One of the greatest challenges we face as students of God’s Word is understanding the world into which the text was originally written. It is tempting for us to impose our own categories and experiences on the text. And while God’s Word is relevant for all times and places, we miss meaning when we do this. Or to put it positively, the better we understand the world of the text, the better we can understand the text’s meaning and apply it with greater relevance and power to our own lives.
This is not to say that one must become an ancient near eastern scholar in order to truly understand the Bible. God promises that his Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts to give us understanding. What it does mean is that becoming more acquainted with the world of the text is a great service to knowing God’s Word.
My mentor, Jim Boice, once said that his single focus in life was to become a better Bible teacher. That is my desire, too, so I have been immensely grateful for the opportunities the Lord has given me to tour Israel. Recently, I had the opportunity to do so with some of our people at Second.
My prayer for these trips has always been that they would help me become a better teacher of God’s Word. I have also made an even more personal request to God, asking that he would make this a pilgrimage for me. In preparation for one trip, I read The Way of the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today by Tom Wright, a collection of lectures he gave to his congregation preparing for a trip to the Holy Land. In presenting a “biblical theology of pilgrimage,” Wright shared his experience at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which made me thirst for similar healing waters on my trip:
And as I thought and prayed in that spot, a few yards from the place where Jesus died, I found that somehow, in a way I still find difficult to describe, all the pain of the world seemed to be gathered there. . . . And it was all somehow concentrated on that one spot. And then, as I continued to reflect and pray, the hurts and pains of my own life came up for review, and they too all seemed to gather together with clarity and force in that one place. It was a moment—actually, two or three hours—of great intensity, in which the presence of Jesus the Messiah, at the place where the pain of the world was concentrated, became more and more the central reality. I emerged eventually in the bright sunlight, feeling as though I had been rinsed out spiritually and emotionally, and understanding—or at least glimpsing—in a new way what it could mean to suppose that one act in one place at one time could somehow draw together the hopes and fears of all the years. I had become a pilgrim.
As we celebrate the Advent of Christ this year, I hope my reflections on places involving Christ’s incarnation will be of encouragement to you. I hope you will better understand the world of the Bible and so become a better student of God’s Word. And I hope you will see Christ more clearly than ever.