"The professor directed herself to Lord Peter:
"I am instructed by my fellows to extend to you an invitation to dine with us tomorrow. Shall you come?"
"An invitation to High Table! And in the future interrogative! How can I resist!"
       ~ Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers

"We is in serious trouble now!"
"'We'? Wha' you mean, 'we'? This is no time for them all-inclusive pronouns!"
       ~ Amos 'n Andy

Words mean things, and words put together in sentences and paragraphs mean things. The supreme evidence and argument of this is that God has communicated to us in words.

Language has its origin in God Himself. He is a God who communicates and when He made man is His image, He gave man the ability to communicate and He conversed with man in words. Since God invented language and since He has communicated with man in words, we can conclude that words are adequate vehicles for expressing ideas.

Since Babel, a variety of languages have existed as groups of people developed their own manner of communication. Sounds are put together in a certain pattern which has an agreed-upon meaning to a group of people, and these multiply into languages. Languages form initially to identify concrete objects - a tree, a snake, a river - and subsequently to give concrete expression to abstract concepts such as relationships, feelings or the perception of truth. But though many languages have come into being, developed and are constantly changing, they all have their origin in the Creator. Languages exist because God exists and because He gave to man the ability to communicate in words. Thus, what is said, how it is said and whether it is in the future interrogative or makes use of an all-inclusive pronoun matters.

Former President Bill Clinton defended the false testimony he had given with the declaration that it wasn't really false because "It depends on what your definition of "is" is." Relativism reaches it logical and cataclysmic conclusion here, when a world leader states that words have no agreed-upon significance and have no concrete idea or objective reality outside the mind of the one using those words. According to this idea, everything really is relative; not only truth, but even truthfulness, words, communication.

God stands in absolute opposition to this idea. God has committed eternal, objective fact and truth to words written done in sentences and paragraphs in a Book. Rejecting the idea that one can never really communicate anything to anyone, that words only have meaning inside the mind of every individual, we accept words and language as legitimate vehicles to express ideas because God has used words, written words, to communicate objective truth, truth that exists outside of my feelings and outside of my own head.

There is a purpose for saying these things.

Because words and sentences have meaning, and because God has communicated in a Book, we can study that Book to understand Him, His plan and His works.

Because words and sentences have meaning and structure, we can study the Bible and learn objective truth.

And because languages have order, there are correct and incorrect ways to study the Bible.

I wonder if some Christians would be shocked to hear me say that one problem in the church of Jesus Christ today is an unholy and unbiblical tendency toward too much "de-pendence" on the Holy Spirit? An entire movement, incorrectly calling itself the "faith" movement, has moved whole groups of believers away from faith and into the fantasy land of feelings, impressions and experiences as the basis for our confidence in God, so that, "I feel God telling me" has replaced "it is written."

Yet faith as the Bible presents it is not confidence in what I feel but confidence in what God has said, and true dependence on the Holy Spirit does not lead one to trust feelings, impressions or ecstatic experiences but to read, study, search and believe God's Word, the Bible.

Since study of the Bible is a legitimate, correct response to the existence of the Bible, I would like to look at seven simple rules on how to study and understand the Bible.

1. All Scripture is inspired of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Ped. 1:20-21)
As we study the Bible we hold in mind that all Scripture, given by God, is worthy of study. We also keep in mind that all Scripture is inspired, and that therefore if two portions of Scripture seem to contradict one another, we can work from the assumption that both are true and seek to understand how they fit together. Some of the richest truths are learned as we study seemingly contradictory passages.

2. Look for Jesus (John 5:39, Lu. 24:27)
The Bible is a Book of progressive revelation. Bit by bit, one step, piece at a time, God revealed His plan (Is. 28:9-10). In Isaiah 46:10 and in many other passages God states He has a plan, His counsel, which He will accomplish, and when we arrive at the New Testament we see clearly that His plan is a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. All of Scripture is designed to reveal the Lord Jesus, and when we study the Bible, whether in Genesis or Revelation, we should ask ourselves, "What does this tell me about the person, work and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ?" He is the sum of all wisdom and He is the heart and message of the entire Bible.

3. Consider the context (Is. 8:20)
The prophet Isaiah states in the verse cited above that we are to speak "accord-ing to" the Scriptures, that is, in accord with, in concordance to, the Scriptures. When studying the Bible, it is important we look at the portion we are studying in its context and in the bigger picture of all of Scripture. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual (1 Co. 2:13), we need to remember that, as John Wycliffe said.

"It shall greatly helpe ye to understand scripture if thou mark not only what is spoken or written but
of whom
and to whom,
with what words,
at what time,
where,
to what intent,
with what circumstances,
considering what goeth before
and what followeth."

A well-worn proverb, not the less true for being oft repeated, simply observes, "A text out of context is often simply a pretext."

4. The New Testament interprets the Old (Heb. 1:1-2)
The New Testament is like the final chapter of a good detective novel, where the central figure is revealed and the true understanding of all that came before is brought to the forefront. The New Testament explains and often radically reinterprets the Old Testament for us in the light of Christ's death and resurrection. It is in the New Testament that we see the true meaning of the sacrificial lamb, the true purpose for the Law of Moses, the true significance of the Passover.

In Acts 20:32, Paul commends the believers to God and to "the word of His grace." He is commending them here specifically to what we call the New Testa-ment. It is the New Testament that is able to build us up and give us an inheri-tance among the sanctified.

Again, a commonly-repeated proverb says it well: The New is in the Old con-cealed; the Old is in the New revealed.

5. The didactic interprets the historic.
The Old Testament has 17 historic books. The New Testament has five: the four Gospels and the book of Acts. These books should be understood in the light of the didactic or teaching portions of the Scripture. In the New Testament, that would be the Epistles. The Gospels and the book of Acts are inspired books that contain much doctrinal instruction. However, they are written principally to tell the flow of historic events. Not everything stated in the Gospels was directed to the disciples, and not everything the first century church did in Acts is a model for what we should do. To understand the actions of the church in Acts, for example, we need to go o the Epistles, written to the Christians and explaining what is normative for Christians. For example, the fact that the Gentiles were instructed in Acts 15 not to eat meat offered to idols should be interpreted not only by the context, but also by what Paul teaches about that in 1 Corinthians 8.

6. The specific interprets the incidental.
God inspired the Bible in such a way that in the New Testament we find the answers to the key issues of the Christian life addressed not only in a verse here or there, but in entire books: Romans presents justification by faith. Colossians shows us our riches in Christ. Ephesians presents to us the church. If you want to understand law and grace, the place to start is Galatians, because that is the theme of the book. Thus, to understand the Scripture, we need to see that a passing comment on justification in the book of Titus should be understood in the light of eleven chapters on the subject in the book of Romans. James' 12 verses on works and faith (James 2:14-26) can be clearly understood when we see them in the light of the 16 chapters of Romans and the 6 chapters of Galatians.

7. The Bible should be interpreted literally.
To interpret the Bible literally means to interpret it as the one who wrote meant it. We should interpret the Bible according to the author's evident intent when he, under the unction of the Holy Spirit, wrote. Thus, we do not "spiritualize" events or teaching of Scripture, so that the text no longer means what it says. We do not make the straight-forward declarations of the Bible symbolic, as though the events did not actually take place.

Interpreting the Bible literally also means that, remembering the author's intent, we do not assume that when Jesus said He is the door (Jn. 10:9), we should think He had hinges and a door knob, or that when He said He is the light of the world (John 9:5), He meant He shined in the dark. The literal understanding of these declarations is that they are literally metaphors.

When we began to comprehend the extension of the need for the Gospel here in the Jalisco Highlands, 1 Thess. 3:1 seemed to us a key verse on how to pray for the region:

"Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you"

As Paul asks here for prayer, he shows his confidence in and dependence on the Word of the Lord. He asks them to pray that the Word of the Lord would spread and be received. What is needed, Paul says, is not opinions, philosophies, experiences or feelings, but what the Bible really says, studied and expounded with care and clarity. Psalm 119:130 states that it is the entrance of God's words that brings light. "Entrance" here is 'the opening up of', 'the unfolding of', 'the expounding of' God's word. It is as we correctly expound the Bible, taking care to search out what it says and how it says it, that we impart the light of life.

This is an urgent need in the Highlands of Jalisco, and it is an urgent need throughout the Body of Christ. May we take God's grace to diligently search through the Bible and carefully explain it to others.