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When people begin to teach the Bible, they can swing to one of two extremes. Some people love to dig into the original setting of the Bible passage they’re teaching. They research all about the Moabites and the Ammonites or the customs and background of the section that they’re reading. When done poorly, these messages can sound like history lectures. Other people are determined to be more relevant. They work hard at trying to relate the passage to the people to whom they’re speaking. It feels easier to apply, but it’s not always clear whether the message came from the Bible or whether something was lost in translation. Let’s consider how to cross the bridge into the setting of the Bible and then back across the bridge into the present context.
Without the history, people can’t hear what God said
One of the mistakes in reading the Bible is assuming that God wrote directly to you. He didn’t. God chose to give us His Word as a collection of case studies. Moses wrote to the Israelites. Luke wrote to Theophilus. Paul wrote to Philemon. In order to understand the Word of God, we need to learn what we can about the people who first received it. A study Bible can answer these questions about the background. As you look into the context, don’t lose sight of what you’re doing there. The point isn’t just to collect random facts about biblical times. You’re trying to learn as much as you can about the setting and the people begin addressed so you can try and hear the words as they would have heard them. The goal of this phase of preparation is to lay out as clearly as you can what the passage meant to the person who first read it. In other words, what was the human author trying to convey? That WAS God’s message. That isn’t God’s message to us yet, but it is an essential step toward getting there because a passage can’t mean what it couldn’t have ever meant. Once we’ve got the history and understood what God said, we’re ready for translation.
Without the translation, people can’t hear what God’s saying
The fact that God didn’t give us a book of timeless abstract principles should be a clue to us: He cares about context. If we take the time to figure out the context that the Bible was originally written in and then ignore the context of the people we’re teaching, then we’re ignoring God’s purposes. In order to translate what God said in the past into what God is saying in the present, we need to think about application and expression. As you learn about the people to whom a particular passage was addressed, you want to try to figure out how we’re similar and how we’re different. The closer that our lives and context line up with the people to whom a particular principle was communicated, the greater authority it has on our lives. When you read Matthew 19:21 where Jesus says “go, sell what you possess and give to the poor,” you can’t just say this means that we should be generous. We need to apply that principle to the extent that our lives resemble the young man with whom Jesus was speaking. Application is about thinking through where the ancient principle lands in the modern world and specifically with the people you’re teaching. The application can be different depending on whether you’re speaking with children, youth, adults, or seniors.
If application takes work, so does expression. We need to work at translating what God said into the language of the people we’re teaching. I remember hearing Eugene Peterson explain how he developed The Message. It came as an outgrowth of his regular habit of trying to express the Bible in words that were familiar and natural to the people he served.
To teach the Bible, you need to study God’s Word, study the context in which it was written, and study the context of the people you teach. If you miss any one of those areas of study, God’s Word won’t have the effect that God intends for it.
May God give you help in hearing what He said and applying and expressing it in ways that will impact people today.
In awe of Him,
Paul
