by juliaf from www.sxc.hu

Most weeks for the last few years I have been blessed to go read Scripture with Jim Savage.  Jim is a counselor, scholar, preacher, and farmer.  He knows Greek and Hebrew well.  He helped me get through my graduate Greek and Hebrew classes.  Now the formal education is over, we still meet and read the text in the original language.  He just uses the text, I use my computer program that defines and parses words I do not know.  It is a devotional time as well as sermon and class preparation time for us.  We try to just read the text without trying to “get a lesson” or “make a sermon.”  We just read it to gain it’s message and then let the lessons spring forth.

Jim said something yesterday in our study and in prayer that stuck with me.  It also convicted me of a common failure.

He prayed, “Lord help us to listen to your Word first, before we listen to what man has said about your Word.”

What a beautiful prayer!  What a powerful principle for our Bible study. Wouldn’t the religious world be so different if people listened to God’s word first, rather than all that man has said about God’s word?

This statement made an impression on me.  I must admit that many of my sermons do not start in the text. Often they start from what someone else has said about a text.  Commentaries, books, blogs, and lectures have their place as tools to help us understand God’s word, but we should start with the text.  How many Bible classes today really get into the text?  How much devotional reading is really about the text?

Begin with the text, then look to other resources to understand it better.  God wrote the Bible to you. Read God first, then read what others have said.

We must be people of the Book!  Only one book contains God’s truth, others are just commenting upon it.  Let’s read the original Author first!