So, a few weeks ago I posted a blog about asking the right questions of Scripture, and the discomfort I feel with thinking of it as a guidebook for life. Luckily for me, there are people out there who are much smarter and more eloquent than yours truly, and today I was blessed by the words of Matt Chandler (lead teaching pastor at The Village Church in Dallas) on the subject. The following short video is a promotional campaign for a curriculum series which Chandler is associated with, though most of its three and a half minutes are a simply stated call to read the Bible with a God-centered focus.
Bear in mind, however, that many scholars hesitate to draw connections on a microscopic scale between every Old Testament passage and Christ. For Chandler and many other intelligent fellows, Christ is the “true and better” version of everything in the OT. Make up your own mind on that. Good luck.
Regardless, recognizing that the Bible is God’s story and not ours is something we all need to recognize, and Chandler does it beautifully.
Matt Chandler – David, Goliath & The Gospel from The Gospel Project | LifeWay on Vimeo.
So what knowlege am I looking to gain from studying the word and a pile of books about the word? Its hard to get what I’m trying to say expressed through the keyboard, but in my school classes I have classes for different things, such as Material Science. We study composition, strength, applications, cost, so we know what material will be best for each application. So I guess what I’m asking is if there is a class that I’m in, metaphorically speaking, and if so, what am I studying?
Laef,
If the Word is God’s self-revelation, his expression of himself on paper, then what we stand to gain from study of the Word is God himself. In your class on material science, you are learning that steel makes a better bridge than balsa wood, and there is much of that same type of instruction in Scripture. For example, the Bible explicitly prohibits sexual immorality, drunkenness, and stealing, in much the same way that your material science textbook explicitly prohibits you from using balsa wood to build a suspension bridge over Chesapeake Bay. However, the more important reality of those biblical prohibitions is what they reveal about the heart of God and how his expectations and desires for creation communicate his character. If we are metaphorically in Bible class, then what we’re really studying is God, by way of what he has revealed about himself.
So to be a minister is to seek and gain knowledge about God and his character and simply relate that to other people?
To be a minister is to shepherd people by offering biblical theology which bears fruit in people’s lives by building in them a desire to know God and be known by God. We cast seeds, God grows them.