I enjoyed yesterday’s panel discussion on leading with influence. The video is available here, or you can view it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRCGyU4gY-I
John Piper’s Look at the Book Preview
John Piper is preparing to launch his “Look at the Book” initiative to teach people how to study the Bible. If this first video is an accurate sign of what’s to come, then we’re in for quite a treat.
If you have any question about what it looks like to sit down with nothing but the text of Scripture and simply observe, interpret, and apply—I could not recommend this 10-minute video any more highly.
http://vimeo.com/101339957
Why I Write
My goal on this site is to help ordinary people learn to study the Bible. I pursue that aim through a few practices:
- On Mondays, I demonstrate Bible study skills on a particular text of Scripture.
- On Wednesdays, I link to other pages on the Internet that either demonstrate good Bible study skills or lay the ground work for good Bible study skills.
- On Fridays, I usually back away from the text to reflect on the skills themselves. Currently, I’m explaining methods for leading effective Bible studies.
All three practices fit into a larger model for teaching people how to study the Bible. But as each post comes and goes, and we focus on very specific skills, we can easily lose sight of the model.
That’s why I occasionally write brief posts like this by way of reminder.
And that’s also why I created a table of contents page for my series on Proverbs 1-9. It’s gone so long that the forest has been long since overgrown with trees. This table of contents will let you know all the main topics I’ve hit so far, and it will let you know what remains before the series finishes. I didn’t link to every post but only to the first post for each segment of text. From that post, you should be able to click through to the next post and the next if you’d like to read through a particular section.
I’ll activate the last few links as I finish those posts over the next few months. Please let me know if you have any ideas for making this page more useful!
Bible Study is Hard Work
At Desiring God, Jen Wilkin asserts that Bible study is hard work. She asserts that it doesn’t come easily or naturally to anyone. She accuses us of giving up or seeking a shortcut when progress is slow.
Being a student of any subject requires effort — the process of gaining understanding is not easy and can often be frustrating. Depending on the subject, learning may be enjoyable, but it will not be effortless. Learning requires work.
This is as true of learning the Bible as it is of learning algebra. We think that learning the Bible should be as natural as breathing in and out; if knowing God’s word is so good for us, surely he would not make it difficult for us to do so. But learning the Bible requires discipline, and discipline is something we don’t naturally embrace. Because learning the Bible is a discipline, patience will play a much-needed role in our progress.
What do you think?
Observing John 3:16
Will Humes (2009), Creative Commons
Douglas Smith has some helpful observations on the Bible’s most famous verse (John 3:16). In my summer Bible study, I may ask the group to make 50 observations on this one verse, as it summarizes much of the Bible’s message.
There is so much life-changing truth packed into this verse that, according to some stories, evangelist Dwight L. Moody’s life and ministry were changed by sitting under the preaching of a man who preached from John 3:16 throughout daily meetings over an entire week!
Idolatry is Embarrassing
Idolatry is not only stupid and offensive to God; it is embarrassing. Check out this post by Ryan Higginbottom on Isaiah 20 and how embarrassing idolatry is. It’s a good example of finding the main point of a text and applying it specifically.
Those same soldiers in whom Judah had hoped were paraded naked through the streets by their captors. What a display of their weakness and frailty! What a dramatic point about the foolishness of trusting in them! You can almost hear the heavenly narrative: “Instead of me, the Lord of hosts, you trust in these guys? Really?!”
Everyday Application
Bible application is exhausting. Must we do it every time we study the Bible? Must we constantly add one more thing to our to-do list?
At Desiring God, David Mathis says it depends on what we mean by Application. If we mean that we must come up with something new to do each day, then no. We’ll never be able to keep up. But if we mean that we must be changed in our thinking or desires, then yes.
Rather than dictating specific actions, he wants to see us formed into the kind of persons who are able to “discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).
In Scripture, we see the Lord. As we see, we will become amazed. In our amazement, we reflect and meditate until the word is written on our hearts. Then, over time, we’ll see gradual and specific change in our lives.
Mathis is on to something, though I’ve used slightly different language for it. I suggest the 3 spheres for application as a helpful model: Head, Heart, Hands. Yes, change should occasionally hit our hands and produce new behaviors or action steps. But we must not neglect the other two spheres, where we address our thinking and character. Head and Heart application rarely produces doable behaviors, but it makes us into the kind of people who are more attuned to the Lord and his commands. Such people will then see behaviors change over time.
But can we confidently say there’s something for us to apply in every passage? Absolutely!
Yes, take every word as spoken to yourself, with this essential anchor in place: Seek to understand first how God’s words fell on the original hearers, and how it relates to Jesus’s person and work, and then bring them home to yourself. Expect application to your life as God speaks to us today through the Spirit-illumined understanding of what the inspired human author said to his original readers in the biblical text.
Mathis shows us how to follow this plan to bring the Bible home to our hearts. I recommend the article to you.
Four Modern Versions of the Bible that are Ruining the Bible
Donna (2006), Creative Commons
Ben Irwin asks if the modern proliferation of Bibles might be part of the reason we’re reading Scripture less. The Bible is so available to us that we don’t hunger for it. And four kinds of Bibles lead us to devalue the Bible.
- The Commodity Bible (teen version, young couple’s version, single white female version, etc.)
- The Disposable Bible (planned for obsolescence)
- The Accessory Bible (colored to match your shoes)
- The “Have it Your Way” Bible (pick a translation—and change translations from verse to verse—so it says what you want it to say)
Irwin’s background in publishing Bibles commercially lends a certain gravity to his musings. And he suggests:
It’s not too late to chart another course. It’s not too late to remember that while the Bible was given for us, that doesn’t make it ours to tailor as we see fit. Scripture, as it turns out, is not that interested in catering to my personal “felt needs.”
It’s not too late to remember that the Bible is not just another commodity — that the whole point of owning and reading the Bible is not so I can fit bits and pieces of it into my life, but so I can fit my life into its story.
This thoughtful article is well worth considering. Check it out!
Proverbs 6, Structure, and Careful Observation All in One
You’ve gotta check out this blog post by Dan Phillips at Pyromaniacs. He walks through Proverbs 6:1-19, showing how his understanding of the text unfolded as he observed more and more carefully. He noticed the structure, and the way the passage hangs together around the three progressively bad kinds of fool.
And his careful observation leads him to many of the same conclusions I drew about this text and these three kinds of fool.
I highly recommend it, if you’re up for a fun journey. Check it out!
Bible Study is for the Heart not Just the Head
According to Dave Kraft, “How You Approach Scripture as a Leader is Critically Important.” He writes of his experience with OIA Bible study (though he labels the first step as “Information” instead of “Observation”) and of how easy it is for such study to influence merely our thinking.
But character matters, too. In fact, if you are not learning from the Bible, you are not in a position to be teaching it.
