For both the Spring semester
and Summer School (which just concluded today at BCM), I had the privilege of teaching
Hermeneutics to a total of 25-30 students. I had a fabulous time! The student's
were very engaged with the topic, and I can think of only one other class that
I could possibly be more excited about (1 Peter). Our main textbook was Duvall
and Hayes' Grasping God's Word,
with Sire's Scripture Twisting as
also required reading.
As I stress with my students,
properly studying the context of any passage remains essential. Even
Proverbs—possibly the one book in the Bible where you could grab a couple
verses and not be too concerned about what precedes and follows—even in
Proverbs the reader must understand the ongoing conflict between "Lady
Wisdom" versus the "Strange Woman," as well as how the entire
book must be read in light of 1:7.
A perfect example of the
importance of context is in how well-meaning Christians quote Psalm
11:3—"Boy, this country [or church, or society, or local coffee shop] sure
is going downhill fast! You know, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the
righteous do?" Indeed, how many messages have been preached with that as
the tagline, generally focusing on what the "foundations" are and how
we need to get back to whatever they are?
Friend, if we truly pay
attention to what Scripture is saying, you'll understand that true believers
are not supposed to be saying
"if the foundations be destroyed . . ." Consider the entire Psalm. In verse
1, we have the basic theme: David trusts in the Lord. Then, immediately
following, we have discordant voice introduced: that of "Naysayers,"
the ones who wish David to abandon hope and join them in their doom and gloom
philosophy. "Flee to the
mountains," they say. With parallelism in verse 2—"The wicked are
bending their bow, they're getting ready to shoot!" Why? "To shoot at
the righteous."
Here's the key—the
"Naysayers" are still talking in verse 3! In other words, verse 3 is
not the theme of the Psalm, the message we should take to heart. Rather, verse
3, "If the foundations be destroyed . . ." is the very statement
David (and the Psalm) rebukes!
The (perhaps well-meaning) "Naysayers,"
then, are bemoaning the fact that everything's crumbling, and they've thrown up
their hands in despair—"It's too late! The foundations are destroyed! What
can good people do about it?"
Listen to King David's
rebuke—"The Lord is in his holy temple, his throne is in the heavens,
God's eyes are quite aware of what's going on, and God will take care of
things!"
My friends, when you state
(whatever the circumstances), "If the foundations be destroyed, what can
the righteous do?", quite possibly you have allowed yourself to join the
side of the "Naysayers" and are seriously questioning the Sovereignty
of God! So long as the Lord is in His sacred temple, so long as God reigns from
heaven, the question is absurd at best and dangerously close to sacrilege at
worst.
This is not to downplay or in
any way minimize true, Biblical Lament. I have made it a point to introduce
legitimate Lament to my students as an under-neglected genre (with thanks to
Dr. Heath Thomas of Southeastern who radically changed my thinking on this
matter). True Biblical Lament cries out to God in despair, even questions God,
yet does so from the perspective of faith.
Psalm 11:3, however, is not
Lament; rather, it is whining, a "woe is us" attitude that focuses on
the deterioration of society (or whatever) and forgets God has called us to a
sacred mission to be the light to the world. In other words, when we bemoan the
fact that the light seems to be going out in the world, we are actually
bemoaning our own failure with the suggestion that God himself has not
adequately equipped us.
Context, then, remains
essential to any legitimate study of the Bible. Yet many preachers and teachers
strip verses out of their context as if it didn't matter, as if those verses
could appear anywhere. Folks, the Holy Spirit has inspired location just as much as content! As an example of the absurdity of being able to
conduct legitimate interpretation without context, I play a little game with my
Hermeneutics students: I have them divide up into teams, then try to guess the location
in the Bible, the significance, and the application of the following passages
(#6 is especially difficult—no student has successfully guessed or interpreted
it yet!) Also, one of these is not actually from the canonical books but from
the Apocrypha (Brenton's translation; all others are in KJV English); can you
guess which one? Some of these are actually kind of easy, some are tough.
Let's Play: Guess that Context!
1. And the sword shall abide
on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of
their own counsels.
2. Binding his foal unto the
vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine,
and his clothes in the blood of grapes:
3. Thy disciples fast not
4. Insomuch as God hath delivered
us from great perils, we thank him highly
5. The mountains were not
found.
6. bestow that money for
whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for
strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth
7. And thy meat which thou
shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt
thou eat it.
8. So she gleaned in the
field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned: and it was about an ephah
of barley.
