Bible study is one of my favorite pastimes.  We are blessed to live in an era when all sorts of tools are available that make research fairly easy, and much less tedious than ever before.  They also make it much more dangerous.  It is easy for me to read a commentary, lexicon, or Bible dictionary and suddenly think I have become a great scholar, when the truth is, not only am I not instantly a Hebrew or Greek scholar, I am not even a good English scholar!

Some of us studied Latin in high school and learned why it is called a “dead” language—it is no longer spoken and therefore no longer changes.  A living language changes every day.  Take the word “silly.”  We know it means “absurd, foolish or stupid.”  Did you know that it originally meant “happy and blessed?”  How about “lewd?”  It now means “sexually unchaste;” originally it meant “a common person as opposed to clergy.”  “Idiot” now has the specific meaning of “someone whose mental age does not exceed three,” and a colloquial meaning of “a foolish or stupid person.”  Originally it meant “someone in private station as opposed to someone holding public office.”  So five hundred years ago, most of us could have been described as silly, lewd idiots and we would not have taken offense!

The same changes are true of every language, including Greek and Hebrew.  When you search for meanings in a lexicon, be sure you find out what meaning the word had when it was written in the scriptures.  In fact, that is why I usually limit my studies to the various ways a word was translated into English.  Psallo once meant “to pull out one’s hair,” but by the time Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 were written it had gone through several changes and simply meant “to sing praises.”  That is why we sing to God instead of standing before Him pulling out our hair!

Another thing to be careful of is root words.  A lot of arguments have been made based on the root of a Greek word.  Let me just give you a quick example in English to show you how dangerous this can be.  Do you know what the root word for “nice” is?  The Latin nescius.  Nescius means “ignorant!”  Think about that the next time someone tells you how nice you look on Sunday morning.

We do all sorts of other things that we think are so smart and really are not.  We talk about compound words as if just knowing the two parts to one will instantly enlighten us to the real meaning of a Greek word.  Not necessarily.  How about “pineapple?”  The bush certainly does not look like a pine, and the fruit neither looks, tastes, nor smells like an apple!  Truly, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Then there are those simplistic definitions we often use.  “Faithful means full of faith.”  Really?  Ask someone whose spouse has been “unfaithful” what that word means and you are much more likely to get an accurate and useful definition.

And what does all this have to do with anything?  God chose to use His written word to communicate His will to us.  I need to be very careful how I use it.  Translations are fine.  Jesus used one—the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed about 200 BC.  However, I must be careful in my study lest I think that learning a few things makes me an authority.  I know it is a cliché, but it is so true—the more I learn, the more I realize I do not know.  But God has made sure I know what I need to know.

We have in our hands the Words of Life.  Be careful with them. 

…many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.  Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would you also go away?  Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  John 6:66-68

Dene Ward

(This will make a lot of more sense to you if you go to http://flightpaths.weebly.com/2/post/2012/08/bussenwuddy.html, and read it first.)

I told you awhile back about our first overnight with our grandson Silas.  It was fun, it was sweet, it was exhilarating, and it was a little frustrating at times when we weren’t sure what he wanted. 

The “bussenwuddy” nearly got us.  Luckily I had cared enough to listen to the things he talked about to recognize “Buzz” and “Woody” from the Toy Story DVD.  Good thing I was the one listening.  Buzz and Woody could have been next door neighbors as far as Keith was concerned.  When you are profoundly deaf, you don’t casually pick up on bits and pieces of conversation or those things “everyone knows.”  You don’t immediately recognize words for all that.  No wonder he was lost.

How well do you hear God?  Even if you recognize the words, do you know enough to make the correct associations and figure things out?  I know people do not know their Bible enough to be familiar with apocalyptic language when they turn the beautiful promises of the book of Revelation into some futuristic Armageddon between political nations (which, have you noticed, change with every generation’s “interpretation,” which ought to tell them something).  I know they don’t care enough to study carefully the entire communication God gave to us when they come up with ideas a real disciple can shoot holes through with half a dozen scriptures off the tip of his tongue.

But how are we doing?  I hear more faulty exegesis from brethren these days than I do from my neighbors.  Taking things literally that are obviously hyperboles simply because they cannot comprehend a Lord who cared enough to come as one of us, speaking as one of us, including the use of hyperboles and humorous comparisons; refusing to see the obvious parallels between elements of the new covenant and those of the old because they have decided that “nailed to the cross” means don’t ever even look at the Old Testament again, much less study it; spending so much time fighting the heresies of mainstream denominationalism that they miss the important fundamentals of a sure hope and a grace beyond measure—these are just a few of the problems.

What do you think of when you read “Christ in you, the hope of glory” Col 1:27?  Does the Shekinah even cross your mind, that physical manifestation of God’s glory that dwelt over the mercy seat?  Or is it just another “bussenwuddy” that eludes you, and robs you of a greater, more magnificent promise than you ever imagined?  I could go on.

Knowing God’s word, not just superficially, but deeply, can lead to a greater understanding and a more heartfelt faith.  Facts may seem cold, but without them you are missing a lot.  You cannot make connections.  You cannot take your understanding to a deeper level.  You cannot see parallels and applications that will make your life more acceptable to your Father.

Take the time to learn those facts.  How do you think you will ever come to a better knowledge of God if you don’t know what He said?  All it will be is a “bussenwuddy” on deaf ears.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:11-14

Dene Ward

We had our first opportunity for an overnight with Silas a few months ago.  It was better than a trip to Disneyworld, better than a vacation in an exotic place, better than dinner in a five star restaurant, better than just about anything you could possibly think of.  Do I sound like a doting grandmother yet?

When he woke the next morning, he remembered that it was the two of us who put him in the crib the night before and he called out, “Granddad!  Grandma!”  And there was that smiling face and those big blue eyes under a head full of tousled blond curls. 

My one concern that weekend was understanding what he was saying.  He has been talking since he was one, but sometimes in a language we can’t quite figure out.  It sounds for all the world like a real tongue.  It comes complete with hand motions and facial expressions and he is quite fluent in it.  Unfortunately, we aren’t.

The last year he has gained more English and less of his personal argot.  For two years old, as he was then, he had quite a vocabulary.  We were looking at a book about shapes, and he pointed to one and said, “That’s an oval.”  I hadn’t quite gotten over the shock of that when he added, “And that’s a rhombus.”  I quickly flipped through my own mental file card, trying to remember that one from high school math classes. 

That morning after we got him out of bed, he turned to me and said, “Can I have bussenwuddy?”

I was stumped.  Maybe I didn’t hear right, I thought.  So I asked, “Bussenwuddy?”

His little eyes brightened and he started jumping in my lap.  “Yes, yes!  Bussenwuddy!”

Okay, now what?  Bussenwuddy...  I flipped through those file cards in my mind once again.  What have I heard him talking about that sounds like bussenwuddy?

Finally it came to me.  “Buzz and Woody?” 

Another excited little bounce.  “Yes, yes!  Bussenwuddy.  Can I?”  He wanted to watch the Toy Story DVD.  I felt like a successful grandmother--I had figured out what my two year old grandchild wanted.  Do you think anyone but a grandparent would have tried so hard?

God is trying to talk to us every day.  He has put it down in black and white.  All we have to do is pick it up and read it.  Some of us won’t even be bothered with that.  Then there are the ones that will pick it up, but then put it back down in frustration.  “I can’t understand this.”  Well, how hard are you willing to try?

I have had women leave my classes because “They’re too much work.”  Keith has had people complain about his classes because, “They’re too deep.”  Really?  I would be embarrassed to say such a thing if I had been a Christian for two decades or more. 

Don’t I care enough about my Father in Heaven to put a little effort into it?  It isn’t that He expects us all to be scholars, who love to put our noses in books for hours on end.  But He does expect us to care enough to spend a little time at it.  He expects us to be willing to push ourselves some. 

No, it isn’t all as simple as, “Do this,” or “Do that.”  Sometimes He throws a bussenwuddy in there (Matt 13:10-13; 2 Pet 3:16).  But if you really care about communicating with your Father, if talking to Him really excites you, if He is the most important thing in your life, then you will exercise that file card memory of yours and flip through it occasionally, striving (a word that denotes effort, by the way) to learn what He expects of you. 

You don’t have to be a genius with a photographic memory, but you do have to love your Father enough to be willing to work at building a relationship with Him.  Pick up your Bible today, and show Him how much He means to you.

And he said to me, "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. For you are not sent to a people of foreign speech and a hard language, but to the house of Israel-- not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to such, they would listen to you. But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart.

Ezekiel 3:4-7

Dene Ward