Three Tips (for now) for Reading, Understanding, and Responding to the Bible

1. Memorize

   I’ve got to be joking, right? You thought your memorization days were over when you finally go through your times tables, didn’t you? Well, not if you want to do something to bring your understanding of the Bible to the next level.

   I’ll put it out there right from the jump—of all the things you could do to help your ability to read, understand, and respond to the Bible, memorizing it will demand the most from you. It takes hard work to memorize a verse, and even more to memorize 20, but that hard work pays off big time not only once you get that section memorized, but as you memorize.

   You see, memorizing Scripture requires a lot of time on a small section of the Bible. I’m sure there are people who can do it, but it’s impossible for me to memorize 20-verses in a day. I have too many other things going on, and I’m just not that good at it. What I can do, though, is memorize one or two verses a day, for a week or two, which adds up to quite a lot of time spent focusing on the text, and that time has done wonders for my ability to read, understand, and respond.

2. Write in your Bible

   Whenever I got a birthday card (or any other card) from my grandma on my mom’s side, I would open it and see that she had underlined a word or two—sometimes entire phrases. I thought this was odd for a long time. I didn’t need help reading the cards she gave me, so I wasn’t sure why she took the time to underline certain words. Over the years, though, it became clear—those words stood out the most to her. She underlined them so they would stand out to me, too. They did.

   This is why you ought to write in your Bible as you’re trying to read, understand, and respond to it better than before. Writing in it makes it memorable. You can underline sentences that seem important, circle words that make you pause or are used often, scribble question marks and exclamation points, and draw connections between statements you find in the paragraphs.

   When you write in your Bible you’re not just writing for yourself that day, but you’re writing for yourself weeks, months, and years down the road, so when you get to that passage again you are reminded of what stood out to you the first time. Do your future self a favor and write in your Bible!

3. Read out loud

   The actor Walton Goggins said that to prepare for a role he will read a script 250-times and turn himself over to an imaginary set of circumstances. That’s it. And that’s not that far removed from what I’m suggesting in this tip for getting better at reading, understanding, and responding to the Bible.

   I’ve found that I have an altogether different experience with the Bible as I move from reading it with my eyes to reading it with my mouth. One of the things I’ll do when I really want to get into a particular passage of the Bible is walk around my house (when no one else is home) reading that section aloud as if I’m the one who thought up those words. I will pretend that I’m Paul, or Luke, or John, or even Jesus as I say out loud the words I’m reading.

   I don’t do that because I like hearing my own voice; I do it because something special happens as I give myself over to the circumstances of the passage I’m reading. If I can imagine—even for a short time—that I’m the one actually preaching the Sermon on the Mount, those words start to land on me in a way they just don’t when I’m only silently reading the words on the page. Even something like the letter of Jude starts to transform from a letter written by someone I don’t know to people I don’t know, to a letter uniquely fitting for the day.

   It’s one thing to read the Bible as if it’s an ancient document far removed from the world you live in, and quite another to read it as if you’re the one who wrote it. So, if you want to grow in the way you read, understand, and respond to the Bible, you might want pretend you’re Luke every once in a while.

Exploring the Bible 2023!

We don't talk about covenants much in our day-to-day lives, but they are integral for understanding the biblical storyline and what part of that story you and I find ourselves.

In this year's Exploring the Bible seminar, we'll be working our way through the Bible to get a good handle on the covenants contained therein, and to settle for ourselves what it means for us to be firmly planted within the New Covenant. Because, if we think we belong to a covenant that doesn't belong to us, then life gets more complicated than it needs to be.

If you have the time, I’d love for you to join me by signing up here.

ETB 2023 Seminar Agenda

• October 6 (6:60p - 7:15p): The Covenants: God’s Agreements with Human Beings

• October 6 (7:15p - 8:30p): If You Will, Then I Will: The Mosaic Covenant

• October 7 (9:00a - 9:45a): I Will Make A New Covenant: The Beginning of the End

• October 7 (9:45a - 10:30a): I Have Come to Fulfill: Jesus and the New Covenant

• October 7 (10:30a - 11:15a): He Has Made the First One Obsolete: The Supremacy of the New Covenant

• October 7 (11:15a - 12:00p): How Should We Then Live?

Exploring the Bible: The Life of Jesus in the Gospels

There seems to be no end to the books that have been and will be written about Jesus. Which is, of course, what John tells us at the end of his gospel: “…I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (Jn. 21:25b).

What this means for us, far from it being a fruitless endeavor into the life of Jesus, is that we don’t need to go searching through all the books that have been written—and will be written someday. Instead, we can look intently at the four short stories about Jesus’s life found in the New Testament: the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In those four short stories we’ll find enough on the life of Jesus to last us our lives.

On the evening of September 30 and the morning of October 1, Lord willing, we’ll be able to do exactly that—look intently at the life of Jesus through the four gospels. During the “Exploring the Bible” seminar for 2022, we’ll follow the stories told by the four gospel writers as they tell the story of Jesus, beginning with his birth (even the time before his birth as John tells it), his call to and the events of his public ministry, his confrontation with the religious leaders and with Rome, and his eventual death and resurrection from the dead.

I hope you’ll consider joining us for the “Exploring the Bible” seminar on “The Life of Jesus in the Gospels”.

Register for the seminar now!

Sometimes the Greek is Different Than the Hebrew

When the New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament, their quotations didn’t always come from the original Hebrew/Aramaic. In fact, somewhere between 90-95% of the time, their quotations came from one of the Greek translations of the Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament.

This means that when Paul, or Peter, or John, or even Jesus, quoted the Old Testament to show continuity between what God had done in the past to what he was doing now, the words they chose to quote from were often from a translation of the original. It must mean something like dependence upon the Hebrew alone had dropped or maybe quoting the original source did not carry the weight it carries today. Either way, they thought, wrote, and quoted differently than we do today.

Even more interesting than that, there are places within the New Testament quotations of a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament where the Greek translation is different than the original Hebrew!

There are times when Jesus himself quotes the Old Testament in it’s Greek form rather than the Hebrew even while the Greek words are different than the Hebrew. For example, let’s take a look at Jesus quoting Psalm 2:9 in Revelation 2:26-27.

Psalm 2:9 (Hebrew OT): “You will break them with an iron rod. Like a potter’s vessel you will shatter them.”

Psalm 2:9 (Greek OT): “You will shepherd them with an iron rod; like a potter’s vessel you will shatter them.”

Revelation 2:26-27: “And the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him authority over the nations, and ‘he will shepherd them with an iron rod; he will break them in pieces like jars made of clay,’ ”

Why would Jesus say “shepherd” instead of “break”? The most likely answer is because he was quoting a Greek translation rather than the original Hebrew. But, why did he choose to quote the Greek instead of the Hebrew?

Now we’re getting into some real fun things about the Bible!

We will talk about this sort of occurrence as well as a number of other interesting topics about the Bible during the Exploring the Bible seminar on November 5 and 6 at Living Waters Church. If this sort of thing is interesting to you, please register and join us for the seminar.

Registration is Open for "Exploring the Bible"

What is the Bible? Is it a rulebook? A theological textbook on God? A manual for how to live your life in order to get the best things out of it?

For thousands of years, people from all over the world have had to reckon with the ancient writings we find today bound together as the Bible. As part of that reckoning process, many have had to make decisions regarding what the ancient writings seem to be saying and how they relate to their lives. We—in 2021—are thankfully no different.

During this weekend seminar we'll look together at these ancient writings sometimes called the Scriptures, the Holy Writings, or the Bible. We'll work together through topics like: 

Who wrote the Bible? | When was it written? | The storyline of the Old and New Testaments | The Greek Translations of the Old Testament | Authority and Trust | English Translations

Seminar Outline

1. Session 1: What Is It, What's in It, and Where Did It Come From? (Nov. 5th from 6:30p-8:00p)

2. Session 2: Storylines, Testaments, Greek, and Quotations (Nov. 6th from 9:00a-10:30a)

3. Session 3: Criticism, Variants, Authority, and Translations (Nov. 6th from 11:00a-12:30p)

Click here to register.