Saturday, April 20, 2019

The Holy Spirit as Teacher, part 2

In the previous post, we saw that the Holy Spirit was given to us to, among other things, to teach us the truth. He is, in fact, called the Spirit of Truth. I also pointed out that this is not taught much in our churches. It is not hard to understand why. There are many competing claims about the meaning of just about every passage in the Bible especially by those who say "the Lord showed me" this, that or the other. I can see why pastors and other ministers might not want to encourage that kind of talk since competing claims cannot all be right. How can we deal with these competing claims to truth?

One of the things that we can do is to "study to show ourselves approved to God ... rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Timothy 3:15) Some of us are going to be ashamed because we have been teaching wrong things thinking that the Lord has showed us something when He has not. Through reading, studying and meditating on the Word will be able to get our minds renewed to what the Bible actually teaches.

I realize that this might seem to be a contradiction to what I said in my previous post, but it is not. I do not mean that we figure it all out in our heads without the Spirit guiding us. Rather I am talking about allowing the Holy Spirit to use scholarly methods and knowledge as a tool to teach us. 

Here is an example of what I mean:

Recently, I have heard a claim about a well-known scripture in Isaiah. It was Isaiah 40:31:

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they mount their wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint."

The question was about the word, "wait". What does it mean? The claim was that it was waiting like a waiter waits on a table. It is active.  We must be serving the Lord and not just waiting for God to do something. But it traditionally has been taken in a passive sense of waiting for someone. So, which is right?

This man, who is an outstanding Bible teacher, was emphatic that it must be taken in an active sense. And that certainly is possible if the Hebrew word which is translated as "wait" has the same meaning as the English word. But it does not. The Hebrew word which is translated as "wait" does not have this active meaning. It could never refer to someone waiting on a table or anything similar. 

So, one of the tools available to us is looking up a biblical word to find the meaning in the original language - Hebrew or Greek. Or we might look up some scholarly source that tells us that. (I found out from my commentary on Isaiah.)

We could also look at other scriptures where this word is used. Although it is not 100%, if a Hebrew word is consistently translated by a certain English word, then we can tell what the Hebrew word means in multiple contexts. In other words, we compare scripture with scripture. There is another verse which helps us illustrate the meaning of the word "wait".

"Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden to the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that he have mercy upon us." Psalm 123:2

So, we can see now that the word "wait" in Isaiah 40:31 has the sense of waiting passively. And it does not mean that it is simply 'waiting around' for God to do something, but being in God's presence and looking to hear from Him. 

I recommend that, if you don't already have one, get a good Study Bible and different translations and even scholarly books to help you in your studies. We should not ignore good scholarship, but understand that it is a useful tool that the Spirit of Truth can use to teach and correct us.

[The comments section is not working. Sorry for any inconvenience.]

No comments:

Post a Comment