The one who desires to pursue God will necessarily find delight in His word, meditating on it day and night as the Psalmist declared (Psalm 1). Written by 40 authors from diverse backgrounds, captured in 66 individual books, spanning 1500 years, the Bible serves the primary input God provides to communicated the message of truth.
Understanding how to interpret scripture is critical. The process is foundational to the Christian faith; it is the bedrock of all that we believe as Christ followers, and it upholds everything we do in response to those beliefs.
From the opening words of introduction, Dr. Yarbrough highlights his concern with the common question asked when investigating biblical truth: “What does the text means to you as reader.” Such an approach to scriptural investigation leads to an “relative” interpretation based on a given individual’s life experiences. As a foundational tenet of his work, the author suggests such an approach leads the reader down a very dangerous path of misinterpretation and misguided application. Protecting against such an aberrant approach to biblical study, Dr. Yarbrough exposes the reader to a proper foundation for understanding God’s word. We must learn a proper interpretive approach which is devoid of imposing our own subjective experiences, opinions. and biases. In other words, we must follow “dependable rules of interpretation”.
Dr. Yarbrough takes what could be considered a very dry and academic topic and brings it to life through many personal stories of humor and intrigue which make learning quite compelling. He creates a very simple yet powerful framework for exposing the reader to this most important topic:
- Know It
- Understand the structure, story and substance of Scripture.
- Identify how the Bible is packaged and presented
- Work It
- Learn the rules for studying Scripture.
- See with your eyes and think with your head
- Live It
- Use the instruction from Scritpure for everyday life.
- Embrace what the Bible says and put it into practice.
I highly recommend this work which exposes important truths about how to correctly approach the study of God’s word communicated in a way that draws the read into the learning process. Through this literary craftsmanship, Dr. Yarbrough imparts the foundations of proper interpretation leading to the application of God’s truth to our daily lives.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Leave a Reply