I don't need to have a foreign meaning arise out of the text that I can apply to myself.
I don't need the Bible for that. I can do that with comic books. Okay.
Lu asks; How am I supposed to juggle the idea that the Bible is for all people,
for all time, with the idea that I'm supposed to interpret the Bible
through the eyes of the ancient Near East?
Because application and exegesis are two different things.
Okay, our job is to take the text as we have it, and to do "exegesis",
which is the fancy academic word for trying to discern what the text says, in its own context.
You know, with its own writers and readers, that contemporaneous audience.
So, that's the goal, that's our job to try to do that, to figure out what it means.
And then, if we know or knew what the biblical writer was saying to his audience:
"here's the teaching point. Here's how I want you to live,
here's how you should think about God,
here's how you should think about yourself, here's why you're in trouble.
Here's why life is terrible."
If we can figure out what the communicative goal was,
then we can take that, and then internalize it: Okay, how does this information relate to me?
I don't need to have a foreign meaning arise out of the text that I can apply to myself.
I don't need the Bible for that. I can do that with comic books. Okay.
It's just, why would I?... If I treat this as the word of God,
I would want to know what God wanted this person to communicate
so that I could apply it well to me.
If I'm not endeavoring to do that, then why am I stuck here doing this with the Bible?
I can get a spiritual buzz from lots of places. The goal of Bible study
is not a spiritual buzz, okay. I actually put that in my book so I'm quoted there.
Application is something that we all should do and can do.
But we should want to be sure that the way we're applying the text
is in line with what the text actually means.
Now, here's what happens typically; pastors do this, Christians do this,
I did this as a young Christian.
It's like, "boy, I want to say something about the Bible to somebody else,
because I got a bone to pick with that guy, or that girl,
and I'm going to find a verse to nail on with it."
Or, "you know, this will be a great sermon, I know just what 10 people in the congregation
need to hear. Where can I go find that? I'm gonna find it somewhere in the Bible."
Or "I'll go ahead with my sermon or my conversation.
And I'll just loop a Bible verse in there and bend it to my will."
Chances are really high that I never needed to do that in the first place.
There's probably going to be something in the Bible somewhere for real,
that does speak to that need, or that is appropriate for this conversation.
I don't need to make something up to make that connection.
But it takes a lot more work.
It takes a lot more knowledge of Scripture to line those things up.
So that I know that when I preached this sermon, okay,
I'm making this point for the congregation.
And that point is necessary. It's needed. It's important.
And I know that the point I'm making really does derive from this passage.
Because I got news for you; there gonna be people in your congregation that will see
that or that will know that there's no relationship between these two things.
That you're basically sucking it out of your thumb.
Okay, thinking people know when they're not being asked to think.
There gonna be people out there who know it.
And who will wonder, "Oh, good grief, five chapters later over here
the Gospel's making that same point.
Why don't you just use the passage that fit?" but you know,
it's a good question, why didn't you?
So what I'm saying is we just don't need to do that. We just don't need to do it.