Knowable Word - Bible study help

What People Thought About Reading the Bible in 90 Days

April 8, 2022 By Peter Krol

One of the things I love about our annual Bible reading challenge is hearing what the participants thought of the experience. Here are some quotes from those who entered the drawing, introduced by the length of time it took them to read the entire Bible:

54 days: Kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet where you can’t eat too much; you keep going because you always have room for more.

85 days: It was a sweet way to start my day, and again I discovered a flow of thoughts and themes that I miss when reading smaller sections.

66 days: I loved it! I have read through the Bible many times over the last 20 years, using various translations, but I have never tried to read the entire Bible so quickly… Reading the whole Bible through in this way was more like reading an historical novel or biography – I could hardly stop reading! Reading swiftly helped me see more clearly than ever before how the thread of redemption runs through the whole story of God’s relationship with mankind. As I read, my faith in Jesus as my Lord, Redeemer and Messiah has grown stronger, my understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life became clearer, and I gained courage to follow Him more intimately. Telling others about the Kingdom of God becomes easier when you understand God’s story more fully. What a joy!

68 days: I really enjoyed reading it quickly like this. It allowed me to see the 50,000 foot view. I did get confused with all the characters reading this quickly (Kings and Chronicles-I’m looking at you), but it was a great was to see the big picture.

83 days: This is my second year reading (third listening), which gave me the confidence that I’d be able to do it again. I liked the challenge this year as well. I feel like every year I do this I’m able to make more and more connections between the Old Testament and the New (without a study bible or notes telling me references), which feels really cool! I think it just generally makes me realize this is a BOOK and God’s story (and ours!), as opposed to “let’s read a Gospel, or let’s read a certain book of the bible and talk about missions, or friendship, or discipleship or some other topic…). Overall a good experience that I hope to do again next year.

81 days: Overall it was a great experience. it started out well, then about a month in got hard and overwhelming with the amount of reading (I wanted to quit at one point). As I got to the New Testament it got easier. Reading larger portions of a books or even finishing books in one sitting was helpful to see the overall picture/theme of each book. However, there were many times I wanted to think through the text or had questions, but due to time was not able to.

78 days: One advantage of rapid reading is that you get to see the theme of the book clearly rather than the specific details. Makes it easier to identify Jesus’ role in each book. Unlike bite sized bible reading, reading in volume changes the way I retain lessons/values. Sometimes, “less significant” things get bumped by “more significant” ones until only a handful of lessons can be recalled after reading. It is easier for me to see the timeline of events in a book if I read large chunks of the Scriptures daily. You get to appreciate the bigger picture. I’d definitely do this again and again. Reading the Bible in volume saturates the mind and relieves the soul. Why did I not do this while I was young?

77 days: Amazing! I was dreading the O.T., but actually found so much depth there and saw things I would never have seen otherwise. I noticed curious themes emerging between prophets that I would not have noticed without this fast reading. Also, because I did that audio version, I have noticed that I have more of the Bible on command in my mind. I was talking with a friend about an issue and was able to seamlessly draw together an OT and NT source because they were fresh in my mind.

90 days: This is my 4th year, and each year I choose a different translation. Each year, different things jump out at me.

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What Not to Do with Difficult Passages

April 6, 2022 By Peter Krol

Elliot Clark has a wonderful piece entitled “6 Wrong Ways to Approach Difficult Bible Passages.” I am certainly guilty of a few of these. How about you?

Avoid hard texts
Exaggerate their significance
Assume correct interpretation is simple
Assume correct interpretation is inaccessible
Research texts like a cold technician
Query the Bible as judge and jury

Clark’s counsel is both concise and practical. For example, regarding point 2:

As I recently prepared to teach from 1 Timothy 2—one of the most controversial chapters in the Bible—I was struck by Paul’s primary command: urging prayer in the church. This focus is often obscured by the more controversial aspects of the chapter. Yet if we spend all our time thinking about a Christian’s relationship to government or women’s roles in the church and never address our calling, posture, and purpose in prayer, we’ve missed the main point. We’ve made the reader’s questions and concerns preeminent.

These errors are worth your consideration. Check it out!

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Congratulations to the Winners of the Drawing

April 1, 2022 By Peter Krol

Responses have been collected, and the drawing has now been completed. Winners have been notified via email. So if you see your name below, please check your email for a communication from me. If I don’t hear from any of the winners in one week’s time, a new winner will be selected to take their place.

Grand prize (Logos 9 Silver base package): Camila E.

Second prizes (copies of Knowable Word 2nd Ed and Sowable Word – coming later this year): Elizabeth H, Anthony H, Scott Y.

Congratulations to all who participated in this year’s reading challenge. Soon, I will share some of the comments participants submitted regarding what they thought of their 90-day readthroughs.

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Individual Impressions Are Inevitable

March 28, 2022 By Ryan Higginbottom

I studied the book of Lamentations with my small group during most of 2021. Through thinking about lament in general, and the book of Lamentations specifically, God taught me so much more about grief, prayer, trusting him, and his faithfulness than I could have predicted. It’s no exaggeration—I think I grew more spiritually by studying Lamentations than I have through any other book study in the last five years.

However, not everyone in my Bible study felt the same! A woman in my small group could not wait for us to move on to study something different. She found Lamentations repetitive and deflating (despite all my cheerleading). I’m sure most of my small group friends fell somewhere in the middle.

The Bible lands on each of us differently because God works with different people in different ways. We see this in several places in Scripture.

Shouting and Weeping in Ezra

After King Cyrus of Persia sent a group of Israelite exiles back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, their first order of business was to construct the altar. After this was accomplished, the people offered burnt offerings and celebrated the prescribed feasts (Ezra 3:3–6). They hadn’t been able to do this for decades!

After the altar, the Israelites laid the foundation of the temple (Ezra 3:10). This was a time for worship and singing.

And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord,
“For he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.”
And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away. (Ezra 3:11–13)

There was a loud, joyful shout from some people and loud weeping from others. Despite the celebratory occasion, some of the older Israelites mourned because they had seen the original temple (and they had also seen it destroyed). Each person’s history and experience shaped their reaction to this event.

It’s not unusual for God’s people to come away with different responses when he acts.

Surprise, Not Everyone Is Like Me!

When I have a strong reaction to something I expect others share my conclusions and enthusiasm. This is especially true when learning from God’s Word. I think everyone should be convicted in the way I’ve been convicted and focused on the same applications as me. I’m the center, and I’m the standard.

When I get some distance, I can see that my thinking is ridiculous. There is so much that determines how a Bible passage affects a person. Their background, interests, social circles, vocation, experience, and spiritual maturity all play a role.

I need to remind myself frequently that this is a good thing. My church would be boring and unbalanced if everyone took identical impressions and applications away from a Bible study, class, or sermon.

The Value of Application Questions

God works by his Spirit in large crowds with largely uniform responses. (The apostle Peter’s sermon at Pentecost seems to be an example of this.) But God also knows and works with each of us as a loving father trains his children individually according to their needs and disposition.

Bible study leaders can trust God to produce the fruit he wants in each Christian. We guide and lead our friends through observation and interpretation to understand the meaning of a passage, and we should press our friends toward application. But we cannot broadly dictate application to individuals.

This is one reason (among many) that I advocate for asking application questions. It may be better, through such questions, to suggest areas for our friends to consider than to list specific options. The Holy Spirit often helps us examine our lives in light of those questions, convicting and directing us.

Two people at the same study may come away with very different applications of a Bible passage. Bible study leaders can plant and water, but God gives the growth.

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How Nineteenth-Century Americans Used the Bible to Support Both Slavery and Abolition

March 25, 2022 By Peter Krol

You might be aware of the fact that many Christians used the Bible to support southern slavery in early U.S. history. Did you also know that many people used the Bible to support abolition? How is it possible that groups of people can all believe in the basic truth that the Bible is God’s word, communicating truth to us, and yet reach opposite conclusions on such huge issues?

We can see the same thing playing out with respect to many other issues today: customs for worship, preaching, and church life. Doctrines surrounding sacraments, church government, salvation, and the moral law. Political issues such as immigration, financial policy, and foreign intervention. Social issues such as abortion, race relations, homosexuality, and gender ideology. On nearly any issue, it is not difficult to find people who claim to believe the Bible, who also make use of the Bible to support contradictory positions from one another.

Why is that? How can the same book be used for so many contradictory perspectives?

An Answer Worth Considering

While there is a complex range of factors contributing to such a complex situation, there is at least one factor we ought to give more attention to: How are people reading and understanding the Bible? What assumptions do they bring to this ancient book that shape the very methods by which they employ it in support of one position or another?

For example, one person presumes that the most literal, surface reading of a given text ought to be the most persuasive reading. Another person wants to string together a collection of verses that all appear to address a particular topic. Another focuses on their systematic theological system as the governing framework for reading any part of the Bible. Another wants to read the text the same way the heroes of old (or a subset of heroes of old) read it. Yet another wants to read the Bible in tandem with other ancient or modern texts that seem to be saying similar things.

My point is simply that we must not only observe the fact that someone makes use of the Bible to support a position. We must also take note of how they are using the Bible to support a position.

A Conversation Worth Your Time

The thing that spawned these reflections within me was a conversation I just listened to, published by the Mars Hill Audio Journal as one of their Friday Features. The host, Ken Myers, interviewed historian Mark Noll regarding his research on how nineteenth-century Americans went about using the Bible in support of either slavery or abolition in their debates. For now, you can find the interview here. I recommend listening to it as soon as you can, as I cannot promise how long it will remain on their site.

Noll discusses how Christians on both sides of the slavery debate resorted to “proof-texting” to make their case, yet the pro-slavery side tended to be better at it (i.e. more persuasive). Many of the proof-texted arguments in favor of the institution of slavery had no clear rebuttal, and as a result many abolitionists were forced to confess that, while the Bible permits the institution of slavery, they just couldn’t support the American expression of it. This led the pro-slavery camp to instill fear that abolition was simply the beginning of the slippery slope toward denying biblical authority at all.

There were a few shining (abolitionist) stars along the way, however, who were able to demonstrate abolitionist conclusions from biblical texts, through careful contextual study of those texts, tracing the unfolding revelation of God over time. In that day, however, proof-texting was believed to be the best way to arrive at truth, so such careful theological and contextual arguments often went unnoticed or unregarded.

I am confident I am not doing full justice to Noll’s research. So again, I commend to you the recording of his conversation with Myers for more detailed nuance and explanation. I commend it to you highly, as an example of why it is crucial that we not merely quote Bible verses but study them in context so as to grasp the larger arguments of the original authors. How we study the Bible matters.

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What Book Should New Believers Read First?

March 23, 2022 By Peter Krol

I’ve often been asked where people new to the Bible should start with the Bible. Which book of the Bible should they read first?

I believe the best answer to the question is: whichever book they are most likely to enjoy reading. So my typical response is to ask them what sort of literature they already enjoy: stories, poetry, non-fiction, etc. Then I propose some options within the Bible that are most similar in genre.

But with that said, there is certainly a place for giving more direction for guided reading to assist folks who are new to the Bible. And to that end, this article by Eden Parker has some wonderful advice. Not only does she provide two “best” options for where to begin; she also provides sound advice to guide the expectations of those just beginning to read the Bible.

Check it out!

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Do Your Best

March 18, 2022 By Peter Krol

My third commandment for commentary usage is:

You shall make every effort to form interpretive conclusions or questions about interpretations before consulting a commentary.

Is this because I think you won’t need any help?

The Short Answer

No.

A More Nuanced Answer

I’m not suggesting that you utterly bar yourself from the insights of commentaries early in your Bible study process. Last week, I suggested that different kinds of questions need different methods for finding the answers. That’s why this third commandment says that you shall make every effort to form interpretive conclusions or questions about interpretations before consulting a commentary.

In other words, if your question is more observational in nature, then go ahead and consult a commentary. Find quickly those answers ye seek. Do you just need a map? Do you need a historical tidbit? Do you not remember a proper name? Is a particular term unfamiliar to you? Just do it. Take a look; get some help.

This third commandment focuses on the process of interpretation, after observation (or in light of it). And my exhortation to you is to learn how to do the work for yourself. Paul told Timothy to “do your best” in his handling of Scripture (2 Tim 2:15). The standard for evaluation is not getting everything perfect, but for personal progress to be visible (1 Tim 4:15).

So to make progress, you need to learn how to wrestle with the text. You need foster your curiosity and learn how to investigate. You need to gain more confidence from the text than from the experts.

So I encourage you to do your own work first. Observe and interpret, all the way up to the point where you have a guess at the author’s main point. Once there, you’re in the best position to read and consider what others have said about your text. You’ll have firm footing from which to evaluate what they say, testing everything, that you may hold fast to what is good and reject what is bad (1 Thess 5:20-22).

Six Reasons You Should Have Your Own Interpretive Ideas Before Consulting a Commentary

“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Prov 18:17). The first commentary you read will likely seem to be right. Unless it’s not your first time reflecting that deeply on the text.
Commentators often disagree with one another. Why shouldn’t you be able to disagree with them when necessary?
Commentators often change their minds from their earlier writings to their later writings. They are constantly re-evaluating and re-thinking their conclusions based on new insights into the text. So why shouldn’t you do the same with their conclusions?
It is more important for you to make progress in your ability to handle the word than for you to have perfect answers for any given text. If you can get answers only by reading a commentary, what happens if you lose access to your commentaries? Or can’t find a decent one for the next book you study?
If you teach, people will ask you questions the commentary may not have answered. If you haven’t learned to answer your own questions from the text, how will you help others learn how to do that?
Over-reliance or premature reliance on commentaries comes dangerously close to establishing those commentators as a high priestly class through whom your relationship with God is mediated. Jesus died to tear the veil and give you access to the very mind and heart of God through his word.

For the Record

And less you misunderstand my perspective, let me repeat: Once you have a guess at the author’s main point, consult some commentaries! You should welcome the help. It would not be wise to cut yourself off from the trained insights of others to guide you toward even further progress. Do your best.

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The Danger of Quoting Verses

March 16, 2022 By Peter Krol

Brandon Smith has a helpful piece on the danger of what he calls “stacking verses,” where we quote verses in isolation for inspiration or to support a particular point.

Some modern examples include Instagram posts and coffee mugs that quote Philippians 4:13 or Jeremiah 29:11. In both cases, these verses appear to promise material, physical, or even eternal blessing from God. However, in both cases, the context of the passage reveals that these verses are a promise of provision amid suffering.
Stacking up these verses might be innocent for some, but this is also the root of the dangerous prosperity gospel that has infiltrated the global church. From as early as Jesus’s ministry to our world today, verse-stacking has plagued the church and brought about countless negative consequences.

The devil quoted a Bible verse to Jesus, attempting to persuade him to test his Father. Ancient heretics had plenty of Bible verses to support their hell-bound doctrines. Sadly, many continue the same practice today.

The problem is not merely in quoting individual verses. It is the danger of quoting verses independent of their context and misaligned with the original author’s intention. Smith provides two interpretive convictions that will help us to avoid much of the danger:

The Bible is a coherent theological book before it is anything else.
The Bible is a canon—a set of 66 books that serve as the rule or measuring rod of our theology.

You should check out his piece to see how he fleshes this all out. I commend his article to you.

Check it out!

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Context Matters: The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

March 14, 2022 By Ryan Higginbottom

Perhaps you’ve heard that our hearts are deceitful, wicked, and sick beyond all cure. You’ve been taught that our desires should always be questioned and our impulses should always be doubted. Anything we want—because that want blooms in our heart—should be suspect.

This is no inspirational teaching, so you won’t spot it on posters or mugs. But I see this verse dashed into arguments like salt in soup. Are we using using this verse properly? When we learn to read the Bible like a book and not as isolated bullet points, we’ll see that some familiar phrases don’t mean all that we’ve always assumed.

The Immediate Context

The verse in question is found in Jeremiah 17:9. Here it is with some surrounding context.

Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:5–10)

We first observe the connection between a man’s heart and his trust. A “man who trusts in man” is one whose “heart turns away from the Lord” (Jer 17:5). This man is cursed. In contrast, the man is blessed who “trusts in the Lord,” and from the structure we infer that his heart does not turn from the Lord.

This connection is essential to a proper understanding of this passage, and it is evident throughout Jeremiah’s prophecy as well. (More on this later.) This is also true in the larger context of the Bible—the heart is not primarily the origin of feelings; it is the control center for trust and worship.

We further see that the question asked in verse 9 (“who can understand it?”) is answered in verse 10 (“I the Lord”). Even if man cannot know his own heart, the Lord understands it well enough to treat everyone “according to the fruit of [their] deeds” (Jer 17:10).

Before moving on, we should examine the paragraph just prior to this passage. God is speaking, and he says that “the sin of Judah” is “written on the tablet of their heart” (Jer 17:1). The children of Judah have altars and Asherim (wooden idol-worship poles) “beside every green tree and on the high hills, on the mountains in the open country” (Jer 17:2–3). Turning away from God involves both turning to other people and turning to idols.

The Broader Context

In Jeremiah 16, the Lord tells Jeremiah what he should say when others ask what sin the people have committed against God.

Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. (Jeremiah 16:11–12)

The primary way that God’s people rebelled against him in Jeremiah’s day was to forsake him, turning to and serving other gods. As we can see from earlier in this prophetic book, it is the people’s hearts that lead them astray.

The “people [have] a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away.” They do not fear the Lord (Jer 5:23–24).
The people “stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them” (Jer 9:14).
“This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them” (Jer 13:10).

There are numerous other examples in the first 16 chapters of Jeremiah which mention Israel’s idolatry and turning away from God. (Most of Jeremiah 10:1–16 is a contrast between the Lord and idols, showing just how ridiculous it is to prefer idols over God.)

Conclusion

Modern Christians like to seize upon the word “heart” in Jeremiah 17:9; they point it as an accusing finger and waive it as a grand caution flag. But this verse was written to a particularly idolatrous people in a specific time. Jeremiah had exhorted them repeatedly about the tendency of their hearts to prefer other gods to the Lord.

This does not mean that 21st century Christians are exempt from warning in this passage. God’s people were led by their hearts away from him before, and the same can (and does!) happen to us. We also must watch our desires, our trust, and our security. But this verse does not teach that we must be suspicious of our every thought or emotion.

Context matters.

For more examples of why context matters, click here.

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Commentaries are Not for When Bible Study is Hard

March 11, 2022 By Peter Krol

A few weeks back, I proposed ten commandments for commentary usage. Those commandments arose from further reflection on the maxim “not whether but when.” I would now like to take a few weeks to expand on each of the “commandments.”

Commandment #1 (“You shall not avoid or ignore commentaries from belief in self-sufficiency to study the Scriptures”) was thoroughly addressed in the “not whether but when” post, so I will not delve into it any further. Let’s now pick up with commandment #2:

You shall not pick up a commentary as soon as Bible study is “hard.”

The Problem

I’m not embarrassed to admit it: Bible study is hard. If we have ever communicated otherwise on this blog, I repent in dust and ashes.

The Bible was written long ago, to people in cultures very different than ours. It was written in languages no longer spoken to address situations no longer extant. The worldviews and assumptions of the Bible’s authors were radically distinct from those held by most today. Even the Bible’s “easier” terminology consists of concepts that prompt very different images today than they would have prompted to the original authors and audiences (for example: church, faith, preach, law, gospel, righteousness, wisdom, salvation, etc.). The Bible’s poetry uses metaphors in a very different way than we use metaphors today. The Bible’s narratives refer to places most of us have never been to. The Bible’s discourses refute arguments people often aren’t arguing about any more.

I’m trying not to overstate the differences, because it is certainly the case that very little has changed in terms of the general human plight and human experience from ancient to postmodern times. But the fact remains that we need a lot of help to understand the people, cultures, situations, concerns, and arguments of the Bible.

A Multi-Faceted Solution

Before running immediately to commentaries when Bible study is hard, I find it critical to distinguish between the different kinds of interpretive questions that can arise.

What? questions define the terms. (“What did he mean?”)
Why? questions uncover the author’s purpose. (“Why did he say that?”)
So What? questions draw out the implications. (“So what does he want me to do about it?”)

In general, the first category of questions often complete your observation. This category involves questions such as:

What is Passover?
Where is Ephesus?
Who was Abraham?
What OT passage is this NT text quoting from?
What is propitiation?

And for such “what” questions—where you simply need to get something defined, clarified, referenced, or mapped out—a commentary or study Bible may be your best ally. Go right ahead and work to close that knowledge gap between the original audience and yourself, by checking out a helpful resource that can quickly put you in their shoes. There is not much reason to hold back from using commentaries on such questions.

But the other categories of questions warrant a different approach. When you have a “why” question (such as “why does the author say such and such?” or “why does he tell this story in this way?”), you are better off not running to commentaries too quickly. The “why” questions are the heart of interpretation, and their main purpose is to help you figure out the author’s main point or primary argument. If that is hard for you to do, you are in good company. But the solution is not to find “the answers” in a commentary or study Bible. If you do that, how will you be able to evaluate whether that commentator’s answers are true (strong, reasonable, probable, wise) or not? Your best help is to learn how to follow the argument of the text itself. That will give you the best measuring rod against which to evaluate competing interpretations given by others.

And when you have a “so what” question, working toward the implications and applications for you or the people you want to teach, no commentator will know your situation better than you do. Sure, commentaries can help suggest broad ideas or topics for potential application. But they won’t be able to connect the text to your life, today. When your “so what” questions are hard to answer, the best solution is further reflection on the main point, along with prayerful reflection on how to correlate it with the rest of Scripture, and especially with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Bible study is hard. And using commentaries just because Bible study is hard might not be the solution you’re looking for. In fact, it has the potential for grounding you deeper and deeper in a web of presumption from which you struggle to get untangled.

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