The Third Degree

‘Inaccessible’ and ‘impenetrable’ may not necessarily be the first words used by students involved in evangelical Christian Unions to describe the Old Testament, however, it would be true to say that many students can find the Old Testament difficult to understand, easy to misapply and intimidating to approach.

This year’s Word Alive 2006 saw Vaughan Roberts open up the Old Testament in a seminar series entitled ‘Understanding, applying and teaching the Bible’. The series has been designed to enable students to gain a holistic view of the Bible, where each God-breathed word of both Testaments is important for our learning and living.

What God says about God

‘The key to understanding the Bible is to recognise that it doesn’t contain lots of little messages for me in my particular situation. First and foremost, it’s a book about God, and I’m not going to go far wrong if, in any part of the Bible, I ask, “What is God saying about God in this passage?” Once I discover that, it’s always relevant because God never changes. These few overarching truths about God will apply to all the details of my life’ (Vaughan Roberts).

While teaching about the importance of context, hermeneutics and delivery techniques, Vaughan has specifically demonstrated the importance of the Old Testament from the book of Exodus, of which he says, ‘Exodus is so fundamental in the Old Testament because it’s the archetype of salvation and redemption, where God reveals himself as the saving God, the Lord’. We have seen from this book of covenant and salvation that the unchanging God graciously pointed towards Christ who was to fulfil the Exodus of the Israelites in one final great act of redemption that would encompass the whole world.

Next Bible teachers

We have been encouraged to approach Bible texts with humility, knowing that God has spoken directly to certain people at particular times and in this sense, his Word was written ‘for us’ rather than ‘to us’.

I asked Vaughan why believes it is important for students to learn about applying and teaching the Bible at this stage in our lives. He said, ‘If we want to know God, and if we want to know how to live to obey him, then we need to know the means by which he communicates, and that’s the Bible. We need to know how to understand it rightly, so that’s going to be important for anyone. But you will be the leaders of the church for the future, so it’s important that at your age you can get an understanding and an excitement about Bible teaching and how to do it properly. My longing for this seminar is that a significant number of you do end up in Bible teaching as your life’s work.’

Power of the Bible

I caught up with a number of students after the series had ended to ask how they had benefited from the seminars. Anneli van Wyk, a biochemistry student at the University of Warwick, said, ‘The seminars were very helpful because we were given questions to consider and practical pointers so that we can get to grips with what a passage is saying.’ Most students I spoke to expressed a new appreciation for the power of the Bible. Brian Kruger, an industrial mathematical modelling student at Loughborough University, said, ‘My overall view of the Bible has been affected. An important issue has been to see the context of the day in which the passage was written to get a true reflection of what the author said.’ While Jenny Williams, a history student at Birmingham University, said, ‘From looking at Exodus, I’ve appreciated the idea that God wants to dwell with his people. That’s exciting. I’m reassured that the Bible is the Word of God and it can be understood clearly today.’ Jonny Richards, a second year lawyer at the University of Leicester said, ‘I realised in a new way the depth of Scripture and the need for deep thought and study to unlock it.’

Unchanging Word

Personally, I was struck by the sense that God’s Word is completely unchanging and absolutely true, while always relevant and significant in our individual situations — even the parts of it that we rarely turn to out of choice. The challenge has been to embrace the Bible as powerful and intrinsically life-changing simply because this is the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So, at the end of the series, we leave Word Alive enthused about the eternal God and his master plan of salvation, inspired to faithfully proclaim the truth of his life-giving word: all of it.

Dan Hames

© Evangelicals Now - May 2006
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