Message: INTERPRETATION: What did the authors mean to say?

Series: The Year of Lving Biblically

SE012410
YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY
4. INTERPRETATION

I’m guessing that some of you might not be entirely pleased with our whole Bible discussion this month. For two reasons:

Well I want to say something to each group:
• So to be effective, we start with faith, we ADD knowledge (where does that come from?) The end being applied love: INTERPRETATION COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE?
So where have we been? We’ve come to have a lot of confidence in the Bible. It’s RELIABLE, IT’S INSPIRED and we confident in how it was TRANSMITTED and TRANSLATED. But we’re not done. Because in the same way last we asked, what good is a RELIABLE INSPIRED Word of God that’s not transmitted to me accurately, this week we ask,
what good is a RELIABLE, INSPIRED, TRANSLATED Word of God that isn’t INTERPRETED correctly?

See, many people think that INTERPRETATION is the problem with the Bible. How do we know what it’s supposed to be saying? Maybe what it’s saying to you, is not what it says to me. They get overwhelmed with denominations who split over interpretations. Then they start thinking maybe God’s Word means whatever you want it to mean!

The problem is seen in the story of this pastor who decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon. So what he did was place four worms into four separate jars for the audience to see.
- The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
- The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
- The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
- The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.

The Pastor proceeded to give his message and at the conclusion of the sermon, he reported the following results. Look at this he said:
- The first worm in alcohol – Dead
- The second worm in cigarette smoke – Dead
- Third worm in chocolate syrup - Dead
- Fourth worm in good clean soil – Alive!

So the Pastor turns to the congregation and asks:
Alright, now someone interpret this object lesson for me. What did it say to you?

Maxine was sitting in the back, quickly raised her hand and said,
'As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won't have worms!'

INTERPRETATION IS ABOUT AUTHOR’S INTENT
Many of us look at interpretation of the Bible like that object lesson,
- When confronted with a Biblical directive we say: “that’s YOUR interpretation.”
- Ever said that? Ever thought that? Know someone who does?

Well, what we can all agree to is this:
- The Bible is a large library of books which speaks to many topics over a period of 1500 years on three continents in 3 different languages. So just by it’s sheer breadth, and age, But here’s what we should NEVER agree to:
- It is not hopelessly subjective.

Let’s go back to Maxine interpreting the meaning of the object lesson with the worms.
- Just because she has her own little interpretation of the demonstration does NOT mean that the pastor who gave the object lesson did not have a very specific meaning in his own mind. And…
- Just because Maxine wants to impute her own idea onto the lesson, doesn’t mean that her “interpretation” is the correct one.

That’s true of the Bible:
- Just because 5 people can look at the verse John 1:1 and get 5 different interpretations of meaning, does not mean that John himself didn’t have a very specific meaning in mind.
- Just because we may WANT to believe the Bible to mean anything we want, the fact is, it CAN’T mean anything you want, not reasonably.

Oh, if you want to be unreasonable that’s another story. Let’s say here’s a group of skinheads some place who INTERPRET the Declaration of Independence in a certain way. When it says “ALL MEN are created equal” they say this means only MEN are equal and women are not equal to men.

You respond: “hey, that’s not true! That’s an unreasonable interpretation.” Well, you would be right, but how do you know? See, to know what it REALLY means we have to interpret the DECLARATION. And to interpret it, we have investigate history, and the use of language to know what the original author meant when he said,
“ALL MEN are created equal.”

That’s what interpretation is all about:
- What was the original author’s intent?
They are not always the same thing! So now let’s turn to the big questions you should ask when reading your bible that will help you INTERPRET it’s CORRECT meaning. Finding out what the original author meant SO THAT we aren’t a church of Maxine’s putting our own spin or English on everything we read.

1. HISTORICAL SETTING
When you read your bible, you should be thinking, this is God’s revelation in history. Some religions are written in mythology, like Shintoism or Hinduism. But the Bible starts as real people in such and such a time, in such and such a place experiencing God. In fact, key parts of Christian belief are not beliefs at all… they are events.
So to know the meaning of the Bible writers experience, it’s critical that we know their time and place.

PHYSICAL SETTING
For example. In Psalm 51 we read King David say:
- Ps 51:4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…

When you read that, you might think, oh this is a comment about some inner spiritual offense against God. A private thing. But that’s not at all what he means. If you know the historical situation, you realize that this confession comes after David was caught for adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah.

When you get that, you understand more deeply David’s real meaning which is profound:
Even though he committed the worst of sins you can commit against other human beings, gross, violent offenses… all these sins are still primarily an offense against God. God is the primary wounded party in ALL sin.

But you don’t get that true meaning unless you know the historical setting.

Another example, Paul says in Phil 4:4
“Rejoice in the Lord always… don’t be anxious about anything…”

Ah, what wonderful words – it’s the Bobby McFerrin Scripture! Don’t worry, be happy! Idyllic by not very practical. But what was Paul’s context as he dictated those words to his scribe? He was chained to a guard, in prison! In fact, the addressees of this letter had seen him go to prison for preaching Christ, during his stay in their city. There, he had been found by a guard to be singing hymns at midnight while chained to the wall!

This impacts what Paul means. Or rather what he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t mean rejoice when life is awesome. Rejoice when you have blessings pouring into your life. No. When he says “Rejoice always…” apparently he means that Christians have the power and reason to rejoice anywhere, anytime. No Bible reader with the knowledge of Paul’s physical situation can read this and say:
He can talk about rejoicing, but he never knew MY circumstances.

CHRONOLOGICAL CONTEXT
One of the reasons we’re getting you to read the Bible chronologically, is because it will help you establish the historical setting, and thus enhance your understanding of the meaning of different passages. For example, because the Old Testament Prophets are arranged after the history books, some of you have tended to think that this is where they fit chronologically.

So you assume, there was this period King David followed these other kings, and God sort of let the nation go to pot and THEN at the end, he shows up with all these prophets to try to fix the problems. Well, in reality, the prophets you fit INSIDE the period of the kings and that’s how you will read them this year.
- So while you’re in the middle of 1 Kings reading about king Hezekiah, you will take an extended break and read Isaiah, the prophet God sent to Judah when Assyria was threatening them. And suddenly Isaiah’s words will come alive!
- And when you read about King Josiah in 2 Kings you will pause and read Jeremiah, the prophet God sent to Judah just before the Babylonian exile. And knowing this will rock your understanding and appreciation of Jeremiah’s message.

Also, understanding the chronological context shows God’s progressive revelation. The Bible is a Story, HIS story, not a fax from heaven. Thus we do not apply all parts equally, like the Jewish law for example.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
Geographical context will affect your understanding what the authors meant too. For example, over and over again the bible says, “From Dan to Beersheba”. What’s that supposed to mean? It’s clearly two towns, but what is there significance? Well, when look on a map you see that Dan is on the far north boundary and Beersheba is the far south border of Israel.

So when the writer says, “From Dan to Beersheba”, it means the equivalent of what we say, when we say, “from New York to LA”. In other words, the whole country did this, or heard this, or felt this.

CULTURAL CONTEXT
Understanding the culture is critical. Take Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. The story is so familiar to us, we just think a Samaritan is a nice person who is kind to someone in need. And that’s the lesson of the story “love your neighbor”. But when you learn the historical context, you realize that this is not really Jesus intended meaning.

Samaritans were despised racial outsiders to the Jews because they were only half Jewish. So the point of the story is not to say, be nice to the people in need who are living in your neighborhood. No. But using a Samaritan, Jesus was destroying our ideas of who a neighbor actually is. It’s not a person just like me, it’s a person UNLIKE me, a person I may be inclined to hate, with different politics, different skin color, different socioeconomic status…

When we understand what Samaritans were in 1st century culture, only then do we understand what Jesus meant:
we’re not loving our neighbor until we love across a line.

Most of us have never lived in an agrarian culture. But the Bible is steeped in one. So for example, we could recognize a sheep in a picture, but we don’t know anything about them. But the Bible talks about them constantly. It’s helpful to learn that sheep are generally helpless, non-resistant, unable to defend themselves and… a little stupid.
- Kind of enriches what Isaiah means when he says, “all we like sheep…”
- Or what David means when he says, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

So first rule of interpretation is to understand the historical, physical and cultural location. How do you find that stuff out? Well, you can consult study Bibles, Bible maps or Atlases and Bible encyclopedias or dictionaries or handbooks, like these*.

The next critical thing for understanding the author’s meaning is to consult the:

2. LINGUISTIC CONTEXT
The clues for meaning are often staring at you in the words themselves. But what people do so often is yank the words OUT of context and get a whole different meaning than the one the author intended.

IMMEDIATE CONTEXT
For example, we start understanding a verse by reading the material directly surrounding it. An obvious example would be Psalm 15:1:
- “there is no God.” A strange thing for a Bible writer to write, until you read it in it’s immediate context and find out that these are the words of a fool.

Last week in Extended we learned about the value of different bible translations. And we learned that the weakness of a more FREE translation is that it gets pretty far away from the individual words used by the Bible writers. But the benefit of a FREE translation is that by going thought for thought, it helps you THINK paragraph-ically.

Meaning? When you read the Bible think in terms of the larger plot or ideas or argument that’s being made. Then the authors intent will begin to pop out. (eg: Love chapter!)

WORD USAGE
Another part of linguistic context is what a particular key word means. Every language has words that mean many different things given the context. And this is especially true of Hebrews which had a very limited vocabulary and uses the same word to mean many, MANY different things.

Take one word, “CHECED” in Hebrew. It can mean favor, loving kindness, mercy, pity, reproach, or wicked thing. This is because the root of the word is chasad, which means “to bow”. So which is it? Kindness or Shame? It depends on the context.
- If God bows to your needs, that’s his loving kindness. But if you are bowed down, that means you’ve done something shameful.

Usually the translator has already interpreted this FOR you by how the word is translated. And most of our translations are very reliable. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be helped to understand a given word by looking at different translations:
- Sarx is the Greek work translated “Flesh” in many translations – it’s where we get our word, “Sarcophagus”. But a Paul uses the word, it refers to an inner compulsion to sin and so another translation renders the word, “sinful nature”.

Understanding key words can helped by looking at how it’s used in other places by the same writer, or looking into it’s using a Greek or Hebrew dictionary online.

USE OF LANGUAGE
Finally, figuring out the unique use of language will help you understand what the Author’s intent was. And if you don’t, you may miss it by a mile. The Bible contains
- Poetry
- Figures of speech
- Drama
- Proverbs
- Prophecy
- And Parables

To treat figurative talk as literal and literal talk as figurative is one of the great problem areas of interpretation. And we’ll talk about those later in Extended but a basic guideline for interpreting the bible (like other communication), is that it should be taken as literal unless there’s a reason to think it’s non-literal. Like:
- if the statement would be irrational at face value.
- If the context demands it, or explicitly tells us. Many prophetic visions are like this.
- If there’s a clear contradiction with another part of scripture.

CONCLUSION
So my final challenge is this. Some of you are still playing what I like to call magic Bible. That is, when you get the notion to read it, which is not that often, you grab your Bible, look up to heaven and say, “OK God, let ‘er rip.” And you let it fall open to anywhere, put your finger down and consider whatever you read as “God’s Word” to you that day.

Friend, that’s not bible use, that’s Bible abuse. It reminds me of this guy who wanted to know God’s will for his life. So he played magic bible and the first passage he came to was: You don’t want to be that guy.

To understand what God is saying to YOU through the Bible, you have to start with what God was saying to THEM – the original Bible writers in their original context. When you do, you’ll be in a much better position to apply what you should apply, and as we’ll learn next week, not apply those things that God would not want you to apply.