Knowable Word: Helping Ordinary People Learn to Study the Bible by Peter Krol lives up to its title. It begins with a section about why to study the Bible (to get to know the Person behind it). It concedes that Bible studies and commentaries and such are valuable in many ways, but promises to give the tools for the reader to mine from the Bible on their own and to get to know God better.

Sometimes…we seek a mountaintop experience where we can behold His glory and see Him face to face. We want to hear His voice speaking with clarity and power. We long to be wowed from on high. The apostle Peter had such an experience with Jesus, and he concluded that you and I don’t need to have to same experience.

“We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” (2 Peter 1:16b-19a) (pp. 13-14).

After a brief discussion of a few off-base approaches to Bible study, Krol dives into the method he advocates and teaches, which is not new but today goes by the acronym OIA:

1. Observation – what does it say?
2. Interpretation – what does it mean?
3. Application – how should I change? (p. 16)

He discusses each in more detail, explains why each is important, illustrates it from everyday conversation and from Jesus’ teaching when He brought out truth from the OT. He reminds us that no method or set of tools replaces our dependence on the Holy Spirit to guide and illuminate us.

The next several chapters discuss each of these steps in more detail and shows how to use them by applying them to Genesis 1 and 2. Observation, for example, means that we don’t bring in preconceived notions or gloss over familiar passages because we think we know what they say. Observation involves considering genre, the author, repeated words, grammar, structure, and mood or tone. He similarly delves into more detail with interpretation and application.

This a short book at 117 pages, but it is densely packed and contains little to no fluff. I have sticky tabs and markings on almost every other page.

One area where I would disagree with Krol just a bit is in application. I agree that we need to be doers of the Word and not just hearers (James 1:22) and we need to be specific rather than vague. He does admit that he delves into this more in the book for illustration and that in reality he would just take one or two specific applications. I agree that we need to apply the Bible inwardly as well as outwardly, and as he advocates, apply it to head, hands, and heart. The point where I have a problem is in coming up with measurable actions steps from each day’s reading. Sometimes that might be the case. As we read, we need to be asking God for wisdom in applying what He teaches us and we need to act on anything He convicts us about. But I imagine a scenario like this: I’m convicted about my need to be more loving (often) and my need to get out of myself and reach out to others. So after reading a Bible passage about Christian love, I might sit and think of ways to show more love to others and interest in them. So I decide I’ll bake some cookies for my neighbor and make my husband’s favorite dinner. And that may be exactly what I need to do. But in my thinking, after I have done those things, I can check “be more loving” off my list because I have done my good deeds for the day. On the other hand, if I ask God’s help to carry the reminder to be more loving with me throughout the day, He can guide me into situations that I didn’t know were going to come up and apply it all day. (Actually I have found that telling myself to “be more loving” focuses on my lack and inability. But if I remind myself to “love as Jesus loved me,” that removes the focus from me to Him, from my lack to His fullness.) There are points in the day I know I will desperately need that reminder, like when someone interrupts me at the computer and I lose my train of thought for the paragraph I am writing, and I have to remind myself that people are more important than tasks. Or when I go in to change my mother-in-law. Since she’s not verbal and often groggy, it’s easy to fall into just doing the task at hand and forget the person. But I have to remind myself to look her in the eye, smile, speak even if she doesn’t respond, show love and care and interest in her as a person. As I read about loving as Christ loved, those two examples come to mind first. But I’ll need to apply that truth in multiple ways, not just the two I thought about while considering application. I think Krol would agree with this: he’s not advocating just generating lists to check off. And measurable action steps are not necessarily a bad result of Bible reading. I just don’t know that I would end every Bible reading time with such a list.

One other section that had me scratching my head a bit described his church hiring a brand new preacher who made some mistakes in his first sermon, realized it, and braced for some criticism from the leadership. I agreed with them in dealing with the issues but assuring him that Jesus had died for him, including these issues, and they’d rather he “give it his all, making a few mistakes in the process, than that he hold back out of fear of imperfection. He was free to live out his calling as a preacher with confidence that he was accepted by God and already approved” (p. 96). But what I thought odd was that, under the idea of “If you’re going to make a mistake, make a big one,” the author said, “So let’s study (and especially apply) the Bible with such great confidence that we can ‘sin boldly,’ as Martin Luther once advised his student Philip Melanchthon, ” and then he shares this quote from Luther: “Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.” I don’t know the context of Luther’s quote, and I do know that “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20), and I agree that we should “give it [our] all, making a few mistakes in the process, [rather] than…hold back out of fear of imperfection.” But still – I don’t see any encouragement in the Bible to “sin boldly” because we’re under grace.

As I said, I have multiple places marked in the book, but I’ll try to share just a few of the quotes I found most helpful:

Careless presumption will kill your Bible study. It will strangle observation and bear stillborn application. It will make you look like the stereotypical, narrow-minded Christian, and it will diminish your influence for the Lord. By strengthening your confidence in questionable conclusions, presumption will cloud your relationship with Jesus and your experience of his grace. When it comes to Bible study then, guard yourself against every form of unexamined presumption (p. 47).

Since we’ll continue observing new things in God’s Word until Jesus returns, our observations could be infinite in number. But interpretations are not infinite (though our grasp of them may mature over time). Biblical authors had agendas, and we are not authorized to add to those agendas. We investigate the facts of the text until we’re able to think the author’s thoughts after him. And since biblical authors wrote God’s very words, good interpretation trains us to think God’s thoughts (p. 49).

Don’t use minor details to make the text say what you want it to say. Don’t build a theology from one unclear verse (p. 51).

Ancient authors didn’t waste space with meaningless details. Every word has a purpose. Every sentence captures an idea. Every paragraph advances the agenda. And every section has a main point. The accumulation of these points promotes the goal of bringing the audience closer to the Lord. And once we understand how that main point directed the original audience toward the Lord, we’ll be ready to consider how it should shape us (p. 59).

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone, whether a new reader of the Bible or one who has read it multiple times for years.

Genre: Nonfiction
Potential objectionable elements: A couple of minor areas of disagreement.
My rating: 9 out of 10

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books and Carol‘s Books You Loved )

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

I’ve mentioned before that I like reading the Bible through, for a number of reasons, but I don’t do it in a year’s time any more. I like to be able to stop when I want to spend more time digging in.

I like to really slow down in the NT epistles especially. Many of them are so short, they could easily be read in one sitting. But they’re so densely packed with truth you wouldn’t want to do that. Previously when I’ve come with them I’ve read the same one over several days in a row until I felt I had gotten a grasp on it.

For the past year or so a couple of friends have been posting when one of Warren Wiersbe’s “BE” Commentaries has come up on a sale for the Kindle app. I really enjoyed his 50 People Every Christian Should Know and With the Word: The Chapter by Chapter Bible Handbook , so I thought I’d look into these. He has written one for every book of the Bible. For larger books, like Genesis, he has taken 2-3 books to cover them. He has combined smaller ones together in one volume. I don’t have them all, but I’ve collected several.

Unfortunately I forgot I had them in my current trek through the epistles until I had already read a number of them.

I wish I had reviewed each one, but at the time, I thought, “How do you review a commentary?” But these are the ones I have read with some stand-out quotes from each:

Be Ready (1 & 2 Thessalonians): Living in Light of Christ’s Return

The Christian who is feeding others must be careful not to feed on the wrong things himself.

Paul also comforted them. This word carries the same idea of “encouragement,” with the emphasis on activity. Paul not only made them feel better, but he made them want to do better. A father must not pamper a child; rather, he must encourage the child to go right back and try over again. Christian encouragement must not become an anesthesia that puts us to sleep. It must be a stimulant that awakens us to do better.

How does God cause our love to “increase more and more”? By putting us into circumstances that force us to practice Christian love. Love is the “circulatory system” of the body of Christ, but if our spiritual muscles are not exercised, the circulation is impaired. The difficulties that we believers have with one another are opportunities for us to grow in our love.

The purpose of Bible prophecy is not for us to make a calendar but to build character.

Any teaching that encourages us to disobey another divine teaching is not Bible teaching.

Be Faithful (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon): It’s Always Too Soon to Quit!

But many prefer the “vain jangling” (1 Tim. 1:6) of those who teach novelties rather than the pure Word of God that produces holiness in lives.

It is not enough for a local church to teach sound doctrine and to proclaim the gospel. The church must also defend the faith by exposing lies and opposing the doctrines of demons (1 Tim. 4:1).

The purpose of prayer is not to get man’s will done in heaven, but to get God’s will done on earth.

Not all unity is good, and not all division is bad. There are times when a servant of God should take a stand against false doctrine and godless practices, and separate himself from them. He must be sure, however, that he acts on the basis of biblical conviction and not because of a personal prejudice or a carnal party spirit.

“That they may lay hold on eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:19) does not suggest that these people are not saved. “That they may lay hold on the life that is real” would express it perfectly. Riches can lure a person into a make-believe world of shallow pleasure.

What germs are to a physical body, false teaching is to a spiritual body, the church.

Note his emphasis on the person of Christ: “I know whom I have believed.” Salvation is not the result of believing certain doctrines, though doctrines are important. A sinner is saved because he believes in a Person—Jesus Christ the Savior. Paul had deposited his soul in the care and keeping of the Savior, and Paul was sure that Jesus Christ would faithfully guard that deposit.

Be Mature (James): Growing Up in Christ

The epistle of James was written to help us understand and attain spiritual maturity: “… that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1: 4). I like the way J. B. Phillips puts it: “… and you will find you have become men of mature character, men of integrity with no weak spots.”

In the Bible, patience is not a passive acceptance of circumstances. It is a courageous perseverance in the face of suffering and difficulty.

“A temptation is an opportunity to accomplish a good thing in a bad way, out of the will of God.

Christian love does not mean that I must like a person and agree with him on everything. I may not like his vocabulary or his habits, and I may not want him for an intimate friend. Christian love means treating others the way God has treated me. It is an act of the will, not an emotion that I try to manufacture. The motive is to glorify God. The means is the power of the Spirit within (“ for the fruit of the Spirit is love”). As I act in love toward another, I may find myself drawn more and more to him, and I may see in him (through Christ) qualities that before were hidden to me.

Be Hopeful (1 Peter): How to Make the Best Times Out of Your Worst Times

Hope is not a sedative; it is a shot of adrenaline, a blood transfusion. Like an anchor, our hope in Christ stabilizes us in the storms of life (Heb. 6: 18–19), but unlike an anchor, our hope moves us forward, it does not hold us back.

The Word reveals God’s mind, so we should learn it; God’s heart, so we should love it; God’s will, so we should live it.

We do not study the Bible just to get to know the Bible. We study the Bible that we might get to know God better. Too many earnest Bible students are content with outlines and explanations, and do not really get to know God. It is good to know the Word of God, but this should help us better know the God of the Word.

It is necessary to understand that God is not going to replace suffering with glory; rather He will transform suffering into glory. Jesus used the illustration of a woman giving birth (John 16: 20–22). The same baby that gave her pain also gave her joy. The pain was transformed into joy by the birth of the baby. The thorn in the flesh that gave Paul difficulty also gave him power and glory (2 Cor. 12: 7–10). The cross that gave Jesus shame and pain also brought power and glory.

I’m currently working through Be Real (I John): Turning From Hypocrisy to Truth.

I’ve been going through a study Bible this year, so I’ll read one chapter of the epistle with the study Bible notes. Then the next day I’ll read the corresponding chapter in Wierbe’s book. If it takes him more than one chapter in his book to cover a chapter in the epistle, I’ll read one a day (sometimes half of one a day) until I finish with with however many chapters in his book it takes to cover that chapter in the epistle.

So, for example, on Monday I’d read the introductory material on 1 John from the study Bible, and on Tuesday I’d read the first chapter of 1 John with the notes from it. Wiersbe takes two chapter to cover 1 John 1, so I’d read those on Wednesday and Thursday – or I’d take longer if I need to. The important thing isn’t that I finish a chapter in a day, but rather that I take the time to read carefully and understand what I am reading.

So I feel this has worked well to slow me down in those short epistles and really take time to soak in them and put them together as a whole rather than reading isolated chapters.

I appreciate that Wiersbe’s tone is, as one preface says, “theologically sound but not overly academic.” He tends to take the passages in sections, explains what they’re about, relates them to the rest of the book, sometimes provides cross references and illustrations or examples.

My only criticisms are that some chapters do get a bit long and might have benefited from being broken down even further, and I wish that, as he discusses the chapter in smaller sections of a few verses at a time, he’d put those verses at the beginning of that section. It would just make it easier than having to go back and forth between the Bible and the commentary.

I haven’t yet used one of his commentaries on a longer book, but I am especially looking forward to the one on Ecclesiastes after reading Hope’s review of it. That book is a little different from the rest, so I’d appreciate his expertise in studying it. Incidentally, she has a Facebook page where she lists free or sale books for the Kindle at Worthwhile Books.

I think when I finish 1 John I might try to review it: if not I may just share pertinent quotes then.

At any rate, I wanted to make you aware of these resources. I’ve found them very helpful.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books and Literary Musing Monday)

Save

Save