The Ultimate Intimate (Telling God's Story: New Testament)

25 July 2021

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Last Sunday, Michael Pahl introduced us to the section in the hymnal on God’s Story as it draws from the Old Testament. Today, we continue with the New Testament. This section in the hymnal is really big, covering everything from Advent to the Reign of Christ. There are more than 200 entries included in this section.

I have chosen two basic passages to encompass these varied themes. The first is found in the beginning of Luke’s gospel and emphasises the simple historical nature of the accounts we have in the New Testament. The second is found at the end of Revelation and emphasises the cosmic nature of the story that we find ourselves in. We look briefly at these two passages and then return to this remarkable combination of daily life and cosmic significance.

Luke 1: 1-4, 2: 1-7

The first two chapters of Luke’s gospel make two simple points besides telling the amazing and wonderful story of Jesus’ birth. 1) Luke writes his gospel in order to establish the simple historical truth of the life of Jesus. 2) He locates the story of Jesus’ birth in sober matter-of-fact terms: when and where. God’s story in the OT begins with the cosmos – “far beyond the starry skies”. In the NT the story is anchored in history. God’s story is the story of God’s intervention in human history. “God is here among us, let us all adore him.”

Luke 1: 1 to 4 states it clearly. Luke says that there are many stories circulating about Jesus and that there are also many who actually knew Jesus and heard him teach. Luke says, “I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” Luke grounds the amazing story of Jesus in sober historical fact.

Luke 2: 1-7 demonstrates that grounding:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴ Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵ He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke writes with the kind of attention to detail that you might find in a good journalist, one who takes care to verify everything and gets all the facts straight. This careful attention to historical fact is a basic characteristic of the story of God. Most religions are not grounded in history. They seek to show the cosmic story, not the simpler human story. The way that the New Testament story begins with attention to human history is important.

Why do you think it is important? Other religions (like Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam) do not ground themselves in history in this way. We do, but why? Because the story of Jesus brings God directly into our lives. Jesus was a man like us. He was a Palestinian Jew who lived in the first century. He was probably average height for his time – about 5 ft 3 in, with short hair. The people around him knew him and his family. The importance of all this simple historical detail is to emphasize the reality of “God with us”.

Revelation 21 and 22

This emphasis on the particular specific reality of Jesus brings us to the end of the story in Revelation. The book of Revelation in general is anything but commonplace. John does not make it easy for us to see his historical context. Instead, he focusses on the cosmic reality of Christ. He brings the whole grand story of God’s redemption of the world to a soaring climax in which Jesus, the man of Galilee, is revealed as Christ, the ruler of the Universe.

We read part of chapter 21 and part of chapter 22, but we could have read both together. The end of chapter 21 describes Jesus this way: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” In the New Heaven and New Earth, the sun is eclipsed by the glory of “the Lamb”, that is, Jesus, the Son of God.

Chapter 22 repeats this description: “Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

The descriptions of the New Jerusalem include various ways of describing perfection. There is no more sorrow. Tears are gone. Death is done away with. There is no more sea. This last one is interesting: In the Old Testament, the Sea is the place that evil rises from, and in the earlier chapters of Revelation the Beast comes from the Sea. Now, not only is evil defeated, but the very place that agents of evil have hidden themselves is destroyed. Everything is now right; perfection rules forever!

Synthesis

Bring these two pictures together. In the first picture, Jesus comes as a baby who grows into adulthood and lives an ordinary life on earth. He gets caught up in the intrigues and power plays of the day and loses his life to a Roman cross. In the second picture, Jesus reveals God in all God’s glory, and the physical weakness that we see in Jesus reveals the power and eternal glory of God, the Creator.

In my seminary studies, my world religions professor (Matt Zahniser) expressed this dual dynamic in an interesting way. He observed that some religions view God as ultimate and other than us. Typical are Judaism and Islam, in which God created all that is. God is not present in this world physically; rather, God made this world, and we live in it and do God’s will. God is ultimate. God is sovereign. As Judaism puts it, God is “King of Eternity”, and as Islam puts it, God is the only One, the absolute Other, the Creator of the universe.

Zahniser continued with the opposite end of the spectrum: Some religions view God as intimate and closer to us than our own skin. Hinduism is typical of this view. Hindu teachers tell us that you and I are God. We are all one and the differences that we see in this world are really only an illusion. If God is not just within me, but actually is me, then God is more intimate than we can possibly imagine.

Both of these views have their attraction. If God is ultimate, God has the power to deal with all of the problems of our world. Of course, if God is ultimate, God may not be particularly interested in our problems. If God is intimate, God cares about us intimately. Of course, if God is intimate, God may not have the power to deal with our problems. We need a God of power and a God of intimate love. That is what we find in Christian faith.

In Christian faith we have a God who is ultimate. Just as in Judaism and Islam, God is the creator of the universe. The passage Michael Pahl led us in last Sunday states it clearly: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” (Isaiah 40:28)

We also have a God who is intimate. Just as in Hinduism, God is closer to us than anything else in the world. That is why one of the names of Jesus is Immanuel, “God with us.” That is why Jesus was born as a baby into a human family. Indeed, you could call Jesus “the Ultimate Intimate”.

The Ultimate Intimate – that is the story of the New Testament. God who is ultimate, who holds the moon and the stars in God’s hand, that ultimate omnipotent God came into our lives as one of us. Or to put it the other way round, Jesus, the intimate one, Jesus who walked with his disciples and ate and slept with them, this closer than a brother Jesus is also the ultimate, the Creator of all that is or ever can be. Jesus is the Ultimate Intimate.

Singing The Story

We sing this amazing NT story each Sunday to remind ourselves that this is the world that we live in. Our world often appears to be a collection of random events with no real hope for the future. We sing the story to remind ourselves that the one who made our world lives and walks among us as one of us. We sing the story to rediscover God’s presence in our hurt and fears.

These two themes – God’s closeness and love for us on the one hand and God’s power to save us on the other – intertwine to give us hope in a hopeless world. Here are two new songs in this section of the hymnal that express this hope.

#303

O love, how deep, how broad, how high!/ It fills the heart with ecstasy,

That God, the Son of God, should take/ our mortal form for mortals’ sake.

For us he was baptized and bore/ his holy fast, and hungered sore.

For us temptation sharp he knew,/ for us the tempter overthrew.

For us he prayed, for us he taught,/ for us his daily works he wrought,

By words and signs and actions thus/ still seeking not himself but us.

For us to wicked hands betrayed,/ scourged, mocked, in purple robe arrayed,

He bore the shameful cross and death, for us at length gave up his breath.

Eternal glory to our God/ for love so deep, so high, so broad;/

The Trinity whom we adore forever and forever more.

 

Another hymn, sung to the tune of  Star of the County Down (sung by the Irish Rovers).

#412

My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great

And my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait

You fixed your sight on your servant’s plight and my weakness you did not spurn

So from east to west shall my name be blest/ Could the world be about to turn?

My heart shall sing of the day you bring/ Let the fires of your justice burn

Wipe away all tears/ For the dawn draws near/ And the world is about to turn!

Though I am small, my God, my all, you work great things in me

And your mercy will last from the Depths of the past to the end of the age to be

Your very name puts the proud to shame and to those who would for you yearn

You will show your might, put the strong to flight/ For the world is about to turn

My heart shall sing of the day you bring/ Let the fires of your justice burn

Wipe away all tears/ For the dawn draws near/ And the world is about to turn!

From the halls of power to the fortress tower not a stone will be left on stone

Let the king beware for your justice tears ev’ry tyrant from his throne

The hungry poor shall weep no more for the food they can never earn

There are tables spread, ev’ry mouth be fed/ For the world is about to turn

My heart shall sing of the day you bring/ Let the fires of your justice burn

Wipe away all tears/ For the dawn draws near/ And the world is about to turn!

Though the nations rage from age to age we remember Who holds us fast

God’s mercy must deliver us from the conqueror’s crushing grasp

This saving word that out forebears heard is the promise which holds us bound

’Til the spear and rod can be crushed by God Who is turning the world around

My heart shall sing of the day you bring/ Let the fires of your justice burn

Wipe away all tears/ For the dawn draws near/ And the world is about to turn!

Conclusion

I encourage you to look through this wonderful section on the life, death, resurrection, return, and reign of Jesus. There is power in this story – the power of the Ultimate Almighty God. There is love and hope in this story – the love of the Intimate God who loves us so much that God became one of us. The power of love expressed in the Ultimate Intimate, God with us, our Immanuel.

Texts

Luke 1: 1-4: 2: 1-7

1) Luke writes his gospel in order to establish the simple historical truth of the life of Jesus. 2) He locates the story of Jesus’ birth in sober matter-of-fact terms: when and where. God’s story in the OT begins with the cosmos – “far beyond the starry skies”. In the NT the story is anchored in history. God’s story is the story of God’s intervention in human history. “God is here among us, let us all adore him.”

 

Revelation 21: 1-4; 22: 1-6

God’s story in the NT begins in Bethlehem, but it ends in the New Jerusalem. From sober history to something beyond human imagining, “fantasy” of the highest order. The end of the story really is better than anything we could possibly think of ourselves, and it is given to us!

Focus Statement: God’s NT story begins in our lives and ends in God. The OT sets the stage for us to analyse the ills and troubles of this world; the NT brings hope into the darkest places of our lives.

Think on it questions: What is the New Testament story for? Isn’t the Old Testament enough? Why do we need “God’s Story, Part Two”?

Reading the Church's Bible, 2

Why Should We Even Read the Bible?

Introduction: The Question

Last week we talked about why we read the Bible—“why” in the sense of “for what purpose”? I suggested (based on Jesus’ words in John 5) that the Scriptures are intended to bring us to God through the person of Jesus Christ. I added (based on Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 3) that they are also intended to teach us how to live as God’s people. We can see these two purposes for reading Scripture in the Great Commission (Matthew 28): Jesus told his followers to “make disciples of all nations”, baptizing those who come to faith in Christ and teaching them to obey all that Jesus has told us to do. The Scripture bring us to Jesus in conversion and then helps us to grow spiritually as followers of Jesus.

Many people around us, however, have a more basic objection. They wonder why we should read the Bible at all. The Bible was written over a period of about a thousand years, finishing about 1,900 years ago. What can such an old book have to say to us today? It was written by people in very different cultures from ours, in very different times from ours. Many people around us think the Bible is simply irrelevant. Why should we even read it at all, let alone make it our guide for faith and life?

Towards an Answer

To read the Bible with the eyes of faith requires an encounter with Christ. God saves us by grace through faith, and in faith we begin to read the Bible and find God there. This is not something that one can prove with human reason. We cannot say to people, “Here are the reasons,” and prove to them with human logic that this book is God’s Word for us today.

At the same time, our faith in God is a reasonable faith, and trusting the Bible is consistent with human reason. We would expect this to be true, since God made human reason. Here is a beginning step, then, towards believing in Christian faith by reading the Bible. In the passage that we read, Paul makes it clear that the centre of Christian faith is the person of Jesus Christ—Jesus lived in Palestine, Jesus died on the cross, Jesus rose from the dead. This is where our faith begins. Paul argues in the rest of the chapter that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the founding truth of Christian faith. If the resurrection did not happen, he says, our faith is misplaced and “we are of all people most miserable” (vv 14, 17). But, Paul says, Jesus did rise from the dead, so that our faith is true (v 20).

This is the key point. Dead people do not rise to new life. We know that, and the early church knew that too. Sometimes people think that the first Christians were just naïve and did not really understand that resurrections don’t happen. But of course they knew well that this event was not normal. That is one reason that they found the appearance of a healthy, glowing Jesus, full of life before their eyes over a period of 40 days, to be so amazing.

So if it is true that Jesus rose from the dead, we have something quite unique in history, something that changes everything that we think we know from nature and human reason.

I often quote C.S. Lewis in my sermons. Lewis was one of the greatest Christian writers of the 20^th century. As you may know, however, he was an atheist before he was a Christian. Born in 1898 in Belfast in an Anglican family, he lost his mother to cancer when he was 10 years old. His father sent him off to boarding schools in England, where for a variety of reasons he became an atheist. He fought in World War One (which reinforced his atheism), and after the war attended Oxford University. After he graduated he found work at Oxford as a tutor in Philosophy, and then as a professor in Medieval English Literature in 1925.

His life at Oxford included friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a convinced Christian and Roman Catholic. Along with various other influences, their conversations and arguments opened Lewis up to the possibility that Christian faith is true. As began to read the Bible again, he realized that, if the resurrection of Jesus were true, then the Bible as a whole is true and God himself is real. He resisted accepting the resurrection because he saw where the logic of the resurrection would take him.

One day he was talking with a friend, an atheist (I think he was himself a professor of history at Oxford) who unintentionally helped Lewis move closer to Christian faith. Here is how Lewis describes it in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy:

Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.” To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not—as I would still have put it—“safe,” where could I turn? Was there then no escape?

There were other factors in Lewis’ conversion—especially his friendship with Christians and the discovery that the authors he liked best were all Christians. But this realization that historical evidence was on the side of the resurrection was an important piece. This is not of course hard proof that God exists, but once one accepts the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, then the door is open to faith in Jesus as God’s incarnate Son.

So How Do We Read?

Once we decide that we can and should read the Bible, we have the further question of how to read the Bible. This question requires a further series of sessions on its own, so I make only a few brief comments. I note two basic ways: critical reading and devotional reading. By critical reading I mean trying to understand what the original authors meant. By devotional reading I mean listening to Scripture seeking to hear God’s Spirit speak to us directly.

Critical Reading

Critical reading is necessary whenever we preach or teach from the Bible. If we want to apply what the biblical authors say to our own lives, we must know what they intended to say to their audience. We must know what the passage meant in its own literary and historical context before we can hear it speak clearly to our own time. Sometimes we want to derive rules for living directly from the Bible without paying attention to these critical questions, but of course we must study the original setting to know what was being said.

A good resource if you want to go into more depth for critical reading is a book by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart titled How to Read the Bible for all Its Worth. Fee and Stuart give good insight into the various kinds of literature in the Bible. We have letters and poetry, stories and history, legal material and parables, gospels and apocalypses. We read each of these differently. For example, poetry and law are quite different, and we do not read poetry like law, or law like poetry. We learn to read the gospels in paragraphs, not verses, looking for each complete episode as the writer puts it together. We learn to read letters as what we call “occasional documents”—something written for a specific occasion. We don’t have time to explore these different kinds of literature this morning. It is enough to note that we should know what we are reading before we are sure we know what it says.

Sometimes we refer to the unchanging nature of God’s Word. As we read the Bible, we see many things that are different from our time, so we may wonder how we can talk about God’s word forever true. We recognize, then, that what does not change is the principles that are being expressed in different situations. For example, 1 Corinthians 11 tells us that women should cover their heads in church. If we read this as a simple instruction, we miss the principle that Paul is applying. In Corinth there was a lot of disorder when Christians met together. In chapters 11 to 14 Paul deals with communion meals, with head coverings, with tongues and interpretation in worship, with prophecies, and with spiritual gifts. He concludes these chapters by reminding his readers that God is a God of order (which we know from many other places in Scripture). His concern with the various instructions about speaking in tongues and covering one’s head and so on all have to do with this principle: That order in church life reflects and demonstrates the presence of God’s Shalom.

There is more in these chapters than just this principle, but you see the idea. The principles undergirding all of Scripture are principles that are true always. So critical reading helps us find these principles by helping us understand the passages in their original context.

Devotional Reading

Critical reading can also be devotional. That is, as we seek to hear God’s Word clearly in its own context, the experience draws us closer to God. But we can also read the Bible devotionally without always asking what the original language said or what the historical context was. For example, I have heard many people appeal to the verse from 2 Chronicles 7: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Now reading this verse critically we observe the context in Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, and the fact that the prayer refers to an extended drought within the Promised Land. It fits into a cycle of grace and disobedience as part of the Deuteronomic promises.

Reading devotionally, however, we hear it speak to our own fears for our own country at critical moments in our history. It is dangerous to build doctrine on devotional reading, because we may misread the verse in its original context. At the same time, God does speak directly to us through devotional reading, and God wants us to listen for his voice as we read our Bibles regularly. This kind of reading is an act of and aid to faith. In devotional reading we do not come to the Bible with questions of historicity or accuracy or anything else. We come rather as part of our relationship with God, desiring deeply to hear God’s voice.

I suspect that the kind of conflict we have been experiencing may either separate us from reading the Bible simply to hear God’s voice, or it may drive us back to the Bible because we realize that we are in crisis. I pray that it drives us back to the Bible and back to God.

Richard Foster tells a story that describes what I mean. It appears in his book, Finding the Heart’s True Home, in a chapter on what he calls “meditative prayer”. I have given this example before, but it shows what I am talking about more clearly than anything else I can think of.

Allow me to tell you the story of Jim Smith, a former student of mine. … Jim went on to do graduate work …. By the second year, however, he was struggling to maintain his spiritual life, and so he decided to take a private retreat. He arrived at the retreat house and was introduced to the brother who was to be his spiritual director ….

The brother gave Jim only one assignment: to meditate on the story of the Annunciation in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. That was it. …. For the first couple of hours he sliced and diced the passage as any good exegete would do, coming up with several useful insights that could fit into future sermons. The rest of the day was spent in thumb-twiddling silence.

The next day Jim met with the brother to discuss his spiritual life. … Jim shared his insights, hoping they would impress the monk. They didn’t. … “Well, there is more than just finding out what it says and what it means. There are also questions, like what did it say to you? Were you struck by anything? And most important, did you experience God in your reading?” The brother assigned Jim the same text for that entire day. All day Jim tried doing what his spiritual director had instructed, but he failed repeatedly … and still it was lifeless. Jim felt he would go deaf from the silence.

The next day they met again. In despair Jim told the brother that he simply could not do what was being asked of him. [The brother replied,] “You’re trying too hard, Jim. You’re trying to control God. Go back to this passage and this time be open to receive whatever God has for you. Don’t manipulate God; just receive. Communion with him isn’t something you institute. … All I want you to do is create the conditions: open your Bible, read it slowly, listen to it, and reflect on it.”

Jim went back to his room and began reading. …. By noon he shouted to the ceiling, “I give up! You win!” …. He slumped over the desk and began weeping. A short time later he picked up his Bible and glanced over the text once again. The words were familiar but somehow different. His mind and heart were supple. The opening words of Mary’s response became his words: “Let it be to me…let it be to me.” The words rang round and round in his head. Then God spoke. It was as if a window suddenly had been thrown open and God wanted to talk friend to friend. What followed was a dialogue about the story in Luke, about God, about Mary, about Jim. The Spirit took Jim down deep into Mary’s feelings, Mary’s doubts, Mary’s fears, Mary’s incredible faith-filled response. It was, of course, also a journey into Jim’s feelings and fears and doubts, as the Spirit in healing love and gentle compassion touched the broken memories of his past. Though Jim could barely believe it, the angel’s word to Mary seemed to be a word for him as well: “You have found favor with God.” Mary’s perplexed query was also Jim’s question: “How can this be?” And yet it was so, and Jim wept in the arms of a God of grace and mercy. …. They talked about this—God and Jim—what might be, what could be. Jim took a prayer walk with God, watching the sun play hide and seek behind the large oak trees to the west. By the time the sun had slipped below the horizon, he was able to utter the prayer of Mary as his own: “Let it be to me according to your word.” Jim had just lost control of his life, and in the same moment had found it!

Conclusion

We must read critically: The original meaning is essential to understanding how Jesus calls us to live today, and the principles that God’s people applied in their lives still live for us today. We build church doctrine on critical reading of the Scripture. This is a task that we engage in together as the community of faith. There is space at the table for experts and non-experts, people who have studied Greek and Hebrew and those who know only English (not even French or German!), people who have read the Bible many times and those who are just beginning. We all work together at the task of hearing God speak to use.

We must also read devotionally: God wants to speak to us deep within where no one else sees. This is a task we can do together and on our own. When you have many people in the church who grew up in Christian faith, the danger is that we may live on the memory of past encounters with God and lose sight of the Risen Christ within our own lives. Then the passage we read at the beginning speaks to us anew: Jesus lived; Jesus died; Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles and the disciples … and last of all has appeared also to us, even though we were born too late to see him on this earth. We see Jesus again, on our knees and in our homes, praying and reading and asking God to touch our hearts.

Different people have different passages that speak most clearly to them. For me it is verses about the cross, and especially about how Jesus bore the cross for us and how he calls us to bear the cross for him. For each of you there are other passages we can share with each other as we encourage each other to walk faithfully with Jesus. In our darkness and fear we turn again to God’s Word and ask God to bring us back to Jesus.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

25 September 2016

Text: 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11

The Resurrection of Christ

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

⁹ For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹ Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

Reading the Bible: The Church's Bible

From Lissa Wray Beal’s course on “Reading the Church’s Bible”:

Margaret Silf [tells] a story about a salad bowl. She tells of a friend’s induction [as a minister] and of the feast that followed. The members of the congregation tucked into the feast, and soon hardly anything was left … except for a large bowl of rice salad. Eventually she realized why: someone had forgotten to put a serving spoon in the dish. … This course is designed to provide a good spoon to begin (or continue!) the feast on scripture, which continually renews and satisfies our appetite. 

So this morning I want to help us understand how to read the Bible, our Bible, the church’s Bible. 

I begin with the kind of “principles of interpretation” that we used to always mention. They are still true, but secondary to the main point (which follows).

—  Type of language: Pay attention to whether a passage is ordinary speech or sarcasm or metaphor or exaggeration, etc. Such as Jesus, “Take the log out of your own eye.”

—  Type of genre: Observe whether you are reading poetry, or theological history (not the same as reading a newspaper), or parable, etc.

—  The plain meaning whenever possible: Don’t use “interpretation” to twist the passage into what you want.

—  Interpret Scripture with Scripture: Paul says in 1 Cor 14 that women should keep silence in church, but in 1 Cor 11 he says that they should wear a covering on their heads a sign of their authority to pray and prophesy (preach) in church. Listening to the whole of Scripture saves us from many problems.

—  Context, context, context! Cultural context, historical context, literary context.

—  And so on. 

We can learn from some of our Anabaptist cousins, in this case the Brethren in Christ. From a 1986 consultation on a BIC way to interpret Scripture:

—  NT interprets OT: “The New is in the Old contained; the Old is by the New explained.”

—  Both centre on Jesus: The disciples reinterpreted everything they knew about Scripture in the light of the amazing discovery that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.

—  Pure heart and mind: If you are in rebellion against God, you won’t understand God’s Word Written.

—  Commitment to obey: In order to understand, you must be ready to obey what you hear God say.

—  Read in community: No “private interpretation” (an extension of 2 Peter 1:20f). 

But more important than all of these, and more important than others that we could mention, is the foundational principle: The Bible is first of all a story. In her syllabus for the course, Reading the Church’s Bible, Lissa Wray Beal quotes from Bartholomew and Goheen:

Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits—theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author’s intention to shape our lives through its story. All human societies live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and give shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. … If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture.” 

We read Psalm 78 to begin with. Like Nehemiah in his prayer (Nehemiah 9) and Stephen in his defense before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7) this psalm tells the story of God’s people—excerpted from the great story of creation and fall to redemption in the Christ-event. So the most important thing is that the Bible is the story!

—  Read the Bible as a story!

—  Genesis to Revelation: the story of “God’s Mighty Saving Acts”

—  Genesis: the problem: God made us—we pushed him out of our lives

—  The rest of the Bible: the story of how God tries to get back into our lives

—  A story with a difference: IT’S TRUE!

But, you may ask, “Is not the Bible full of promises of hope and directions to follow?” Certainly. Psalm 78 says to tell the story so that the children yet to be born will follow God, so that they will know his promises and obey his commands. But promises and directions are like the bacon in a wonderful casserole. No matter how much you like bacon, you don’t pick out only the bacon and leave the rest, and then say you have eaten the whole meal. Some might actually do this, but they would be wrong about nutrition, and if you do it with the Bible you miss the best thing of all, the way that God wants to transform you with divine reality. 

You see, the Bible is a story with a difference. There are many stories out there—Game of Thrones; Downton Abbey; LOTR; The Matrix; Doctor Who—but the Bible has something more. It is true! Rooted in history, but truer at even deeper levels than history: The Bible tells us the truth about God and all humanity. It is the story of salvation history, what G.E. Wright calls “the mighty saving acts of God”. 

The key to this story is Jesus. The whole Bible intends to bring you to Jesus, to “the human face of God”. In the garden the first human pair pushed God out of their lives. The rest of the Bible tells the story of how God seeks to get back into our lives, culminating in Jesus, the Messiah. So 1 Cor 15: I passed on to you what I received as of first importance: and then Paul tells the story of Jesus. 

A few weeks ago a couple named Peter and Liz stayed with us. We learned a bit of Peter’s story—from a Christian home, attending a Christian college, then he started reading the story of Jesus and met Jesus in a new and powerful way. He changed direction to follow God’s call, eventually graduating from college and going to Chicago to live in an intentional Christian community. Now they live in London, England, in an apartment complex with Bangladeshi families, building bridges between Christians and Muslims, being Christ to their neighbours. When Peter met Jesus as he read the gospels, Jesus transformed him completely. 

The Bible seeks to bring us first of all to Jesus. When we meet Jesus, he changes us forever!