How do you read a book?  While this seems a simple question, everyone approaches reading differently.   Consequently, there are a multitude of books about how to read books.  Mortimer Adler’s “How to Read a Book” is a part of our children’s curriculum.  And Fee and Stuart’s “How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth” is a standard work in many seminaries.  And because the digital age has shortened our attention span from a thousand pages to 140 characters, many colleges and universities require new students to take classes such as “Freshman Experience” which remediates the art of reading.

For some the answer revolves around form.   After all, who actually has time to sit long enough to read an entire book?  In our digital age, audio books fill the place of reading for many.  Or perhaps you want to read a book yourself, but don’t want the bulk of an actual tome.  For you there is Kindle.  And if you are nostalgic for the aesthetic of reading, you can buy a spray or candle to recreate the smell of actual books.  Or perhaps you, like me, need to the tactile experience of rustling pages to stay engaged in the reading. 

Others focus on approach.   When I was in school ‘speed reading’ was touted as the panacea for busy students.  Readers would scan the center of each line of text and trust peripheral vision to supply the rest.   We were also taught to skim – by which we gleaned facts, but failed to suck the marrow out of literature.  Some cherry-pick, reading here and there to extract only what seem to be relevant ideas.  While others read the last chapter immediately after the first, just in case they never make it to the end.  

What few will do, however, is to read the front matter – the preface, acknowledgements, table of contents, and any bibliographies or attributions.   Yet without these, much is lost to guide the reader on his journey.   Like the composer who explains the symbolism behind a cryptic lyric or the artist who describes with words what he was trying paint, front matter provides the keys to understand a book’s perspective, purpose, and progression of thought.  Without it, much is lost.

This is especially true of the Bible where “a text without a context is a pretext.”  For this reason, virtually every Reformed confession of faith and catechism introduces the study of the Ten Commandments with a discussion of its preface.   God himself writes and delivers the preface in Exodus 20:1-2.   Patterned after an ancient style of covenant, called a suzerain-vassal treaty, the Ten Commandments are a foundational expression of the God’s covenant with his people.   Yet unlike every instance of such treaties in the ancient world, the Ten Commandments are authored and delivered by God himself.   Exodus 20:1-2 give us a simple preface that establishes perspective, purpose, and progression of thought for our life in covenant with the Lord.

Christians often struggle to understand the place of Biblical law in their lives.  Some claim we under no longer under law, but under grace therefore law has no place in our Christian walk.  Others look to law as a “ladder of merit by which we try to climb by grim obedience into [God’s] good graces.” (J. A. Motyer, The Message of Exodus)  But neither view is faithful to the Bible’s teaching.   The preface to the Ten Commandments reveals the gracious nature of the covenant and the God who makes it.   To consider God’s law without reading the front matter risks seeing it as “a letter that kills” instead of a gracious gift through which the Spirit gives life.

Join us as we examine Exodus 20:1-2 and consider the ‘front matter’ God has given us to understand the purpose, perspective, and progression of the moral law as summarily revealed in the Ten Commandments.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.