Enjoying the Bible for All Its Worth

Starting tonight I have the privilege and joy of teaching our 3-week crash course in practical hermeneutics, starting tonight, at Foothills Community Church: Enjoying the Bible for All Its Worth

(6:30pm at our building ; let me know if you want to come join us!)

I designed the course to be helpful for any and all Bible readers (even for those who don’t yet read it!) It should be beneficial for those who have plunged the depths of its truth for years as well as those still looking for that dusty Book on their bookshelf. All will benefit, and as Kari and my pastor remind me, I will attempt to "put the cookies on the bottom shelf."

My hope is that the five dozen people attending think and feel with God. And that I talk less and less as the first, second and third weeks come. At the start I will be talking more, and then we will move to all of us doing Bible interpretation and application to our lives.

My prayer is that it will be God speaking, and not me.

Here’s the (albeit a bit aggressive) general table of contents we’ll be tracking with starting tonight. Not all will be covered (e.g., the appendices), and more to follow in the next couple of weeks.

• Enjoyment is Not Optional
• Enjoying God
• Enjoying the Bible
  • How Much is the Bible Worth?
  • What is the Bible About?
  • The Story—Understanding the Story Line of the Bible
    • OT: Promises Made
    • NT: Promises Kept
  • What Challenges do we face when Reading Our Bibles?
  • Bible Reading as a Lifestyle
  • I-O-U-S
• Hermeneutics 101
  • The Importance Of Hermeneutics
  • Context
  • The Time Challenge of Interpreting the Bible
  • Allowing the Author + Text to Speak
  • Meaning Flows from the Top Down
    • Levels for understanding
    • 6 Steps for Understanding the Bible
      • A Method Of Hermeneutics
        • 1. Identify the genre of the biblical passage
        • 2. Read the Bible book for the big picture
        • 3. Determine the structure (or outline) of the Bible book
        • 4. Make observations about the book or passage
        • 5. Meditate on the book or passage and upon your observations, and interpret the meaning of the passage
        • 6. Apply the passage to your own life (seeing how it relates to other people especially)
  • Bible Genres
• Appendix (definitions, notes on a Bible reading plan, and some short articles for further reading)

Lots of illustrations/diagrams in the notebooks, and plenty of room to take notes. We’ll be getting into some texts ourselves to see how to both understand (think) and enjoy (feel) God’s thoughts after Him.

We’ll also be diving into a few texts, one of them being James 1:2-4 .

Open Bibles, open minds and hearts. God, help us to read Your Word well and see the worth, work and ways of Jesus through every page.