Ridgell's Originals

 As I mentioned in my last blog, Randy Harris taught of the Sermon on the Mount to kick off our church wide study.  In his lesson, he talked about three things as part of studying the Bible.  They are not new concepts and preachers have been saying these things for years.  But Randy has a unique way of communicating and I liked the way he stacked these three concepts together.  

So here is my take on three things to help us use, study, and know Scripture.

1. What does it say?  Learn what the Bible says.  Personally, I am pretty much a "if the Bible says it, it meant it."  So I think you always start by assuming God said what He meant to say.  Love your neighbor.  That is clear and I do not have an option to argue that God didn't mean for us to love our neighbor today.  If I believe Scripture is true, and I do, then the command is clear.  Lots of Scripture is clear like that.  We may not like it, but it is clear.  Most of us will live our lives in a world that will not accept truth that is plain.  But we do.  So start with what the Bible says.

2. How do I apply it?  This is the hard part of Scripture.  Not so much interpretation, but application.  In my experience most "interpretation" is actually trying to explain that God did not mean what He said.  Or that God really did mean to add some things to what He said.  But application is different.  Love your neighbor.  The lawyer that asked "who is my neighbor" is a form of application.  Who is my neighbor?  What does it mean to love my neighbor?  Not questioning the Scripture, but figuring out how to live it out.  That is one reason we live in community.  Together we figure out how to apply clear commands in our world.  I think that is where we rely on the leadership of elders.  Sometimes they help with how our particular community of faith is going to apply Biblical teaching.  

3.  Do it.  The Sermon on the Mount, James, and many other places in Scripture are clear on this.  Don't just learn what it says.  Don't just figure out how to live it out.  Do it.  And if we really want to be honest, this is the hardest of the three.  By a long shot.  I get that I am to love my neighbor.  I can even figure out what that means in my daily life.  But doing it is hard.  Needy people.  People that are not Jesus people.  Inconvenient.  Messy.  Costly.  Much easier to argue about the application than to do it.

So...

Read what it says.

Figure out how to apply that in your life.

Do it.

It really is simple.

And hard.

# posted by Steve @ 5:00 AM