An Online Bible Commentary You Can Understand - A Spotlight on BibleRef.com - Podcast Episode 71
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What is BibleRef.com? What is the purpose of BibleRef.com? How is BibleRef.com different from other Bible commentary websites? How is the Bible commentary content on BibleRef.com created and edited?
Links:
BibleRef.com - https://www.bibleref.com/
About BibleRef.com - https://www.bibleref.com/about.html
What's new on BibleRef.com? - https://www.bibleref.com/new.html
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Disclaimer: The views expressed by guests on our podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of Got Questions Ministries. Us having a guest on our podcast should not be interpreted as an endorsement of everything the individual says on the show or has ever said elsewhere. Please use biblically-informed discernment in evaluating what is said on our podcast.
- 00:24
- Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. A few episodes ago, we did a spotlight on GQkids .org,
- 00:31
- and we're going to continue that series today. We just want to spotlight the other websites that Got Questions runs.
- 00:37
- So it's not just GotQuestions .org. There's several other sites in our network as well. Today, we're going to be talking about BibleRef .com.
- 00:45
- BibleRef was the site we launched a few years ago. It's really interesting in that it kind of is an offshoot of Got Questions because it's a different type of question.
- 00:55
- So at Got Questions, we kept receiving questions over and over again about what does this
- 01:00
- Bible verse mean? So what does John 3 .16 mean? What does Philippians 4 .13 mean? What does John 1 .12
- 01:06
- mean? And we're like, is GotQuestions .org really the best place to have those articles?
- 01:12
- So we'd kind of been thinking and dreaming and praying about sort of a Bible commentary site where we would answer those questions.
- 01:20
- Anyone who asked the question, what does Revelation 3 .12 mean, we'd have an article just dedicated to that.
- 01:26
- But as we started looking through this and planning it, we were like, there's a lot of verses in the Bible. If I remember correctly, it's 31 ,172 verses in the
- 01:38
- Bible. That's a lot of articles. And we're not sure every single verse needs its own article.
- 01:45
- For example, there's several verses in Job where the entire verse is just, and Job said.
- 01:51
- That's going to be pretty hard to write an article about. But still, even with that in mind, the goal of BibleRef .com
- 01:56
- is to have an article or at least a paragraph on every single verse in the
- 02:02
- Bible so that if someone goes to Google or whatever search engine they prefer and does a search for, what does
- 02:07
- John 3 .16 mean? You want them to land on BibleRef. Well, similar to GotQuestions, they will get a theologically sound, biblically dedicated answer that explains that in easy to understand language.
- 02:20
- So that's the primary vision for BibleRef, a Bible commentary that people can understand and designed to work well in the search engine so that people will find
- 02:31
- BibleRef articles just like they find GotQuestions articles, but on a more directly
- 02:36
- Bible verse focus rather than GotQuestions, which tends to be more topically focused. So on today's episode,
- 02:43
- I have Jeff, who is the administrator of BibleRef .com and Chris Lyon, who is one of the primary authors of BibleRef .com
- 02:52
- commentary. So Jeff, why don't you take it away? Maybe start by just introducing what your service at GotQuestions was before, and then how
- 03:01
- BibleRef really fits with the passion and the calling that God has on your life. Absolutely.
- 03:07
- I started with GotQuestions Ministries in 2004 as a question answering volunteer.
- 03:13
- And that was in a phase of my life where I had only a few years before that started to become really serious about my faith.
- 03:22
- And I was looking for answers. I came across GotQuestions as I was growing more and more confident in understanding exactly what
- 03:29
- I believed and why, and worked with GotQuestions as a volunteer for a good while, eventually started doing some contract writing.
- 03:36
- And then this opportunity for BibleRef came up, and I was really intrigued by the idea of doing this particular thing.
- 03:45
- My background was in mechanical engineering, but I knew I wanted to do some sort of vocational ministry.
- 03:51
- I was really pulled in that direction of explaining, answering, defending biblical truth.
- 03:57
- So the idea of doing something that was hands -on, practical, layman level, that's always been my personal emphasis, is on things that are meaningful to real people in the real world.
- 04:09
- It's not that I don't appreciate theory and those sorts of things, but I also know that the rubber has to meet the road sooner or later.
- 04:16
- And that's part of the engineering mindset. The difference between an engineer and a scientist is that the engineer focuses on, what do
- 04:23
- I do with this? What's the application for that? So when we had the opportunity to do something with GotQuestions that was clear, layman level, free, easy to access, easy to find, that was a big deal to me.
- 04:37
- So I was happy to come on board and basically move completely out of a secular career and into doing that full time.
- 04:48
- And it's been a really rewarding process. One of the things that makes that interesting is that you find yourself digging into passages more deeply than you have in the past.
- 04:56
- Another thing that's interesting is you get to interact with a lot of other people and the way they do it.
- 05:02
- As you were saying, there's a lot of content in the Bible and in order for us to get the level of content that we want, that's not feasible for a single person to simply produce all by themselves.
- 05:14
- I mean, you can do that. But the way that we're doing our commentary, that could take decades to accomplish.
- 05:21
- So to get this done, we work with several other persons who help us write.
- 05:27
- Now, one of the persons who's been doing our writing in a lot of cases is Chris. And I'm glad that you're able to join us today.
- 05:37
- Chris is one of the gentlemen who writes a lot of our biblical commentary content that we then take and we work together to put into the form that we're using.
- 05:47
- So why don't you give us a little bit of a background on your personal connection to ministry and how you came to be connected with GodQuestions and BibleRef.
- 05:57
- Sure. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. When I first heard about BibleRef, I was astounded that this was something someone is going to jump into and build from the ground up.
- 06:09
- And I was so excited to be a part of it. I was flabbergasted that I was being invited to work on writing commentary one verse at a time, one book at a time.
- 06:20
- It's awesome. I started in ministry, really. My first full -time job of any kind, career -wise, was working for TeamQuest magazine as an editor.
- 06:30
- Then published my back of the Bible in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is where I am from. And TeamQuest moved to another ministry in Dallas.
- 06:39
- We lived down there for a few years, and I worked on that magazine, and then ended up in Colorado Springs working for Scripture Press Publications, which publishes
- 06:48
- Sunday school curriculum. And it was there working at Scripture Press. I worked for my editor there.
- 06:55
- His name is Jim Dyett. And that was like an opportunity just to open the doors and learn so much about the
- 07:02
- Bible, because Sunday school curriculum, kind of like BibleRef, you kind of march through, at least we did.
- 07:08
- You marched through books of the Bible and tried to present them. I was working on youth material, so you try to present them with clarity, concisely, and in as compelling way as possible, which, from my understanding, is the ministry of BibleRef as well.
- 07:26
- And then in 2001, I went full -time freelance as a writer, editor, web content manager, working for ministries, working for secular organizations, both.
- 07:37
- Somewhere in there, we moved back to Nebraska for a while, where I was on staff with a church as a pastor for about seven years, and did that part -time.
- 07:45
- And then we moved back to Colorado Springs and reconnected with, actually, Beth DeVore, who works there at GodQuestions.
- 07:53
- And old friends reconnected, and she mentioned, hey, there's something that GodQuestions is launching, and maybe you would be a good fit to be part of that.
- 08:03
- So yeah, I'm very glad. I think it's been about six years now that we've been marching through books of the
- 08:10
- Bible, and it's been awesome. Yeah, and it's interesting when we talk about those connections, because both Beth and Jim that you mentioned have also contributed commentary for BibleRef.
- 08:21
- So there's definitely a team effort that goes behind this. I think, Shay, it was interesting, you were discussing the idea of how
- 08:28
- GodQuestions had a need to get into commentary, and I think it would be interesting for people to know or to hear how does
- 08:36
- GodQuestions interact with, or what's the way in which BibleRef fits into or is currently being used in the
- 08:44
- GodQuestions context. Sure. So one of the interesting things about BibleRef is that it truly is unique in the sense of no one else, at least that I know of, is really doing this to the same extent.
- 08:57
- There are other sites where you can get Bible commentary, but typically they are the commentaries that were written several hundred years ago, so they're completely open source, no copyright, those sorts of things.
- 09:07
- And not that there's not any value in, say, a Matthew Henry commentary, there truly is. But for today's readers, it can be pretty hard to understand, it doesn't really fit the cultural context.
- 09:18
- So that's another reason why one of the things that GodQuestions, we strive not to do, is to reinvent the wheel. If there's someone else already doing something, doing it well, we don't want to just launch it just for the sake of launching it.
- 09:31
- So BibleRef, we truly do believe, fills a unique role. And then as BibleRef has grown, and now,
- 09:38
- Jeff, I'd love for you to give stats of just where currently BibleRef is at in terms of how much of the
- 09:43
- Bible we have done, but as more and more content has become available, we find ourselves using it like in the
- 09:48
- Q &A system. So if someone submits a question at GodQuestions, we've got access to the
- 09:54
- BibleRef database. If someone asks, well, what does Ephesians 1 .3 mean, or what does
- 10:00
- Ephesians 1 .3 -14 mean, we can very easily then import BibleRef content into that answer.
- 10:07
- And that's not something we could ever do before. That was something that previously, we'd either have to write out the answer right there or assign that to a writer, and then they'd have to do all the digging.
- 10:16
- So having a easy to understand and biblically sound commentary at our fingertips has been a huge benefit to GodQuestions in terms of just being able to provide the answers to questions we receive, because those are some of the favorite questions we get at GodQuestions with people who are directly wanting to study the
- 10:35
- Bible and are not able to understand a particular verse or struggling for whatever reason.
- 10:41
- Here we are in January, and I always find it interesting, so many people will start a one -year
- 10:47
- Bible reading plan in January. So all throughout January, we're getting all these questions about the book of Genesis, because that's where the one -year
- 10:56
- Bible reading plan. So based on the type of questions we get, I can tell you where the one -year Bible is in the
- 11:02
- Genesis text, just from, well, why did Jacob wrestle with God?
- 11:07
- Or why did Cain kill Abel? Or why this? Or why the flood? So, oh, we must be in Genesis 8 in the
- 11:13
- Bible one -year plan. So that's a couple of the benefits we've found. And then as Bible Ref has grown and grown, and we could share some of the stats.
- 11:23
- I mean, it's amazing. Millions of people a month are now hitting BibleRef .com.
- 11:29
- It's a privilege to see, and that when we launched this, I remember Jeff and I even having the conversation.
- 11:35
- It's like, I think this will work. I think that there's a market or a need for this, but we don't really know until we try.
- 11:42
- But it's blown us away how quickly it's grown and how, even here, just a few years in, how much of it we're done with and the impact it's having.
- 11:52
- Just some of the great testimonials we hear from people, how much they love it. And it's actually a
- 11:57
- Bible commentary that I can understand. And that's kind of one of our slogans or definitely one of our goals for BibleRef is that we want to biblically sound.
- 12:05
- We want to answer the questions. If there's some nitty -gritty details that really need to be covered, we want to do that.
- 12:10
- We want to present it in a way that people can understand. Because if you look behind me, I've got all sorts of commentaries.
- 12:17
- And trust me, there are some of these commentaries that I don't even understand what they're talking about. So we want this to be at the level where you don't need to have a seminary degree to be able to understand it.
- 12:29
- You don't need to have a thorough knowledge of Greek and Hebrew to be able to understand it. We want to explain the verses as much as is necessary, but without overwhelming people with the intricate details of behind the scenes type of stuff.
- 12:43
- And that's one of the things that causes us to drive so much of our emphasis into context, because one of the things that really helps a person understand what scripture means and what it says is context.
- 12:57
- What do other verses say? What do other passages say? What is the general tone and the purpose of something?
- 13:04
- Because a lot of times people tend to read verses like fortune cookies. They just want to read one verse and try to interpret it all by itself.
- 13:11
- And it's not that you can never do that, but there's always danger in taking those things out of context.
- 13:16
- So we try to focus very heavily on here is how this particular verse connects to a wider passage.
- 13:24
- Here's how this passage connects to a chapter, connects to the entire Bible. One of the things that really was interesting to me was to know that when we were going to go about making a
- 13:33
- Bible commentary, that we were going to do it with the emphasis on it being accessible.
- 13:40
- Because you're right, we can write things at a very high technical level. We can go into all of the tiny details, but that's not really useful for most people.
- 13:50
- And everybody needs some help to understand scripture. The Bible never says that you're just supposed to take a
- 13:56
- Bible, lock yourself in a closet, and once you're done reading it, you will understand everything with perfection.
- 14:01
- We need each other to help us understand, but there's also limitations. Every single one of us has some point in time where our brain just says,
- 14:09
- I just ran out of bandwidth. I can't hold a whole lot more on this. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to boil these things down in a way that the really important things, not the doctrinal tangents, not the things that have true and false answers, because everything in scripture, there's some correct and incorrect ideas, but not all those things are equally important.
- 14:31
- None of those things are equally clear. So what we want to do is focus on those things that are clear.
- 14:36
- Make sure that a person could read the Bible and come away and say, yes, I think I understand the things about this that I need to know, that I really should understand to understand
- 14:47
- God's will. And that's one of the things that's come across to me as I've written commentary, co -authored commentary, edited commentary is understanding the nuances of how you can help people understand context.
- 15:02
- Where do we tie it in? How do we tie it in? What are the 10 ,000 things that you want to say, but you know, you've only got so many words to go in there.
- 15:12
- So you're going to have to let some things go. At least for me, that's been part of the experience is knowing that we could say a million different things, but here's the things that are most important.
- 15:21
- Now that's my side of the experience. Chris, I'd like to hear from you about what it's been like for you over these couple of years of writing commentary.
- 15:30
- What do you like? What's challenging? Is there a particular book that you've worked on that you found more interesting?
- 15:35
- Just what's your experience been so far of this process? Well, what
- 15:40
- I loved about Bible Rep from the very beginning was that commitment to make it accessible.
- 15:47
- Because that came from my experience of just teaching laymen in the church, good friends who we would sit around in a
- 15:54
- Bible study. And I would realize just as the church, and this is not in a, I don't offer this as condemnation, but as the church in general, we're pretty shallow in our understanding of the
- 16:04
- Bible. People who've been going to church their whole lives who are committed to Christ at a serious devotional level.
- 16:12
- We have gaps in our understanding of what God's Word says to us. I think part of the reason for that is we can sometimes make it an academic exercise that we've made the idea that here's
- 16:25
- God's revealed Word to you, which should be one of the most important things to understand in our life.
- 16:32
- And we've reduced it to a level of school or academic understanding.
- 16:39
- And there is study that needs to be done to reach a correct understanding of God's Word. But as we present it to people to be able to make it as accessible as possible, this is the living and active
- 16:49
- Word of God. That's exciting to me. That mission is exciting to me.
- 16:55
- And so that's exciting to me when you're sitting down to teach people face -to -face. And it's exciting to me to say, here's a challenging verse.
- 17:03
- Don't get it wrong and be done in two or 300 words. That is a challenge, but it's also exciting.
- 17:13
- That's a reason to get out of the bed in the morning because I really want to get that right. And I really don't want to get in the way of the connection the reader will make with God's truth by the power of the
- 17:26
- Holy Spirit, because I go off on a tangent that's too academic or because I missed the big point that's right in the middle of it, talking about things that are less important.
- 17:39
- So I love that idea. But yeah, you're right. It's challenging. What's some verses, obviously some texts are easier or harder than others.
- 17:51
- Shay was talking about how there are some verses that, yes, we believe in making things accessible. Yes, we know everybody's at a certain level, but when the verse says, and Job said, you really don't need a whole lot of explanation behind that word.
- 18:03
- We're not necessarily going to come up with 150, 200 words of deep commentary, but there's also verses in there where you say,
- 18:10
- I could write 10 ,000 words about this and I don't know if I'm necessarily going to get there.
- 18:18
- Which aspects or I guess maybe passages or parts of the Bible have you found that have presented you with the most either interest or challenge in that?
- 18:26
- Is that idea of how am I going to distill this down to something that's not a thesis? Right.
- 18:33
- Well, and so a good example of that would be Isaiah. Isaiah was challenging.
- 18:39
- There's so much depth and context and people have written books and books on three verses in Isaiah.
- 18:47
- So it's making choices about what we're not going to talk about, although they might be extremely valuable things, but it's remembering too that the mission, the audience always think we're serving an audience and the audience are laymen, including myself.
- 19:04
- If I'm going to look just what's my basic understanding of what this verse says, understanding I'm not going to present everything this verse means, might mean everything it's connected to in the
- 19:14
- Bible. But Isaiah was challenging because you could always go deeper and you could always say more and you could always go to the passages that this verse is connected to in the
- 19:27
- Old Testament and the New Testament. And so some of it you're curating what is essential for someone who's just looking to understand the meaning of this verse or this passage.
- 19:41
- Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that's a good way to describe kind of the general approach that we have at Bible Ref is we understand that it's an internet ministry.
- 19:52
- This is we seek to support discipleship. We believe in discipleship, but you can't be discipled by text on a screen.
- 20:00
- So we can't say, yes, we're going to fully and completely immerse somebody in all the meanings of this scripture just through what we're doing.
- 20:10
- And to what Shay was saying, part of it is also about the unique ministry that comes with doing things on the internet.
- 20:17
- One of the things that we are doing unashamedly is trying to make sure that this is material that's going to show up when people are looking for it.
- 20:25
- It's a visibility sort of a thing. And in some respects, that's not a whole lot different than somebody who prints a
- 20:30
- Bible saying, well, I want to choose a size and a shape of the letters that's relatively easy for people to read.
- 20:38
- So when we want to make something search engine friendly, that's really done for that exact same reason.
- 20:44
- We want people to be able to see that. Shay, I'm curious to know if you have any thoughts on your mind about specific portions of Bible ref that you find that GotQuestions Ministries is going to more often than others for those.
- 20:58
- What does such and such a verse or such and such a chapter mean? We can totally pull up some data on that, but I mean, really like what's
- 21:06
- GotQuestions, if you look at like the top 20 questions of all time, almost all of them are controversial issues.
- 21:11
- And then it's kind of the same thing with the most popular. What does in survival verse mean?
- 21:18
- It's going to be the ones that have the most controversy or the ones that are most difficult to understand because those are the ones that people are either confused about or most intrigued about or just need help understanding like verses in Hebrews.
- 21:31
- I know we're going to be talking later about the issue of eternal security and the loss of salvation.
- 21:37
- Some of those verses in Hebrews are really difficult to understand. So you get a lot of questions about those or some of the most really, really common ones that we don't get a lot of people asking, what does
- 21:47
- John 3, 16 mean? Because it's pretty much the core of the gospel. If you don't understand that, there's a lot of other questions we need to direct you to.
- 21:58
- But some of the other ones like a, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me from Philippians.
- 22:04
- So that's a lot of people quote that verse and they love that verse and that's their life verse. But do they really actually know what it means?
- 22:11
- And do they know what it means in its context? So those are the type that we see the most often. It's going to be either the controversial ones, the difficult to understand ones, or the really commonly known ones that maybe people are thinking for the first time is like,
- 22:25
- I don't think that means what I've always thought it means. So they go to Google search for what does this
- 22:31
- Bible verse mean? And we're increasingly finding Bible right at the top of the results.
- 22:37
- And that's what we're aiming for. And that's, that's why we have also focused on the idea of making our content of good quality rather than focusing just on quantity.
- 22:48
- Uh, at least at the time that this podcast is going to be published, people are probably going to hear
- 22:54
- Chris talk about working on Isaiah and they're going to go, Isaiah, I don't see Isaiah on there.
- 22:59
- Well, no, not yet. We're working on it. You know, we take the material in, we work on it, we get it pulled together, um, and we get it up there.
- 23:07
- But we, we do have a process that we go through. Now that doesn't mean that we haven't had some success in getting things out there as of this point in time.
- 23:16
- And again, as of the time that this podcast is coming out, we'll have complete commentary for 29 books of the
- 23:23
- Bible and somewhere around 10 ,000 verses. Uh, our commentary is longer in that sense than a typical commentary would be because instead of just writing a paragraph to talk about several verses, we want every verse to be searchable, to be findable.
- 23:38
- So we've got 10 ,000 some verses worth of material, 360 chapters of material that's been published.
- 23:44
- We have surveys that give a synopsis of every book. And what we've done with that is we've structured that in layers of context.
- 23:52
- So if a person looks at a particular chapter for a book of the Bible, that chapter has commentary specifically for that chapter.
- 23:59
- And then off to the side, you'll be able to see a book summary and a context summary. How does this chapter fit in with what came before and what came after?
- 24:07
- When a person goes to a specific verse, now there's verse commentary. And then also here's a quick synopsis of the chapter that this is in.
- 24:15
- And here's a synopsis of the general context that's going on there. That's what we're seeking to provide people with is this multi -layered view so that at any time, whether they're looking at something from the book perspective, the chapter perspective, the verse perspective, they always have this sense of how does it connect?
- 24:33
- What am I looking at? What's the view from these different angles that are in here right now, as Shay was saying trends from a traffic standpoint have been interesting.
- 24:42
- We've been averaging somewhere between one and a half to two and a half million visitors a month over the past year.
- 24:48
- And search engine changes will make that go up and down, but that's somewhere around five to five and a half million page views that we'll see more.
- 24:57
- I guess, meaningful, if you want to think of it that way is that we do have a gospel presentation that we offer people.
- 25:03
- And that's obviously a theme that we're trying to explain to people to show to people is how these things relate to the gospel.
- 25:11
- And about 1700 people in 2021 indicated that they were expressing first -time faith because of what they read through the gospel page on BibleRef.
- 25:21
- That's a meaningful thing. And that's the reason that we try to promote this commentary is we want
- 25:28
- Christians to be better equipped to understand the word. We want them to have a better understanding of what it says.
- 25:34
- And that's so that they will be better ambassadors for Christ. We want people who are skeptical or who don't understand scripture to understand it better so that they will come to that conclusion.
- 25:45
- It's also the reason why we use things like social media. BibleRef has a Facebook, a Twitter. We're working on an
- 25:51
- Instagram that we use just to put the information out there so that people are more likely to contact it.
- 25:57
- We have a newsletter that we send out every month that people can sign up for on the website that gives people updates on the sort of things that we're doing and the things that are in process.
- 26:07
- Some of the things that are in process for right now, obviously, Isaiah is in there. That's one of the things that's coming through there.
- 26:13
- We've also got just about everything in the Old Testament right now is in process that we're working on.
- 26:19
- We are going to, in the relatively near future, debut an app for BibleRef so that people will be able to access the material the same way that they access
- 26:29
- GotQuestions material through an app. That's going to be a big deal because that means that it's also accessible offline.
- 26:36
- That's something that people have been asking for for quite a while, and we've been working on that. Another thing that's coming up fairly soon is we're going to start publishing
- 26:44
- Spanish language translations of BibleRef content. That's something that I know people have asked for.
- 26:51
- So far as we can tell, there isn't as much available material. Those are some of the things that are happening from an administrative standpoint behind the scenes.
- 27:01
- We're going to be wrapping up publication of Acts and then moving on with all these things in the Old Testament that we have that are in the archive.
- 27:09
- Chris, on your end, why don't you tell us just a little bit about what you're working on right now?
- 27:14
- So that people can see what we mean about how we really are working on things behind the scenes and what's striking you most about that particular book.
- 27:22
- Sure. First, to your point about how much time we invest in making sure that we get the content right,
- 27:32
- I am really glad for that. As somebody who's writing a lot of words, where words are many, sin is not absent, the
- 27:40
- Bible says. I am so glad that we are taking the time to edit it and vet it and put it through the paces because the last thing we want to do is put something out there that we don't feel good about being able to stand behind.
- 27:53
- So I'm glad for that. It should take as long as it takes to get it right. Right now, I've just finished 1
- 27:59
- Samuel. I'm moving into 2 Samuel. And I have just loved that so much.
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- Selfishly, even if nobody else comes to Bible Rev, the fact that I get to go verse by verse through these books that I've never would have ever spent as much time with as I do because we're doing it for Bible Rev, it's a joy to me.
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- You forget, you always know it. If you grew up as a Christian and you've had the experience of feeling engaged with the
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- Bible and being alive and active and feeling like God is communicating with you, for some reason, it's still easier for us to set it aside and not come back for a while.
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- And I have now a professional reason to come back every day and go through it. And I've just been hurt in 1
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- Samuel with the difference between King Saul and King David and how they responded, especially in moments of crisis, personal stress, when it seemed like things were falling apart.
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- How did they respond? And the reason David is called a man after God's own heart is because of the choices he made to, in the moment of stress, to see that God was at work and he chose to see it instead of choosing to say,
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- I don't know where God is. I'm going to take control for myself. So that's what Saul does when he's facing the
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- Philistines. For one of the first times, it's an overwhelming, the Philistine horde is on the doorstep.
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- And everybody knows that Israel is going to lose. And the fighters for Israel are running away.
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- They're literally finding holes to hide in. And he can't go to battle until Samuel shows up to make the sacrifices.
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- This is 1 Samuel 13, I believe. He can't go to battle until Samuel shows up to make the sacrifices.
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- And seven days goes by and Samuel hasn't come. And Saul makes a choice to take matters into his own hands and violate
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- God's command and offer the sacrifices himself. And this is the first time that Samuel says to him,
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- God has started looking for a replacement for you because in the moment of stress, you didn't choose to trust me and believe that I was at work and that I was good and that I was powerful.
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- You decided to work salvation for yourself. And the exact contrast of that is
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- David later on when Saul is hunting David to kill him. And that's where David shines the most is when he's going through that season where Saul is hunting him and trying to kill him.
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- And David in a moment has a choice to kill Saul. If you remember that story,
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- Saul comes into a cave where David and his men are hiding. And David has an opportunity. Saul's literally ruined
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- David's life. He's taken his wife away from him. He's taken his home away from him. David's living in the wilderness. And David and his men who have suffered this wisdom say, let's kill him.
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- And David says, no, I will not kill the Lord's anointed. That was a choice for him to say,
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- I believe that God is working out his plan through the circumstances of my life right now.
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- And even though this man is actively trying to kill me, I won't kill him because this is
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- God's work in my life. This is God's work in the world. But you get to that next chapter and stop me if I go on too long because I get a little passionate about these things.
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- But you get to that next chapter. And if you'll remember it, there's another man who treats
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- David badly, insults him. The husband of Abigail.
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- I'm forgetting his name right now. Nabal, right. Nabal insults
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- David basically. And it's as if David says to himself and to his men, I'm not going to kill the Lord's anointed, but I can kill this guy.
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- And so he mounts an army of 400 men and they take off across the wilderness to go kill
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- Nabal and his whole household. And Nabal's wife Abigail shows up with an offering and food and bows before him and makes this incredible speech.
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- And I copied it out here because David's response to her is so telling. It's the difference between David and Saul.
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- David says to Abigail, blessed be the Lord. He doesn't say you, blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel who sent you to me this day to meet me.
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- He sees Abigail as the God's work in his life.
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- He doesn't see her as acting independently. He sees her as God's work in his life. He says then, blessed be your discretion and blessed be you who have kept me this day from blood built and from working salvation with my own hand.
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- And that's the thing that hit me and convicted me. Because when I'm facing difficult circumstances, which we all are all the time,
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- I feel very motivated to work salvation for me in that circumstance with my own hand. And David throughout his life, when he was being faithful, says,
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- I'm not going to work salvation. I want to see God work salvation in my life. I'm not going to take control. And Saul, the opposite, said,
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- I have to win this. I have to take control. And that's why God rejected him. And so, man, that just hit me hard going through Samuel.
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- Maybe that's more of an answer than you were interested in. No, it's good. And I appreciate that because I think that gives people an idea of how there are these threads.
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- There are these ideas in scripture. And it's not necessarily just about giving people a simplistic answer.
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- It doesn't have to be kindergarten ABC, but it doesn't have to be overly complicated for somebody who presumably, there's a lot of people who would listen to what you just said and say,
- 33:38
- I didn't realize that that's a contrast. I didn't see. And that's kind of what we're seeking. That's what we're looking for in the general concept of Bible ref.
- 33:47
- And it's one of the things that's made me happy to work on the project is that's the kind of thing that we're offering to people. Yeah, exactly.
- 33:55
- And it's a beautiful, beautiful book. Go ahead. Sorry. So Jeff, you're doing a fantastic job on Bible ref .com.
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- And I remember when Kevin and I were just talking like, okay, so we have this idea, this vision, who do you think would be a good fit?
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- And the Lord brought you to my mind and mentioned you to Kevin. And Kevin, I have no idea if he'd be interested in that, but it sure sounds like the type of person we'd be looking for.
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- But over these past five, six years, I think God has confirmed multiple times that you are just the right man to have leading this project.
- 34:34
- And Chris, I've really enjoyed the commentary that you've written. And Melissa, my wife has edited some of your content and she's very complimentary.
- 34:41
- So thank you for your role in this as well, because we couldn't do this without you. So hope that gives you that.
- 34:47
- And I wanted to just stick in for just a quick second, remind people that there are a tremendous number of persons who are involved in Bible ref from editing to writing to proofreading.
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- It's a lot like God questions. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes than people realize. So I appreciate that. And I also appreciate all the people who are working alongside us on this.
- 35:07
- Yeah, absolutely. So I hope this brief spotlight on BibleRef .com will give you an idea of why we're doing it, what it's all about.
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- And hopefully, maybe you haven't used it before, you can start using it. We believe it's an extremely valuable tool to have a verse by verse commentary, hopefully within the next few years on the entire
- 35:26
- Bible that's explained in its context, that focuses on giving the answers from a solid evangelical, theologically sound perspective.
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- So that's what BibleRef is all about. Check it out. So this has been the Got Questions podcast spotlight on BibleRef .com.