How to Read the Bible ½

OT Lesson: Psalm 19:7-11 (NIV)

The law of the Lord is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring for ever.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
and all of them are righteous.

They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb.
By them Your servant is warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.

NT Lesson: 2 Peter 3:15b-16 (NRSV)

So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

Sermon

Introduction

Good morning. We had a cooler and rainier weather last week. Rains are good. The farmers need it. We need it. So I am thankful for the rain. Before the rain, I smelled the smoke in the air all the way from Canada. So I pray that the fires in Canada will be put off as soon as possible, especially yesterday was Canada day. Thank you all for your prayers for Steve MacPherson. The surgery went well and now recovering. Please continue your prayers for him. Please also pray for Gretel. She got COVID for more than a week now and was not able to come to work for the whole week. Now she has pink eye. Beside, her surgery is scheduled coming Friday. Gretel needs your prayers.

Anyway, two months ago, a good friend of mine living in New Jersey had a business trip to Indianapolis and stayed over for one night before he flew to California. So I met him. He has been living in America with the green card for five years now, and as far as I know, he will soon begin the process to get his and his family’s citizenship. He is a very smart guy. He has a PhD in physics from one of the top Universities in Korea, and used to work at Samsung R&D centre working on smartphones. Now he has been working at a technical company at New York for a few years and last year he became the CTO, Chief Technology Officer. SO his ranking in the company is number 2. In short, he is very smart—PhD in physics. I have not seen him for six or seven years. We talked a lot about many different things. Guys can be talkative. Then I found something strange with him. Before the meal, he put his hands together as if he was praying, and then made a cross on his body with his right hand, just like the Catholics do. But as far as I knew, he has been atheist for his whole life. He is a science guy, not a religious guy. So I asked him, “What are you doing? Are you suddenly a Christian or something?” He told me that he recently became a Christian, precisely Catholic. I asked him who led him to church, and the answer was nobody. In short and straight to the point, while studying mathematics and physics in deep level—he has a PhD—one day he thought to himself that “The whole universe in the eyes of mathematics and physics, from the giant scale of galaxies to the small scale of subatomic particles, is so delicate and perfectly balanced. This level of perfection cannot be just random. There must be someone who designed all these very carefully.” So he walked to church by himself. Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the church in Rome that “Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things He has made.” So I am very glad that my good friend is going to church. It could have been better if he went to a Presbyterian church though. 

Problem 1: Translation

Even without the Bible, my friend became a Christian. The universe itself proves the existence of God. The nature itself proclaim the glories of God. But we are given the Bible, the written word of God. We’d better read it. We need to read it. It is a wonderful thing because we can learn about God without studying all the physics formulae and without understanding the spin values of different particles in quantum mechanics. I am so thankful that we have the Bible which does not require us a PhD in physics. All it takes is a cup of coffee. Yet the Bible comes to us with different problems. And that is why we need a cup of coffee, and also need to talk about the interpretation and adaptation of the Bible. The first problem is that the Bible was not written in English. The Bibles we have were translated into English. As you know, a lot of things can be lost in translation. There can be many examples, but how about talent? If you are a Bible translator, how would you translate one talent of gold? You have three options. Simply saying 1 talent of gold. In this case, the readers will have no idea what it is. Do you know what exactly is one talent of gold?

In a parable of Jesus when a master gave his servants 1, 2, and 5 talents of gold each, many people think that the master gave them gold coins. But actually, 1 talent of gold is defined as the weight of a grown-up man. The average weight of the grown-up males in America is 198 lb but back in the old days, people were mostly under fed, so the scholars roughly agree that it is about 110 lb. So the second option is to translate and write that the master gave his servant 110 lb of gold. The problem here is what if the number one has some kind of very important spiritual or social meaning? The spiritual meaning from the numeric value will all be lost in t his case. The last option is to give the actual value in US Dollar. I googled it yesterday. One pound of gold is about $28K. So one talent of gold is roughly $3,080,000. But then you have to put a footnote in your Bible, “as of July 1st, 2023” because the value always changes.

Another thing about the language is the gender. English language does not really distinguish the gender much. Only third person singular pronouns have gender—she and he. ‘I, you, we, they’ do not have gender. But Hebrew language has very strict gender. When the English Bible says ‘you,’ it could be singular male, singular female, plural male, and plural female. When the Hebrew Bible uses singular male ‘you,’ then the Bible is only talking to guys not including even single woman. When the Hebrew Bible uses singular or plural female ‘you,’ then the Bible is only addressing to women. And the funny thing is that the ten commandments use only singular male ‘you.’ So technically and linguistically, Bible is saying, “Hey guys, you don’t kill. Ladies, whatever. Hey guys, you don’t commit adultery. Ladies, whatever. Hey guys, you don’t steal. Ladies, whatever…” If we take the Bible 100% literally as is without proper interpretation, this is one of the problems we face. Almost all rules, laws, and regulations in the Bible are only for men. Women are mostly exempted and free from them. Are you happy, ladies?

Problem 2: Culture

The second problem of reading the Bible is that we have very little knowledge of the culture when the Bible was written. We don’t even know well the culture of Middle East in 21st century. To make it worse, the Bible was not written in contemporary. The books in the Bible were written 2,000 years ago at the latest and probably 5,000 years ago at the oldest. Many people do not know why Judah’s daughter-in-law had to marry her brothers-in-law, and then later sneakily slept with her father-in-law and yet the Bible says that she was more righteous than Judah.. Let me put it this way. When we write something, we omit all the extra information which we assume that everybody already knows. For example I may write ‘I crossed my fingers at him.’ But I do not explain its meaning every time I used that phrase like, ‘in the United States of America in 21st century, crossing the fingers means wishing good luck.’ I do not add this extra information and explanation because I assume that everybody already knows it. Now imagine like two or three thousand years later archaeologists find my writing. Then the scholars may debate about the meaning, ‘what is the difference between the crossing the fingers and raising the middle finger?’ Some scholars may say that there is no difference. Others may say that the middle finger is good luck. We actually experience the same problem whenever we read the Bible.

Problem 3: Social Order

The third problem of reading the Bible is that we are living in different social order. Some countries in the world still maintain the old social order such patriarchal society and no separation between the religion and the state. But at least here in America, the church and the state are separated. But we need to understand that it was not so when the Bible was being written. Those people like Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Eli were like pastors, judges, and governors all at the same time. So when Moses did something or when God told Moses to do something, we need to distinguish if that was as the head of the state, or as the head of the church, or as the head of the justice system. For example, God commanded Moses and Joshua to distribute land to every household. If we apply it literally today, there shall be not one household without owning a land property in the United States of America. We have to take rich people’s land and distribute all the land equally to every household in this country. It sounds pretty much communism. And also the sales of land and real estate is strictly forbidden in the laws of Moses. But we cannot do the same here in America because we are the church, not the law and policy enforcing government department. At that moment, God was talking to Moses not as a pastor, but as the head of the state. God commanded yet again on every Jubilee, which is every 70th year, all the debts must be forgiven and all the slaves must be freed. For example, if next year is the jubilee, it should work like this: I get mortgage this year, and pay up just for one year, and then next year, all the leftover mortgage debt will be declared forgiven by the court. I wish that happens to me because I actually have 28 more years to pay the mortgage. But we cannot declare the jubilee in the United States of America because we are the church, not the supreme court. At that moment, God was talking to Moses not as a pastor, but as the head of the supreme court. But in the Bible everything is all mixed up. The distinguish between jobs was not clear. The church and the state were one body. And our job when we read the Bible is to separate those things, and to discern which ones can be applied to the church.

Things Not in the Bible

As you know, I came to America from Canada in 2012. Hannah and I rented an apartment unit near Naperville, IL. There was a big grocery store within 5 minutes walking distance. That used to be Dominick’s and it is changed to Mariano’s now, owned by Kroger. One summer night, my wife and I walked to Dominick’s to buy some ice cream, and between my home and Dominick’s there is a Planned Parenthood. So we walked by it on the side walk. And there were bunch of protesters in front of the Planned Parenthood. Everybody was holding Bibles in one hand, and pickets with images and messages in the other hand. When we were walking by them, they yelled at my back, thinking we were going into the Planned Parenthood: “You’re murderers! God hates you! You’ll burn in hell!” I was so shocked and was shaking for a few days. I had never expected someone holding a Bible would say such things at people. So that was their interpretation of the Bible. But the thing is, the Bible never mentions about abortion—not even single reference in the Bible. Personally, I do not like abortion and back then I was trying to make a baby—you know, I was still in honeymoon phase then, just married. I do not care about your stance on the abortion. I respect your opinion whether you like the abortion or dislike the abortion. I respect your opinion. And in this free country, of course everybody and any body can voice out their opinions. But you cannot use God’s name when the Bible is silent on that issue because that is the violation of the third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Well, linguistically, women are OK, but men cannot. Anyway, we cannot use the Bible to justify our political opinions especially when the Bible is silent. On the side note, I think God was responding to the protesters when they were yelling at me like, ‘You’re murderers—No, they are not. God hates you—No, I don’t. Why do you say I hate them?’ 

Rule of Thumb, Rule of Love

I actually planned to talk about this topic just today. But the thing is, last night while I was writing the sermon script, I found that I was working on the 11th page and not finished. But my sermon had better be under 7 pages because if not, you all will feel like hostages rather than worshippers. So I decided to talk about the interpretation little more next time when I come back, that is the first Sunday in August. While I am away, Ben Piper will preach next Sunday and on July 23rd. Rev. Joseph Park will preach on July 16th. Rev. Jennifer Lewis from the Presbytery will preach on July 30th. Rev. Alan Griffin is the emergency pastoral contact from tomorrow through the end of this month. But you can always email me.

Anyway, I cut the sermon in the middle, but I cannot end the sermon abruptly like this. I need some kind of conclusion. So let me give you one of the rules given by St. Augustine to interpret the Bible. According to him, the most important and the most fundamental rule among all the rules to read the Bible is the rule of love. After all the study and meditation, if your interpretation of the Bible does not point to love, that interpretation is wrong. Those protesters in front of the Planned Parenthood, even though they were all holding the Bibles in their hands, their interpretation of the Bible was wrong because their message was not love but hatred. No matter what they yelling at me, God loves me. God loves you. God loves all of us. If anyone tells you that God does not love you, do not listen to them at all because their interpretation of the Bible is clearly and completely wrong according to the great church father, St. Augustine. And the Bible declares boldly that God is love. Even if your parents do not love you, God still loves you because the Bible declares, “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close.”2

Conclusion

Friends, we must read and study Bible diligently. But because our knowledge and wisdom are limited, we are always subject to the possibility of wrong interpretation. To be safe, whenever we read and meditate the Bible, let us follow the guidance of the light house built by the great church father, St. Augustine. Let me finish the sermon today by quoting a teaching from Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”3 Amen.