The God Who Locates You: Listener Questions and the Sacred Echo

Today we're pressing pause on the Bible study so you have time to catch up. The color method takes real work, and not everyone can listen every day. A couple of times a month I'll stop, let you get caught up, and do a separate teaching that still connects to where we are. Two parts today. First, your questions from SpeakPipe, including a correction I owe you, a great catch about the bread and the fish in John 6, and a long answer about the Ethiopian Bible and the so-called lost books. Then a teaching on the sacred echo, and the one thing God has repeated to me all week: He knows exactly where you are, and He is the one who comes looking. Links Join me on an immersive Bible Study Experience. Greece 2027 is full, so add your name to the waitlist. Rome and Maui are open. Learn more at BibleStudyLive.org Have a question about the series or a prayer request? Leave me a voicemail: SpeakPipe Ad-free episodes and the full organized library of past series start at $5 a month: Patreon My new book Never Unseen is available for pre-order now. SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today. Plant your first seed and see what God can grow. SEEDS A correction about the New World Translation I answered a question about translations recently and didn't catch that the caller mentioned the New World Translation. A listener pointed it out, and I'm grateful. I do not endorse it. That's the Watchtower Bible, used by Jehovah's Witnesses, and there is a great deal in it that is problematic from an evangelical Christian perspective. My answer was about the standard Christian translations, and I apologize for not catching the reference sooner. Why doesn't John mention the fish in the leftovers? Great catch, and it shows how intentional each gospel writer was. These were four different people with different purposes in what they chose to include. In John 6:13 the disciples fill twelve baskets with pieces of the five barley loaves, and the fish aren't named. But John isn't the odd one out. Matthew and Luke also describe the leftovers as broken pieces without naming the fish. Mark is the only one that says bread and fish. So why do three out of four focus on the bread? Bread carries real theological weight in John, because right after this Jesus gives the I am the bread of life teaching. John's attention lands there because he's setting up what's coming. Bread also echoes the manna God provided in the wilderness, and the crowd would have been thinking about Moses. The fish didn't carry that same weight. It may also be how people told stories. Bread was often shorthand for a whole meal. I've seen that serving overseas, where someone says they made bread and they mean bread and stew and fruit and everything else. It's like telling your family there's leftover pizza when there's also salad and breadsticks. The fish weren't forgotten. They just weren't the detail John wanted to highlight. Notice what you notice This is the whole reason I teach the color method. It slows your brain down enough to actually comprehend what you're reading. A lot of us trained ourselves into short attention spans. What the Lord draws your attention to may be different from what He draws mine to, because He is a personal God. We each have a personal calling and a personal relationship with Him. The more you do this, the more you'll see how He reveals things to you specifically. What about the Ethiopian Bible and the lost books? This comes up constantly, and I have some passionate feelings about it. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a Bible with 81 books. Ours has 66. The extra ones include titles like Enoch and Jubilees, plus some you've probably never heard of. First thing to understand: these books are not lost in the sense that anyone is hiding them from you. They've been around the whole time, part of the Ethiopian church from very early on, while the rest of the church settled into a different set. Take Enoch. It was written centuries a