Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....March 19, 2018
A couple of weeks ago, we had just finished our first teaching at C4 on the different denominations that claim Christianity as their theology. We had no sooner finished and when I got home I had this email question.
"Why are there so many different Christian interpretations of the Bible? If all Christians have the same Bible, and the same Holy Spirit, should not Christians be able to agree?"
This is an example of a question that began with deep thought and concern. If we are all followers of Jesus Christ, why the discrepancies in theology?? Lets try to answer that question.
Scripture says there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5). This passage emphasizes the unity that should exist in the body of Christ as we are indwelt by “one Spirit” (verse 4). In verse 3, Paul makes an appeal to humility, meekness, patience, and love—all of which are necessary to preserve unity. According to 1 Corinthians 2:10-13, the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God (verse 11), which He reveals (verse 10) and teaches (verse 13) to those whom He indwells. This activity of the Holy Spirit is called illumination.
In a perfect world, every believer would dutifully study the Bible (2 Timothy 2:15) in prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit’s illumination. As can be clearly seen, this is not a perfect world. Not everyone who possesses the Holy Spirit actually listens to the Holy Spirit. There are Christians who grieve Him (Ephesians 4:30). Ask any educator—even the best classroom teacher has his share of wayward students who seem to resist learning, no matter what the teacher does. So, one reason different people have different interpretations of the Bible is simply that some do not listen to the Teacher—the Holy Spirit. Following are some other reasons for the wide divergence of beliefs among those who teach the Bible.
1. Unbelief. The fact is that many who claim to be Christians have never been born again. They wear the label of “Christian,” but there has been no true change of heart. Many who do not even believe the Bible to be true presume to teach it. They claim to speak for God yet live in a state of unbelief. Most false interpretations of Scripture come from such sources.
It is impossible for an unbeliever to correctly interpret Scripture. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). An unsaved man cannot understand the truth of the Bible. He has no illumination. Further, even being a pastor or theologian does not guarantee one’s salvation.
An example of the chaos created by unbelief is found in John 12:28-29. Jesus prays to the Father, saying, “Father, glorify your name.” The Father responds with an audible voice from heaven, which everyone nearby hears. Notice, however, the difference in interpretation: “The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.” Everyone heard the same thing—an intelligible statement from heaven—yet everyone heard what he wanted to hear.
2. Lack of training. The apostle Peter warns against those who misinterpret the Scriptures. He attributes their spurious teachings in part to the fact that they are “ignorant” (2 Peter 3:16). Timothy is told to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). There is no shortcut to proper biblical interpretation; we are constrained to study.
3. Poor hermeneutics. Much error has been promoted because of a simple failure to apply good hermeneutics (the science of interpreting Scripture). Taking a verse out of its immediate context can do great damage to the intent of the verse. Ignoring the wider context of the chapter and book, or failing to understand the historical/cultural context will also lead to problems.
4. Ignorance of the whole Word of God. Apollos was a powerful and eloquent preacher, but he only knew the baptism of John. He was ignorant of Jesus and His provision of salvation, so his message was incomplete. Aquila and Priscilla took him aside and “explained to him the way of God more adequately” (Acts 18:24-28). After that, Apollos preached Jesus Christ. Some groups and individuals today have an incomplete message because they concentrate on certain passages to the exclusion of others. They fail to compare Scripture with Scripture.
5. Selfishness and pride. Sad to say, many interpretations of the Bible are based on an individual’s own personal biases and pet doctrines. Some people see an opportunity for personal advancement by promoting a “new perspective” on Scripture. (See the description of false teachers in Jude’s epistle.)
6. Failure to mature. When Christians are not maturing as they should, their handling of the Word of God is affected. “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly” (1 Corinthians 3:2-3). An immature Christian is not ready for the “meat” of God’s Word. Note that the proof of the Corinthians’ carnality is a division in their church (verse 4).
7. Undue emphasis on tradition. Some churches claim to believe the Bible, but their interpretation is always filtered through the established traditions of their church. Where tradition and the teaching of the Bible are in conflict, tradition is given precedence. This effectively negates the authority of the Word and grants supremacy to the church leadership.
On the essentials, the Bible is abundantly clear. There is nothing ambiguous about the deity of Christ, the reality of heaven and hell, and salvation by grace through faith. On some issues of less importance, however, the teaching of Scripture is less clear, and this naturally leads to different interpretations. For example, we have no direct biblical command governing the frequency of communion or the style of music to use. Honest, sincere Christians can have differing interpretations of the passages concerning these peripheral issues.
The important thing is to be dogmatic where Scripture is and to avoid being dogmatic where Scripture is not. Churches should strive to follow the model of the early church in Jerusalem: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). There was unity in the early church because they were steadfast in the apostles’ doctrine. There will be unity in the church again when we get back to the apostles’ doctrine and forego the other doctrines, fads, and gimmicks that have crept into the church.
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
A young man was at the end of his rope. Seeing no way out, he dropped to his knees in prayer. "Lord, I can't go on," he said, "I have too heavy of a cross to bear." The Lord replied, "My son, if you can't bear its weight, just place your cross inside this room. Then, open that other door and pick out any cross you wish."
The man was filled with relief and said, "Thank you, Lord," and he did as he was told. Upon entering the other door, he saw many crosses, some so large the tops were not visible. Then, he spotted a tiny cross leaning against a far wall. "I'd like that one, Lord," he whispered.
And the Lord replied, "My son, that is the cross you just brought in." When life's problems seem overwhelming, it helps to look around and see what other people are coping with. You may consider yourself far more fortunate than you imagined.
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
History and faith of Isaiah
Isaiah is the Paul of the Old Testament in his teaching that faith in God’s promises is the single most important reality for the Lord’s people: this is the heart of chapters 1–37. He is the ‘Hebrews’ of the Old Testament in his proposal of faith as the sustaining strength of the Lord’s people in life’s dark days: this is the heart of chapters 38–55. He is also the James of the Old Testament in his insistence that ‘faith works’, proving itself in obedience: thus chapters 56–66. Behind all this lies the history through which he lived and future events as he envisaged them.
i. God and history. In 10:5–15 Isaiah teaches how history ‘works’. He sees two fundamental principles. The first is that the course of history is in the hand of God in the most direct, managerial sense. The Lord is neither like a boy launching his model yacht on one side of the pond, confident that the wind will bring it safely to the other side but uncertain what will happen in between, nor is he like a chess master patiently allowing the other player to make moves and then countering his opponent’s intentions to secure his own victory. For Isaiah, even the superpowers of earth are but rods, axes and saws in the hands of a single divine Agent (10:5, 15). Secondly, within the divine program, history is the outworking of moral purposes, the arena of choice and moral responsibility. Thus the Assyrian is held within the Lord’s purpose to bring due punishment to Jerusalem (6, 12a): this is the moral government of the world which underlies the ‘inanimate’ models of rod, axe and saw.
Yet the Assyrian is moved not by obedience to the perceived will of God but by the arrogance of his own imperialism (7–11, 13–14): he is out for self-advantage and the fulfillment of proud ambition, no matter at what expense to others. This makes him culpable before history’s Ruler and he will be punished (12b). In this way Isaiah’s view of history is consonant with the Bible’s (especially the Old Testament’s) fixed gaze beyond second causes to the First Cause, for preoccupation with second causes leads to living by our wits, working the system and making the right move, whereas concentration on the First Cause issues in a life of faith, trusting, ‘cleaving to the Lord’ (see Acts 11:23, AV), and living for his pleasure.
The nearest Isaiah comes to offering an illustration of this understanding of history is in his hint of the horse and the rider (37:29). All the violent strength lies in the horse; all the sovereign direction is the rider’s. So it is in the show-jumping arena where the commentators move easily between congratulating the horse or the rider for a clear round—for there are two separate even though interlocking ‘forces’ at work. So it is in history. This is the ‘theology of history’ which made Isaiah the prophet of faith.
ii. The three crises. Crisis one: The unbelieving king. Isaiah ministered within the fifty-year period between the death of Uzziah (1:1; 6:1, probably 739 BC), and that of Hezekiah (1:1, 686 BC). This was also the great period of Assyrian imperialism initiated by Tiglath-Pileser III (Pul, 2 Kgs 15:19) in 745 BC. The Palestinian states almost immediately began to feel Assyrian pressure under which King Menahem accepted tributary status (2 Kgs 15:19). Pekah, however, who came to the throne by assassinating Menahem’s son (2 Kgs 15:25), was not prepared to acquiesce in Assyrian overlordship without a struggle. He joined with Rezin of Aram in a defensive alliance and, for an undeclared reason, the two moved against Judah. Was this to pressurize Ahaz of Judah into joining the alliance, making it the cohesive strategy of all the west Palestinian states, or was it a punitive measure because Ahaz, foreseeing that Assyria would act against Aram and Ephraim, was already himself negotiating with Assyria to secure his immunity when the attack came?3 Whatever the truth about this matter, Isaiah’s concern was how Ahaz proposed to react to the northern threat.
Isaiah 7:1–17 reviews the crisis, focusing on Isaiah’s call to faith and Ahaz’ refusal of that call. Faith meant taking no action in relation to the northern threat (7:4), simply resting on the word of divine promise (7:7), but the alternative to faith was made clear (7:9): there is no other way of security or of continuance. Ahaz, however, refused the way of faith (7:10–17), choosing rather to buy Assyrian protection (2 Kgs 16:5–9) and thereby, in J. N. Oswalt’s memorable phrase, acting like a mouse asking a cat to help it against another cat! Short-term benefit was purchased (as Isaiah foresaw) dearly. In every real sense the Davidic monarchy ended with Ahaz, for the remaining kings reigned only as puppets by courtesy of either Assyria or Babylon, and with the exile (586 BC) the monarchy disappeared and no king ever again reigned in Zion. When the Lord makes promises, faith is the make-or-break decision of his people.
Crisis two: The faithful Lord. By the time of Hezekiah Palestine was in the Assyrian grip: Damascus fell to Tiglath-Pileser in 732 BC. Shalmaneser succeeded in 727 BC, made his eastern empire secure by 724 BC and turned his attention westward. He began the siege of Samaria, but its fall in 721 BC is accredited to Sargon. As always in those ancient conglomerate empires, Sargon’s accession was greeted by widespread rebellion of subject peoples and he spent his first seven years quieting his eastern and northern dominions. This gave Hezekiah and the Jerusalem politicians a breathing-space in which to review their policy vis-à-vis Assyria. And Egypt was at hand making encouraging pledges of support should the Palestinian states revolt. Some of them did so in 715 BC, and it is an interesting comment on Egyptian promises that, when Sargon took Ashdod (714 BC) and its king fled to Egypt, the Egyptians promptly handed him back to Assyria!
Hezekiah seems not to have been involved in this insurgence, since he was not included in Assyrian reprisals, but, sadly, his day was to come. 2 Kings 18:7 simply says he rebelled against the king of Assyria, but behind that bald statement lies a strange infatuation with Egypt, reviewed by Isaiah in chapters 28–35. The unreliability of Egypt fully justified Isaiah’s irony (30:3–7), and he was absolutely right in deriding the politicians, jubilant over their ‘coup’, because in their Egyptian alliance they had succeeded only in signing their own death warrant (28:14–15)! He saw that the issue (as in the days of Ahaz) was not one of political astuteness but of faith. He had faced them with the word of God in such a simple form that they mocked it as kid’s stuff (28:9); he reminded them of the solid rock of the Lord’s promises to David, the foundation stone laid in Zion (28:16), but they would not build on it; he called them to repentance, rest, quietness and trust as the way of salvation and (warrior) strength (30:15) but they chose the world’s militarism (30:16). The message is the same as to Ahaz, and the situation not vastly different, except that Ahaz chose to seek security in a contemporary killer, Assyria, while Hezekiah trusted the ancestral specialist in ethnic cleansing (Exod. 1:22). Only the Lord is the life-giver, and faith alone is the way of life; every other remedy is the way of death.
Sennacherib acceded in 705 BC, and by 701 BC he had all Palestine at his mercy and Hezekiah belatedly conscious of his folly (37:1–3). Hezekiah, however, discovered the truth that ‘if we are faithless, he will remain faithful’ (2 Tim. 2:13). Faith is a potent force, not because of any reflex effect it has within the human psyche but because it reaches out to a trustworthy Object. Isaiah had long since known that Assyria would (so to speak) meet its Waterloo in Judah (14:24–27); in the thick of the crisis he reiterated the same message (37:21–29); and in the event so it was (37:36). Judah was delivered just as Isaiah forecast, by an eleventh-hour intervention (29:1–8), and, in fact, with this the zenith of Assyrian power passed.
Crisis three: The decisiveness of unbelief. The great deliverance (37:36) must have been a bitter-sweet experience for Hezekiah. It would have been very strange if he had not found himself saying, ‘If only’! For within the series of events leading up to the Egyptian Alliance and Sennacherib’s ferocious reaction, there had happened, within the secrecy of the palace, a personal crisis of faith for the king which was the hinge on which the national future turned. When we realize that before Sennacherib invaded—probably even before he came to the throne—Hezekiah had decisively turned from trusting the Lord to self-trust and worldly-trust, we appreciate how marvelous is the faithfulness of God who nevertheless intervened to shatter Assyria in the mountains of Judah (14:25)—not because the king trusted the promise, not because he merited deliverance, but simply because it is impossible for the Lord to pledge his word and then go back on it.
The tale of Hezekiah’s crisis is simply told. Merodach-Baladan of Babylon was a superb ‘freedom-fighter’, determined to end Assyrian rule. He achieved this for the first time, ruling as king of Babylon from 722 BC until he was ousted by Sargon in 710 BC. The death of Sargon in 706 BC, however, gave him a second chance and once more he made Babylon an independent kingdom. It must have been at some point in relation to this second insurgency that he sent his fateful embassy to Hezekiah (39:1). The ostensible reason was a gesture to the convalescent king; the actual reason, in the letter which accompanied the gift, can be deduced from Hezekiah’s reaction (39:2). Hezekiah may well have been already compromised by his negotiations with Egypt, and it was a small (but flattering) thing to be invited to a further alliance with the prince of freedom fighters! But in his illness Hezekiah had a specific promise from God: ‘I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria’ (38:6). From that point on it was surely simply a matter of trusting the promise and awaiting its fulfilment. To choose instead the way of alliances, armaments and resources (39:2) was as decisive a rejection of the way of faith as Isaiah recognized it to be (39:3–7).
There is no need to find anything difficult or strange in Isaiah’s prediction of Babylonian captivity. Babylon was plainly a world power; Merodach-Baladan had already once achieved a balance of power in Mesopotamia. The prediction of Babylon was a sharply relevant message to the king to whom it was addressed: he had chosen Babylon and, like it or not, all his proud possessions would go there! But, of course, Isaiah could not leave it at that. In fact, he must either tear up all his earlier prophecies of the glories of the coming king (9:1–7; 11:1–16; 32:1ff.; 33:17) or else he must seek light from the Lord on how, notwithstanding the end of monarchy and kingdom in captivity, they would yet be fulfilled. When we remember that, like Hezekiah, Isaiah lived to experience the astounding faithfulness of the Lord to his word about shattering Assyria, it is no wonder that he set alongside his prediction of Babylonian captivity (39:5–7) his message of comfort that the days of duress would some day be over (40:1, 2a) and, alongside the king’s great sin in abandoning faith, his forecast that sin would be exactly and abundantly dealt with (40:2b
In this way 39:5–40:12 can be compared with 8:21–9:7. When the dark day comes, then, for those with believing minds, there is a bright light beyond the darkness, a faith to sustain them in the grim realities of life.
Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, p. 26). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, pp. 25–26). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, p. 25). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, p. 25). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, pp. 21–25). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou