Living by the Book/Living by the Book Workbook Set (103 page)

Keep your charts simple. You can always add detail; the challenge is to trim away the clutter. What key ideas, characters, themes, verses, terms, and other data from the text ought to take priority? What is the big idea? What structure needs to be shown? What material do you want to see at a glance?

If you find that you’ve got too much material to include in a chart, chop it up and make several charts. By the way, too much unrelated data is a clue that you need to go back to the text and do some more observing.

Be creative. There are dozens of ways to show relationships in the text. Let your imagination flow. Draw illustrations or symbols if they help. It’s your chart, so make it work for you.

Revise your charts in light of your study. No chart can summarize everything. As you continue to study a passage, you’ll gain new insights that should cause you to revise or even redo your chart. Remember, charts are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. They are useful to the extent that they accurately represent what is in the biblical text.

These steps are reprinted from the end of chapter 25 of
Living By the Book.
If you desire further review, you’ll find more specific examples in that chapter.

Exodus 7–12

TIME COMMITMENT:

60 minutes

“Bible study is information-intensive. If you do the job of observation [as previously described], you’ll have more data than you can possibly handle. And that’s a problem, because what good is information if you can’t access it? . . . Show rather than tell. Summarize your findings in a chart” (p. 184).

L
ots of people can tell you that Moses called down several plagues on the Egyptians before Pharaoh would let the Israelites leave. Some people even know there were ten such plagues. But few people are able to quickly list all ten.

Today’s assignment is to create a chart that will help you identify the plagues as well as take note of anything else you feel is relevant about them. (The immediate effects of each one? The reactions of the Egyptians and/or Israelites? The response of Pharaoh to each one? etc.)

The account of the plagues is found in Exodus 7:14–12:42. Your task is to figure how to summarize the key information in that section of Scripture by means of a chart. Use the hints on the previous sheets, and don’t hurry into the project until you have an idea in mind.

Don’t feel bad if you need to start over several times. Finding the right outline to follow is the hardest part. But once you get past that point, all that’s left is the rather simple matter of filling in the blanks.

TODAY’S PASSAGE:

Revelation 2–3

TIME COMMITMENT:

60 minutes

“A chart is to the Bible student what a map is to a mariner. It aids him or her in navigating an ocean of words, pages, books, ideas, characters, events, and other information. Without a chart or some similar device, he is liable to founder on the shoals of mental overload. There are just too many details to keep track of” (p. 185).

I
n the first part of the book of Revelation we are told of an awe-inspiring vision of Jesus, who dictated a series of letters to seven different churches. John did a lot of writing to pass along the message verbatim. However, the letters all follow a clear pattern. Read Revelation 2–3 several times until you get a feel for the structure of the letters. Then create a chart that can help you visualize all that information more simply.

When you finish, you should be able to use your chart in a number of different ways. By going one way (either left to right or up and down), you will have a concise analysis of the spiritual condition of each of the seven churches. But if you look at the chart the other way, you will have assembled a comparison of how various churches were performing in a number of different categories.

Again, make this chart your own. It’s more important to create something that is meaningful to you instead of something fancy or complex.

I
NTERPRETATION

A
s we make a transition from Observation to Interpretation, let’s review a few key points from the
Living By the Book
text. The next several pages provide some essential reminders about the importance of Interpretation, some hazards to avoid, and the various types of biblical literature you might come across in your attempts to interpret Scripture.

“Why must we interpret Scripture? Why can’t we just open the Word, read what we’re supposed to do, and then do it? Why do we have to go to so much trouble to understand the text? The answer is that time and distance have thrown up barriers between us and the biblical writers, which block our understanding. We need to appreciate what those roadblocks are. They are not insurmountable, but they are substantial” (p. 202).

Have you ever learned a foreign language? If so, you know that learning the words is not enough. You have to learn the mind-set, the culture, the worldview of those who speak it if you really want to understand what they are saying.

In the same way, when it comes to the Bible, we have some excellent translations from the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic languages in which it was originally written. Even so, the English text leaves us a long way from a complete understanding. That’s why the process of Interpretation involves the use of a Bible dictionary and similar resources. We have to go back and recover the shades of meaning that translated words alone cannot convey.

These are closely related to the problems of language because language is always culture bound. The Bible is the product and presentation of cultures that are dramatically different from our own—and also different from each other. To appreciate what is going on in Scripture, we have to reconstruct the cultural context in areas of communication, transportation, trade, agriculture, occupations, religion, perceptions of time, and so on. Archaeology proves helpful in this area.

Another problem we run into in interpreting Scripture is the variety of the terrain. If it were all mountains or desert or ocean, we could outfit ourselves appropriately and have at it. But the literary genres of the Bible are quite diverse and demand vastly different approaches. We can’t read the Song of Songs with
the same cold logic that we bring to Romans. We won’t get the point of the parables through the same exhaustive word studies that might unlock truths in Galatians.

Even though God Himself was working to communicate through the writers of Scripture, we still must contend with breakdowns in the communication process. As finite creatures, we can never know what is going on in someone else’s mind completely. As a result, we have to settle for limited objectives in our interpretation of Scripture.

“Have you ever felt shut out of understanding the Bible because you don’t know the languages in which they were originally written? You don’t have to feel that way any longer, thanks to the many extrabiblical resources that have been developed in recent years. . . [Here are some resources] to help you interpret Scripture accurately” (p. 205; also chart below).