Thought for Today
Psalm 18:2 The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Psalm 36:7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
Matthew 13:31 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;
Matthew 13:33 He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
I heard a question asked yesterday which I suspect most of us have asked at one point or another, “Why can’t the Bible just say things in plain English?” Regrettably, the answer(s) are neither simple nor easy.
First, the Bible is not meant to be a textbook on mathematics, science or history. The Bible is a textbook on our relationship to our Creator God. While I do hope that all of my doctors read the Bible, I don’t want any of my doctors to search the Bible for cures to treat anything which threatens my health. I would love to know that my pharmacist does read the Bible, but I want my pharmacist to have studied chemistry.
Secondly, I do believe the Bible says things in plain language. However, we need to realize that not a single person mentioned in the Bible ever spoke a word of English. Truthfully, none of them spoke any language in the same form that is spoken today. Modern Hebrew is not biblical Hebrew. Neither is modern Greek identical to the koine Greek of the Bible. I am not a linguist; however, in every language I have ever studied there is one general rule which applies, few (if any) words have a one-to-one correlation with the English spoken in the U.S.A. today. Even the language of the King James Version of the Bible differs greatly from the English spoken anywhere today. Just to complicate the issue more, the English spoken in England, Scotland, Ireland, New England and Texas all vary from the language of the King James Version and from each other. Translating anything from one language to another, overcoming linguistic, cultural and temporal barriers is much harder than it seems.
A third, maybe more important issue is that we must realize that even the Bible contains very different genres. The poetry of the book of Psalms differs greatly from the narrative prose of Acts. To understand the true message of each, each must be read and studied in terms of its genre.
Did the psalmist truly worship a rock with wings? Of course not! Did Jesus truly mean that we will spend eternity in a mustard seed or that we would spend eternity as yeast? I should not have to tell anyone the answer to those rhetorical questions.
I believe that all Christians and Jews are called upon to read the Bible. The Bible is our basic handbook on our relationship to our Creator. Yesterday I compared it to an automobile owner’s manual. I don’t honestly, exactly mean that we can look up information on how to ‘operate’ our bodies or our lives in the Bible in the exact same way we can look up information on how to operate all the features of our cars.
When we read the Bible, we must be constantly aware of the fact that the Bible includes poetry, prose, history, metaphors, analogies, similes and a plethora of other literary devices to allow us to understand and apply truths which are often beyond our comprehension.
How do we convey the belief that God is the author of all that is? “Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” That is not a statement of scientific fact or theory. All of our astrophysics, the Big Bang Theory, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, all of it is subsumed into that theological statement of God’s transcending Creation. All of our science is merely our attempt to understand the details of the mechanics.
How do we convey the truth of God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and love? "John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
We use prose, poetry, metaphor and all of the other literary devices to convey truths too great to be expressed in any other way. We ‘paint word pictures’ to convey images that transcend our ability to imagine the magnitude of God’s power and God’s love. If we study the Bible to prepare for a chemistry exam, we fail the exam. If we use it to study for eternity, we spend eternity in the arms of our Creator.
Stay safe, study wisely, trust God,
Pastor Ray