Happy New Year!
As 2021 wrapped up I thought I had a really nice rhythm going. Then I wrote about goals in 2022 – and immediately fell off the wagon and lost the beat.
There’s a lesson here.
We do what is important to us. If you want to know what your priorities are, look at what you’re doing. How do you spend your time? That will reveal what you value.
For me it was work and family activities. It jumped up and suddenly the time to write went away.
But the good news in all this is that every day starts fresh and so each day is a chance to pursue new values and priorities.
Which brings me to what I want to talk about today. I want to dive into the New Testament and make that a focus for a while.
My goal this year is to create studies for all the key epistle writers in the New Testament. And my desire is for you to use those studies to sample the different instruments God used to communicate to us today.
When you step back and look at it, there really aren’t that many people who wrote books of the New Testament.
- Matthew
- Mark
- Luke
- John
- Paul
- James
- Jude
- Peter
- And the mysterious unknown writer of Hebrews
That’s a total of 9 people.
Believe it or not, Luke wrote the most. In fact he wrote more words than almost all of the biblical authors (the number 3 author in fact). But he did all of that in just 2 books. And that makes them really big books and hard to study.
Paul Is the 5th most prolific writer. he wrote a lot of the New Testament. We commonly think of him as the “star of the NT”.But he really came in second place – at least when it comes to word count.
Fortunately Paul wrote a lot smallish books – and they are good to study. Already in Study the Bible – Six Easy Steps we studied Titus – in part because it is short. And If you’ve been around very long you know that my first free email study program was the book of 1 Timothy.
When it comes to other similar short letter writers, we have a few.
- James wrote a nice short letter to Jewish Christians who were scattered across the Roman empire.
- Peter wrote a similar letter to persecuted Christians. Two of them actually.
- John, between his big gospel and Revelation, wrote some short letters as well.
These are the New Testament Biblical writers I want to focus on this year. They have written highly impactful but short letters that we can study together.
I look forward to the journey with you.
It’s just a matter of priority.
Dennis
