Knowable Word - Bible study help

Please Help Me Decide What to Do Next

March 27, 2015 By Peter Krol

Spring sprung a leak in Happy Valley this year, and a snowstorm was our reward. No joke. But by faith, I trust new life is on its way. “All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come” (Job 14:14).

I’m trying to figure out what to blog about next, and I’d like your help. What sorts of posts have you found most helpful? What would you like to see more of? What would help you learn to study the Bible better?

I’ve done longer series on the following topics:

I’ve written some shorter series as well:

I have some more ideas, but I’d like to know what would be most useful to you:

Sample Bible studies through another book of the Bible
Big Bible concepts made simple (tracing major themes through the Scripture)
How to train others to lead Bible studies
How to use commentaries and other resources well
Recommended commentaries that promote OIA (observe, interpret, apply) Bible study

Do any of these ideas resonate with you? Do you have any others? What would you like to see on the blog that would help ordinary people learn to study the Bible?

Feel free to comment below or on the Facebook page. Your ideas may trigger further ideas for others. If you’d prefer to keep your suggestions private, however, please use the contact form.

Thank you for your help!

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John Piper’s Advice for Reading the Bible

March 25, 2015 By Peter Krol

I don’t hesitate to assert that OIA (observe, interpret, apply) is the best method you can use to study the Bible. But in asserting this, I must make clear that it is not the terminology that matters but the substance. Many Bible teachers do excellent OIA Bible study without calling it “OIA Bible study.”

Case in point: John Piper. In this article entitled “How to Read the Bible for Yourself,” he explains his methodology for reading the Bible. And he never uses the words “observe” or “interpret.” He uses “apply” one time.

But he speaks of reading, understanding, noticing, and asking questions. He pushes for life change. And he packages his ideas in a few simple points:

Read for the author’s meaning, not your own
Ask questions to unlock the riches of the Bible
At every page, pray and ask for God’s help

I commend Piper’s summary to you as another angle on how to study the Bible. Check it out!

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How to Apply the Bible in Community

March 23, 2015 By Ryan Higginbottom

Perhaps you nodded at the suggestion that Christians should apply the Bible in community. Agreement might fire the engines, but it doesn’t get you off the runway. How can our friendships grow so that Bible application is natural? How can we get this plane in the air?

Cliff Muller (2009), Creative Commons License

When talking about community, many Christians focus on accountability. But Christian friendship doesn’t start (or stop) there. Let me offer four resolutions toward developing helpful, God-glorifying relationships.

Resolve to Spend Time with People

To apply the Bible in community, you must be in community. This goes beyond becoming a member of a good church. You need to know other Christians and you need to be known by others. When Paul writes about the church using the metaphor of a human body (1 Cor 12:12–27), he emphasizes how the parts of the body need each another (1 Cor 12:21–22).

This need is more than a physical or social dependence. We are to bear each other’s burdens (Gal 6:2), forgive one another (Col 3:13), confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), love one another (Rom 12:10), and speak truth to one another (Eph 4:25).

These commands point us well beyond handshakes and saccharine smiles on Sunday mornings. We need to pursue deep, honest friendships with other Christians. Relationships with other sinners—though messy—are worth pursuing because God commands them and they are designed for our benefit.

Resolve to Ask Questions

My treasured friends, the ones who have had the greatest spiritual impact on me, are the ones who excel at asking questions. When they see me caught in a sinful pattern or spiraling downward in my thoughts, they adopt a holy refusal to leave me alone. They ask me questions to help me think through my behaviors, thoughts, and relationships in the light of the gospel. Such questions are uncomfortable, but they help uncover my sin and point me toward Jesus. Don’t you want to be this type of friend? I sure do!

The good news is that we can all become friends like this. Start with a tiny question: why? Why was that disappointing? Why did you enjoy that? Why did you respond to her that way? It seems like you’ve been withdrawing recently; why is that?

Answering why questions can reveal your true hopes, fears, joy, and motivation. Even if you are not a verbal processor, you may get powerful clarity by speaking some thought you’ve been storing in your head. Friends can expose wrong thinking, a bent character, and errant behavior by asking these simple questions.

Why questions are not the only questions to ask, of course. As your relationship grows and you see the your friends’ struggles and tendencies, you’ll learn additional questions. You will notice the parts of their lives they don’t like to discuss. You will see how they respond to disappointment and criticism. Soaked in the gospel, your questions may be just the signpost toward hope that your friends need.

Resolve to Talk About God

I’ve seen too many Christians leave faith as an assumed-but-not-discussed topic between them. We can do better.

As you grow closer to other believers, you should care deeply about their walk with God. Their Christian discipleship is one of the most important qualities about them. So ask!

Here are some helpful questions to ask your friends: What has God been teaching you lately? How have you seen God work in your life over the past month? What are you reading in the Bible? What are you learning? What fruit of the Spirit have you seen God growing in you? How are you different from the person you were a year ago? These questions are like salt in your relationships. Don’t empty the whole shaker at once! But if you sprinkle them into your conversations, your friendships will have a richer flavor.

Though conversations like these might not feel natural at first, press through the awkwardness. You might even take the opportunity to discuss what sort of friends you want to be.

Putting it Together

So talk about the Bible with your friends. Tell them what God has been teaching you and how you’ve been trying to apply it. Ask them the same.

And talk with your friends about your sin and areas of frequent discouragement. Tell them the ways you are struggling to trust God. Ask them the same.

Soon you will find that these discussions overlap. You’ll talk with someone about a passage of the Bible, and later in the month that same person will notice an area of your life that is begging for application of the same text. Applying the Bible in community isn’t one extra step to put at the end of your small group Bible study. It will happen naturally as you develop close, Christian friendships.

Resolve to Pray

Since our sin nature is opposed to these ideas of exposure, humility, and vulnerability, we need to pray! We must ask for God’s provision of good friends and for his help to be a good friend. By his Spirit, he needs to change us into people who embrace the faithful wounds of those who love us (Prov 27:6).

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A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible

March 20, 2015 By Peter Krol

As a young missionary and student of the Bible, I once received counsel to check out certain commentaries written by scholars who didn’t believe the Bible to be true. This counselor wasn’t trying to lead me away from the true faith but toward it, because he suggested, “Many liberal scholars are more willing than conservatives to take the Bible at face value. Since they don’t care what the Bible says, they have nothing to lose by being honest about its message.” Having grown tired of endless word studies and thin defenses of dogmatic opinions on every page of some conservative commentaries, I gave it a try.

And I began learning to read the Bible as a work of literature.

(Please note: Not all commenters are created equal. Some unbelieving scholars take offense at the Bible’s message and seek to undermine it at every turn. I’m not writing about them, but about their colleagues who approach the Bible with more indifference than aggression.)

This approach helped me for a time, leading me to learn from brilliant (though spiritually foolish) writers how beautiful and well-written the Scriptures are. I learned how important structure was to ancient authors. I gained a keener eye for devices like characterization, comparison and contrast, inclusio (bookends), and repetition. I realized how important the original audience is to our interpretation. I learned to set aside my preconceptions, since I often had to suspend my disgust for the commentator’s assumptions in order to sharpen my ability to observe the text and delight in the ancient artistry.

Enter Leland Ryken.

Dr. Ryken showed me that I didn’t have to simmer in unbelieving scholarship in order to read the Bible for what it is: literature.

One of my earliest “wow” experiences was being required to read selections from Ryken’s Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible for a seminary course. The book was so good, I finished it on my own as soon as the course ended. And I’ve returned to it regularly ever since.

Ryken teaches college-level English and trusts God’s word. I praise God for his service to the kingdom of God in our generation, through his teaching career and long list of published works. And I was delighted when this man I deeply respect was willing to endorse Knowable Word.

Crossway caught my eye when they offered me a copy of Ryken’s recent work, A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible, in exchange for an honest review. This handbook appeared to be a useful tool for any student’s library.

And Ryken’s Handbook delivers on a grand scale. Ryken gets literature, and he gets the Bible.

The Handbook lists about 270 different forms Bible passages follow and gives definitions, explanations, and examples for each form. The handbook’s introduction explains why literary form matters: Writers communicate meaning through form. If we ignore form, we often miss the meaning. There is no content in the Bible communicated without a form. And a biblical understanding of inspiration requires us to recognize the inspiration of not only words and content but also the shape those words take.

Ryken explains:

The most obvious lesson that this handbook reveals is that the Bible is much more infused with literary forms and techniques than we realize. In fact, I predict that anyone who browses in this book for ten minutes will be shocked by the extent to which literary forms and techniques are present in the Bible. (Kindle loc. 381)

Dr. Ryken is a prophet indeed. The Handbook will help you understand forms like soliloquy, three-plus-one motifs, parody, insult, irony, hero stories, fantasy, foreshadowing, envelope structure, apostrophe, coming-of-age stories, stories of villainy, and lament psalms, to name but a small percentage of forms.

I would imagine using this reference often, except for one significant flaw that undermines its usefulness to average Bible readers like me. It has no Scripture index. This handbook is useful only to those already familiar with the extensive literary terms. If I’m reading Job 3, and I want to learn more about how soliloquies work, this handbook offers a marvelous explanation. But if I’ve never heard the term soliloquy, the handbook will be of no use to me.

I would give this book 5 stars if it had a Scripture index tying Bible references to the names of literary forms found in them. Without such an index, unfortunately, I can’t see most readers benefitting from this handbook—unless they’re either steeped in the terminology of literature or reading other reference works making use of that terminology.

You can find the Handbook at Amazon.

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Amazon links in this post are affiliate links. If some people care about this blog by reading it, how much more do those care who click the links and thus support the blog at no cost to themselves. That’s an example of an a fortiori literary form, which I learned about from Ryken’s Handbook.

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A Simple Guide to Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament

March 18, 2015 By Peter Krol

Kevin Halloran offers a simple guide to seeing Jesus in the Old Testament. He offers two simple steps and three helpful questions to guide us.

Two steps:

Study the passage in its original context.
Look for connections and work to understand it in its broader context.

Three questions:

Does the New Testament say anything about this topic or passage?
How does this passage connect with a main theme that points me toward Christ?
How does this passage aid my understanding of Christ and what he has done?

This short article is well worth your time. Check it out!

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Making Sense of Deuteronomy

March 11, 2015 By Peter Krol

Deuteronomy is a difficult book. It’s old. It’s long. It’s full of super-specific laws that don’t exactly fit our historical situation. For example:

You shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it. And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. (Deut 23:12-14)

How do you lead a Bible study on that? What must God think about my infant daughter’s intestinal blowout in the middle of church a few weeks ago?

At Reformation 21, Bruce Baugus’s excellent article will help you get your bearings in Deuteronomy. A few key points help those of us in the 21st century to understand why this book would have been so foundational and exciting for ancient Hebrews:

Moses structured Deuteronomy just like an ancient treaty. This book ratified the covenant treaty between God and Israel before Moses departed and handed things off to the next generation.
Ancient treaties always contained a section for the terms of the covenant (what was expected of each party to this treaty).
The long section of laws in Deut 4-26 describes those terms in painstaking detail. It begins with the summary: the Ten Commandments. Then it proceeds to explain what each of those commandments should look like in the lives of the people.
We’ll best understand the specific case laws if we see them as commentary on the Ten Commandments, in the very order of the Ten Commandments.

Baugus then takes up the particular question of where exactly the commentary on the 9th commandment begins and ends, which is a fine question to ask. But I think the best value of the article is in the overview of the larger framework.

With these tools in hand, you’re ready to tackle Deuteronomy.

Check it out!

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Why We Need Community to Apply the Bible

March 9, 2015 By Ryan Higginbottom

Because it is so personal, application can be the most demanding part of Bible study. In observation and interpretation, we focus on the words and meaning of a passage of Scripture, and our distance from the study provides some cover. But application is dangerous because God calls us not just to think but to change. Applying the Bible is difficult.

Yet this difficulty doubles when we attempt application on our own. Like a solo mission on a battlefield or a five-on-one game of basketball, the odds of successful application spike when we engage without company. Relationships are messy and the cause of deep grief at times, yet God ministers grace to his children through other Christians. We need each other in order to faithfully apply the Bible.

Grayson Akerly (2013), Creative Commons License

Our Blindness

We need other people because we all have blind spots. We often see ourselves dimly, as in shadows. While we may identify obvious transgressions, there are subtle sins below the surface. Blind spots show up in each of the three spheres of our lives where we must apply the Bible.

Ephesians 4:22–24 gives three steps for change when applying the Bible to your head: Identify what you think, identify what God wants you to think instead, and start thinking God’s thoughts. But how do we identify what we think? Our minds and beliefs are far more complex and layered than we assume, and the lies we believe often hide behind solid truths. A willing friend can help unveil our thoughts.

When applying the Bible to our heart, we focus on character. We ponder what kind of person God wants us to be. We have previously considered some questions to give us traction in this task: In what ways are you relying on your performance? What are your greatest hopes?

But here’s the problem: How confident are you in your ability to answer these questions? Can you diagnose your character by yourself? Our true hopes and values may be slightly (or dramatically) different from what we state in polite company. When a brother or sister forces us to answer why questions, we unmask our hypocrisy.

Perhaps most obviously, we have blind spots in our behavior (applying the Bible to our hands). We might not realize how our words were harmful or how we ignored someone in need. We might not identify our conversation as gossip, our snacking as gluttony, or our “personal time” as selfish. Good friends can point out our overlooked sins.

If we ignore community when applying the Bible, we will miss aspects of our head, heart, and hands that need to change. But our blind spots are not the only reason we need other Christians in our lives to help with application.

Our Resistance

Because both the old man and the new man dwell within us, we always face a challenge when pursuing obedience to God. (See Galatians 5:16–17.) Our flesh likes inertia and dislikes change, especially if that change is brought about by faith. When applying the Bible to our lives, our flesh offers massive resistance.

Sometimes this resistance appears shortly after we resolve to change. Despite the conviction we feel and God’s call to repent, our flesh grabs a bullhorn and reminds us of the inconvenience of change. The old man offers dozens of reasons to delay or abandon this new obedience. One way to rob these protests of their power is to anticipate them with a friend.

But our flesh contends against our repentance over time as well. We’ve probably all experienced this: under the conviction of the Spirit you decide that change is needed, so you start off on a new course. You’re not walking perfectly, but by God’s grace you begin in the right direction. Over time that initial conviction of sin wears off, and you no longer connect the new behavior to the reason that inspired it. So the new behavior happens less and less frequently until it doesn’t happen at all. Sometimes we need friends to ask us about a repentance begun months ago.

If we ignore community when applying the Bible, we may lose momentum in our application and give up.

The “How”

Our blind spots and our resistance to change provide some reasons that Christians should apply the Bible in community. In my next post we’ll discuss how to apply the Bible in community.

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The Best Way to Grow Your Bible Study Group

March 6, 2015 By Peter Krol

I don’t lead Bible studies just to make myself feel better; if that were the case, I could find many other ways to spend my time. No, I do it to help grow the kingdom of God. I want God to use me to influence others and draw them closer to him. If you’re leading a Bible study, I imagine you have similar motives.

So if we want to influence others to know God through Christ, we’ll want to have this influence on as many people as possible, right? That means we’ll want the group to grow. If we’re content with the group and never want it to change, perhaps we should reconsider our motives for having the group in the first place.

Grisel D’An (2015), Creative Commons

But this leads us to ask a valuable question: How do we grow the Bible study?

I could answer this question in many ways, depending on your cultural background, environment, unique strengths and weaknesses, and the makeup of your current group. But this post will highlight what is certainly the most important technique you must master if you want to expand your reach for the Lord’s sake.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Tim 2:1-2)

Before you can master this technique, you must be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 2:1). You will always feel unworthy for what you’re about to do. Except for those times when you feel eminently worthy for this task, at which times it’s even more urgent that you be strengthened by the grace of Jesus. Draw your sustenance and power from the lavish mercy and free forgiveness of your Master and King. You are approved to study the Bible. And you are approved to lead others to study the Bible.

And what is this most important technique for growing your Bible study? “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2). Take what you’ve learned and teach it to someone else.

Pick someone with godly character in your group to be your assistant leader. Give that person some responsibility in the group. Follow a plan for progressively entrusting both the good deposit of the gospel and the skills of leadership to your assistant. Your plan could look like this:

Come and see (John 1:39), aka “I do, you watch.” Invite this person to become your official assistant leader. Meet with your assistant before the group meeting to go over the passage. Teach that person how to do OIA Bible study. Practice it with that person over the course of a few months.
Come and follow me (Mark 1:17), aka “I do, you help.” Ask your assistant to evaluate your leadership and make suggestions for improvement. Give your assistant particular assignments to carry out during the meeting. “Please help me to draw out the silent person.” “Please feel free to ask a key question if you think the discussion is lagging.” “Please come early and be ready to help welcome people.” “Please let me know what you hear that will enable me to make the next study more relevant to them.”
Go out and come back (Luke 10:1-24), aka “You do, I help.” Let your assistant lead one of the meetings, and then meet to give that person feedback on how it went. You now play the support role during the meeting, helping with difficult situations or participants. Encourage your assistant with what went well and offer suggestions for improvement. Avoid correcting every minor mistake; focus on broad patterns that might hold back this person’s leadership ability.
Go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), aka “You do, I watch.” Right when your assistant starts being truly effective, you’ll need to send that person out to start a new group without you. This is painful, because it will feel like your own group is moving backwards. You’ll lose the momentum and excitement of forward movement. But where there had been one group, now there are two. This is worth it.

After your assistant starts a new group, you’ll probably want to continue meeting for a time. You’ll want to discuss how the meeting goes as it gets off the ground. You’ll discuss the new challenges and opportunities faced by this fledgling leader. But most of all, you’ll want to make sure the new leader wastes no time in looking for a new assistant to train. And you’ll be looking for another assistant yourself. And before you know it, you’ll have four groups going.

I didn’t invent this model for growth. Jesus instituted it from the start of his ministry, and it has been changing the world ever since. It’s not flashy, and you’ll rarely be able to wow people with your dramatic growth figures. (“I trained one new person this year!”) But the power of multiplication is like a silent infection, wreaking havoc on the forces of darkness. Don’t neglect this best way to grow your Bible study group.

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The Bible Project Videos

March 4, 2015 By Peter Krol

It is difficult to overemphasize the value of strong book overviews when we study the Bible. If we don’t know what the book is about, we’ll have trouble discovering what a chapter within that book is about. That’s why I was delighted to recommend overviewbible.org to you a few weeks ago. Jeffrey Kranz has done some terrific work in writing solid book overviews and making them visually appealing.

I recently discovered a similar resource, which overviews books of the Bible in a short video format. The guys at The Bible Project are doing a bang-up job at creating high quality, textually-sensitive videos that overview each book of the Bible. They’re also making videos explaining various topics and concepts in the Bible, but I’m sure you can understand I’m more interested in the book overviews.

These videos are sensitive to the text. They explain each book according to the literary structure and themes of the book, and not by stringing together random but memorable stories.

These videos are fascinating. I’m no graphic artist, but I’m often repelled by low quality Christian productions. The production level on these videos rises well above the crowd.

These videos are short. They pack a lot of material into 5 or 6 minutes without cheating or cheapening the subject.

These videos are free. As they complete each video, the creators post it on YouTube for wide consumption.

I can’t wait to show these first few videos to my children. The next time I lead a study on Genesis or Exodus, we’ll make sure to watch these videos to kick things off (after the usual assignment of reading the book 4 or 5 times to develop our own overview).

So far, they’ve completed 2 videos on Genesis and 2 videos on Exodus, and they’re looking for help with the rest of the project. This appears to be a project well worth supporting.

Check it out!

HT: Andy Cimbala

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How to Tell if Someone Knows God

February 27, 2015 By Peter Krol

At a church dinner on Sunday, I was discussing last Friday’s post with an older, wiser gentleman in my congregation. We reflected on the main measure of success for any Bible study: Do people know God better through his Son Jesus Christ? And this good man asked a great question: How do we know whether someone knows God (or knows him “better”)? How does one observe and evaluate such a thing?

The question was neither aggressive nor condescending. This kind brother intentionally stimulated further meditation and consideration of the Scripture. Thank you, Denny!

Easy but Unacceptable Answers

Of course, some answer the question in clearly unbiblical ways:

People can’t know God unless they are members of our church.
People can’t know God unless they adhere to every specific of a certain extra-biblical creed, doctrinal statement, or code of conduct.
People can’t know God unless they use a certain translation of the Bible.
People can’t know God unless they are baptized.

Now I’m no hater of church membership, historic Christian creeds, decent Bible translations, or baptism. But reacting against unbiblical abuses of such things is right and true. (For example, consider Paul’s reactions to abuses of circumcision and law in Galatians 5:2-12, 6:14-16.) And it’s not hard to come up with exceptions that disprove each proposed rule.

However, let’s not over-react with equally unbiblical conclusions, such as “I’m not God, and I can’t see people’s hearts. Therefore, I can’t know whether someone truly knows God or not. I won’t play God by even asking the question.”

Though a question as personal and invasive as this can inspire fear in the stoutest heart, let’s not hesitate to speak clearly where God has spoken clearly. What can be more helpful than to have a clear way to observe and evaluate the presence or absence of true faith and knowledge of God?

So what has God spoken on this topic?

Three Clear Tests

Chiceaux Lynch (2007), Creative Commons

God gave us an entire book of the Bible to answer this very question. Consider this explicit purpose statement for John’s first epistle:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:13)

While John intended his Gospel to stimulate faith leading to eternal life (John 20:30-31), he intended his first letter to promote assurance of eternal life for those wondering whether their faith is true faith. As a result, the teaching of 1 John helps us test not only ourselves but also other people, including professing Christians. John doesn’t hesitate to apply his principles to the spirits and teachers within the church to call out the false prophets, devil’s children, and antichrists among the membership (or former membership). The letter’s tagline is “We know.”

John gives three clear and objective tests of genuine faith. He states them early and returns to them repeatedly throughout.

Keeping God’s commandments: the test of personal change.
Loving the brothers: the test of personal affection.
Confessing Christ: the test of personal witness.

The first exposition of the tests occurs in chapter 2: Change (1 John 2:3-6), Affection (1 John 2:7-11), Witness (1 John 2:18-25). But John repeats and develops the three tests repeatedly through the letter, climaxing with his closing statements.

Change: “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him” (1 John 5:18).
Affection: “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19). See 1 John 4:7 for John’s definition of what it means to be “from God.”
Witness: “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:20-21).

Applying the Tests

As you evaluate whether your Bible study (or any other ministry) was a success, you’ll want to observe attendance figures, participation levels, and the faithfulness of the leaders. But please don’t neglect to ask the most important questions.

As a result of the study, do people know God better through his Son Jesus Christ?
How do we know?
- Are people changing to become more like Christ?
- Do they have more affection for each other, and are they acting on it?
- Are they more empowered to confess Jesus as the Son of God? Do they firmly believe it, and do they boldly declare it?

John doesn’t expect anyone to be perfect (1 John 1:8-10); neither should we. These questions aren’t concerned with people’s position as much as with their direction. We know that those who head in the right direction in all three areas have eternal life.

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