Baltic Agape Staff Conference, January 2008 

 

Insufficient interpretation

It’s high time we got a grip on how to interpret the Bible.  For two reasons.  First, the man in the street is constantly coming out with the old objection, “it all depends how you interpret it” – as if it required super-human intelligence to decipher the hieroglyphics.  Second, we are hurting ourselves if we wrongly interpret the Bible and come to silly conclusions.  Even worse, we might abandon the attempt and live our lives with serious spiritual vitamin deficiency.

 

By “insufficient” I mean things like surface moralising, imposed allegory, justifying our behaviour by seeking parallels, illegitimate spiritualising, selective application and mindless parroting of poetry.  For example, some of our songs are taken from Hebrew poetry but without the understanding that Paul requires in I Corinthians 14.

 

“Correctly handling the word of truth”

Although it’s not rocket science, there is good work you can do to learn to “handle” God’s word. The Old Testament has two main implications for us - theological and personal. 

 

The theological implications are mainly about salvation and prophecy.  The prophecy is especially about Christ and also includes judgement.

 

The personal implications are both warning (see I Corinthians 10:11) and encouragement (see Romans 15:4).  The warnings come out of the times when God’s people seem to be doing fairly well in life and the encouragements come out of the times when they were desperate.

 

The New Testament itself teaches us how best to use the Old Testament.  It looks for the principle in a story and then applies the principle to us who live after Christ’s first coming.

 

Job

This process is spelled out in James chapter 5 where he is dealing with cases of encouragement.  James invites us to look at Job’s life and consider the principle – in this case, patience.  Of course there were other patient people so what precisely is so special about Job?  His suffering was unrelenting, long, and from every angle.  James says we should notice “what the Lord finally brought”.  Ever found yourself praying from within suffering that is unrelenting, long and from every angle?

 

Elijah

We think of Elijah as being a mighty man.  James doesn’t – and Elijah didn’t either.  He lived and worked under the regime of Ahab, the most despotic ruler of his day.  We see this in Elijah’s colleague Obadiah who was Ahab’s palace admin person.  Although he was frightened for his life he worked for God’s will right under Ahab’s nose.  Godly people felt they could hardly move during those years.  The circumstances were overwhelming.  Everything was out of their control.  That is when Elijah, apparently an ordinary believer like you and me, prayed.  Ever found yourself praying from within overwhelmingly controlling circumstances?