Our text for today is Acts 8:30 (NIV)
“Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked.”
That is a great question. “Do you understand what you are reading?” The first step in understanding what you read is to know the meaning of the words you are reading.
One of my college professors told about attending a discussion on the necessity of baptism. The fellow who was taking the position that baptism was necessary used as his proof text Matthew 7:14
In the KJV, it reads, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.” He read that and said, “I looked in the dictionary and it defined strait as ‘a small body of water.’ “ Then he continued, “The only small body of water in the Church is the baptistry.”
When the other guy stood up to answer this argument, he said, “Well, that is a new argument. I don’t know how to answer it, so we’ll just move on to the next point.” Ugh!
They didn’t know the meaning of a Bible word and so they got everything wrong. Of course, they could have just read the passage in a different version and found it reads, “Narrow is the gate that leads to life.” “Strait,” the word in the KJV means “narrow” and not “water.”
Words matter. Knowing what a word means makes the difference between understanding God’s words and misusing God’s word. Beginning tomorrow we are going to look at six common Bible words. You hear them all the time, but may not know exactly what they mean. We will be better Bible readers by knowing these six words.
Here are the six words that we will define:
1. Faith, 2. Grace, 3. Hope, 4. Sin, 5. Repentance, 6. Forgiveness
You use these words and hear them all the time. I trust that by digging deeper into the meaning of these words as used in the Bible, you will be a better Bible student.
Tomorrow we will begin with the word “Faith.”
Lonnie Davis