Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my ninety ninth episode. In this episode I want to make the case for teaching Scripture verse by verse. This is also called expository teaching. In expository teaching, the goal is to discover the author’s meaning in a passage by studying the historical, literary, and sociocultural context. This sounds like a lost art given over to dusty commentaries and dry theologians – and it is if you approach it that way. But what if you approach expository teaching as if it holds the key to perspectives that will promote your well-being today, tomorrow, and the rest of your days? What if I told you that line by line teaching of Scripture has the power to uncover ancient wisdom inside of you that leads you and your loved ones to a better life? And what if you knew that plumbing the depths of Scripture was at the same time gaining a more complete picture of God Himself? Wisdom that has been lost to the generations becomes secret wisdom. Rediscovering this secret wisdom may be the only effort that can prevent the catastrophic failure of civilization. You might say I’m being alarmist, but history is littered with the skeletal remains of imploded societies. The artwork of the evil one.
After Christ’s baptism, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness where He encountered Satan. There the thief, the father of lies, the destroyer whispered temptations into Christ’s ear. And then Jesus – I imagine Him looking directly into the eyes of evil – calmly replied: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He was quoting Scripture – Deuteronomy chapter 8. This idea that we need the Word of God is more necessary today than ever. There have been several high profile conversions to Christianity which means the faith stands the possibility of becoming popular again. In addition to the imploded societies, history also tells us that there are few things more dangerous than popular but misguided religion. It’s a wonderful thing that the power of Jesus’ name is reverberating through western culture – but if our teaching fails to function as salt to preserve what is good and light to guide the world then the culture will grab hold of the faith and warp it into its own image. Humanity will call forth darkness and destruction in Jesus’ name – violating the second of the ten commandments and causing countless numbers of people to fall away into apostasy. Line by line expository teaching of Scripture is the only fail-safe that can keep this from happening.
So I’m going to explain the proper way of doing it. We’re going to discuss Bible translations and the original languages. I want to talk about developing the historical and sociocultural background in any given passage. We’ll discuss the importance of uncovering ideas which pass can through the full developmental narrative of the biblical canon free of error. I want to explain the necessity of an additional domain of context that many expository teachers neglect – which results in teaching that is dry at best and incorrect at worst. We’re going to look at the difference between topical teachers and expository teachers, as well as the areas each are getting right and each are getting wrong. And finally I want to go over some popular misunderstandings in the Christian worldview that could have been resolved by solid expository teaching.
First let’s think about Bible translations. Most translations follow one of two philosophies – essentially literal or dynamic equivalence. Essentially literal is a word for word translation. Dynamic equivalence is a thought for thought translation. If you are doing deep study then essentially literal translations are superior. A good essentially literal translation is the English Standard Version. If you are trying to find a Bible for devotional reading then dynamic equivalence might work better. Dynamic equivalence tends to produce a translation that sounds more modern and reads easier. The New Living Translation is a good work of dynamic equivalence. My favorite translation is the English Standard Version because it’s trustworthy and it lends itself to the type of expository work that I do.
As Christians, we believe that the Bible is inerrant in its original form. If you want to read Scripture in its original form then you need to learn Hebrew and Greek. Many scholars have done exactly this. Commentaries such as the Word Biblical Commentary and the New International Commentary were developed out of the Hebrew and Greek. I used to think that it would be interesting to learn these languages so that I could access the biblical manuscripts but I’ve since changed my thoughts on that. In my opinion, learning the original languages to do your own critical scholarship of the manuscripts is probably a waste of time. The work has been done. The work has been checked and rechecked by world-class scholars across the generations. There is no text on planet earth that has been more scrupulously examined than the Bible. I say it’s not a wise use of time because if you do the work correctly you’ll probably come to the same understandings as previous scholars – and you don’t have unlimited hours to live in this life. If your entire ministry is built on knowing the original languages then that’s one thing, but if you’re just interested in studying the manuscripts to find a conclusion, I think it would be more efficient to stand on the shoulders of bygone experts.
So we know that our widely sourced translations like the ESV are trustworthy and accurate representations of the biblical manuscripts. This means that we can study them with peace of mind. When I read Scripture, my first area of interest is literary context. I want to read the sentence in light of the paragraph, the paragraph in light of the chapter, the chapter in light of the book, the book in light of the entire canon. I never want to change the meaning of a given verse by taking it out of its context. But literary context by itself is not enough to arrive safely at the author’s intended meaning. We also need to check the historical and sociocultural context. This means understanding the nature of the original audience as well as the nature of the author. What were their customs? What was considered normal during this time? What was the political climate like? A good example of passages that require historical and sociocultural development are the early books of the Old Testament. Many of the ancient laws in the Torah seem silly or cruel to us today, but that’s because we live in a civilization that is very far removed from the civilization these laws were designed to address.
You might say: I thought all of God’s Word is applicable to us today. The answer is that some of it is not but only because the generations have succeeded in building a stable society. If we reverse course and fall into the dark ways of ancient humanity then some of the early object lessons given to God’s people might become necessary to pull us up out of the muck. Many of the early Old Testament laws were given to the Israelites as a means of separating them from the savage pagan people. Today, nearly everyone in western culture is steeped in biblical principle – even if they don’t realize it. We would do well to keep it that way so that we never have to suffer the cruelty of the ancients.
So we need to establish literary, historical, and sociocultural context in order to understand what the biblical author meant in any given passage. Once we’ve gathered all of these data points then we can use them to tell a story about what was happening in the passage. We can accurately infer what many of the characters must have been thinking and feeling. Telling the story of a biblical passage makes the Scripture come to life and allows listeners to see points of contact between themselves and the individuals who lived thousands of years ago. They can relate to the passage. Once we have this relatability and we can see what’s happening in the text – the application principles become more clear. An application principle is a biblical truth that you can go out and deploy in your life and in your relationships. These application principles are what most people are interested in. What’s the purpose of learning this? How can I use it? I never provide exposition of a biblical passage without uncovering at least one principle. God’s Word is loaded with wisdom.
Once we’ve uncovered a principle, we need to test it in a couple different to make sure it is good. The first way is to make sure it can pass through all of Scripture without encountering an error. Let me read you an example of a principle that fails to do this from Deuteronomy chapter 22:
Deu 22:13 “If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her
Deu 22:14 and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity,’
Deu 22:15 then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate.
Deu 22:16 And the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man to marry, and he hates her;
Deu 22:17 and behold, he has accused her of misconduct, saying, “I did not find in your daughter evidence of virginity.” And yet this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city.
Deu 22:18 Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him,
Deu 22:19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days.
Deu 22:20 But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman,
Deu 22:21 then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
So a skeptic would read this passage and claim it is a clear example of Scripture promoting barbaric and inhumane treatment of women. But if they would look at the historical and sociocultural context of this passage they would see that this law was given to prevent the barbaric and inhumane treatment of women. The base condition of societies during this period allowed for men to do pretty much whatever they wanted to women – including false accusations of sexual immorality to justify murdering them if they decided they no longer wanted to be with them. Pagan societies had little if any regard for the value of human life. In contrast, everywhere God goes the value, rights, and responsibilities of the individual are brought to bear and considered sovereign. To extract His people from these horrific practices, God gave them a criteria of due process that must be met before such a thing as murdering your wife would be permissible. And the whole point is that this criteria would be impossible to satisfy – thus preventing the practice altogether while at the same time preserving the free will of His people. For ancient people it was a moral leap forward of such intellectual magnitude that it can only be the product of omniscience.
But why doesn’t God just say: You shall not murder your wife for sexual immorality. The answer is that He does give this command further up the ladder – but He had to give these ancient, barbaric people some initial rungs to climb in order to get there. Otherwise it would be like trying to teach a 3 year old algebra. And here’s the scary thing: I believe it’s possible for societies to degenerate so badly that they will once again need these base-level object lessons in order to climb back into a civilized nature. We do not want to go down that road.
Let’s assume that a reader fails to understand the historical context of this passage in Deuteronomy and so believes it’s godly to murder your new wife if you discover she’s not a virgin. The truth is that even if you irresponsibly exegete this passage and totally ignore the historical context you still can’t make it work because of plain literary context. God commands Hosea to love his wife who falls into prostitution. Jesus Himself rescues a woman from being stoned by the Pharisees for violating this very same Old Testament passage. Jesus told the Pharisees that none of them had the right to judge her because all of them were themselves contaminated with sin. God is the only one who holds the position of judgment over an individual – and Jesus forgave the woman for her adultery.
So if you interpret the passage in Deuteronomy to be God’s instruction for you to murder your wife for adultery, then you must also send this interpretation through the rest of the developmental narrative of Scripture. When you see that it fails to make it through, that’s how you know you are wrong and you need to look at it again. It is your responsibility as a Christian to make sure that every single principle you pull from Scripture is able to pass muster in this way. Jesus gives us the master values that all of your principles must adhere to in order to work. These master values are to love God and love your neighbor. If you’re acting on something that you believe to be biblical and it is causing you to fail in loving God or loving your neighbor then guess what: the principle you are acting on is not biblical. Even if you think your idea is plain as day in Scripture, if implementation causes you to violate the two great commandments then you have failed either in your exegesis of the passage or your application of the principle.
And that brings us to our third domain of context. We’ve covered historical, sociocultural, and literary context. Now we need to think about practical or application context. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the Word of God – the Logos. If you want to be Christlike, then you must also attempt to embody the Word of God. This requires that you learn as much as you can outside of Scripture and commit to developing yourself into an effective person. You might say, why do I need to learn anything outside of Scripture if Scripture is all sufficient? The answer is that the things you learn outside of Scripture add depth to what you see when you look inside of Scripture. Here’s a simple example. Imagine that you’re driving down the road and you see a sign that says Road Work Ahead. You only know what this sign means because you are familiar with roads, you’re familiar with work, and you’re familiar with things which are ahead. It’s impossible for you to read or interpret anything without drawing on things you’ve experienced.
You might think that’s obvious, but developing your knowledge of the world outside of Scripture is so important that it can determine your efficacy as a Christian. Imagine that your neighbor is sick with an infection. 200 years ago loving your neighbor as you love yourself would have meant bloodletting to get the infection out. Today, if your neighbor was sick and you bled them instead of taking them to the doctor you would be committing a sin. The only thing that’s changed is our collective knowledge of infectious disease and medicine. The disciplines that exist outside of Scripture are there to inform you how to apply the timeless principles inside of Scripture. You can’t know the Christlike thing to do in any given situation unless you do your work to understand that situation.
If you embody a derived set of principles from Scripture and the mode of being leads to societal, familial, or interpersonal breakdown then you know that your understanding of the principles is incomplete or incorrect. I think one of the reasons the Protestant Church has so many denominations is because the theologians responsible for forming the denominations spent more time developing their theology than they spent embodying the Word of God. It’s critically important for an expositor to have a depth of knowledge of things outside of Scripture. The expositor can use this outside knowledge to inform his listeners as to how they can go about applying the principles that emerge from the text. I can tell you that if a teacher skips this step then the Bible is going to be boring. Oh, but if a teacher gets this step right – the Bible will come to life and transform entire cities.
When you go into a church today you’re likely to hear a sermon that is either topical or expository. Topical sermons address a specific idea using passages of Scripture. A sermon on marriage is an example of topical. Expository sermons are interested in developing a specific passage of text. A skilled teacher can develop the text and allow the topic to emerge on its own. An easy example is 1 Corinthians 13. You can teach an expository message on 1 Corinthians 13 and the topic that is going to emerge from the text is love. Competent expositors can give rise to important topics using any passage of the Bible. Really competent expositors can develop the text and the topic simultaneously using their knowledge of both Scripture and the disciplines outside of the text such as history, psychology, leadership, etc. The biggest mistake topical teachers make is forcing Scripture to take a back seat in favor of their own opinions on a given topic. The biggest mistake expositors make is teaching a crowd of people all about the text without showing the audience how the text is relevant to them.
Every church should have good, verse by verse, expository teaching of Scripture. The well being of ourselves, our families, our communities, and our nation is directly connected to our biblical literacy. If we allow this wisdom to pass away from us we do so at our absolute peril. I want to give you just a few examples of popular misunderstandings that are a direct consequence of the widespread decline of biblical literacy. You may have heard someone say that cleanliness is next to godliness. This is not biblical. In fact, listen to what Isaiah predicts about Christ and His first coming:
Isa 53:2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
Isa 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Jesus came to us first as a suffering servant – not very impressive to look upon. Imagine how many Christians mistreat unattractive or disheveled people because they believe cleanliness is next to godliness – when that idea is nowhere to be found in Scripture. The truly biblical idea is to treat the least of men and women as if you are treating Jesus Himself.
Another popular misunderstanding is that human beings become angels when they die. You often hear people say, so-and-so is my guardian angel now or this person finally got their wings. None of that is biblical. Human beings are heirs with Christ, angels are not. Human beings are made in the image of God, angels are not. You also hear people say that money is the root of all evil. Again, this is not biblical. The biblical truth is that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. There are many wealthy Christians who do great things because they love Jesus more than they love their money.
Finally, you’ve heard people say that God helps those who help themselves. This, too, is not in the Bible. It’s actually a dangerous idea because it implies that you can do something about your own salvation if you just perform well enough. The truth is that you are warped beyond your own capacity to save. Only God can save you and that’s why He went to the cross. You are saved by grace through faith alone – not by your own works. I often encourage individuals to pick up maximum responsibility and try to improve themselves – but I never imply that their salvation is at all dependent on that practice. To suggest that God won’t help or save you unless your performance is good enough is fully antithetical to the Gospel.
Scripture is a treasure trove of wisdom that will help you live a peaceful, meaningful, and better life because of your reconciliation through Jesus Messiah. It’s all given to you by God. We are crazy to think that we can get by without doing all that we can to delve into this wisdom and plumb the depths of God’s Word. Jesus said, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
If you enjoy this podcast, please rate it on Apple Podcasts. You can find the link on my website. You can follow The MHB Podcast on Facebook or Twitter @mhbpodcast. Tell your friends about it and share it on social media. With your help we can bring this work to those who need it and God-willing we will change the course their lives. If you’d like to support my work directly, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me, and I will see you in the next episode.
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