Sunday Message: Not on your own

When you are a teacher in the Word- or in my case, a "regurgitator of what I've been taught"- you often come around to times where you think you have nothing to share, and then it happens.  You prayerfully reflect on a small, seemingly insignificant point, and there you are.

That's where I am this morning.  And to explain that seemingly insignificant point, let me go to Peter.

 2 Peter 3:15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.


It has always been a comfort to me that I was not the only one to whom Paul frequently sailed overhead on.    But in the last couple weeks, as Dennis Miller explained the backdrop of 1 Corinthians 7, I began to see just why that was happening, and what we can do about it.


Firstly, Pastor Miller earlier established that Paul was no local yokel.  He was intelligent in the extreme.  Which makes sense; he was, before Christ, a Pharisee.  That entailed having a good grip on logical processes to get from point A to point B, sometimes in microscopic detail.  That same attention to detail, that same mastery of logic, he brings to his letters as well.  The difference being, now he is inspired by God, which Peter also tells us.  In many ways, he is the Calculus prof teaching remedial math students.


Secondly, the language that this is coming from is early Greek.As Pastor Miller points out, this language has no punctuation marks.  We read translations of this which tend to make Paul speak in what we might call run-on sentences.  One place of that is what Miller covered this week, involving his instructions to the married people:

7 Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me:

It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 

Now, as you and I read that, we see Paul giving a command.  But that is NOT how he meant it.  Let me switch from the KJV to the ESV and you'll see what I mean:

7 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 

Now we see QUOTATION MARKS.  He wasn't giving a command- he was repeating a question asked of him!  When you aren't a linguist it can be hard to catch subtle meanings like that.  To us, Greek is all one big run-on sentence, and Hebrew is backwards.  Here is a matter that my Catholic friends don't quite get.  When I tell them that they should read the Bible of their own and question the Church Fathers in their interpretation, they think I mean that I can just pick up a Bible and know exactly what the passage means on my own, and then they bust me for being "so much smarter/closer to God than the Church Fathers".  But I do not do that- I rely on men whose prayer life and connection to the Ultimate Author, the Holy Spirit, is much closer than mine, I lean on historical teachers who have studied both language and culture- and I check my sources. 

The other day I had decided to check on just why the Catholic Church believes Mary was "assumed" (taken bodily) into heaven.  Apparently the root of it came from a Gnostic Gospel (remember "apparently") in which Mary died and was laid in a tomb- but once again, Thomas was late to the party.  When they opened the tomb so he could see ( and why, exactly, would he want/need to?), the body was gone.  And even though this was from a book that was NEVER accepted as Cannon, they combined that with the fact that they couldn't conceive how Jesus could have been born of a normal (AKA with Original sin) person, that Mary had to be special as well, and that somehow turned into sitting at His side in heaven telling Him what we are praying and pleading our case to Him so He could plead it to God, yada yada yada.  And that I should just accept it, however it happened, because the Church Fathers decided it did.  And yet, you have this:

10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.


"Examining the scriptures to see if (what Paul told them) was so."  Which not only tells us that we do have to check one against the other- which sometimes requires a knowledge we don't have, but leads us to point #3.

Third, Paul becomes hard to understand because often, we try to make him say what we WANT him to.  Last week, I believe, I pointed out where some people try to point out that Jesus never DIRECTLY  attacked homosexuality (not true), thus it must be okay, just a "cultural thing".  Today, Pastor Miller mentioned being approached by a young adult who claimed that the Bible didn't give you directions on marriage- which can only be explained as a statement by someone that didn't want to HEAR instruction on marriage.  I admit that I tried to do this very thing during my divorce many moons ago.


So where am I going with this?  That it is not enough to just read the Word, just like it is not enough to just listen to me.  While I know how to work a concordance, I do not speak Greek or Hebrew and have not been immersed in all the several cultures that the Bible touches- though I prolly have a better working knowledge than the local yokel.  I have to be taught.  And that comes from examination and prayer, sure, but it also includes being taught by those who know more than I do.  The more I learn, the more I am humbled by what I have yet TO learn.

So we see in my difficulties with Paul that:

1- Paul was very smart, very meticulous, and I need to learn which bites are small enough to chew at a time.

2- Other languages are not my forte, and Google Translate doesn't replace hearing a commentary from a scholar well-versed in the area- and checking that against other men of faith.

3- We need to approach the scriptures prayerfully, opening eyes and ears to what God is saying TO US, and not what we want Him to say to us.

And one other thing I hadn't hit.  Though the entire Bible is inspired by God, it was written by men, who brought their own personalities to the table.  Catching on to the logical, methodical way of Paul isn't much help reading the more mystical, esoteric take of John.  And all four of these thoughts lead you to one conclusion:  You can't do this stuff on your own.  Listen to your pastor.  Reach out to people whose faith you respect.  Do some digging on your own, based in prayer.