WHY BOTHER WITH THE DETAILS OF INTERPRETATION

WHY BOTHER WITH THE DETAILS OF INTERPRETATION

CHIEF PURPOSE: It is to use the Bible for its intended purpose of Christian nurture. Interpretation of the Bible makes the study (include preaching, teaching, learning) of Scripture more than an intellectual quest to find the doctrinal truth – it focuses on the Christians’ response that leads to spiritual and moral growth, which in turn equips the Christians to fulfil the mission and commission, given to the church by the Lord.

The foundational principle
The Bible is God’s revealed word, inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore without error; hence studying this book is obviously a serious matter as God speaks to us through it. If the BIble is inspired by God it is trustworthy and reliable; it will not mislead a person and it does not contradict itself. Because it is God’s revelation to us, we can assume its clarity and authority.
Its importance becomes apparent the moment we read commentary that does not accept this principle.
If the Bible were not God’s revealed Word – lf, that is, no one could be sure that everything the biblical writers say of God, God who says of himself – we could not be sure either that any single statement in the BIble purporting to be a promise of God to Christians believers is truly valid.
Consider what Paul wrote about resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:14-19.
“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead….If only for this life we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied more than all others.”
The second interpretive principle
The biblical canon (the Bible as a whole) is an organic whole in which the parts fit together harmoniously. In the case of difficult or obscure passages, the interpreter should give precedence to biblical passages where the doctrine is clear.

The third principle
The BIble as a whole is based on a principle of progressive revelation. The most notable is the progress from the Old Testament to the New Testament. This will explain contradictions or discrepancies between Old and New Testament passages.

In the light of the above, interpretation (including accurate exegesis, exposition, theology) becomes crucial, for it determines the right and proper applications in our Christian lives. The wrong applications which come from distorted interpretations would harm the spiritual state of the recipients and damage churchlife and the mission of God’s church.
BIble study is not a matter of just answering questions prepared by various ones like a comprehension exercise. There is a need to ensure that the interpretation, theology, and application are in line with what God reveals through the biblical writers. It is not a matter of being thorough for thorough’s sake; it has to do with the nurturing and equipping of believers in their walk with God and in their service as God’s stewards and ‘ambassadors’.
Eg. Many of the second parts or later parts of the epistles consist of practical exhortations and applications for the readers; however, their applications can only come about wholesomely with the understanding of the previous chapters and the earlier portions of the epistles. Often, the second part is prefaced with “Therefore”…hence the need to know that the therefore implies that the applications must be in line with the understanding of the earlier portions of the epistles.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, do not go away with the idea that interpretation of Scripture and their principles are not relevant and it is just too much to ‘digest’. They are crucial for wholesome nurturing and equipping of God’s people!!

WHY BOTHER WITH THE DETAILS OF INTERPRETATION (B)

When we hear, read, or study Scripture, whether we realise it or not, what impinges on our mind is the speech of God himself!!
Not that the church knows, or ever knew, or will know in this world, the full meaning of God’s Word. “Now I know in part; then shall know fully, even as I am fully known {1 Cor, 13: 12(b)}. The task of biblical interpretation never ceases. There is no such thing as an exhaustive exegesis of any passage. The Holy Spirit is constantly showing believers facets of revealed truth not seen before.

To claim finality for any historic mode of interpretation or system of theology would be to resist the Holy Spirit; there is always more to be said; the Lord has more light and truth yet to break out of his holy Word. The church must receive all teaching that proves to be biblical, whether on matters of historical or of theological fact, as truly part of God’s Word.

Hence the importance of insisting that the inspiration of Scripture is verbal. Words signify and safeguard meaning; the wrong word distorts the intended sense. Since God inspired the biblical text in order to communicate his Word, it was necessary for him to ensure that the words written were such as did in fact convey it. We do not stress the verbal character of inspiration from a superstitious regard for the original Hebrew and Greek words; we do so from a reverent concern for the sense of Scripture. If the words were not wholly God’s then their teaching would not be wholly God’s.
This is terribly important! Preachers and teachers must always be open to the fact that their communication may not always convey the true sense of Scripture. Hence the need to be open to feedback; not to receive it as criticism (although at times it is so from ‘overconfident listeners’), but to sincerely review the biblical text, and this may conclude with affirmation that the interpretation was correct, or with the openness to correct and review what has been communicated (especially if it affects the glory of the Triune God and the wholesome truth of the gospel).
Even if the preaching or teaching come from well known preachers, theologians, this should not be overlooked. Recall how Scripture commends the Berean Christians who checked whether what the renowned apostle Paul preached was indeed scriptural. To do that required the thorough ‘bother’ with the details of interpretation and to ensure that what was communicated was indeed what God spoke.
Similarly for us today, let us check reverently whether what is being taught in preaching or teaching are not ‘coloured’ by traditions of certain church groups or certain historical claims, but that is indeed what God speaks and what God desires for us to obediently apply. This is a ‘tall order’ in some contexts, but it is definitely essential if we desire to know the wholesome revelation of God in his Word.

WHY BOTHER WITH THE DETAILS OF INTERPRETATION (C)

To be an avowed Bible believer is no guarantee that one’s interpretation of the BIble will always be right, or that secular distortions will never invade one’s mind to discolour one’s thoughts.
To avoid subject eccentricity in our interpretation of the Bible, the first necessity is precision in handling texts (hence the need to know the details involved in interpretation).

We must take pains to see what truths about God and his world the passage teaches, or assumes, or illustrates. We must also reflect on how these truths impact our lives today (hence application in applying practical theology). Nothing must be read into texts that cannot be read out of them.

We must appreciate the wide range of the Spirit’s ministry in connection with Scripture. The leadership of the Spirit was exercised in the whole process of producing the BIble and setting it before us, and that same lordship is exercised as the Spirit moves us to receive, revere, and study the Scriptures and to discern their divine message to us.
The ‘spiritual’ sense of Scripture is nothing other than the literal sense – that is, the sense the writer’s words actually express – integrated with the rest of biblical teaching and applied to our individual lives.
Apart from the Spirit, there is no true learning of divine things from Scripture,and supposedly ‘spiritual’ thoughts not founded on the Word are godless flights of fancy. When such thoughts are expressed by an individual in a bible study, there needs to be swift correction of them; otherwise the group and particularly the younger believers may accept them as acceptable spiritual thoughts. Those who would live under the authority of the Spirit must bow before the Word as the Spirit’s textbook while those who would live under the authority of Scripture must seek the Spirit as its interpreter. Negligence and one-sidedness either way could be ruinous, and since a proper balance as this as in other matters comes naturally to none of us, we do well to be on guard and to speak up when the Spirit prompts us to (even though we may be accused of speaking too much, and the time-watch says it is time to stop the study for our meals).

The ability to apply God’s truth therapeutically implies the prior ability to diagnose spiritual ill-health, and diagnostic ability is learned as much by discovering and keeping track of one’s own sins and weaknesses as by any other means. Truth obeyed, will heal. The unconverted are sick unto death; those who have come to know Christ and been born again continue sick, but they are gradually getting better as the work of grace goes on i n their lives.The church, however, is a hospital in which nobody is completely well, and anyone can relapse at any time. Pastors, teachers, leaders, npo less than others are weakened by pressure from the world, the flesh, and the Devil, with their lures of profit, pleasure, and pride, and they need also to acknowledge that they, the healers, remain sick and wounded and therefore need to apply the medicines of Scripture to themselves as well as to the sheep whom they tend in Christ’s name.
All Christians need Scripture truth as medicine for their souls at every stage, and the making and accepting of applications is the administering and swallowing of it.
If we are sick and we insist that we are well and refuse the medicines, it would be a matter of time before the sickness worsens to a point beyond healing. Take care that when God speaks to us from Scripture that we do not rationalise and dismiss the communication from him. Unopenness and unteachability are the factors that are associated with pride and self-centeredness and they ‘spell’ serious ‘red-flags’ (dangers) for us to take close attention to.

THE SELF-SUBSTITUTION OF GOD

In Isaiah 53, Isaiah wrote in his message: “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer” (vs. 10). Scholars rightly understand this as a reference to Jesus Christ and his suffering that led to the crucifixion. And so, with reference to the sovereignty of God, many have emphasised that it is God’s sovereign will that Christ should suffer and die for the sin of man – and it is not so much that Jesus was killed by the Romans or the Jews or Judas Iscariot but it is God’s will that he should suffer and die (although this does not excuse those humans who were responsible for their sinful deeds in causing the death of the Son of God).

But here we have to clarify and qualify the statement that God punished Jesus for our sins {as illustrated by the guilt offering in the OT that in the offering the sins of Israel were transferred to the scapegoat, that the ‘Lord laid on him’, his suffering servant, all our iniquity (Isa. 53:6)}.

We need to emphasise that we have no liberty to interpret that God compelled Jesus to do what he was unwilling to do himself, or that Jesus was an unwilling victim of God’s harsh justice. Jesus Christ did indeed bear the penalty of our sins, but God was active in and through Christ doing it, and Christ was freely playing his part (eg. Heb.10:5-10).
We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other. We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners.

Whatever happened on the cross in terms of ‘God-forsakenness’ was voluntarily accepted by both in the same holy love which made atonement necessary. It was ‘God in our nature forsaken of God’. If the Father ‘gave the Son’, the Son ‘gave himself’. If the Gethsemane ‘cup’ symbolized the wrath of God, it was nevertheless ‘given’ by the Father (John 18:11) and voluntarily ‘taken’ by the Son. If the Father ‘sent’ theSon, the Son ‘came’ himself. The Father did not lay on the Son an ordeal he was reluctant to bear,nor did the Son extract from the Father a salvation he was reluctant to bestow. There is no suspicion anywhere in the New Testament of discord between the Father and the Son, ‘whether by the Son wrestlng forgiveness from an unwilling Father or by the Father demanding a sacrifice from an unwilling Son. There was no unwillingness in either. On the contrary, their wills coincided in the perfect self-sacrifice of love.

It is God who must satisfy himself as holy love. He was unwilling to act in love at the expense of his holiness or in holiness at the expense of his love.
Thus he who humbled himself even to death on a cross was none other than he who ‘being in very nature God’ made himself nothing in order to become human and to die (Phil. 2:6-8). It was ‘the Lord of glory’ whom the rulers of this age crucified (1 Cor. 2:8). And the blood by which the robes of the redeemed have been washed clean is that of the Lamb who shares the centre of God’s throne ()Rev. 5:6,9; 7:9). Immortality belongs to God’s essential being, and therefore God cannot die; so he became man, in order to be able to do so – so that by his death he might destroy him who holds Trinity, the Son of God, became man in order to be the ‘one mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim. 2:5). The person who died on the cross was not the Father but the Son. If we say that God died on the cross, ‘God’ refers to the second Person, the Son of God, and not to the Father.
An over-emphasis on the sufferings of God on the cross may mislead us either into confusing the persons of the Trinity and denying the eternal distinctness of the Son. Our substitute, then who took our place and died our death on the cross, was neither Christ alone,nor God alone, but God in Christ , who was truly and fully both God and man, and who on that account was uniquely qualified to represent both God and man and to mediate between them. If we speak only of Christ suffering and dying, we overlook the initiative of the Father. If we speak only of God suffering and dying, we overlook the mediation of the Son. The New Testament authors never attribute the atonement either to Christ in such a way as to dissociate him from the Father, or to God in such a way as to dispense with Christ, but rather to God and Christ, or to God acting in and through Christ with his whole-hearted concurrence.

God and Christ were together active in the work of reconciliation, indeed that it was in and through Christ that God was effecting the reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:17 -19).
The only way for God’s holy love to be satisfied is for his holiness to be directed in judgment upon his appointed substitute, in order that his love may be directed towards us in forgiveness. The substitute bears the penalty that we sinners may receive the pardon. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy!
The essence of sinis man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvationis God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.
Neither Christ alone as man nor the Father alone as God could be our substitute. Only God in Christ, God the Father’s own and only Son made man, could take our place. The incarnation is indispensable to the atonement. It is essential to affirm that the love, the holiness and the will of the Father are identical with the love, the holiness and the will of the Son. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
This understanding is essential in our appreciation and worship of God the Father; the Father is not someone who is ‘cruel’ in ‘crushing’ his Son as a father who does not care or love his son – in fact, the Father suffers with His Son in the atonement, because the Triune God noted before the creation of the world that there is no other way to save rebellious human beings and at the same time compromise his holy love. God the judge takes the place of those who ought to be judged – the judge himself was the judged! Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place. Otherwise, hell is the only alternative for fallen men and women. Here is the wondrous grace, mercy and love of God to all those who acknowledge their unworthiness, wretchedness. and cry out or mercy and forgiveness available to them in the gospel of Christ.

THE SELF-SUBSTITUTION OF GOD (B)

The drama of the ‘cross’ involves ourselves on the one hand and God on the other. Not God as he is in himself (the Father), but God nevertheless, God-made-man-in-Christ (the Son). Hence the importance of those New Testament passages which speak of the death of Christ as the death of God’s Son (John 3:16 for eg.).
For in giving his Son he was giving himself. This being so, it is the judge himself who in holy love assumed the role of the innocent victim, for in and through the person of his Son he himself bore the penalty which he himself afflicted. The mysterious unity of the Father and the Son rendered it possible for God at once to endure and to inflict penal suffering.
There is neither harsh injustice nor unprincipled love nor Christological heresy in that; there is only unfathomable mercy. For in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us!

Beholding this truth clearly brings out deep gratefulness and praise from the depths of our heart; it is indeed amazing love and amazing grace which save wretched creatures like us. It brings us to our knees each time we behold what the Triune God did for us at the CROSS and beyond.

At the cross, a great mysterious exchange took place. Jesus bore the curse in order that we might inherit the blessing promised to Abraham (Gal. 3:143); and God made the sinless Christ to be sin for us, in order that ‘in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor.521).
Elsewhere Paul writes of this transfer in terms of ‘imputation’.
On the one hand, God declined to ‘impute’ our sin to us, or ‘count them against us (2 Cor. 5:19), with the implication that he ‘imputed’ them to Christ instead. On the other hand, God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to us (Rom.4:6; 1Cor.1:30; Phil. 39).
Many are offended by this concept; they consider it both artificial and unjust on God’s part to arrange such a transfer (among them are also some well known theologians). Yet this objection is due to a misunderstanding.
“Imputation” does not at all imply the transference of one person’s moral qualities to another. Such a thing would be impossible; we ourselves have done nothing of what is imputed to us, nor Christ anything of what is imputed to him.
What was transferred to Christ was not moral qualities but legal consequences: he voluntarily accepted liability for our sins. This is what the expressions ‘made sin’ and ‘made a curse’ mean. Similarly, the ‘righteousness of God’ which we become when we are ‘in Christ’ is not here righteousness of character and conduct (although that grows within us by the working of the Holy Spirit), but rather a righteous standing before God.
And here we see the need for sanctification after this wonderful exchange; the significant role and ministry of the Spirit; the implications of ‘Already’ and ‘Not yet”.
We need to acknowledge that no article of Christian faith admits of full demonstration as, say geometrical theorems in Mathematics do; all the great biblical doctrines – the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the work of the Spirit in man, the resurrection of the body, and the renewal of the creation – are partly mysterious, and raise problems for our minds that are at present insoluble. But that should not daunt, nor even surprise us; for it is the very nature of Christian faith to believe, on the authority of God, truths which may neither be rationally demonstrated nor exhaustively understood. God does not tell us everything about his acts and purposes, nor put us in a position to work them all out for ourselves. We are wholly dependent on him for our knowledge of his ways.
In this light, besides ‘imputation’, we need also to appreciate ‘propitiation’ – God has freely and undeservedly set his love upon us, and reconciled us to himself by propitiating his own wrath through the atoning sacrifice of his Son. God, the very time, when he loved us, was hostile to us until reconciled in Christ. Here is the mystery of God’s free grace – a wonder not to be pried into by speculation, but to be reverently adored.

On the subject of the ‘renewal of creation’, from all eternity it has been God’s gracious plan, purpose, and pleasure to restore the cosmos to perfection at the end of the day through the mediation of the “last Adam” (Jesus Christ, the God-Man; Rom. 8:21). All the decisive events in God’s plan to save the last have now been played out on the stage of world history. The key to understanding the plan, as it affects mankind, is to see that by God’s appointment each man’s destiny depends on how he stands rel;ated to the two representative men, Adam and Christ. What God planned was to exercise his kingship over his rebel world by bringing in his kingdom – that is, a state of bliss for sinners who, penitently returning to his obedience, should find under his sway salvation from sins’ guilt, power, and evil effects. In this kingdom, Jesus Christ should be God’s vice-regent, and trusting and obeying Christ should be the appointed way of returning from sin to God’s service.
Here is where the Great Commission comes in, and disciple-making becomes prominent, and also the ministry of the Spirit drawing man to himself and by strengthening them for faithful obedience in the face of mounting opposition till the day dawns for his return to judge all men and finally to renew all things.
The goal of God’s action is to glorify himself by restoring and perfecting his disordered cosmos, and the gospel call is to abandon rebellion, acknowledge Christ’s lordship, thankfully accept the free gift of forgiveness and new life in the kingdom, enlist on the victory side, be faithful in God’s strength, and hope to the end for Christ’s coming triumph.

THE UNFINISHED TASK OF THE CHURCH

We have shared on the ‘Heart of the ministry of the church – the Gospel’; and we also noted that the center of Redemption is the Cross. We saw also that the goal for God’s people, individually, and corporately, is to grow unto spiritual maturity and Godliness in Christ. Earlier, we are told that God gives gifts to the church – pastors, teachers, and leaders to equip the church (the members and laity) to do the work of the ministry of evangelism, disciple-making, and all these actually contribute to spiritual maturity and godliness as a whole, as well as bringing new believers into the fold.

We know that the entire life and being of the church lie in the word of God (the author and illuminator of the word is the divine Spirit). So the main task of equipping the church members to do the ministry must involve the commitment to the tasks of preaching and teaching the word of God.
Of the two, preaching has fared better than teaching.
BIble teaching is the medium of neglect in the contemporary church. Seminaries have required courses in homiletics, and many books on preaching have been published. There are few books and courses on teaching the Bible in comparison.
Effective Bible teaching in fact heads the agenda of the church’s unfinished tasks. Part of the problem is that the church has failed to equip lay people to study and teach the Bible. Without intending to do so, it has handed over the task of interpreting the Bible to its ministers.
Ministers themselves feel more comfortable in the pulpit than in front of a class. They spend their time on their sermons and by comparison feel that anything is good enough when it comes to teaching the BIble. Nor have ministers been quick to oversee that lay people teach the Bible effectively.

When we speak of effective Bible teaching as the church’s unfinished task, we are not minimizing much that is good in how the Bible is being taught and studied today. To complete the task of teaching the Bible with excellence, however, will require that we improve what currently exists. We need to honestly look at where BIble teaching stands today and diagnose where it fails; also, what has contributed to the slow progress towards spiritual maturity in the church has a lot to do with the poor quality of Bible teaching in most cases.

Ineffective teaching must be viewed at two levels – the presentation level and the planning level. The presentation level is actual classroom teaching or teaching in small groups. The planning level encompasses the teacher’s planning and general approach to teaching,as well as decisions about the content and organisation of a lesson.
By tackling problems at the presentation level, we have generally treated the symptom rather than the alilmet. Presentation problems can be solved by feedback, practice, and coaching.
The key to better Bible teaching lies at the planning level. In fact many presentation problems are the result of faulty planning. We focus now on the ‘culprits’ that cause the problems. As we go along, we would find that they are also related to preaching the BIble as well, and not just teaching.

Inability to come to grips with a Biblical text
Teachers (and Preachers as well) need to get a firm grip on a Bible passage. Various ones who think themselves prepared to teach the BIble are often teaching about the BIble. In other words, they are teaching doctrinal persuasions or outlines of systematic theology.
There is the inability to teach a Biblical passage in terms of the kind of writing it is – i.e. to state the essential differences between a story and poem. There needs to be an awareness of the genre or type of writing that a passage is. To teach a psalm without realising that poets speak a language of images and metaphors is to cut against the grain.
Equally problematic is the inability to deal adequately with a biblical text in terms of identifying the “big idea” of a biblical passage – the thought that unifies a biblical passage and that ought to govern the teaching (and preaching as the case may be). Ineffective teachers tend to focus on isolated facts and to present unrelated ideas with the hope that some will stick.
There is a common problem of escaping from the biblical text to other material – eg. matters beyond the text itself like the writer, the cultural context, the ‘background material’ and so on.
Then there is the excessive confidence in published materials. The teacher may bombard the group with a stream of isolated observations and a series of anecdotes and applications, but nothing fit together.At times, the teacher ‘uses someone else’s preparation.

We need to be reminded that teachers can never teach effectively beyond their grasp of a subject; they cannot teach what they do not understand. Merely parroting a prepared lesson is not teaching; we cannot teach various ones anything we do not know.
Although we live in an age of available information, the church is often lacking in maturity and spiritual understanding and its biblical illiteracy is often alarming. We need people who understand the big ideas of their faith and who can use them to guide their lives and the mission of the church. Running out of information is not a problem, but ‘drowning in it is”.
It is our use of BIble knowledge, not the mere possession of Bible facts, that produces growth toward godliness.

Teachers (and even preachers) must be able to ‘bridge the gap’ effectively – i.e. making the biblical text relevant to modern living. Good interpretation must ask and answer two questions – what a passage meant to the original audience and what it means to us today. We must not just take a one way journey to the world of the BIble and not return to our own world. This will help us not to moralise about isolated details in a text instead of first mastering the passage as a whole and then deducing principles from it.
We must guard against allegorising or spiritualising a biblical passage. This is rather pervasive today. Also we must avoid too many facts but not enough meaning; the way out of the maze is to reach a high enough point that we can see the overall pattern of a BIble passage and the big ideas of the Christian faith based on the Bible. Interpretation is simply reaching the vantage point from which to see the big picture.

UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING THE BIBLE

Good communication avoids obscurity and achieves accuracy and clarity of presentation. The art of interpretation is to avoid reading into communication what cannot be read out of them, and to achieve precision in receiving and applying them. The art of understanding is to lay aside prejudice and willfully closed mind, and to achieve imaginative as well as conceptual rapport with both the communicator and the communication.

To clarify and at the risk of over-simplifying, we may state the position of the evangelical Christian in this way: Catholicism says that those who want to know the mind and will of God on Christian essentials should listen to the teaching church, and finally let tradition guide them; others say they should listen to the expert theologians, and finally set their own thoughts guide them; but evangelicals say that they should listen to Holy Scripture, and finally let its teaching guide them, however much it may set them at odds with the mind-set of their peers and their times. Although evangelicals respect traditions, they do not regard any of its deliverance as infallible and irreformable.The rule of faith embedded in Christ’s teaching is that belief and behaviour must be ordered by the light of the Scriptures, supplemented and interpreted by his own words of witness and those of the number of the apostolic circle.

Preaching, teaching, and Bible study continue in faith and hope on the basis of the following convictions:
God is the Lord of communication just as he is the Lord of saving grace.He speaks from Scripture, read, preached, explained and applied, across all cultural gaps and barriers, making Christ known and overcoming all muddles of the mind through the power of the Holy Spirit. He has done it constantly throughout the church’s long history and he will continue to do it, whatever the well-meant misunderstanding of his word among the learned and others.

When God gives insight into Scripture, that insight is for obedience and it is primarily the practice of obedience that opens us up to further truth. There are moral conditions of understanding as well as intellectual ones, and the former are in fact fundamental: it is those who are willing to do God’s will who will be enabled to know what it is. God himself will see to that.

Scripture is meant to do more than inform our minds, and only as, by leading us to Jesus, it fires our imagination, feeds our worship and changes our ways dare any of us claim to understand it. But a life transformed by Scripture from an ego-trip into an intoxication with Jesus Christ is evidence of understanding at the deepest and truest level..

Why the above convictions and elaboration? The many errors committed and seen in the church and among God’s people have their roots in miscommunication, wrongful interpretations, and distorted understanding of Scripture. In the last days, “…the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather round them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth, and turn aside to myths.” (2Tim. 4:3-5)
Hence Paul told Timothy (and this applies to all Christian teachers and leaders): “Preach the word: be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.”
(2Tim. 4:2)

A LIGHT IN A PLACE OF DARKNESS

I forwarded two long sharings yesterday; some may ask why and why such long discourses in the two sharings?
My answer is simply that the writings of James the half brother of Jesus, and that of Peter the apostle, are so very relevant in times like ours. James exhorted Christians, in the midst of sufferings, temptations, and trials, not only to persevere, but to rejoice in the midst of their sufferings. He pointed out that sufferings, when we go through them with the Lord, would produce Christian character, and prepare us for the day of the Lord. James shared with humility and identified himself as a servant of the Lord Jesus even though he had a relationship with Jesus as his half-brother; and James shared his exhortations with full awareness of the intense sufferings of the brethren, reminding them that they were pilgrims on earth, waiting for the second advent of the Lord Jesus.
The apostle Peter, however, knew that his death was near and he wrote the second letter to remind the believers of things he had taught them already and to confirm them in those things. What are those things? They are the things concerning the knowledge of Jesus Christ the Lord. Again and again, he summoned them to ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
And Peter confirmed the reality, the truth, the reliability of the things he has taught them concerning the Son of God, by referring to the transfiguration of which he himself was an eyewitness.
But more than that, Peter told them of something more sure than his testimony – the word of the prophets which is more certain. ‘The prophetic word,’ Peter declares, ‘is more sure even than my eyewitness as an apostle in what happened at the transfiguration. Why should Pet speak of Scripture as “more sure even than this”?
When Peter speaks of the word of the prophets he was thinking of the Old Testament as a whole = all of this was regarded as prophetic. And the nature of the prophetic word was that it was, in truth, God’s teaching, God preaching, God addressing men, God instructing men in the most direct way through the utterance of human agents. But the word that they spoke was most directly and most categorically His word and not their own. What Peter was actually saying was that the prophetic word confirms that the voice he heard in the transfiguration scene was God speaking; the prophetic word confirms that Peter’s experience is right, that the voice he heard from heaven was indeed the voice of God. It is the Word that confirms all our experience now; in other words, take everything ultimately from the written word that God has given us!
For us, the prophetic word comprises all the canonical Scriptures, the Old and the New Testaments. How can we be sure of the Word and have confidence in the Scriptures? From its divine origin; from the fact that it is God’s word. Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The view of many today, even scholars, is the view that Scripture is essentially no more than human witness, sincere but fallible, to God and his grace. This view allows you to discount details of what the biblical witnesses say. NOTE: This is not the view that Peter is putting forward. He does not start with the BIble’ humanity; he starts with its divinity. For to Peter the words of Scripture are simply the human form, the human nature, we might say, of God’s own witness to himself.

Peter affirms ontological inspiration – the inspiration comparable to the incarnation of Christ himself. He is the Son of God; the Bible is the Word of God. Therefore, Peter affirms that the whole of Scripture is authoritative,and its authority is the authority of God!
What we have in the biblical word is utterly sure, and we will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a place of darkness. It is a thought parallel to that given in Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.’ By its light I can see to go. Without its light, I could never see to go,and would be bound to lose my way.
Your heart needs a light, and says Peter, ‘you do well to pay attention to God’s word. God’s written word is as a light that shines in a dark place to enable you to avoid falling victim to the obstacles and see your way out.

It is a dark world, especially so today. It is a dark church.
People’s hearts are dark, even Christian people’s hearts,and no wonder. It is bewildering. We need light. Thank God we have in the written Word of God the light that we need.
Who is putting out the light? Those who are leading God’s people astray over the truth and authority of the Word of God. Who is seeking to put on the light? Those who teach, preach, and uphold the light of God’s Word. Hence the need to teach proper and right interpretation of Scripture, the need for catechism (the teachings of basic biblical truths to all in the church to equip them for the ministry), and the preaching and teaching of God’s Word in season and out of season. There is a need to learn together in Bible study, interactions, prayer – it is not a time to quibble over unrelated issues, the sharing of personal opinions – it is a time to learn and receive what God says and reveals in His revelation in Scripture and in the learnings of His church over the many years of church’s history (correct doctrines and theology).
Peter ended his second epistle as an aged apostle, telling God’s people to know for sure of Christ’s second coming (including the coming judgment) and the consummation in the new heaven and new earth. He kept reminding us of these things!!

WHAT HAVE GONE WRONG WITH PREACHING TODAY?

I am addressing this issue because of the conviction that there is no power or stature or close fellowship with the Triune God in the church without preaching. Our quest for renewal in the church must involve a quest for true preaching; otherwise it will prove shallow and barren.

I share this with sincerity and the acknowledgement that as one of three pastors in a local congregation for some 30 years, I had my share of preaching, and I must confess that in most of my preaching, I had fallen short of what I now realise should be what preaching ought to be. I thus embark to write on this sensitive subject with the prayer that I may be able to communicate some areas and issues which, by God’s grace, may help the current preachers in our churches to evaluate and to recognise the solemn responsibility they have as preachers to communicate messages from God.

We need to recognise that there has been much non-preaching in our pulpits. If preachers fail to open Scripture or they expound it without applying it, or if they are no more than lectures aimed at informing the mind or delivering statements of the preacher’s opinion rather than as messages from God, or if their lines of thought do not require listeners to change in any way, they fall short of being preaching.

Preaching is essentially teaching plus application (invitation, direction, summons); where the plus is lacking, something less than preaching occurs. Unfortunately, many in the church have never experienced preaching in this full biblical sense of the word.
Topical preaching has become a general rule in our churches today. This may be because it makes the preaching appear interesting and more important in an age that has largely lost interest in the pulpit. Many preachers resort to topics because knowingly or unknowingly, they do not trust their Bible enough to let it speak its own message through their lips. My preaching years ago had this element; I found it easier to refer to concordance on a topic and bring all the references together as best as I could to prepare a sermon. Whatever the reason or reasons, the results are unhealthy. In a topical sermon the text is reduced to a peg on which the speaker hangs his line of thought; the shape and thrust of the message reflect his own best notions of what is good for people rather than being determined by the text itself. But the only authority that his sermon can then have is the human authority of a knowledgeable person speaking with emphasis and perhaps raising his voice. Topical discourses of this kind, no matter how biblical their component parts, cannot but fall short of being preaching in the full sense of that word just because their biblical content is made to appear as part of the speaker’s own wisdom. The authority of God revealed is thus resolved into that of religious expertise; it destroys the very idea of Christian preaching, which excludes the thought of speaking for the Bible and insists that the Bible must be allowed to speak for itself in and through the speaker’s words.
Some churches have started preaching on books of the Bible and focusing on passages in the book chosen. This may be more helpful, for it give more room for the BIble to speak for itself from the various texts taken from the particular book.
However, this requires the preacher to have a firm grasp and understanding of the Bible; not just the particular book chosen for sermons, but the whole flow and revelation of the Lord God from Genesis to Revelation. The preacher also needs to study the text chosen for the sermon with the consciousness of the context that his text is in – meaning the interpretation of the text must bear in mind where the text ‘lies’ or is in, in the context of what goes before and what goes after the text, and also how the text fits in, in the whole revelation of Scripture (i.e. appreciating Biblical theology). However, when a preacher chooses to preach on a particular passage or text, and opts to give a title or topic for the sermon in particular, then the dangers of topical preaching come in again, and the preacher may preach on what he feels is the topic in the text, and not allow the text to speak for itself.
Personally, I confess that in my previous preachings years ago, I was not equipped to preach on “book by book” of the Bible, or even expound text after text of a book. There was no in-depth knowledge of the Bible; as a tent-maker (practicing as a medical practitioner and a pastor simultaneously), I had no adequate time to study church history, theology, and the Scripture in depth as well as in understanding the bird-eyes view of the whole Bible and revelation of the Triune God. Over the years, by God’s grace, I manage to acquire more understanding and biblical knowledge for my life and ministry, and it is still growing and work in progress.
I need to qualify that some topical discourses may become real preaching if the speakers settle down to letting this happen, but many topical preachers never discipline themselves to become mouthpieces for messages from biblical texts at all.

The current cult of spontaneity militates against preaching. It is characteristic of some of the liveliest Christian groups today to treat what one can only call crudeness as a sign of sincerity, whether in folk-style songs with folk-style lyrics or in rhapsodic extempore prayer marked by earnest incoherence or in a loose and seemingly under-prepared type of preaching in which raw and clumsy rhetoric matches intellectual imprecision. Charismatic ‘prophecy’ (unpremeditated applicatory speech, uttered in God’s name) is an extreme form of this. But where interest centres upon spontaneity rather than substance, and passion in speakers is valued above preparation, true preaching must of necessity languish.

The purpose of preaching is to inform, persuade, and call forth an appropriate response to the God whose message and instruction are being delivered. The responses will consist of repentance,fait, obedience, love, effort,hope, fear, zeal, joy, praise, prayer or some blend of these. The preacher must realise that there is to be much reverence at the pulpit for he is standing behind the Lord God in delivering God’s message to His people. Although there is a place for humour to capture the attention of the hearers, this should not border on being flippant, or projecting oneself. Illustrations are meant to help the hearers to understand God’s message and instruction; they ought not to be delivered in such a manner that the hearers only remember the illustrations at the end of the sermon, and lose sight of the sober messages from God.
In that respect, personally, I think various ones among the hearers should not regard the sermon as a lecture, and feel free to move about, in and out of the chapel as desired, bringing in drinks and beverages and consuming them in the midst of what God is teaching and communicating through the preacher.
Preaching is God-centered in its viewpoint and Christ-centered in its substance, so it is life-centered in its focus and life-changing in its thrust. So it is a solemn responsibility of the preacher to ensure all these are in place. It is not about projecting himself, his knowledge, or his expertise!

THE IMPORTANCE OF THEOLOGY IN RELATION TO FAITH
I have just sent a sharing on ‘theology of work’, first shared on 15th April. In this sharing, I sought to put this aspect of the theology of work in its proper perspective.
It is heartening that churches and Christians have a growing interest in issues of theology. One factor for this interest is the existence of role models who have demonstrated the utility of theology and its capacity to illuminate and inform the life of faith.
An integral part of the walk of faith for the Christian is a “discipleship of the mind.” The apostle Paul talks about renewing our minds (Rom. 12:1-4), and this seems to be an integral part of our conversion – the reshaping and recalibration of our ways of thinking in accordance with the patterns of reality disclosed in Christ.

We must therefore appreciate the importance of theology in relation to faith and also to engagement with the Great Tradition (which includes the ‘Authority of Scripture’, ‘Justification’, ‘Holiness and Transformation’, ‘True Spirituality’ and ‘Godliness’). With regard to the Great Tradition, it is important to ask what can be learned by listening to others who have sought to be faithful to God in their own generations and passed down to us their insights. Rediscovering the corporate and historic nature of the Christian faith reduces the danger of entire communities of faith being misled by charismatic individuals and affirms the ongoing importance of the Christian past as a stabilising influence in potentially turbulent times. What is good, wise, and true from the past can be discerned and gladly and joyfully reappropriated by today’s church. Rediscovering the historic and corporate dimensions of our faith make the great treasures and resources of the Christian past accessible and available to the present, thus enriching the life and witness of present Christians and churches.

A concern for tradition is however not equivalent to ‘traditionalism’ – that is to say, a nostalgic and backward looking approach to the Christian faith that “can quench the Holy Spirit and cause paralysis and impotence in the church” by demanding that we blindly and uncritically repeat exactly what believers did and said back in the past. A concern for the past does not violate the emphasis on the sole and supreme authority of Scripture. Tradition serves in a ministerial mode and does not rule magisterially. It is there to guide, not to command. Scripture must have the last word on all human attempts to state its meaning, and tradition viewed as a series of such human attempts, has a ministerial rather than a magisterial role. In the end, all interpretation of Scripture must be judged in the light of Scripture itself, recognising that the church has misunderstood the Bible on occasion in the past.
Tradition is something that must be judged. It can too easily shape our readings of Scripture, highlighting some ideas and obscuring others. Tradition predisposes us to read the Bible in certain ways without realising how that seemingly “obvious” or “self-evident” interpretation of the Bible actually gains its power or plausibility from traditions. A time-honoured way of reading the Bible is not necessarily right.
Engaging properly – that is, positively and critically – with tradition opens the way to proper biblical interpretation and theological reflection.
This applies in our study of theology. It is important to correct our natural tendency to rush ahead, act precipitately, and make snap judgments. This may lead to the theological equivalent of fast food outlets. Yet we must ask ourselves, in all seriousness, whether the prefabricated, processed, and predigested approaches to theology that are so often encountered within the evangelical world really can sustain it as it confronts the future.

All proper theology is taught by God, teaches God, and takes us to God. Theology must not be detached and cannot be detached from the relational activity of trusting, loving, worshipping, obeying, serving, and glorifying God. Reacting against dry and heavy theology has made some of us wolly and wild, valuing feelings above truth, depreciating ‘head knowledge’ by comparison with ‘heart knowledge’ and refusing to allow that we cannot have the one without the other, just as reaction against overheated emotionalism has made others of us, cool, cerebral, and censorious to a fault. Right and proper thinking of what God reveals leads to the heart and enables the will to respond in obedience to Him. Both are needful.

HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD….ISAIAH 66:5

When we hear or read Scripture, that which impinges on our mind (whether we realise it or not) is the speech of God himself.
Not that we know, or ever knew, or will know, in this world, the full meaning of God’s Word: the task of biblical interpretation never ends. There is no such thing as a full exhaustive exegesis of any passage; the Holy Spirit is constantly showing believers aspects of revealed truth that are not seen before.
We cannot claim that any historic mode of interpretation or system of theology is final; that would be to resist the Holy Spirit – there is always more to be said or understood – the Lord has more light and truth yet to break out of his holy Word. As such, the church must receive all teaching that proves to be biblical, whether on matters of historical or theological fact, as truly part of God’s Word. What that means is that believers and the church must prayerfully be open to God’s Spirit to throw more light and truth to any passage, epistle or book of the Scripture. It is foolish to stick to understanding from previous study, either from biblical teachers, or theological colleges, or commentaries, without being sincerely open to the Spirit of God to teach us more of the truth he desires to communicate. If our previous understanding is distorted or wrong because we are not open to the searching of the Spirit, then individually, and corportely, we can be led far astray. Hence the second part of Isaiah 66:5…”you who tremble at his word”.
When we come before the Word of God, in hearing, studying or meditating, we must come with much “trembling” and reverence to receive what God has to say to us.
When God spoke to Moses and Israel from the mountain, the sight and sound were so frightening that the people requested God to speak to them though Moses. There was definitely ‘trembling’ and ‘fear’ in seeing the mountain quaking, fire, and lightning, and hearing terrifying sounds of thunder and loud noises as God ‘revealed’ himself.

For us, have we lost this sense of the majesty, power, and awesomeness of the appearance and speech of the Lord God? Words signify and safeguard meaning; the wrong word distorts the intended sense. Since God inspired the biblical text in order to communicate his Word, it was necessary for him to ensure that the words written were such as did in fact convey it. We do not stress the verbal character of inspiration from a superstitious regard for the original Hebrew and Greek words; we do so from a reverent concern for the sense of Scripture. If the words were not wholly God’s, then their teaching would not be wholly God’s.

So when God speaks, through his Word, are we receiving it with reverence and trembling, realising the implications and the consequences that may follow if we ignore the words of the Lord God? Or do we just receive them as just one of those ‘communications’ placed on the internet, or some ‘news’ in the media? Remember, we have to give an account as to how we respond when God speaks!