Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

• 2 Timothy 3:16-17

I wrote a post roughly three years ago on Bible Book Usage.  Here is the LINK.

I have used the same, single Scripture for this post.

The reason that I am writing this is that tomorrow afternoon, I will start a nine-week series on “The Last Nine Chapters.”  It is not the last nine chapters of the Bible of the Old Testament.  It is the last nine chapters that I have never quoted in these blogs over the past six and a half years.

In the first post on this topic, I wanted it to be organic, and since “organic” can mean anything you want it to mean these days, my idea was that I was not going to artificially write a post about this or that just to have an excuse to use that chapter of the Bible.

But, when we are dealing with 1189 chapters in the Bible, using 1180 of those chapters pretty much proves the Apostle Paul’s comment to Timothy.  But then again, when Pual wrote that, he was referring to the Old Testament.  That would mean that I am nine chapters short out of 929 chapters in the Old Testament.

That means that my Friday afternoon series is going to be some strange subjects.  Some of these chapters are lists of names during a census, but I am up to the challenge, and I will be doing a lot of praying.

Actually, I am also tracking the chapters that I have only quoted once.  When I read a new author, I like to read at least two books by that author.  I do not want to label an author “I will never read anything by this author again” unless I have given them two shots at getting it right.  And with some authors, it is amazing that they seem to stink in one series and have really good stuff in another, so two books out of the same series might not be fair enough.

But my thinking about quoting each chapter of the Bible twice is that there are a lot of chapters that cover more than one concept.  And the chapters that have only one concept are probably talking about an important one.

Besides, I have written a lot about how the Holy Spirit guides us as we read a second, third, or twentieth time through the Scriptures.  Our journey of faith should be in a different place, and those old verses might mean something more, something deeper, something richer.  So, why not quote each chapter at least twice?

But as of near this writing, since I update the spreadsheet weekly, here are the top ten chapters that I have quoted.

• Matthew 5 (70 times)
• Matthew 6 (57 times)
• John 14 (43 times)
• John 3 (38 times)
• Romans 12 (36 times)
• Matthew 7 (35 times)
• Philippians 1 (35 times)
• Genesis 2 (34 times)
• Exodus 20 (33 times)
• Ephesians 6 (32 times)
• Romans 5 (32 times)

For those who like memorizing verses, you can tell that I have quoted from the Sermon on the Mount a lot (Matthew 5-7), and you might guess the verses from most of the other chapters on the list.

I admitted in the first discussion on this that Matthew got a lot of quotes early due to laziness.  Many of those quotes were also in Mark and Luke, even a few things in the Sermon on the Mount.  For example, Luke has the Lord’s Prayer, at least most of it.  I have used the Deuteronomy retelling of the Ten Commandments a lot lately, when appropriate.

I will continue to track the chapters that I use.  I think that the Apostle Paul’s statement to Timothy is true.  And I pray that I can use all of it in my life.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.