Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.

• 2 Timothy 4:2

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

• Luke 10:27-28

“In vain I punished your people; they did not respond to correction. Your sword has devoured your prophets like a ravenous lion.

• Jeremiah 2:30

Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.

• Proverbs 10:17

This afternoon, the post will talk about unproductive criticism.  Having someone tell you that you have heaped eternal damnation upon yourself unless you quit writing does not identify what I might have said that was offensive and how the other person misread what I wrote.  But that is for this afternoon.  To rebuke someone properly, you must follow that with correction – a path forward.

Thus, this quiz will be about verses containing the word “correct.”  This will include correction, which only appears in the Old Testament.  It will also include correcting and correctly.

The questions are in biblical order.

The Questions:

	Question	Bible References	Answers
1	How many times over, as your sin deserves, will God punish the Israelites, for not accepting God’s correction?
2	Jephthah defeated the Ammonites without the help of Ephraim.  Then Ephraim wanted to battle Jephthah.  Jephthah set up a ford crossing guard and if you could say “Shibboleth” correctly, you could pass.  What would the Ephraimites say instead?
3	After Eliphaz tells Job to not despise the correction from the Lord, how does Job respond, considering the correction of Eliphaz?
4	When the young man is caught in the trap of adultery, he might say, according to the author of Proverbs, that he hated what?
5	Later in Proverbs, it says that whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is what?
6	After God calls Jeremiah, He tests him with a vision to make sure that Jeremiah will correctly prophesy as God calls him to do.  What does Jeremiah first see? A bonus for what he sees next.
7	Who is referred to as “she” when Zechariah talks about how she does not accept correction?
8	Jesus asked Simon about a moneylender who forgave debts of 500 denarii and another 50, who would love him more?
9	Why was Jesus so angry that the crowd thought Him to be demon possessed, thinking they were planning to kill Him and curing people of the Sabbath?
10	In Second Timothy 3:16, all Scripture is found useful in doing four things.  Name at least two.

We should patiently teach.  At times that teaching should involve a rebuke.  We are doing something wrong, and we need to correct what wrong we have done.  But if the person says that we are wrong, but they never tell us what was wrong, how can we correct it?  Thus, the rebuke becomes useless as an aid in teaching.

Encouragement is a great teaching tool when the person who is learning is on the right track.  Some people withhold encouragement.  They think that if they say something like “good job” or click a like button, the person will sit back satisfied and never accomplish anything greater.  But I have always felt that one bit of encouragement or praise might spur the person on to achieve even greater things, including greater praise.  Sometimes I fell short, especially when my children knew they could have done a lot better.  But I tried to praise them and encouraged them to greater things, even when they had not been perfect.

In contrast, my mother must have been like the first person that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  At times, I wished for “you could have done better” rather than the lengthy lecture on how I had dishonored her for doing a lousy job, with these fifty glaring errors.  All the while, my teacher had given me an “A” on the assignment.  Maybe some of the rebuke was legitimate, but I never heard the words, “job well done” and I craved that more than my next breath.

But correction?  C. S. Lewis said that when everyone is going in the wrong direction, the first one who turns around and goes in the right direction is the most progressive man.  When we get to the point in life when we think that we have “arrived” and everything we do is “golden,” we might faintly hear the rebuke or the correction, but we do not take them to heart.

God honors the humble man, the one who accepts the correction and turns from evil.

Bible References:

	Question	Bible References	Answers
1	How many times over, as your sin deserves, will God punish the Israelites, for not accepting God’s correction?	Leviticus 26:23-24
2	Jephthah defeated the Ammonites without the help of Ephraim.  Then Ephraim wanted to battle Jephthah.  Jephthah set up a ford crossing guard and if you could say “Shibboleth” correctly, you could pass.  What would the Ephraimites say instead?	Judges 12:6
3	After Eliphaz tells Job to not despise the correction from the Lord, how does Job respond, considering the correction of Eliphaz?	Job 6:26
4	When the young man is caught in the trap of adultery, he might say, according to the author of Proverbs, that he hated what?	Proverbs 5:12
5	Later in Proverbs, it says that whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is what?	Proverbs 12:1
6	After God calls Jeremiah, He tests him with a vision to make sure that Jeremiah will correctly prophesy as God calls him to do.  What does Jeremiah first see? A bonus for what he sees next.	Jeremiah 1:11-13
7	Who is referred to as “she” when Zechariah talks about how she does not accept correction?	Zechariah 3:2-7
8	Jesus asked Simon about a moneylender who forgave debts of 500 denarii and another 50, who would love him more?	Luke 7:43
9	Why was Jesus so angry that the crowd thought Him to be demon possessed, thinking they were planning to kill Him and curing people of the Sabbath?	John 7:24
10	In Second Timothy 3:16, all Scripture is found useful in doing four things.  Name at least two.	2 Timothy 3:16

Have you ever heard your teacher say something like, “I spent all night correcting the test papers”?

Oh, if that is the case, why did some of us fail the test.  Once the test is “corrected,” should not everyone have a one hundred?

But I had unwanted recognition at a Math Honors Society meeting.  Sorry, I do not remember the Greek letters.  My professor for Differential Equations was retiring after that semester.  They had him be the speaker at the meeting that night.  As fate would have it, we had our mid-term examination that morning, the proverbial eight am class.  Note: Four years of undergraduate school and I never failed in having an eight am class, Monday-Friday, including summer school.

But back to the professor’s final speech before the honor society, he had me stand up.  He said that he had written the problem on the board incorrectly.  And he pointed at me and said, this young man showed his work, all five pages of trying to use all the tools that he had been taught to solve the problem.  And he wrote that he admitted that something was wrong.  He failed in solving the problem.  But I am giving him the only 100 percent on the examination for his tenacity, his attitude of never giving up.  By the way, young man, if I had used a minus instead of a plus in the middle of the equation, I think you would have solved it in short order.

Now. That was “correcting” the exam.

But this discussion started with the teacher saying that she had “corrected” the exams.  I appreciated all those teachers that truly did that.  When I got my paper back and the teacher had simply written a red “X” to denote I missed the answer, it was up to me to correct my thinking.  But if they scribbled what I did wrong or described wrong, then having come short of a perfect score on the exam had meaning, for I was taught what I did wrong.  I was corrected, and as Solomon tells us often in the Proverbs (“correct mentioned twelve times, but there are other synonyms), we should welcome correction.

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The Answers:

	Question	Bible References	Answers
1	How many times over, as your sin deserves, will God punish the Israelites, for not accepting God’s correction?	Leviticus 26:23-24	Seven times
2	Jephthah defeated the Ammonites without the help of Ephraim.  Then Ephraim wanted to battle Jephthah.  Jephthah set up a ford crossing guard and if you could say “Shibboleth” correctly, you could pass.  What would the Ephraimites say instead?	Judges 12:6	Sibboleth.  They must have had difficulty with the “sh” sound.
3	After Eliphaz tells Job to not despise the correction from the Lord, how does Job respond, considering the correction of Eliphaz?	Job 6:26	He dislikes how Eliphaz corrects what he has said, as if Job’s words were mere wind.
4	When the young man is caught in the trap of adultery, he might say, according to the author of Proverbs, that he hated what?	Proverbs 5:12	Hated discipline and his heart spurned correction
5	Later in Proverbs, it says that whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is what?	Proverbs 12:1	Stupid.
6	After God calls Jeremiah, He tests him with a vision to make sure that Jeremiah will correctly prophesy as God calls him to do.  What does Jeremiah first see? A bonus for what he sees next.	Jeremiah 1:11-13	A branch from an almond tree.  Next, he sees a pot that is boiling, poured out from the north, meaning the northern nations will attack and bring misery.
7	Who is referred to as “she” when Zechariah talks about how she does not accept correction?	Zechariah 3:2-7	Jerusalem
8	Jesus asked Simon about a moneylender who forgave debts of 500 denarii and another 50, who would love him more?	Luke 7:43	The one who was forgiven the greater debt.
9	Why was Jesus so angry that the crowd thought Him to be demon possessed, thinking they were planning to kill Him and curing people of the Sabbath?	John 7:24	They were judging by mere appearance instead of judging correctly.
10	In Second Timothy 3:16, all Scripture is found useful in doing four things.  Name at least two.	2 Timothy 3:16	Teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness

Whether you did well on this quiz or, ummm, not so well, for the first video, here is the West Coast Choir, from West Coast Baptist College, Lancaster, California singing I Speak Jesus.  I have used a lot of high school and college choirs at exotic locations, but the beach is not far from the classroom, they probably didn’t walk, but close by.

Here is Daniel Cha singing Humble My Heart. We cannot accept corrections unless we admit we need correction.

And here is Melissa Oretade singing Come Christians, Be Committed.

Correction requires a lot.  A good teacher is a good start.  A willing person to learn is required.  And humble and being committed are required.  Notice that I did not use the word “student” in that many adults do not like being called a student.  That is too “grade school” for them.  But as I have mentioned before, and I have even written it into some short stories…  Once you stop learning, you die, at least you start the process.  May we be ever eager to learn and be more like Jesus until we take our last breath.

If you like these Saturday morning Bible quizzes, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Saturday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.