Pastor Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle and nearly 5,000 congregants participated in Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience.
Hear what he has to say about this experience, leading the church through the New Testament and their plans for continued reading in the future.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/wYK5IIuMEiY[/youtube]
Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience: http://immersebible.com/
Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/
“I will say to the north and south, ‘Bring my sons and daughters back to Israel from the distant corners of the earth. Bring all who claim me as their God, for I have made them for my glory. It was I who created them.’” Isaiah 43: 6-7, NLT.
Ever wonder exactly why God created you? Or why he placed children in your specific family? God couldn’t have spelled it out any plainer than in Isaiah 43:6-7. He created you and me for one purpose: to showcase his glory; to enjoy it, display it, and demonstrate it every day to all those we encounter.
What does it mean to put his glory on display? It means highlighting his attributes and characteristics. It means making hard choices to do the right thing. It means biting your tongue from gossiping, going out of your way for a neighbor in need, telling the truth even when it’s hard, not snapping back when someone hurts you, and speaking openly about your Father in heaven. In short, it’s living like Jesus lived when he walked the earth.
God is invisible. Whenever he displayed his character in the Old Testament, he used something visible like a burning bush or pillars of cloud and fire. In the New Testament, God displayed his glory through his Son, Jesus. But Jesus no longer physically walks on earth, and bushes that burn can only be seen in prairie fires or piles of raked leaves. So how does an invisible God display his glory in this age? Through you and your children. What a privilege!
Father God, what an honor we’ve been given! You no longer choose to speak through inanimate objects; you choose people like us. Point out ways we can showcase your character and glorious qualities to others today. In so doing, we’ll be glorifying you and living the life we were created to live. Amen
Taken from the Beyond Suffering Bible
Look inside the Beyond Suffering Bible
“What if we gave our students enough credit to think they could read the Bible if we were to able to offer them the very words of the Bible in the simplest format?” Matt Laidlaw, dean of student life, Calvin Christian High School.
See what happens when high school student get engaged while reading Scripture in community using Immerse: Messiah.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/Vg_2UsDTL-8[/youtube]
When facing difficult circumstances it can be hard to understand “why.” Chris Tiegreen in the Dancing in the Desert Devotional Bible uses the story of Lazarus to give us insight into how and why we can trust even when it seems hopeless.
Dancing in the Desert Devotional Bible
“But when Jesus heard about it he said, ‘Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.'” John 11:4, NLT
Lazarus was a “dear friend” of Jesus, as were his sisters, Mary and Martha. So when the sisters sent a message to Jesus that their brother was near death, it would have seemed natural for Jesus, the healer, to hurry to Bethany to see him. Yet Jesus remained where he was, across the Jordan, at least a day’s walk from Lazarus. And he assured his followers that Lazarus’s sickness would not end in death.
Jesus’ delay seemed inexplicable when he arrived after Lazarus had died. He had spoken with assurance about the situation yet showed up too late.
As implied by Martha’s piercing statement—“If only you had been here, my brother would not have died” (11:21)— the sisters must have wondered if he really cared. And the disciples must have wondered if he had tragically miscalculated the situation. Apparently, Lazarus’s sickness really did end in death.
But Jesus never said Lazarus wouldn’t die. He simply said this was not how the story would end. His sense of urgency was far different than theirs, just as God’s deliberate work in our prayers and problems violates our sense of urgency. God sees the end of the crisis even while we’re stressed about it.
And he often has a solution we would never dare to imagine.
Jesus deliberately demonstrated a truth that answers many of the “whys” we utter in our crises: that problems and pain become a platform for his glory. We would never know many of God’s most beautiful attributes otherwise. We’d never know him as healer without a sickness, as deliverer without a captivity, as forgiver without some sin as the backdrop. That doesn’t mean he creates these evils, but he certainly utilizes them. When our “why did this happen?” turns into “how do you want to show yourself in it?” he reveals himself in greater glory.
Learn more about the Dancing in the Desert Devotional Bible.
It is one of the most recited portions of Scripture, the Lord’s Prayer, but by taking it out of context do we lose an integral part of its meaning? Read what Glenn Paauw, from our partners at the Institute for Bible Reading, has to say.
Reading the Lord’s Prayer in Context – Institute For Bible Reading
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We all know it. We’ve all heard it, we’ve most likely prayed it, and perhaps we’ve even sung it.
The Lord’s Prayer. The one Jesus himself taught us to pray. It’s straight from the Master. How can we not do what he says? Since this is a Jesus prayer, we might be reluctant to admit we’re not especially thrilled with it.
But let’s admit it. At this point it can seem so . . . what? Mundane? Common? Safe?
Maybe there’s more to our lethargy with this prayer than simple overexposure. Maybe we’re verging on boredom with it because we haven’t captured the heart of it. And maybe this is because we haven’t focused on the context in which we first received it.
What context?
It’s easy to forget that this was prayer was introduced to the church by being embedded in two of our Gospels—Matthew’s and Luke’s. We don’t have space to explore both settings (or even one in any detail), but we’ll look more closely at Luke’s version in light of his Gospel’s bigger project.
The purpose here is to briefly set forth the kind of difference reading the Bible in context can make. In this case, we’ll see that there’s a whole lot more going on with the Lord’s Prayer than we’ve known.
Luke gives us the shorter, compact version of Jesus’ prayer, generally rendered along these lines in modern translations:
Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.
Crucially, Luke tells the story of Jesus in light of Israel’s bigger history with God. Jesus is fully embedded in Israel’s first-century context, announcing the arrival of God’s long-standing purposes for his people. In a fascinating passage that occurs just a little before Jesus teaches his disciples this prayer, we read that Jesus himself went up on a mountain to pray. Then this happens:
As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his exodus, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
His exodus? Yes, this is one way Luke signals that the entire mission of Jesus was conceived in terms of a fresh Exodus experience for God’s people. This is precisely what the prophets had foretold. God would again come down and act decisively for his people’s liberation. God’s great new act of redemption would follow the pattern of the previous one. Biblical scholar Brant Pitre has written: “Each line of the prayer is rooted in the language and imagery of the Scriptures of Israel and in the prophetic hope for a new Exodus.”1 When we take a closer look at the Lord’s Prayer in the larger context of the Bible’s whole story, we find that it moves from being somewhat abstract and tame to bold and even risky.
When we take a closer look at the Lord’s Prayer in the larger context of the Bible’s whole story, we find that it moves from being somewhat abstract and tame to bold and even risky. Jesus is telling his disciples to urgently plead with God to bring this promised, future New Exodus. And to do it right now. In short, pray in the future. Tell God to free his people, bring them home, and establish his kingdom fully right here on earth.
Reading the prayer of Jesus in context recognizes all this:
• The Exodus was the first time God called Israel his son, and became Israel’s Father.
• The Exodus is when Pharaoh asked, “Who is Yahweh that I should obey him and let Israel go?” So God showed up and made his name holy, known among the nations.
• . . . when God brought his power and reign to earth to rescue his people.
• . . . when God brought his people daily bread in the wilderness.
• . . . when God forgave his people and revealed the Jubilee when all debts would be forgiven.
• . . . and when the time of great trial or testing came right before the great redemption.
Israel had been praying for centuries for all this to happen again. But Jesus told his closest followers and mission partners to pray for God to do it all right now, through the work of the Messiah. And then Jesus went out and did the work. He fought the great battle and brought us the New Exodus, freeing us from God’s biggest, baddest enemies—sin and death.
When read in this light, the prayer and its urgent Greek imperatives go more like this:
Father,
Make your name holy.
Bring your kingdom.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone indebted to us.
Do not bring us to the time of trial.
The early church brilliantly connected the Lord’s Prayer directly to its observance of the Lord’s Supper. A New Exodus prayer right before a New Exodus Passover meal. Those early followers of Jesus also routinely introduced the prayer with the words, “We make bold to pray.”
Who are we to tell God what to do? It may be that we shouldn’t even have the nerve to pray this way, to demand that God act decisively right now to finish his work of the world’s redemption in and through Jesus. Except that Jesus himself told us to have the nerve.
So go ahead and pray that bold prayer in all its glorious biblical context. The way Jesus taught us.
1See his article The Lord’s Prayer and the New Exodus for a detailed exploration of all the connections
Find out more about the Institute for Bible Reading
Find out more about our joint project, Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience
With Father’s Day approaching we think about the men who have played an important role in our lives. Not all of us were raised by our biological fathers, but most of us can think of a man who had a significant impact on who we are today. Even Jesus had a parental figure who was not his father. God chose Joseph, a humble carpenter, to be the earthly male influence for Jesus. Learn more about Joseph from the Every Man’s Bible.
The Man God Picked
What sort of man would God pick to rear his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world? Would the man have to wield great influence? Amass tremendous political power? Accumulate fantastic riches?
No, no and no. God’s requirements came down to these two items:
Joseph, a Jewish carpenter, fit both requirements. He traced his lineage to his famous forebear, King David (Matthew 1:1-16; Luke 1:27), and he made it a habit to obey God in all matters, large or small.
Scripture doesn’t tell us a lot about Joseph. He comes on the scene abruptly at the beginning of the gospel story. We learn he is a “good” man (Matthew 1:19) and that he works as a carpenter (13:55). He plans to marry a young woman named Mary. But when he discovers that she is carrying someone else’s child, he decides to break the engagement quietly.
How did Joseph find out about the pregnancy? Did his fiancee tell him directly? Or did he hear the shocking news through friends or family? Did he wonder, Well, if God could send an angel to tell her, why couldn’t he other to send one to tell me?
Whatever the case, he made up his mind to distance himself from Mary. And then a second shock took place: God did let Joseph in on the divine secret. An angel appeared in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1:20-21).
The angel offered no explanation. He gave no apology, no further instructions or communiques of any kind – and yet Joseph hurried to comply with God’s command. He immediately took Mary home to be his wife and name her son Jesus the moment he was born.
At least three other times Joseph got instructions from an angel in a dream, and all three times he immediately complied (2:13-15, 19-21, 22-23). Today’s readers might thing, Hey, if I got a message from an angel, I’d listen, too. Really? Not everyone in the Bible did. The might King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ignored the dream God sent him (Daniel 4) – and wound up breakfasting with the bovines. The Roman governor of Jesus’ day, Pontius Pilate, ignored the dream God sent his wife (Matthew 17:19) – and ended up condemning to death the man God had sent to bring life. Joseph, however, leapt to do God’s bidding in both the “small” stuff (Luke 2:39, 41) and the “big.”
That’s the kind of man God looked for to rock his Son’s cradle. And it’s still the kind of man he seeks to rock the world.
This month we will be using the Every Man’s Bible for our monthly Read With Us plan. Sign up here
Whether facing overwhelming circumstances or even in the day-to-day drudge of life, it’s often easier to focus on what’s wrong with a situation than look to see how God is seeing us through. Often, that was the response of the Israelites while wandering in the wilderness.
Here is an example from the Book of Numbers. Read the passage and then the note from the Beyond Suffering Bible. Reflect on what is God saying to you?
“Soon the people began to complain about their hardship, and the LORD heard everything they said. Then the LORD’s anger blazed against them, and he sent a fire to rage among them, and he destroyed some of the people in the outskirts of the camp. Then the people screamed to Moses for help, and when he prayed to the LORD, the fire stopped. After that, the area was known as Taberah (which means ‘the place of burning’), because fire from the LORD had burned among them there. Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt. And the people of Israel also began to complain. ‘Oh, for some meat!’ they exclaimed. ‘We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted.’” (Numbers 11:1-5, NLT)
Connection Point from the Beyond Suffering Bible
How easy it is to grumble and murmur about our hardships. Our hardships are real, but just as real is God’s care for us. God’s love is a fundamental reality, something that is absolutely true in every circumstance we face (1 John 4:7-12). Can you thank the Lord even in your pain or disability? Remaining grateful to God in every circumstance leads you to act in ways that please God.
“Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” (Philippians 4:11-12, NLT)
Immerse: Prophets, the final volume to be released in the Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience series, is now available!
This volume takes you through the prophetic words of the Old Testament prophets grouped together by four historical periods.
Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience
Find out more about the Institute for Bible Reading
Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience was created to be read in community, but we are often asked “where do I even start?” Our friends at the Institute for Bible Reading share some tips on how to read the Bible as a group.
5 Tips for Reading the Bible in Community//
In a recent survey the Institute conducted, we asked our audience where they usually find themselves reading the Bible. While 92% of them said they read the Bible alone or during their quiet time, only 31% said they read the Bible during their small group or Bible study. Clearly, reading the Bible alone – maybe accompanied by a cup of hot coffee and a pen – is the way most people choose to engage with God’s Word today. There’s nothing wrong with this on its own, but there’s a whole new world of understanding and engagement waiting for us if we regularly experience the Bible in community.
For most of Christian history, the personal Bible did not exist. Reading the Bible was a group activity because most churches only had one Bible. Only with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century did we see the Bible make its way into the hands of individuals on a mass scale. Since then, Bible reading has evolved into a solo sport. And while it’s certainly nice to have Bibles around our house that we can call our own, we’ve unfortunately lost the ancient practice of reading and wrestling over the text together.
If you’d like to try reading the Bible with your community of believers, here are a few tips to get you started:
Most group Bible study guides today take a question-and-answer approach to the Bible. How does Paul identify himself to the Corinthians? Why might he do it this way? What does the word “sanctified” mean? All you have to do is open up your Bible and find the answer to the question. This diminishes the Bible into a sourcebook for answering the right questions to grow your faith.
Unfortunately in many group settings this can also lead to the person who is most knowledgeable about the Bible – perhaps they know Hebrew or Greek – taking over and providing all of the “answers” to the study guide’s questions. Other people in the group don’t get a chance to participate in talking about the Bible because they don’t know as much and therefore don’t think they bring value to the group. This situation can be especially intimidating for new believers.
Instead, open the discussion up for opinions and questions about the reading. A question like, “So, is there anything that stood out to you?” opens the text up for discussion at all levels.
Try modeling your Bible discussions after book clubs. When book clubs meet, they usually don’t only discuss one paragraph or one sentence of the book. While they may dwell on a short passage for a while, they’ve often read large chunks of the book and can talk about how the story is progressing or what shifts they’ve seen in the characters. They can pick out turning points in the story and discuss what they think might happen as a result.
When your community reads the Bible together, read and discuss big portions. Read an entire letter from Paul or an entire story from the First Testament. Don’t be bound by chapters and verses – look at the content itself and determine a good stopping place.
Many of us have been conditioned to automatically ask, “Okay, now what does this mean for me?” as we read. If a story or passage doesn’t have direct application to our lives today in the 21st century, it can be difficult to know what to do with it. Large portions of the Bible end up ignored because it’s hard to find something we can draw from it that we can start practicing immediately.
When talking with your community about a passage in the Bible, if you’ve found something you feel speaks to you that you can apply to your life, by all means share it with the group. But if it’s not there, you don’t need to reach for it.
There are a lot of things in the Bible that are hard to digest. When we read alone we don’t have anyone to process these unsettling passages with, and when we’re in a group setting we sometimes focus discussion on the easier, more manageable parts of Scripture. We have a hard time talking about parts of the Bible that bother us, so we usually try to just push it out of our minds.
Talking through these uncomfortable passages with your community can be extremely helpful and valuable. It will help your group grow closer, and somebody within the group may have some insights to the difficult passage that can help make it more understandable. Even if your group can’t come to a satisfying explanation of a hard passage, wrestling over the text together will bring you all closer to God.
Part of the beauty of group discussion is the opportunity to wrestle together over a passage and work together to sort out its meaning. It’s almost inevitable, though, that at some point there will be disagreement about the interpretation of a passage. When this happens, we have the opportunity to learn to see different angles on a Bible passage by listening well to other members of our group. And while we may end up holding different opinions, it’s important for these differences not to become deal-breakers for our relationships.
If your community has been in the traditional “Bible Study” mode for a while, I encourage you to try this “Book Club” approach. Read big chunks of Scripture together, then just open it up for group discussion. I think the results will surprise you.
Find about more about Immerse.
So many of us are getting into the Word of God in personal study. This is important, but we often forget the importance of coming together as a community and reading God’s Word together like they did in the early church. Communal Bible reading is at the heart of Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience. Read what Glenn Paauw, Institute for Bible Reading, has to say about getting back to our early church roots and reading the Bible in community.
How did early Christians learn and pass on their traditions about Jesus and his teachings? What did the first communities of Jesus followers do to maintain the authenticity of their understanding of the meaning of his work, and its continuity to new generations? Further, what place did the growing collection of apostolic writings to scattered churches have in first century Christian gatherings?
For some time the academic study of early Christianity has maintained an emphasis on the role of oral tradition and social memory in the initial spread and growth of the new Jesus movement. It was assumed that due to things like the scarcity of both writing materials and professional readers, actual communal reading from sacred texts must have been somewhat rare and limited especially to more urban areas, at least until later in the second century.
But now there is an increasing recognition that early Christianity, like the Judaism from which it was born, was a “bookish” religion through and through. (See our earlier article How the First Christians Challenge Us to Be Bible Readers.) Larry Hurtado, a New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity, has been a key voice helping us explore the evidence for this more closely. His books Destroyer of the Gods (2016) and The Earliest Christian Artifacts(2006) have directly examined this theme. Brian Wright’s new book continues this effort to bring more clarity to our understanding of the place of reading in the earliest church.
Wright’s key point is that communal reading was geographically widespread and that such reading was a way of avoiding any serious alterations in the traditions and teachings of the first Christians.
There are two backgrounds to this: first, the fact that public reading was a common feature of life across much of the Roman Empire. Letters, proclamations, poetry, and the great literary sagas of the time were all frequently read in public places. These did have a kind of performance aspect to them, but the point is that they were not performed from memory, but rather read aloud from written texts.
The second key background is of course the Jewish matrix from which Christianity emerged. Just as the Jews met and read the Scriptures together regularly, so did the early Christians. (See the chapter “Sharing Our Synagogue Bible” in my book Saving the Bible from Ourselves.)
Wright’s book is an important piece of detailed, collected evidence from the first century, in both the broader Roman culture and in specifically Christian settings. He includes chapters on relevant social, economic, and political factors, arguing that all of these were actually conducive to the widespread practice of public reading, making it a familiar feature of life for everyone. In the case of the Christian communities, it’s more clear than we’ve realized that the New Testament documents themselves are filled with evidence that they were expected to be widely shared and then publicly read.
In short, a standard part of the experience of the first Christians was the public, out-loud reading of the founding documents of the faith.
Of course most of the first Christians didn’t have any opportunity to own a personal copy of the Scriptures, and the preponderance of evidence remains that most people could not even read or write. But they were experienced, focused listeners, and this served them well. Christian formation in the early church was centered on immersion in the story of God, Israel, and the world as found in the sacred writings, both old and new. This tangible, practical focus on the Scriptures also helped ensure the integrity of the message over time.
But what about us?
In the modern era we’ve largely turned away from the early Christian practice of communal immersion in the Scriptures. Reading and study of the Bible is largely done individually, surrounded by all manner of reference-type helps, commentary, and devotional aids. The research evidence is clear that this is not working as an overall strategy for Bible engagement. People report that reading alone in this way is complicated and overwhelming. In short, it’s hard. And as a result, folks admit they’re not doing it much.
What new kinds of communal encounters can we imagine? What new forms of public reading and dialogue around the text can we envision?
The consequences have been serious for both private and public expressions of the faith. Unfamiliarity with the Big Story has produced Christians who don’t really have a good chance of living into the story in our contemporary setting because they don’t know who they are or where they came from.
There is no shortcut to this biblical knowledge. It comes only from sustained attention to our founding narratives, letters, songs, and wisdom. It comes from reading big and reading whole, not piecemeal sampling.
So what if we were to reclaim the practice and simplicity of the early Christ-followers?
What if we were to rediscover the unique value of communal reading of the Bible?
There have been a number of shifts in the nature of congregational life in recent history. A new emphasis on small groups, a move toward contemporary music and worship styles, and others. Why couldn’t we commit to similarly shifting how and when and where we engage the Bible? What new kinds of communal encounters can we imagine? What new forms of public reading and dialogue around the text can we envision? There are lots of different kinds of churches, lots of different ways this might look.
A commitment to biblical fluency should be at the center of every church’s life.
We can all ask: What could my community do?
