Lighthouse Keeper

One of the main reasons people get intimidated by the Bible is because they haven’t received a revelation that the Holy Spirit is the great Teacher and will always be teaching his Word. 

Racing straight into a commentary, or nowadays ChatGPT, will guarantee that you get someone else’s revealed word and not necessarily your own. It’s challenging because it has become very fashionable to scream “context” at anyone when they start preaching or teaching the word of God. While context is important, it can also dilute a unique revealed Word and assumes that there is only one correct way to interpret a scripture. There isn’t. (We currently have 45,000 Christian denominations so there’s your first clue). Prayerful reflection and meditation on the word of God is always the best place to start. Then you can do a bit of colouring in with other people’s teaching and commentaries as necessary. 

I’ll give you an example. 

The other morning, I was doing a little study on Paul’s shipwreck in the book of Acts. 

One passage that jumped out at me was in Acts 27: 43-44.

43 But the centurion wanted to spare Paul’s life and kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. 44 The rest were to get there on planks or on other pieces of the ship. In this way everyone reached land safely.

Those who could swim were ordered to swim for shore. The ones that couldn’t float on pieces of the broken ship. 

My personal revelation of this Scripture was concern that a shipwreck was occurring in a supposely safe harbour. Why did the shipwreck need to occur if it was always God’s divine providence to save all the lives on board the boat at Malta? Why did the able swimmers make for the shore and not rescue the others? Those that couldn’t swim were left on broken planks?

I went to another commentary that had a completely different revelation. The boat (often a picture of the church or Jesus, Jesus and Noah’s ark redemption etc) was a symbol of the saving grace of salvation and how we can’t save ourselves and need the broken boat (the body of Christ) to get us safely to shore. Instantly I thought, “wow I’ve completely missed all that”. 

Then, I went to the great Matthew Henry commentary and read his analysis:

“Although there are great difficulties on the on the way of promised salvation , that salvation will be brought about without fail and even a shipwreck may be a means of saving lives so that when all seems to be lost, everything proves to be safe ,even though it is on boards and broken pieces of ship” 

You see the scriptures and commentaries build on each other so you start to get a clearer view of the picture of salvation that is being illustrated here in Paul’s story. Simply screaming “context” at people and hammering away at ChatGPT will not get you to the wonderful revelation that the Holy Spirit can teach through his own, very much alive, Word. 

Taking time to meditate, linger, contemplate, and savour the word of God as you ask questions and see new insights in the text ensures that you will always be humbled by the richness and depth of scripture and also have life-long learning with the Person who wrote it.