Better Bible Reading Podcast

Today on Giving an Answer: What does it mean to be all things to all people? 

The apostle Paul speaks of what it means to become “all things to all people” in this passage. This is a well-known mantra within Christianity, but a brief survey of the text is in order. The context of this passage comes in the preceding chapter of 1st Corinthians in which Paul establishes what it means to live within the ebb and flow of Christian freedom and Christian responsibility. Paul sets up his rationale of verses 19-23 of chapter 9 in the twelfth verse: “Nevertheless we have not made is of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the Gospel of Christ” (English Standard Version, 1 Cor. 9:12b). This verse parallels that of verse 19 where the apostle says, “I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some”.

The historical context of writing such a rationale of ministry comes in the wake of the Corinthian's struggle with partiality. This is evidenced throughout the epistle, where Paul repeatedly touches on aspects of the Corinthian’s problem with partiality, related to leadership (1:10-12), wisdom (3:1-4), and celibacy (7:1-2) to name a few. This resurfaces in our text in chapter 9 specifically in readdressing their partiality of leadership. Paul provides to the Corinthian’s his own ministry model, unimpressive as it may have been to them, in order to demonstrate that all freedoms taken as entitlements become obstacles in the way of the Gospel of Christ.

From a contemporary standpoint, this sets Christianity as an antithesis to the secular structure, where the highest positions experience the highest privileges. There are no white collars in Christianity, but only servant’s bonds, and Paul means to stress to our culture that Christians must never be willing to compromise the glory of Christ for comforts. Being “a servant to all” (i.e. enduring whatever trials necessary cf. 9:12) is not found in the contemporary prosperity gospel, where the message is to follow Jesus- so that the health wealth and prosperous privilege becomes the goal of the hearers and the model of the heralds. This is out of touch with the Paul who became all things to all people- even the weak, the Jew, and the Greek. Rather, authentic servanthood is the authentic standard of Christian leadership, with the end goal of winning all peoples and all varieties of persons to Christ.

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Naturalism denies the supernatural and elevates the autonomy of humanity. The problem with this is that it takes away all possibility of personal responsibility in laws and ethics. Today on culturology we see how the 'natural' progression from the false freedom of naturalism ultimately leads to a reinvention of the wheel in postmodernism, or the despair of nihilism. 

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Man Is A Responsible Being. When a person is tried in court for murder, the guilt or innocence of that person is described in terms of their responsibility. As a negative example, when the body of the murdered individual is found, the person who discovered the body thinks to themselves, “who is responsible for this death?” But in a more positive example, decreasing death rates in a crime-saturated town leads to the question, “who is responsible for this change?” Societies are preoccupied with addressing questions of responsibility, as they are the questions which must be answered if any society is to last. As such, different worldview adaptations have been proposed over the centuries as a way to view the world through the proper lense to foster the type of society to be desired.

One such worldview which rises to the occasion is that of naturalism. Naturalism, according to Carl Sagan is the view that “the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be” (Sire 68). That is to say, there is no other reality which can or should be considered besides that of the natural realm. Life in naturalism is as Sires puts it “the silence of finite space”. There is no voice from beyond to which man can look to for meaning.

The naturalistic worldview is very popular in academic circles. Naturalism is the lense by which the popularization of evolution took place, especially thanks to Charles Darwin. Because of the deep-rooted influence of this worldview in academia and the secular world, the question must be asked, on what basis does a naturalist believe man is a responsible being? To answer this question, a brief survey of naturalism and the logical conclusions as such will be analyzed briefly.

Naturalism teaches the eternality of the universe. While the mantra “nothing comes from nothing. Something is” seems to indicate that the eternality of the universe as expressed in naturalism speaks to time, it is better to understand this tenant of naturalism as speaking to authority. If the universe is eternal, then there is no authority or power that lies beyond or above the universe with the ability to speak into life objectively. Further, life cannot be considered ultimately as creation. Instead only matter exists, evolving and surviving in different expressions over time, forever and ever.

What then is the initial impact of this tenant when considering human responsibility? If the myth of objective authority found in other worldviews is finally put to rest, then all that remains in a purely materialistic world is that which exists as the supreme authority by means of evolution. In this case, that supreme authority is humanity. Yet at the same time, human beings are “simply a part of the cosmos”. This recognition indicates that the concept of responsibility is a moot point in naturalism, at least in the final analysis. Instead, naturalists are “a law to themselves” (Romans 2:14). For this reason, Sire asserts that the difference between naturalism and theism is this: “For a theist, God is the foundation of values. For a naturalist, values are constructed by human beings”.

What impact does this consideration have on society? Further, what impact does this consideration have on the responsibility of m

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After a month away, here is the June 2021 update on what's been going on in Kevin's life, as well as what to expect for the rest of 2021 on the Better Bible Reading Podcast!

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Writing your way through the Bible is the final step for better Bible reading. This step is all about learning to read with a pen in your hand!

I recognize that this step is perhaps confusing at first glance, because what we're talking about is conversing with the Bible. In my opinion, this is where it all comes together. Everything that we've been talking about so far comes together at this point, simply put conversing with our Bible, means reading with a pin or a pencil in hand. Some like to call this active reading. And I'm not the one who invented that idea, but we are going to approach it in a little bit of a different way than traditional active reading, because normally this step is responsive. It's something you do after you read. However, I find it most helpful to write while reading. And I want to encourage you to do this with a pen and not a keyboard, not because I'm against typing, but because the way you're going to converse will be best done with a pin in hand with a physical copy of God's word in hand, in order to do this, I want to recommend to you that you get a wide margin Bible.

Here's why have you ever come across a verse that you highlighted years ago in your study Bible or your regular Bible, and wonder why you highlighted it. Maybe you thought about trying to write something off in the side margin at the time, but there wasn't any room and your study Bible was already full of notes all over the place. So you just decided to highlight it and leave it alone. Well, having a wide margin Bible can help you with this because they are unique ways for us to track our reading progress. In our knowledge of the Bible. In essence, what a wide margin Bible is, is our own personal study Bible with a blank slate, waiting for us to write notes and arrows and highlights and whatever else it is that you want to do to converse with the text. As you read it, it also turns out that this is a great way to map your progress through certain books of the Bible.

For example, I purchased my first wide margin Bible several years back, and I used it as my Bible for slow and steady reading over time. Several books of the Bible have notes and highlights on every page. While on the flip side, I also have several books that are left blank. What this does. It actually allows me to see my progress in real time. If I come up a book that has a bunch of notes and highlights, I know that I've spent time in that book. Whereas if I find a book that has nothing written there, that tells me what book I have left to deal with, at least at first glance. And this is an excellent way to trace my reading progress. Let's say that a verse in Romans comes to mind. I decide that I want to study it at this point. I could grab my study Bible and look at the notes from other people, but I could also pick up my own wide margin Bible and see my previous interaction with that verse. We wouldn't run into the issue. Like I mentioned earlier of coming across a highlighted passage that you had from several years ago and trying to figure out why you highlighted it because in a wide margin Bible, you would have made use of that wide margin to write down notes, to associate an idea with your highlight.

You might actually find that what you wrote months or years ago can help you today, which is very fascinating. There's so much more that could be said about the idea of conversing with the Bible. But I find that it is one of the most neglected aspects of reading because not many people have that wide margin Bible, but because they're so accessible, everyone should have one because one of the greatest ways that you can put steps, one through five into practice is by this final

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More Bibles, more options. Step 5 in how to be a better Bible reader is all about supplementing! And while we talked last time about expanding the books we read in the Bible, we will now talk about  supplementing the kind of Bible(s) we use!

After expanding the question might come up, but what else is there to do? And that's what step number five is all about. Supplementing. I hope that so far, you're really seeing the value of opening up possibilities for how you read the Bible. This next step is similar to our previous one, except we're talking about expanding in a different way. We're moving from expansion of content to expansion of platform, which I like to call supplementation. So here's another fact for you. The average American who owns at least one Bible actually owns three or four Bibles. So if you have one Bible, you have more than one, most likely this could include the ones that are scattered throughout your house vehicle, or even electronic Bibles, which we all have access to. If you're listening to this and chances are that these Bibles are different from one another.

I highly doubt you have the same exact Bible in multiple copies. You might have a King James version and an NIV Bible. You might have a single column Bible and a study Bible, but here's what I want you to know. More Bibles equals more options. There are hundreds of different types of Bibles. And while it's true that some aren't so good either by type or translation, most Bibles are very good. And if you have multiple types of Bibles, my encouragement to you is to supplement that is making use of all of them. If you don't have a Bible, or if you only have one Bible and find a good Bible and follow that process by finding more good Bibles. So for example, let's pick up on all of our conversations. We've had previous to this and build on them. Study Bible is good for books of the Bible that are unfamiliar to you, such as Leviticus.

A study Bible is going to have notes from somebody who has spent dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours studying that particular book, someone who can help you understand what you're reading. I like to think of study Bibles like a mini class or a sermon that's attached to the page. They aid your reading of the Bible. The notes and insights are helpful to all of them, but they shouldn't be the only way that we read the Bible just as a Sunday morning class or a sermon, shouldn't be our own experience with the Bible study. Bibles should not be our only experience, but they're a great experience for a different type of reading experience. You could do the opposite of what a study Bible has. You can actually find a Bible that not only doesn't have notes, but even hides chapter numbers, verse numbers, and paragraph headings for a reading experience that's left with just the text of scripture itself.

A great example of this is the ESV reader's Bible, which I absolutely love. This helps you for larger portions of scripture. If you're wanting to read an entire book of the Bible in one sitting, for example, you're not going to get distracted with study notes and verse numbers and highlights. And what once might've seen too complicated. If you're trying to do this all with one Bible becomes much more easier and logical. When you expand into using multiple kinds of Bibles. Another thing that sets Bibles apart is the kind of translation. If you've supplemented your Bible type supplement your Bible translation, you'll be surprised how much of your knowledge of the Bible will be increased if you start being acquainted with John three 16, not only in the King James version, but also the

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Peter describes our salvation as being brought out of darkness into His marvelous light. What does that transition describe, and how should we live as people brought out of darkness? Today we continue chapter 2 in our study of 1st Peter. This is Teaching Thursdays with Kevin Morris on the Better Bible Reading Podcast!

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Should Christians observe the sabbath? Today we talk about how and why we should understand the Sabbath as an ongoing practice of the Church's obedience to the 4th commandment today.

This particular question about the observance of the Sabbath has become especially close to home for me lately, since I have transitioned into the PCA denomination over the last year. This Presbyterian denomination by and large is Sabbatarian, that is, upholds an observance of the Sabbath day. In my own experience, I have seen that most Christians do uphold the Sabbath; the question is normally not whether one observes the Sabbath, but how and to what extent should the Sabbath be observed. In this light, answers are all over the map! I have found the book "Call the Sabbath A Delight" by Walter Chantry to be highly influential and helpful to this topic as I have considered this whole question over the past several years with great sobriety.

One of the main occurrences in the New Testament has to do with Jesus' own words concerning the Sabbath: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath." (English Standard Version, Mark 2:27-28). In this brief but powerful statement, Jesus identifies the Sabbath's effect in terms of its mandate in the creative order, as Chantry points out: "Our Saviour and Teacher clearly understood that 'the Sabbath was made' at creation, not at the institution of the Mosaic covenant or the Abrahamic arrangement [...] At creation week he revealed that it would bring blessing to man." (55).

Christians have also employed a hermeneutic that sees Jesus' own words of the two great commandments as a summary of the Ten Commandments- have to do with 1. loving God and 2. loving our neighbors. If we are to maintain this hermeneutic, it seems inconsistent to say that of the Ten Commandments, nine of them are binding and one has been disregarded! In another great OT/NT correlation, the author of Hebrews 4:7-10 does say rather clearly "there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God", and this conclusion stands in stark contrast of what the author of Hebrews takes liberty to identify as points of discontinuity in the OT/NT, such as cleansing rites of purification (Heb. 9.10). Hebrews becomes especially helpful as a test case, due to all of the Old Testament quotations that are present in the writer's development of doctrine. If ever there was a book that should make mention of the Sabbath's discontinuity for the NT, it would be Hebrews! However, this is not the case, which does seem to suggest that there are exegetical reasons to see the Sabbath as that which is upheld, not that which is overthrown as a relic of the past.

Although Chantry does list many negatives of observing the Sabbath (what one should not be occupied with), he focuses primarily on the positive implications of the Sabbath, focusing on the delight and joy of the day which is to be spent worshiping and enjoying the Lord. Meditating on the Sabbath being to the LORD (Ex. 20.8-11), Chantry has this to say: "This is not a narrow or restrictive requirement. A heart that loves the Lord will leap for joy at the prospect of a day with him" (20).

As a brief but helpful articulation of what Chantry has in mind, the Westminster Confession of Faith (the statement of Faith used within the PCA) gives word to how one should keep the Sabbath:

"This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but a

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All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16). If that's true, our Bible reading should be an anything and everything approach. Today I share Step 4 for Better Bible Reading- Expansion!

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Do we need a historical Adam? The pressure for the promotion of evolutionary views of the Bible is ever increasing, and along with it is a denial of a historical person named Adam who existed in Genesis 1. Today we uncover why this is denial is not only an attack on faithful biblical interpretation, but even on the gospel itself.

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Step 3 of my 6 steps for better Bible reading is all about organization. If we want to know how to read the Bible, we must organize our lives to make sure we leave room for what matters most. This means making a schedule for Bible reading just like we do for the essentials: eating, sleeping and hygiene. And just like the essentials, when life happens we must be willing find a way to adjust our schedule to make room for what matters.

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