Reading the Bible is hard, D

To continue with the series of posts I was doing on how reading the Bible can be really difficult...

One of the most helpful things that I've found when reading the Bible is to remember that we are not the original audience.  My dad puts it like this: The Bible was written FOR us, but not TO us.  The Bible was written to specific people, in a specific context, at a specific time.  It speaks uniquely into their situation.  This doesn't mean it has nothing for us.  It just means that we should seek understand a passages' original meaning, in context, before we seek to understand it's meaning for us. 

Understandably, this makes reading the Bible much more difficult than reading an email addressed to "Derek Fekkes."  I am not a 1st century Christian living in Rome with Jews and Gentiles mingled in the same church.  My situation, context, and historical position are all very different from that of the original audience of the Bible. 

An example:

Acts 15:28-29 says, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:  You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things."  

Does this mean that we are not to eat meat from strangled animals or to eat meat with the blood still in eat (no more rare steaks!)?  Remember, Acts was written to a specific people in a specific time.  Furthermore, this statement was spoken to a specific people.  If you read the rest of chapter 15, you learn that the situation that this statement is spoken into is this: The Gentiles (non-Jews) are coming to faith in Jesus and some Jewish believers are teaching that these Gentile believers must be circumcised (which had been the sign for the Jews of belonging to God's people).  The church leaders didn't agree.  They responded by saying that "we shouldn't trouble those of the Gentiles that turn to God."  

However, they did lay down the guidelines listed in the above verses.  Why?  The first three are for the purpose of the Gentile believers not offending the Jewish believers.  The Jewish Christians didn't eat food sacrificed to idols, blood, or meat from strangled animals.  That was part the ceremonial law that they still followed.  As Jewish Christians would often be mingled with Gentile Christians, the leaders asked the Gentiles to observe these food laws so that there would be peace among all believers.  It was NOT a command for all believers at all times.  The last command, to abstain from sexual immorality, was not simply a contextual command.  We clearly learn from the rest of the Bible that this is a universal command of God that still applies to us today.


More to follow...