Welcome to First Fruits!

New to our site? Sign up for a free First Fruits Core account and enrich your First Fruits experience.

Sign up for a First Fruits Core account:

  • Access to more online resources and greater connectivity! Premium content, email newsletters and special offers from our Store. Find out more »

I can't remember my login. »

FFOZ Blogs

Timely updates, teaching, videos and inside information about what's happening at First Fruits, written by staff members and guest contributors.

 Guest Authors

Avot 4:16

The Pirke Avot is one of my favorite pieces of study material outside the scriptures. I go over and over the proverbs and I am amazed at how many of them still speak to the situations we encounter on a day to day basis. True wisdom is timeless. And the Pirke Avot is an example of such timeless wisdom.

One of my favorite teachings is Avot 4:16: R. Judah said, “Be cautious in study, for an error in study can amount to presumptuous sin.â€

In this day of the internet there is a plethora of materials at our disposal. We can go all over the internet and have no troubles finding teachers who will tell us what our itching ears want to hear (2 Tim 4:3, 4). It can be very easy for us to place our trust in those who can easily lead us astray from the truth, if we are not careful.

The gift of discernment is vital to our education. It is part of the caution of study that Rabbi Judah wants us to be engaged in. In this way we can protect our teaching, making sure that we do not lead ourselves into presumptuous sin. However, discernment can be difficult when we are studying Torah on our own. This is one area where community becomes very important.

One of the extra benefits to being a part of FFOZ’s Torah Club is the Torah Club Online Forum. The Online Forum gives people a virtual community in which to ask questions and strive to find answers. It also allows us a place to test teachings we may hear and see how they measure up against scripture. With the guidance of the FFOZ Teaching Team and others we can work to be cautious in our study and not be easily led astray by every whim of doctrine.

I encourage you if you are not already a Torah Club member to look into becoming a part. And then join us in the Torah Club Online Forum. There we can work together to keep our study and ourselves from presumptuous sin.

About the Author: Bill Beyer is a friend of FFOZ and a volunteer moderator for the Online Torah Club Forums. He is also the pastor of a Lutheran church.

 

Visitor Feedback:

beautiful quote. thank you for sharing.

D.A. Fluker II | February 12, 2008 11:57 AM

Click here to add your comments...

If you have not posted a comment here before, you may need to be approved before your comment will appear. Thanks for waiting.

Used:

Search in Blogs...

Browse through Blogs

 

Feeds

Use this RSS feed to track our blogs in your favorite reader.

The FFOZ Blogs RSS Feed

 

Blogs by Category

 

Blogs by Author

 

More Recent Posts

 

Select a Previous Month