A police inspector went to visit a primary school, where he’d been asked to take a Religious Education class. He thought he’d begin by checking what they knew about well known Bible stories. So he asked, ’Who knocked down the walls of Jericho?’ There was a long silence as the children shuffled nervously in their seats. Eventually, a young boy put up his hand and said, ’Please sir, my name is Bruce Jones. I don’t know who did it but it wasn’t me.’
The policeman thought that reply was a bit cheeky, so he reported the incident to the headmaster. After a pause the headmaster replied, ’I know Bruce Jones; he’s an honest chap. If he said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t.’
The inspector was flabbergasted. He wrote to the Department of Education to complain about this appalling lack of knowledge. Finally he received this response: ’Dear Sir, we are sorry to hear about the walls of Jericho and that nobody has admitted causing the damage. If you send us an estimate we will see what we can do about the cost.’
There was a time when that sort of ignorance of the stories of the Bible would have been unbelievable, but sadly it’s all too true these days. I’ve seen contestants on Sale of the Century (Temptation) being unable to name the four Gospels.
And I’m sure there are plenty of churchgoers who have a copy of the Bible on their shelves but rarely take it down to read it, let alone study it. Or who perhaps know a few favourite stories from the Bible but couldn’t say where they’re from or how they fit with the overall story of the Bible, if they even know there is an overall story of the Bible.
Well, today we begin a series I’ve entitled ’The User’s Guide to the Bible.’ Over the next 12 weeks or so we’ll be taking a journey through the Bible, beginning with Gen 1 and finishing at Revelation 22. But today I want to think about why we’re doing this. Why do we spend 20-30 minutes every Sunday studying God’s word? Why should we spend time every day studying God’s word?
The answer to that question is found in our first reading today. Not just in the well known verses 16 & 17 but in the previous verses as well: "14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." I want you to think about those words for a moment. "How from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."
We celebrated our grandson’s first birthday a couple of weeks ago, and part of the celebration was a time of prayer and blessing for him as we dedicated him to God. We were each asked to write a prayer of blessing for him and as I sat down to think about what I’d like to pray I immediately thought of this passage. I guess that was partly because of the connection between the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother and that of Oliver’s mother and grandmother both of whom I expect will be instrumental in teaching him the faith. But it was also because this is so crucial for everyone’s growth in Christ. My prayer for little Oliver is that he’ll grow up knowing God’s word, and Jesus Christ, the way of salvation.
But let’s think about Timothy growing up in first century Ephesus. What were the sacred writings that Timothy would have been taught by his mother and grandmother? They weren’t the New Testament were they? That was still being written down. No, they would have been the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament. Now that’s not what we’d think of, I imagine, if someone mentioned the Scriptures that can instruct us for salvation. We’d think of the gospels, or perhaps the letters of Paul or Peter or James or John. But here, we’re talking about the Old Testament.
So here’s the first thing we learn. The whole Bible is worth exploring from start to finish if we want to fully understand the way of salvation.
But then look at the next two verses, the ones that lots of people will be able to rattle off by heart: "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work."
All scripture is inspired, God-breathed. That in itself makes it worth studying, I would have thought. But then look at its utilitarian value. It’s useful for a whole range of things in the Christian walk: for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. God has given us these books to keep us on the right track, to show us when we wander off the path, when we go astray. He’s given them to us to correct our misconceptions about him, about righteousness, about justice, about how to live in this world. He’s given them to us to train us in how to live righteous lives. And he’s given them to us so we might be proficient: that is, skilled in serving God and equipped for every sort of good work.
My hope as we go through this series is that we’ll get a feel for how the revelation of God’s plan for salvation unfolds and that we’ll see how God expects us to live as his ambassadors in the world.
Well, let me give you some introductory information about this Bible that we’re going to be studying over the next few months:
The Bible is a collection of 66 different books written by about 40 different authors over a period of nearly 2000 years.
I imagine you know that the Bible is divided into two main sections: The Old Testament and The New Testament. You’re probably aware that these were written in two main languages: Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New. There was, however, a Greek version of the Old Testament translated between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. It’s known as the Septuagint, because there’s a tradition that it was translated by 72 translators, and in one version of the tale, in 72 days. In another version of the story they each translated independently and came up with identical translations. Whether or not that’s true is another question, but still, the Septuagint is an important source for modern English versions of the Bible.
One of the important things we need to understand and that we need to keep coming back to as we study the Bible is that it consists of a mixture of types of literature. These include history (eg. Exodus through to 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, The Acts of the Apostles), poetry (eg. Psalms), wisdom literature (eg. Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes), prophecy (eg. Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah), letters (eg. Romans, 2 Timothy) and an odd type of literature known as apocalyptic (eg. Revelation and parts of Daniel). I say it’s an odd type of literature because it’s a highly symbolic form of writing, written for people who’ve been introduced to its secrets and, in the case of Revelation at least, aimed at encouraging believers in the face of fierce external opposition.
What’s more, even within one major literary type, you’ll find examples of other types. So you can be reading a book of history and suddenly you’ll come across a piece of poetry. Or you might find someone telling a riddle or a parable or a fable.
So why am I telling you this? Well, because if you don’t understand the sort of literature you’re reading you can easily be misled or confused. Let me give you a couple of examples: in Exodus 15, after the crossing of the Red Sea, the people sing a song of triumph that includes these words. : "Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power-- your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.7In the greatness of your majesty you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble. 8At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea." Now unless you understand that that’s poetry, you might get a bit confused. It says God "consumed them like stubble". That is, he burnt them up. But didn’t they just drown in the Red Sea? How could they burn if they were being drowned? Well, of course that’s a poetic metaphor for rapid destruction isn’t it? It isn’t history being told, it’s a song. Like when we sing "The Lord’s My Shepherd" we don’t think of God being literally a shepherd, I hope. What we mean is that he provides us with everything we need to live; he shows us where to go; and he protects us from predators.
How about this one. In Judges the son of Gideon calls the people together to warn them against choosing his older half brother as their king and he does it by use of a parable or a fable. He says: "The trees once went out to anoint a king over themselves. So they said to the olive tree, ’Reign over us.’ 9The olive tree answered them, ’Shall I stop producing my rich oil by which gods and mortals are honored, and go to sway over the trees?’ 10Then the trees said to the fig tree, ’You come and reign over us.’ 11But the fig tree answered them, ’Shall I stop producing my sweetness and my delicious fruit, and go to sway over the trees?’ (Judg 9:8-11 NRSV) And so the parable goes on. We’re not expected to read that as history, even though it’s in the middle of a book of history. It’s meant as a fable. And of course there are many more examples of this sort of thing.
I hope that this sort of thing comes easily to you, but I’m emphasising it because there are still people in the church who read every word literally without even thinking about what sort of writing it is that they’re reading.
Now we’re not going to look at all those various types of literature in detail as we go through the series. We’ll mostly be looking at history, prophecy and the New Testament letters, but I hope you’ll keep your eyes and ears open as you read the Bible to understand the different types of literature you’re reading.
But having pointed out the great variety of literary styles we find here, it’s equally important to understand that within this diversity lies a central unity. This is a single book, written by the one author ("All scripture is inspired by God" - 2 Tim 3:16), with the one main subject ("... the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus"- 3:15).
So it’s first and foremost a book about salvation. It’s God’s revelation to us of what he’s done to create a people to have a relationship with him. And it tells us over and over again how we’re to turn away from a self-ruled life to a life ruled by Jesus as our King.
So one of the central themes of the Bible is the Kingdom of God. The structure that we find over and over again, the model we see developing from Genesis to Revelation is that of God’s people living in God’s place under God’s rule. We’ll see next week how God created the world to be a place where his people live in harmony with one another and with the rest of creation because they live faithfully and obediently under God’s rule. And as we go through the rest of the series we’ll see how God’s plan gradually unfolds - a plan to restore his Kingdom to the way he intended it to be in the beginning.
This is one reason why we need to read it all. Because it’s a plan that develops, that unfolds, as the nation of Israel develops. Can you imagine two friends who love reading Agatha Christie mysteries but they’ve only managed to get one copy of her latest story. What do they do? Well, one of them could tear the book down the middle and they could each read half the book. But that wouldn’t help would it? The first one would know that Professor Plum was killed in the library, but wouldn’t have a clue who done it or how, while the second would have read Inspector Poirot explaining that it was Mrs Peacock who used the candlestick to kill him but wouldn’t know who he was or what had led up to this revelation. The same goes for us. If we read the New Testament without understanding the Old, much of what we read makes no sense. It just seems to be overcomplicated if not totally unintelligible.
Finally, remember that there are about 40 different human authors represented in these pages. That means that there are at least 40 different styles of presentation, 40 different objectives in what and how they present their material. You only need to study the four gospels and notice how the four writers present their material about Jesus and the things they emphasise to see how this works out in practise. For example, Luke, whose gospel we’ve been looking at lately, has a particular interest in the issues of justice and equality, so we see lots of examples of Jesus’ dealings with women and with the poor. And he’s a doctor so he’s interested in the way Jesus heals. The other gospel writers have different emphases. Matthew is interested in the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies and particularly the way Jesus has come to be the new Israel. Mark wants to give a concise account of the work and words of Jesus in order to show the power and authority that he exercised as the Son of God. John wants to assure his readers that Jesus is the Son of God and the way of salvation.
So part of my aim is to help you read God’s word with an understanding not just of the big picture that we’ll be looking at over the next few weeks, but also with an understanding of the different styles and personalities that have gone into producing this word of God.
I hope that by the end of the series you’ll be able to see how the things we read here fit together so that when you open one of the sections that you perhaps haven’t read much before, you’ll know how to fit it in with the parts that you’re familiar with. What’s more I hope you’ll see how you fit in to God’s plan of salvation for the world.
For more sermons from this source go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos
