In reaching a wider audience, is it necessary to avoid the hard questions? Is it necessary to create devotional commentary that pleases everyone? Or is it better to teach those in the audience how to discern truth from error? Is it better to teach readers here how to study the Bible more than teach readers what to believe?
Well, I do believe in teaching readers here what to believe. But you would be hard-pressed to pigeon-hole what denomination I support. And if so, you are a discerning reader. I do not support any denomination because they are all wrong in some point of doctrine or another. Some are better than others, so if you find a church where the Bible is honored and taught carefully, you are blessed indeed.
From the start of my Bible teaching ministry in 1954 or 1955 as the teacher of a fourth-grade class of boys in the Junior Department at Highland Park Baptist Church, I determined to address all levels of ability in my classroom. I did just that, and by the grace of God, I understand the results in the lives of those boys continue to this day.
I believe every student should be taught in a manner that makes the subject seem easy, but that brings each student up from and beyond where he or she start to as far as he or she can go.
It is not fair to the very bright and gifted students to be held back by the pace of slower students in the class. It is not fair to the slower students to be forced to keep up with the very brightest. Therefore, I believed that every student should be permitted to learn at his or her own speed and on his or her own level.
I still believe exactly that, now many years later. I believe that though I have probably impacted very few people as far as numbers go, I may have helped encourage some to go further than they otherwise might have, both in Sunday school and in public school.
What I did back then might seem contrary to what modern forces in the field of education are now advocating. Maybe I misread what is currently being advocated. But breaking away from the model of local control of public education has been the wrong way to go. Nationalizing the curriculum by the back door using “Common Core” and associated programs, like the previous “No Child Left Behind,” has been a very flawed process that so far has not worked–at least it has certainly not brought about what was promised: every child reading and learning at grade level by 2014. The year 2014 is now almost here, and the flawed mantra has been silently dropped, and perhaps you have forgotten it. But I remember! Those in charge of making the Big Decisions are flawed in their decision process because they are making choices not based on the best and demonstrated-to-work practices in the art of teaching.
This directly relates to what I do here at Real Bible Study.
I try to present material in such a way that anyone can understand it. I sometimes go beyond what many people may have been taught so far in Sunday school or church. I do not focus on devotional Bible study, though under “How to Study the Bible” I presented as one of the possible Bible study methods a method pertaining to devotional Bible study.
When you share a particularly valuable, good book, with another person, you provide that person a path to knowledge or understanding that they might not otherwise have. Each such book, whether great literature or nonfiction, provides considerable leverage to move beyond where we are. Especially is this true of learning to dig deeper into spiritual things by means of real Bible study.
Sometimes “Digging Deeper” may appear to be a very academic, non-spiritual process. But I have said here before that the Holy Spirit puts no premium on ignorance. The Holy Spirit has been graciously provided by the Father and the Son to lead and guide us into all truth. We can all learn to study the Bible more deeply for ourselves by using such a simple, largely untapped resource like looking up cross references as found in many reference Bibles and study Bibles. Learning more from our Bibles this way can ground us in our faith and guard us against being mislead by those who teach false doctrine. Thus I believe that all of us ought to engage more seriously in Real Bible Study, even if at times it seems more “academic,” and less appealing than an emotional or devotional approach to Scripture. If anything, what we need the most today is a more academic and accurate approach to Bible study and Bible doctrine to inform our Christian living and spiritual outreach.
The biggest problem in Christendom today as I see it is that regular Bible believing Christians are not academic enough!
Devotional studies and messages and devotional “fluff” in general are widely available and, considering the state of Bible believing Christianity in our day, has little fruit to commend it.
My Greek professor at Bob Jones University, Stuart Custer, said that we should never waste our money buying Christian books and Bible commentaries that are devotional in nature. He said, “If you want devotional fluff, write your own.” Of course at the time he was speaking to a class of mostly men students who were preparing for the ministry. I was not. I simply wanted to get a better understanding of the Bible by learning something about the original language the New Testament was written in, Greek.
When you are looking for answers, devotional commentaries don’t cut it. They skip the difficult issues.
But no one taught us back then how to write devotional fluff, so I don’t write my own either, far as I know.
But if you want the very best in devotional “fluff,” I can point you to some “good stuff.” At the same time as I got that little New Testament from my Grandma Smith’s farmhouse book closet (thanks to my brother Mark for letting me have it, since he is the one that found it), I also obtained volume 1 of F. B. Meyer’s seven volume set, Through the Bible Day by Day. I have since found the rest of the set in a used bookstore, and value it highly.
I have lately at the kind suggestion of Ken Sagely adopted the idea of presenting a daily Bible nugget. That is probably as close to going just one verse at a time as I am able to get. It may also be as close as I will ever get to writing that “devotional fluff”!
Notice that I almost always present a “Digging Deeper” option after my own brief commentary to allow those who wish to go deeper to do so. That is the secret to good teaching. You must never dumb down the message or content. You can place some of the “cookies” on the bottom shelf in reach of everyone. But if you stop there, you short-change anyone who really wants to go further. And many people don’t really know that there is a way to go further. There are gracious, zealous, Christian people in our churches today I have recently met who have never seen a Bible with cross references, and do not know what cross references are! That is a tragedy, and is a big part of why so many Christians are susceptible to the message of false cults. They have never learned to “prove all things” by “searching the Scriptures daily” (1 Thessalonians 5:21; Acts 17:11). Kingdom Halls are full of people who used to go to Bible believing churches, but were never taught any Bible doctrine. Seventh-Day Adventists prey on already converted Evangelical Christians from Bible believing churches, converting them to their system of belief, because Christian people in our churches have no idea how to verify or disprove the truth of what is presented by them. There are even Roman Catholics who are devoted to the same mission of converting Evangelical Bible believing Christians to their particular faith. And not just the people, but their pastors. Pastors are generally not equipped to answer the specific errors of the cultists that come to the doors of the homes of people in their congregation.
Part of the wrong direction people have taken is to move toward or bring in Charismatic ideas in their worship services. Many churches have allowed the music and worship style of Charismatic churches to invade and poison the pot. As a result, churches focus on emotion and feeling instead of content. From what I read and from what I have experienced, some churches no longer use a hymnal, and are not making use of the great hymns of the faith. Instead they display a “praise chorus” on the screen to help the audience follow. They spend a long time standing, and lift up hands in worship (which for me is tiring, so I don’t participate: I stay seated; in fact, I no longer go).
I have spent much time in Charismatic circles. The people I have met have generally been very fine Christians. The ones I met were devoted and committed to the Bible. They were very excited about Christian things. They wanted to talk about the Lord, and did so. I enjoyed that. Most ordinary Evangelical Christians have no time to talk about the Lord. They rush out of church when the service ends as fast as they can go. The Charismatics I knew were fervent in prayer. They desired to worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth. When they learned about cross reference Bible study using what was then available, The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, they became avid users of that Bible study tool. But the biggest flaw I encountered was not their lack of enthusiasm for the Lord, but their almost utter lack of spiritual and especially doctrinal discernment. That problem can be solved by Real Bible Study as advocated here.
At this very time Dr. John MacArthur has been featuring a series of messages on his radio program, Grace to You, about “Strange Fire” and the dangers of the Charismatic movement. I thought it most ironic that the very doctrinal dangers Dr. John MacArthur pointed out that are present in the Charismatic movement are likewise most evident in the doctrinal school he has chosen to follow, namely, reformed five-point Calvinism. Both systems of error are equally bad, equally unbiblical, and must be remedied by engaging in Real Bible Study.
The proliferation of modern English versions, helpful as they are, has sometimes stifled Bible teaching, scripture memory, and use of Scripture in worship services. As you know or at least might suspect already, I do not believe in preaching AT ALL. We need TEACHING, not PREACHING. No wonder people know so little about the Bible. No one is teaching them anything substantive in church or Sunday school. I’ve noticed that most people do not carry their own Bible to church anymore. They don’t need to. The pastor projects the Bible text on the screen. People are saved the effort of turning to passages themselves in their own Bible. If people did bring their own Bible to church, it would not match the text the pastor is using most of the time because each person has their preference for which translation they like to read. Besides, the pastor likely as not will use several different versions of the Bible, so you never know which one to bring if you wish to follow the text in your own Bible. And that is assuming that Scripture is being used that seriously at all in the pulpit.
Our churches and Christian ministries and radio programs have been blown off course by the latest trend, whatever that may be. Introducing psychology into the work of the church has been very bad for the church because it sidesteps Bible doctrine. Charismatics, and the former Jesus People movement, are and were very much against theology and systematic teaching of Bible doctrine. That has let Satan sneak in and deceive the church, its pastors, and those that attend as parishioners. People do disagree over doctrine. I believe most of the disagreements are unnecessary because most of the time the Bible will settle what doctrinal differences there may be if you study the Bible carefully and accurately enough. That is what Real Bible Study is all about.
It was being intimidated by my utter lack of Bible knowledge when I was in high school attending the senior high school Sunday school class at Highland Park Baptist Church in Detroit that spurred me to read the Bible seriously for myself, and that’s what got me saved in the first place!
I think you will like the next series of Bible Nuggets, which follow a new theme starting today, Lord willing and enabling, on the theme “Christian Growth and Living,” from my original list of verses for Scripture memory I first devised for myself as a high school student, then just a decade later shared with students in my high school Sunday school class at Military Avenue United Presbyterian Church in Detroit.
