Reading the Bible like Jesus

A reflection on Luke 2-4, based on the talk for CCC 2 January 2022

 

In 2022 we’re aiming to grow in ‘living like Jesus did’ (1 John 2:6), and we’re starting the year thinking about the Bible – what it is and what does it mean for how we live?

In the early chapters of Luke we see that Jesus knew the Bible, Jesus trusted and used the Bible, and Jesus saw himself in the story of the Bible.

Know the Bible

Chapter 2 of Luke, seeing beyond the details of the Christmas story, paints a picture of a family who knew the requirements of the Torah, the Old Testament laws, and lived accordingly.  Eight days after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph named and circumcised him.  Just over a month after his birth they took Jesus to the Jerusalem Temple for the rites of purification, where they met Simeon and Anna.

After returning to Nazareth Jesus grew and became strong within his family.  Over the next few years the family regularly attended the Passover celebrations in the Temple, and one such celebration, when Jesus was 12, merits special mention.  On this occasion Jesus became separated from Mary and Joseph, who found him after three days in the Temple asking searching questions of the teachers there.

This is a family who knew what the scripture said and what God required of them.  Jesus is growing and being curious about scripture and what the Temple teachers were saying.  I don’t think Jesus ‘just knew’ the Bible because he was God – Luke paints a picture of the human Jesus growing and learning, and reading and living scripture in his life, both in the family and in the synagogue and Temple.

We too should seek to know the Bible – the Old as well as the New Testament.  Not only do many of the famous parts of the NT quote the OT, the OT was enough for Jesus and the NT writers!

Part of knowing the Bible is knowing about the Bible.  What order things happened makes a difference to the overall story.  Our understanding is helped by knowing who wrote each book, why they wrote it, and what was happening at the time.  And we read different parts differently according to whether they are story, poetry, song, prophecy, instruction, etc.

This knowledge doesn’t happen by accident; we need to choose to listen or read.

The Bible in One Year (BiOY) is one way to do this – it’s available as a book, or as an app (where you can listen or read), or at the BiOYwebsite.  Each day there is a reading from the NT, the OT, and a reading from Psalms or Proverbs taking you through the whole Bible in the course of a year.

It takes choice and discipline.  Maybe also try to choose a verse each day or week to memorise.  Don’t get hung up about sticking to the program, but it’s a good framework to aim to follow.

One way or another we need to know the Bible and what it says.

Use the Bible

In Luke 3 we see Jesus coming to John to be baptised along with many other.  Luke records that the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, and a voice spoke from heaven: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

In Luke 4 Jesus is in the wilderness being tempted by the devil.  Each time the devil raises a question, aiming to undermine Jesus’ understanding of who he is.  Each time Jesus responds with a direct quote from scripture.

Jesus didn’t only know the Bible, he used it in response to the temptations.  He didn’t engage the devil in argument or conversation, just gave a direct reply.  In the BiOY commentary on Adam & Eve’s temptation in the Garden of Eden, Nicky Gumbel says that Eve’s mistake was to talk to the serpent on its own terms.  Tom Wright’s comment on this passage in Luke is that “arguing with temptation is often a way of playing with the idea until it becomes too attractive to resist.”

Interestingly Jesus didn’t rely on personal revelation to respond to the temptations.  He could have referred to the affirmation of his Sonship at his baptism, but instead chose to use the words of scripture to resist the temptations.

After the temptations Jesus starts his ministry preaching in the synagogues in Galilee, reaching his home town of Nazareth.  Here he is given the scroll of Isaiah, and takes a moment to find the section he wants to read and teach from – the section we know as chapter 61.

We too should use the Bible and allow it to shape us.  It can shape the way we speak, as Jesus spoke the words of scripture to deal with the temptations he faced – can we do the same?

Allow scripture to shape how we think and what we believe.  How will we know what to believe if we don’t know what God is saying?  And I think that God’s primary communication is still through the pages of scripture.

There are so many other things trying to tell us what to believe about humanity, creation, life, death, our purpose, etc.  News articles, social media feeds, books, films and TV all present particular understandings of these aspects of life.  Let’s at least know what the Bible says too, so that we can put other views into context, and challenge them where necessary.

And we can use the Bible to test ‘personal revelation’.  Whatever we think God might be saying to us personally, it won’t contradict what’s in the Bible.  Even Jesus’ personal revelation at his baptism was a quote from Psalm 2.  What Jesus heard was something new, but it fitted with what God had said before.

When we know the Bible we can use it to shape our beliefs, our speech, and our lives.

Seeing Jesus in the whole Bible

The second half of Luke 3 is Luke’s account of the ancestors of Joseph, who (so it was thought) was Jesus’ father.  It traces the family through David, Abraham, Noah, Adam, and others all the way back to God.

Matthew is well-known for the genealogy at the start of his gospel and for showing where his gospel story fulfils OT prophecy.   Luke too points out continuity with the OT.  Mary’s song refers to God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants, and Zechariah’s prophecy mentions the house of King David and, again, Abraham.

Although Jesus is clearly doing something new, Luke wants us to see that what he is telling us about is in continuity with the OT.

Preaching in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4, and after reading his chosen passage from Isaiah, Jesus makes the eye-opening claim that the prophecy has been fulfilled in his listeners’ hearing!  Jesus saw himself in scripture – he was the fulfilment of what the OT had been pointing to all along.

He was perhaps a different fulfilment from what the people were expecting.  When he pointed out that the OT prophets operated outside of Israel as well as inside, and that the promise to Abraham was for the whole world, the people turned against him.  But he saw himself as fulfilling the prophets nonetheless.  At the end of Luke’s gospel Jesus interpreted to the disciples on the Emmaus Road “the things about himself in all the scriptures,” i.e. the OT.

Of course we’re not called to see ourselves in scripture in the way that Jesus saw himself!  But we are supposed to see Jesus in the whole of the Bible.

Knowing about and believing in Jesus puts the entire Bible in a new light.  When we read the OT with Jesus in mind we can see that the whole story is ultimately fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  As the Jesus Storybook Bible has it, every story whispers his name.

It’s important too to see the OT passages in their own context – what they meant to the original writers and readers – and we can see God’s character and purposes in the OT.  But looking through the lens of Jesus opens up a whole new understanding of God and the Bible.

 

We are called to follow Jesus as he…

• Knew the Bible
• Used the Bible, and allowed it to shape his speech, actions, and beliefs
• Saw himself as the fulfilment of the story told so far in the OT

In the words of the Mike Burn song:

               Get into the word
               Get reading the word
               Get living the word of God…

My prayer for CCC as we start 2022, as ever in uncertain times, is that:

• We walk the way Jesus walked
• We spend time in the Bible which reveals Jesus to us
• We allow God’s words in the Bible, through the filling of the Holy Spirit, to shape us to be more like the Jesus we see there.