Scripture Study, not Sunday School Pins
by Billy Strother
My moment of greatest embarrassment in the pulpit occurred in an interim ministry while serving a church in Atlanta, Georgia. About 15 years ago I was in the middle of preaching a sermon. A contemporary church, the lights were down, but there was still light enough that I could see the audience clearly. There was a tiny little bird-like elderly woman sitting on the front row. She was playing with her cell phone. I am preaching, and she is rapidly thumbing her phone. The more I preached, the more she played with her phone. It was so distracting! Finally, I was having no more of it. I broke from the sermon and addressed her directly in front of all.
I said (pretending it was a question), “Ma’am, could you please stop playing with your phone?” She answered, “Dr. Billy, I am not playing here.” Confused, I retorted, “Then what are you doing?” She answered, “You said something earlier in the sermon that was so interesting and profound that I been searching for more information on what you said. It was so exciting!”
Eat crow much? Ugh ... I got what I deserved. The lesson? “Don’t beat up on old ladies for studying during your sermon!” Don’t be that guy! Since that day, I have encouraged people to bring their smart phones and tablets as a study tool during the sermon.
Study of the Bible is a spiritual discipline, an inward discipline. In his work Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster argues:
... study should be distinguished from meditation. Meditation is devotional; study is analytical ... Although meditation and study often overlap, they constitute two distinct experiences. Study provides a certain objective framework within which meditation can successfully function.
Reading the Bible devotionally and studying the Bible are two related, but differing experiences.
The Apostle Paul, imprisoned in Rome and soon to be executed, wrote Timothy, a young church leader. In his second letter, Paul wrote, (here is my own literal translation from the Greek), Be eager to prove yourself standing alongside of God, a worker unashamed cutting straight the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). “Rightly dividing” is the beautiful but dated KJV phrase for “cutting straight.” Those who study the Word need not be ashamed; it is a shame for a disciple to not study the Word, and a lost opportunity for spiritual growth for that disciple.
Study is more than meditation. Study takes a deep dive into a passage, a book, a series of books (like the 12 Minor Prophets), or a testament of the Bible. We are familiar with the phrase “the truth shall make you free.” Secular culture has picked up the phrase as if it is an interrogation technique for amateur detectives to draw veracity from persons who have a penchant for prevarications (liars). But when one studies the context and the passage, there is targeted meaning to the phrase.
“The truth shall make you free.” Those are Jesus’s words. Here is John 8:31-32 taken all together:
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (NASB).
The passage is aimed at studying and living out the Word of God in your daily life. In verse 31, the word translated as “continue” literally means “to remain, to stand fast, to stay at home.” In verse 32, the word translated as “know” literally means “to discern, to recognize.” When the verses are studied together and perceived clearly, living out the Word and knowing it through that experience is truth; it is not just the truth, but “knowing” the truth as a lived experience is what makes us free.
We cannot know the truth well unless we study the Word. The more we live the Word, the more freedom we experience. Yet, we cannot live what we do not know. Therefore, study becomes a critical spiritual discipline ... if one harbors the desire to continue to grow spiritually in Christ.
How should we study? There is no one way. A myriad of tools exist: commentaries, software, books, magazines, study Bibles, podcasts, webinars, online sermons, formal and informal Bible lessons, classes for credit and classes with no credit, and the list rolls on. Reading devotionally is not study. Study takes tools and concentration. Sometimes something as simple as a brief study guide may be helpful.
As a leader, where would I tell a new Christian to start? I would encourage a simple commentary (book, e-book, or online) and the Gospel of John. That commentary is going to fill in what we call “biblical backgrounds” since none of us have lived in first century Palestine. A solid commentary that goes verse-by-verse or passage-by-passage will fill in the background and help us with meaning. The scholars have already done that hard work. Why the encouragement to start with the Gospel of John? Two reasons: 1) John begins, by no accident, with the words, In the beginning; and 2) it’s all about Jesus. The Gospel of John is the Genesis of the New Testament.
One of the saddest church things I ever experienced occurred in my first ministry. My first church as preacher was established 75 years before I got there and had an average worship attendance of 75 on Sundays. The average age of those 75 church members? You guessed it – 75! One of the adult Sunday school teachers got sick and I did not find out until early that Sunday when I arrived at church. There was an elderly member there who wore the same suit to church every Sunday morning. Not because he was poor, but because of that with which he adorned that suit: pins. In that congregation, for decades, a lapel pin was given to each church member who had not missed a Sunday class for a whole year, not once in 52 weeks—perfect Sunday school attendance. Each year there was lapel pin ceremony in January. This church member had pinned to his lapel, not one or two, but 50 pins—50 years of perfect Sunday school attendance! He had pins on his suit lapels, suit pockets, suit chest, suit sleeves, and even down the legs of his suit pants. Both he and the suit were saggy!
I looked at him dragging his pins around and ran up to him. I said, “We are down a Sunday school teacher this morning. Would you please go into that class and teach something, anything from the Bible to that class this morning?” He said, flatly, “No I can’t do that.” I was taken back by the abruptness. I answered back, “Why not?” He said, “Because I do not know enough about the Bible.” Then he walked away. How do you got to 50 years of 52 Sundays annually of Sunday School and not know the Bible? That seemed impossible to me. In a short few months of Sundays with him, I came to find out that he proved the impossible — he proved by way of meanness in church that he really did not know the Bible, particularly the words in red.
When Jesus was first tempted by Satan to break his fast by turning stones into bread, Jesus said to Satan, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,'” (Matthew 4:4). Besides quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, Jesus was also alluding to other Scriptures about the palpable delight of God’s Word like Jeremiah 15:16, “Your words were found and I ate them, and Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart” (NASB).
I think I would rather eat the bread of life than collect Sunday school pins.
