By Peter Krol
Here is a wonderful piece by Jim Orrick on why the Bible is the greatest of the great books. He gives ten reasons:
See the article for details on each point.
By Peter Krol
Over at the Logos blog, Robert Elmer provides a helpful overview of who wrote the Bible. He lists and explains what we know about the human authors of every book of the Bible. Then he highlights how some books of the Bible describe the Bible itself (interacting with other books).
Elmer’s writing is plain and clear, and his overview provides a good summary of the big picture with respect to these questions.
By Peter Krol
Jacob Crouch has a really important point to make: Those who read the Bible only a little tend to become arrogant people, looking down on those who do not read the Bible.
One sure sign that someone hasn’t read their Bible for very long, is that they are arrogant. That might seem surprising, but it is almost universally true that someone who has spent a little time in God’s word always seems to have the answer for any situation…
When I was freshly seeking the Lord, I seemed to have all the answers for finances, marriage, and children, all while I was a broke single man. I had lots of verses in my arsenal, but I had only really been seeking God for a few years.
The cure, of course, is not to stop reading the Bible, but to read the Bible excessively. This strategy is rooted in God’s requirements for kings called to shepherd his people.
By Peter Krol
A listener to John Piper’s podcast recently asked him a question about the roller coaster of Bible reading. A steady diet of Scripture can take a person consistently through cycles of promise, warning, assurance, and threat. What are we to make of that?
In the process of answering the question, Piper offers a keen answer to an important question: Does the grace of God in the New Testament eliminate our obligation to obey God’s commands?
Piper says:
And here’s what our friend, who sent this question, is drawing our attention to: God uses both promises and threats to motivate that obedience to his commandments. Lest anybody say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t even need the word commandments. We shouldn’t even use the word commandments in the New Testament. That’s an Old Testament idea. We don’t live by commandments in the New Testament. That’s law. We live under grace.” To that I respond…
I won’t paste his excellent response. You’ll have to go check it out for yourselves.
By Peter Krol
Though family discipleship is hard work, Todd Hains has some great suggestions.
In family discipleship, we regularly sow God’s Word into our children’s hearts and into our own. It doesn’t take long to drop a seed in the soil, nor does it take long to read, pray, and sing God’s Word. In his grace, God takes our planting and watering and produces a harvest full of the fruits of his word—a harvest of faith and forgiveness and life everlasting.
His five suggestions are:
He offers many practical tools and resources to help you in this crucial task.
By Peter Krol
Aaron Armstrong encourages you to read the Bible in bigger chunks. There is a time and place for detailed study of small portions of text. But what we must not do is lose sight of the whole.
Early on as a new Christian, my pastor challenged me to put down any other books and only focus on the Bible until I read the whole thing cover-to-cover. No in-depth study required. Just read, pray, and make notes as I went.
I set to work. I finished 8 or 9 weeks later, reading about 30-45 minutes a day. And I had a great big stack of notes to show for it. Actually, that’s not entirely true: I had a lot more than a stack of notes. I had a greater appreciation for the Bible as a whole.
Most importantly, I didn’t take his challenge, do it once, and never do it again. It’s something I’ve come back to a few times over the years. When my reading maybe feels formulaic, or when I’ve been struggling to read consistently. At the time of this writing, I’m nearing the end of one of these “big chunk” reads—or, actually, listens since I’m using an audio app for it this time.
By Peter Krol
Mitch Chase takes up an important question in the Bible’s wisdom literature: Can you trust the book of Ecclesiastes? Is it a collection of biblical wisdom, or is it a curation of ungodly beliefs to reject?
When you survey commentaries on the book of Ecclesiastes, you’ll notice that not every interpreter is convinced we should trust the words in this book. So how should we approach it? Is the content of Ecclesiastes like the book of Job, in which the speeches of Job’s friends have a mixture of truth and error? Or do the Preacher’s observations about life “under the sun” stay uncorrupted and trustworthy?
I think we can thoroughly trust the book’s content and wisdom, and I want to offer some considerations as to why.
By Peter Krol
When Jesus spoke of the sun being darkened, the moon not giving light, and the stars falling from heaven (Mark 13:24-25), was he talking about the end of the world? Or was he using prophetic terminology for the fall of Jerusalem?
Michael Bird tackles the issue in a lengthy but carefully argued article that would be well worth your time. Looking at the entire “Olivet Discourse,” he argues that:
…the discourse needs to be situated in the context of Jesus’s mission; namely, the preaching of the kingdom (Mark 1:15) and the restoration of Israel (Matt 10:5–6; 15:27; Mark 7:27; Rom 15:8). Jesus announced that Israel was facing a national crisis, that it had to choose how to be Israel. He explained how to be God’s chosen people to some who were choosing the path of violent revolution, to those who were following the pattern and piety of the Pharisees, to those who accepted the status quo of the Herodians, and to those who put put up with the moral and mercantile corruption of the priesthood. He gave them options: follow his way of being Israel, or else find the holy city laid waste and the sanctuary itself desecrated and destroyed.
Bird concedes that Matthew’s version of the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24-25) does contain a preview of the final judgment. But Mark and Luke appear to be squarely focused on events surrounding Rome’s assault on Jerusalem in AD 70.
Bird makes his case from both literary and historical contexts, and whether you end up agreeing with him or not, his article is well worth your time and consideration.
By Peter Krol
Daniel Rowlands suggests that one context we ought to keep in mind when reading the Bible is the context of the whole Bible. We can do this because, though the books of the Bible were written by various human authors, they were also written by the singular divine author.
Here is a taste:
The word of God in the Bible comes to us through human writers. We find the humanity of the writers in variations of vocabulary, idioms, structure, and style. For example, there is the difference between the exquisite Hebrew poetry and varied vocabulary of Isaiah and the straight-forward narrative of Joshua. Similarly, in the New Testament there is the difference between the complex and elegant Greek of Hebrews and John’s more elementary Greek. We can detect the presence of the human authors throughout all of Scripture.
On the other hand, and at the risk of sounding obvious, we ought not neglect the divine author, God himself. Here, the incarnation of the Son of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh (John 1:14), is a helpful analogy for understanding the human and divine together as one.
By Peter Krol
Apparently some folks at All Nations Church in Ilford, London struggle to concentrate when reading their Bibles. I suspect they are not alone. The church offers some wonderful counsel here, including:
Perhaps some of these suggestions may benefit you as well.
