In Matthew, chapter 28, verses 16-20, we read about Jesus’ final invitation to his disciples. They have followed him for three years. They have followed him through the craziness of his arrest, trial, beating, crucifixion, resurrection. Now this:
“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’”
Following Jesus would now involve what might be the scariest “out of their comfort zone” experience of all, because he would no longer be with them. He has been leading them, supporting them, with his physical presence right there with them for three years. Now they will be on their own.
A few days ago, my son and daughter-in-law brought their new baby daughter from the hospital for the first time since her birth two months ago. While that felt amazing, and it means that she is doing well, it also felt quite scary because she has a heart condition. They had to be trained by hospital staff on the specialized care she receives. When you are on your own for the first time, you can feel way out of your comfort zone.
This is how the disciples were feeling. In verse 17, Matthew writes, “some of them doubted.” I wouldn’t blame them if every single one of them doubted, thinking “Jesus, don’t leave us! Stay! We don’t know if we are trained for this, if we can do this on our own.”
He will leave them, and that will be scary, but Jesus is thinking about this correctly. Why? We found out in the next post.
Some people say that being a Christian is easy. Others say it is difficult. They have a variety of reasons for their perspective. It seems to me that it depends. But let’s evaluate the ease and difficulty of following Jesus from his own words.
In Matthew 16:21-26 there’s an interesting story in which Jesus says the same thing we heard him say in the previous post about how growing faith together means following him out of our comfort zones. In the previous post, Jesus mentioned that his disciples will “take up your cross and following me,” but notice what brings him to that point is this new story:
“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’ Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’ Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?’”
When Jesus explains to his disciples that he will need to die, Peter is not having it. No, no, no, Jesus. Peter is essentially saying, “Jesus, you don’t need to go that far out of your comfort zone. Death? That’s crazy talk, Jesus. Let’s rethink this. You must have other options.”
Jesus boldly looks Peter in the eye and says, “Peter, following me means getting way out of your comfort zone. There are no two ways about it.” And soon after that, Jesus has an encounter with a man, with his disciples watching, that gives Jesus a chance to illustrate what he means about how following him equals getting out of your comfort zone. We read about that encounter in Matthew 19:16-30.
In verse 16, the story begins, “Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, ‘Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?’ ‘Why do you ask me about what is good?’ Jesus replied. ‘There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.’ ‘Which ones?’ he inquired. Jesus replied, ‘”You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”’ ‘All these I have kept,’ the young man said. ‘What do I still lack?’ Jesus answered, If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ Peter answered him, ‘We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.’”
This is a story that we really want to turn into metaphor, symbolism or figurative speech. Jesus could not possibly have meant that this guy needs to sell his possessions, give them to the poor, and then and only then could that guy follow Jesus. Right? I want to say, “Come on, Jesus, this guy asked you an awesome question. It’s the question we are dying people to ask us. How to have eternal life? Why in the world did you tell him he had to sell his possessions? That’s not how people get eternal life. Why didn’t you tell him that he just needs to believe in you and follow you? I don’t get you. Why are you making it so hard on the guy? Why are you telling him he needs to get way, way, way out of his comfort zone?”
Later in the story Peter is basically asking Jesus those very questions I just asked. Peter is tracking with the implications of what Jesus is suggesting to the rich man. Peter knows that the disciples left everything and followed Jesus. By this point in Matthew 19, they are a good two and a half years into following Jesus. Maybe even close to three years. Unlike the rich man, the disciples did leave everything to follow Jesus. Makes you wonder how their wives and kids felt about it. How were their families making ends meet?
We can speculate lots of answers to those questions, but the larger point remains. Peter says to Jesus, “We left all to follow you. Are we going to be okay?” Talk about going out of your comfort zone. Peter is saying, “We gave up our livelihood to follow you. We could have been padding out 401K. We could have been setting our families up for long-term financial health. But, no, we chose to follow you. We are way, way, way out of our comfort zones here. Are you going to take care of us?”
Jesus says, “Trust me. Place your faith in me by stepping out of your comfort zone, die to yourself, take up your cross, follow me, and you will see how I care for you.”
This week we’re talking about growing in faith together, particularly through the lens of Jesus’ famous phrase “Follow me.” In the previous post, we learned about some of Jesus’ first invitations to people to follow him. Some people accepted the invitation, some were hesitant. In Matthew 9:9, Jesus has another “follow me” invitation,
“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.”
For Matthew, following Jesus likely means giving up a tax collector’s lucrative income. Matthew is also likely giving up protection of the Roman soldiers. As a tax collector, Matthew was collecting money from his fellow Jews and giving the tax to the Romans. Therefore Jews hated tax collectors. Jews viewed tax collectors as sell-outs, betrayers, and greedy, as the tax collectors got rich, skimming money off the taxes they paid. Jews considered tax collectors as people who didn’t work for their money, but who cheated people out of their money. You can see why tax collectors needed the Roman soldiers as their security personnel. Now Matthew, in giving up his work as tax collector, is also giving up his security team. He is stepping out of his comfort zone to follow Jesus, thus joining a new group of people with whom he will be able to grow his faith.
Soon enough, Jesus would push the disciples out of their comfort zones, so they would grow their faith together. In Matthew 10:1, page 790, we read that,
“Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” And then in verse 5, “These twelve Jesus sent out” on a mission trip.
We don’t know how long the disciples have been watching Jesus minister at this point. A couple months? A year. But think about it. They are fishermen, tax collector, regular working-class guys. They haven’t gone to rabbinical school. They’ve followed Jesus, though. They’ve watched his ways. Now he has empowered them, and he sends them out saying, “Now, you go do what I have been doing.”
In Matthew 10, verses 9-10, Jesus says the disciples are to take nothing with them on the mission trip. Huh? Nothing? No money, no extras. Just go and trust in God. “Where are we going to sleep, Jesus? How are we going to eat?” Talk about stepping out of your comfort zone to follow Jesus.
If that wasn’t enough, then Jesus kicks it up a notch in verses 16-20. “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
Woah. Hold on. Did Jesus just say what I think he said? Arrested? Flogged? How can those be good things? Because we’ll be able to minister to the people who are arresting and flogging us? And the Spirit will speak through us? This sounds really bizarre.
Could you imagine signing up for a mission trip, and the leader says, “Well, we’re going to a country where we will be arrested and beaten for our ministry, but that’s a good thing because we’ll get to share Jesus with the guards and judges.” Not too many Christians would sign up for that. Yet that’s what Jesus is saying to his disciples. Follow him and he’ll take us out of our comfort zones into the area of incarceration, physical persecution.
Scan down to verse 38 on the next page, and Jesus adds more detail to what following him is all about, “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
The image of carrying a cross was very well known to the people of his day. Crucifixion happened frequently before Jesus himself was crucified. Rome used crucifixion to put down rebellion, to exert its authority, to keep the peace. The Jews knew exactly what taking up their cross meant. Jesus is comparing following him to an awful form of capital punishment. “Sit down in your electric chair and follow me,” we might say in our day. Following Jesus is a life of stepping out of our comfort zone like he did.
In due time, Jesus would give the disciples even more opportunities to practice stepping out of their comfort zones. Matthew 14:25-33 records a great story about one of those opportunities.
“Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. ‘It’s a ghost,’ they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ ‘Lord, if it’s you,’ Peter replied, ‘tell me to come to you on the water.’ ‘Come,’ he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ‘You of little faith,’ he said, ‘why did you doubt?’ And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.
I give Peter a lot of credit in this story. He was probably a good swimmer, having spent his whole life around the Sea of Galilee, working as a fisherman with his father and brother from childhood. But what he does in this story is on another level. Asking Jesus if he, Peter, can step out there on the stormy water with him? Is Peter showing off? Is he arrogant? Is he a thrill-seeker? He definitely has some guts, and he must be stepping out of his comfort zone. But only enough to get out of the boat. With waves crashing over him, Peter has one of those “Uh-oh, what was I thinking?” moments. “This was a mistake.”
After Jesus rescues Peter and calms the storm, thereby calming the fears of all the men who thought for sure they were going to drown, Jesus refers to faith. Growing faith means stepping out of your comfort zone.
This time last year I was in India. The trip came together quite quickly in the fall, and I gradually became more and more excited as the day of my departure neared. Then just a few days before leaving, something happened that always happens. I started feeling like I didn’t want to go. Maybe you’ve felt something of that too. New experiences are scary, risky, uncomfortable and awkward!
Throughout this relationships in the church family blog series, the emphasis, week after week, has been the words “together,” “each other” and “one another.” Our topics have included: encourage, meet, hold accountable, pray, care, speak life, study God’s word. Each of these are important elements of a church family, and we studied each them from the perspective of “together, each other, one another.”
By practicing all those habits together, we will grow in faith together. When I went to India, I was so thankful to have a travel partner, my friend Jeff. Being together made a world of difference. This week, as we look at growing in faith together, we’ll examine one important way that Scripture teaches us to grow in faith together. Scriptures teaches us grow faith together is to follow Jesus into the great unknown together.
One of Jesus’ famous phrases beckons people into the great unknown. What phrase do you think I might be referring to? If you thought of the phrase “Follow me,” you’re right! Let’s look at a few times Jesus uses that phrase in the Gospel of Matthew.
First, turn to Matthew 4:18-22. This incident is right at the beginning of his ministry,
“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”
This is the story of Jesus calling his first disciples, “Follow me,” and they do it. Based on what we read in the Gospels, it’s hard to know how much they knew Jesus prior to him calling them to follow him. Clearly, though, he is not yet a noteworthy rabbi that people are falling over themselves to follow. He will become that soon enough. But at this point, these disciples are his first followers, and yet, though they likely know very little about him, they still followed him! On that first day, did they decide “Ok, I will follow you for the rest of my life?” I doubt their decision-making was that thorough. Maybe that first day they were just thinking, “Sure I’ll follow you over to the grassy area and have a little chat.” What we do know is that they would, in short order, walk right out of their comfort zones, leaving the comfort of jobs and families to follow him. Their following him into the great unknown would last a lifetime.
Let’s meet some others who have a very different response to Jesus’ invitation to follow him.
Turn a few pages forward to Matthew 8:18-22,
“When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’”
I read that and think, “Yikes, Jesus. The guy needs to bury his father. Why are you making it seem so difficult to follow you, with all that talk of having no place to lay your head.” Apparently, whereas the disciples left jobs and family to follow Jesus, Jesus seems to indicate that these other people were not really committed to following him. They were like the people who talk a good game, but when it comes time to step out of our comfort zone and follow Jesus, they don’t. Many times we can choose to participate in seemingly good activities to avoid what is better and best.
Check back tomorrow for the next post, as we continue our study of Jesus’ “follow me” invitations in the Gospel of Matthew.
Since the beginning of 2024, we’ve been studying what the Bible has to say about relationships in the church family. The seven topics so far in the series have each talked about how a church family is to be together. Meeting together was one of the topicss. But how do we meet together? What do we do when we are together? We looked at how we are to encourage one another, hold each other accountable, pray together, care for one another, speak life to each other and study Scripture together.
We conclude the relationships series this week looking to the future: How do we grow in faith together? Growing in faith is quite a broad topic. The Scriptures teach numerous practical steps a church family can take if they want to grow in faith together. As I look at all the previous topics in this series, they each relate to growing in faith together. While I think it could be helpful to review what we already learned in the series, I decided that this final topic should focus on one important facet of growing in faith together that we haven’t yet discussed.
What I will talk about comes from the teaching of Jesus. What two-word phrase did Jesus repeat many times to his disciples, and to numerous other people, that relates to growing in faith together? Before reading the first post in this series, I encourage you to scan through the four Gospels, looking for that two-word phrase. You’ll find this phrase in all four Gospels. Sometimes when Jesus uses this phrase, it leads to amazingly positive responses, and sometimes it leads to very negative responses.
I think Jesus’ famous phrase is foundational to being a church family that grows in faith together. On the blog this week, learn Jesus’ important two-word phrase, and how we can respond to it (positively!), so that we can grow in faith together.
As we think about studying scripture together, I want to point out an interesting episode in the early church that occurs during one of Paul’s mission trips. In Acts 17:10-12, we learn that, “As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.”
We should not read this passage as people who went to a worship service in a building, heard Paul’s monologue sermon, then went home by themselves, opened their individual copies of the Bible and researched to see if what Paul said was true.
They did not have individual copies of the Scriptures. Instead, Paul would have preached, and the people, including Paul would have stayed there in the synagogue to discuss the Scriptures together to see if what Paul said was true. They studied scripture together.
Now look ahead to Acts chapter 19. Paul is in the city of Ephesus. In verses 8-10, we learn,
“Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.”
What are we seeing? The early church studied the Scriptures together. They discussed Scripture together. This is why I encourage you, if you are not already participating in some expression of studying the word together, to start.
When we participate in studying the Bible together, there are so many benefits. First, we deepen relationships in the church. We get to know one another better.
Second, we benefit from other people and they benefit from us. This is why I find my church’s sermon discussion class is almost always better than the sermon itself. There are numerous times when I’m sitting around the tables listening to people discuss the passage from the sermon, and I get embarrassed.
I get embarrassed because they are making a point, or observing something in Scripture that I didn’t think of. I sit there as they talk thinking to myself, “How did I not see that? That is so obvious. So good. So important. My sermon would have been better if I had noticed that!!!”
That is the beauty of studying Scripture together. More points of view, more people who have a variety of personalities and experiences who bring the entirety of their lives to the text, and through whom we can learn. We might never have seen the text of the Bible like they did because we didn’t have their experiences.
This is why it is so vital that we interact with people from other cultures, who speak other languages, have other ethnicities than we do, have other life experiences. This is why we study the Bible with them. This is why we study the Bible with people who are older and who are younger.
We can also intentionally study the Bible with others by reading books about the Bible written by people who are different from us. For most of Christian history, books about the Bible, books commenting on the Bible, study Bibles, devotional books, etc, were written by white males from western Europe or America. They wrote lots of good material.
But to study the Bible together, we should read books about the Bible written by persons of color, by people from eastern nations, by women. We Protestant evangelicals, we should read books written by Catholics and Orthodox and Pentecostals. In so doing, we are trying to answer the question: “What do others who grew up very differently from me, who worship differently from me, who think differently from me, and yet still love Jesus, have to say about the Bible?”
Most of all, I believe, we should gather with others, and that could be online or in-person, and study the Bible together. What gatherings are available in your church family? What classes, small groups, Bible studies are available? If you do not already, would you consider participating in a group like that?
Maybe you want to connect with a smaller group, two or three others and study through a book of the Bible together.
Let me remind you of the principles we started with in the first post in the series. When I mentioned them originally, I noted how these principles are often used for individual, personal Bible study. I believe individual, personal Bible study is a good thing. But now that we have looked at how important it is to study scripture together with others, I ask you to think about how the same principles can be applied to studying the Bible with others. Flowing from a humble, teachable mindset:
Pray together for God’s Spirit to help your group understand what you read and study in the Bible.
Read the Bible out loud together with a meditative heart, thinking deeply about what you’re reading.
Write down questions that come to mind as you read and study, then together look for ways to answer those questions. Discuss together. Maybe people in the group will have thoughts. Maybe consult with others to search for answers.
Talk together about principles, takeaways that your group learned from your study and that you can apply to your lives.
The first Christians demonstrated communal Bible study. In Acts 2:42-47, the very first description of the very first church, we learn that the church was devoted to the apostles’ teaching. We read that they were together. The met in the temple courts and in homes. Add up those statements, and we can see how the earliest Christians gathered in groups both large and small to study the Bible together. This should not be understood as simply listening to a monologue, as if the apostles preached sermons and no one else talked.
We know this because the disciples had learned from Jesus how to study the Bible together. Yes, he taught and they did some listening, but he also frequently discussed his teaching with them. He asked them questions. They tried to answer, often not so good. They asked him questions. “What does this parable mean?” “How do we pray?” “Why are you different from the teachers of the law?” They discuss, they study together. From Jesus, the earliest Christians learned a participatory approach to studying the Bible together.
In 1st Corinthians 14:26, Paul gives us a glimpse into what a worship gathering looked like in the city of Corinth. Before we read that passage, let’s take a moment to think about the setting of that worship gathering. Early church gatherings were in homes, and their worship services would be much more like contemporary small group Bible studies than our Sunday worship services in buildings. The early Christians did not have buildings. They did not have a theater-style arrangement like we do.
Most contemporary church worship spaces resemble a theater, with row of seats or pews, generally facing a raised stage area. The largely non-participatory congregation sits in the seats watching a few paid professionals and volunteers as they lead, play music, sing, pray and preach. Contemporary worship services not only bear a striking resemblance to the theater, because of their typical seating arrangement and production, our worship services emphasize individualism. People can attend a worship service in the role of spectator with very little expectation of participation. While they participate in worship through singing and giving, they can passively follow along with everything else. It can be highly individualistic.
With the difference contexts of the ancient and contemporary Christians in mind, notice how Paul describes the early church in 1st Corinthians 14:26. Paul writes, “What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God. wo or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop.”
What Paul describes is participatory worship, especially in verse 14, “when you come together, each of you has.” There was an expectation, a very healthy expectation, that when the Christians gathered, they were all participants. It was not a passive participation.
When I think of my own congregation, I believe a majority of our us are not passive. I believe most of us are active in our participation. People serve on Sundays in a variety of ways: hosting, welcoming, singing, serving on sound, projection, Zoom, counting the offering, preparing fellowship snacks and drinks, serving in the nursery, the kids ministry, teaching classes to youth and adults, unlocking the building, and I probably missed some. Much of that we did for years. When I went on sabbatical in 2018, it was awesome how people stepped up and started doing even more.
That said, what Paul is describing is active participation during the worship service itself. But you might think, “Joel, contemporary worship services are not designed for active participation.” You would be correct. Remember that the Acts 2:42-47 description of the early church includes both large group and small group gatherings. Those large group gatherings in the temple didn’t last long, as the Christians eventually got kicked out of the temple. Archaeologists do not have evidence for large Christian gatherings approximately three hundred years later. Instead early Christians met in small groups, just as Paul describes in 1 Cor 14:26.
That is not to say that at every small group meeting in homes, every single Christian was extremely participatory. People then are just like people now. I have students in my college classes who are very talkative. They want to talk before class, during class they raise their hands, and after class they come up to me and want to talk some more. I also have students who are quiet. Even if I say that I am grading their class discussion, so that during a class period every student has to raise their hand and ask or answer a question at least once, or they will get a downgrade, those students still will not raise their hands.
Likewise in any church gathering throughout history there have been over-talkers and under-talkers. But what Paul is clearly suggesting is the participation is vital in the church.
Notice in particular how there is participation in studying Scripture in 1st Cor 14:26. He describes instruction, revelation, tongues, interpretation and prophecy. All of these are variations of studying God’s word in its various forms. The point I’m trying to make is not about the variations, but about the participation. Everyone involved. Everyone digging into the Bible, discussing it together with others in the church family.
Thankfully, I suspect most contemporary church families have many opportunities for everyone to participate in studying the Bible together. At Faith Church after worship every Sunday we have Bible teaching and discussion in our Sunday School classes. We have home Bible studies as well. My guess is that your church has similar opportunities. If you are a Sunday School teacher or Bible study leader, I encourage you to make your groups heavily discussion-oriented.
At Faith Church one of our Sunday classes is sermon discussion group. I encourage all pastors to have a group like this. If all I did was give monologues and there was no discussion, I believe I would be wrongly emphasizing an individualistic approach to studying Scripture. Sermon discussion group is a open discussion about the sermon. Questions, feedback, clarifications, stories, applications, and more. I love sermon discussion more than I love my sermons!
What we see in the New Testament is the importance of studying Scripture together. What can that look like in your church family?
Would it surprise you to learn that for most Christians across the two millennia of the history of the church, study of God’s written word was accomplished together with other Christians?
We contemporary Christians are used to the idea of personal Bible study. Personal devotions. Reading the Bible by ourselves. Reading through the whole Bible in a year. Using a Bible or devotional app on our phones. We are accustomed to a personal approach to Bible study.
There were two Germans who were very instrumental in making personal Bible study possible: Johannes Gutenberg and Martin Luther.
Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, eventually making it possible to print books quickly and inexpensively. Prior to the printing press, everything was copied by hand, which is slow, and expensive, resulting in hardly anyone having access to the printed Bible. No surprise, one of the first works of literature that Gutenberg printed was the Bible. The year was 1455, when he completes 180 copies of the Bible.
Of course it took time for the printing press to get widespread use. But just as printing was becoming common in early 1500s Europe, a Catholic priest named Martin Luther took center stage. Luther was instrumental in breaking away from the Catholic Church and starting the Protestant Reformation. One of the features of the Protestant Reformation is the idea of Sola Scriptura, referring to the primacy of the Bible in communicating God’s word.
Luther and numerous other reformers believed that the Bible was quite important, and thus they believed that the Bible should be translated into the common language of the people. German, English, French, Spanish, etc. They wanted to get the Bible into the hands of every person, and their timing was great because the invention of printing press made it physically possible and cost-effective to print Bibles. That led to growing efforts to translate the Bible and teach people to read.
I’m not suggesting that in the mid-1500s suddenly everyone who wanted one had a Bible. That reality would take time. One copy of Gutenberg’s Bible in 1455 cost the equivalent of three year’s wages for a clerk, but that was exceedingly less expensive than a hand-scribed Bible previously. As time when by, costs decreased, Bibles were translated into common languages, and slowly more and more people could read the Bible for themselves.
Thus, in the 1500s a new approach to the Bible was born. Personal Bible study. For the previous 1500 years, personal access to the Bible was the privilege of the wealthy, scholarly, priestly few. Everyone else, most people, had to go to church services to hear the Bible preached. The regular Christian would have no expectation of owning even a small portion of Scripture in their own language ever in their lifetime.
It was a travesty that Luther rightly wanted to change. He believed that if people could have access to the Bible in their own language it would fuel the Reformation and free people from what he believed was like a captivity inside the Roman church. He was right, and the Catholic Church would come to agree. As the decades and centuries went by, the influence of Gutenberg and Luther swung the pendulum from a communal approach to Bible study to a personal approach to Bible study.
As with so much else in life, when a situation swings from one extreme to the other, we can trade one deficiency for another. The ability to study the Bible personally has wonderful benefits. We can read the words of Scripture anytime we want. We can hear the truth of the Bible and apply it to our lives every day of the week. We can dig into its thought, mission, wisdom, and we can know the heart of God. But personal Bible study can also miss something important: The Word of God is given to a community.
I don’t ever want to return to the 1500 years of church history when most people had zero access to the Word of God, so they could only hear the Bible read and preached in church. But I do want to return to the 1500 years of church history when people understood that the Word of God is given to a community, and therefore they expected to study it together with other people.
The first Christians demonstrated this kind of communal study, and their communal approach to studying the Scriptures is what we’ll investigate in the next post.
What is studying the Bible? Reading it? Yes, but we read lots of things for a variety of reasons. We read the newspaper differently than we read a novel or poetry or history. How, then, do we read the Bible so that we are studying it?
There is one important attitude and one important action before we even open the Bible. The important attitude is humility. Humility means we are aware of our assumptions. Don’t assume you already know what the Bible says. Likewise, don’t run from it assuming you can’t or won’t understand it. Approach the Bible with humility.
The important action is prayer. Pray that God’s Spirit will help you understand his words. In 1 Corinthians 2:12 Paul says that God’s Spirit will help us understand what God has given us, and the Scriptures are one thing that he has given us. Then expect God to speak through the Scriptures.
After praying, begin reading it with a meditative approach. In Psalm 1 we read that we are to delight in the Bible, meditating on it day and night. That meditation means to think deeply about it.
One way to meditate on the Scriptures is to slowly observe what you’re reading, asking questions about what you’re reading. Maybe write those questions down.
Next, seek answers to those questions. This might require using a study Bible or commentary. It might help cross-referencing with other portions of Scripture.
Finally, discern a principle that you can apply to your life, and begin to apply that principle to your life. Or as you read and think, consider if there is something new you learn about God.
Those are some important steps to studying the Bible. But we’re still missing something important about studying the Bible. To reveal what we’re missing, I want to ask you, when do you study the Bible?
Maybe first thing in the morning. I like to use the Lectio 365 app in the morning before I work out. Might be over lunch break. Perhaps in the evening? Growing up my family had devotions together after dinner. Maybe when you’re driving in your car, doing chores or exercising, you listen to a devotional, sermon or teaching on TV, online, on a podcast, on the radio. Might be reading a book about the Bible or biblical teaching. Hopefully, you read the Bible during worship services, and the sermon involves studying the Bible, with the person preaching serving as a guide.
We study the Bible in Sunday School classes, and in small groups of various kinds. Our care groups, Bible study groups, prayer meeting.
There are so many ways to answer the question “When do you study the Bible?” I’ve described all sorts of Bible study opportunities, and all of them fall into one of two categories: Personal and Communal.
Personal Bible study is when we study the Bible individually, by ourselves.
Communal Bible study is when we study the Bible together with others.
Throughout the 2000 years of Christian history, of those two, which do you think was the predominant form of Bible study. Personal or communal?
This past week in my class, I had a slightly embarrassing moment.
I teach adjunct for a local Bible College. This semester I’m teaching the Gospels, the Life of Jesus. In class this past week, we were talking about Matthew 9, verses 9-13. I love this story. I’m very familiar with this story. But this story about Jesus is what led to my embarrassing moment. Here’s the story:
“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
Jesus is always an example for us, and in this case he shows us how he would handle interaction with people who in that culture were considered sinful. In class, then, I asked the students how we might apply Jesus’ example to our lives, and a student raised their hand.
The student pointed out that in the story, after Jesus invites the tax collector Matthew to be his disciple, Jesus goes to a dinner party at Matthew’s house. Matthew, the student said, would have paid for the party through the income he made as a tax collector.
That fact might sound innocuous. Of course Matthew paid for the party from his employment. But there’s more to the story, when you consider a cultural reality was a work. Tax collectors were hated by their fellow Jews because the tax collectors not only collected taxes for the Romans, but also the tax collectors got rich skimming money off the tax collection. That means that tax collectors got rich off the backs of their fellow Jews.
Matthew, therefore, paid for his dinner party through ill-gotten gain, and there is Jesus at the party, eating and drinking. The student pointed out something fascinating: Jesus was benefitting from Matthew’s sinful lifestyle.
I stood in front of class thinking to myself, “How did I not see that before?” I had to admit in front of the class, “That’s a profound point, I never thought of that.” I was slightly embarrassed that, I, their professor learned from a student.
In my heart and mind, I felt that flush of heat come over me that so often happens to humans when we get embarrassed. As I thanked the student for their insight, my mind was also swirling with thoughts and emotions, “I bet these students’ full-time professors would have seen that point. The students are going to see that I’m just an adjunct who has no business being a professor. I’m a fraud.”
Admittedly, my heart and mind can go a bit wild with self-doubt and fear. Most of what I was thinking and feeling inwardly is false.
But it was good to be in that awkward position and struggle with myself. I needed that. While I was embarrassed, I was grateful for the insight I learned and the reminder that we always need to learn from one another.
As we talk about studying the Bible this week on the blog, what happened in that class is something that I believe should happen a whole lot more. To me, for sure. And to all disciples of Jesus.
But first, what is studying the Bible? I’m concerned that question might come across as having an obvious answer. Yet, if we are going to talk about studying the Bible, we need to begin by seeking an answer that question. We’ll do so in the next post.
Engaging Scripture 