Why Bother with the Bible? (Part 2 of 6)

The Bible is unlike any book that's ever been written.

It's more than a remarkable piece of historic literature. It is the Word of God and it speaks to our circumstances and reveals our greatest needs. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains how to understand and interpret scripture properly. And for that he takes us to 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 14. So who wrote this Bible? Well, ultimately God wrote the Bible, but men wrote the Bible.

B. B. Warfield, in a very helpful quote, says, if God wishes to give the people a series of letters like Paul's, he prepares a Paul to write them. And the Paul he brought to the task was a Paul who could spontaneously write such letters.

But here's the issue. The church did not write the Bible. Prophets and apostles wrote the Word to the people of God. And the reliability of what they wrote lies in the fact that behind them is the work of the Holy Spirit.

And this is the reason why the church has no right to rewrite what God has written. In the Scriptures, God was and is speaking to us. If you want to listen to God, open your Bible. The safest way to hear God speak is to read your Bible and beware of every other notion about how you're going to hear from God.

The mystical ideas that have come out of the dark centuries—understandably so—when they didn't have a Bible to guard them and to keep them, they came up with all kinds of notions. I warrant you that some of the craziest people you will ever meet are the people who have decided that the Bible is insufficient for them when it comes to hearing from God. And some of the bypass meadows of contemporary evangelicalism are directly related to a willingness to listen to books, no matter how influential the author may be, which suggests that the answer to your quest is to be found over here in a corner somewhere, listening for something, finding out where God is going, finding out what God is doing.

My dear friends, if you want to know where he's going and what he's doing, read your Bibles. You see why this is so important? And this, incidentally, is the importance of the sermon, is it not? There is no… Who wants to come and listen to somebody pontificate?

Somebody give you his ten cents' worth of information that he's gleaned, a few ideas, a couple of jokes, an illustration, and a how-do-you-do? What's the point in that? I have no interest in that. I have no interest in being a servant to that kind of objective. But to be made the vehicle of God's truth through the Bible, to be simply its servant, to be underneath it, to be holding it in one's hand, to be offering it afresh, that's something very different. And this, incidentally, answers the question that I get all the time. Could we have a service where all we do is sing? No.

Why not? Think about it. What God has to say to us is much more important than what we have to say to him. And indeed, we have nothing to say to him until first we have heard from him. And that, in passing, is one of the reasons why perhaps our whole approach to the study of the Bible and the praise is upside down, traditionally so. But little comes after having heard from him.

We're talking to him before he speaks to us. It presupposes that we've been listening every day of the week, but if we haven't, then we arrive cold, uneducated, uninspired, and are exhorted to praise a God with whom we have spent no time in the preceding seven days. That's why the hymn writer says, "'Tis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my life with praise, my lips with song.

It's what I know of you that fills my heart with praise, my lips with song." So you understand the context in which I answered no to the Bible. What is the Bible? Well, it's a collection of books. It's like no other book. Who wrote it? Well, it has a dual authorship. Thirdly, how are we supposed to understand it?

Let me give you the answer in one word, properly. The Bible does not have a special esoteric spiritual meaning which can only be gleaned by setting aside the plain grammatical and historical sense. You'll find people like this all the time. They pop up in Bible studies all over the place. Well, I believe that what this is saying is, because I such and such and so on, I say, Well, listen, sir, if you could just maybe make a cup of coffee or something, just sit over there in the corner for a little while, we'll come back to you.

Maybe. But right now, our concern here is to understand the Bible properly. We're not really interested in what it means to you. And if you've been reading your Bible during the week saying, Well, I got nothing out of it because it didn't mean anything to me, what did you expect to happen to you? I mean, if you're reading a book of Leviticus, what do you really think is supposed to happen? Well, what it's about, you need to stand back from it. It's like certain paintings. You can't see them up close.

You have to take them in the process. And when you stand back and you realize what God is conveying of his holiness and of his power and of his grandeur and pointed into the nature of substitution and sacrifice, then suddenly all these elements begin to take on form. Great harm, you see, has been done and continues to be done by those who claim infallibility for dubious, often eccentric interpretations of the Bible.

And again, these people bounce into places all the time. Now, let me give you one illustration from of old, 2 Samuel 9.13. I'll just quote the verse for you. You needn't turn to it.

It's not important. But the verse reads, So Methibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem, for he did eat continually at the king's table and was lame in both his feet. The preacher announces that as his text, and then he preaches a sermon, the outline of which was as follows. Point one, this verse speaks to the issue of human depravity, because Methibosheth was lame. Point two, this verse addresses total depravity, because we can see that he was lame in both feet. Point three, this verse addresses the issue of justification, because we're told that Methibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem. Fourthly, this teaches us the doctrine of adoption, inasmuch as Methibosheth sat at the king's table.

And fifthly, it teaches us the doctrine of perseverance, in that Methibosheth sat at the king's table continually. Now, if you were to come here and hear a sermon like that from me or from any one of my colleagues, the best thing you could do is grab your Bible and run for your life. Because a careful reading of the passage would make it clear that what we're being told there is that David is loving and he's kind. And that's what that verse tells us. Not that his lameness was a picture of this, and his two feet were a picture of that, and Jerusalem was a picture of this, and so on.

Everywhere you go, you'll find people that want to distract you with that kind of information. That's why it's so important that I tell you how you need to understand the Bible. The reason that people make those applications is simply because they refuse to accept that the plain meaning of a passage is the plain meaning of a passage. They're unprepared to accept that the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things, and they have the idea that the plain meaning must always defer to some hidden spiritual interpretation. Incidentally, that is why you can write a book that is fairly true and straightforward, and only ten people buy it and read it, and those are all members of your family. Or you can write a book that takes a notion, spins it into an interesting dimension, and retire in the islands.

Why? Because of the perversity of the human mind—the idea that perhaps in this secret notion, in this strange meaning, in this little idea, there is the answer to spiritual fitness. It's the same way that people are plugged into their televisions every afternoon, listening to anybody who will get on there and tell them, There is an easy answer to the complexities of your life.

Simply plug this in. And they are made vastly rich because of the longing of the human heart. But if you tell the person, If you want to look like this, it will take this and this and this. It will take this effort and so on, says, I don't have time for the pain.

I don't have time for the pain. Well then, let me end, because I have to end, my time has gone by, saying that the way to avoid that kind of foolishness in interpretation and application is to keep certain principles before you, and let me just give them to you quickly. Number one, if you're going to interpret the Bible, the answer is not, Let's go and see what the pastor has to say.

Pastors have been given Ephesians 4, 11, and 12 so as to help in the process of edifying the saints. We have a unique role. We understand that. But we are not priests and popes and potentates.

We're just learners from the one who knows the answers. We have been given the privilege of spending our time to do more study than others have done and to unearth the plain teaching of Scripture, but not in such a way that would then deprive the individual Christian of the necessary endeavors on their own. The Scripture needs to be interpreted on the basis of the straightforward sense of the passage. The way to interpret a passage is on the basis of its straightforward sense. In order to do that, you have to interpret it first according to its original meaning.

According to its original meaning. So Paul writes to the Corinthians, at a certain point in time, at a certain place, a certain latitude and longitude. We must first understand the historical context to which he writes, in Corinth, before we start making application here in Cleveland.

If you go immediately to application in Cleveland without first understanding why Corinth, then you can make the Bible say just about anything you want it to. If you're going to interpret it according to its straightforward sense, not only do you have to pay attention to its original meaning, but you have to pay attention to its literary form. Its literary form. Am I reading poetry or prose? Am I dealing with a parable? Am I dealing with history? Am I dealing with allegory? Am I dealing with a metaphor, with a simile?

Because it makes a difference, doesn't it? 2 Chronicles 16, 9 speaks of the eyes of the Lord ranging to and fro throughout the earth. Now, unless you understand that that is a figure of speech, that it is a metaphor, then you will inevitably conclude that two great cosmic eyes scan the globe intermittently, and that somewhere or another, out in the solar system, there are two gigantic eyes looking all around. Is that what it is saying? What person says, well, I'm taking the Bible literally, therefore, yes, it is. My dear friend, you're taking the Bible literalistically. To take the Bible literally is to take it in the genre in which it is conveyed. And this is clearly a metaphor. What it is teaching is the omniscience of God. It is a picture to convey a truth.

That's the first point. Scripture has to be interpreted according to its straightforward meaning. Secondly, Scripture needs to be interpreted by Scripture. There is a harmony to the Bible. There is a unity to the Bible.

There is a self-consistency to the Bible that you would expect given a single divine author. And when you interpret Scripture with Scripture, you need to interpret it according to the purpose of Scripture. What is the purpose of Scripture?

Well, we'll come to this eventually. He says to Timothy as a young man, he says, you should be paying attention to all these things. You should be thankful that you've known the Bible for a very long time, the Bible which is able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. What is the purpose of the Bible?

It is to make men and women wise unto salvation. It's not a book about astronomy. Not a scientific textbook. It's a book that has been written to make us wise for salvation. So we should be very, very careful then about trying to extrapolate scientific terminology and deductions from a book that does not have that as its express purpose. And we need to understand a passage or a writer in relationship to their purpose.

I can illustrate this for you easily. People come to me from time to time, and they say, Well, I found a contradiction between James and Paul. I found that what Paul is saying is that it's all grace, and then I was reading James, I read his little five-chapter thing, and it seems to me that he's saying it all works.

And it's an obvious contradiction. Well, it is an apparent contradiction until you interpret Scripture with Scripture, and in doing so, you acknowledge the fact that you have to understand the purpose of the writer. What is the purpose of James in writing his letter? It is to address a group of people who are going around saying, My morality and my social involvement is irrelevant. All that matters is that I have faith in Jesus. And James writes to them to say, You better be very careful of a sterile faith. You show me your faith without works, and I'll show you faith with works. So he's addressing people who are tempted to say, All I have to do is believe in Jesus, and nothing matters.

He says, Oh yes, everything does matter. If you're a snob, you call in question your commitment to a humble Christ. If you simply say, Be warm and do nothing to help, then you apparently haven't understood what it means to prefer your enemies and to love those who despise you. But when Paul writes to the Galatians, he's writing to a group of people who have got the exact opposite problem. He's writing to a group of people who are so convinced that on the basis of their own good works and their own good deeds, they're made acceptable to God. They keep themselves going by what they do. And Paul writes to say, It's not what you do that matters.

It's the grace of God that matters. Now how do you understand that? According to the purpose of each writer. And therefore, it's obvious that you need to interpret other passages in the light of passages that deal with the same theme. You see a difficult part, then you look elsewhere in the book to see if it's the same issue as dealt with in a way that's easier to understand. You understand that.

You do it all the time in a textbook. And also, as I said earlier, we interpret the earlier in light of the later and the fuller. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament, and the epistles interpret the Gospels. We're about to have this movie come out, a movie on Jesus.

I saw trailers for it this week. A powerful description of the passion of Christ, horribly brutal and gory and disgraceful in every aspect. If it stays as it is, it will never have any English text in it. It will all be in Aramaic. Therefore, it will be totally unintelligible. Therefore, the viewing audience will only have the opportunity of gazing at this atrocity and making deductions. Would that be a problem?

Of course it would be a problem. It'd be the same problem of reading the Gospels and never going on to read the epistles. Because in the Gospels, it is clear that Christ died. But it is really only in the epistles that it becomes perfectly clear why Christ died—that he died for our sins and that he died for our sins according to the Scriptures. According to what Scriptures? According to the Old Testament Scriptures. So you read Peter, and he says, Christ died.

We said, we know that. I saw it in the Gospels. He died for our sins.

Oh, that explains it. And he did so according to the Scriptures. Oh, that makes sense of Isaiah. That's why he was saying he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, he had never opened his mouth. He was wounded for our transgressions, and he was bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement that brought us peace was upon him.

I read that, and I hadn't a clue what it meant. And I saw it in the Gospels, and I wondered, perhaps this is how it fits. And then I read the epistles, and the epistles said, Christ died.

Got it for our sins? Understand it according to the Scriptures. And suddenly, you're reading from the back to the front, it begins to make sense.

Two statements, and I'm done. One, ultimately the Bible can only be interpreted for us by the Holy Spirit, because true understanding is not natural to us. Milne is right when he says, what we understand of God's truth is related less to the capacity of our brains than to the extent of our obedience. What we learn of God's truth is related less to the capacity of our brains than to the extent of our obedience. And that, my dear friends, is why it is that a young Christian begins to lap this older believer, because the older believer, thinking that they simply sit on the pew and flatten out their posterior over time, never taking seriously the Bible, never absorbing its truth, never applying it to their lives. And suddenly, this young believer comes along, and they're so crazy to think, you know, if you go to the morning service, presumably you go to the evening service too. After all, God's Word is preached, and apparently you do what the Bible says. Yeah, you believe and you get baptized, so let's get baptized. And apparently, the people who got baptized, they joined the fellowship, and so they joined the fellowship, and they got involved, and they read their Bibles, and suddenly they are laughing you, and you're saying, why is it that they're a way ahead of me now? Well, that is because it's not directly related to the length of time you've sat listening to sermons or the length of time that I have preached sermons, but it is directly related to the obedience of my heart.

And my friends, that's why it's so important. And finally, if we're going to understand the Bible, we need to recognize that it needs to be interpreted dynamically. Dynamically, there is a dynamism to it. We look at the passage and we understand what it meant in its own time. We considered it in the light of its surrounding context. We placed it in the framework of the whole purpose of Scripture. And then, and only then, did we ask, what does this mean in my life and in my family and in my congregation, in my church and in my culture? In the Scriptures, God was and is speaking to us. Which then goes part of the way to answering the question, why bother with the Bible?

And we'll answer it more fully from Paul's insights here in 2 Timothy 3, when we return to that. That is Alistair Begg on Truth for Life with a message titled, Why Bother With The Bible? And we'll hear more on the topic tomorrow.

Please keep listening. Alistair is going to be back in just a minute to close today's program with prayer. It is a great privilege for us to be able to open the Scriptures with you every day here on Truth for Life. This program is possible because of generous support that comes from listeners like you. Truth for Life is 100% listener funded.

In fact, your financial partnership not only takes care of the cost of this daily program, but your giving is what makes Alistair's entire teaching library free to access and share by people all around the world. So as we are moving toward the end of 2021, we want to ask you to reach out to us. Make a one time end of year donation. This will help us move into 2022 ready to press forward to serve you with another year of ministry.

It's easy to donate online at truthforlife.org slash donate, or you can call us at 888-588-7884 and you can donate by phone. And when you give, we want to say thank you by inviting you to request a copy of the book titled Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture. This is a collection of seven compelling sermons preached by Charles Spurgeon.

It's a great supplement to our current series. The content in this book will strengthen your confidence in the authority of the Bible. Again, you can give and request Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture at 888-588-7884 or visit truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. O God our Father, we thank you that you have spoken and therefore as a result of that we are enabled by your grace to respond. We thank you for the Bible, that it is a lamp that shines on our feet.

It's a light which opens up our path, that the entrance of it brings light to us. And we pray that you will shine your light into our lives so that in understanding its purpose to make us wise to salvation, we may understand that we are in need of that salvation, in need of this Jesus to die on our behalf in order that we might be forgiven. And then in embracing him and in bowing before his Lordship that we might be thoroughly equipped for every good work. We long desperately Father that we're not simply a group of people who are stoked by an interest in the Bible but that we're stirred by your Spirit as we read the Bible and that you will make us a people of the book and then a people of Christ and a people that live to proclaim your wonderful grace having called us from darkness into your terrific light. May the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to him, the joy of Jesus fill our hearts and the peace of Jesus' garden keep our minds for we pray in his precious name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. God's word is clearly more than just words printed on a page but have you ever asked yourself what's the Bible really for? Join us tomorrow as Alistair answers that question and then leads us to an even greater question. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.