JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE CAMP

How are you teaching the Bible to your children?

Most parents understand the great need to teach their children the Bible. This is a good impulse and a very necessary one if we are to bring up the children in the way of the Lord. But there is a right way to teach our children the Bible and a wrong way. Which way are you teaching your children?

Let's take a look at two people who taught the Bible in the right way: Lois and Eunice. They appear in 2 Timothy. Lois was the grandmother of Timothy and Eunice was his mother. Timothy's father appears to have been an unbelieving Greek (Acts 16:3). Both Lois and Eunice taught Timothy from the scriptures (2 Tim 1:5). Their scriptures would have been the Old Testament to us. Both women made a great effort to make sure Timothy understood the scriptures correctly and when he finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, it meshed with what he knew of God from his Jewish faith and the lights came on for him and he became a believer. In 2 Timothy 3:14-15, we see Paul talking about the faith that his grandmother and mother taught Timothy:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Meditate on his word

Psalm 119:15,16
I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.

 

Pastor Stuart Briscoe came back to my church for a second session on Bible literacy. He had many, many interesting things to say but one of the key points that stuck with me was what it meant to meditate on God's word. So often, we hear the word meditate being bandied about. We have notions in our head of someone sitting quietly just thinking over and over about a word or trying to clear the mind but this is not what the Bible means when it tells us to meditate on God's word.

First of all, meditating has to do with the heart. In the Bible, the heart refers to the innermost recesses of our being. It is where our throughts, emotions and desires are. To have God deep in our heart is to act upon three Ds when it relates to his Word: discern, desire, decide.

I Am who I Am

In Exodus 3, When God was conversing with Moses at the burning bush, God told Moses he was about to act on behalf of the nation of Israel (Ex 3:7-8). Moses, very nervous about the prospect of going back into Egypt and telling the Israelite slaves that he would be God's chosen leader to free the entire nation, asks God for his name so that he could tell the Israelites who it was that was calling the shots. (Add to that the fact that Moses had been wanted for murder in Egypt, you can understand why he was nervous. He needed assurance that this God would be powerful enough to actually free the slaves.) God tells him, "Say to the Israelites that YHWH has sent you." (Ex 3:13-14)

Hold on... what is YHWH? Pronounced Yahweh, it is God's name in Hebrew, which we commonly render in English as The LORD. Also known as the Tetragrammaton, it's God's personal name. It means "I am who I am". Is God being cheeky?

Stuart Briscoe: Put your nose in the book

"Don't put your head on the pillow at night unless you've put your nose in the Book during the day."

 

That was the advice that Rev. Stuart Briscoe shared with the participants of his talk on biblical literacy last night at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. I had looked forward to Rev. Brsicoe speak, especially after my wife read and summarised his book, Flowing Streams: Journeys of a Life Well-Lived, for me.

Rev. Briscoe's topic was on biblical literacy and he started by talking about how to think about the Bible. He focused on three points: first, the Bible is God's revelation to man. Many people feel that it's impossible to know God or have an accurate picture of him. God knows this and therefore made himself known by revealing himself through scripture. Our God is a god of self-disclosure.

Get your head in the Book

I came across this article on the Barna Group's website: Six Megathemes emerge from Barna Group research in 2010. Even though the study was based in the U.S., I could certainly see some of the same themes emerging in our local churches as well. The six themes as outlined in the article were:

1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.
3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life. 
4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.
5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.
6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.

The vigour of our spiritual life

As I was working on a lesson on reading the Bible, I came across this quote from George Müller:

The vigour of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts. I solemnly state this from the experience of fifty-four years…. I have read the Bible through one hundred times, and always with increasing delight. Each time it seems like a new book to me. Great has been the blessing from consecutive, diligent, daily study. I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the Word of God.

These words from this man of faith really remind me that the Word of God is the fuel in our spiritual lives. We cannot profess to have any relationship with God if we do not spend time with the Bible. Spending time with the Bible is spending time with God. Spending time with the Bible allows the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. We cannot claim to be a follower of Christ without being a lover of the Word of God. It is that simple.

Son of Man

Of all the names and titles that Jesus has, his preferred self-designated title is Son of Man. He uses it over 80 times in the gospels, far more than any other title. I've always thought that it was a strange title until I read up on it and learnt more about what it means.

The phrase the "son of man" is used two ways in the Old Testament. In places like Psalm 8:4 and Ezekiel 2:1, the phrase distinguishes mere humans from God. However in Daniel 7:13–14, the "son of man" reference is different.

Daniel 7:13–14
"I saw in the night visions,
behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed."

This son of man seems to be greater than any human. The fact that he comes on the clouds is a clear symbol of his divinity (see Psalm 104:3, Isaiah 19:1). This son of man is given dominion and glory and a kingdom that will last forever! Clearly, this son of man shares qualities that only God has and therefore is God. This is the title that Jesus uses on himself. Jesus is claiming that the role of the son of man is his to fulfill. And this was exactly what he said to Caiaphas the high priest when he was on trial.

NLTInterlinear.com

Tyndale Publishing House just released the NLT Interlinear online. Essentially, it's an online interlinear Bible and concordance that allows users to see the Greek New Testament lined up against the text of the NLT Bible.

One of the best features is being able to look at the Greek words in the Greek-English Concordance of the New Testament and see all the English nuances of the original Greek. I think it will help me expand my understanding of Scripture when I see how various English expressions actually have the same Greek root word.

While my main Bible is the ESV, I do refer to the NLT from time to time. But since this interlinear Bible is available online (for free!), I'll definitely be using it. Thank God for blessings such as these.

Read more about the NLT Interlinear on the NLT Study Bible blog.

Faith comes by hearing

In my busy day, one way I connect with God is by listening to his Word while commuting. I have an old iPod which I stuff with sermons and an sections of an audio Bible. Trouble is, ripping my old CD audio Bible into MP3 format takes a lot of time. I thought of buying an MP3 edition but then I stumbled onto Faith Comes by Hearing's free audio Bible.

The mission of Faith Comes by Hearing is to reach the nations with the Word of God in audio format. They offer the Bible to people who are illiterate. These people may not be able to read God's Word, but they can definitely hear God's Word. So they offer the Bible in a variety of editions and languages. And it's free.

I downloaded their AudioBible Ambassador, selected the edition and language I wanted, and it went to work, downloading the entire New Testament to my hard drive. Their software can play the Bible or in my case, I stuffed the MP3 files into my iPod. Now I can soak myself in God's Word as I do something terribly mundane: riding the train home from work. Thank God for this.

If you do download their audio Bibles, consider donating to them so they can continue their work.

Codex Sinaiticus is now online

One of the most important texts for the Bible is now available online! Codexsinaiticus.org lets you view the actual codex online. The codex was written some time between AD 325 and AD 360 and originally, it contained the complete text of both the Old and New Testaments in Greek, as well as several other writings. Written on vellum parchment, the codex was discovered in 1844 in the Greek Monastery at Mount Sinai, hence the name.

Codex Sinaiticus: The start of Romans 1

This codex is significant because it is one of the earliest manuscripts of that helped us understand the what the early church considered part of the canon and also who to arrange the sequence of the books of the Bible.

To quote from the site:

The ability to place these 'canonical books' in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a 'Bible'. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.

Well, looking at the actual text of codex, I have to say, it's all Greek to me! But seriously, it's exciting to be this close to the actual Greek text of the New Testament. (The OT portion, of course, is the Greek [Septuagint] version of the Hebrew text.) Like I like to tell my classes, "The English Bible you have in front of you is not actually the Bible! It's a translation." To see the actual text is awe-inspriting.