Two Things Every Preacher Must Have in His Proverbial Toolbox

Every preacher ought to utilize these two items:

• A microscope - to analyze the details of the biblical passage being studied (i.e., for zooming in)

• A telescope - to see how the biblical passage being studied fits into the larger context of the entire redemptive story of the Bible (i.e., for zooming out)

Seven Common Fallacies of Biblical Interpretation

The Parchment and Pen blog offers seven common fallacies of biblical interpretation:

1. Preunderstanding fallacy: Believing you can interpret with complete objectivity, not recognizing that you have preunderstandings that influence your interpretation.

2. Incidental fallacy: Reading incidental historical texts as prescriptive rather than descriptive.

3. Obscurity fallacy: Building theology from obscure material.

4. Etymological root fallacy: Looking to the root etymology of a word to discover its meaning.

5. Illegitimate totality transfer: Bringing the full meaning of a word with all its nuances to the present usage.

6. Selective use of meaning: Selecting the meaning you like best.

7. Maverick fallacy: Believing that you don’t need anyone but the Holy Spirit to interpret the text.

Read the whole post here for further explanation and examples.

HT: Thabiti Anyabwile

Ryle's Exhortation to Bible Reading

With the beginning of a new year often comes the beginning of daily Bible reading plans. Unfortunately, many people start with the best of intentions and then get bogged down in the instructions for the tabernacle in Exodus or the holiness codes in Leviticus (though some make it to Kings or Chronicles before they give up!).

As you start your new daily Bible reading plan, be encouraged and challenged by this exhortation from J.C. Ryle.

Glorious Truths

As I came to the end of Micah this morning, I was overwhelmed by the glorious truths that end this prophetic book. These reminders of God's covenant love and faithfulness were the perfect balm for my sinful soul. They were the means I used to preach the gospel to myself this day. May they be of comfort to you as well:

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. --Micah 7:18-20

Speaking of Good Instructors

In the previous post, I mentioned the importance of good instructors for any theological institution. In addition, I spoke of how thankful I was for my own good instructors during college and seminary.

Well, I just happened to see where one of those instructors (Gerald Bray, one of my primary professors from seminary) was featured on Justin Taylor's blog today (I assure you J.T. and I are not in cahoots). He discusses three questions to ask of biblical texts, and then he answers those questions in regards to a difficult text like the genealogies of 1 Chronicles.

See the post (and Dr. Bray's questions) here.

HT: Justin Taylor

The Pleasures of Patient Plodding

One of the reasons using the original languages is so helpful in sermon preparation is that it forces the preacher to slow down and read the text carefully. It requires patient plodding, which is far from glamorous but it is rewarding.

I found this to be true yet again this week as I was studying to preach John 14:27-31. As I was working my way through the Greek text, I suddenly realized something that I hadn't realized while reading the English. It's not that what I found wasn't also evident in the English translation (though that is often the case); it was the fact that I had read through the English too quickly and with too much familiarity. Patiently laboring with the Greek text forced my mind to be more alert and more watchful. As a result, I picked up on a significant statement Jesus made at the end of the passage - the meaning of which I may have missed had I not taken the time to do some plodding through the Greek text.

Several different times in the previous passage, Jesus called his disciples to demonstrate their love for him by obedience to his commands: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15), "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me..." (John 14:21), "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word..." (John 14:23), and "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words" (John 14:24). The connection between love and obedience is crystal clear.

But when you come to the end of John 14, you hear Jesus making this same connection between love and obedience, but in a different context. He makes the connection in the context of his relationship to the Father. He says that he will endure the cross out of loving obedience to the Father: "but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father" (John 14:31). In other words, Jesus is not asking us to do something that he himself will not do. What he has just called his disciples to do in verses 15, 21, 23, and 24, he himself offers an example of in verse 31. He models loving obedience for us in going to the cross.

Admittedly, that's not all that verse 31 means. There is much truth to be communicated in what Jesus says there. But it is something worth noticing...and pointing out. And had I not taken the time to patiently plod through the Greek text of John 14, I might have missed that connection. And worse, my people might have missed it come Sunday.

How To Read the Bible

From Stephen Nichols and Eric Brandt in Ancient Word, Changing Worlds: The Doctrine of Scripture in a Modern Age.

Seven suggestions for how we should read the Bible:

1) Reverently. Remembering the Bible is the word of God, the revelation of the Creator and Redeemer, means above all reading the Bible reverently.

2) Prayerfully. We have the Spirit to guide us into truth.

3) Collectively. Reading the Bible solely or merely as an individual plays into the notions of modernism. Reading the Bible collectively is a good antidote to such privatized, individual reading....Reading the Bible collectively also puts us in the historical and global community, which means that the Bible is not our individual possession.

4) Humbly. It's helpful to read the Bible humbly, to be careful not to equate our interpretations of the text with the text itself. The Bible is innerant, in other words, but our interpretations are not.

5) Carefully. We also need to read the Bible carefully, which is to say there is a place for hermeneutics and rules of interpretation....Reading the Bible carefully also entails reading the Bible canonically. In previous ages of the church, this was referred to as the "analogy of faith," which amounted to reaidng particular texts of the Bible in light of the whole Bible.

6) Christologically. The Bible is ultimately the story of Christ. All of it points to or away from him, like spokes from the hub of the wheel. All of the Bible eventually finds its end, its design, its purpose in Christ....It's not too much of a stretch to say that we understand a text fully when we connect it to Christ and his mission.

7) Obediently. Reading and interpreting are first-order activities that lead to the second-order activity of obedience and practice (James 2:22-27). Reading and interpreting the Bible is actually the easy part, compared to taking the Bible seriously enough to act upon it.

The Exegetical Method of "Arcing"

Ray Van Neste has a great post on the exegetical exercise of "arcing" (diagramming at the paragraph level) in which he briefly explains the method, directs us to a new website devoted to this method, and provides a brief video of John Piper discussing the value of the method.

If you are a preacher or a Bible teacher, I highly recommend you giving this some time and attention.