How Do You Read The Word of God?

How Do You Read The Word of God?

Chaim Bentorah

 

Biblical Message As God Dictated It Grammatical, Historical, & Contextual

 

 

 

 

"One of our biggest problems in understanding Scripture is that we look at it from a Western Greek philosophical view rather than an Oriental one, in which the Bible was written. In our Western culture, we use a sort of stair-step philosophy. For instance:

 

All men are created equal. Fact: Burford and Bunkie are men. Conclusion: Burford and Bunkie are equal. Oriental philosophy is sort of a box-type logic. For example, there are two ends to a box. If each end is connected, what is inside the box is your conclusion. Take the matter of election as found in the Bible. In one passage of Scripture, we see that God elects, or chooses, some people to be saved or they are predestined to be saved. In another passage, we find that man chooses to be saved, which sounds contradictory. For centuries, Western theologians have tried to plug that into our Western logic, and it just does not fit. Consequently, you have the Calvinist who says God chooses man to be saved and the Armenians who say man makes the choice. They both can’t be right, so they divide into two camps and throw rocks at each other. Yet that would not bother an Eastern Jew with Oriental box logic. You have two sides of a box that are connected; what is in the middle is the conclusion. Therefore, salvation is an act of the will of God and an act of the will of man.

1 Kings 19:3–4, we have an example of this box logic. Elijah saw (that is, saw with spiritual eyes) what Jezebel had planned for him, and he ran away as a defensive action. But he was also terrified by what he saw. These two sides of the box are joined by, “I am no better than my fathers.” The issue with the fathers was a matter of faith and trust in God. Elijah was not despondent because of Jezebel’s threat; it was that after all these miracles that God performed proving that He would provide, Elijah still let fear take control of him. He saw himself no better than his ancestors who walked in daily miracles of God in the wilderness, yet when it was time to enter the Promised Land, they were overcome with fear, and God could not let them enter. We can only imagine what kind of relationship Elijah had with God. However, I am certain that Elijah was filled with remorse over having wounded the heart of his God with his lack of faith. His relationship with God was so close that he witnessed firsthand the miracle of the bread and oil, fire from heaven, etc., but still he let fear take control of his.

Elijah did not necessarily ask God to take his life, but rather asked him to take his nephesh (ׁשפנ), or his soul. Like many other Hebrew words, this word has a wide range of meanings. It can mean one’s physical life to one’s free will. Perhaps this was the point where Elijah finally decided to give up his will to God and asked God to take complete control of his nephesh (ׁשפנ), the central area of his emotions, passion, and will.

When the father of the Jezebel spirit points his finger at you and says, “Look at you. You lost your job. What’s going to happen now? You will starve, you will be homeless, doom, doom, doom.” Suddenly, all your faith and confidence in God is shaken, just like Elijah’s was. You find yourself running in fear, and finally, when you are sitting under that juniper tree, you sit in despair, not over all your problems, but over your lack of trust in God. You are not only disgusted with yourself; you are feeling badly because you feel you have let God down, you have wounded His heart with your lack of faith. After years and years of seeing God’s faithfulness, you find that you are no different than the children of Israel. Just as you are ready to enter the Promised Land, you encounter a “giant,” and you crumble in fear. So like Elijah, you cry out, “It is enough, take my will, my desires, my hopes, my dreams, my very soul because I am so tired of living in this fear and this lack of trust in you!” My grandfather used to tell the story of an old Native American who became a Christian where someone asked him what it was like. He said, “It is like two dogs inside of me fighting, one good and one evil.” When asked which one would win, the old man said, “Whichever one I feed the most.” Elijah had two dogs fighting inside of him. At first, ravens and then a widow fed him. Later, God Himself did. For so long, we let the arm of flesh feed us, but when it comes time to let God feed us, our faith falters. It is like we have two dogs fighting within us, one of fear and one of trust. The one we feed most will prevail."