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I don’t know what your devotion or individual worship practices look like, but I hope you have one!  As followers of Jesus, we value worshipping together as a family of God.  In fact, this is one of our church’s three core values—gospel, COMMUNITY, and mission.  However, I hope that you also worship God individually.

Different people do this in different ways.  Some have family worship times that might involve reading the bible, singing together, praying together, and etc.  Others may spend some time at a specific point of the day reading the bible and praying.  Lots of believers even use a devotional guide to help them in this practice.  Especially at this time of the year, many people like to follow a bible reading plan.  Some believers even like to begin the day and end the day with bible reading and prayer.  In fact, Charles Spurgeon (a famous English pastor in the 1800’s) wrote a devotion guide called Morning and Evening.  It contains 2 short devotional readings for each day of the year—one for the morning and one for the evening.

Recently I came across pair of hymns written in the late 1600’s.  These hymns are complements to each other and are meant to be sing in the morning and the evening.  In fact, they are called, “A Morning Hymn” and “An Evening Hymn.”  They are both sung to the tune of the Doxology.   (Actually, as best as I can tell, this is where the doxology came from.)  The words to these two hymns are written below.

Again, I don’t know what your private worship habits are, but I hope you have some.  If not, then consider making time this year to worship the Lord alone individually or as a family praising him and honoring him for all that he has done in your life.  If singing (these hymns or other songs) help you to do that then use them as well.

Hopefully you all are reading the bible regularly in your homes.  As believers in Jesus, we should all love him and his word.  As the psalmist says, it should be our delight.  We should love reading his word and being transformed by it.  Sometimes this may be easier said than done.  Much of what is in the bible is very straightforward and easy to understand.  However, there are some passages that are more difficult.  We should be reading prayerfully and relying on the Holy Spirit to help us understand God’s word, and some passages require more study than others if we are going to understand exactly what is being communicated.

I want to offer 6 questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?) that we can ask when reading the bible.  Answering these questions will help us to come to a better understanding of those more difficult passages, but they will also help us even to understand the easier passages more fully and more consistently.

In order to keep these blog posts short enough to be read and digested in a timely manner, we will consider these questions over a few posts.  This is the second.  The others can be accessed below.

Part One     Part Two     Part Three

5. Why?

The fifth question that we need to think about and ask when we read the bible is “why?”.  This question gets to the heart of the meaning of whatever passage you are reading.  Why did the author write what he wrote?  Why did the person speaking in the passage say what he or she said?  Why did God decide to include this particular passage and these specific words in the bible?  What is the purpose?  What was the author trying to say—why did he write this?

Many passages in the bible are pretty straightforward and easily understood, but a some are more difficult.  In 2 Peter 3;16, Peter, himself, says that there are some things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand.  So, how are we supposed to figure out the point of a difficult bible passage?  When there is time, using some bible study tools can be helpful.  You could use a bible dictionary or bible encyclopedia to discover some information about 1st century history, culture, customs, or etc. that may shed light on what the author is saying.  When you don’t have as much time (or even when you do), noticing some things about the passage itself can help to shed light on the author’s purpose as well.

• Look for words (or ideas) that are repeated throughout the passage.  In Ephesians 1:3-12, Paul refers to Jesus at least 12 times.  That is more than once per verse.  He doesn’t always use the same exact word.  Sometimes he says Jesus, sometimes Christ.  Other times he uses “the Beloved,” “he,” “him,” “the messiah,” or other words, but he refers to Jesus at least 12 times in these 10 verses.  That tells us that the emphasis in this passage is that the plan that God had before the foundation of the world to save his people centers on Jesus.

• Next, look for words or ideas that are opposites.  Sometimes biblical writers make their points by contrasting opposite ideas or concepts.  In Galatians 5, Paul writes the famous passage about the fruit of the Spirit.  The passage that comes immediately before this one is all about the fruits of the flesh.  Paul is contrasting a life in submission to sin and temptation with a life in submission to the Holy spirit.  In another familiar passage, Isaiah 53, Isaiah makes his point by contrasting God with people.  In doing so, he shows that God is holy, people are not, yet God has taken on the position of people to provide salvation.

• Sometimes, biblical authors use a series of progressions to make their points.  This is most common in poetry.  In Psalm 1, the author warns against walking, standing, and sitting in the ways of the wicked.  In Isaiah 40, those who trust in the Lord will soar like eagles, run and not grow weary, and walk without growing faint.  In the gospels, Jesus tells a parable against the pharisees where an owner of a vineyard is not happy with his tenants.  He first sends a message by the hands of a slave.  He repeats with a second and a third slave.  Finally, he sends his own son.

• Finally, when trying to understand the point an author is making, it is essential to pay attention to prepositions and connecting words.  These words can be very small, but they are very important.  The simplest of these words are “and,” “but,” and “or.”  These indicate either a continuation, a contrast or distinction, or an alternative.  Other words such as “for,” “to,” “against,” “over,” “however,” ‘therefore,” “so that,” “in order that,” and others are extremely important to make note of.  They often help us to see and understand the connections between words, sentences, paragraphs, and who sections of books.

6. How?

The final question that you want to ask when studying the scriptures is the question of how—how do you apply this passage to our own lives?  We do not want to be people who know the bible the way that we might know some piece of trivia.  In fact, knowing the bible is not the point at all.  The point is to put the bible into practice—it should affect the things that we believe, the things that we think, the things that we say, the things that we do.

We can help ourselves to answer this question by asking a few others:

• Is the application spelled out in the passage?  Sometimes, the passage you are reading will call you to a specific (positive) action or call you to stop acting in a certain (negative) way.

• Is there a principle that is being exemplified here?  Can this passage be “boiled down” to a universal/eternal principle that can then be applied to our present context?

• Can you insert yourself into the story?  This can be dangerous.  You should proceed with this method of application carefully.  Always keep the gospel in mind when putting yourself in a story.  For example, people often want to put themselves in the place of David in the story of David and Goliath.  We are sometimes told that like David, we should summon the courage to face the Goliaths in our lives.  A better understanding would be to put ourselves in the place of the Israelites and be reminded of how God has provided for our salvation, protection, liberation, and etc. by sending a humble king (Jesus) to defeat our enemy (sin, death, shame, etc.) on our behalf.

• Is this passage limited in some way that affects how you should apply it?  Is the passage written to a specific group within the church (women, men, pastors, deacons, etc.)?  Is the passage written specifically to Israel as a nation?

The point is that we want to make sure that we do not stop with knowing what the bible says and understanding it.  We want to put the word into practice in our lives.

Finally,  I want to make sure that these questions are a blessing to you and that you do not feel burdened by them.  Please do not think of the questions in these posts as something that you have to do every time you read the bible.  Don’t think that you have to sit down with a notebook and go through each question in a very programmed kind of way.  For some passages, the answers to some of these questions may be more or less obvious.  You may spend only a few seconds thinking through some of these questions and maybe a more substantial amount of time on others.

The hope is that thinking through and answering these questions will help us to understand the bible better and to put it into action in our lives more completely.  Imagine a church full of people who study the bible even more and work even harder to understand and apply it to ourselves.  Imagine a church where people know the bible even better and live the bible even more fully.  Imagine the even larger impact we could have on our community and our world. 

I pray that these articles would help us to become a church where this is more and more the case.

Hopefully you all are reading the bible regularly in your homes.  As believers in Jesus, we should all love him and his word.  As the psalmist says, it should be our delight.  We should love reading his word and being transformed by it.  Sometimes this may be easier said than done.  Much of what is in the bible is very straightforward and easy to understand.  However, there are some passages that are more difficult.  We should be reading prayerfully and relying on the Holy Spirit to help us understand God’s word, and some passages require more study than others if we are going to understand exactly what is being communicated.

I want to offer 6 questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?) that we can ask when reading the bible.  Answering these questions will help us to come to a better understanding of those more difficult passages, but they will also help us even to understand the easier passages more fully and more consistently.

In order to keep these blog posts short enough to be read and digested in a timely manner, we will consider these questions over a few posts.  This is the second.  The others can be accessed below.

Part One     Part Two     Part Four

3. When?

A third important question to ask is “when.”  Depending on the type of passage you are reading (history and narrative or prophecies and letters) this question may have two different answers.  First you want to ask when was what you are reading written.  You do not have to become a historian to read the bible, but knowing a little bit about the background of the passage can help you to understand it better.  In many bibles, each book has a short introduction at the beginning that helps us to get a little background.  For example, it is helpful to know that Paul wrote 1 Timothy after he had planted a church in Ephesus and left Timothy there to help it get established.  It can be helpful to know that Paul wrote 2 Timothy while he was imprisoned and that it is the last book that he wrote.  It can be helpful to know that Micah wrote his prophecy after the Assyrians conquered the northern division of the kingdom (Israel) but before the Babylonians conquered the southern division of the kingdom (Judah).  It can be helpful to know that Moses wrote Genesis a few hundred years after the life of Abraham and looked back on those events.

There is a second aspect of this question that is even more important when did the events in the book take place (or at least in what order).  When we read the prophets or the New Testament letters, the events taking place are happening at the same time or close to the same time that they are being written.  However, in history or narrative books (books that tell a (true) story), often the writer is writing about them after they have taken place—sometimes many  years after.  It is important to know if the events in the passage you are reading happened before the fall or after, before the flood or after, before Israel was established as a nation or after, before the priesthood was established or after, before Jesus was crucified and ascended to heaven or after (or between those two events), before God made a specific promise or after, or etc.  For example, when reading the passage where we are told about Abraham tasing Isaac to be sacrificed, it is helpful to remember that God had already promised Abraham and Sarah that he would create a great nation through Isaac and his descendants.

4. Where?

The next question is very similar to the last.  When we ask where a passage int he bible is, we are talking about where in the story of the Bible.

The bible is made up of 66 different books written by several different people over a time span of several hundred years.  However, those 66 individual books join together to tell one large story, and the events of each of them fit within the storyline of the whole bible. When reading any specific passage in the bible, it is important to note how it fits within the overall storyline of the bible. 

This shouldn’t be more complicated than it has to be.  The storyline of the bible can be summarized in four parts:

1. Creation

Creation is the first stage in the bible’s story.  The bible says that God created everything that exists other than him.  It says that God did not create the world out of anything.  He created the world from nothing.  It also says that the creation he made was good—all aspects of it.  Nothing evil in the world is God’s fault or because of how he made it.

2. Fall

The second stage in the bible’s story is the fall—when Adam and Eve fell into sin and took the rest of creation (including all other people) with them.  This is the explanation for how evil and bad things entered the good creation that God made.

3. Redemption

The third stage in the story of God’s interaction with his creation is the longest.  This is the majority of the bible, and this stage itself has several sub-stages.  We read about creation in the first two chapters of Genesis.  Adam and Eve fall into sin and carry the creation along with them early in Genesis 3.  In Genesis 3:15, God made a promise to undo what Adam and Eve had done.  We can understand the entire rest of the bible (starting with God driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and ending with Jesus’ return at the end of Revelation) as the story or history of how God has kept that promise!

4. Consummation/Completion

This final stage int he story occurs when Jesus returns and completes the plan of salvation/redemption that God has been working toward since before the creation of the world.

When reading a passage from the bible, it is vital to know which stage of the bible’s story it is a part of —and where in that stage.  For example, we find the ten commandments listed in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.  Many people reading one of those passages come to the conclusion that if they just obey those commandments perfectly then God will be pleased with them and they will be saved.  However, if we keep in mind where those passages are located within the progress of God’s work of salvation/redemption, then we realize that the plan all along was to provide salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus.  Read in the proper context, we understand the 10 commandments to be a description of God’s character, a standard for people to measure themselves by, and proof that we are not able to measure up to God’s standard on our one.  We need someone to do it for us!

Finally, this discussion could be discouraging to some of us—especially newer believers—who may not have a good grasp on the history of biblical events.  I don’t want it to be and hope that it will not be.  Each of us are learning about God and about how he has worked through history all the time.  I know the history of the biblical events now better than I did several years ago.  Lord willing, by continuing to read the Bible and the Holy Spirit continuing to work through it, I trust that I will know it and understand the significance of it even more and more as the years go on.  If you are a new believer or if you have not read the bible much, you may not know much about the history in the bible.  You may not even know who Abraham is. 

If this is the case for you, let me encourage you with a few of things:

• Firstly, keep reading.  The more you read, and re-read, the more you will understand and remember. 

• Secondly, read different parts of the bible.  Don’t discouraged by not understanding every thing or how it all fits together.  That will come in time.  A bible reading plan can be helpful for this, but if you use one and get behind don’t be too discouraged.  Maybe take a yearly bible reading plan and read through it in 2 years or 3 instead of 1. 

• Thirdly, make it a priority to be reading and studying the bible with the church as often as possible.  You should try to be present for the preaching of the word as often as you can.  When we preach the bible, we not only try to explain and apply a particular passage of the bible, we also try to put that specific passage being preached in the context of the whole bible and explain how it fits into the overall story of the bible.  Moreover, the more you are in bible studies and Sunday School classes the faster you will pick on these things.

• Fourthly, a good children’s bible can help with this as well.  There are a lot of children’s bible published that are just a collection of bible stories.  Those can be helpful to get to know what is in the bible.  But, really good children’s bibles not only introduce the stories of the bible, they explain the one overall story of the whole bible and how those individual stories fit into it in a simple understandable way.  Sometimes adults may feel self-conscious or too prideful to read a book written for children.  Don’t.  Understanding the bible is too important for that.  I have a couple of really good children’s bibles that I look at and use from time to time for this purpose. 

• Finally, If this is a need you have or something you are interested in, please let one of your pastors know.  I have a few books that I could recommend to you or let you borrow.  Your other pastors can as well.

Hopefully you all are reading the bible regularly in your homes.  As believers in Jesus, we should all love him and his word.  As the psalmist says, it should be our delight.  We should love reading his word and being transformed by it.  Sometimes this may be easier said than done.  Much of what is in the bible is very straightforward and easy to understand.  However, there are some passages that are more difficult.  We should be reading prayerfully and relying on the Holy Spirit to help us understand God’s word, and some passages require more study than others if we are going to understand exactly what is being communicated.

I want to offer 6 questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?) that we can ask when reading the bible.  Answering these questions will help us to come to a better understanding of those more difficult passages, but they will also help us even to understand the easier passages more fully and more consistently.

In order to keep these blog posts short enough to be read and digested in a timely manner, we will consider these questions over a few posts.  This is the second.  The others can be accessed below.

Part One     Part Three     Part Four

2. What?

A second important question to ask is “what.”  In some ways, this is the easiest question to answer—or at least the most straight forward one.  At some point, all of us have been reading and after several sentences, paragraphs, or even pages, realized that we don’t really know what we have read.  Often our minds wander, we get distracted, or for whatever reason, we do not fully comprehend what he have just read.  This happens with all types of reading, and it happens when reading the bible too.

We cannot begin to think about why the passage was written or how it applies to us today (questions #5 and 6 in this series) if we do not remember what it is that has been said—the basic information.  There are several tricks that can be used to help us to remember what we have read, and different ones may work for different people.  I have found that four pretty simple techniques have been helpful for me.

• Read the passage more than once.

Reading the same thing more than once can help us to comprehend what we are reading.  If we read a passage three times for example, we are less likely to miss the same things each time; so, after the third reading, we will have a pretty good understanding of what has been said, what has happened, and etc. in a particular passage. 

You may even want to make a habit of reading each passage three times and looking for certain things each time.Maybe the first time you read a passage through you look for the overall main idea and the main flow of the passage.The second time, you could read with the main idea already in mind looking for more details.The third time, you might try to notice the emphases and other nuances that we often miss on a cursory reading.

Depending on the length of the passage you are reading and the amount of time you have, you may not be able to read this in depth all the time, but at the very least, if you are reading and find yourself unable to remember what you read or to summarize the main ideas, you would want to go back and read part of the passage or the whole thing again.

• Read the passage out loud.

A second strategy for comprehending what we read that may appeal to some of you is to read the passage out loud.  This adds another layer of activity.  This way you are not only seeing the words on the page and thinking about what is being said, you are also hearing what is being said.  This method can be really helpful.

• Write the passage as you read it.

If you have the time and are really struggling with understanding a passage, you may want to add a third level of interaction.  This does two things.  It forces you to read much more slowly, and forces you to use another part of your brain as you not only read but also write.  You could also combine this with the strategy above and read out loud as you write.  Again, this method may be less practical if you are reading a large passage, but it could be helpful in the right situation.

• Write a short summary of each paragraph.

Another way to help you comprehend what is being read is to try and summarize what you are reading or put it in your own words.  This doesn’t have to be anything big.  It could just be stopping at the end of each paragraph and summarizing it in a few words—no more than one simple sentence.  The famous passage in Matthew 21 could be summarized as simply as “Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the temple.”  Many modern translations divide passages into sections with headings.  While these are not inspired, they can be helpful for this purpose.

Some passages are easier to understand than others.You may not need to use any of these techniques for some passages, but for others you may find one or more of these methods to be helpful.You may have other tricks that you already use to help you read with understanding/comprehension.The key is to find a way that helps you to remember what you have read.

Be sure to check back in the next few days for part three.

Hopefully you all are reading the bible regularly in your homes.  As believers in Jesus, we should all love him and his word.  As the psalmist says, it should be our delight.  We should love reading his word and being transformed by it.  Sometimes this may be easier said than done.  Much of what is in the bible is very straightforward and easy to understand.  However, there are some passages that are more difficult.  We should be reading prayerfully and relying on the Holy Spirit to help us understand God’s word, and some passages require more study than others if we are going to understand exactly what is being communicated.

Below, I want to offer 6 questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?) that we can ask when reading the bible.  Answering these questions will help us to come to a better understanding of those more difficult passages, but they will also help us even to understand the easier passages more fully and more consistently.

In order to keep these blog posts short enough to be read and digested in a timely manner, we will consider these questions over a few posts.  This is the first.  The others can be found below.

Part Two.     Part Three     Part Four

1. Who?

• Who wrote what you are reading?

Knowing who wrote the Bible passage you are reading can be really helpful in many cases.  Different writers sometimes used different words in very different ways.  For example, John and Paul both used the word “flesh” in their writings.  However, when John used that word, he was referring to the physical body.  Paul used “flesh” to refer to the sinful nature.  So, John says that Jesus took on flesh or became flesh meaning that Jesus became human including all the physical aspects of humanity.  Paul believed that Jesus became human, but he would not use the word “flesh” to say that.  Instead, he told us to avoid the works of the flesh (sinful nature).

Also, knowing who wrote can be helpful because it sometimes gives us a better understanding of the author’s purpose or life situation.  In the case of the gospels, knowing which author we are reading (and his specific purpose for writing) can sometimes help us to understand why he included certain stories or emphasized certain aspects of Jesus’ life.  Knowing that Paul wrote a certain letter can help us to understand some of its significance if we also know where he was and what he was doing when he wrote it (Was he is prison?  Was he traveling between churches?  Etc.)

• Who is speaking (if different than the author)?

This question can be really helpful when we are reading historical or narrative passages (parts of the bible that read like a story, biography, or history).  For example, in the book of Job, it is often helpful to know whether we are reading words spoken by Job or one of his friends, or God.  In the gospels, sometimes we read words spoken by Jesus, sometimes words spoken by one of the disciples, a demon, a pharisee or sadducee, or etc.  Sometimes, in the gospels or Acts, it can be helpful to know whether the person speaking is Jewish or Gentile.  In Acts, it may be useful to know what we are reading is coming from a person preaching or from a person responding to preaching, whether the words we are reading were spoken by someone who has trusted in Jesus or someone who has not yet.

This is true in other historical or narrative books as well.  For example, if we are reading at the end of Genesis, we would want to keep track of whether the words we are reading are coming from Joseph, one of his brothers, Pharaoh, Jacob, or etc.  In the early chapters of Genesis, we definitely want to make sure we know who is speaking—God or Satan!

• Who was what you are reading written to?

This final “who” question is important as well.  Figuring out who the passage you are reading was written to can help you to understand the purpose and meaning of a passage of scripture.  If you are reading a passage from he Old Testament, you might want to figure out if it was written to Israel or to the whole world—whether it was written to all of Israel or just to the priests or the prophets or kings.  If you are reading a passage from he New Testament, it is helpful to know whether it is addressing believers or unbelievers.  Is it written to a specific church that was facing a specific situation/problem or is it written to all Christians in general?  It the small section that you are reading addressing the whole church or a group within the church (e.g.: pastors, deacons, women, men, children, or etc.)?  We will talk about application later (question #6), but this is one of the first steps in applying the Bible rightly.  You do not want to take something that was written specifically to women or deacons or etc. and try to apply that to all believers in general.

Be sure to check back in the next few days for part two.

1.  Good Friday is Good Because It Shows Us the True Nature of Our Sin.

It is good for us to reflect on the the extent of our sin.  When we see the penalty that our sin cost, it forces us to come to terms with just how bad our sin is–and this is good.

2.  Good Friday is Good Because It Shows Us How Amazing and Overwhelming the Love and Grace of God Are.

Jesus willingly went to the cross.  He was beaten, mocked, spat upon,  humiliated and ridiculed, and  he suffered these things willingly.  He even prayed that the very ones doing these things would be forgiven!

Scripture tells us that one of his motivations was the love he has for his people.  In fact, Romans 5:8, Paul tells us that “God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  He did it for us!  In John 15:13, Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.”  Jesus said that; then, on Good Friday, he did it!

3.  Good Friday is Good Because in the Cross, Jesus Won Our Forgiveness.

At the moment of Jesus’ death, he said, “It is finished.”  It was finished.  Jesus fulfilled his mission and won forgiveness for his people.  We can be sure that we will not have to face the punishment for our sins.  We can experience forgiveness because Jesus has already taken that punishment on our behalf!

4.  Good Friday is Good Because in the Cross, We See the Glory of God More Fully and Clearly than in any Other Event in History.

As Jesus hangs dying, we see the full picture of God’s character.  It is a clear display of his glory as he, himself, steps in our place to take the punishment that we deserve.  We see his justice and holiness and righteousness as he acts rightly against sin and his wrath is poured out on Jesus.  We also see his forgiveness, grace, love, and mercy as they are poured out on us.

5.  Good Friday is Good Because it is Not the End of the Story.

We know that Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, was just around the corner.

Good Friday was not a surprise to Jesus.  It was the very reason that Jesus was born!  Jesus had been foretelling his death and resurrection in his words and actions throughout his earthly ministry.  He said that he would tear down the temple and raise it in three days.  He raised Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, and the widow’s son showing that he has authority over life and death.

He said that no one takes his life from him but that he lays it down willingly–and that he would also take it up when he wills.  This is why his death brings forgiveness.  In his death and resurrection, he overcame death.

Finally, I want to remind you that Good Friday is not necessarily good for everyone.  It is only good for those whose sins have actually been forgiven.  It is only good for those who have turned from their sins and are trusting in Jesus’ death for forgiveness of sin.  I pray that this is true for all of you reading this right now.

Here, I have offered 5 reasons that make Good Friday good.  Of course, if we were to take the time and make the effort, we could come up with countless reasons that Good Friday is good. I invite you to add reasons that you are thinking of in the comments below.

(To view the Good Friday service where this sermon was originally preached, follow the link. https://youtu.be/qJHT7V5vAFc)