Christian Living and Bible Study

Christian Studies
and Living
Learning to Read the Bible

Saturday, 8 October, 11

TImeLine

• Beginning (Genesis 1-11)
• Middle (Genesis 12 - Malachi 4; Matthew -
Revelation)
• End (Matthew 25; Romans 8; Revelation 21-22)


Outline

• Part 1 - the process
• reading with an agenda
• Part 2 - new insights
• taking our hands off the book

adapted from: the Blue Parakeet, Scot Mcknight, 2008


Part 1 - Reading the
Bible
• Reading to Retrieve

• return to the times of the Bible and read from that period of time

• Reading through Tradition

• ordinary people need to learn to read the Bible through tradition or they will
misread it

• Reading with Tradition

• go back to the Bible so we can move forward through the church and speak
God’s ways in our days in our ways


Reading to Retrieve

• The IDEA that we should should retrieve all or parts of the Bible
no matter how uncomfortable, politically incorrect or what it costs
us

• Problems:

• It is impossible to live a ﬁrst century life in a 21st century
world (Paul doesn’t even do this - 1 Corinthians 9:19-23)

• The other way of only salvaging for our day and for our
culture (the challenge of consistency with the Bible)


Reading through
Tradition

• The challenging part of not understanding enough
of Christian tradition and simply reading your own
opinion/thought into the scripture (individualism)
• A responsibility of reading the Bible ourselves
(Martin Luther) and understanding “the Great
Tradition” (Apostles Creed)


Apostles Creed
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of
heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the
Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cruciﬁed, died,
and was buried. He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of
God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the
dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

Amen.


Reading with Tradition

• “God was on the move; God is on the move; and
God will always be on the move”
• Simple: Those who walk with God with
therefore always be on the move
• Are you reading the Bible so [you] can live
out today on the move?


Part 2 - Let the Bible
be the Bible

• Story (What is the Bible?)
• Listening (What do I do with the
Bible?)
• Discerning (How do I beneﬁt from the
Bible?)


STORY - What is the
Bible?

• 3 Parts
• Shortcuts
• Powerful Stories
• Plot


People Love
ShortCuts
• #1 - Morsels of Law

• making it a book of rules (613) distorts the Bible

• #2 - Morsels of Blessings and Promises

• leads to reading the Bible as a collection of divine verses
and we write them out daily

• #3 - Mirrors and Inkblots

• reading the Bible as part of our story instead of entering
into God’s story through the Bible


ShortCuts Continued

• #4 - Puzzling Together Pieces of God’s Map
• The Bible is a big puzzle, solve it and you no
longer have to engage with the pieces
• #5 - Maestros
• using an expert (Paul) to understand the story
without comprehending it ourselves


Powerful Story

• Context is everything
• “So I invite you to read the Bible, not for bits and
pieces of dry information [pieces of a puzzle], but
as the story of God’s embrace of the world told in
poetic images and types” (Robert Webber)


William Tyndale

• He translated the Bible into
[farm boy] English.

• October 1536 - he was tied
to a stake and strangled by
an executioner. His body
was then burned.

• The Challenge:
tolle lege (take, read)


How does the Bible
work?
• Plot Characters Authors
Plot Theme

Creating, Eikons (Genesis 1-2) Oneness

Cracked, Eikons (Genesis 3-11) Otherness
Covenant Community (Genesis 12 -
Otherness Expands
Malachi)
Christ, Perfect Eikon, redeems
(Matthew - Revelation 20)
One in Christ

Consummation (Revelation 21-22) Perfectly One


Creating Eikons
(image, likeness of God)
God Creates

The Adam

then splits the lonely The Adam into

Ish in communion with Ishah

and brought together
by God to form

One Flesh


Listening - What do I
do with the Bible?

• 3 Parts
• On Paper
• God Speaks
• “So That”


Listening On Paper

• Inspiring
Inerrant
Authority
Submission
• Does authority and submission describe a dynamic
relationship?


Psalm 119 - Relational
Approach
• I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word (v.16)

• My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times (v.20)

• Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I ﬁnd delight (v.35)

• I will walk about in your freedom, for I have sought out your precepts (v.45)

• For I delight in your commands because I love them (v.47)

• You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees (v.68)

• How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
(v.103)


God = Bible

God communicates Bible with God’s people

God communicates Bible with listening God’s
people

God communicates Bible with listening God’s
people in conversation

relationship with God of the Bible

God Speaks...

• A Theology of Reading (Alan Jacobs)
• Written words are personal communication
from one person to another
• The proper relationship of a Christian to a
person’s communication is to love that
person by listening to their words


Levels
• Attention (opening our ears)
• I Corinthians 14:2
• Absorption (ﬁlling our beings)
• I Kings 3:9-12
• Action (leading to certain behaviours)
• Matthew 7:24


So That...

• Relationship
• Character
• Action


2 Timothy 3:14-17
But as for you, continue in what you have
learned and have become convinced of,
because you know those from whom you
learned it, and how from infancy you have
known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to
make you wise for salvation through faith in
Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed
and is useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting and training in righteousness, SO
THAT the servant of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work.


Water Slide Analogy

• Reading the Bible with our wise mentors is like
sliding down a water slide
• Gospel = slide
• Bible = one wall
• Teachers/Traditions = other wall
• Water = Holy Spirit


Discerning - How do I
Benefit from the Bible?

• Living Jesus
• Patterns


Colossians 1:9-10

• For this reason, since the day we heard about you
we have not stopped praying for you. We
continually ask God to ﬁll you with the knowledge
of his will through all the wisdom and
understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may
live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in
every way


Literal Living


ReThinking...

• The reality is that we do pick and choose, even
with Jesus and the New Testament
• there are over 600 Old Testament rules
• The reasons we have for our adopting and
adapting


Entering the Kingdom
• Book of Matthew

• They must have surpassing righteousness (5:20)

• They must do God’s will (7:21)

• They must become as a child in humility (18:3)

• The must cut themselves off from whatever is in the way
(18:8-9)

• They must abandon riches (19:23-24)

• They must separate from the scribes and Pharisees (23:13)


Discernment
• Using Divorce/Remarriage Example

• Jesus is against divorce (Mark 10:11-12)

• Jesus Discerned - except for sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32)

• Paul discerns regarding Christian/non-Christian (1 Corinthians 7)

• Churches Today - MESSY PART - guidance of the Holy Spirit is
promised to us as we pray, as we study Scripture, and as we join in
conversation with church tradition

• Discernments should not become rules or laws


Death Penalty
• Old Testament sanctioned capital punishment

• witch (Exodus 22:18)

• idolater (Exodus 22:20)

• blasphemer (Leviticus 24:13)

• rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

• adultery (22:22)

• one who broke the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36)


• Other tendencies

• Cain was not killed after murdering his brother (Genesis 4)

• Cities of refuge for those who committed accident murder (Exodus
21:12-14, Numbers 35:6-34, Deuteronomy 4:41-43; 19:1-13)

• Jesus did not demand capital punishment for the woman caught in
adultery (John 7:53-8:11)

• Discernment

• Does capital punishment actually deter crime?

• Grace and Forgiveness

• opposed - based on social progress, historical & legal developments,
theological development based on Jesus’ teachings (Matthew 5:38-39)


ShortCut Problems
• treating the Bible as a collection of laws

• treating the Bible as a collection of blessings and promises

• treating the Bible as a inkblot onto which we can project
our own ideas

• treating the Bible as a giant puzzle that we are to put
together

• treating the Bible’s authors as a Maestro


The Story
• God and Creation

• Adam/Eve as Eikons who break the relationship

• God’s covenant community (humans restored to God, Self, Others,
World)

• Jesus Christ, who is the story and whose story we are to live

• The church as Jesus’s covenant community

• the consummation, when all designs of our Creator God will be
ﬁnally realized forever and ever


Relationship
• God gave us the Bible as a person who speaks to you as a
person(s) through words

• summoned by God to listen to God speak
• to live out what God directs us
• and to discern how to live out the story in our own day
• If we love God and love others, we will listen to
God in the Bible, live out what he calls us to do
and discern how to live out the Story to our world


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