Studying Deeply in 2021

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Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Grazie, with Dr.

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John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany, and the host and author of the Behold Your God study series.

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And John, we are finally back together. It seems like it's been a while. Yeah, and also it took you five times to say that first line.

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Well, because it's been so long since I've been in this setting and giving that introduction. It's been a while. You're having to be retrained.

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I am. I am. So, but here's the thing. It is a new year. So this is,

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I believe, we're recording this on the eve of Christmas Eve, and I believe this episode will come out the very first Thursday of the year.

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And so we want to, as we have kind of done in past years of the podcast, we want to talk about how to approach the new year with reading the scripture and really reading it with intentionality.

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And so we're going to be talking about reading and we're going to be talking about devotional and study.

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Now, I know in my mind for the longest time, John, when I would think of devotional reading, devotional study, there was a particular category in my mind for that.

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And it wasn't necessarily study. You know, I had another category for things that I read to really study.

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But my devotional material, my devotional reading wasn't kind of in that mindset.

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We're going to be using the word study and talking a lot about studying scripture today. So help me and help us to kind of have a right category in mind when we're reading to read, study, and devotionally.

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Yeah, I think, you know, it would be artificial to draw a strict line dividing, you know, approaching the scripture a bit more academically to try to understand what is the

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Bible teaching at this point? Why is it teaching it at this point? And, you know, and dividing that from kind of a thought for the day that warms my heart.

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We generally we think of quiet time reading as more devotional. And I think it is devotional in the sense that as we're reading, our heart is being stirred to devote ourselves to the

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Lord. But always when we're reading the scripture, we want to remember that the bigger picture and the facts and how this passage is fitting into that tapestry of God unfolding the revelation of himself and what he's done to rescue us.

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Now, all these factual aspects have to form the fuel for our devotion.

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So while we may read three chapters a morning, if we're three or four, if we're reading through the Bible in a year or whether we're just reading, you know, a verse or two a morning and going very slowly through a book.

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We want to kind of I think it's best to think of it this way. We want to keep the order correct.

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First, it's the facts. We want to understand the facts. Why is this here?

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What is the context? What is it saying? And that then moves to the devotion, to the moving of my heart and the satisfying of my soul and moving me to obedience and to adoration of God.

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So instead of thinking of more than one category of reading, you know, so academic reading and devotional reading, those can come in various degrees.

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We want to think of order. Facts ought to always lead to devotion. So don't skip the facts and don't stop with the facts.

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But a lot of a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about today when we talk about studying may not fit into the devotional reading quiet time.

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You may have a quiet time separate from the kind of things that we're talking about that you may want to devote some time maybe later in the day, you know, 15, 20 minutes a night working through a particular study.

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Yeah, absolutely. And so before we really get into a lot of those, we have had previous episodes where we talked about, you know, particular ways you can read through the scriptures with intentionality, with purpose.

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And following a plan is incredibly helpful. And so, you know, there are five day plans where you'll read through the

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Bible through the year, reading five days a week. Personally, I like that because that allows you to have, you know, days of catching up if you get behind.

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It also allows for me personally, on Sundays, I like to go back and to read, you know, what what has been preached on that day.

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And so there's different ways. Another one is a seven day study. The ones that we particularly like here are the

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McShane study, the McShane reading plan. You can find those online.

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We'll put a link to those in the description and also at MediGratia .org. But that's a wonderful plan.

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There's four different sections that you'll read from the scriptures every day. There's the Professor Horner plan.

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And now this is going to be 10 different chapters of scripture and all from different places. And it's a really,

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I find really helpful method of study. If you're the type of person who wants to read an entire thought or an entire story together, then the

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Professor Horner to me seems more difficult. And that's always been my challenge with that. I like to read, you know, an entire pericope or thought or idea.

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And oftentimes I find that chapter divisions stop in the middle of a thought. So I like the

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Professor Horner plan, but to me, that's one of the challenges that I face with it. Another plan that you can follow is the chronological reading.

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And so again, you can find these online. They have chronological Bibles, but we've done episodes on reading plans in the past.

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And so let me encourage you again, we'll put a link to this in the description and in the show notes at MediGratia .org.

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Make sure that you go there if you're interested in finding about a plan to read through the

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Bible in a year or even we also want to mention some resources to you. And again, we've done episodes on this.

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We'll put links, but one, if you like listening audio Bible, there's a fantastic app called

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Dwell that we at the church here in Christ Church in Albany use. I've used it and benefited from it greatly.

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Particular software that we would recommend if you want to go that route, Logos is the kind of gold standard, but also there's

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Esword and there's a few others that we'd be happy to link to. So again, lots of resources. I don't want to take any more time from what we're going to do with our study.

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But I do want to let you know that we have had those discussions before, and let me encourage you to go check those episodes out.

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So, John, now getting into particularly studying and like I said, we don't want to draw a distinctive line or anything like that.

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But where are we going? Kind of our thinking through this year, reading through and studying in 2021.

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Well, we want to maybe introduce you to a number of study approaches that you might pick for the year.

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Maybe ways that you haven't thought of doing before. So some of them will be pretty familiar to us and then some of them might be new to you.

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So I think what do we have for four different study ideas for the year 2021?

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And some of them might last a little longer than a year, but you can get started now if you want to.

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And again, this is probably over and above your quiet time reading. So the first one is one that we're most familiar with, and that would be the study of a book of the

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Bible. To give an intensive period of the year to the study of one book in the

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Bible. Now, the pros of that would be that material is easy to find.

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You don't struggle with the question of where do I start and where do I go next? So the material is pretty clearly laid out for us.

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Commentaries are helpful. The books there, the order has been laid out by God himself.

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You know, so if you're reading the book of Romans this year and you want to really get a great grip on the book of Romans, you've got 16 chapters to work through in one year and the order is perfectly laid out by God himself.

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And so that does so much of the work for you. That doesn't mean hard work isn't required.

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But that is one of the real pros of this approach. So let me say this is how

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I would suggest approaching things like that. And there are some basic patterns I'll mention that I think could be applied to every style of study.

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And the first is that it's good to start with the big picture to step back as far as you can from the subject you're studying and kind of get the general picture.

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So if you're studying a particular book of the Bible, don't start with the book. So let's say Colossians.

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We don't start by reading or studying Colossians 1 .1. We'd probably want to start by reading a resource that explains the book of Colossians as a whole or the big picture of Colossians.

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So where does Colossians fall in the New Testament? Not just where it falls in your

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Bible, but when did Paul write it? To what people was he writing? Was there a specific need for those people?

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So to understand the bigger picture, generally, we think of an Old Testament survey book or a New Testament survey book.

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And if you haven't looked at one of those, you can go online and you can find good ones. We can suggest some good ones and show notes.

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Another one is a resource that Mark Dever did years ago when he preached through the books of the

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Bible. And this is the Old Testament and the New Testament message of the Old Testament, New Testament.

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So he takes one. He did, I believe, one week on each book. So, you know, we're covering Exodus. What's the big message of Exodus?

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And what are the fundamental points in Exodus? Kind of we laid out a large picture of the outline of Exodus.

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And how does it fall in the flow of God's revelation? So I find that that's a helpful source. So if I were going to read the book of Colossians, I might get

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Dever and read an introductory statement about what's Colossians all about.

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Why was it written? And that's a help. Now, when you come to the book itself, I have another suggestion, and that is we still try to keep that general pattern of moving from the big picture to the more specific.

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But we also add another element, and that is moving from facts, kind of bare bone facts to devotional, warm thoughts.

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OK, or think of it this way. Think of the study you're doing as a meal.

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Start with the basic ingredients and move toward the prepared meal. So start with doing the hard work yourself.

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Don't start with what other people have come up with. Like, don't start with sermons, because so if you're studying the book of Romans and you pick

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Martin Lloyd -Jones as one of the commentaries you want to read. If you start with Lloyd -Jones, you're basically starting with all the stuff he's already done for you.

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So he's done all the work for you. It's kind of he hands you a complete meal. Well, that's really convenient.

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But you skip the hard work yourself of preparing, of taking those facts, of wrestling with the great realities and coming to a conclusion yourself.

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So I think there's a helpful order. All right. So here's the order. Start with commentaries that are more factual or academic and end with commentaries as you're looking at a passage that are more devotional.

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So when I do this, I generally try to pick three commentaries. Okay. One is the more academic.

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Then the second is kind of a mix. There'll be sermonic material, but still facts.

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And the third is pretty much purely sermonic. So let me give you examples of each. Here's an example of more of a, you know, the academic.

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So this is called the New International Commentary on the New Testament. There's also a New International Commentary on the

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Old Testament. And there are many volumes in this commentary, maybe 50 or so volumes. And they're a bit spendy.

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But if you're going to study, so this is the book of Acts, I would get this. And this is where I would start.

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Maybe I would take five or six verses from the book of Acts and I would read what this commentator says. And he's going to basically give you facts.

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Another example is one of my all time favorite authors for kind of brainy commentaries is

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John Eady, 19th century Scottish theologian who did Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and 1st and 2nd

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Thessalonians. Only that's the sad part. But if you're doing one of those books, Eady's good.

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This is pretty academic. Actually, he uses a lot of Greek. So you can read through the

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Greek, even if you don't know Greek and kind of come to his conclusions. But for pastors who have studied

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Greek, that's a great place to start. Now, a more middle of the road is, and this is a bit academic as well, is the

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New Testament Commentary by Hendrickson. A more sermonic.

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So I'm moving more toward the sermonic is MacArthur's Commentary. Really, these are just his sermons put into print.

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One of our favorite overall commentary series for lay people, you do not have to know

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Greek and Hebrew to benefit greatly from these, is a series called the Wellwyn Commentary Series.

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This happens to be the one that they have on the book of Revelation. The older Wellwyn Commentary Series all look the same.

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They all had a black cover with a picture. Now they're white. Now they've gone kind of white with stripes of color.

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So, but Wellwyn Commentary Series, you can see that in the link. And here's an example of a very sermonic commentary, and that's

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Martyn Lloyd -Jones. This is him on Romans chapter three. So all that to say, when

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I personally study a book, I try to pick three good commentaries. Academic, kind of middle of the road, and very sermonic and work in that order.

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Now, for the lay person who you had mentioned earlier, you know, maybe they have 15, 20 minutes a day to do this kind of study.

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You're not saying, OK, sit down with these three sermons and then or with these three commentaries and take the net, you know, and read them all at the exact same time.

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But really, take one day to read one of these commentaries.

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Tomorrow, read that middle of the road on the same passage, on the same few verses.

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And then go read the sermonic material, the sermonic commentary on the same. So really what you're doing is taking an extremely long, multi -day soak in a very short passage.

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Yeah. So if you think of, you know, a famous passage, so Ephesians chapter one, there's that long in the

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Greek. There's the one long, unbroken sentence where Paul is talking about the triune work of God in rescuing us.

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Well, you know, so there's some statements early on in verse three and four about the work of the Father. Choosing and predestining and wonderful stuff.

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So you could just take two verses there and you could read the academic commentary. Tomorrow, you read another commentary that's a bit more warm hearted, not just the nuts and bolts.

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And then maybe the third and fourth day, maybe, you know, maybe it takes you a whole week to cover three verses.

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But that's OK, because you're just working the whole year. You're working slowly through a book. Now, if you're going to work through a book and with any of these, you do want to have some way of recording what you're learning.

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So a notebook, computer at your hand where you can type in your notes, whatever, however you do it.

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I use notebooks. But also, I think, you know, you would want to you would want to there be some passages that you'll want to memorize and just, you know, store up in your heart.

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So I wouldn't memorize necessarily the entire book of Romans. You can do that if you're up to it. But there may be key passages in the book of Romans, three or four or five or six key passages.

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And maybe they're, you know, 10 verses each. And over the year of studying Romans, you could memorize those key passages.

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Let me give you a second approach to study, and that's not studying a book of the Bible, but studying a theme of the

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Bible. Now, the benefit of that is you get a big picture of a theme.

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So whatever the theme is, you know, let's say the theme of prayer. All the prayers of the

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Bible. And that ought to give you a very well -rounded picture of what the Bible says about one thing.

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That's the pros. The cons. The cons would be that it's harder to locate your material because you've got to go find the material.

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Whereas if you're just doing one book, it's pretty obvious, you know, I just go to the next verse tomorrow. Another con is as you study a theme in individual places, as it shows up throughout the scripture, you need to be careful not to bend a passage to fit what you think.

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So that means you're going to have to keep it in its context. So let's say that we find statements about prayer in the book of Second Chronicles.

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There's many wonderful statements about corporate prayer, about seeking God as a whole people.

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Keep it in the context. Why does it show up where it shows up? You know, you don't want to bend a passage to fit a theme ever.

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So that requires a little carefulness. Now, let me say that there you could pick anything that you find, you know, any substantial thing.

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The bigger the theme, the longer it would take you. So you could study these things as if you've never read anything about this before.

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Character of God. The person and work of Jesus Christ. I mentioned prayer.

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What about evangelism? What about holiness? What about the church? You know, what about humility?

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I remember Mr. Roberts mentioning going through the Bible and reading every passage on humility, then going back and reading every passage on pride and looking at them in their context and taking a long soak there.

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So you can use a concordance. You can use Nave's topical Bible as an online resource, or you may have it in a hard copy.

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But there are ways to locate, you know, where this shows up now because we're looking at a systematic picture of this.

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You can start with a systematic theology. So, again, you back up and you want to get the big picture. You want to try to collect where does the

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Bible talk about this theme? And then you would kind of narrow in on that and study passage by passage.

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And then hopefully, you know, kind of get a really after you've gotten the big picture and then you've studied the individual passages.

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Hopefully there will be some key themes that come up. So, for instance, if you're studying prayer, you start with, you know, looking up every place that the word prayer shows up or you get a good, you know,

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Bible dictionary or systematic theology. And you start with, you know, every place that prayer is mentioned.

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And you've studied those passages in their context. And then you start to notice some key themes.

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So what do people ask God for in prayer? How do they describe

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God in prayer? What situations drove them to God in prayer? You know, so things like that, that hopefully at the end of the study, you've gotten a well -rounded, but also a pretty precise understanding of that.

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One thing that we've suggested recently, as we've been looking at the life of Christ at Christ Church on Sunday mornings, is taking a description, an

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Old Testament description of Jesus Christ and then reading through the Gospels with just that one description as kind of a window.

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So we use Daniel chapter seven, verse 13 and 14. The Son of Man is presented there coming up to the

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Father, receiving a kingdom so that all people might honor and worship him. Well, if you take that phrase,

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Son of Man, which appears about 80 times in the Gospels, and Jesus refers to himself as the

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Son of Man, no one else does. Every time you read the Son of Man from Christ's own lips, go back to Daniel seven, read those two verses.

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Here's this picture of the Son of Man receiving all the glory due to an everlasting king.

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So I read those two verses and then I read a passage where, for instance, it says the

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Son of Man has come to seek and save that which is lost. Or the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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Or the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. And so I read the picture of the

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Son of Man, this glorious picture. And then I read this strange picture of this same being humbling himself, reaching out to the sinner.

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It really alters the way I read the New Testament. You can do that with any

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Old Testament description. So God gave us Old Testament pictures of the coming of the

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Messiah. Take one of them, read the new, read the Gospels, you know, and see how that alters the way you approach

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Jesus Christ. So that's a theme, a thematic study. And again, you want to start with kind of the big picture and then and then hone in.

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Let me give you a third study option for the year. What if we're not talking about the Bible now, but what if you studied one

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Christian author? OK, so this may take more than a year. And I've heard this suggested many times throughout my life.

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But you pick a Christian author that you feel is, you know, has written on a number of substantial topics.

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And you want to kind of become acquainted with that Christian author in your life. And you kind of set your goal to become an expert on that, that author.

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So that means you're going to have to pick one that's written enough that would kind of validate that much study.

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And there's enough about him that you could go into study. Yeah. So where do you start? Well, I would suggest that you start with a biography, actually.

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What kind of life did the person live? You know, when did they live? What what what things did they go through?

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You know, what's admirable about that person? I always find myself benefited reading about the life of the author before I read the author's works.

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So Samuel Rutherford, Rutherford's life is so extraordinary. You know, the suffering he went through, the things he says about Christ in his books, in his letters, carry a lot more weight when

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I've already read his life. If I hadn't read his life, the things I read that he wrote, much, much less impact on me.

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So start with the biography. And also it helps to to know when a particular book was written in his life.

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So I'm actually at the very beginning stages of doing this with John Owen. And Owen is very difficult to read at times.

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But my hope is that the more I read, the more kind of used to his language and way of speaking and I'll be able to hear him better.

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But knowing when a book was written, when it was written to a church, when it was written to the general public, what was happening in that era, all of those things really do assist in how you approach a book and how you approach a particular letter, writing or sermon that the person that you're reading presented.

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Yeah. And there's some pros and cons to this kind of a study. One of the pros is that you, in a sense, if you pick wisely, that author can become a lifelong friend to you.

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And so it's almost like a John Owen or a George Whitefield or, you know, a John Flavel or whoever,

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John Bunyan. There's a lot of good Johns, you know, in history. So one of the, you know, these guys, in a sense, it's like they walk alongside of you and you get the friendship of a

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John Bunyan your entire life or, you know, or whoever it is. So I find that extremely beneficial.

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It's like you can never quite shake their witness, their pattern of life and their words.

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One of the cons would be that no individual in Christian history can be our master.

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We call one man master, Jesus Christ. And what we love about these men, about John Owen, is not that John Owen becomes my pattern, but that John Owen helps me love

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Christ. John Owen helps me to understand Christ. John Owen's life helps me, helps me follow

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Christ. So these men help us love the Lord. So in a sense, we're walking.

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Owen comes up alongside you. If Owen's the man you picked and Owen helps you follow

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Christ better. But you don't really follow Owen. You follow Christ using Owen. There are, you know, many suggestions we could give.

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Fortunately, we live in a day where there are a lot of the old writers, their works are available now. So, you know,

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Reformation Heritage Books has a lot of good sets out. Banner of Truth has had a lot of good sets out for a long time.

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John Flavel, John Newton, you know, Richard Sibbes.

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I mean, there are just so many good Puritan sets that you could pick from. It doesn't have to be an old Puritan author.

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I mean, it could be Spurgeon. Yeah, Spurgeon. If you're going to read his books, there's not as many books as there's a whole heap of sermons.

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It could be even a modern author, you know, a Piper or whoever, you know, that you find really beneficial.

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I remember reading C .S. Lewis and I did notice quite a distinct difference.

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And I mentioned, you know, we don't follow these men as if they are our Lord. You know, if you've been reading Spurgeon biographies and Whitefield biographies and then you move to C .S.

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Lewis, it was I found it a little disappointing. Lewis's life wasn't quite on the same level that, you know, these heroes of the

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Christian faith. But it was an honest look at his life. And so it was kind of, you know, refreshing in that sense.

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You know, Lewis didn't like walk on the clouds. He was a bit more flawed than, you know, than the biographies

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I read about McShane or whoever. So you can pick an author that has a substantial number of works, sermons.

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Now, I think there's an order here that's helpful. If you pick an author, generally you'll have books they've written, essays or small, you know, smaller, like devotional writings that aren't actually a book, letters, sermons.

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So you have different genres of writing. So take A .W. Tozer. Tozer wrote a handful of books.

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It's under 10 books, but there's about 39 books out there you can find by Tozer.

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Now, what happened was Tozer wrote a lot of articles, editorials for the Christian Missionary Alliance magazine.

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And after Tozer died, people took those articles and put them into books. And you can tell that it's made up of articles if the chapters are about four pages each.

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All right. That's not a Tozer book that he wrote. Those are articles that he wrote. So if I were going to use

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Tozer, I would start with his books because that's a different way of writing. Tozer has gathered his thoughts, wrestled with a theme and written an entire book on one theme.

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So the pursuit of God, the knowledge of the holy. I would start with those and then

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I would work my way toward the toward the collections of his essays where he's just giving you warm kind of nuggets, you know.

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So if you have an author like so, let's say a John Newton, you're going to have.

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Did he write any books? Well, Newton wrote very few books. And so if you go to his six volume set, there are some books, but mainly he wrote sermons and then he wrote letters.

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So what I would do is I would move from the big to the specific, from the general to the specific.

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So books, essays, sermons, letters.

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Generally, that's how I move. It's not I mean, obviously, it's not a black and white rule. And if you feel that you're benefited by reading in a different way, then you can do that.

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You could, you know, if you pick an author like Newton who didn't write a bunch of big, heavy theological books, you could pick themes.

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So, you know, what did Newton preach on regarding, let's say, the death of Christ? And you can use the index in the in the series to find sermons on the cross and then you can find letters on the death of Christ.

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So, you know, you could study even an author thematically. Let me give you one more suggestion, and that is studying a period of history.

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So we're not doing a Bible book. We're not even doing an author, but we're studying a period of Christian history where we see

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God at work. And so, again, we start if you pick a period in history, you're going to have to pick one that's somewhat specific or you're going to, you know, you'll grow old and die before you read all the stuff you could read on it.

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So you kind of have to prune your appetite. You know, you have to discipline yourself. So let's take, for example, the 18th century

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Great Awakening here in the States or the evangelical revival in Britain, which is the same general movement.

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So if we pick the revivals of the 18th century, where do you start? Well, I would start with just a basic Christian history book, the biggest picture.

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So you're reading a Christian history book and only one chapter is on the 18th century. But it will put it in the context, you know, what was happening before and during that century and after.

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And that kind of gives you the context for the movement. Then I would move in and I would read a book on that movement.

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So I would read a maybe I'd read the section of a general Christian history book.

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And then I would read a book that talks about the 18th century revival. And that's all it talks about.

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Then I would become even more specific by reading either history books on one part of the

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Great Awakening. So there are books that hone in on only on, you know,

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Wales or England or Scotland or the colonies. And I would. So you're becoming more specific.

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I would read biographies next. OK, not just one area, one region.

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So what God did in the colonies in the 18th century, but what God did in the life of Jonathan Edwards and in that one church and later among the

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Indians when he labored among the Indians. And then, you know, then you can read some of the specific things they say, you know, the first hand resources, the primary accounts of them in themselves.

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So you can kind of funnel in like that general to the specific. A couple of closing warnings, one would be this, don't try to bite off more than you can chew, don't don't don't become overwhelmed.

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I mean, you have a lifetime to do some of these studies. So, you know, just 15 minutes a night and keep a notebook where you're writing down things that God is teaching you.

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And just think of don't don't get overwhelmed like, well, I I don't know that I can do that in a few months or I don't know that I could even do that in a year.

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Well, have the long term picture. You know, if I spent 15 minutes a night studying, reading

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John Owen, for example, and reading what God did during that period in in a year,

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I may not be able to accomplish as much as I think in five years. I generally can accomplish much more than I would imagine.

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Yeah, I can't remember if it was if it was you or our other elder Chuck who had said we tend to as a people, we overestimate what we can do in a day and we underestimate what we can do in a year.

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Yeah. And there's a lot of truth in that. So, one, don't be discouraged if all you have, you know, time wise and mental wise is 15 minutes.

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That's the time that I can block off. A great deal of benefit can be wrought from 15 minutes.

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Another warning would be don't don't don't get hung up at the beginning thinking,

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I don't know if I picked the right one. You know, I picked I picked the thematic study rather than the book study.

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I I picked a historical study rather than an author study. And maybe that wasn't the best one for me.

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And I do this all the time. I start a new study and about one week into it, I think I'm not getting that much out of this.

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I probably picked the wrong one. You know, so I study Colossians a week into Colossians. I think maybe it should have been an

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Old Testament book. I probably should have been in an Old Testament book. So I jump in the First Chronicles and about a week into that, I think, actually, you know,

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I probably should have been looking at a gospel. And I get myself stuck at the starting line.

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So the key. I can't help but smile because that's my story with so many things as well. Yeah. So the key is not did you start the right place?

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The key is and of course, none of these studies replace your daily time with God in the scripture.

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But the key is to be consistent and to be humble and to meet with the

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Lord, even if you're reading a history book and to say to him, help me learn the things about you. I need to learn about you as I as I see the way you worked in this period.

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So be teachable, be consistent and do not get stuck at the starting line like I do.

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And I plan to quit doing that after I'm glorified in heaven. I won't have any more problem with that.

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Let me give you one more. It's a quote. Someone sent me this quote about a month ago, and it's actually a quote by Helen Keller.

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And she said this, I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they are great and noble.

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So when it comes to the study of great themes in the Bible, books of the

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Bible, periods of Christian history or that or what one author wrote about God or whatever.

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Don't try to accomplish great, big, noble tasks. Do the small task today.

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Do the small study, the 15 minutes, but do it with the awareness that this is part of a great and noble task and the

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Lord will help us. And I think that if we can be consistent, we'll find it greatly rewarding.

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There are many ideas about God in our culture today. Many are not grounded in scripture and some are actually the opposite of what scripture teaches.

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The best way to identify these ideas is to go back to the Bible and allow God to speak for himself.

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Learn how God describes his character, his work in salvation, his definition of repentance and much more through the 12 week multimedia

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Bible study, Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically. The heart of this study is its daily devotional workbook participants study at home in preparation for the small group session.

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Each session is led by a video containing three segments. First, a biographical sketch of an individual from Christian history who was gripped by the reality of God you were studying that week.

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Second is a sermon from Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany. Lastly, are interviews from contemporary

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Christian pastors and authors who help apply the lessons from the week to learn more, to see what others are saying about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically.

35:58

Visit MediaGratia .org or click the link in the description of this episode. Well, 2020 was definitely an unprecedented year in a lot of different ways, and our prayer is that 2021 can be unprecedented in a lot of different ways.

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Our prayer for you, our prayer for one another, is that we will end this year closer to Christ with a heart that is warmer to Christ and more immediately obedient to his will and to his command.

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We do want to let you know before we end this episode that we're going to take a bit of a break. We're going to take the next several weeks and release to you some different aspects of some of the projects that MediaGratia has made.

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So those will be sermons from Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, Weight of Majesty, our latest project on the church, and some other things we think that you'll benefit from.

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The reason that we're taking a break, one, as we mentioned earlier, this is the day before Christmas Eve.

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So we're going to take a little bit of time off just to breathe and enjoy time with family, but also because there's some changes coming to the podcast.

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And I don't want to give away anything just yet. But there's some really, I think, helpful changes that are that are coming in and I could not be more excited about it.

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So be on the lookout. Make sure you're subscribed to our podcast and to our

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YouTube channel and you'll be able to see and hear the difference soon. We want to end this episode with a