God Wants Understanding of His Word

God delivered His Word for men to understand and by which they would live. Men must study it and then rightly divide it (2 Tim 2:15), but God made its meaning accessible (Rom 10:8-10, Deut 30:11-14).  He will judge men according to it (John 12:48).

The Bible is not indecipherable.  Its degree of opaqueness relates almost entirely to desire and belief.  Proverbs 2:3-5 say these such things:

3 Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and] liftest up thy voice for understanding; 4 If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; 5 Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.

Still People May Not Understand God’s Word

Rebellious

On the other hand, Psalm 106:7 says,

Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.

God wanted understanding, but those who did not have “ears to hear” could not understand.  Ezekiel 12:2 explains that some “have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.”  Not understanding does not always relate to supernatural blinding.  A student in class may not like the subject, so he does not comprehend or retain.  Almost everything is lost on him.  Furthermore, Jesus revealed in Matthew 13:13-15:

13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. 14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

Satanic

A sufficient degree of the understanding of scripture becomes unattainable to the one not caring about it or wanting it.  An unbeliever might hear and comprehend, but still miss what God says.  This testifies to the uniqueness of scripture.  Isaiah 8:17 says:  “And I will wait upon the LORD, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.”  To some, God hides His face, and others will look for God, apparently finding Him because of that looking.

The Apostle Paul says Satan works toward deluminating blindness.  “[T]he god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor 4:4).  What someone might ordinarily understand, he cannot because Satan keeps him from getting it through various Satanic means.

God Wrote His Word with Plain Meaning

Since God wrote a book to man to understand, a man would expect a reading of it in accordance with a plain meaning.  God intended accessibility of its message.  Men would live by what He said even from a child.

I didn’t make this up.  But how I explain plain meaning is understanding scripture like the people heard it in that day.  What did the words mean and how were they used at the very time men wrote and received them?

What was God saying in Genesis to the original audience of Genesis?  Or, what was the Lord saying in Matthew to the original audience of Matthew?  When someone gets that interpretation, what God was really saying, what is that called?  Someone might call that a literal interpretation or a grammatical-historical interpretation.

An original audience, the children of Israel, received the original manuscripts of the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah or Pentateuch.  As they read through those writings, they received more understanding of each part as they also knew more of the whole.  When God gave other inspired writings through various other human authors, such as Joshua, Judges, historical books, and poetic ones, the meaning of the previously given books, the Torah, did not change in meaning.  Genesis still means the same as it did when the first readers first set eyes on it.

God Changed His Methods and Manner of Operation Sometimes

Different Eras or Ages

As God gave more writings, one could understand more of His will.  Through history, sometimes God changed His methods or His manner of operations.  God didn’t change.  As He continued communicating with mankind, He used different, sometimes new genres.  He spoke in different ways.  God used symbolic or figurative language among other types of writing.

Looking back at proceeding time periods, historians recognize eras, ages, or periods of time.  They may disagree with the dividing points for these periods, but they admit shifts in thinking and lifestyle.  You’ve heard of premodern, modern, and postmodern as a description.   Surely you’ve heard said, ancient, middle, and modern.  Broader periods can break down into even more detail.

The Bible is Dispensational

The changes of methods and manners of God as seen in scripture also divide into epochs of time.  In order to systematize a literal understanding of scripture, grammatical and historical, men organized scripture into dispensations.  The system of interpretation became known as dispensationalism. Dispensation- alism recognized the continuity and discontinuity of God’s methods and manner of operation across these various ages.

God is dispensational in His revelation of Him and His will.  The Bible is a dispensational book.  Any literal or true view of history is dispensational.

Old Testament Priority

Succeeding new generations of recipients of original scripture could understand what they read in their day.  Scripture did not change in meaning.  However, God makes prophesies.  He uses prophets to tell the future.  The understanding of a divine prophecy could increase with time, closer to or after its fulfillment (cf. Daniel 12:4).  The Babylonian captivity shed light on the prophesies of captivity.  The return to the land after captivity shed light on the prophesies of return to the land.

The added understanding with a fulfillment of prophecy is not a change in meaning.  God wanted understanding of what He said.  He gave His Word to man to be lived.  God meant the original audience of the Old Testament to understand its meaning.  “Hearing” meant understanding (Deut 19:20, 21:21, 31:12-13).  God did inspire the Old Testament with a New Testament priority.  The Bible does not read as though God a thousand or more years later said what He really was saying in what He earlier inspired.

More to Come