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Back to Bible Study special issue contents
CREATION AROUND us witnesses to the existence of an all-powerful God (Rom. 1:20), but only the Bible reveals His character and purpose. The absolute importance of Scripture as the guide to salvation is beyond dispute. God expects us to read His Word, to understand the message, and to put it into practice: "Study to shew thyself approved unto God... rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15); "if they speak not according to this word..." (Isa. 8:20). A careful reading of Psalm 119 shows us what value attaches to the Word and how lost we are without it, whilst Isaiah 66:2 shows that our attitude and response to the Word determine God’s response to us.
It is largely through the Word that we draw near to God; it is where we hear His voice, and our meditations on the Word are a central part of prayer. We may all learn from our experiences, but we shall not learn as God intended unless our hearts and minds are guided by the knowledge that comes only from the Word. Faced with any problem, Jesus turned at once to Scripture.
It follows that we need to read it carefully and to think very deeply about it. How easy it is to write those words! But how do we put them into practice? The Bible is not the easiest of books to read; it is quite large and very fragmented. Size is perhaps something of an illusion; the Bible contains less text than a week’s issue of a ‘serious’ newspaper such as the Daily Telegraph or The Times. It is its fragmented nature, divided into many books of widely differing character, that is perhaps the most difficult feature. How can we best approach the Word which is able to build us up?
The need for patience
We are accustomed to reading a book once, perhaps taking notes while we do so, and then never reading it again, except for an occasional reference to some particular passage. The Bible cannot be treated in this way. We respond very slowly to its message and easily forget it. We need therefore continually to be reminded. Daily, systematic reading is a necessity. Left to ourselves we shall inevitably concentrate on those areas that make most appeal to us. Evangelical Christians are, for example, drawn to John’s Gospel like moths to a flame, and largely ignore the Old Testament, which is essential for a correct understanding of much of John’s writings. All Bible students have this tendency.
The Daily Readings keep the Scriptures fresh in our minds. We are disciplined to read all the Bible, but twenty minutes’ daily Bible reading is not exactly what Psalm 119 implies. Meditation in the Word is a skill which has to be developed, and each of us has to find the method that best suits us. The human mind is, sadly, capable of concentrated, constructive thought for only brief periods; two or three minutes is an unusually long time. The Daily Readings develop our familiarity with Scripture, but it is those brief moments of constructive thought that open our eyes to behold wondrous things.
Many find disciplined, formal study the most productive approach, but meditation need not require a study room and physical relaxation. All sorts of moments when the mind is free can be invaluable for drawing threads together. All of us have times we do not recognise but which are very productive—they may be as unexpected as the moments when we are cleaning our teeth—the secret is to search them out and use them; but remember, their productivity will be determined by the knowledge of Scripture on which we can draw.
We are often impatient, but the Bible does not respond very well to that weakness. Knowing, let alone understanding, the Bible takes time, and we may have to wait years before suddenly we obtain a deeper insight. It is as though all the information accumulates, but nothing happens until our minds are in the right frame, and then it all ‘clicks’ together. Perhaps this is what the psalmist prays for when he asks God to open his eyes to behold wondrous things out of the Word. Until the mind has been reformed by the Word much of what is studied remains hidden. Ultimately our present spiritual condition, our attitudes, are what aid or hinder Bible reading. Indeed, it is this aspect which requires us to exercise the most caution and discipline in our meditation.
Having ears that hear not
It is not enough to say that we must read and think. We do not have to read the Bible very long before we are reading of men who read but never heard the message. We can appreciate the danger that we also may not be hearing properly. God warned the Jews that His Word was the standard, and all that failed to conform to it was futile (Isa. 8:19,20). When Christ came to them preaching, they prided themselves on their understanding of Scripture. What then must they have thought when Jesus asked them, "Have ye not read... ?", and then applied to them the words of Isaiah 6:9,10? The history of Christianity similarly inspires no confidence in man’s ability to read and hear what Scripture says.
If so many read and do not understand, we must assume that we also can make the same mistake. God has not concealed the fundamentals of Truth, they lie on the surface of Scripture; but it never does to forget God’s warning that Israel would never really see and hear; nor can we ignore Paul’s warning that God sends strong delusion on those who refuse to love the truth, helping them to believe a lie (2 Thess. 2:11).
What was the problem—what is the problem—that the Jews of Isaiah’s time, of Christ’s time and indeed of our own time could not see and hear and repent and be saved? Why have generations of Christians persisted in beliefs that make nonsense of the gospel? We are given many examples of Israel’s blindness, a sickness that ultimately led to their dispersion, but what was the cause? And how can we avoid it? They understood, as do we, the need to read the Word, to read it regularly and carefully, to think long and hard about it and talk about it. All this was built into the Law of Moses, and the Pharisees in particular took the matter very seriously.
Confusing the natural and the spiritual
When they rebuked Jesus for allowing his disciples, in their judgement, to break the sabbath (Mt. 12:1-8), he turned the question back to them: "Have ye not read what David did... ?". And again: "have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?". They had read and they knew these Scriptures by heart, but the deeper significance of the incidents had never registered. It is as though their thoughts were trained to skate on the simple literal surface of things. Scripture told them not to seethe a kid in its mother’s milk; so kitchen utensils were used in specific ways to avoid breaking the literal command.
The deeper message of compassion and moral values was always subordinate, even when dimly recognised. They lost sight of principles: if the literal sabbath day were so holy then there would be no exceptions about physical labour; if the rituals were so holy in themselves, then David must have stood condemned. Jesus alone had discerned the implications: neither sabbath nor ritual was an end in itself; they were parables, shadows, types, designed to teach. "If ye had known what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless" (v. 7, RV). Jesus was speaking to men who had a profound respect for the Bible as the Word of God, and who had studied it in great depth. But his question, "Have ye never read... ?", carries deep implications for ourselves as we read and seek to understand the Bible. His warning is that the most sincere and dedicated student can somehow fail to understand what Scripture is saying; that it is possible to read again and again and still never read.
The Law a shadow of good things
The written word is our link with the past; it is the way in which knowledge is accurately preserved. It is often supplemented with visual aids—pictures, maps, plans, and so on. Visual aids are valuable, often essential for some types of information. The Israelites had in Scripture a profusion of visual images and pictures in the tabernacle and all its rituals, as in all the Law; significantly, Jesus is showing that the images had been taken as ends in themselves, and the underlying message had been missed. The natural almost invariably acts as a parable to direct us to the spiritual.
The legislation in the Law of Moses provides many examples. The laws of leprosy are often presented as examples of medical hygiene, but the reality is very different. The leper who had part healthy, part unhealthy flesh was unclean, but the leper who was leprous all over was clean. It is the mixture that is unclean. Similarly the command not to mix fibres in woven cloth is not about good weaving practice but a warning about mixtures in spiritual matters: you cannot serve God and Mammon.
The power of prejudice and human desires
Scripture is designed for all who genuinely seek truth, and essential Scriptural knowledge lies on or close to the surface, where any reader can see it. The difficulty is that our prejudices and desires get in the way of seeing what is written. It is helpful, in learning to read and meditate on Scripture, to look at another example provided by Jesus.
On the road to Emmaus Jesus reproved his grieving disciples: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken" (Lk. 24:25). They had read, and they did, in principle, believe all that was written. Remember that Jesus himself had told them on several occasions that he would be killed and would rise the third day. The disciples knew the Scriptures; the difficulty, in part, was correctly assembling the pieces, but much more an inability to escape deeply ingrained prejudices. Like all the Jews, they desired a Messiah who would free them from the Roman yoke; they focused therefore on those prophecies that spoke of Messiah freeing the nation from bondage to foreigners.
They had failed to keep before them that the history of their nation reflected spiritual principles. If they had first considered why they were in bondage they would have understood that the Romans were merely a symptom of a greater problem (Lev. 26; Deut. 28). They were in bondage to Rome because they disobeyed God; their bondage declared them to be sinners. Far from the Law blessing them, it cursed them for their disobedience. The real enemy was sin, and before they could find true liberty the Messiah must first overcome sin, the one who has the power of death: "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?... Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations..." (Lk. 24:26,46,47).
It was all in the Old Testament, and they had never seen it because it had no place in their own desires. As in the parable of the sower, the desire of other things had choked the Word. They too supposed that the blood of bulls and goats was the reality of sacrifice, rather than a declaration of principles which neither they nor their sacrifices could satisfy (Heb. 10:3,4). They had selected those scriptures that promised to answer what they saw as their immediate needs, and had never seen the full picture. We are men and women like them; if we are not careful there will be much in our Bible that we will fail to see, that we will never truly read, either because we do not want it or because we can see no use for it.
The place of self-examination
Jesus is surely directing us to a way of reading the Bible that the great scholars of his time and earlier had overlooked. Why should we suppose that we will be incapable of making the same mistake? So often our understanding of what we read is limited by blinkered vision. Jesus is showing us that we cannot be selective in our reading; all Scripture must be drawn together to obtain the complete message. Somehow we need to recognise and rise above our prejudices when reading Scripture. As those who watch eagerly the signs of the times, we should remember that Jesus could prophesy that he would come "in such an hour as ye think not" (Mt. 24:44). Perhaps even we are not truly able to discern the signs.
Jesus himself kept asking the question, "Have ye not read... ?", or, "Have ye never read... ?", of those who questioned him, as if directing them to a new way of looking at Scripture. Why have the Jews to this day never understood that Messiah must first suffer and die, and then enter into his glory? After all, it is written large through all the Law, in tabernacle, sacrifices and prophets. Surely it is because, when they read, preconceived ideas prevent them hearing what is there. As Paul says, a veil remains over the Jewish heart to this day whilst Moses is being read. Always they suppose the crown can come without the cross.
As we ask ourselves, "Have ye never read... ?", we need to be aware of our limitations. The Bible is a unity, a complete revelation, and we must strive to read it in that way, combining and accepting all the Scriptures, as Jesus did, and not concentrating on a part, as we often do.
Out of the mouth of babes
To conclude on a more comforting note, God has not chosen the wise and rich, the powerful and clever to be heirs of the Kingdom. When Jesus entered Jerusalem and the children welcomed him, he answered the criticisms of the Pharisees by asking, "have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise?" (Mt. 21:16). The key is honesty and simplicity as we read and listen to Scripture. God is concerned more with our response than with the breadth of our knowledge. Given the first principles of the Truth, the basic teaching, it will be how these beliefs shape our lives that will matter. James tells us that we must be doers of the Word and not hearers only; hearing without doing is the ultimate deafness.