Dig Deeper

Tools To Unearth The Bible's Treasure

Nigel Beynon, Andrew Sach

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781844744312
• eBook ISBN:
  9781844746873
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Bibles

'It's all a matter of interpretation.'Most conversations I've had with non-Christians about the Bible end up there sooner or later. It's all a matter of interpretation. Sure, you say it means that Jesus is God and that sex outside marriage is wrong and that heaven is only for Christians, but maybe for me it means that Jesus was just a good teacher and sex with anyone is OK as long as you both want it and heaven is for everybody. It's all just a matter of interpretation.Actually, we've all been conditioned to think like that. It's part of the whole philosophical movement called postmodernism, and over the last few decades it has infiltrated the TV shows that we watch and the classrooms that we sit in. Postmodernism teaches that when I come to a piece of literature such as the Bible, what matters is not what it means, but what it means for me. And that might be different from what it means for you. And that's OK.I wonder if you've ever been in a Bible study like this: Leader: Does anyone have any thoughts about verse 1?Person A: I think it's talking about X, and... (blah, blah)...Person B: Yes, I see what you're saying Person A and I totally respect you. For me though it means Y, the opposite of X.Leader: Mmmm. Thank you both. Let s move on to verse 2.That's postmodernism in action. The text means one thing for one person and the complete opposite for another, but both interpretations are to be respected and treated as equally valid. But the apostle Paul doesn't see it like that. He thinks that there is a right and a wrong way to understand the Bible.The book is based on the idea of a toolkit. Each chapter introduces you to a separate tool and explains how it works. Although there are illustrations from the Bible throughout, we'll sometimes spend a bit longer on a Worked example to show you how that particular tool really can help us discover something exciting and relevant that the Bible is saying. Finally, the Dig deeper! boxes give you a chance to practise using the tools for yourself. At the end we've included a brief appendix with a suggestion of how you might use the toolkit concept in your small group.

1. What the Bible Is and How We Should Approach It

Before we jump in with our first tool, we’re going to pause to examine the nature of the Bible – what kind of book it is, and how it came about. That will lead us to the right way to approach it.

Imagine that a friend who isn’t a Christian asks you, ‘Why do you bother reading the Bible? Isn’t it out of date?’ How would you respond?

We hope you would disagree. The Bible isn’t like an old railway timetable that has outlived its usefulness because things have changed. It is something that the eternal, almighty God has said, and therefore it is relevant and important for all times and cultures: ‘The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands for ever’ (Isaiah 40:8).

You can see where your friend is coming from, though. We would have to admit that parts of the Bible seem a bit ‘dated’. After all, it was written between 2,000 and 3,500 years ago; it describes the history and events of people we’ve never heard of and who often don’t seem anything like us; it talks about what food you should and shouldn’t eat, how you should sacrifice animals, and the type of material you should make your clothes from, none of which applies to us today. It isn’t hard to see why someone might say it’s out of date.

Our dilemma is caused by the dual nature of the Bible. It is adivine book, spoken by God, and therefore it is always true and relevant. And yet at the same time it is ahuman book, written by people a long time ago, and therefore it is in some senses ‘dated’. Let’s think about each of these two natures of the Bible and how they should influence the way that we approach it.

A divine book

By calling it a ‘divine book’, we mean simply that the Bible comes directly from God. Behind the various human authors, he is the ultimate author.

That’s a huge claim to make, and lots of people would dispute it. But for Christians the issue is settled very easily: this is what Jesus himself believed about the Bible.

When asked by the Pharisees about divorce, Jesus said this: ‘Haven’t you read...that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”?’ (Matthew 19:4–5).

Jesus quotes from Genesis 2:24, which, he says, was spoken by ‘the Creator’. But when we turn to Genesis 2:24, we find that it is not a direct pronouncement from God (compare 2:18), but simply part of the narrative written by the human author of Genesis, probably Moses. However, Jesus sees this human sentence as something spoken by the Creator, God himself. We could multiply the examples showing that this is typical of Jesus’ attitude to the Old Testament.

The apostle Paul delivers the same verdict: ‘All Scripture is God-breathed’ (2 Timothy 3:16).

You can’t speak without breathing – your lips move, but there will be no sound (try it!). Words travel on our breath. That explains what Paul is saying about the Old Testament (‘Scripture’). It comes out of God’s mouth. It is his word. This is sometimes called the doctrine ofinspiration.

But what about the New Testament? That was written after Jesus returned to heaven, so presumably we can’t know what he thought about it. Wrong. While Jesus was on earth he told his apostles that they were to be his witnesses and speak for him after he had left (see John 15:27; 17:20), and they went on to write the books and letters we call the New Testament. In effect, Jesus deliberately planned and commissioned the New Testament. To make sure they got it right, he didn’t just leave the apostles to write it by themselves. He promised the help of his Spirit: ‘I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you’ (John 16:12–14).

The other New Testament writers seem conscious of this. Peter, for instance, wrote: ‘Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Saviour through your apostles’ (2 Peter 3:1–2).

Do you see what Peter is saying? It isJesus’ command, but from the apostles’ lips. The apostles speak for God.

Much more could be said about the inspiration of the Bible, but we don’ty have room here. If you want to take it further, chapter 2 of Bible Doctrine by Wayne Grudem (IVP) is highly recommended.

Let’s think about four implications that flow from the Bible being a divine book.

The Bible is alive, not dead history

If the Bible is God’s word, then, far from being ‘out of date’, it is a book that is alive and speaks to us today. As the book of Hebrews puts it: ‘the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ (Hebrews 4:12).

Imagine a lawyer who has to answer a tricky legal question. He knows that the answer lies in the dusty, leather-bound volumes in the law library, among all the previous cases and legal precedents. However, reading those books is rather boring and takes a long time. It’s much easier to phone up a fellow lawyer who knows more than he does. His friend can tell him the answer straight away; it’s quick and easy.

Of course, our lawyer friend still thinks highly of the books in the law library. They are the final authority on what is right and wrong. But he goes to read them only when he really has to, or when he needs to check that his friend’s answer is right. Otherwise, it’s much easier to stick with the immediate answer he gets over the phone.

That can sum up how many of us treat the Bible. We have lots of questions we want God to answer, but we think of the Bible as rather old and boring. It’s much easier to try to get answers more directly. We either ask God to tell us answers in some way that doesn’t involve the Bible, or we ask Christian friends for their opinion. We still think the Bible is very important, though. Like the law library, it is our final authority; it decides what is right and wrong. But we go there only as a last resort, to check on things we’ve heard from elsewhere.

From what we’ve said about the Bible, we hope you can see that that is a huge misunderstanding! The Bible isn’t like a dead law book, true but boring. It is God’s word. It is what God is saying today. It is living and active. It is like speaking to the friend on the phone, only the friend is God himself.

It would be good to keep this in mind every time we sit down and open the Bible. Banish any thoughts of a boring library, and think instead of picking up the phone and dis covering your Creator on the other end of the line. God is speaking. That is really what is happening as we read the Bible.

The Bible is true and doesn’t make mistakes

One of the wonderful things about God is that he doesn’t lie (Titus 1:2). He doesn’t make mistakes either, because he knows everything that there is to know. If the Bible is God’s word, then it follows that the Bible doesn’t lie or make mistakes. No wonder that Jesus can say to God his Father: ‘Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth’ (John 17:17).

We can trust everything that the Bible says. It will never mislead us – so long as we understand it correctly, that is.

Yes, we know that the Catholic Church persecuted Galileo because its leaders were convinced from the Bible that the sun orbited the earth: ‘The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises’ (Ecclesiastes 1:5). ‘Ha!’ says the sceptic. ‘How hopelessly naïve of the pre-scientific Bible writers, who knew nothing of cosmology! The Bible must be riddled with mistakes like that.’ But of course we still speak of ‘sunrise’ in our own day. That’s what it looks like from the standpoint of someone on earth. It’s not saying anything about cosmology. It’s not a mistake.

The word of God is the surest foundation that you can build your life on.

We can understand the word of God only by the Spirit of God

Consider these verses:

However, as it is written:

‘No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,

no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him’ –

but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

(1 Corinthians 2:9–12)

Paul’s point is clear: we need God’s Spirit to understand God’s word. Given that it was the Spirit who inspired it in the first place, that comes as no surprise. There’s another implication, though:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

(1 Corinthians 2:14)

Someone who isn’t a Christian (i.e. the ‘man [or woman] without the Spirit’) won’t be able fully to understand the Bible, however many qualifications or degrees in theology he or she may have. We should be wary of the ‘expert’ on television, or the professor who’s written the latest controversial book about Christianity. It’s easy to bow to what seems to be impressive knowledge, but if they haven’t got the Spirit of God working in them, then they haven’t a hope of grasping the Bible’s message.

On the other hand, everyone who is a Christiancan understand the Bible for themselves, since all Christians have the Spirit. The role of our pastor or minister is not to tell us private secrets to which they alone have access, but to point us to the verses in front of us so that we see for ourselves what the Bible is saying. This is very liberating and exciting – all God’s children have access to God’s truth.

Yet we need continually to express our dependence on God for a right understanding of him and his ways. He is the one who grants insight (2 Timothy 2:7; Philippians 3:15). And so we must pray. Pray before you open the Bible. Pray when you get stuck and don’t understand. Pray again when you do understand it – say thank you! Pray, pray, pray!

It is vital that we remember this. In the rest of this book we are going to concentrate on what we might call ‘our part’ in understanding the Bible, as opposed to ‘God’s part’ of enabling us to understand. However, we would hate you to get the impression that just because we spend most time on ‘our part’, we think God’s part isn’t very important. Not at all! Better than any of the tools that we will learn about later is the privilege of prayer. If the Bible is God speaking to us down the telephone, then prayer is our way of speaking back – ‘I don’t get it. Please help me see what you mean’; ‘I’m struggling to accept what you’re saying, Father. Please help me to trust you’; ‘This is amazing, Lord. I praise you for what you are showing me.’

What God says goes

The fourth implication of the Bible’s being God’s word comes from remembering who God is. He is the supreme Lord and King of the universe. He is the one in charge. Given that, it should be obvious that what he says goes.

This is sometimes called theauthority of the Bible. It carries the same authority as the God who speaks it and so has the right to say what is true and to demand obedience. As Christians we want to live with God in charge of us, and in practice that means living in submission to the words of Scripture. Listening to Jesus’ voice and following him in all that he says is a matter of instinct: ‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me’ (John 10:27).

Yet, even with God’s Spirit working in us, we still have a sinful nature, and that part of us doesn’t want to listen to God or obey him (Galatians 5:17). The simple fact that the New Testament letters contain so many rebukes and commands about what we should and shouldn’t do is ample testimony to the fact that living with God in charge doesn’t come easily to us.

Earlier we quoted part of a statement by Paul about the Bible being God-breathed. Here it is in full:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

(2 Timothy 3:16)

Paul expects the Bible to tell us off when we are getting things wrong, and to correct us where we are veering off course. As we read the Bible we should expect to find God saying things we don’t like or find difficult. We should expect to be rebuked and corrected.

When that happens, it is really important that we accept what God says. When some people read what the Bible teaches about predestination, or homosexuality, or wives submitting to their husbands (to pick three controversial examples), they respond by saying, ‘I can’t accept that’, or ‘Surely we must interpret this in a different way.’ Now, of course, it’s very important to ask whether the Bible reallydoes say what we think it does – that is what this book is going to help us with. But once we are clear about what the Bible says, the question is whether we will accept what it says.

Part of us does want to hear and follow what God says, but part of us doesn’t. We should harbour a little self-suspicion: just because we don’t like what we are reading doesn’t mean we’ve got it wrong; in fact it might very well mean we’ve got it right!

A human book

Having thought about the Bible as a divine book, let’s turn now to the other side of the coin – that it is a human book also.

We hardly need to prove that the Bible is a human book. That’s obvious as soon as we start to read it. For example, Philippians 1:1 tells us that this part of the Bible was written by a man called Paul; from the way he writes it is clearly what we would call a letter; it is addressed to Christians in a place called Philippi. It is clearly a ‘human’ document.

Often, the human authors give us some personal information about themselves and their involvement with what they are writing:

I, Daniel, was exhausted and lay ill for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.

(Daniel 8:27)

The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.

(John 19:35)

The words of the Teacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem...

(Ecclesiastes 1:1)

There is a right sense to saying the Bible is ‘dated’: not that it is no longer relevant, but that it was written a long time ago. This is sometimes called historical particularity – the Bible is written by particular people, at a particular time, in a particular place, for a particular reason. Their humanity comes through. Their particular circumstances come through. That’s why you find verses in the Bible like this: ‘When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments’ (2 Timothy 4:13). If you go hunting in this verse for God’s special message for you, you’ll be barking up the wrong tree. It is particular to the human writer Paul, who was beginning to get cold as winter approached and needed his overcoat!

So then, the Bible is a human document. That doesn’t overturn what we said earlier about God speaking to us in the Bible; that is all still true. But theway God speaks to us is throughhuman authors. They weren’t mindless robots, writing as God dictated from above. Rather, God worked through them as people, preserving their personality, literary style and culture, yet at the same time guiding them by his Spirit so that they always wrote his eternal truth.

This all means that we have some work to do. We must work at understanding the different writers correctly, exploring their situations, their purpose in writing, how they have expressed themselves. As we do that, we will come to know God’s voice in our lives. That is what the following tools are going to help us do.

What we have learnt in this chapter

Understanding the nature of the Bible leads us to the right way to approach it. It is a divine book, the very word of God. That means that it is

• living and active today
• utterly true and reliable
• understood only with the help of the Spirit
• the ultimate authority for Christians

But at the same time it is a human book, written by real people in real situations. We need to work hard at understanding it. We need tools! Read on!

2. The Author’s Purpose Tool

When I (Nigel) was a student I remember leading a Bible study on the following verses:

[God] has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

(2 Timothy 1:9–10)

As I...

Table of contents

• Dig deeper
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. What the Bible Is and How We Should Approach It
• 2. The Author’s Purpose Tool
• 3. The Context Tool
• 4. The Structure Tool
• 5. The Linking Words Tool
• 6. The Parallels Tool
• 7. The Narrator’s Comment Tool
• 8.The Vocabulary Tool
• 9. The Translations Tool
• 10. The Tone and Feel Tool
• 11. The Repetition Tool
• 12. The Quotation/Allusion Tool
• 13. The Genre Tool
• 14. The Copycat Tool
• 15. The Bible Timeline Tool
• 16. The ‘Who Am I?’ Tool
• 17. The ‘So What?’ Tool
• Conclusion: Pulling It All Together
• Recommended Reading
• Appendix: It Really Works!