6. You Can Understand the Meaning

More than this, just a year before, the lovely home she had constructed with so much care had been destroyed by fire.

As she lay there, still awaiting the medical verdict as to the amount of damage done, I asked her how she could face these two disasters with such apparent calm.

"Well," she smiled, "two years ago I don't think I could have taken it like this. But in the light of what we've learned about our God, I somehow don't feel worried in the least."

You see, for the past two years a faculty group representing many different departments in the school had met every other Saturday afternoon to read together through the Bible book by book. Of each of the sixty-six we asked the same basic question, What have you learned about God from the study of this book?

No other experience with the Bible do I ever find so rewarding. And for twenty years I have had the pleasure of repeating this experience with three different groups a year.

No two trips through the Bible are ever the same. But these two basic questions inevitably arise.

Why do the Scriptures seem to contain so much apparently unimportant historical detail?

If the purpose of the Bible is to give us the truth about God, why are there so few specific statements about Him?

In answer, I sometimes ask, What if the Bible should consist mainly of God's claims about Himself? On what basis would you believe them?

When John the Baptist was languishing in prison, he began to wonder if Jesus really was the Christ. He sent some friends to ask Him for the truth.

Did Jesus tell them, "Yes, indeed I am. And I expect John to believe"?

Anyone could make this claim–even the devil himself. Only on the basis of sufficient evidence could John's serious question be given a satisfactory reply.

So Jesus answered John's disciples, "Go and tell John what you see and hear–that blind men are recovering their sight, cripples are walking, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing, the dead being brought to life and the good news given to those in need. And happy is the man who never loses his faith in Me." Matthew 11:4-6 Phillips.

The Bible is a record of the things that God has said and done. But most of the Bible is made up of the historical details that describe the situations within which God so acted and so spoke. Without these details we would not be in a position to understand why God chose to speak and act in such a variety of ways.

Even the lengthy genealogies have their value in helping us to reconstruct the total historical scene within which God was seeking to reveal Himself to His people.

Sometimes the difficulty in understanding the meaning of the Bible is simply a matter of words, especially for those who prefer to use the older versions.

In the King James Bible, for example, what does it mean that "thou shalt be for booties unto them" (Habbakuk 2:7)? Or, "By his neesings a light doth shine" (Job 41:18)? What are "ouches of gold" (Exodus 28:11), or the meaning of "I trow not" (Luke 17:9)?

Help for such problems is readily available in such excellent publications as The Bible Word Book, by Luther A. Weigle, in which obscure terms in the King James Version are explained.

Another simple solution, of course, is to make use of some of the more up-to-date translations of the Bible.

On each trip through the Bible it soon becomes apparent that the same principle of interpretation that is applied to any ancient document must also be applied to the Scriptures.

It was the context that determined the meaning of a passage when it was originally written. To the extent that we can recover the original context we shall be able to recover the original meaning.

The context is customarily divided into two aspects, the grammatical and the historical.

The grammatical context has to do with the wording itself. A word, a certain expression–what did they mean at the time they were written?

John 20:17, as translated in the older versions, has Jesus saying to Mary after the resurrection, "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father."

What would have happened if Mary had failed to restrain herself? Would Jesus have been so defiled by her touch that He could not have gone back to His Father?

The solution lies in another look at the original language. In Greek there are two ways of saying, Don't do something. One is, "Don't begin to do it." The other is, "Don't go on doing it."

Of course it would have made no difference whether Mary touched Jesus or not. What our gracious Lord actually said was "Mary, don't go on holding Me," or "Please don't detain Me. I must go now to see My Father." Again the modern versions accurately represent the meaning of the Greek.

The historical context has to do with the total setting within which a certain event occurred or a piece of advice was given.

Paul's comments about the proper dress and behavior of women are very puzzling when taken out of their setting in the city of Corinth. A good Bible commentary will help the student to picture the first-century scene in that metropolitan center of the ancient mystery religions.

Then there are the much larger problems posed by all the fighting and killing in the Old Testament, the apparently cruel punishments, the representations of an angry God.

It would be presumptuous to attempt an answer in so brief a space. But as the student reads on from book to book, there begins to appear a pattern of consistency behind all the problems. There gradually emerges a picture of an all-wise and infinitely gracious Person who seems willing to go to any length to keep in touch with His people, to reach them where they are, to speak a language they can understand.

As story follows story, the reader is overwhelmed with love and admiration for One who would be willing to run such risk, to pay such a price, in order to keep open the lines of communication between Himself and His wayward people.

We are not so concerned about what happened to Samson and Delilah, to David and Bathsheba, to Gideon and his fleece. The overriding question is, What do these stories tell us about God?

When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity, they were resolved that never again would they fall into the sin of idolatry. Instead they would read the Bible as never before. Nehemiah describes the enthusiastic response of the people that followed Ezra's public reading of the law. See Nehemiah 8:1-8.

But as time passed, many began to rely more on the mechanical reading of the Scriptures, as if there were some special virtue in the mere repetition of the sacred text.

Jesus exposed this error when He said, "You study the Scriptures diligently, supposing that in having them you have eternal life; yet, although their testimony points to Me, you refuse to come to Me for that life." John 5:39, 40 N.E.B.

There is no life in the mere reading and memorization of the Bible–be it ever so faithful and regular. Only God can give life.

The great purpose of the Bible is to reveal the truth about our God, that we may be won back to Him in love and faith.

The man who desires to understand the meaning of the Scriptures must learn to view the Bible as a whole and relate all its parts to this one central theme–the revelation of the truth about God.