The Jesus Book

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship

Sabbath, September 29, 2012

How to Interpret the Bible, Part 2

Perhaps you missed it but The Hindu, the major English language newspaper in southern India, reported this week on a celebration to mark the 200^th anniversary of the translation of the gospels into Malayalam. One of the dignitaries noted that Christianity had existed in the region for 2000 years but had spoken the language of the people for only 200.

The translation was the work of a scholar and priest named Philipose Ramban. Ever since Christianity had come to India—according to tradition, brought by the the apostle Thomas—the Christian church in southern India used the ancient language of Syriac in their worship.

It would be like us using Greek as our language of worship. The only way you could understand what was said in church or what was written in the Bible was to go to seminary and learn Greek. Even then, most people would never have more than a superficial “head knowledge” of the most important words of our religion because Greek is not integrated into our lives. We don't think in Greek. We don't dream in Greek. We don't visit in Greek.

The believers in south India were devout. They loved God. They prayed. They loved their neighbors. But there was a vast chasm between the heart of their spiritual life and the language of the Bible and public worship.

Then Philipose Ramban set to work and translated the Syriac gospels into the ordinary language of Malayalam. His “Gospels” was published by Curier Press in Bombay in 1811. The translation caused a scandal. The church in that region of India actually split with one faction beginning to use Malayalam in their worship services. The other faction rejected this vulgarization of worship. They insisted that true worship could only be conducted in Syriac, the language of St. Thomas.

This story highlights one of the central commitments of the Christian religion: to make God's word available in the language of ordinary people.

From the earliest years of Christianity, the church has prized the written words of the New Testament.

From wikipedia: “Parts of the New Testament have been preserved in more . . . [than] 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian. The dates of these manuscripts range from c. 125 (the John Ryland's manuscript, P52; oldest copy of John fragments) to the introduction of printing in Germany in the 15th century. The vast majority of these manuscripts date after the 10th century.” (I quote wikipedia here not as “an authority” but as a convenient summary of widely accepted fact.)

The church does not imagine that there is some magic in the specific words themselves. Within a hundred years of the time the New Testament was written, people were already translating it into other languages so people could hear the ideas and stories of Jesus in their own tongue. “Possessing the Word of God” was not the goal. Rather “hearing the Word of God.” And hearing meant understanding. For that to happen the Word had to be in the words ordinary people used in the ordinary affairs of life.

Why were the Christians in south India using a Syriac Bible for more than a thousand years? Because they were the descendants of Christians who migrated from Syria in the 300s. They brought with them their language and their Bibles—which were, naturally, in Syriac. Then as the language changed, they failed to keep their Bibles up to date.

It's just like what happened in English after the King James Version was produced. The translators used the language of ordinary people. Four hundred years later, that language had become antiquated. The very language that had helped people connect with God had become a barrier to understanding God. Fortunately, we now have modern translations and the Bible again speaks our language.

In most of the world where people revere the Quran, the people cannot read the Quran. Translations are not respected. The only “authentic Quran” is in Arabic. Since most Muslims don't speak Arabic, their “Bible” is an unreadable book. No wonder they are susceptible to manipulation by clerics.

It's important that we who revere the Bible don't fall into the trap of shouting our respect for a book that we don't really know. And we can only know it by reading it.

So we have the Bible in our language. Still the question rises: How do we understand it? How do we rightly interpret it? Today's sermon is part 2 in a series addressing that question.

Let's begin with on of the most famous passages in the Bible that talks about how to interpret what we read:

Then Jesus said to them, "You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?" Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:25-27

This conversation occurred on the third day since Jesus was crucified. Two men were hiking from Jerusalem to the little town of Emmaus about seven miles away. As they were walking, they were joined by a stranger. He asked what it is they were talking about. They answered, “What? Are you the only person in Palestine who doesn't know what's happened this weekend? You haven't heard how our rulers arrested and crucified Jesus of Nazareth? He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. We hoped he was the promised Messiah. Some of our women claim he has been resurrected from the dead.”

At this point, Jesus interrupted them,

“You foolish people! Do you really find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures? Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?”

Then Jesus teaches them how to interpret the Bible. He begins with Moses and runs all through the Old Testament showing them how the ancient prophets had predicted the very events they were lamenting.

This becomes a central feature of Christian teaching. Jesus' live, ministry, death and resurrection happened JUST AS THE PROPHETS PREDICTED. Christians came to interpret the entire Bible as the Book of Jesus.

In the very first Christian sermon, recorded in Acts 2, Peter makes repeated references to Old Testament passages in support of his argument that Jesus is the Messiah and that his death and resurrection were in God's plan.

Peter's second sermon again cites OT passages in support of his claims about Jesus.

But God was fulfilling what all the prophets had foretold about the Messiah—that he must suffer these things. . . . For he must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things, as God promised long ago through his holy prophets. Moses said, 'The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your own people. Listen carefully to everything he tells you.' [Peter is quoting Deut 18:15.]. Then Moses said, 'Anyone who will not listen to that Prophet will be completely cut off from God's people.' [Here Peter quotes Deut 18:19 and Lev 23:29]. "

[Peter concludes,] “Starting with Samuel, every prophet spoke about what is happening today.” Acts 3:18-24

When Peter was invited to the house of Cornelius, the devout Roman centurion, Peter preached,

“[Jesus] is the one all the prophets testified about, saying that everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name." Acts 10:43.

Sometimes when you read the ancient Christian writers, you'll find yourself wondering, how did they figure that out? Does that passage really predict Jesus?

Over the next centuries as Christian preachers kept thinking about the whole Bible as the “Jesus Book,” they came to see Jesus everywhere in the Old Testament.

In Genesis 3, God says to Snake, “And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." (Gen. 3:15). An uninitiated reader might think this is simply a fairy tale about the origin of the common human antipathy to snakes. But Christian interpreters saw it as a picture of the work of Jesus. Jesus would be wounded (dreadfully, fatally) by the devil. But Jesus fatal wound would be healed. He would rise from the grave and ultimately crush the forces of evil.

Christians learned to see the mission of Jesus in the work of the priests in the ancient Jewish temple.

David, the King of the Jews, modeled the honor and sovereignty of Jesus the King of kings, Lord of the nations.

The prophets—the spokespersons for God—came to be seen as small-scale models of the grand work of the Messiah who would be the supreme Word of God.

Every story became a springboard for sermons about the ministry of Jesus. When the Jewish people invaded the land of Canaan and sacked the city of Jericho, they were under orders to kill every person and even all the animals. They were to obliterate the place. But they saved one person, a prostitute named Rahab. And they saved all the people who were with Rahab in her house. Why? Because when Jewish spies were casing the city prior to the invasion, Rahab hid them from the police. The spies promised her: Since you saved us, we'll save you. And they kept their word.

It's a messy story. Christian preachers turned it into a metaphor for the work of Christ. Humans, all the residents of planet earth were doomed, destined for destruction. But the human, Jesus Christ, had earned salvation by his righteous life. When the world is destroyed, Jesus' house—that is the church—will be spared. And everyone in the house with him will be saved.

Your first thought, reading the story of Rahab would probably not be to think of the ministry of Jesus. You might not think of this even on your third or fourth reading of the story. But if you were a Christian theologian reading the story for the 20^th or 30^th time and you have been trained to think of the book you are reading—the Bible—as the Jesus Book, then maybe you'll see it.

If you spend enough time in the Jesus community, thinking constantly about Jesus, asking constantly as you read the Bible, “what is this passage telling me about Jesus, you, too, will begin seeing Jesus everywhere.

Another story: Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.

God speaks to Abraham and orders him to take his beloved son Isaac to a distant mountain and offer his son there as a sacrifice. It's a horrible story. We recoil reading it. How could God ask such a thing? How could any decent father obey such a command. But how did ancient Christians read the story?

They saw Abraham as playing the role of God the Father. He had a beloved Son. He sacrificed his son. Because we understand the angst of Abraham in this story, we understand the angst of God the Father in sending Jesus to earth.

In the real story, at the last minute an angel cancels the order to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham then spots a ram caught in the bushes and offers the ram as a sacrifice instead of his son Isaac. Christians then understood us as “Isaac” under an order of execution. Jesus becomes the ram who takes our place. He dies that we might live.

Another story: The suffering servant of Isaiah 53.

My servant grew up in the LORD's presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows [fn] that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.

If you read Isaiah looking for obvious clues that this passage is about the Messiah, you'll be disappointed. But if you are a Christian reading Isaiah as part of the Jesus Book, you'll immediately see the reality of Jesus portrayed in the pathos of these words.

There is no end to this: Jesus is the shepherd of Psalm 23, the lamb of the sacrificial system. He is the king (David) and the king's son (Solomon). Elijah and Elisha prefigure John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus is everywhere . . . when you learn to look.

This kind of approach to interpreting the Bible anchored Christian reverence for Jesus. It became the foundation of the church's belief that Jesus was not only Wonderful, Counselor, Healer. He was also the Everlasting Father, the Almighty God. Jesus was seen as the grand climax of God's plan and God's action through the ages.

Secondly, reading the Bible as “the Jesus Book” led to a “progressive” understanding of God. The fury and harsh sometimes evinced by God in the OT are seen as less authentic revelations of what God is really like. The view of God in the OT came to be regarded as preparatory, provisional. Jesus was the final word, the authoritative interpretation of God and of all words about God.

Understanding the Bible as the Jesus Book invites readers to shift their attention from the literal stories to spiritual applications. The snake in the garden is not a snake, it is a representation of the Evil One. The animal skins that God offers Adam and Eve after their sin and before their expulsion from the garden are not merely fur coats, they are symbols of God's continuing protection even as they wander from the garden under a curse.

This approach to interpreting the Bible can be frustrating to our modern rationalistic minds. It lends itself to worship and music and devotion. It is nearly useless in rational defenses of doctrine or arguments about “truth.”

The point of the Bible is to connect us to the Living Jesus, the one who died and rose again and who promised—I am with you always, even to the end.