BROADCASTS.com

Chapter and verse divisions were inserted into our Bibles about 500 years ago. These relatively recent additions do provide a certain level of convenience. However, because of these numbers, many believers now view the Bible not as a continuous flow of thought but as a collection of sentences that we can cobble together or break apart according to our own whims. It is far too easy for Christians to focus on a single verse within a book of the Bible with no thought of the context for that verse. Though not as frequent as reading a single verse out of context, some entire chapters are divorced from their contexts. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a prime example. There is no doubt that this chapter is able to stand alone but the reader does miss something in divorcing the words from their surrounding context. Hebrews 11 is often called the "faith chapter" or the Bible's "Hall of Faith" and rightly so. The chapter is famous for its list of great men and women of faith from the pages of Scripture. However, readers must never forget that this list of heroes of the faith is not disconnected from what has just been written and what follows. To be sure, we can profit from reading this chapter in isolation from the book of Hebrews but we profit even more from understanding the intent of the author in writing these words at this particular point in the letter.