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Welcome to Day 1444 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomNo Excuse 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 1444 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: No Excuse Bible Study·      Insight Seven: Deuteronomy 29:29 Is No Excuse for Intellectual Laziness in Bible StudyNo one likes to hear excuses. Whether it be your kids, your parents, your coworkers, or your friends, it’s downright annoying when people try to avoid problems and then make excuses for not doing what they know needs to be done. It’s something we all have to watch for in ourselves too—and in our Bible study. Deuteronomy 29:29 has, unfortunately, become the go-to verse for quitting when thinking gets hard in Bible study. It’s the verse that says: “The Lord, our God, has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions. Most people only know the first few words: “The Lord, our God, has secrets known to no one.” Dr. Heiser shares that as a professor and a Bible teacher in the church, he has heard those words often enough to be able to paraphrase their meaning whenever students of all varieties and circumstances use them. Here are some excuses: “No one really knows what that verse means, so can we move on to something more practical?” “I want my Bible to be simple. You’re making my head hurt.” “Are you going to ask us to explain that passage on an exam?” The irony here is that Deuteronomy 29:29 doesn’t mean that there are things in the Bible that are hard to figure out. Deuteronomy 29 is part of the conclusion of a long sermon by Moses about blessings or curses from God for obedience or disobedience. After talking about the need to obey God and how to avoid offending him, Moses punctuates his point with this verse. The point is not that God says things that are difficult to understand. It’s that concealed acts of sin are still known to God. He will punish them since He knows them. The revealed violations were the Israelites’ responsibility to punish. For our purposes, the point should be clear: Deuteronomy 29:29 is not about waving the white flag of surrender in Bible study. No one understands everything in the Bible, but a lot of hard passages do have coherent explanations. It’s our job to find them, not evade the work involved. ·      Insight Eight: When You Read About a Place in the Bible, Look Up What Happened ThereGeography can be interesting if...