandchildren, all reminiscing about grandpa.

Would you be shocked if they each remember different aspects of their grandfather’s strengths an personality?

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Revisiting Two Tries to Heal the Blind

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I wrote once about how the larger context helps us to understand why Jesus took two tries to heal the blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26). I offered two theories that both fit the data.

  1. To provide a picture, a living parable, of his two tries to heal the disciples’ spiritual blindness.
  2. To provide a picture, a living parable, of the two stages of sight the disciples must go through to understand who Jesus is.

Here now is a clear piece by Benjamin Gladd arguing in favor of that second theory. He walks through the text, highlighting what is happening in Mark’s larger argument regarding the disciples. In the process, Gladd demonstrates how to read the story of the blind man contextually and carefully.

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Jesus Walking on Water Echoes the Old Testament

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What is going on when Jesus walks on the water in Mark 6:45-52? What is Jesus revealing about his identity?

Brandon D. Crowe explains the many Old Testament connections that show Mark’s purpose in recounting this event. Crowe shows that Mark uses language the same way many Old Testament passages use language to describe the coming of God himself to deliver his people.

Jesus is the eternal “I am” who has become incarnate and leads his people in a new exodus toward the peace of the true promised land. Just as he was with his disciples 2,000 years ago to guide and protect them, he continues to be with us today. Despite the opposition we face in this world, his purposes will prevail and the salvation he has accomplished for his people is secure.

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3 Ways to Overcomplicate Your Bible Reading

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Jacob Crouch wants to encourage you to read your Bible. In so doing, he warns of three common pitfalls he’s seen that tend to overcomplicate things:

  1. Studying every passage
  2. Setting unrealistic goals
  3. Having no goals

while this seems like it shouldn’t be controversial to say, I have found that almost every person I talk to in the American South (and I’d imagine is true of a lot of places) has never read through the Bible in it’s entirety. And it’s not just in nominal, cultural Christians. It is often in well-meaning, genuine Christians. Some are even leading in church or para-church ministries. For these people, I don’t think the problem is sincerity, but rather an overcomplicating of the Bible-reading process. I want to shine a light on some common mistakes and hopefully help you avoid them.

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Use Context to Resist Satan

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J.A. Medders reflects on the fact that the devil hates context. He’ll quote scripture but ignore what’s present right in the immediate context. We should make sure we don’t do the same. (My co-blogger Ryan once made a similar point.) In fact, by employing context in our Bible study, we’ll be better equipped to resist the wiles of Satan.

The devil took Psalm 91:11–12, applied it to Jesus, and left out the context. And here’s why: verse 13 is an allusion, reminder, and reinforcement of the promise God made in Genesis 3:15. There in the garden of Eden, as sin rippled through the universe, the devil heard his doom—someone would be born who would crush his head. And his name is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. He didn’t want to think about Jesus and verse 13.

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Good Old Fashioned Biblical Literacy

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Ben LeBlanc has a wonderful and thoughtful piece on “How One Gen Zer is Gaining Biblical Literacy the Old-Fashioned Way.” In the article, he tells the story of how he had to go without a smartphone for two years in Bible school, and it transformed the way he approached the Scripture.

Not only does online life erode our capacity to read, but it distorts how we read by cluttering the page with links, notifications, and widgets. In one study, participants found it harder to recall what they’d read as the number of links in an article increased. And research by Nielsen shows that online readers don’t read: They skim and “powerbrowse”, moving their eyes across the page in a spasmodic F-pattern.

LeBlanc offers three practical suggestions for how to avoid such dangers and improve your own experience of the Lord in his word. You’ll have to go see them for yourself.

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3 Mistakes with Commentaries

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Stephen Kneale warns of three mistakes we could make with commentaries.

  1. Opening commentaries too early
  2. Opening commentaries too late
  3. Not opening commentaries at all

There is some good advice here, along the lines of our continued counsel to avoid becoming a commentary junkie. I’ve given my own set of mistakes with commentaries. And just as you can disagree with someone’s advice about commentaries, so also you ought to be free to disagree with the commentaries themselves.

The goal is always to allow the biblical text to speak the loudest for itself. Commentaries make great conversation partners but lousy agenda setters.

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You Don’t Have to Choose Between Truth and Love

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I appreciate Josh Thomas’s thoughtful piece “Big Heads or Big Hearts,” where he considers the false dichotomy of truth vs. love, and he suggests we don’t have to choose between them. Especially in our Bible study.

Sure, it would be unhelpful to study the Bible only to beat people up and prove you have superior knowledge. But that doesn’t mean that a pursuit of love means you don’t need to continue learning from and about the Bible.

Truth and love ought not be thought of as if they are opposites — as if the pursuit of one will automatically detract from the pursuit of the other. Even in specific situations, we shouldn’t think that we need to decide between standing for the truth and loving. We can always do both!

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