Introduction

Not every Bible study session has to result in a ground-breaking realization to be meaningful. As I said in a previous post, our mindset behind studying the Bible should be to know God. Knowing God is eternal life (cf. John 17:3). In my fifteen years of studying the Bible both personally and academically, I have noticed that the big realizations are at the top of a mound that is made up of a series of small conclusions.

How Do Small Conclusions Work?

Small conclusions aren’t show-stoppers. They aren’t affective for advertising. They are, however, necessary for getting more of God through Bible study.

You see, small conclusions are things you notice that might be interesting but aren’t obviously significant on their own. The power of small conclusions is how they work together to help you realize something you otherwise wouldn’t have seen. As I think about some of the big realizations I’ve made over the years, I can say they were all made possible because of the accumulation and interconnectedness of small conclusions. You don’t know which small conclusion will lead to deeper meaning down the road, and you don’t know how your small conclusions will work together, but I firmly believe that you should approach your Bible study with the expectation that your conclusions are meaningful, no matter how small they seem to be.

A Scenario: Small Conclusions in Luke 9–10

My wife and I are reading and discussing a chapter of Luke each night before bed. Luke is the Gospel I have studied the least. I don’t have a firm outline of the book committed to memory like I do Mark and John. There are many overlapping passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke (collectively known as the Synoptic Gospels), but each writer might structure these passages differently. I often notice the differences between Luke’s structure and the others because I am less familiar with Luke and more familiar with Matthew and Mark.

Luke 9:51–56 is an odd passage. It reads as follows:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.

In reading this the other night, I noticed the sequence of Jesus sending messengers ahead of Him, and then the Samaritan villagers ultimately rejecting Him. I was already familiar with this passage, so this simple sequence is what stood out this time.

The next night, we read Luke 10:1–24, and the following verse stood out to me because of my previous small conclusion about verses 9:51–56:

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.

Luke 10:1

I noticed that Jesus appointed seventy-two others and sent them ahead. His response to the Samaritans’ rejection of Him was to send out more messengers. Not only that, but verses 10:2–20 reveal that the seventy-two were commissioned to extend or revoke peace based on how they were received in each town and village. This commissioning is associated with receiving Jesus, as Luke 10:16 says: “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

For Luke, the sending out of the seventy-two is about the reception or rejection of Jesus. This bigger conclusion was made possible because a bunch of smaller conclusions had stacked together and positioned me so that I could see something bigger.

Conclusion

Small conclusions make a big difference. Sometimes we make them consciously. Other times information just gets stored away in our brains as we engage the biblical text (which is why reading the Bible is so helpful!). Either way, these small conclusions pile on top of one another to form mounds of understanding that we stand upon when we engage the text. Eventually the mound gets high enough and allows us to see a breathtaking view. This is when we see more within the Bible than we otherwise would have. Don’t place artificial pressure on yourself to walk away with massive conclusions. You will inevitably have massive conclusions if you do a lot of Bible study, but they will always come on the heels of who knows how many smaller conclusions.

Happy Bibleing!