by Eric North

As a pastor I think of myself as a kind of professional Bible reader and explainer. People exist under the impression that you intuitively know what everything in the Bible means.  Over my years in ministry there have invariably been people who have casually said, ‘So Eric, what do you think (fill in inscrutable passage here) means?’ It probably doesn’t serve me well to tell them I’m completely clueless. Instead I fumble my way through with an ‘I’ll get back to you on that…’ reply that I secretly hope will be washed away by forgetfulness that this exchange ever occurred.

It gets worse though. I might be reading my bible or prepping for a message and there it is, right in front of me, inescapable, taunting me to understand, interpret, apply. And I just stare at the page wanting those hard words to disappear.

Now before you think what a terrible pastor I must be, the truth is I want to know what those hard words mean too. Like easy, straightforward, mean what they say passages are a pleasure to explain and affirm, hard passages are, well, hard. Nothing obvious or straightforward about them.

Since dodging what I don’t want to struggle with doesn’t seem like a wise solution, I’ve learned some things that can make hard passages not easy but less hard.

Make sure God is part of the process

Pray first. Enough said.

We’re not in Kansas anymore

The Bible was written and lived in a different time, place, language, and culture with different rules about how people behave. How many wives can one man have anyway? Answer: way more than you’d ever want to have. You don’t see women with multiple husbands. They’re way smarter. Words or phrases may have been used in a way that had a clear, accepted meaning for the people to whom they were spoken but because there may not be enough evidence to make a case for what it would definitively mean, scholars (and pastors) take their best crack at interpretation with the knowledge they do have.

See the big picture

Architect Eliel Saarinen is quoted as saying, “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” When considering scripture in general and the hard parts in particular, look closely then start moving out contextually, similar to the picture game where you try to guess an object by seeing an extreme close up of only one section. The further out you move the clearer the object becomes. What is being said? Who are they saying it to? Why are they saying it? When are they saying it? Where are they saying it? Are there other parts of scripture that can shed light on this (yeah, time to dust off the exhaustive concordance). Asking these classic inductive questions can bring clarity to something that is confusing at the outset.

You know more and less than you think

When you start to feel like you should know more and be able to better understand than you think you do, consider this:

 

1 Peter 1:10-12 – ¹⁰ Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, ¹¹ trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. ¹² It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

 

2 Peter 5:15-16 – ¹⁵ Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. ¹⁶ He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand…

 

Rule #1: Some things we’re not meant to know.

Rule #2: All the study in the world may not change Rule #1 … and that’s okay. We don’t have to.

 

That said, I admire Matthew Henry enormously. His classic commentary on the Bible is one of my most-well used reference books. The thing about Henry is that he fearlessly tackles everything the Bible says. Where other commentaries I’ve used might ignore or glance over the hard parts but not dig deep, Matthew Henry digs in. I’m not suggesting his understanding is always correct or that you or I may agree but the commentary always offers something to get you thinking.

 

I recently heard a message based on Jesus cursing of the fig tree. Looking at the event in both Matthew 21 and Mark 11 (he spoke from Mark) neither offered anything by way of explanation that seemed particularly helpful. In Matthew, when asked by his disciples how the fig tree withered so quickly, Jesus response was, ‘I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt you can do things like this and much more…’ Do you wonder how long afterward some of the disciples tried their own hand at cursing fig trees? In Mark after Jesus cursed the tree, the disciples made a mental note. The next morning, Peter remarked that, ‘the fig tree you cursed withered and died.’ A leading statement that begged some ‘hey guys this is what it means’ time from Jesus. Sorry Peter (and friends), you’re left in the dark. Us too.

The person who brought the message though didn’t seem to be. He began connecting the dots between fig trees in the culture, fig trees in the Bible, and the fig leaves that covered Adam and Eve. Although I wasn’t completely convinced everything fit equally together, it did have a sense and flow to it. And an application. It worked.

Pray, trust God, and don’t be afraid to follow an idea. Isaiah, for example, had no idea his words would be applied by Jesus to himself at the temple or Peter applying the words of Joel to the events of Pentecost. You may be more on the right track than you think.

The hard is what makes it great

In the film, A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks’ character, in talking about baseball, reminds us, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” (Hanks also said, ‘There’s no crying in baseball!’ but that would be for an entirely different blog).

You’re at the edge of a diving board, about 15’ off the ground the water looking much further down from where you now stand. There are two choices: turn back and climb down – except there’s this eight-year-old girl waiting her turn behind a certain pastor wondering what this grown man is trying to do as he attempts to leave the diving board – or dive in headfirst.

It’s the hard that makes it worth doing. Not everything easy is good; not everything hard is bad … it’s just hard. But that’s where the payoff is. If you get it wrong, that’s alright. Godly, scholarly, hard praying, Spirit-filled men and women have disagreed for centuries on how to understand and apply what the Bible says.

We don’t always get it right or get it at all and some things we’re not meant to but you’ll never regret doing the hard work with the hard parts of scripture and finding the big reward of digging in and digging deep. The hard really is what makes it great and how you grow through the process.

 

Eric North is a pastor and musician. He and Ellin have been married for 32 years, the parents of two and grandparents of three beautiful girls.