Living by the Book/Living by the Book Workbook Set (124 page)

In addition to the six questions above, keep in mind that: (1) principles should correlate with the general teaching of Scripture; (2) principles should speak to the needs, interests, questions, and problems of real life today; and (3) principles should indicate a course of action.

If you need to, review chapter 46 of
Living By the Book.
Then see how well you can do at formulating some principles based on today’s passage.

Leviticus 16 describes the procedure the Israelites followed on the annual Day of Atonement—what is now known as Yom Kippur and remains the holiest of the Jewish special days. Use your skills of Observation and Interpretation to examine the text. Figure out the significance of this event to the ancient Hebrew culture, and consider how your own culture thinks about God.

Finally, see if you can create some principles from this passage that might apply to your own relationship with God, or to today’s Christian community as a whole.

TODAY’S PASSAGE:

2 Peter 3

TIME COMMITMENT:

60 minutes

“If you can discern principles from your study of Scripture, you’ll have some powerful tools to help you apply biblical truth. You’ll bridge the gap between the ancient world and your own situation with the timeless truth of God’s Word. . . . If we stock up on principles from Scripture, we’ll have a powerful set of resources to deal with the situations of life. You see, principles enable us to multiply truth. One interpretation; many applications. We may not have a specific verse to plug into the circumstances of the moment. But we can still navigate a godly path by extrapolating from the truth we already know” (pp. 353, 358).

R
efer to the previous assignment to review the questions and groundwork for stating principles from Scripture. Then, for today’s assignment, take a look at 2 Peter 3. Try to state some good-to-remember principles from Peter’s writing concerning Jesus’ second coming.

TODAY’S PASSAGE:

Your choice

TIME COMMITMENT:

60 minutes

“Too much ‘application’ stays at the level of good intentions because we talk about the end of the journey without specifying when, where, and how we’re going to take the first step” (p. 361).

C
hapter 47 of
Living By the Book
deals with the essential commitment to following up Bible study—Observation, Interpretation, and Application—with the changes we know need to be made in our lives. By this point in the workbook, perhaps you have felt the gentle nudging (or perhaps the outright prodding) of the Holy Spirit to address a particular aspect of your life where you desire to see positive change.

Don’t forget the three steps for converting your good intentions into action:

Choose any area of life-change you wish. As you allow the Word of God to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16), you can experience positive changes that you never thought possible.

P
UTTING
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A
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OGETHER

S
o far in this workbook we’ve introduced a number of different Bible study methods grouped in the categories of Observation, Interpretation, and Application. To illustrate each one, we’ve suggested a portion of Scripture to let you accustom yourself to that particular method.

But now that you have some of those methods under your belt and have had a bit of practice, we’re going to reverse the process. Rather than introducing Scripture to learn the methods, we’re going to combine the methods to learn Scripture. We’re going to spend thirty days in Ruth, and then in James, using various study methods we’ve seen to help us get more from God’s Word.

In each day’s assignment, you’ll receive a suggested method of study. But please use our outline only as a suggested
guideline.
If you want to rearrange the order of our lessons, please do. Most of the activities can be completed in a half hour or so. If you want to take longer (or shorter), feel free to do so. If you see something not in our daily studies, or if you have a hankering to go off on a tangent we haven’t pursued, that’s all part of studying Scripture on your own. You may not even want to examine Ruth or James at this point, but we’ve purposely avoided pulling too much from either of these books in other sections of the workbook so you can have the opportunity to approach these sections of Scripture with a fresh perspective.

We’ve divided the following studies into approximately equal sections for Observation, Interpretation, and Application. However, don’t forget that the better you do at Observation, the more natural the rest of your study should be. If you’re not quite ready to move on when we do, don’t feel rushed.

The books of Ruth and James are quite different, but you’ll use the same methods to examine each one. And remember, this isn’t a race. If an assignment doesn’t make sense to you, spend some time reviewing the principle in this workbook or in
Living By the Book.
If it takes a day to catch up, you’ll be that much better off the next day. It’s much more important that you make gradual, regular progress rather than merely “getting another page done.”

May God bless your study of His Word in these activities and in your lifetime of Living By the Book.

Y
ou’re going to read the book of Ruth repeatedly and patiently over the course of the following month, and we suggest you use a number of different translations as you do. Read it straight through today to get familiar with the story, the settings, and the characters. List the characters, the places mentioned, and any questions you have. Don’t worry too much about what you don’t know at this point. You’ll have twenty-nine days after today to piece together the holes in your perspective.

Characters