In this episode, Pastor Dave Brown visits with us discussing how to open up the word of God correctly with our children, equipping them to understand the Bible.
Our Guest: Pastor Dave Brown
Dave is the interim pastor at First Baptist Church, Weleetka, Oklahoma. He is my husband, and he has been a pastor in the ministry for over 35 years, 15 of those years, he was a missionary pastor in Taipei, Taiwan. He speaks regularly about prayer, our search for God, and seeking after God’s heart with all of our hearts. If you have questions or wish to contact Dave, you can reach him by commenting below.
Book Discussed in This Episode and Another We Recommend:
Additional Resources:
What the Bible Is All About for Kids by Frances Blankenbaker adapted from Dr. Henrietta C. Mears’ book What the Bible Is All About
Teaching Our Kids How to Read the Bible webinar from Foundation Worldview
Helping Children Study the Scripture on Their Own from Foundation Worldview
Podcast: “Exploring Study Bible for Your Older Kids”
Podcast: “Finding the Best Bible for Your Kids”
Podcast: “Finding the Best Bible for Your Kids” updated
Transcript with Links:
Terrie:
Welcome to “Books That Spark,” a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that help us with everyday discipleship every day, sparking important conversations with our children. Today we have a special guest with us, my husband, Pastor Dave Brown, and he’s been on the podcast before, but we wanted to talk today about how to rightly divide the word of God. I know there’s many of you who probably already know this, but there are some out there who are new to the faith and who are just learning to read their bibles and want to really educate their children and disciple them well. And so we need to know how to understand the scriptures and rightly discern what they’re saying and be able to teach them to our children correctly. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. So Dave, welcome. Thank you for being here.
Dave:
Good to be here.
Terrie:
Okay, so the first thing we always hear when we talk about rightly understanding scripture is to remember context, and when I think of context, there are different kinds of context. And the first one is of course, the most important one probably, is just the context within the chapter. What is the chapter actually saying where we are reading it? What is the verse actually about? And there’s a really good example that is very popular right now of a verse that is completely taken out of context, and that is the one from Psalm 46 and it says, “God is within her, she will not fall.” And they just used that first part of verse five, and they use it for girls to feel empowered. It isn’t even talking about a woman, it’s talking about the city of Jerusalem, and if the people are of Jerusalem are faithful to God, He is with them and He is their refuge and their strength and their help in time of trouble, but it is not talking about a woman. And so we take that one completely out of context because it sounds good
Dave:
A lot of times the reason we have trouble with interpreting the scripture in context and things like that is because we go to the scriptures having never really read the scriptures, and I feel like it is so important that when you have people that don’t read the scriptures, it’s very easy to take things out of context, and here’s another example that we hear about all the time, and it’s in the book of Revelation chapter three. The Apostle John is getting the vision from Jesus and he’s writing letters to seven churches, and this particular letter goes to the church in Laodicea in chapter three starting in verse 14. And it says “Write to Laodicea to the angel of the church: God says yes, the faithful and accurate witness, the first of God’s creation says: ‘I know you inside out and find little to my liking. You’re not cold, you’re not hot. Far better to be either cold or hot. You’re stale, you’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, I’m rich, I’ve got it made. I need nothing from anyone oblivious that in fact, you’re a pitiful blind beggar, threadbare and homeless. Here’s what I want you to do. Buy your gold from me. Gold that’s been through the refiner’s fire, then you’ll be rich.'” Now, just to kind of get an understanding of what this is about, a lot of people think that when it’s talking about being hot or cold, not lukewarm, they’re thinking in terms of like a scale of am I hot for God or am I cold for God? You know, am I not? God would rather us be, you know, hot for God or not committed to God at all, rather than being someone who walks on the fence kind of so to speak, but that’s not what that’s talking about. Actually, what’s going on there is Laodicea was one of the wealthiest of the seven cities, but the city had always had a problem with its water supply. At one time, an aqueduct was built to bring water to the city from hot springs, but by the time the water reached the city, it was neither hot nor refreshingly cool, only lukewarm. In fact, kind of the idea was water was worthless, let’s say it was either hot or cold, but the water was only lukewarm and lukewarm water makes a disgusting drink, or at least it did in their culture. So the Church of Laodicea had become lukewarm in faith and thus distasteful and repugnant to God, so the believers didn’t take a stand for anything. Apathy and indifference had led to idleness and by neglecting to do anything for Christ, the church had become hardhearted and self-satisfied. Now all of a sudden that changes how we look at that scripture and it speaks directly to our churches today who have become complacent, and have not really committed to being on fire for God. Knowing what the context is is kind of important, it changes the meaning of what you’re actually reading. So it’s important to kind of know what was actually happening in that case, this kind of reading in context goes a little further than just like a chapter example. It actually goes into the cultural customs to kind of help you know, what was that talking about? When they’re talking about hot or cold or lukewarm, we can’t assume that it automatically means what we in our language today consider it to mean.
Terrie:
So that would be historical context or cultural context. So if we are cold, a church could be refreshing, it could be full of life and still be pleasing to God, or it could be on fire for God. We can use those terms and those are still good things in that analogy from that chapter, and if we understand what it was really saying within the context historically and within the context scripturally and culturally, then we gain an understanding and a lesson from it that means something to us today. Another type of context besides historical and cultural is genre. When we interpret any kind of literature, whether it’s Shakespeare or Mark Twain or the Bible, we need to look at what kind of genre we’re reading. If we’re reading in Psalms, we need to understand we’re reading poetry and therefore interpret some of the language as figurative. We’re going to have analogies, we’re going to have metaphors, and we’re going to have personification and these poetic devices because it is poetry, it’s a songbook. But when we’re reading Genesis or when we’re reading Second Chronicles, we know that that is historical and that is not meant to be taken figuratively, although there are situations where someone may be sharing a Psalm of praise to God and use some figurative language, but if we adopt the right kinds of just intelligent reading that we would use with any kind of literature, we can interpret much better what we’re reading in the Bible.
Dave:
Yeah, that’s good. Another example would be, and this, this would be more of context within a chapter, is James chapter four. And we know that there are some really cool verses in James chapter four, one of them that we read about. In verse eight, it says, “Come close to God and God will come close to you, and draw near to God and God will draw near to you.” And those are wonderful verses, but if you look at it in the context of the entire chapter, this is exciting. Actually, in verse one of chapter four, it says, “What is causing quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you. You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it. So you fight and wage war to take away from them, yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it, and even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong, you want only what will give you pleasure, you adulterers.” And I thought that was pretty powerful words there. “You adulterers, don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, if you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think the scripture has no meaning? They say that God is passionate, that the spirit He has placed within us should be faithful to Him, and He gives us grace generously, as the scripture says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Then he says, so humble yourself before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come close to God and He will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.” Now all of a sudden you see the context of what’s happening there, it’s a big, big difference. Another popular verse where that comes into play is Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse 11, people quote this verse frequently and that verse says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Now those are wonderful words, they sound very encouraging, but unless you understand the context of what is written there, all of a sudden that changes everything. Well, let’s just go a little further. If you go past verse 11, it says, “and then you will come to me and pray to me, and when you come and pray to me and seek me with all your heart, you will find me. I’ll be found by you, declares the Lord.” But then let’s go out even a little further. Let’s go out to the whole chapter. This is in Jeremiah. Well, what happens in Jeremiah? Well, what’s going on in Jeremiah is that the entire nation of Judah is about to be taken over by the Babylonians, and God has been using Jeremiah to give the message to the people of Israel that they need to repent and realize that their country is about to be taken over. They’re no longer going to have their own country. You think, well wait a minute, Jeremiah’s talking about doom and gloom, and yet in the middle of that verse, there’s this promise, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.” Then you’re starting to see this message is not coming in good times and promise of things kind of being pie in the sky, sitting on top of the clouds, everything’s wonderful type of thing. Instead, what you’re seeing is that in the midst of the hardships and struggles and challenges and even some of the disasters that may happen around you, the fact that God is your God changes everything, and even in spite of the horrors that you may have to go through, God still has a plan and a future for you, so I think that brings in a huge understanding of how context can make a difference. We read that with a completely wrong attitude,
Terrie:
Right, and it can change your whole Christian worldview, your whole understanding of who God is. He isn’t out there trying to make our lives easy. He’s trying to draw us closer to Himself and trying to help us understand that He walks with us through whatever circumstance we go through, and if we will put our lives and our circumstances in His hands, that He can bring beautiful things from that. He can bring hope even in the darkest valleys. And so it gives us strength to walk with Him through the tough times of this world. It just paints a whole different picture of what it’s like to live the Christian life, and I think it’s very important as parents, when we’re discipling our children to not paint a pie in the sky picture of Christianity. God tells us to count the cost, it is going to be hard. He said, “They hated me, they’re going to hate you.” Our children need to understand that they are making a choice to follow Christ, that He is their Savior and Lord, and that it doesn’t mean that life is always going to be easy, but we will never be alone.
Dave:
Right? In fact, Jesus said in this life you will have troubles, but do not fear for I have overcome the world. So you know, He basically promised you, things are not going to be easy. In fact, when you become a Christian, it’s very possible that things are going to actually feel worse. The difference is you have God to help you go through it. God doesn’t give us detours around and away from difficult problems, and the reason for it, this is so important, the reason for it is because those hard times and those difficult trials and those problems are the very things that God uses to shape us and make us who He wants us to be. We don’t become godly people of character in sweet and wonderful times. It happens through the testing of our faith and the challenges and the difficulties that come that help refine us. Like that scripture said just a minute ago in James, that it refines us like gold in the fire. That’s, really the context that God wants us to understand for some of these verses that we read and misread.
Terrie:
Well, two other points I wanted to make about reading accurately. One is understanding like when we’re talking about the genre and the history, the culture, the context within the chapter, historically, we want to look at the language that is used. I’ve heard many people quote the scripture, it’s from the King James, I believe, where it says, “For I am a jealous God.” and they’re like, what kind of a God is jealous? Like they’re giving God a human quality instead of understanding what the original meaning of that word was. He does not share His godhood with anyone, He is God. There isn’t a sense of jealousy there that He is not going to tolerate us sharing our allegiance and our worship with anyone else, and so when we understand what the word truly means and don’t take it just as what a 21st century person would understand from a human perspective jealousy means, because jealousy on the human terms is a really negative thing. I mean, you don’t want someone in your life who’s just jealous all the time, it shows immaturity, it shows really a lack of love, but this is a totally different understanding of what that means, and we have that happen with a lot of words that are used in a certain way in the scriptures, especially depending on the translation you’re reading that do not have the same meaning as a 21st century human viewpoint, and we need to use wisdom in understanding the words. And so if you are learning under a very, you know, educated Bible teacher or you look at some good commentaries, and I like to look at several translations, I’ll put the link in the show notes for our episodes we did on Bible translations that we recommend. But NASB, the New American Standard Bible is one that is word for word translated pretty much from the Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic into English, and it’s not as modern as some, but it is very accurate. You have your NIV, NLT, the New International Version, the New Living Translation, and those are pretty reliable concept by concept and are at a good reading level for most people. They’re fifth, fifth-ish grade, little higher middle school, fifth or sixth, yeah, fifth or sixth grade reading level in modern English, and so they’re pretty good. And there’s some other translations that we highly recommend if you go to that episode and listen to that, if you have a reliable translation, you have reliable notes, then you can start to really understand. And what I always say is don’t forget about prayer. When I was seven years old, I became a Christian and my mom’s best friend gave me my first Bible and I wanted to read it so badly. And of course it was King James version because that’s about all we had back then, and so I was trying to read it and I was like, boy, I don’t understand this at all. And so I just said, “God, please help me understand.” And the next day when I did my Bible reading, it just was clear as day to me and I began to understand the word of God. So the Holy Spirit is with us and He can help us. He is even called the helper, so don’t neglect to rely on Him when we need His help. And then the final suggestion we have is, don’t over contextualize. We’ve had friends who can take the scriptures in context so much that they nullify any meaning for us in the 21st century. I mean, the Bible was written years and years ago, and so Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, therefore the book of Philippians is only for those people who are now long gone and dead, and it doesn’t have a message for us because in context it was written to the church at Philippi, and we’re not in Philippi, and we didn’t live back then. That’s being ridiculous, that’s carrying it too far. There are principles throughout every part of the Bible that we can glean information from and lessons from we can understand about the character of God. We can understand what God’s plan is, how God’s plan is unfolding, what He is doing to reconcile people to Himself, we can learn about human nature, we can learn about how to live the Christian life by looking at these letters, looking at these scriptures within context and gleaning from them the principles. I love what Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I’m going to put her link in the show notes for a wonderful webinar she does on how to help our children interpret scripture well, and she’s got so much good information in there. You want to take lots of notes as you listen to it. She talks about how when we read a scripture, we can look at it and say, “Is this instructive or prescriptive? Is it trying to tell us what to do or is it telling us about something?” And so when we look at the story of Daniel in the Lions Den or David and Goliath, these are stories that’re telling us historical situations, things that happened. They are not teaching us a how-to, they’re not teaching us a prescriptive thing. So you know, go fight your giant and you know, trust God. Well, yeah, we can fight our battles by trusting God and knowing that He is the one who is going to help us and He is not mocked. That is a principle we can pull from that. But to go around and say we’re slaying giants is a little silly, especially when you consider He was literally a little kid facing a giant with a sword and armor, and he went before him when the whole army was shivering in their boots and afraid to face this giant, he stood up in the name of the Lord. And we may be facing a difficulty or someone who’s irritating us, but we’re not literally facing giants. We kind of take those out of context and put ourselves into a situation that is not prescriptive. It is not telling us how to slay giants, it is showing us a story that historically happened. So we have to be intelligent, we have to be careful that we don’t take scripture and take liberties with it that are not appropriate. With Elizabeth, I wanted to also mention one other thing that she covers on her webinar, which like I said, I’ll have the link to in the show notes, but she also talks about helping our children to understand the overall historical story of God’s plan from Abraham and the Israelites and, you know, all that has happened in the Old Testament, then the birth of Jesus, and all that happened in the New Testament, so that when they’re reading a scripture, they know where it goes in that timeline, and I think that’s just such a great idea to help them to know what they’re reading and when it takes place in the story. I think there’s great wisdom in that and it also gives our children such an understanding of God’s overall plan and what He’s doing. Now, we want to spend just a few minutes talking about exegesis and eisegesis, and this is not, Jesus as in J-E-S-U-S, but exegesis as E-X-E-G-E-S-I-S, and these are terms we use when talking about interpreting scripture. Okay. Dave, could you share a little bit about what exegesis and eisegesis means?
Dave:
Sure. Exegesis means getting what the scripture actually says, drawing from the scripture to get what it means.
Terrie:
Can I share a crazy story about that? When I was a kid in Sunday school, I was probably four years old and they had a picture of Adam and Eve and the serpent in the tree. Eve is over here talking to the serpent, picking the fruit off the tree, Adam is over there taking a nap, and so I, as a little kid, I never understood why God was so upset with Adam, because poor Adam, he was asleep. She goes over and gives him fruit when he’s groggy and doesn’t know what she’s doing, and here he’s being, you know, God’s not happy with him for sinning, and yet he didn’t know what was going on because that was the picture I had in my head, and I read Genesis, the first part where The Fall is in chapter three, I read that with that picture in my mind for so long that it took me until I was an adult to see that it says, “And she gave to Adam who was there with her.” He was right there listening to the whole thing, he was right there involved without speaking up, without stopping her. And so it’s a really silly example of eisegesis, but that is not exegesis to have a preconceived picture in my mind. I need to look at what the scriptures actually say and build my beliefs based on what the scripture says, not take my beliefs to the Bible and make it say what I want.
Dave:
So it means that we need to be careful when we study it, and the best way you can do that, I’ve often told people, you don’t have to tell people to remember the context, but teach them how to do it in context, and the way you do that is by reading a chapter before, and the chapter after, and then read the chapter you’re reading and then you get a picture of, well, what’s the flow of the scripture actually leading to? You know, we can misinterpret things by taking a scripture and pulling it out of the context it’s reading in and just say, “Well, this is what it says.” Well no, you need to- you need to see what was actually being said before, and what is it, where is it going after that to kind of get a picture of what it’s saying. Eisegesis, on the other hand, is where we try to read in our interpretation into the scripture and trying to make it fit what we want it to say, and that’s not what we need to do. So, you know, don’t just kind of stick your finger in the Bible and say, this is what God says when you see something, I mean, you know, you could take a scripture like what Judas- what Judas did in the scripture, completely misunderstand what God is saying.
Terrie:
Yeah. The old joke is that you just open the Bible to any scripture and you pinpoint it says, and Judas hanged himself, or you know, and then you close it, open it again and it says, go thou and do likewise, you know. So, and of course, that’s just even worse than eisegesis, that’s just like playing roulette with the Bible. We don’t want to teach our kids to read like that, of course. We want to have them rightly understanding scripture and being like 2nd Timothy says to show themselves approved rightly reading and understanding the Bible.
Dave:
Well, and when we read the Bible, it’s important that, you know, sometimes what happens is we kind of lose track of where we are, what we’re reading, cause our minds wonder, and it’s okay to say, you know, I don’t want to go through my Bible reading that way. You should give yourself enough time to go back and say, no, I want to make sure as I’m reading the scripture every day that I understand what I’m reading. I keep telling our people at church, you need to read the Bible every day. If you did that for two years, you would know more than most people know about the Bible. Because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand it, it just takes consistency in reading and carefully trying to understand, what does the scripture say here?
Terrie:
Yeah, and putting those pictures and preconceived ideas away and really just digging into what the scripture says and letting that, like I said, let that determine what you believe. Now we talked earlier about being transparent with our kids, not painting a, you know, roses and unicorn’s picture of following Christ, but at the same time, I don’t want to neglect to say how wonderful it is to be a follower of Christ, and we do want our children to see that joy, that peace. It’s amazing to me how often people come to the Lord because someone is going through a hard time, and yet they have peace in the midst of that struggle, and they’re like, “Why aren’t you freaking out?” or “Why aren’t you worrying?” Well, our children need to see that with us too, and Dave, I just want you to comment on that if you would.
Dave:
Well, I’ve been telling my own kids, they’re adult kids now, but at the same time, you can look at circumstances in our world today and feel hopeless and a Christian shouldn’t, even though things may seem out of control in our world, God is sovereign, that literally means He’s in control always. When we see bad things happen and sometimes bad things are going to happen to us, we need to remember that there is a God that we can cling to. The Bible says He’s our rock. When the world feels like it’s out of control, He is our foundation. He is the one that we hold onto and that we go to. So what do we do when things are bad? We cling to God, we go to His word, we find comfort in His scriptures and we find joy in the word of God.
Terrie:
So how can we share that joy and that hope and that peace with our children? How can we help them to be excited about following Christ?
Dave:
We just help them to realize, you know, there’s always another perspective. There’s two ways you can look at a situation in life, you can look at your circumstances and get discouraged, or you can look at God’s perspective and realize that even though things may seem out of control, God’s in control and He has your best interest at heart.
Terrie:
Yes, and we’re never alone. One of the things too is I like to help my children and my students see the wonder of God, the wonder of this world that He has created and to be thankful. I think if we can help our children to daily, stop and take an assessment of what are they thankful for and help them to have an attitude of gratitude, that goes a long way to building in that peace and that joy and that comfort. Even in the midst of crazy times, they’ll find that too, as they read the scripture, we gain such strength, like Dave said, and peace from reading the scriptures and recognizing that God is there with us.
Dave:
And that in spite of difficult circumstances, He still has a plan for good, not for harm. And you know, I’ve been telling my kids you have a choice every day. You have a choice of looking at things and being discouraged or you have a choice of looking at things and realizing in spite of all that’s happening, God is the one firm foundation, unshakeable truth that I can hang onto.
Terrie:
Hmm, that’s good. We were talking about the Bible stories, like the stories about like Daniel and the Lions and David and Goliath, and rather than trying to teach our kids that we can face giants and we can be in perilous situations and stuff like that, why don’t we teach the children what these stories are showing us? That God is an amazing God and He does amazing things through His people when we will trust Him, when we will be faithful to Him. Daniel prayed morning, noon and night, even though he knew it was against the law because he knew it was the right thing to do. Even though he knew he might get into trouble for breaking that law, he wouldn’t compromise his faith, that’s the story we need to be telling our children from that story. And with David and Goliath, they were mocking the God of Israel, and he said, you come at me with swords, I come at you in the name of my Lord, and He will defend His name. So it shows that God is going to defend His own honor, His own name. We don’t need to worry about those who are mocking us for our faith or who are mocking our God and thinking we’re foolish for following Him, and that’s what we need to teach our children from these stories. Let them see the beauty of God, the power of God, and the source that he brings into our life of giving us that strength, that hope, that tenacity and perseverance that we need, and basically the fruit of the spirit alive in our lives. And so we need to just help our children to open up God’s word and find that awe, find that wonder and that worship for God in the, the midst of it.
Dave:
You know, a good example of that is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Terrie:
Oh, yeah
Dave:
Yeah. You know that they- they believed in their God and they would not deny their God, and they were willing to go to the fire knowing that they could be burned up, but having faith in God that whatever happened, either they were going to be in heaven with God or that God was going to deliver them. They didn’t know how it was going to turn out, they just knew that God was with them in that situation.
Terrie:
Dave, you wanted to share a good book you know of for people to use in learning how to do different types of Bible studies. Can you share with us about that book?
Dave:
It’s an old book. Actually, many of you have heard of Rick Warren. It was his first book he ever wrote in his twenties, and it was one of the most helpful books in my life. It’s called 12 Dynamic Bible Study Methods, and he says the difference in the different ways of a Bible study is simply the questions that you ask and one type of Bible study is different than another because they ask different questions. A word study, thematic study, a biographical study, devotional study, topical study. There’s all kinds of different Bible study methods and it is still in print. You can still find it and it’s wonderful.
Terrie:
Well, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. I really appreciate that.
Dave:
Oh, it was my pleasure. I enjoyed being here with you.
Terrie:
Thank you for joining us for “Books That Spark,” where we encourage each other to live out everyday discipleship, helping to equip our children to follow Christ with their whole hearts. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share on social media so people know we are here and we truly want you to know. We really appreciate you, and if you would like to connect with me, you can join my mailing list or comment on my website on TerrieHellardBrown.com. We love to hear from you and we respond to every comment in question. We pray you feel empowered as a parent or caregiver to walk by faith and to embrace everyday discipleship every day with the children in your life.
Your Host: Terrie Hellard-Brown
Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God’s purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children’s stories, and Christian education materials.
Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children’s books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.
Her blog posts discuss living as a disciple of Christ while parenting our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ and to use the nooks and crannies of our lives to disciple our children.
Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on “the spectrum”), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.
Her motto is “Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be WONDERFUL” and keeps her childlike joy by writing children’s stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.