All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. (II Timothy 3:16 ESV)
3:16
And elder in the church I served repeatedly asked me to preach a sermon series on what he termed, “The 3:16’s” of the Bible. He believed that God had placed some of His most important concepts in the sixteenth verse of the third chapter in most of the books of the Bible.
I was skeptical.
The Bible did not have chapters nor verses until very late in the story of God’s written word. Chapters were first added in a published Bible in Wycliffe’s Bible, 1382. Verse numbers were inserted in the Old Testament around 1448, and in the New Testament in 1551. The Geneva Bible, later that century, was the first Bible to use both chapters and verses for both the Old and New Testaments. It is generally believed that such were added to aid in referencing, study, and ‘following along.’
So a set of sermons based on those later divisions seemed… unnecessary.
But lately, perhaps because I am more appreciative these days of the subtlety of God’s providence, or perhaps because I am starting to see that there are no coincidences in God’s economy, or perhaps because I am simply more curious… I have been thinking that maybe Elder Ives might have been on to something.
So for the next while, let us look at the 3:16’s of the Bible.