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Bible Study Notes

Bible Study and Reading plan

patricia grace

 

Just finished a 25 Day plan of reading through the entire Bible! It was a great experience to get an overview of the Word of God and to see the powerful hand of God at work in His creation and to see the MANY examples of His mercy and patience with fallen man. The 25 day reading plan is found here: 25 Day Plan  This was made with college students in mind, to be completed over their Christmas holiday break. My Sunday school teacher has asked me to bring in a copy, so I’m working on updating it with current dates. I’ll post it here if I remember. [Update: I made a 35 Day Bible Reading Plan. You can find a link to it on the Resources page or just go directly to the Google Doc page.]

Neither the plan creator nor I would advocate only completing a quick read through of the Bible, but it was beneficial as part of a larger reading plan.

For the rest of 2020, I am planning to follow a chronological reading plan (One plan is linked here: Chronological Bible Reading Plan ).  As I go through the Bible, I plan to record insights on this blog but I wanted to use this separate post to explain my goals and process.

  • Each book and chapter will be both tagged and have separate categories made.
  • As I learn more about a passage, I may go back and edit the original post, so that I may keep the insights of a particular passage together. I’m going to make new posts as I go and use categories and tags to group similar subjects instead of adding on to the original posts.
  • I’m studying the Bible with a chronological plan, so my posts may not follow the canonical order of books.
  • I’m a participant in other Bible studies, outside of my personal study, that are currently studying New Testament epistles. So, some posts may jump ahead to the New Testament if choose to record what I’m learning in those other study groups. That’s why I’ll make sure to use Categories and Tags for each book to make searching easier later.
  • The insights will be primarily from my personal study of the Word of God. I like using commentaries, but my goal is to gather insights from reading and asking God for knowledge and wisdom first, before I read the commentaries. I am thankful to God for faithful, knowledgeable Bible teachers. He has given the spiritual gift of teaching to some for the building up of the body of Christ, so we are wise to pay attention to good teachers. However, as with the Bereans, see Acts 17:11 , we must know the Scriptures ourselves in order to be armed against error and to build up our powers of discernment, by the grace of God.
  • As I record the insights of others, I will properly credit other sources used in my study.
  • I do all this writing, reading, and studying prayerfully, remembering that we make plans but it is God Who establishes all things. Prov 16:9
  • I am doing this as part of an overall goal to be more disciplined. I was delighted to finish the 25 day reading plan; I even finished a day early! I don’t often follow through with my plans, however, and that’s something I would like to change. I want to be more disciplined in posting and studying to the glory of God.

What are your goals for reading and studying the Word of God this year? May God bless you in all your efforts!

[Edit: Well, I definitely dropped the ball on this plan! I suppose my own goal is to be more faithful in recording my Scripture insights here!]

Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. – Prov 16:3 ESV

May God bless you in all you do for His glory. Happy New Year!

 

Bible Study Notes

Imperishable and Precious Beauty

patricia grace

red water lily

I’ve been studying the book of 1 Peter for the past couple of weeks. A major theme of the book is suffering and the letter also has several things to say about submission. Submission is about as popular a topic as suffering to our fleshly nature. Yet, my study has yielded some delightful findings. 

While suffering and trials are a big theme here, the descriptions of God and His work throughout Peter’s epistle instill hope and joy, words like: living, imperishable, undefiled, unfading, precious, holy, pure, abiding, chosen, good, gracious.

A couple of adjectives in particular caught my eye this week– “imperishable” and “precious”. These words and their synonyms run through Peter’s letter. I’d made notes about how the words were used to describe things like “our inheritance” (1 Peter 1:4), the “word of God” (1 Peter 1:23), “faith” (1 Peter 1:7), and the “blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19). What I hadn’t noticed before is that the same (or similar) words are used to describe the “beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” with which women are called to adorn themselves. Not only does God tell us that the beauty of that gentle and quiet spirit is “very precious”, but He describes it with the same term (“imperishable”) used to describe such lofty and wonderful things as the Word of God and our eternal inheritance. 

Being a wife, the verses beginning in chapter three always stand out to me. In the first verse here, we read the command to wives to “be subject to your own husbands”. (1 Peter 3:1). I’ve seen both the world and professing Christians get tripped up on that verse. If you do any web searches on the meaning of the verse,  you will find folks falling all over themselves to explain what the verse doesn’t mean (“It’s not about subservience! It’s not about women being inferior!”). You may, as I have, heard it taught with what seems like reluctance from a pulpit. It’s as though Christians feel they need to excuse commands that clash with worldly, fleshly philosophy. But, looking closely at these verses about the godly behavior of wives, we see how much God values the beauty of a gentle and submissive heart.

red water lily

The beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit is said to be very precious “in God’s sight”. In this epistle, “a living stone” (which is Christ) is also said to be precious “in the sight of God” (1 Peter 2:4). So, that beautiful spirit of believing wives is brought into likeness with no trifling thing, but rather to things glorious and eternal and to the Person of King Jesus.

However, cultivating this adornment is no light matter. Usually, when I read the verse about being subject to my husband, I’m reminded of how I fall short of this command. I pray for God to change my heart and to help me submit to my husband. When I read 1 Peter 3:4, I long to have that abiding “gentle and quiet spirit”. Even in writing this post I have been tempted to reply harshly when I felt that my husband was interrupting me! How slow I am to learn!

As difficult as submission may seem though, we believing wives have a great privilege in making ourselves beautiful with this precious ornament and outfitting ourselves with this unfading, imperishable robe. In Christ we have victory and can count on His faithful process of sanctification. We are His workmanship and if we are trusting in Him then we cannot fail. (see also Phil 1:6, Eph 2:10, Lamentations 3:22-23). 

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious [timios, G5093] and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 peter 1:3-4 ESV, emphasis added.)

There is no mistaking the value to God of this adornment of women who belong to Him. We certainly don’t need to apologize to the world for such things.

Images by Couleur from Pixabay

I thought I should add that the word “precious” found in the ESV is not always from the same Greek word in the original manuscripts. I attached a pdf table below to further your own research. You can find an interlinear Bible at blb.org (Blue Letter Bible).

Table_imperishable