How to Read the Bible

Though even the Bible speaking in an ancient Voice the Most High Creator took care that His Words would spread all over the world and would reach the many different peoples in a language they can understand.

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To be careful and to remember

John Walton writes

God … adopted the language of the culture to communicate in terms they understood.

or “we could say incarnated Himself” writes Andrew Mills who regularly preaches at Bethany Community Church.  With that incarnation he probably does mean something different than what we would understand by bringing life into His Word. Naturally we do know the Almighty never incarnated into something or some one. But what God provided, was that God His Word came to the people

“in the language of the culture to communicate in terms they understood.”

or, as John Walton puts it,

“[The Bible’s] message transcends the culture in which it originated, but the form in which the message was imbedded was fully permeated by the ancient culture.”

We should believe the Bible is authoritative, and we should take the words of those 66 different books as containing all the necessary.

We may never forget that

We need to be open to letting the Bible speak in its own voice, not in ours.

This is so often forgotten by lots of people, who prefer to take all those added notes by theologians as more telling than the words in the bible text itself.

When reading the Bible we should know that we have God’s Word in our hands and that we should open our ears to what He is saying.  We should be humble enough not to think human beings who went to a theological college would know it better than Him. Reading the Bible is a way of  hearing God’s word when we are prepared to have our ears and eyes open for what the Most High wants to tell and show us.

We do have to allow Scripture to guide us on what to do and how to serve the Most High. Whatever happens and whenever in our life we can turn to the Bible. In times of sadness, joy, worry or bereavement there is He Who wants to talk to us. It is up to us to be willing to hear what God has to say.

Being humble with our interpretations, because we aren’t perfect, we always should remember that god’s Word is perfect and does not need any adding by human beings.

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Continues with:

How to Read the Bible (sequel 1)

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Find also to read:

1. Absolute Basics to Reading the Bible
2. Words of God to stand and to be followed and to believe

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• Jesus, our Emmanuel: The Fourth Sunday of Advent
• The Word made flesh entrusts believers with the gospel
• A little at time

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{ Andrew Mills }

Today, in a short blog post, we are going to try to dive pretty deep theologically and philosophically. I want to begin with a quote from a pretty well-known Biblical scholar at Wheaton, named John Walton, who apparently Larry went to school with, which makes me quite jealous.

Walton writes this, “We must notice that when God wanted to talk to the Israelites about their intellect, emotions, and will, he did not revise their ideas of physiology and feel compelled to reveal the function of the brain. Instead, he adopted the language of the culture to communicate in terms they understood.”

For me, that last line is incredibly important… “[God] adopted” – or we could say incarnated Himself – “in the language of the culture to communicate in terms they understood.” What this means is that the message of the Bible is imbedded and formed by the ancient cultures of…

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