Search the Scriptures

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Search the Scriptures

 

The thrill of discovery

 

With an open Bible in his hand, he came at me, this young brother of mine in Christ, all eagerness and excitement.

 

“I say,” he exclaimed, “have you seen this? It’s just great! A simply lovely idea!” And his forefinger stabbed away at a verse on the page before him. I peered over his shoulder at the text, savoured the delight in his voice, and put one or two leading questions to make his point clearer and to test its soundness. I avoided telling him that, in fact, I had seen it before, for it would have been a shame to tarnish his joy of discovery by giving the impression that his new find was commonplace. For a disciple of the Lord there are few thrills in life to match that of a new discovery in the exploration of Holy Scripture.

 

There for the asking

 

And such ideas are there, almost for the asking, like Newton’s pebbles on the beach—some more shapely and more lovely than others, one here or there with a touch of uniqueness, fit to be polished up and set. But all of them, whatever their quality, have been smoothed and shaped by God—and, what’s more, have been lying there all your lifetime, waiting to be found, that they might please and profit you.

 

The supply of them seems to be limitless. For the believer the Bible is not like a chess problem or a Rembrandt or a Beethoven trio. With these there’s a limit to the fascination which they exercise and the joy they impart. But not so with the Bible. So often there comes the moment when that well-loved passage with which you are familiar these many years suddenly glints with a new tonic truth which you never suspected could be latent there!

 

But this can only happen when you fulfil an important condition laid down by our Lord himself: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” (John 7:17). Got the point? If a man wants to do God’s will, he shall know (learn?) concerning the teaching. In other words unless at Bible reading time your soul thirsts for the living God, you will most likely come out by the same door at which you go in. Little inner eagerness for Bible truth means meagre reward for the time spent on it.

 

Dedication

 

Bible study is not necessarily a matter of concordances, commentaries, midnight oil and bleary eyes. That is one way of going about it never to be decried; for without these devoted painstaking accurate people we should let ourselves in for a lot of howlers. There will never, alas, be a glut of students of this kind. They are always in short supply.

 

But all who dedicate themselves to Christ must in some way or another dedicate themselves to the Book about him. The Jewish rabbis were meticulous in their Bible searching, and they got a lot out of it (for the Word of God rewards all who come to it not hating it) but they concentrated on the rind and the pips of their “apple of gold,” and destroyed the best of it.

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Easy Examples

1. — “Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you,” said Jonah to those decent heathen shipmen (1:12) and thus he, whose experience foreshadowed that of the Son of God, also taught the great and mysterious truth that if men are to be saved, a Man must die. So simple, yet so telling!
    
   
2. —On the cross Jesus said: “It is finished; and he bowed his head, and gave up the spirit.” (John 19:30). Then, doesn’t this imply that when he spoke those words his head was uplifted? And he hanging in utter exhaustion on a cross! Think of it! So here was no gasp of relief that at last the long drawn-out agony was coming to its end. That “It is finished” was a shout of triumph.
    
   
3. —In Gethsemane, the disciples had all run for their lives (Matthew 26:56). And next day only John was there at the cross (John 19:26) —apparently! But whether close to his Lord or not, Peter was there —as one word in his first epistle reveals (5:1). And some­how it seems right that this great hearted, loyal disciple should share the suffering of his Lord, as well as the triumph (Mark 16:7; 1 Cor 15:5).
   

Let no one say: “Discovery of this kind is beyond me; I don’t have the flair.” It is possible—with varying degrees of success—for all who are really prepared to give their minds to it.

 

Insight and Discipline

 

Even so, if you are to get anywhere, a thirst for greater insight into God’s Word needs to be reinforced with self-discipline. Your study will not always be easy going. Sparkling jewels are not the treasure trove of every search. So in the less rewarding times you will need to counter discouragement with a strong resol­ution to keep at it.

 

“Search the Scriptures” was the Lord’s command­ment. Or was it? The point is worth investigating, for it is an equally valid translation to read the words thus: “Ye (Jewish rabbis to whom he was talking) search the Scriptures, because ye are confident that in them ye have eternal life (and in this ye are absolutely right, for) they are continually bearing witness concerning me, yet ye have no inclination to come to me so that ye might have life” (John 5:39).

 

Read like that, it becomes obvious that the “punch line” is not the first one. What good is any man’s Scripture searching if it doesn’t reveal Christ to him and set him on the way to Christ and eternal life? It is “witness concerning me... come to me... have life,” that matters. And all our searching of the Scriptures is useless rabbinism if the spotlight does not rest on Christ.

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The next stage

 

Now a step further. Here are a few suggestions how to make Bible reading one of the most absorbing activities in your life.

 

First, learn to read a passage slowly and with care. That scamper through a chapter in five minutes, or through all your daily readings in twenty, is a good opportunity that could have been better used. Some details appear so obvious that your eyes and your mind skip quickly past them. So take a good look at every expression which does not appear to carry its meaning on its face. Everybody knows that Paul whilst he was preaching the gospel, also worked for his own living, as a tent-maker, but it is surprisingly easy to overlook that he also worked to provide subsistence for those who shared his missionary journeys (Acts 20:34).

 

Read with attention a passage like Nehemiah 7:70-72, and it becomes suddenly obvious that when the Jews were captives in Babylon they were certainly not a race of oppressed and tyrannized slaves. On the contrary, they must have done extremely well for themselves to be able to amass such a fantastic contribution of wealth for the new temple.

 

Why should Paul associate his own message with such a collection of smear words as there are in 1 Thessalon­ians 2:3? “For our exhortation was not of deceit, not of uncleanness, nor in guile.” A passage such as this only makes sense on the assumption that accusations of this sort had been levelled at the apostle and had to be rebutted before they damaged the faith of the new believers.

 

There are always finds like these to be made, big and small, none of them negligible. He who seeks will surely find.

 

This brief survey takes for granted that you will want to mark points of importance in your Bible, but be content to underline just the key words.

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Marginal References

 

Next, make that extra bit of effort to follow up marginal references. Time and again difficulties are explained and new ideas stimulated by this simplest of all aids. Here are two examples from consecutive verses:

 

“I am he that searcheth the reins and hearts” (Rev 2:23). It is the Lord Jesus who speaks. The simple meaning of the idiom used here is awe-inspiring in itself. The two-version Bible promptly adds another eleven places where the same words or idea occur (a quick glance at the concordance brings to light another eight and there are probably more?). How important this must be when God’s Book says it twenty times over! But if you know yourself, you have to admit ruefully that you need far more reminders than that.

 

And it is worth noticing too, that whilst several of those mg. refs. are about the Lord Jesus (like Rev 2. 23), most of them refer to the Almighty Himself. You don’t need to be a trinitarian to get the point of that!

 

The next verse has these straightforward words: “I will put upon you none other burden, “with a mg. ref. to Acts 15. 28. So here is Jesus quoting the considered opinion of his own apostle!—or should the rest of that verse 28 teach us that the words came from the Lord in the first place? Look it up, and see.

 

A third example which got me excited not long ago was Paul’s phrase in what was probably the last thing he ever wrote: “and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion” (2 Timothy 4. 17). That small reference letter revealed (what I should have known without any mg. ref.) that this is practically a verbatim quote from Psalm 22. 21. But Psalm 22 is most certainly a psalm of Messiah. Then what was Paul doing appropriating Scriptures about Jesus to his own situation?

 

A little careful hunting backwards and forwards reveals some more interesting facts from the context:

 

Paul in 2 Timothy 4:16,17	Messiah in Psalm 22
At my first answer no man stood with me; but all men forsook me.	Trouble is near: there is  none to help (v 11).
The Lord stood with me,	Be not thou far from me, O Lord (v 19).
and strengthened me;	My strength, haste thee to help me (v 19).
that by me the preaching might be fully known;	I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren (v 22).
And that all the Gentiles might hear.	All the kindreds of the Gentiles shall worship (v 27).

 

Surely, then, Paul was rejoicing to know that he, who had been the most bitter enemy of the Truth of Christ, could now approximate so closely in his own experience to the work and suffering of Christ his Lord.

 

And all this from one mg. ref.

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Being tuned in

 

Akin to this very gainful activity is another where you depend on no external aids (save one: Psalm 119: 18). Wherever you go in the Bible your ear, if it is properly attuned, will be catching echoes (or anticipation) of what you are already familiar with elsewhere. And thus you get busy making your own unique set of mg. refs. For example, it is the easiest thing in the world to trace four, or maybe five, allusions to the Lord’s Prayer in Galatians 1:4,5 (compare also 1 Chronicles 29:10-12).

 

It is not so easy, but every bit as satisfying, to trace every idea in Paul’s speech on Mars’ Hill back to Isaiah 45 (with two or three of them, maybe, in Isaiah 40); and thus you can give the lie to those who accuse Paul of trying to preach the gospel to philosophers via philos­ophy and of making a mess of it in the process.

 

The Concordance

 

There is no need to emphasise the incomparable value of a good concordance, but keep it handy. If you have to go to a bookcase or into another room for it, you won’t—human nature is like that.

 

Besides the ABC of tracking down an elusive reference, the concordance will help in a wide variety of ways, and will illuminate many and many a passage.

 

The suspicion arises that the Hebrew word nogah always refers to the Shekinah Glory of God. Ten minutes with Young or Strong (or five minutes with the Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance) will provide a definite “Yes” or “No”. And similarly you can research into the possibility that nega (no connection) always refers to leprosy.

 

With no more trouble it is possible to settle whether King James’ version really does justice to Joseph of Arimathea when it says that he “waited for the kingdom of God” (Luke 23: 51).

 

The concordance reveals, by a simple count of lines on page, that the word “Servant” comes twenty times in the second part of Isaiah (ch. 40-66): The last of these is 53:11: “By his knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many” —and thereafter the “many” are referred to eleven times as “my servants”, just as Jesus after his resurrection begins to speak of his disciples as “my brethren”.

 

Is “interesting” or “remarkable” the right word to use about such concordance finds?

 

Foundation Principles

 

Again, with a year of Witness ahead of you, ought not your Bible study to include a special re-furbishing of the First Principles of your faith? There are many well-trodden paths that can still afford considerable pleasure whilst at the same time bringing home to your soul that what we call “The Truth” really is the Truth.

 

Settle down to find out what “baptism for the dead” and Job’s Satan and John’s “pre-existence” passages are really about. See how many Old Testament antici­pations of the Virgin Birth you can track down, and where else, besides Genesis 14, Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7, the Scriptures teach the great truth of a Melchizedek priesthood.

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Practical Aids

 

Lastly, a short list of simple practical things everyone can do to make Bible reading stimulating and helpful.

 

1. —Use different versions to throw new light on pas­sages. But beware of the slovenly unprincipled habit, too much with us these days, of skipping from trans­lation to translation until you come across a turn of phrase that chimes in with some pet notion of your own. Remember, most of the modern versions are not accurate translations but paraphrases. So when they differ radically from the AV or RV, never believe what Phillips or NEB tells you until you have found verification elsewhere.
    
   
2. —Develop the habit of bottling every idea you hear or find. Whether important or not now, one day it may turn out to be valuable. So preserve every bit of useful exposition. The lazy man trusts to his memory—and then one day wakes up to the fact that it has lost its edge, and he the poorer for it.
    
   
3. —Get into the way of talking about whatever bit of Bible study you happen to be interested in. Even if you do not feel that you have anything of special value to impart, talk just the same. The mere fact of expressing an idea or a problem in words will help tidy your thinking about it, will set your mind at work on it again, and will probably evoke from the other person some fresh approach, some new slant, or some worthwhile comment, to help you make further progress.
    
   
4. One of the most shameful features of modern Christ­adelphian life is the way easy conversation about the Scriptures has gone out. Is it really the case that the people of the Book have little to say about the Book? Then see that you make your contribution towards rectifying this lamentable situation.
    
   
5. —Be alert when you read. Instead of giving atten­tion to the Scriptures when you are going drowsy in bed or when you are relaxing in the depths of an arm­chair, learn the habit of sitting up at a table. You will be more alert, more likely to take the trouble to make a note of some query or useful discovery and more ready to search for that book of reference which might clear up a difficulty. In other words, be businesslike. The Word of God deserves more than the fag-end of one’s mental and physical energies.
    
   
6. —Memorise. Set yourself to learn by heart favourite chapters of Scripture. In ancient days the Jews knew the value of this practice. Modern education, set on making all learning easy, and completely sold on the decadent principle of “do your own thing,” has greatly neglected this invaluable aid to good living. Those who are willing to take the trouble (and it can be hard work) to memorise will be thankful in later days that they have done so. For those in their teens and twenties there is no excuse. Over sixties may consider themselves exempt.
   

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Opening the Scriptures

 

Three people walked a dusty road. They all knew their Scriptures well. One of them knew the text so well, he could hardly think or talk about anything except in a Bible context. As a lad, in obedience to the command­ment, he had actually written out his own copy of the Scriptures.

 

The others also knew their Bible, or thought they did. Daily reading was part of their life. Quote a phrase, and as like as not one of them would finish the passage for you.

 

But walking eight miles that day taught them how little they knew. They had the words all right, but not the real meaning.

 

“Fools! Slow of heart!” was his reproach. And they couldn’t resent it, because now they knew he was right.

 

“Christ in his sufferings —Christ in his glory —all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Of course, of course!

 

And now he couldn’t tell them enough, or fast enough. Friend, be with us not only in our going, but also in our meal and our evening leisure. We insist!

 

But for that opening of the Scriptures and their new­born resolution, would he have been made known to them in the Breaking of Bread?

 

 

THE COMMITTEE DEDICATION 75 - WITNESS 76

 

Published by the

 

Christadelphian Auxiliary Lecturing Society

 

http://www.godsaves.co.uk

 

SearchTheScriptures.pdf