So, What Does It Say? (YWS Week 28)

Nick Horton 1 Comment

richardsibbessmallWelcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Bowels Opened Study Plan

  1. Discuss Biblical Hermeneutics, which is the science of biblical interpretation.
  2. Explore various interpretations of the Song of Solomon.
  3. Brief outline of what I believe to be a correct interpretation.
  4. Canonization – Why is this book in the Canon?

Summary/Engagement

Last week we explored a few of the more popular, albeit wrong, interpretations of the Song of Solomon. I want to remind everyone to read the first two posts above that lay some of the ground work for today. When reading the Bible we have to pay attention to what the author willed to convey to the original audience, keeping in mind their culture and place in history. Thus, we cannot impose 21st century western American cultural values on a Middle Eastern, Semitic, 3000 year old text. If we do, we won’t make any sense of it and seek to resolve that with allegorical interpretations, dramatic interpretations that wouldn’t have existed in the region until 1500 years later, or force it into contemporary cultic interpretations that do not fit.

Let me introduce one more category for our vocabulary of hermeneutics and interpretation. Literary Genre.

Literary Genre – The literary form being used by the author and the rules governing that form.

What literary form is the Song of Solomon? A love song, or really a collection of love songs. If I look at what the book says an pay attention to how it was written, what other conclusion could I come to? To be fair, there are those who hold to alternate readings as we discussed last week. However, I think they suffer from imposing a reading on the text to cover what they see as problematic or improper.

If we ignore the author and their willed meaning we end up with incorrect interpretations and thus incorrect applications. Look at what Sibbes says about Song of Solomon 5:2 – “I slept, but my heart was awake.” Dr. Sibbes interprets this to mean:

Indeed the church might have said, My heart sleepeth, but my heart waketh. For it is the same faculty, the same power of the soul, both in the state of corruption, and of grace, in which the soul is; as in the twilight we cannot say, this is light and that is darkness, because there is such a mixture. In all the powers of the soul there is something good and something ill, something flesh and something spirit. The heart was asleep, and likewise was awake. ‘ I sleep, but my heart waketh.’

He goes on to conclude that in the Christian there exists both good and evil. From this his application is that we should recognize that which is good and that which is evil so that we don’t bear false witness. His conclusions and applications are not heretical. They are good observations. The problem lies in those observations having no correlation to the text.

You might say, “Yes he was wrong but it isn’t heresy, so what’s the harm?”

What’s The Harm?

This is dangerous for any student of scripture to miss the meaning and thus misapply the text. God inspired the writing of Scripture using human authors to convey a specific meaning. We cannot take the word of God and make excuses, impose meaning, or seek to explain what is not there. To do so robs the Word of its power and hinders its transformative power in our life. Don’t think so?

What if I took John 3:16, “For God so loved the World, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” and imposed a meaning that did not arise from the text. For example, I could say that the text speaks about the love between fathers and sons, and that all fathers should love their sons like God loves Jesus. Not necessarily heretical in the sense of denying the Gospel, but the interpretation is simply flat wrong and takes a passage concerning the Gospel and salvation and moralizes it into human behavior. We cannot impose our meaning on the text. That is called eisegesis. Not only can we not do that, we have no right.

I would also conclude that the Song of Solomon is not a metaphor for Christ and the Church. The language is not there. You may object that the institution of marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. I wholeheartedly agree with that. However, this is a love song that delves in to the physical consummation of the marriage relationship. Christ is never referred to in such a way in the rest of the Bible. To introduce Christ in to the physical aspect is to run dangerously close to Pagan fertility cult beliefs. Many disagree with my assessment. Did God physically interact with Mary in the conception of Christ? No! Why would we ascribe a love song with vivid physical imagery to anything resembling Christ’s relationship with the Church?

OK, why is it in the Bible? What is the purpose of it being there? How did it get canonized?

Good questions. We’ll take those up next week.

Helpful Links

A COMPLETELY FREE online Hermeneutics class taught by Dr. Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Check it out!

Two helpful books:

  1. Robert Stein: A Basic Guide To Interpreting The Bible.
  2. Robert Plummer: 40 Questions About Interpreting The Bible.

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Last week, we read the Second Part of Bowels Opened and discussed the variety of interpretations of Song of Solomon.

Next week, we finish Bowels Opened and consider its canonicity.

Why Christianity Doesn’t Stand a Chance At Your Local Library and How to Change That

Mike Leake 6 Comments


“Maybe there really is a God.”

Young Sam has had this nagging sense in his heart for a few weeks now. But he’s always been an intellectual, so he’s not the type of guy that just goes on feelings. So he does what he always has done when he wants to find the answer to something—he goes to his local library.

This time he’s going to study the claims of Christianity against the claims of new atheism. He’s a little more familiar with what the new atheists teach. But he figures he had better check the books out anyways. It’s a familiar section for him and so he quickly pulls some of the more popular books off the shelf. He loads Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and a couple others onto his arms.

Next he finds himself in a rather unfamiliar territory—the somewhat scant section in the library on Christianity. A few faces seem familiar—these are guys that he’s seen on television, so he figures they must be the best representatives.

On top of his books on New Atheism he’s loading himself down with books by Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, another book called the idiots guide to Christianity, a book written by one of the popes, and a book about the history of Christianity.

Christianity doesn’t stand a chance.

No Fault of the Library

This is not the fault of the librarian. She picks books based upon bestseller lists, professional reviews, and requests from patrons.

The books that are most popular in Christianity (sadly) are usually not intellectual or scholarly treatments. Truthfully they are more akin to self-help books than anything to do with the gospel. But most librarians don’t know this. They often have meager budgets and so if they are going to stock something in the non-fiction section then they need to be sure that its something that will be checked out. If Joel Osteen is a best-seller then it’s a pretty safe bet that somebody will want to read it.

But none of this bodes well for people like Sam trying to learn the truth about Christianity. We need to help our librarians and young learners like Sam at least be able to give the gospel a fair shake.

How To Change This

You can’t do much about the bestseller list. Nor can we do a ton about peer reviews and librarian magazines. But there is one door that is wide open that can help us get solid Christian books in your library. You can request them.

Most librarians are open to suggestions. I contacted our local library and I’ve been tasked with giving our librarian a list of solid Christian books to help shore up the non-fiction section. I doubt my situation is that unique. Libraries want to provide a service for the community. Enough requests of the same books will likely result in their being stocked.

However, there  are a couple of tips to what books you ought to request.

  • Don’t request really old books. I know you love the Puritans (I do too) but most librarians try to get these types of books through inter-library loans.
  • Don’t request rare books. I know you love books like Torn to Heal (and I appreciate that) but you’ll be better served requesting books a bit more popular.
  • Don’t shy away from the classics. I’m pushing to get the Institutes in our library. There are some old books that they need to have for research purposes. But request these books based on history, quality of literature, etc. and not based on theology.
  • Don’t focus on controversial topics. As much as you’d like to get a book in there about a Christian view of sexuality now is likely not the time. You are doing foundation work here. Help build a good sturdy base first.

You want to get solid biblical books that are also relatively new, have good covers, and are at least moderately popular.

So here is what I’m asking from our readers. Help me put together this list for our library. Once I have your suggestions and combine them with my own I will make this list available to all of our readers. Then I’ve got a challenge for you to get these books in your local library.

So…which books fit the criteria that you believe would be great for a local library?

Today in Blogworld 07.16.14

Mike Leake

Restoring Optimism to A Pessimistic America

Americans are no longer optimist. And David Murray believes this is a great opportunity for gospel ministry. I agree.

So your child is dating a non-Christian

Some helpful advice from Kim Shay on what to do when your child is dating a non-Christian.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Screwball

Few pitchers through the screwball anymore.

An Open Letter to “Gospel-Centered” Preacher

This is good: “Because when people see that, they don’t say “You’re smart!” They say, “You know – that makes sense.”

Watch kids try to figure out a GameBoy:

Why Preachers and Bloggers Should Be Like Richard Nixon

Mike Leake


It was the middle of May in 1946 when a 33 year old Richard Nixon approached the podium. In the audience couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred of the Pomona Kiwanis Club. Nixon clears his throat and gives a riveting speech.

It was certainly a much more modest audience than Nixon would be speaking to in the coming years. In the Nixon Library one can scroll through the speech files and will note that 1:7 is this particular address. The attendance at this event (and the significance of this event) will pale in comparison to the hundreds of other speeches on this list.

And yet Nixon delivered to these few souls “a rather learned review of the brutalities of seven centuries of Russian history”. It was, as his biographer Conrad Black would note, “an amazingly substantial address for such a modest audience” (Black 76).

Few times have preachers and Christian bloggers been admonished to follow in the foot steps of Richard Nixon. But here we must.

Preaching and Blogging to a Modest Crowd

What preacher hasn’t been discouraged by his modest Sunday evening crowd and just decided to phone it in? It’s not that he’ll preach untruth. He’ll still preach the gospel and still try to be faithful to the text. But it’s the periphery things. The things that he could have done that are missing—like the riveting illustrations that he diligently sought to help his Sunday morning sermon.

Those periphery things are missing when he preaches to the more modest crowd. He’ll save his hard work for the big crowds—and the little crowd will get his leftovers.

The same thing is true of bloggers when they first start. The crowd is modest and so she’ll write for a modest crowd. She won’t bother editing much. She won’t sit on a post and work it over until it’s just perfect. After all, she reasons, only my grandma will be reading this anyways.

Be Faithful With Little

But there is a reason why Nixon became president, why some bloggers continue to grow, and why the influence of some preachers will widen; namely, they were faithful when they had a little crowd.

What Jesus said in Luke 16:10 applies to preaching and blogging. “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.”

Whether you are preaching for 5 or 500 give it 110%. Whether your blog audience is 10 or 10,000 keep writing to the best of your ability. If you aren’t faithful with the little that you’ve been given then you will certainly shipwreck any wider audience that you might be given.

One other thing that is interesting in the life of Nixon is that you can see early on in his political career corners that he cut. These were little things when in his scope was much smaller. But eventually these little things caught up to him and he wound up disgraced. I can’t help but think that there is a warning for us as well—the corners you cut now will catch up to you later.

Be faithful no matter the size of your audience—knowing that you always have an audience of One.