TIP of the day: Keeping your Bible Study fresh

1. Create a clipping file of suggested questions, comparisons, exercises et. al. that you run into in your readings. You need to capture them as you run into them because there is no good search argument to find them. For example,

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Open up virtually any biblical commentary written before the 16th century; then look at the discussion of that same passage in virtually any commentary written after 1870. The differences are so significant that a beginning student may well wonder if these two commentaries are actually speaking about the same biblical text. I can think of no better way to begin to think about the role of history and historical criticism in theological interpretation than to perform this exercise.

Stephen E. Fowl, Theological Interpretation of Scripture, Cascade Companions (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009), 15.

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Auditory Exercise
Perform this exercise in small groups or individuals may tape their responses. The task is to describe certain nouns used often in preaching as sounds. There are no wrong answers other than dull descriptions.

    •      If you could hear God’s voice how would it sound?
    •      Choose and describe the sound(s) of one of the listed words: peace, hate, love, disappointment, healing, joy, hunger, relief, resurrection
    •      Select a text and prepare a three- to five-minute sermon focusing on the word and sounds. The intent is for preachers to practice auditorally connecting with listeners as well as deepening imagery in sermons. The preacher is able to “listen” to his or her own voice and make modifications to intonation that does not express the sound, emotion, impact of the specified words.


Teresa L. Fry Brown, Delivering the Sermon: Voice, Body, and Animation in Proclamation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 45.

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Compare these passages from Lamentations and Jeremiah: 1:2 (Jer. 30:14); 1:15 (Jer. 8:21); 1:16; 2:11 (Jer. 9:1, 18); 2:22 (Jer. 6:25); 4:21 (Jer. 49:12). The same compassion, sympathy, and grief over Judah’s downfall are evident in both books.

Bruce Wilkinson and Kenneth Boa, Talk Thru the Bible (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1983), 207.

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The barren woman motif provides a good illustration of how Israel’s experience, and therefore perspective, were capable of differing from those of humankind at large. Generally speaking, many barren women have never experienced the joy of childbirth, but in the history of God’s covenant people barren women were often the Lord’s instruments in fulfilling His promises and delivering His people. God miraculously allowed barren Sarah (Gen. 11:30) to have a son, even though by her own admission she was “worn out” (18:12). Other barren women who gave birth to important figures in Israel’s history were Rebekah (25:21), Rachel (29:31), Samson’s mother (Judg. 13:2–3), and Hannah (1 Sam. 1–2). With this tradition in view, it is little wonder that the author of Psalm 113 reminded the Lord’s servants that their God “settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children” (v. 9).

Roy B. Zuck, A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, electronic ed. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991), 274–275.

2. To do the first, set up a Bible with two commentaries in a linked set (when possible):

3. To do the auditory exercise, use Logos in your normal way to develop the short sermon.

4. For the last two, Logos does not have really great support for the comparison of disparate texts but you  could:

• use a note with multiple attachment points to record your observations
• use a harmony format personal book to hold the passages in parallel.; it would be fantastic if the Passage List had a parallel passage mode.