It’s Time for Another Reformation

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Tax Reform.  Healthcare Reform. Social Reform.  We hear a lot of call for reformation, these days. None of these are as important as a reformation that took place centuries ago.

Today marks the 506th anniversary of one of the most important protests in history.  On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther –  a German priest and professor – composed a list of 95 complaints against the Church.  He nailed his list to the Wittenburg church door the day before the church celebrated All Saints Day, inviting a discussion on these issues.  His timing guaranteed a wide reading.

Had that happened in a Baptist church, the deacons would’ve fired the pastor for ruining the door.  Just kidding folks.  Sort of.

We need a return to letting the Bible speak for God.

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A Christmas Journey You May Not Have Considered

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The Christmas season is notorious for traffic and travel. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, many people will travel great distances to celebrate with loved ones. The highways will be clogged with travellers, any of which will NOT be exhibiting the joy of the season. Hopefully for you, all of the going will be worthwhile as it results in great times with your loved ones. I know that will be the case for us.

The first Christmas was noted for its travellers as well. Mary and Joseph travelled about 80 miles in a journey that probably took them anywhere from a week to 10 days; a journey made even more complicated when traversed with and by a pregnant young woman. Magi travelled from the East – probably somewhere in the Persian Empire – to pay homage to a newborn King. Even shepherds temporarily went AWOL and travelled into nearby Bethlehem to confirm the news delivered to them by angels who had travelled from heaven.

Your Christmas Journey

The advent of the Giver of Life set many to travelling literally, but metaphorically, once He gives us life, the travelling has just begun. This life He gives us is quite a journey! We should all be travelling spiritually – moving closer to Him each day. God has called us to Himself so He can transform us into the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and that transformation can be understood in terms of a journey. Once God begins a work in our life, He promises to FINISH it (Philippians 1:6)

Where are you in your spiritual journey? Have you begun to walk with Jesus? If not, the reason He came was to die for your sins so you could be forgiven and have a relationship with God. You can learn more about that by following this link to The Story.

Are you learning more and growing closer to the Lord each day or have you stalled along the way in your spiritual journey? Have you detoured or even taken a few steps backwards? Just as every trip needs a route plan, so also we need an intentional plan to grow.

This Christmas begin or resume your spiritual journey by intentionally and regularly studying God’s Word and praying.   Make an intentional effort EACH DAY to move a little closer to the Lord. You can find some helpful hints by clicking here. Next year, may Christmas of 2023 find you so much closer to the Lord than you are this year.

Intentionally Keep One Christmas Decoration Out

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Christmas is over and the un-decorating now begins, making room for all of the new gifts we received for Christmas. How do we repack the ornaments? Where we store the lights? And what we do with the nativity scene? As you put the decorations away, let me challenge you to intentionally leave one of the items on display. 

When you pack your nativity scene and safely secure Mary, Joseph, and the manger, don’t put Jesus in the box.  At least metaphorically, keep Jesus unpacked throughout the year.

Often, we denounce our culture for “taking Christ out of Christmas.” But do we conveniently leave Christ out of our lives when it seems beneficial to do so? We stand firmly against those who have “taken prayer out of our schools.” But we do regularly pray with our children or pray privately in our prayer closets? We lament culture’s attempts to remove the Bible from public life. But do our Bibles gather dust on our end tables and shelves in our homes?

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Discern What Is and Isn’t a Word from God

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I received an email today from someone I do not know and of whom I have never heard.  To put it nicely, the email was hard to follow and almost unintelligible.  To be more precise, it rambled, made little sense, and in some cases was untrue. I had to discern if it was indeed a word from God.

The subject of the email is what troubles me most.  This individual proceeded to throw misinterpreted and misapplied scripture at me trying to make his case. The author claimed to have had a recent “Esperance” [sic] that “brought God” to Him.  Supposedly, God showed him some passages of Scripture and he felt the need to share it with churches. He was probably sincere, but in his application of Scripture, he was sincerely wrong.

Yet, so many people receive emails like that full of misapplied Bible verses and assume they are reading truth. Not only emails, but TV airwaves, radio frequencies, and the internet provide anybody an opportunity to purvey their religious thoughts.  And immature believers give credence to anyone claiming to be speaking on God’s behalf.

How are we to know the difference?  What are we to do when we encounter such teaching?

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When Bible Teaching Is Like Folgers Crystals

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Many years ago, Folgers coffee ran commercials in which someone secretly exchanged a gourmet coffee with their brand.  Of course, in the commercials, the unsuspecting coffee drinkers could not tell the difference.  Additionally, many even claimed Folgers was better than the original brand.

Sadly, I see a similar trend prevalent in Christian circles – not with coffee, but with preaching and teaching.  Many preachers today stand a passionately deliver messages to people who stand in great need to hear from God.  But some deliver what amounts to a coach’s locker room speech rather than a clear, anointed message from God’s Word.  They exchange the gourmet truth of God’s Word with the Folgers crystals of human insight and perspective.

If the message is not based on, rooted in, and filled through with God’s Word, it is merely a speech.

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Things to Consider Before Drinking the Folgers

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How to Do A Verse Analysis for Bible Study

In high school I was a grammar nerd; I REALLY enjoyed English class.  I even remember what an indirect object is!  Because I was (and still am) a visually oriented learner, I especially liked diagramming sentences because the diagram was a good analysis that helped me see and understand the relationships the words in a sentence had with each other.

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Verse analysis is not as involved as sentence diagramming

The same type of analysis can help us in our Bible study through what I call a verse analysis.  The verse analysis is not as in-depth as the sentence diagram, but useful nonetheless to help us see the relationship of the words in the verse to one another.

I believe that not only did God inspire EVERY word of the Bible, but He also inspired EACH word is.  Words matter and their relationship to one another in a given passage reveal the truth that God wants us to know about Him, His precepts, and His purposes for us.

At the end of this blog, I have included a video tutorial demonstrating how I do a verse analysis, and I invite you to watch it and let me know if it is helpful to you.

A Working Example

Let’s consider as an example Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.

My first step is to isolate the main verbs in a passage.  Once I’ve isolated those verbs, I study their context and meanings.  I use many of the tools I mentioned in the “Tools Blog” to help with this task. 

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Context – The Missing Link to Understanding the Bible

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One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when studying the Bible is the failure to consider context.  The inspired words of God did not drop down in book form in a vacuum.  The Holy Spirit moved men to write eternal truth in their times, cultures, languages, and personalities.

Types of Context

By context, I mean the unique place, time, and style of each part of God’s Word. We may consider several different contexts in a passage of Scripture.

The Bible cannot mean something it never meant.

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Literary Context

God used several different types of context to communicate His truth to us.  Likewise, we should understand different types of literature in different ways.  Poetry reads differently that narrative. We understand letters differently than historical writing.  The book of Revelation and several parts of Old Testament prophecy include cryptic apocryphal language.  We have to interpret them in that light.

Historical Context

The authors of the Bible lived and wrote in times different than ours.  When we understand the cultural norms and practices of Bible times, we gain deeper insight into its message. Good Bible interpretation considers what the Bible meant to its original readers and hearers.  Then we can find application for our current lives.  The Bible cannot mean something it never meant.

Grammatical Context

The Bible is a written document.  (I know, duh!)  It was written primarily in two languages, Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament.  Additionally, there is a little of the ancient Aramaic in the Old Testament as well. Translators work diligently to bridge the gap between those languages in the Biblical period and our contemporary language.

Likewise, we must consider a word in its relationship to the sentence.  We look at the sentence in relation to the chapter, chapter to book, and book to the entire Biblical narrative.  Never forget that the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, is a unified story.  Grammatically, how does a particular passage fit into the whole narrative?

The Bible, Genesis to Revelation, is a unified story.

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A Case in Context Point

Just the other day a Facebook post described a “new” meaning to Psalm 23:5, “You anoint my head with oil.” According to the article, shepherds rubbed the heads of sheep with oil to protect them from flies who would lay maggots in their ears.  The sheep in turn might injure themselves by beating their heads against rocks in an attempt to alleviate the torment.  The article’s author drew the conclusion that God helps us when we are mentally tormented.

I do not claim to be an expert on shepherding – today or in David’s time.  Shepherds may very well anoint their sheep for such a purpose; however, that is not the meaning of Psalm 23:5.

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You Are Already Equipped For Bible Study

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In Bible study as in life, there is always “more than meets the eye.”  Many people make poor judgements by following their first impressions and instincts without taking the necessary time and effort to fully observe what is happening around them.  Likewise, lack of careful Biblical observation has led to much false teaching and poor understanding of Biblical truth.

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“Never trust general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.” – Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

Biblical observation is not difficult, it just takes a little time and attention. The average Christian may feel under-prepared for the task, but the simple truth is you already possess the two most important tools in Biblical observation and other helps are not difficult to obtain and use.

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How to Begin Investigating the Bible for Yourself

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The Bible is a literary masterpiece, written in fine literary fashion, and worthy to be studied by students of literature.  It serves a much higher purpose, however, in the life of a believer.  When a believer reads the Bible, he or she reads an message from God applicable to that particular believer in his or her current life circumstances.  The Bible is God’s living specific truth that speaks into people’s lives today as much as ever.

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I cannot tell you the number of times a specific passage of Scripture has come to life when I read it and that God used it to instruct, challenge, encourage, inform, or convict me as I read it.  Sometimes I feel “ambushed” by God because I read a passage of Scripture only to have the Holy Spirit speak – silently yet loudly – right to a current situation in my life.  That can happen to you as well if you approach the Bible to hear what God wants to say to you!

Last week I encouraged you to develop an intentional plan for reading both larger and smaller portions of Scripture on a regular basis, and for probing a smaller passage on a daily basis.  I believe that best way to study the Bible is through what is called the Inductive Study Method, which consists of three parts: Read More

4 Things Everybody Needs to Know About the Bible

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i-knowWhen I think of all the important theological truths that we Christians need to understand, I have to begin with teaching about the Bible. If we know the textbook well, even have it memorized, but the textbook has errors, then our knowledge is flawed.

So as we begin this journey on Fridays looking at essential doctrines about which believers should be knowledgeable, we begin with the Bible. God’s Word is our standard for truth and there are four things about the Bible we need to understand before we can learn about the other important truths.

  1. The Bible is the Word of God.

The Bible is not just a word from God, it is the word of God. In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul tells us that all Scripture is inspired by God. To day God’s Word is inspired is not to say that it inspired like a modern work of art, poetry, or song. The word literally means to be breathed out by God. God is the source of the Bible.

The Bible contains 66 books written over a 1600-year span by 40 authors from 3 different continents. These authors include shepherds, kings, scholars, fishermen, a priest, a butler, and a even a military general. In spite of all of that, the Bible maintains a unique unity from beginning to end. It is a redemptive story from creation, through fall, and continuing in redemption, leading up to our ascension to Heaven.

All the words and each individual word in the Bible comes from God.

  1. The Bible is our ultimate source of authority.

In 2 Timothy 3:17, Paul asserts that the Bible produces a mature person, perfectly equipped for EVERY GOOD work. The Bible’s teaching is comprehensive. It contains all we need to know to live obedient lives and in obeying it, we are made complete and enable to handle what comes our way in life.

  1. Bible truth is timeless and always relevant.

In Psalms 119, David tells us that the Bible will keep our way pure (vs 9), keep us from sin (vs 11), and give direction and guidance (vs 105).

Isaiah 40:8 reminds us that unlike flowers and grass, God’s Word does not fade, go dormant, or disappear.

While others claim the teaching of the Bible are foreign to today’s culture, we realize that the Word should inform, instruct, and guide our living in our contemporary culture. What God said was TRUTH then is still TRUTH today.

  1. Obeying the Bible leads to a successful life. (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 19:10-11, Matthew 7:24-27)

Self-proclaimed secrets to success change with every generation, but God’s Word has stood the test of time. We can trust God’s Word to guide us directly down a path to the success that God has for us.

Our knowledge of God, His Son Jesus, and all other important Christian doctrines are only as reliable as our source for that knowledge. You can trust that we have a sure and certain Word of God that reveals all He desires us to know.