The Promise: Understanding Empowered by God Through Thinking

It is easy to gloss over details within unfamiliar (and familiar!) passages of the Scriptures. I do it more often than I care to admit. However, missing the gems of promise embedded within the texts of God's Word can be detrimental to my trusting God. One such gem was pointed out to me in John Piper's book Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. Piper says,

Only when we are troubled and bothered do we think hard. Paul told young pastor Timothy to think hard: "Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything" (2 Tim. 2:7). And if we don't think hard about how Biblical affirmations fit together, we will never penetrate to their common root and discover the beauty of unified divine truth--what David calls "wondrous things out of your law" (Ps. 119:18). The end result is that our Bible reading will become insipid, we will turn to fascinating "secondary literature," our sermons will be the lame work of "second-handers," and the people will go hungry.[1]

First of all, I had never seen 2 Tim. 2:7 as a promise. I had totally missed it, but now see it as an anchor to hold onto when studying the Scriptures. It has gotten me through some tough topics within the hermeneutical papers that I have struggled with this past semester.



Second, the end part of this quote hit me like a brick to the head. Piper says, "We will turn to fascinating 'secondary literature.' our sermons will be the lame work of 'second-handers.'" This kind of preaching is rampant in my city, and I have heard it many times over the past few years. It becomes easy to recognize when a pastor does not know the passage thoroughly. When this occurs, there is little depth or richness unearthed from the text. What happens often is the selecting of one passage as the "key" text, but then most of the sermon is spent extracting verses from around the Bible that have little or nothing to do with the key text, showing little unity of the Bible and the author's message. So Piper encourages pastors to "think hard about how Biblical affirmations fit together, [in order to] penetrate to their common root and discover the beauty of unified divine truth."

Third, one of my biggest fears of becoming a pastor is that they whom God will put in my care might "go hungry." If a pastor is feeding his sheep, then it would be oxy-moronic for them to go hungry. Oh, how many hungry people there are just waiting to hear a solid, well-explained, meaningful word from God. Our youth probably suffer more than anyone else. So many people untrained in the truths of God's Word are teaching the youth programs, and it is obvious. So reading this quotation from Piper made me a little uneasy, and rightfully so, for we who teach will have to answer to Christ (James 3:1). So what, then? "We must form the habit of being systematically disturbed by things that at first glace don't make sense. Or to put it a different way, we must relentlessly query the text...Asking questions is the key to understanding."[2]

When I first read that, something clicked for me. One of my own problems with the Bible was that I wasn't asking enough questions of the text. We can too easily become dependent upon commentaries for help. I am grateful to the men of the past and present for their rich scholarship and understanding of the Word, but my own understanding must begin with prayer and a heart willing to "query the text" again and again and again. When questions are unanswered, that's when we most desire to feast on God's words! So what does Piper mean by "understanding?"

Insight or understanding is the product of intensive, headache-producing meditation on two or three propositions and how they fit together. This kind of reflection and rumination is provoked by asking questions of the text. And you cannot do it if you hurry. Therefore, we must resist the deceptive urge to carve notches in our bibliographic gun [meaning to digest as many books as possible]. Take two hours to ask ten questions of Galatians 2:20, and you will gain one hundred times the insight you would have attained by quickly reading thirty pages of the New Testament or any other book. Slow down. Query. Ponder. Chew.[3]

That is my goal as a student of God's Word. I do not want to be insubordinate as many pastors are, (although I admit there are many good, honest, hard-thinking pastors out there). My goal is to hold tightly onto 2 Tim. 2:7, query the text, and trust that God will give me the understanding to share His truths with others, for this understanding is not for my own glory, but for His.

Caveats, Questions and Suggestions

One question in my own mind is this: Does God give "understanding" to every Christian who is faithful to prayerful querying of the biblical texts? I ask that question because, about a week ago, a woman and her friend came in to the Christian bookstore that I work at to purchase a Bible. Discussing what kind of Bible to purchase, the friend asked, "Do you want to buy him an NASB with the MacArthur notes?" The first woman hesitated. She developed a sort of confused look on her face. Then she replied, "I don't think people should use commentaries. They should spend more time praying and God will give them the answer." (In fact, she was already giving in to purchasing an NASB as she is a KJV only kind of person, but that's a whole different discussion.)

The first woman's commentary statement is similar to what I have just argued, but I believe it deserves an explanation. Although I believe that in many ways this is true, that we should prayerfully query the texts of God's Word, I also believe that God has spiritually gifted certain people to help others usher in Spirit-led understanding. For instance, it is possible that being led to sound answers found in commentaries can be God's answering of prayer. Not everyone is gifted with teaching, preaching, tongues, or, in this case, has the skills of exegesis and hermeneutics. Therefore, I cannot believe that everyone reading and praying about a text will receive a direct, immediate answer to that prayer as they simply query the text. It often comes from the scholarship of others that have come before us. Suggestions for study (a non-exhaustive list):

1. Read the texts again and again. 
2. Note the relationships between propositions. Grammar is so important. Conjunctions are integral!
3. Write down your observations.
4. Pray for understanding, even when you think you already understand it all.
5. Once you've spent time observing and finding connections, go to commentaries. Often you will find interesting points about the Greek or Hebrew that you do not understand. Also, the historical-cultural contexts that commentaries give will often shed much light as to why the passage was written in the first place.
6. Read the debates, and do it without trying to bring all of your presuppositions; that is, don't make up your mind that you're automatically right all of the time. Oh, how many times in Hermeneutics class that I have been forced to think from new perspectives that I had missed (thanks, Dr. Timothy Wiarda)!
7. With new information in mind, pray for more guidance and wisdom. Sometimes God leads us to a certain book or another believer who will open up deep, well-thought out, prayerful answers for which we have been looking. 

One thing that I have really learned about studying God's Word is that I know very little, and that God works not only through prayer, but through deliberate searching, thinking and debating. Hear the words of the Proverbs:

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Prov. 18:17 ESV).

God help us as we dig, as we feast. "[Even] those of us who interpret the Bible as part of our vocation acknowledge we are imperfect interpreters. Some passages in the Bible are difficult to understand. We may struggle to fully understand them."[4]

[1] John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Nashville: B & H, 2002), 74.
[2] Ibid., 75.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Jeff Iorg, Evolving Obama, http://ggbts.edu/president/blog.aspx [accessed May 15, 2012].