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Ink Blot Bible Class
How much preparation have you made for Bible class this Sunday? Maybe you are reading this and thinking, “I don’t teach a Bible class.” My question is still, “How much preparation have you made?”
If I am off-base in your case, please forgive me, but my impression of what often happens in Bible class goes something like the following. Several people show up and open their Bibles to a passage which begins where the class left off the previous Sunday. Few in the class have had their Bibles open to this spot at any time during the week. The teacher reads the passage under discussion and makes some comments, and members of the class react to it.
“React” is the key word here. The Bible is read, and then people start talking about “what this passage means to me” as though God’s word was some sort of Rorschach test or word-association exercise. No study, no work; a plethora of opinions, suppositions, and I’ve-always-thoughts.
On the Apostle Paul’s second missionary journey, he encountered opposition to his preaching in Thessalonica from some who sought to turn him over to the civil authorities with the claim, “They all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar…” (Acts 17:7). A sharp contrast between those accusers and the Bereans is found a few verses later: “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
The Greek verb translated “examining” in this passage is used sixteen times in the New Testament, often carrying with it the idea of an examination of a witness or evidence in a legal proceeding. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon says the word, anakrino, means “to investigate, examine, inquire into, scrutinize, sift, question; specifically in a forensic sense of a judge to hold an investigation.”
The clear lesson to be drawn, the very reason the nobility of the Bereans is mentioned, is that God wants people to study, to dig, to work, to devote time, to exert effort in finding out what He commands. What I think or feel matters not. What matters is what mattered to the Bereans – whether what I think or feel is so. If it is not so, there is an adjustment due to be made to my thinking or feeling.
So long as we approach Bible class as some sort of group therapy read-and-react exercise, we will learn more about each other than we will about God and what He expects. When we approach it as an examination of the message Jehovah God has sent, we will have the opportunity to be “corrected” and “trained” and “equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).
