‘Can I have a volunteer to read one verse please? It’s a well known verse, you’ll probably recognise it: turn to Jeremiah 29:11.’
Alexandra volunteers, finds the verse and smiles - ‘you’re right: it’s underlined in my Bible!’ She reads the verse out and there are smiles and nods - it is well known. (You might know it without looking it up, but you might as well look it up to be sure).
It’s the fifth training session at The Wave 2020, our IFES Greece summer beach camp. By now the team are used to the format: we introduce today’s topic (‘Will life with God go well for me?’), get them discussing, dig into a Bible passage (just the one passage: no hopping around between verses with the exception of any crucial OT/NT fulfilment passages), and then aim to dig out the God-intended meaning of the passage by allowing the text to interpret itself.
Here's what it looks like (this was discussion on the feeding of the 5000):
By the end of our 45 minute session, I observe the kind of reaction I’ve come to expect with the approach to Bible training that I now normally take. People (not all, of course, but most) are listening and concentrating, thinking of questions, making connections, and often either frowning with thought or smiling with the realisation that God actually speaks in his word (I mean, the Bible is not just lots of words about God but words from God, living and active) and that his word is a word of grace in Christ not law and burden.
I'll rewind briefly.
We’re IFES. Of course we believe in Bible study.
I doubt many people need persuading of that. But to what end? And how? Because we all know that it is possible to get the Bible open with students and see little gospel growth. We were finding that we were opening the Bible with bored Christians - 'We've heard it all before (or least might think we have).' It’s become a bit of a dry routine. And so it has become boring. Why? Well, I've been wondering about this and maybe there are two common tracks we head down that lead to boring Bible teaching.
One is the track that looks to give something practical. We are concerned about not being applied enough, so we look for something that we can tell people 'to do'. I've heard this stated explicitly many times. And so when we get into a passage we are quickly looking for practical lessons for life - the result of which is often burdensome to the people we're to whom we're speaking. Do this, or stop doing that, or do this better, or learn this, or take on this principle, and so on.
Is it right to apply our Bible teaching? Of course. But if our starting point is 'what practical application can I take from this passage?' we may well end up at the wrong destination. And the goal of giving people clear instruction on what to do can easily end up being burdensome, and that ends up being joyless, graceless - and boring.
The other common track is to aim merely for rigorous orthodoxy: to be satisfied with laying out truth and leaving it at that, with no application to real daily life. This comes from a laudable desire to keep us in the truth, which of course needs doing. But if all we do is restate what is already agreed with and not show how that leads to transformation of life and thought and heart, it can end up being joyless, directionless - and boring.
Let me say clearly: what we did at The Wave was not about being more interesting, more exciting. I think I am one of the less interesting public speakers I know (ask my family). But there is something simple and refreshing that we can do to help bored Christians get into the Bible, and I’ve been trying to take this approach more and more over the past couple of years with students (and others) in Greece.
In a nutshell, we want to hold up two approaches to the text side by side and let the Bible itself show which one is better. Do you want to make the text about me, or about Jesus? We’d noticed that although people were very familiar with the Bible, and didn’t need persuading that it is God’s word or important, more often than not the message that people were hearing from Scripture was one of what we must do, and not so much what God has done for us in Jesus. Jesus himself tells us that we should read the Bible as about him (John 5:39-40, for example). So it’s not that surprising that making the Bible about ourselves makes it less captivating, and it’s not surprising that boredom is the result.
What we do is take often-familiar passages and get people to try and dig out a message. Invariably (I’m not exaggerating) we can second-guess the kinds of messages that people pull out. For example, in 1 Kings 19 where Elijah goes to Horeb, the message is often that you have to learn to listen carefully to God’s voice because it can be hard to hear (you know, the still small voice, or the sound of silence). With David and Goliath, it’s about being courageous, and how we can overcome obstacles if we have faith like David. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the application is usually how we ought to be like Jesus, not like the disciples, and learn to stay alert and pray and so on.
Our students are in the habit of looking in Scripture to find out what we must do. If we miss Christ in the text, we miss the main thing. So we are trying to help students to learn to hear God’s word about Jesus in his word and work out how that word about Jesus impacts the way we live and think.
So, back to Jeremiah 29: how will life with God go for me?
It’s a picture of God keeping his promises for the long haul, isn’t it? Of being brought to the place where God dwells, and dwelling with him, because Jesus brings us out of exile truly and forever. It’s not about being comforted by the promise of employment again when we’ve been made redundant, or a new relationship around the corner if we’ve been through a painful break up, or healing when we’re sick. (Those might all happen of course, it’s just that this promise isn’t about any of those sorts of things.) It’s about something much better and lasting and truly wonderful. A Christ-centred application of this passage takes us to hope in the long-term future fulfilment of a promise - hope in the new heaven and the new earth brought about by the life and work of Jesus. An attempt to apply without Jesus driving that application leads to expectations of a life here and now that just isn't promised to us, and fixes our eyes on nearer and narrower horizons, rather than broader and more glorious ones that truly motivate and encourage us to keep going.
Our horizons contract and our hopes shrink when we make the Bible about me, or when we make Bible study more of an intellectual/theological exercise. Our Christianity becomes boring, because it’s not about something really great. But when we make it about Jesus (what am I talking about? When we see that it is about Jesus!) our horizons expand, our hopes are brighter, our life takes its rightful place in Jesus with him in the spotlight.
This is just the start of a long process of disciple-making. It’s relatively straightforward to help people have this eye-opening moment of seeing that the Bible is about Jesus and not about me. That application that starts with having Jesus at the centre leads to growth in the grace offered by the gospel. It needs to be done consistently and regularly and comprehensively, but it’s a good start.
Get some bored Christians reading the Bible with Jesus at the centre!
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