Wouldn’t
it be wonderful to interpret the scripture just as Jesus did? Wouldn’t it be
helpful to use Jesus hermeneutic in all biblical interpretation? Is it possible
to understand and employ Jesus hermeneutic? If Jesus had a specific hermeneutic
and, if we could understand it, why wouldn’t the followers of Jesus use his
hermeneutic only? The answers to all of these questions should be a resounding
yes/of course. Jesus most definitely taught his followers a unique distinctive
hermeneutic so I will try to uncover it.
Looking
at Jesus and his followers presuppositions:
#3 The scribes and Pharisees –- the rulers of
the Jews were apostate and in danger of the imminent day of the Lord’s wrath,
foretold of in the prophets, which would come to their generation. Ultimately,
the hermeneutics of Jesus would overthrow the specularia of Moses and establish
but one covenant… the new covenant. Jesus of Nazareth was the unique promised Messiah.
All
of the history of the scripture…. the entire story was pointing to one grand
plan of God. God was going to set to rights the creation by bringing forth the
Messiah. If one missed the Messiah, they missed God and his plan. Missing the
Messiah was the ultimate example of missing the mark -- sin. When the Jews
incited the Romans to crucify Jesus, they in effect killed their only Messiah
and that is the ultimate apostasy. Rejecting and killing God Incarnate was the
ultimate final apostasy.
Using
scripture as a justification (John 7:46-49) the Jews rejected Jesus for
religious and hermeneutical reasons. This was after God proclaimed this to
them:
Exo 25:8-9 And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. (9) According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.
God had become the tabernacle and dwelt among
them and they rejected him. This is the ultimate apostasy.
Hebrews
the Rosetta Stone of the New Covenant:
One of the ways that God could speak clearly
to the Jews was to employ their hermeneutical devices in speaking to them. The bulk of the New Testament writings are
made up of DRASH that helps to interpret the Old Testament Prophecy. Of all the
books in the New Testament, Hebrews is directed at Jewish believers who were in
danger of joining the unbelieving Jews in the apostasy of rejecting Jesus as
Messiah.
One of the main presuppositions of the
scribes and the Pharisees was called the specularia of Moses. By this they
meant that all of the scripture must be filtered through Moses writings. They
used Numbers 12:5-8 as the proof text for this Mosaic Specularia. DRASH uses
phrases from the scripture to show interpretation. Hebrews chapters one through
three establish the supremacy of Christ. Chapter three explains the supremacy
of Christ over Moses and there is DRASH in the passage as the writer of Hebrews
uses the language of Numbers 12:7 in referring to Moses being faithful in all
of God’s house, and then the writer goes
on to say that Jesus was greater than Moses thus overthrowing the earlier
Mosaic Specularia.
Tradition has killed many a relationship! Some of us are so stuck in the traditional way of doing things, that we are losing so many souls for Christ that it is pathetic. Some are so bent on doing things the old way, keeping things the old way, but what they fail to realize is that we have to change and grow with the times. We are not going to reach this new generation with ancient ways. I’m not saying conform, I’m saying transform; use the old ways but maybe spruce them up if you have to. I’m not saying water down the ways of God, but enhance it by using up to date ways. How about tweeting your service, using a conference call line for your weekly prayer meeting so that those who cannot make it into the church can still join in and also do this for your Bible Study. Put both on the web and stream it live so that others can join in. The world is growing and building and moving and so should we.
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