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Welcome to Day 1554 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomBible Study \u2013 Communication and Word Meanings \u2013 Meditation MondayWelcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! Wisdom is the final frontier in gaining true knowledge. Our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, seek out discernment and insights, and boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; this is Gramps; thanks for coming along on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy Today is Day 1554 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\u2019s 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 our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our current insights are focusing on accurately interpreting the Bible. Today let us meditate on:
Bible Study \u2013 Communication and Word Meanings\xb7 Insight Fifty-One: Most Passages in the Bible Don\u2019t Have Three Points to Communicate
Here is what Dr. Heiser has to say about this insight. I\u2019ll admit it. I\u2019m taking a swipe at contemporary preaching. I\u2019m in a grumpy mood. But it\u2019s not just for personal satisfaction. It\u2019ll illustrate something important for Bible study. Honest.
As a Bible college student, I can recall marveling at the preacher\u2019s ability to produce three points from any biblical passage. It didn\u2019t matter how short or long the passage was: three points. You could throw Zephaniah or Obadiah at them: three points. I\u2019ve heard three-point sermons on one verse. In my freshman year of college, we were taught in a sermon prep class; every sermon must have three points and a poem.
As a young pastoral intern, we were required to preach for the pastors each week. I can recall casting aside passages in my Bible that I thought was fascinating or spiritually challenging because I wasn\u2019t clever enough to break it down into three points. I didn\u2019t see the inspired symmetry. Now I can see how ridiculous this was.
It dawned on me one day that the problem wasn\u2019t me. It was the artificial nature of what I was trying to do. The goal of Bible study should be to grasp the meaning of the text. Serious study of the Bible should produce people who can trace the text\u2019s argument or follow a theological breadcrumb trail through a book or section of the Bible. Working in a text means discerning its literary structure, intelligently created by the original authors to communicate to an audience that would have seen what they were doing.

If that sounds like work, it is. If you don\u2019t think Bible study is work, you aren\u2019t doing it. Serious Bible study requires spending time in the original text and learning the art of reading the Scripture as literature, because that\u2019s what it is. Biblical writers did not work without agendas or strategies. Their work isn\u2019t random. They were careful and deliberate about what they were writing. Inspiration isn\u2019t a synonym for amateur hour.
If the goal of Bible study is grasping the meaning of the text, the goal of preaching ought to be communicating that meaning. All too often, what happens in the pulpit isn\u2019t preaching the text\u2014 it\u2019s talking about the text. Any Bible student who has occasion to communicate their discoveries to someone else needs to know those enterprises are not the same. One is teaching the text. The other is transmitting your thoughts\u2014in three...