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Welcome to Day 1439 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomThe Goals of Bible Study – Meditation MondayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1439 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.  We are continuing a new series this week on Meditation Monday, which will focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our first few insights will focus on study habits to build a strong foundation. Today let us meditate on: The Goal of Bible Study·      Insight Five: Insist on Being a Slave to the Text – Let it be Your MasterDr. Heiser has been in academia for almost thirty years, both as a graduate student and a professor. He has spent time in both Christian and secular institutions. His Christian experience taught him the fundamentally important lesson of having a high view of Scripture. Treat it as God’s Word. Dr. Heiser’s secular years taught him a lesson just as valuable, and one that he didn't find consistently in a Christian context: be a slave to the text. In his secular experience, being a slave to the text meant that you shouldn't bring prior commitments to the biblical text you’re studying. Theological ideas about how the text came about or how it might be understood to achieve a theological outcome should be left behind. The text is all that matters. Theological commitments are irrelevant and, in fact, impediments to understanding. This is, of course, what one would expect in a secular institution. They aren’t seminaries. However, there’s a bit of a flaw in this understanding. Objectivity is a myth. No one can jettison all preconceptions about something, no matter what the context. The secular scholar has presupposition of his or her own that crouch in the mind, ready to influence interpretation. We all should be aware of that, so take that part with a grain of salt. But don’t lose the lesson here. The text is all that matters, so we must let the text take us wherever it leads. Ironically, despite the pervading belief in inspiration, I don’t see this principle consistently practiced in Christian academia. True, any given seminary has, and needs to have, certain theological commitments, but those theological commitments should not be the basis of judging scholarship or handing out grades. Rather, professors should be forthright. They should have well- informed exegetical arguments for their positions (presumably those of the school) but should be honest with the text. They should admit that, given other interpretations about the Hebrew or Greek grammar and word usage here and there, the conclusions drawn from a passage could be different. To hide those possibilities or manipulate the text to your “obvious” conclusions is dishonest. So it should be with personal Bible study. The text is what is inspired, and nothing else. Loyalty to God's Word means...