Pleasing God Podcast
Pleasing God Podcast
Unlocking the Bible: A Guide to Understanding and Applying Scripture
Unlock the secrets to a more profound understanding of the Bible with author Jonathan Sole in this enriching episode of the Pleasing God podcast. Join us as Jonathan shares his disciplined journey of writing "The Books of Scripture: A Concise Guide for Understanding and Applying the Bible" amidst the chaos of ministry work and raising five children, with two more on the way. Learn how Jonathan's commitment to an hour a day in his study transformed his vision into a vital resource that offers Christians a unified, high-level overview of the Bible. We promise you'll walk away inspired by his dedication and motivated by his insights into balancing life's many responsibilities.
Discover the key to unlocking the Bible's more challenging books like Nahum and Numbers, and grasp the significance of generational discipleship through the lens of Nineveh's story. Jonathan discusses the innovative structure of his book, following the Hebrew Bible's order, and how it aims to make scripture more accessible and engaging. Stay tuned as we also delve into the creative process behind our podcast's cover art, celebrating the collaborative effort that made it visually captivating. This episode concludes with a heartfelt reminder from 1 Thessalonians 4:3: "This is the will of God, your sanctification." Don't miss this conversation packed with wisdom, creativity, and a passion for God's Word.
Stock Music provided by wolfgangwoehrle, from Pond5
Hi and welcome back to the Pleasing God podcast, a podcast focused on helping Christians to think biblically, engage practically and live faithfully for the glory of God. I'm your host, jonathan Soule, and I'm joined again with my lovely. I guess we can call you maybe co-host. Yeah, On the website I think you're content creator or something like that chief editor.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:One who does makes this whole thing go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, you're taking a lot of credit.
Speaker 1:Well, I do the behind the scenes. Well, it's been a while, this kind of like in the middle of a summer break, but we did want to record an episode and actually you said you want to just take the lead on this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're gonna do something a little bit different. If you have not heard, and if you have not heard, john wrote a book, and so this podcast is going to be a little bit interview type style, where I think I'm just going to sit and ask you some questions so that the listeners can maybe get briefed on your book.
Speaker 1:Okay, I didn't know, that was exactly how we were doing this, but let's roll with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you wrote a book. What is the it? Yeah, so you wrote a book. What is the title of your book?
Speaker 1:I wrote a book and it's a book about books. It's a book about a lot of books. The title of the book is the Books of Scripture, and I think the subtitle is A Concise Guide for for understanding and applying the Bible. Correct, okay, good. I got the title right Woof Made it through that one.
Speaker 2:And the first question I think is going to be on a lot of people's minds With ministry meetings, five children, with two on the way, Is that an announcement. Yeah, we're having twins.
Speaker 1:We're having twins.
Speaker 2:We are having twins. We are having twins, yeah, yeah. So we found out a month ago that we were having twins and that was quite a shock and surprise. But I think the first question on a lot of people's minds going to be how did you find?
Speaker 1:time to write a book with all of the things that you have going. Do you want to maybe answer that? You just you prioritize what's important. So for this project, I was working through my doctor of ministry work and I hit a big milestone. I got my third chapter approved and I just wanted to take a break from that. That was a lot of research, I was dealing with practical issues and discipling and I wanted to do something different. And so how did I find the time? I committed to writing an hour a day, roughly, Some days maybe two hours, Other days no hours. But I put it on the schedule and said I just want to write. I had the idea going. I had kind of a loose format of what I wanted to do, what I wanted to accomplish, and so I just began plugging away and it came together. Some days I wrote and it wasn't even good writing.
Speaker 1:So I didn't use it, but just five days a week committing to writing, and then, over time, project got completed.
Speaker 2:So when did you start the project of writing the book? Because it really wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1:It kind of came together, Well, yes and no. So the project of the actual beginnings of hey, I'm going to write this book, I started probably towards the end of April.
Speaker 2:Of 2024. Yeah, and we're recording this, uh, end of july okay, one last question about kind of the, the workings of writing a book, and then we'll get into the book itself. Where do you write? Obviously we do have a lot of kids, it's loud you work from. So where do you write and is there a type of time of day that you prefer to write?
Speaker 1:So I write in my attic study. For the most part I did probably 85% of the writing there.
Speaker 2:Where we are right now, where it's currently 15 degrees hotter than it is downstairs.
Speaker 1:It's so blazing hot up here, sure because you can't run the AC while we're recording a podcast. Unless you want this big humming noise in the back, it's a little toasty up here. So yeah, writing in my attic study where it's quiet. It's also the reason why we record here. It's a finished attic.
Speaker 2:by the way, it's not like a Rapunzel's Castle type attic. It's a finished attic. By the way, it's not like a Rapunzel's Castle type attic. It's a finished attic.
Speaker 1:I've never been in a Rapunzel's attic.
Speaker 2:I'm just envisioning people thinking of an attic where Cinderella gets locked up or Rapunzel's locked away Unfinished. Stone and cold and damp and mice.
Speaker 1:No, I have sheetrock and windows and computers and bookshelves, skylight yeah it's fine, it's a good space so, and then some of the other writing um, I would just on my tablet out and about doing stuff, and so, yeah, that's, that's where I spent my time writing okay.
Speaker 2:so, getting into the book, you kind of alluded to this, or at least started alluding to it, but what inspired you to write the book, or maybe what led to your writing the book? You mentioned some of your doctoral work, so just give us an understanding of kind of what it's stemming from.
Speaker 1:So my conviction or objective in writing this book was to create something that's accessible for Christians, church members, non-seminary people. It's not technical at all, but I wanted to create a resource that can help people to just understand whole Bible, or a 50,000 foot view of the books of scripture. So I take a huge overview. I've limited myself to two pages per book of the Bible, and so it's a super high flyover. The Bible, and so it's a super high flyover. But it was the idea is that, or the conviction is, scripture is one unified story. The Bible is one whole story by one divine author, written through 40 or so human authors. But how they all work together. And so what motivated me was I wanted especially members in my church to understand and grasp their Bible better.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you get lost in the middle of Jeremiah and you're saying, well, I don't know what's happening here. Or you start your read through your Bible in a year plan and you get to numbers and you're just like you're done. You know you hit February right. And so how can I understand my Bible better? How can I get a snapshot of each book on a high level and then go into that book? So it's a companion for Bible reading. So that's kind of what drove me is I wanted, I want someone to pick up this book and say, hey, what's Nahum about? You can Google it, or you can read my wanted. I want someone to pick up this book and say, hey, what's Nahum about? You can Google it, or you can read my book, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you kind of answered one of my other questions. I was going to ask you is what, what do you hope readers will get out of out of reading this book? And you sort of answered that. But if you could maybe specify a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Every one of the books of scripture is meaningful to our lives because it's the inspired word of God and the Old Testament is not outdated and the minor prophets are not for a time ago and we can learn much from them. Now understanding you know covenantal context and things of that nature. You know we're under the new covenant, we're in Christ that way, but you don't have to be intimidated by the thickness of your Bible or kind of have this burden, this kind of pietistic legalism put upon you that, like I, have to read through my Bible no matter what. The more you know and understand, the more you will love the books of Scripture. And so I'm hoping that I can just unlock a level of understanding for the reader to say, hey, I can access this, and through understanding there would be a growing love for God's Word.
Speaker 2:All right, cool. So in writing this book, you're writing about the Bible. So, assuming that you had to go through the whole Bible to write the book, what was one book from the Bible that you most enjoyed studying and writing about, and why?
Speaker 1:Probably some of the books that I'm the least familiar with, and I can't say one book. But I really enjoyed the message of Nahum Because it's kind of like I don't know. I think in the book I even mentioned that it seems like the sequel to Jonah, and how the message is, you know. He writes and it's like oh, the destruction of Nineveh, and he's rejoicing over the destruction of these wicked people. But as I was reading that I was like this is the failure of generational discipleship. So if there is this conversion in Nineveh under the preaching of Jonah and Nineveh turns and God relents the disaster upon them, 100 years, 150 years later, nahum writes about the destruction of Nineveh and just kind of piecing these things together and hopefully the book helps to understand that. The application section for the book of Nahum is it is absolutely necessary for one generation to commend the works of God to the next so that one generation of Assyrians or the Ninevites were spared. But that story didn't seem to perpetuate and within 100 years they were utterly devastated. And I just really enjoyed making those connections and then saying, hey, there's a warning here of generational faithfulness and you can see that throughout.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of the other stuff too. You know the transition from Joshua to Judges, but that was one. A lot of the minor prophets. I was, you know, carefully reading through the book of Joel and I was just like whoa, he writes really good. So the Minor Prophets, I think the Book of the Twelve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are the ones where you kind of have to sometimes go to the beginning, the Book of Context or what is it called the?
Speaker 1:Table of Contents and kind of find where those are because they're tricky to find I call it the sticky pages of your Bible because they're usually stiff, because they don't get a lot of.
Speaker 2:We don't go there very often.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it was good.
Speaker 2:All right. So someone gets your book and we'll talk about later about how you can get your book. But someone gets your book and they open it up. What are?
Speaker 1:they going to expect to see. So I'll give a little introduction. What are some of my convictions? What am I writing from?
Speaker 1:A couple of unique things. I break from the English order of the Old Testament and I do so and I explain why. So I ordered the books according to the Hebrew Bible, or Hebrew Old Testament, and this is the way in which Jesus and the apostles read their Old Testament, and so I put it in that order so we can kind of just understand. Because I think it's really confusing when you go from 1 and 2 Samuel to 1 and 2 Kings which is fine, that's one full story but then you have the book of Chronicles and you're like this is redundant, and if you're reading through books of the Bible in the order of the, it doesn't make sense. Why am I getting told this same story in a different? But when we understand that Chronicles is the last book of the jewish old testament, it's it's kind of the, the spark notes or the cliff notes of the old testament. It's genesis to, to the return from exile. Okay, um, so that's one thing that's unique about that book. They can expect, and the format, the structure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I wanted you to touch on too.
Speaker 1:Yeah just I give a line about who the author is, date of composition I think those things matter, just to know when the book was written and then I'll give maybe a sentence or two about just the theme of the book, what stands out the most, followed by a paragraph that summarizes the whole book. So books like Genesis, exodus, the whole Pentateuch it was challenging to summarize that all in one paragraph. And then I carefully selected four, roughly about four key passages from each book that either support the theme or the summary, or some of the main points of the book or an application of the book. And then what's unique, I think, and what I haven't seen in something like this, is the section that I titled the Christ Connection.
Speaker 1:Jesus on the road to Emmaus is very clear that all the scriptures point to him. Everything written about him in the law, the prophets and the writings must be fulfilled. And so I approach this as a conservative evangelical who believes that the whole Old Testament is pointing to Jesus and finds its fulfillment in him. And so I try to draw out from each book where Jesus is in all of scripture. So if it's Daniel the son of man in chapter seven, if it's Genesis, he's the seed of the woman in chapter three and Exodus the Passover lamb. I could go through, but I won't pick it up and then, I'll give an application which is relevant to the contemporary reader today.
Speaker 1:What does this message of Obadiah? How does that apply to me, because it means what it says, but how does it apply to my life? How can I take Nahum Obadiah Habakkuk Luke and, on the flyover, grasp the meaning of this text for me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like the way it's set up. It's giving you the context of the book itself, who it's being written to and all of that, but then also seeing Christ and then how this can apply to us. I think it's kind of a good, full and concise understanding of the Bible and an easy way to read. I think what I like about it is, like you said, you have one book of the Bible and an easy way to read. I think what I like about it is, like you said, you have one book of the Bible on two pages and so it's easy to grasp. I think this could be a good gift maybe for a new believer to be able to go through the Bible and read through and understand, kind of the Cliff Notes version of the.
Speaker 2:Bible. It could be good for someone going into a Bible study to kind of have a better understanding to go through a book of the Bible. It could be good for someone going into a Bible study to kind of have a better understanding to go through a book of the Bible. So, yeah, I think this could be beneficial for most everybody. Anything else from the book that you want to kind of go? Before we start asking I ask a couple more questions. But anything else specific about the book that you'd like to point out?
Speaker 1:It was a joy to go through this process. I never felt like it was a burden. It forced me to read through my Bible in two months. And when you have to write about what you're reading, you read differently. So I thoroughly enjoyed the project. I was motivated throughout. Formatting is frustrating, so maybe I'll think about on the next one how I can maybe do that differently or maybe go through a different agency or something. But from start to finish, a joy.
Speaker 2:All right, two more questions. How can one get their hands on the book if they would like to purchase it?
Speaker 1:You can find it on Amazon. Okay, probably the best way to find it on Amazon is to probably type in the books of scripture, but the most direct way would probably type my name into Amazon, type Jonathan's soul into Amazon and I'm pretty sure the title will come up, so you can get it on Kindle or hardcover paperback kindle, and do you plan on writing any other books?
Speaker 1:yes, um, yes, uh, I need to prioritize you're finishing up your doctoral study this year, so that's yeah, so between now and february February getting that project wrapped up I'd like to turn my D-Men work into a book, and so Foundations of Discipling is one that I'd like to do, and I've really been toying kind of wrestling with an autobiography. I kind of have this like weird feeling about like I don't want to write about myself, but you have a story worth telling.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, from prodigal to preacher or something like that, or the long, the long journey home, I don't know something like that. But so I definitely want an autobiography, to write my autobiography, even though my story is not over. That's, that's what's challenging. Maybe I'd have a couple editions, who knows? I definitely want to write about kind of taking my research and my findings for discipling. But yes, I enjoyed the process. I enjoyed. I hope that this serves as a research I'm sorry, a resource for the church, and so if I can put out some material that's accessible, readable, very practical in the way, I think, so I think I'm pretty practical in the way I write, academic world to the church and providing helpful resources to help Christians think biblically, engage practically and live faithfully for the glory of God.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, those are the questions that I had for you today. This was kind of fun being on kind of the interviewer side of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I tend to, I guess, over-answer answer questions, that's okay yeah, um, but I'm proud of you.
Speaker 2:I know it's. We've had a lot on our plates. We've been in a very busy season. We talked about the last time we recorded we were entering into our really busy two months and it has been wild and um, you've been able to kind of put this out in the midst of that. So I'm proud of you for all your hard work and your diligence.
Speaker 1:And thank you for your support and just riding this wave with me all the way. And thank you for the design and the cover art, because I would have just had a black cover with a title on it.
Speaker 2:And I was not going to let you just have a black cover.
Speaker 1:Right, maybe the next one would have been blue. So thanks for helping to design that and getting this project to completion.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, no problem, I enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Great.
Speaker 2:You want to close this out?
Speaker 1:Sure, I want to thank you for listening to the Pleasing God podcast. If you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. You could reach out at questions at pleasinggodpodcastorg. And remember 1 Thessalonians 4.3,. This is the will of God, your sanctification.
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