Getting More Bang for Your Buck: Post 2

            Here are three other tips to keep in mind when reading the Bible:

3) Interpret the New Testament in Light of the Old Testament

            I sometimes cringe when I hear well-meaning people tell new believers/seekers to “start with the Gospels” when going through the Bible. I understand the premise behind the suggestion… I used to say the same thing! The Gospels contain Jesus’ life, and Jesus is the whole point of Christianity, so what better place is there*?

            Genesis, namely.

            The problem is that without understanding what is in the Old Testament (OT), you can’t understand why Jesus is even necessary. A reader can’t understand WHY we need a savior, WHY the savior had to meet certain requirements, and WHY/HOW Jesus took mankind from under the law of God to the grace of God without the Old Testament.

            For example, here is an example of a NT passages that can’t be properly understood/appreciated without understanding the OT.

            Jesus liked to refer to Himself as the “Son of Man” (Luke 9:22, Mark 14:62, etc.). People often mistakenly assume He was referencing His humanity with the title. Actually, it’s the opposite. In Israelite culture it would’ve been understood as a claim to the divine figure in Daniel 7:13-14:

            "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.

            He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

            If you didn’t know the reference, the correct meaning of Jesus’ favorite name for Himself would go out the window. The Son of Man referred to Jesus' divinity and messianic fulfillment.

            In short, the significance of a lot of Jesus’ life goes unnoticed without the OT. Also, in Paul’s letters he establishes doctrine and mindsets that can only be comprehended if a reader is familiar about the way things used to be before Jesus.

            A lot of the New Testament simply doesn’t make sense by itself. Now, you can always glean SOMETHING by just reading the New Testament, but we want maximum results, right? Well, for that you have to read the New Testament in light of its predecessor.

4) Use Your Imagination!

            Okay, so in my last post I said that the Bible shouldn’t be read like a fiction novel (“movie in a book”). While true, the Bible certainly comes to life when you use your mind to recreate images. Let’s go through one examples. Psalms 137:1-4:

          “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.

            There on the poplars we hung our harps,

            Or there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

            How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?”

             Now, use your imagination! I personally can imagine the Israelites hanging beside a river and remembering all that they had before they were captured. They are silent or weeping, too despondent for mirth. I can see the musicians being too depressed to pick up their instruments. But then their bored captors laugh and mockingly demand a tune. Then I imagine the hatred burning through these proud Israelites as they glare back. They slowly comply and sing a defiant psalm.

             As you can tell, I’m a terrible fiction writer. But you get the point I’m trying to make. Use your mind to recreate the scene. All of sudden the Bible goes from “long ago and far away” to “wow, these were actual people with hopes and dreams like me!” I could give tons of examples – from Ezekiel having his crazy visions to Jesus’ agonizing flogging and crucifixion – but you get the gist of what I’m saying.

             The Bible comes alive.

Summary

             As a teenage Christian, I’m in this “Bible reading” business for the rest of my life. I have so much to learn, but God is using people in my life to show me how to unlock the riches in His Word. These are just four tips on an amazingly deep subject (hermeneutics and exegesis**).

             We speak to God through prayer, and we hear Him through the Bible (among many other ways). This series was on reading because I am nowhere near ready to write anything on prayer. Haha, I have a lot of work to do in that area as well.

*Now, I’m fine with a compromise. Reading Genesis AND one of the Gospels works, too.

**Hermeneutics is the principles (guidelines) for interpreting scripture, while exegesis is actually interpreting scripture. Sometimes I just use the word "exegesis" for both, which isn’t the best thing to do.

Getting Some Bang for Your Buck: Post 1

Here are some “quick” tips to getting something out of reading the Bible:

1. Read Books of the Bible According to Their Genres

            This is the most violated principle of Bible reading. Proverbs, for instance, is poetry that is meant to convey GENERAL truths. “General” meaning “most of the time”. It’s not meant to be taken as rock-solid 100% truth. Take Proverbs 22:6, for instance:

            “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” (NIV)

            This has comforted parents greatly through the centuries… that is, until you see some godly pastor’s kid jumping off the deep end (permanently). What happened? God PROMISED in Proverbs that, with godly parenting, a kid will come back to the faith! God is a liar!

            Unless, of course, you understand the genre of that particular passage of scripture. This tip helps you properly exegete (interpret) the Bible.

            Another problem people run into has to deal with parables. Christians love to take every minute detail of a parable and try to match it to some truth. For instance, in Luke 16:19-31, Jesus talks about the beggar Lazarus and a rich man.

            The purpose of this parable is to tell Jesus’ audience that if Israel wouldn’t listen to the prophets and Moses, they wouldn’t listen to Jesus now. They also wouldn’t listen to Jesus after He rose from the tomb. And that is exactly what happened.

            Now some like to take every incidental detail of a parable and like to establish doctrine. For instance, in this parable Jesus describes the inhabitants of Heaven and Hell as being able to converse with each other. These Christians then turn around and claim that Jesus was saying we will be able to do that when we die.

            Now, I’m not ruling that possibility out, but “being able to have conversations with people from the other side” was NOT the purpose of the parable. It was a detail added to the story to set up the main point, which was “if Israel didn’t listen to Moses or the prophets, they wouldn’t listen to Jesus”.

            We shouldn’t try to take every detail of a parable and try to proclaim it as a literal truth. Don’t miss the forest (the point of the parable) for the trees (the details used to get to that point).

            I could go on and on with why we miss out on the great truths. Here are some more mistakes we (me included) often make: reading the Old Testament prophets just to look for prophecies about Jesus/end times, reading the words in red and think Jesus was being quoted word-for-word*, thinking God wrote the Bible directly instead of inspiring men to write it in their own personal style**, etc.

2. Read the Bible with Three Things in Mind

            There are three tiers of truths we can gather when reading a passage of scripture: 1) what truth does God want me to apply to my life? 2) How was God working in that particular situation of scripture? 3) How was God using that particular situation to accomplish His greater kingdom purpose?

            I know I often stop at that first one. I look for some way to apply a passage of scripture. When I find it, I stop and say, “Okay, that was a good study.” But there is so much more to the Bible.

            Take the story of Joseph’s temptation in Genesis, for instance. If you stopped at the first question, you would get some amazing truths. You would come away with the cost of obedience, the blessings of obedience, etc. You could answer the first question very easily.

            But if you stopped there, you’d miss the bigger truths. God was working to show His glory in an amazing way, using a prisoner to prevent Egypt from starving. How God was setting Joseph up to bring his family to Egypt to grow the nation of Hebrews. The second question reveals some amazing truths.

            What about the third question? God was using Joseph (a prideful snob, really), a nobody, to do great things. The Lord has done that many times over, using the weak and useless to accomplish His will. God then used Israel as a model nation for the world, showing mankind what happens when we obey or disobey Him.

            You can get all of that (and much more) by asking those three questions. There are more questions you can ask to get different angles, but you get the picture. What is God telling you? How was God working? And how was God accomplishing His greater goal?

Summary

            I have a few more tips, but these two are helpful ways of getting more out of Bible studies. We often think “the Bible is weird” because we read it like a fiction novel. We read it for entertainment purposes. When we don’t get that “movie in a book” feeling, we stop. But we have to read the Bible in ways it was meant to be read.

*Unlike today’s culture with quotation marks, Jesus’ culture was concerned about preserving the message of a speaker, not His words. That’s why, in the same story, Jesus sometimes uses slightly different words depending on which gospel you read. The writers were concerned about what He was meaning, not what He was saying. That doesn’t mean they were wrong per say, but we have to read His words with this in mind.

**For instance, Paul basically curses in Philippians 3:8. He writes “skubalo”, which, in the Greek, means a stronger version of “dung”. Different translations have different words depending on how strongly they want to translate that word. Some say “dung”, others say “waste”, etc. They are technically correct, but the force is definitely lessened. A more accurate translation might be the s-word, believe it or not.

Reading Scripture with All Your Mind: Why Should I Read?

            Currently I am listening to a lecture by Walt Russell called “Reading Scripture with All Your Mind”. Now before you fall asleep, let me tell you some why this is such an important topic.

            Teens often say reading the Bible is boring. Though I beg to differ, I see their point. They read about crazy stories and weird theology… why? What is possibly in it for them?

            I confess I was the same way. That is, until I decided to stop playing “church kid” and actually enter into a loving, obedient relationship with my Creator. You see, when you love someone, you want to find out all about that person. You read what they read (unless they read boring theological and philosophical works… like me). You listen to their music. You listen to them (hopefully). You watch them. You… get the point.

            With God it is no different. When you are committing to an eternal relationship with Him, you want to grow closer to Him. He is your everything. You want to listen to Him. You want to know what He knows. You want Him to guide your steps.

            All of those things are possible through Bible reading and prayer (I’ll be focusing on the former). We see how He thinks and a glimpse of His vast knowledge. We see what makes Him happy and sad. We see how deeply He loves us.

           Why do we read the Bible? We read the Bible because we want our relationship with God to grow.

Okay, That’s Great… But…

            Okay, so you understand that Bible reading draws us closer to God. But still… what’s in it for me? Well, if the above reason doesn’t stir a desire in us to read the Bible, the following benefits won’t either. I’ll give them to you anyways.

1) One result of meditating on God’s word is found in the very first Psalms (verses 2-3):

            “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night.

            He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”

            Though written in poetry, there are solid truths to be found within this beautiful Psalm. The first is that a man will be grounded and nourished. When winds of tribulations come, he won’t be moved because he is rooted. He won’t grow tired of life because he is always energized.

            Also, he will recognize opportunities given to Him by God. When God calls on him to bring fruit (i.e. be productive), he understands and obeys.

2) Another reason is found in Psalm 119:105:

            “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

            A person needs to know where he is going in life. Without this knowledge, he is basically useless because he can’t tell the difference between danger and opportunity. Is his next step leading him toward a pit or water? Well, don’t ask him because he has no clue.

            The Word of God is that lamp that illuminates our life.

3) James 1:23-25:

   “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 

   For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

   But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

           The basic questions of life are answered in the Bible. Who am I? Why am I here? The Bible answers those things. It is the mirror that shows us ourselves in ways nothing else can. It is honest; it doesn’t distort images. You can find rest in the Word of God.

 4) I could go on for eternity on the benefits of reading the Word. There are so many. People have written books upon books on what happens when you delve into this Book.

Summary

            The reason why we read the Bible is to grow in our relationship with Him. But God didn’t us an obituary or a phone book to go through; He gave us a book that benefits us in all facets of our lives.

            Now in my next few posts I’ll be going through HOW we should read the Word. I’m not an expert (duh), but there are a few tips I’ve learned that I would love to share.