Dear Friends,
One of the most important questions ever put to any one was the question that Philip the evangelist put to the Ethiopian eunuch when he discovered him reading the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: - “Understandest thou what thou readest?” he asked him. There is nothing more vital in the life of any one than to have some kind of a clear comprehension of what the Bible is actually saying to them; and so, on the following pages of the Wicket Gate I thought that we might devote the bulk of the space available to that subject.
Let me hasten to add, that what follows is not a detailed or “in-depth” study on how to read the Bible. There are several books dealing with Principles of Interpretation, and so forth, and any one who cares to go deeper into the subject may obtain any of these. What follows is more a series of “random jottings” – pointing to various areas in our everyday approach to the Word of God – and we trust that these might form seed-thoughts for those who read the magazine. The material is varied: anecdotal, serious, not-so-serious, humorous; but we trust that it all might prove to be “grist for the mill” in our endeavours to see what the Lord our God is saying to us.
There are two extremes to which we must never go in our whole general approach to reading the Word of God:
1. We must never approach it as though it were any other book. 2. We must never approach it as though it were not any other book!
Let me explain that, for it is not a contradiction in terms. It may appear to be something of a paradox; but then, doesn’t the Christian mind learn to deal with paradox where such paradox is brought before us in the Word of God?
First, the Bible must not be approached like any other book, indeed. ‘The advice of a whole army of the Lord’s people, from Luther through to Whitefield, and those who went before, and those who came after, still holds good today; namely – that the best position in which to read the Bible is on your knees. That goes without saying, and ought to go without saying. The Bible is absolutely unique; the Bible is the Word of the living God from beginning to end, and there never was and never shall be any book even remotely like it on all the face of this earth.
Every statement in the Word of God concerning the Word of God and the uniqueness of the Word of God ought to be beyond question in the heart and mind of every believing man or woman. As the apostle John says, “These things are written that ye might believe.” The Bible has a unique purpose, and the Bible is a unique book in every way. For all that, however, we fall into a terrible trap if we fail to realise that although it is a unique book, it is, for all that, a book!
It is one of the glorious facts of the Word of God that our God in heaven above deigned to be an “Author” and write a Book for his people. He hasn’t left us without guidance, or counsel, or directive, or hope; He has written a book for us to read! But and this is very important; when God wrote His book for us to read, God didn’t abandon the “laws” of language, and communication, and so forth, in the writing of His book. Therefore, we must take into consideration those self-same things when we endeavour to read the book that the Lord has given us.
It must be said that if some Christians read other printed matter the way that they read the Bible their whole course of life would be in a shambles. The Bible is written in the form of poetry, or narrative, or history, or song – and a dozen and one other ways - and due attention must be paid to the very way in which a particular part of the Bible is written, as we approach it to read it. Could you imagine receiving a letter through your door from a friend and immediately turning to the middle of the third page, say, to start reading it. Worst still, who would start to read in the middle of a sentence? Yet, that is precisely how many people treat the letters of the Word of God given to us.
There is a story about an old thief who made a profession of religion, but who still went on with his thieving unabated. The pastor of the church challenged him about this, but the old man said that he did it, because the Bible exhorted him to do it. He quoted Ephesians 4:28 – “let him that stole, steal.” Now it’s beyond question that the Bible does say that. As far as actual words are concerned, those very words are in the Bible, and the old fellow felt quite justified in repeating them as “the word of God.” What he had done, of course, was simply abandon any rules whatsoever for reading; not just for reading the Word of God, but for reading anything. He had repeated the sentence incompletely and had placed a convenient full stop of his own making after the word “steal.” What the sentence really says, of course is – “Let him that stole steal no more.”
Are we not careful in reading our phone bills, our fuel bills our road maps, our timetables, our children’s homework, our appointments and engagements? Surely, then, it is inappropriate to look on the Word of Eternal life in some haphazard and indefinite way. If God has become a gracious “Author” for us, it is only but right that we should endeavour to be careful and diligent readers for Him.