You and the Greek New Testament: Devotional Values and Precautions

You and the Greek New Testament: Devotional      Values and Precautions

I would like to provide to you two forms of exhortation (especially to pastors of local churches). One, in the form of a sermon.  The second, in book form. Personally I try to use my Greek NT on a fairly regular basis just to the languages flowing. It has also by way of personal testimony produces immense blessings reading God's word in its original language. The blessing of mining out vocabulary, word usage, grammar and syntax to say the lease simply can't be replaced with an English translation.

As to the first, I would encourage you to listen to Dr. Randy Leedy's presentation "A Deeper Devotion through a Greek New Testament."  That link can be found here located on the Mount Calvary Baptist Church Website.  This presentation was delivered during their 2018 Whetsone Conference. Exceptional presentation and heart warming challenge for pastors and laymen to use their Greek New Testaments.  It even includes some pointers (examples) of using Bible software for this task.  

The second exhortations is found in Dr. David Black's textbook Using New Testament Greek in Ministry: A Practical Guide for Students and Pastors. It is now over twenty five years since coming into print.  Three practical exhortations  concerning the decline in seminaries teaching or emphasizing study of the original languages are as follows: 

First, "the teaching of language tends to be dominated by content to the neglect of understanding" (p. 17).

Second, the decline in instruction results from "the enormous amount of material covered in the typical exegesis course" (p. 18). 

Third, the focus of teaching original languages should be "to prepare expository preachers of God's Word (p. 19). 

Finally, and I would suggest the most dangerous for the local church and Christianity as a whole, "the increasing tendency in education toward subjectivism" (p. 20). 

I hope these to sources are a challenge to you heart and daily devotional Bible reading. I also have provided a separate languages page for original language sources for both Greek and Hebrew. 

Read.  Comment.  Enjoy.