Month: March 2018

… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (II Tim 2:15)

As you spoke in ancient times to real people in real settings, so, too, do you speak today to real people in real settings, and you use what you said to the ancient people to encourage and challenge us modern people.  Praise your name!

We have been talking about how to read the Bible, and I have been saying that, in one sense, we ought to read the Bible in much the same way we read other books. The past couple blogs have given some examples. We talked about adjusting how we interpret the Bible according to the genre we are reading. We then talked about the importance of the writer’s situation and historical context and used two letters from Paul to illustrate. But the Bible contains more than Paul’s letters. So let’s continue talking about writer’s situation and historical context, except today let’s focus on one prophet and the psalms.

In the book of Micah, the prophet foretells the birth of Messiah in Bethlehem (Mic 5:1-4). We often bring this prophecy out at Christmas, but we rarely mention the writer’s situation and context, even though Micah states up front that Jerusalem is under siege when he writes (5:1). This fact adds significantly to the meaning of what God was doing with that prophecy. When God predicted a ruler who was from ancient days but who would be born in Bethlehem, he was sending a message of hope to a people who did not know if they would be alive tomorrow. God gave them encouragement in their situation by giving them something bigger than their situation. Micah did not write to give you and me information we could put in our Christmas programs. He wrote to encourage despondent people. You see, the message of a coming Messiah is hope in a desperate situation just as the message of the 2^nd coming is today hope in our desperate situations.

The prophets are constantly addressing a people facing problems like invasions, sieges, injustice, corruption, idolatry, and more. When you read the prophets, they often describe their context for you just as Micah did. Listen to it and try to put yourself into the situation of someone facing the same issues. You will better understand what the prophet is doing.

When it comes to the psalms, each psalm has a historical context. Sometimes we know that context, sometimes we don’t. Some psalms come with a preface that states the context. Psalm 54 says that David wrote the psalm “when the Ziphites went and told Saul, ‘Is not David hiding among us?’” This story appears in I Samuel 23:15-29, and you will better understand Psalm 54 if you read that story first. The story helps you get inside the head of David.

Many psalms, however, do not have such a preface.  Instead, some psalms refer to the context in their body. In Psalm 86 David says “O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.” (v. 14). When we read this psalm, we must understand that evil men are attacking David in order to kill him. When David then says, “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord” (v. 9), he is making a great statement of faith because what he sees with his eyes is that men ignore God and want to kill the godly. The historical context helps us see David as a real man struggling with real difficulties, but it also magnifies his faith. This is not a nebulous “Preserve my life” (v.2). It addresses a situation just as specific as yours and mine.

Now all this talk of history within the psalms does not mean that the psalms are history texts, but neither are they ahistorical because they are songs. No one thinks Francis Scott Key was trying to write history when he wrote the “Star Spangled Banner.” At the same time, no one doubts the historicity of the battle of Baltimore Harbor, the event that inspired the song. When he wrote that he saw “in the dawn’s early light … the rockets red glare and the bombs bursting in air,” he is likely describing what he saw.  If you think of the psalms as something like that, you will not be amiss.

Finally, sometimes historical context can give perspective on difficult texts. In Psalm 137, the author blesses him who takes the infants of Babylon and dashes them against the rock (v 9). Some people do not understand how the Bible can say such things. But we live in our antiseptic world, divorced from the realities that drove this psalm. The author is a Jew who has likely witnessed Babylon dash Jewish infants into the rock. He was likely there when the armies burned the city and put to death thousands of innocent men, women, and children. He has likely seen women raped and the temple razed to the ground. He has vivid pictures in his mind of Edomites shouting, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” (v. 7) He has now been taken as a slave into captivity in Babylon (vv. 1-3), and in this psalm, he expresses his raw feelings, and asks God to repay Babylon with what she did to Jerusalem (v 8). The prayer is a cry for justice. The author expresses that cry with such a crude image (v. 9) because that may be the image that he cannot get out of his head. He will never forget what he saw.

The Babylonian destruction and captivity of Judah is the historical context of the psalm. It is so foreign to us. We cannot imagine anyone thinking what this author said about the babies of Babylon. But then neither can we imagine going through what this author just went through. We sit in our easy chairs 2700 years after the fact, sip our lattes, and somehow think we understand. We pass judgment on a man who just went through hell. The historical context, however, tempers our judgment. You and I will never completely understand the feelings of this psalmist. We haven’t walked in his shoes, and we don’t want to. But the historical context shows me where his feelings came from.

Imagine an African man in the 19^th century who was forcibly taken from his family, put onto a boat, and shipped to America. He was sold into slavery on a Southern plantation. He was whipped and beaten. He eventually started a family in America, only to have his master take away his boy and finally sell his wife to someone else. He wished and prayed for justice, and he prayed that his master would lose his own boy and see what it is like.

Today, I may not wish such things on anybody, but I get it. I know why that man feels that way. The historical context he is in changes how I look at him. We need to see this psalm and many other psalms in much the same way. And we need to see that we, too, can express our real feelings to God, even if what comes out might sound crude. I think God is a big enough God to deal with our hurt.

“… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”  (II Tim 2:15)

I pray, Lord, that you grant me your Spirit as I read to help me grasp the plain sense of what you say.

Let’s say you write a simple text that says, “Hi Abdul, We’ll come Saturday.” You write that text because you are in a specific situation and feel the need to communicate specific information to a specific audience. And this is true no matter what you write. The simplest email or a 300-page dissertation both give specific information to a specific audience to address a specific situation. All writing does this, including Biblical writing. Therefore, if you want to understand the Bible, it helps to understand a writer’s situation and context. This is rather basic, but let me give some examples where knowledge of a situation helps us understand Scripture.

Let’s begin with Paul. Paul himself tells us that he is a former Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, and that he once tried to persecute the faith he now follows. He has a calling to take the gospel of Jesus to Gentiles, so he is a cross-cultural minister, but he is also steeped in the Old Testament and quotes it profusely. When you read Paul, you have to let him remain a Hebrew and not try to make him a 21^st century American or Asian or whatever. In this sense, you need to understand the Jewishness of the gospel. Even when Paul writes to Gentiles, the gospel is the culmination of the Hebrew Scriptures. And even when Paul says that Gentiles do not have to keep certain Jewish ceremonial laws, he says that their faith is rooted in God’s eternal plan revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures. In other words, Paul is a Hebrew even when he is telling people that they don’t have to be Hebrews. It’s who he is. And it’s what the gospel is. This means that when you read Paul, try to understand him from his sandals.

Now Paul wrote many letters, but they are not the same. For example, he received information that one of the churches he had planted had abandoned the gospel of justification by faith and had accepted contrary doctrines. He wrote an official letter to that church in order to address the specific doctrines they embraced with the intent that the church read his letter publicly. That letter is Galatians.

Toward the end of his life, however, Paul found himself in prison. He believed that his life was poured out and that the authorities would soon execute him. He wrote a private and deeply personal final message to a man whom he regarded as a son. That letter is II Timothy.

One author. Two very different situations. This means that when you read II Timothy, you must read it differently from the way you read Galatians. It is private, not public. It does not touch on many of the themes or problems Paul deals with when he writes publicly. The tone is different. The style is different. The wording is different. The topics are different. But the man is the same. His situation, however, has greatly impacted what he says and how he says it. This is common sense. No one writes a private letter to his son in the same way that he writes an open letter to the editor. Nor does he necessarily say the same kinds of things.

When you read Galatians, therefore, understand that Paul is combating the idea within the church that God justifies us on the basis of our keeping the law. Paul is saying, “Your faith, not your works, saves you.” He argues it. He supports it from the Old Testament. He contrasts it with the error the Galatians were embracing. He discusses the implications of living life under this new gospel of faith. Most everything he says in Galatians is tied to the idea that justification comes by faith, not works. That is the historical situation he is addressing. If you miss that, you miss Galatians.

But when you read II Timothy, you hear a man pouring out his heart to his son and encouraging that son to fight on. Whether that son is to guard the good deposit entrusted to him in the Scriptures, or to entrust to faithful men what he has received from Paul, or to remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, or to remind the church of these things, or to present himself to God, or to rightly handle the Word, or to flee earthly passions, or to avoid controversy, or to preach the Word, or to … You get the idea. You see what Paul is doing. And he is doing it because “the time of [his] departure has come.” He has fought the good fight and finished the race, and now it is time to pass the baton to the next runner. That is the situation Paul is in. If you miss that, you miss II Timothy.

Common sense.  When you read the Scriptures, use your common sense.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.  (II Tim 2:15)

 Father, help me approach your Word with a right head as well as a right heart.  Grant me your common sense.

The Bible is not an ordinary book. If you do not have a right heart, you will never understand it, for it is more than words. And yet the Bible is an ordinary book. Its writers were real people writing to a real audience with a real historical setting. Sometimes they wrote history, sometimes legal code, sometimes songs and poetry, sometimes letters, sometimes proverbs, sometimes prophecy; and when they wrote, they used normal words with normal meanings to fit their purpose. In this respect, the Bible is like all other books, and the skills that help us interpret the U.S. Constitution, Hamlet, and the lyrics of the Beatles also help us interpret the Bible.

For example, if you want to understand Thomas Paine, it helps first to know the meanings of the words he used. It then helps to know that he is writing nonfiction, that he is a child of the Enlightenment, and that he is personally sympathetic to the colonial cause during the American Revolution. In this respect, interpreting the Bible is like interpreting Thomas Paine. You need to know what the words mean. You need to take into consideration the genre, the writer’s specific situation, and the broader historical context. And when it comes to the Bible, learning these factors does not require a college degree or years of study.

But it does require study. The study of Scripture is important. It often helps us discern the plain sense of a passage.

Let’s give some examples. Today we will talk about genre.

Common sense says that the genre of a piece of literature should inform how we read it. We should not interpret poetry the same way we interpret epistles. Common sense also says that if the author declares his genre, we should give precedence to what the author states. For example, Luke states outright that he has “carefully investigated” many sources and is writing an “orderly account” of the events that happened (Lk1:1-4). Common sense, thus, indicates that one must interpret the Gospel of Luke to be historical narrative. That is what Luke himself says he is writing. In fact, any interpretation of Luke that says he was somehow trying to write legend is intellectually irresponsible.

But there is more, for Luke also states that he is writing this orderly account so that the reader “might know the certainty of the things [he] has been taught.” Thus, Luke has a pastoral objective as well. He is not writing history just for history’s sake. One must then interpret Luke as an attempt to write history which has great theological significance. Any interpretation of Luke that says he is too theological to be historical is suspect. To Luke, history and theology are not mutually exclusive. In fact, to Luke, history is theological. He tells us so straight up. When we read Luke, we must, thus, let Luke be Luke and not force him to fit our 21^st century biases and categories. If you read Luke as mythology or midrash, you miss Luke.

When reading the psalms, however, we might take a different approach. The psalms are a collection of songs, an ancient hymnbook so to speak. They are full of passion, struggle, faith, pain and praise, and they often use figurative language. So when the psalmist tells us, for example, that “God will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge” (Ps 91:4), he is not saying that God is some sort of giant bird. He is rather using poetic metaphor to illustrate a point about God’s character. This is poetry, not expository description, and we need to read it as such.

When it comes to epistles, we need to read them even differently. Though they are not historical narrative as the gospels are, they do have historical context, and they generally address specific issues. Those issues are doctrinal and practical. For example, Romans is a theological treatise on the gospel, while I Corinthians, deals with multiple issues that have come up in the Corinthian church. It’s not that Romans never talks about living life (it does) or that I Corinthians never gets theological (it does). Both letters marry theology and practice. Theology is always practical, and everyday life always involves theology. In the broadest sense, this is what the epistles are about. They are letters explaining how the Cross and Resurrection should affect our lives, and they apply the theology of the Cross and Resurrection to specific contexts. In this sense you might say they are like case law. If someone wrote to you today explaining some principle of Constitutional law and then illustrating that principle with specific cases, he would not be far amiss from what the epistles are doing. The content would be different obviously, but the idea is much the same. Therefore, when you read epistles, read them to learn God’s theology and to apply it. That’s the genre.

The Bible contains many more genres. Much of Exodus and Leviticus is legal code. Read it as such. The Proverbs, however, are not laws. Don’t read them as such. They are meant to give wise counsel for life, not precise legal requirements. And, of course, Revelation is its own animal. You can’t read about beasts and angels and trumpets and bowls and streets of gold and a river with fruit trees without seeing a great contrast and a great war between heaven and earth. Behind all the symbol, God judges this earth and delivers His people, and in the end they see His face. The main themes are obvious, but the details that the symbols represent … Well, shall we say that we must hold them loosely?

One more quick word. Sometimes a genre can exist within a genre. For example, the gospels are historical narrative, but within the gospels, Jesus tells parables. Now the parable is history in the sense that it is what Jesus said, but a parable itself is not necessarily history. It is a different literary genre. This means that when Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins or the Prodigal Son, he is not likely describing some event that happened. This genre within a genre is quite frequent. Revelation contains epistles. Isaiah contains history, prophecy, and song all within the same book. The Psalms frequently refer to historical events.

But don’t let this fact discourage you. In most instances, the genre within the genre is clear. Common sense generally will show you what is going on.

Taken as literature, the Bible is a rich book full of many genres, and each genre needs to be read in a different way. But isn’t this common sense? You would do this with any other book wouldn’t you?