Moore to the Point

On our recent Chrismas drive from Kentucky to Texas, our family visited an elderly relative in a nursing home in Dallas, my wife’s 100 year old great aunt. The highlight of the visit, I think, consisted of our 5 year old and our 2 year old quoting Scripture to dear Aunt Esther. The boys quoted Luke 2:7-14, Psalm 121, and Psalm 23. The little guy quoted John 3:16, and then as a family we sang “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and “How Firm a Foundation.” We prayed for her, and we were back on the road.

There’s nothing special about us as parents, and our kids are not geniuses (well, we’ll see–their mother is really sharp). They were able to quote those passages and sing those songs for the simple reason that kids are sponges, and that’s what we regularly do in family worship. It’s amazing how sticky their memories are. I don’t think we could have done anything else that would have blessed Aunt Esther more than show up with our kids and have them speak the word of God.

Family worship doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t take someone with a seminary degree to pull it off. In the morning at the breakfast table we work on a memory verse together. In the evenings right before we put the boys in bed we read a passage or two from the Bible, say the Apostles’ Creed, sometimes sing a hymn, then we pray and put them in bed. That’s it. That’s family worship. The boys have Psalm 23 memorized because it was the passage we read every night for several weeks. The boys had it memorized after about a week. We kept reading it for a couple more weeks until my wife and I had it! We didn’t set out to memorize it. We just read it every night until they were saying it along with us, and before long we could all say it without looking at the Bible. The same thing happened with Psalm 121 and Luke 2:7-14. Now we’re reading Psalm 67. The boys have it, but I keep messing up the order of the phrases, so we’re still reading it.

I pray that our family worship will not only pay dividends in the nursing home with an aged relative or friend from church. I pray that the seeds sown in the lives of our sons will bear fruit. That they will be oaks of righteousness, planted by the stream of living water, bearing fruit in season, filled with the fruit of righteousness to the glory and praise of God.

If you have a family, I commend this to you. If you want to read more on it, Denny Burk has a post on Don Whitney’s helpful book. May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing of his word, and may he save our little ones and do mighty things in their lives.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, English translations of the Psalms decided not to number the superscriptions of the Psalms. This breaks with other printed practice, since the superscriptions are numbered in printed editions of the Hebrew text as well as the Greek and Latin translations. The verse numbers are not original to the authors of the individual Psalms, nor are they original to the collection of the Psalter. The verse references were added in the middle ages. For some reason, early English translators decided not to number the superscriptions, and they remain unnumbered down to the present. The problem with not numbering the superscriptions is that it gives the impression that they don’t belong with the biblical text.

Not only do the superscriptions go unnumbered, translations often put them in a different font, whether in small caps (such as in the ESV) or a smaller font (such as in the NASB and NIV), but one way or another the superscriptions are marked off as being somehow different from the rest of the text of the Psalm. This is fine, as long as it doesn’t result in the superscription being ignored.

My fear is that many serious students pay as much attention to the superscriptions as they do to the boldface subheadings some editors of modern translations have inserted into the text of the Psalms, that is, none! Concluding that the “real text” of the Psalms is not what the editors have added, serious students skip straight to verse 1, ignoring all that irrelevant prefatory text up top.

Some teachers of the Bible have also presented theological or literary arguments against interpreting the Psalms in light of the superscriptions. Worse still, some modern scholars have invented a whole set of supposed “genres” for Psalms, then their labels become procrustean beds on which the Psalms are made to lie. So instead of interpreting the texts as they stand, taking into account all the textual evidence present, they bring in a controlling theory of how the Psalms are to be classified, then they read the Psalms in light of their theory.

I have no interest in dissecting these arguments except to say this: the choice to ignore the superscriptions of the Psalms is nothing less than a radical text critical decision to exclude from consideration evidence that is in the text. We have no manuscript of the Psalms that lacks these superscriptions. Let me say that another way: every manuscript of the Psalms in our possession has the superscriptions. It is true that there are places where the superscriptions vary from one another, just as there are textual variants all over the rest of the Bible. But we have no warrant at the level of textual evidence to ignore the superscriptions of the Psalms.

These Psalms are not abstract installments in the world’s poetic registry. No, these Psalms are to be interpreted in the context of the canon, and the superscriptions are there to guide readers as to where the Psalms fit in the canonical story.

So here’s my conclusion: Are you a world-renowned Old Testament textual critic who has consciously decided that on the basis of your analysis of the manuscript evidence you cannot accept the superscriptions as belonging to the inspired, original text? Fine. Don’t preach them. But if that isn’t why you don’t preach the superscriptions, then my question for you is this: what reason can you give for ignoring part of the inspired text?

If you’d like a plan for reading through the articles in the ESV Study Bible in a year, Eric Schumacher has done you a great service. Enjoy!

I’m always looking for creative ways to do evangelism, recognizing, of course, that evangelism is like dribbling a basketball. That is, it’s great to be able to go around the back, through the legs, and so forth, but those things can only be done if you have mastered the fundamental control of the ball as it bounces from the floor to your hand. For those who can really handle the basketball, the ball has become an extension of their hand.

This happens for people who deliberately set out to improve their skills. They do dribble drills. They consciously and diligently stretch and test their abilities with a ferocious tenacity to be the best, to be one who will not lose control of the basketball, one from whom the ball will not be taken. They dribble the basketball constantly. A day does not go by that they don’t do their drills. It’s like an addiction, but it’s driven by a commitment that continues even when you don’t feel like doing it.

The equivalent for those of us who would do evangelism is that we (1) know and understand the gospel–we have to know by heart key gospel verses (e.g., Rom 3:23; 5:8; 6:23; 10:9-10; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24, etc.)–and (2) that we “dribble” the gospel the way an aspiring point guard dribbles the basketball. As the basketball is always at the tip of his fingers, the gospel is always on the tip of our tongues. Just as the point guard is always looking for a chance to practice, we’re always looking for a chance to tell someone the good news.

It used to be that Baptist churches did “visitation” every Tuesday night. That’s commendable for its consistency–is your church that consistent? My fear is that there are very few Baptist churches today who have set out to train their members to share the gospel, and then have diligently pursued ways to set people up to share the gospel. Sort of like a basketball coach who hasn’t bothered to teach his players any dribble drills, hasn’t challenged them to devote themselves to daily practice, and then shakes his head in frustration every time the team turns the ball over during the game.

If you’re a pastor, are you leading the flock on this one? What if you add a Sunday School class (or whatever you call them) open to anyone in the church who wants to learn to communicate the gospel? What if you then set a goal to have one overtly evangelistic opportunity for the church per month in 2009? It doesn’t have to be a huge event. You could pick a Saturday when you’ll canvass the neighborhood of the church, the next month you could invite the congregation to join you at a place where people are hanging out–whether a mall or an open air venue such as a town square. I know of churches that have arranged to have apologetics talks given at busy Starbucks locations.

Some people say that knocking on doors “doesn’t work” anymore, but I think there’s still a place for it. One of the most helpful things I’ve seen for helping others to start evangelistic conversations in a place where people have gathered to hang out is to have someone do some open air preaching–as much for the opportunities it gives for the Christians who have shown up with the preacher as for the open proclamation. Open air preaching doesn’t have to be done in a way that is offensive. If a gregarious person can gather a crowd, the other Christians who have come with him can then start up conversations with folks in that crowd. Then there are places that people go where they find themselves sitting and waiting, such as a bus stop, and while they wait for the bus they’re generally open to conversation.

What evangelistic “dribble drills” have you found to be most effective? What have you found to be effective ways to get conversations going, to build relationships with unbelievers, or to help someone feel the need for the gospel?