ESV Review and June 2011 NT Reading Challenge

Read this post to learn about the 12 x 12 x 12 NT reading challenge.  Here’s my prayer for you as you read the Bible.

For the month of May we read the NT in the English Standard Version (ESV).  I am very familiar with the ESV because it is my regular study and preaching translation.  So, there’s no doubt that I love the ESV.  Here’s the main reasons why I use the ESV…

1. It is a literal translation of the Bible.  There is no way that a thought-for-thought translation or a paraphrase could fit well into text-based, expository preaching.  When I preach, I often refer the congregation to the text.  And when they look down at the page of their Bibles, I want them to look at a translation that is as transparent as possible and allows them to see the original text.  So, we have encouraged the congregation to get the ESV.
2. It uses modern English.  It’s important to have and use a translation that I can give to a new Christian that will be easily understood by the 21st century English speaker who did not grow up in church.
3. It stands in the stream of of King James English.  So, the ESV will sound familiar to those who grew up on a steady diet of the King James Version.  This is important to me as I am ministering in a small rural town in the South.  The majority of all adults in the rural South grew up in church reading from and memorizing the KJV.

June starts our reading with the HCSB – Holman Christian Standard Bible (or Hard Core Southern Baptist, if you prefer, lol)

Download June calendar here… NT June Calendar

Pastoral Qualifications – Overview

See the introduction to this series here.

Before actually diving into each of the specific qualifications for being a pastor, I want to do an overview of all the qualifications and make a few general observations.  Here are the qualifications for a man to become a pastor, as laid out for us in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

Character Qualifications (positive)

• above reproach (x3)
• sober-minded
• self-controlled (x2)
• respectable
• hospitable (x2)
• gentle
• a lover of good
• upright
• holy
• disciplined

Character Qualifications (negative)

• not a drunkard (x2)
• not violent (x2)
• not quarrelsome
• not a lover of money
• not arrogant
• not quick-tempered
• not greedy for gain

Family Qualifications

• husband of one wife (x2)
• children are believers
• children are not open to the charges of debauchery or insubordination
• manages his own household well
• with all dignity keeping his children submissive

Faith Qualifications

• not a recent convert
• holds firm to the trustworthy Word

Skill Qualifications

• able to teach
• able to give instruction in sound doctrine
• able to rebuke those who contradict sound doctrine

Civic Qualifications

• well thought of by outsiders

Here’s the major observation that I had while looking at this list after I first organized it like this in my personal journal.  God is much more concerned with who a pastor is than what a pastor does.  There are 22 qualifications dealing with the pastor’s character and family compared to the astonishing fact that there are only 3 qualifications for a pastor’s skill set.

These qualifications are not things that a man drums up in himself upon becoming a pastor.  These are characteristics that should be present in a man and then his church recognizes that he could be a man God is desiring to use in pastoral ministry.  In both Scripture passages, Paul is telling Timothy and Titus how to recognize a potential leader.

In the next post I will begin working through each of the specific qualifications on the positive character list.

Pastoral Qualifications (Intro)

As I’ve been reading over the past couple of days about the qualifications that it takes to be a pastor, God has been working in my heart  about the person that I am.  So, I want to share a series of posts with you about what qualifies a man to be a pastor of a church.  I’m not talking about degrees, licenses, ordinations, etc.  Though helpful, these are man-made qualifications for being a pastor.  What does God say it takes to be qualified to serve in the position of pastor?

This will be a 7-part series based on Apostle Paul’s writings to 2 young men, Timothy and Titus, who would carry the torch after he dies.  The writings are found in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9.

As you can see from reading the above passages, the list is quite daunting.  So, I’ve tried to take all of the qualifications and organize them into a format that we can look at a little easier.  Here’s how this series will shape up…

• Overview
• Character Qualifications (positive)
• Character Qualifications (negative)
• Family Qualifications
• Faith Qualifications
• Skill Qualifications
• Civic Qualifications

Our AWANA Kids Are Awesome

I just wanted to send out a congrats to all the kids who attend AWANA at First Baptist in Smithville.  We finished our year this Wednesday.  The AWANA year runs with school (August-May).  Here’s some numbers that will blow you away…

• Cubbies (preschool 3-4 years old) – 14 children, 190 Bible verses learned
• Sparks (grades K thru 2) – 26 children, 518 Bible verses learned
• Truth & Training (grades 3 thru 6) – 40 children, 805 Bible verses learned

Total AWANA – 80 children, 1,513 Bible verses learned

Adults, how many Bible verses did you memorize since August???

One Generation Away

What does it take to pass on the faith to the next generation???  Take a quick tour with me…

Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 20-25 – God lays out his plan for how the faith is to be passed down.  The plan???  God has designed the family to be the place where the faith is passed down.  These commands are given to Moses and his generation.

Deuteronomy 6:10-15 – A warning: watch out for prosperity – it will cause you to forget God.

Joshua 1:7-8 – Moses is dead.  Joshua has been chosen as the leader of Israel.  God commands him to be strong in the Word.  This word from God would naturally be passed on from Joshua to the other leaders of the nation of Israel.

Joshua 24:14-31 – Joshua has led the people well.  He and his family set a good example (v. 15).  He calls the people to serve God and they respond.  The Bible records that Israel served faithfully all the days of Joshua and his contemporaries (v.31).

Judges 2:6-10 – Key in on verse 10 – another generation arose that did not know the Lord or the mighty works he had done on behalf of Israel.  What follows is one of the most morally void books of the Bible.  Judges records generation after generation that did not pass down the faith.

The faith was lost in one generation…for all of Joshua’s good leadership, the faith was not passed down from his generation to the generation after him.

Parents…you have the job of passing down the faith to the next generation.  Churches…you have the job of helping parents do this.  Start young.  Pray hard.  Sow gospel seeds at every opportunity.  This is particularly difficult in a day and time of prosperity (thus God’s warning in Deut. 6).  As a parent, I want my kids to have every opportunity.  I feel the pull to answer yes to everything my kids want to do.  What if this is not best for them?  Don’t become so busy with sports and activities that there is no time in your family for the Bible and prayer.  Let us make the most of every day with our children!!!  We don’t get our days back.  We don’t get to retry.  God must be central in our homes today.

New Testament Reading Challenge – May 2011

We finished our first month of the New Testament reading challenge using the New Living Translation (initial review of NLT).  I must say that I enjoyed the NLT much more than I thought I would.  You see, I’m a big advocate of more literal or word-for-word translations because of my philosophy and approach to the text and preaching the text.

That said, I really liked the NLT and found myself reading it to our kids in the evenings.  I think the NLT does its best work with narrative sections of the Scripture (gospels, historical books) because the NLT is designed to be read aloud and tell the story.  The narrative sections of Scripture focus on just that…telling the story of Jesus, telling the story of Israel’s history.  I also really liked the modern equivalents of measurements (distance, weight, money, etc).

Here’s a reading schedule for May – NTMay.

This month we’re using the English Standard Version (ESV).  This is the translation that I normally read and preach from.

New Living Translation (NLT) – First Thoughts

One of the things I’ll be doing as we read through the New Testament 12 times over the next 12 months is to post some reviews of the different translations we read from (click here to learn about this Bible reading project).  We started our first month reading in the New Living Translation (NLT).  Today we finished the book of Matthew, so I wanted to post some initial thoughts about this translation.

The NLT is firmly in the thought-for-thought philosophy of Biblical translation.  This simply means that rather than try to translate the actual words from the original language into English, their goal is to translate the idea or meaning of the original language into English.  In other words, rather than pass on the difficulty of the original text to the reader, and thus allow the reader to make a decision about the meaning of the text, the translators of the NLT have made interpretive decisions for the reader.  One example…

In Matthew 8:22 Jesus says to someone who wanted to follow him but was also wanting to return home and bury his father, “Follow me now. Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead.”

The original Greek text actually says, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”  The word “spiritually” is not in the original Greek text.  The translation committee made a decision to interpret the (difficult) verse for the reader rather than simply pass the translation and difficulty on to the reader.

The big question is, “Did the NLT correctly identify the meaning of the text?”  If not, then instead of clarifying the meaning of the text, they have in fact, made the text harder to understand.

I’ll do another review after completing the New Tesatment at the end of the month.

My Prayer As I Read the Bible

So, today starts the journey thru the New Testament 12 times in the next 12 months.  Click here to read the post about this challenge.  As I begin this challenge, I have one big fear.  I am afraid that this will be nothing more than a reading exercise.  That would defeat the purpose.  The idea is to allow God to use his Word to form us into the image of Christ.  So here’s my prayer for myself and for you if you’re doing this or just anytime you pick up the Bible to read or study.  All the following verses are in Psalm 119.

• May God open our eyes to see wonderful things as we read his Word. (Ps. 119:18)
• May God grant to us understanding of what we see in his Word. (Ps. 119:27)
• May God build us up with his Word. (Ps. 119:28)
• May God himself be our teacher. (Ps. 119:33, 135)
• May God incline our hearts to love his Word even more. (Ps. 119:36)

I Challenge You to Do This

Next month I will turn 33 years old (yikes).  In reflecting on the speed of life, I have set a goal for my 34th year.  I’m going to make myself slow down enough to do the following: read the New Testament once per month, every month from April 2011-March 2012.  That’s right, I’m aiming to read the New Testament 12 times over the next year!!!

And I want to challenge you to do it with me.  So, here’s the rundown…

It averages out to about 10 chapters per day, 6 days per week, with Sundays being used as “grace days” (not having an assigned reading) to catch up or get ahead depending on how busy a certain week is.  Below is a sample schedule for how it will work in April.  Then, in May, you can use the same order but move the grace days so they fall on the Sundays of May.

NTApril – download sample schedule for April

Also, I will be reading the NT in a different Bible version every month for a little variety.  I tried to alternate between literal versions and dynamic versions. Here’s which version I’ll be using each month.

April – New Living Translation (NLT)
May – English Standard Version (ESV)
June – Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
July – New King James Version (NKJV)
August – New International Reader’s Version (NIrV)
September – New American Standard Bible (NASB)
October – Today’s New International Version (TNIV) – you won’t be able to find this much longer b/c Zondervan has discontinued its publication
November – King James Version (KJV)
December – The Message
January 2012 – New International Version 2011 (NIV) – the updated NIV is being released this month
February – New English Translation (NET Bible)
March – New Century Version (NCV)

If you would like to do this with me could you leave a comment on this post or send me an email?

Learning from George Muller (pt. 2) – Faith

We’re looking over the life of George Muller from this book to see some simple things that we can learn for our own journey with God.  Listen to the words of George Muller when it comes to faith…

“Only by using faith are we kept from practically losing it, and one the contrary, to use faith is to lose the unbelief that hinders God’s mighty acts.” – p.84

“George Muller believed that, in all ages, there had never yet been one true and trusting believer to whom God had proven false or faithless, and he was perfectly sure that He could be safely trusted who, ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.’ [2 Tim. 2:13] God has not only spoken, but sworn.” – p. 91

“George Muller believed, and because he believed, prayed; and praying, expected; and expecting, received.” – p. 92

Do you use faith?  Faith is like a muscle.  If you don’t use it, you lose it.  The key to faith is actually believing that God will come through on your behalf.  It goes like this…you belong to God and in order for God to be faithless to you then he would have to deny his very being (which is faithfulness), and he cannot do that.  Thus, you should have TOTAL CONFIDENCE in God.  Step out in faith!!!  Watch him come through.