Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Erik Thoennes - How should we approach God’s Word?

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode Pastor and Professor, Erik Thoennes, answers the question: “How should we approach God’s Word??"Watch on YouTubeFollow on InstagramVisit Our Website

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, I sit down with pastor and professor Eric Tonnes and ask him, what are some of the attitudes and heart postures that we should have as we approach God's Word? Let's dial in. Eric, thanks for sitting down. I wanted to ask you, so much is said about how we need to devote our life to the Scripture, but many people today don't necessarily have an understanding of the proper attitudes that we should have as we engage God in His Word. So what would be attitudes that you would recommend or heart postures that we should have as we approach God in his word? Yeah, that's such

an important question because I see more and more an affirmation of the self in a way where people are more and more getting the idea that they determine reality, that they determine truth. And what we're doing is going right back to the garden of eden where the first humans rebelled against god in deciding that they were going to determine good and evil for themselves and not leave that to their creator and so that's really the heart of the human sin problem of this self and human centeredness where we don't have humility before our creator realizing that we need him to understand what right and wrong and truth and error is and so we take that into our own hands at another level you can end up doing that with the bible you can go to the bible and say yes this

is the word of god but then handle it in a way that isn't really consistent in that fundamental understanding of Scripture. And so I would actually challenge people to say, do you really believe this is the inspired, authoritative, clear, sufficient Word of God? And if you do, let's go about treating it as such. And then realize that the whole counsel of God's Word, all of Scripture is inspired by God and sufficient for everything we need in Christ of substantive value, and then treat it as such.

We can have a way of dealing with the Bible that doesn't actually stay consistent with what we say we believe about it. And so the way we interpret the Bible, the way we treat the Bible, the way we approach the Bible needs to be we treat the Bible, the way we approach the Bible needs to be shaped by what we say we believe about it. And we really do. So I really want to challenge people to say, do you really believe this is the word of God? If you just think it's

the product of human beings, well, then you're going to treat it as the product of human beings. But if we who believe this is the word of God believe that, then we need to go about it with a real humility and go about our lives submitting to its authority where we end up living our lives like this, where we walk around with the Bible over us. But what so many of us tend to do is do that with it and stand over it and even approach it saying, one, I'm a little afraid of what I'm going to find here maybe if I really read it. Or two, man, the God here is a God I don't like and so

I'm going to figure out ways to reinterpret this or neglect portions of it. So we need to start with a humility that submits to God's authority and joyfully and eagerly goes to find out what our creator really thinks about himself and us and everything else and what brings our lives meaning and we do that enthusiastically no matter what the subject is there are now some subjects that we do this with when it comes to our contemporary culture's perceptions of Christian views and we can't do that. I don't want to communicate to people that I'm a little embarrassed of the biblical view of, say, sexuality or that Jesus is the only way to heaven. I want to say, isn't it glorious what God tells us about himself?

And they just provided a way of escape. I think too many of us act a bit sheepish or embarrassed or just ourselves even neglect portions of it. We apologize on behalf of God. Yeah, we apologize. act a bit sheepish or embarrassed or just ourselves even neglect portions. We apologize on behalf of God. Yeah, we apologize. And we don't even say things like, you know, if I were God, I wouldn't do it this way. We're kind of stuck with it because it says it in the Bible. Instead of saying, no, this is our all good, all wise creator who's telling us what's true. And so this is like food for a hungry soul. And it's like water for a thirsty soul. And so we go to it with humility, but we also go to it with dependence, realizing that in the process of learning from God, that we still

need him. We didn't just need him to give us the scriptures. We need him through the Spirit's illuminating work to understand the scriptures and then be transformed by the Spirit in the word He inspired. And so we go to it with a spirit dependence, with a humility, with an intent to obey it and not just make ourselves more informed so we can impress people with the things we know from the Bible. And so we go to it with humility and dependence on God with an intent to obey it. We do it in community, depending on trusted teachers

and the fellowship of the saints to grow in these ways. We go about the scriptures wanting to proclaim what we find here and not just keep it to ourselves. So there are so many vital attitudes we've gotta have when we go to the Bible, if it's going to do the work that God intends for it to do in our lives. I remember talking to you once and you told me that one of the things you do in the morning before you read or after

you read is you sing a hymn to get your heart happy in the Lord. And there's so much even as we approach the scripture where we need God's help. How do you personally pray while you're reading so that God would illuminate the meaning of the text and enable you to apply it to your life? How does that look when you're reading the scripture? I remember I was in a class in grad school and the professor had done his primary research in the Gospel of John and he said something I'll never forget that stunned me. He said, I've worked academically so long in the Gospel of John that I've lost the ability

to read it devotionally. And I was a beginning grad student and I just was stunned by this. And I raised my hand and I said, does that concern you? And he said, ah, it's kind of an occupational hazard. And I said to him in class, I remember saying, you know, if I were a construction worker and I was losing my hearing class, I remember saying, you know, if I were a construction worker and I was losing my hearing,

I would do something, I'd either quit or I'd do something drastic to keep that from happening. That was an occupational hazard. And I said, if I'm going into academia, I never wanna lose the ability to read devotionally. I want my ability to study at a deeper and deeper level to increase my ability to access devotional truth from the Lord. And so that marked me, and I went to war with that kind of study of Scripture.

And so when I go to the Word, I seek to do it worshipfully and devotionally and in an effort to find intimacy with God. Now, it doesn't always feel that way. It doesn't always consistently give me, you know, feelings of motivation or enlightenment. There are mornings I read the Bible and I say, that's true and I'm not quite sure how it intersects with my life. But what I mainly do is go on a character of God hunt in the Bible. And I'm always saying, Lord, who are you?

No matter what I'm reading in the Bible, who are you as I'm reading this? And if that's what I'm doing, I need to do that worshipfully. And so I try to read my Bible and pray and always seek to express my affection for God, my adoration for God privately and personally so that when I'm worshiping corporately I'm bringing that private worship life into it. And I do, I'm more and more convinced that if I don't have a time of expressing my affection, adoration, and glorification of God in my life privately, then there's something very stunted in my approach to

scripture and what scripture should be doing for me. And again, I don't always feel like it. Sometimes I'll read in the Bible and I don't necessarily feel like worshiping, but I discipline myself to sing. I'm not a good singer. I make up tunes of songs I don't know in my hymnal and it sounds horrible. I'm glad no one can hear me, but my wife usually in the next room. But I do, and it's good for my heart. I never wake up in a good mood. But that inclines my heart toward God and toward softness, toward people. And I have to do it as a discipline to worship God.

And I think singing is particularly, even biblically, an important discipline to worship God. And I think singing is particularly, even biblically, an important discipline to do that. That's so interesting what you're saying about how you go on a hunt for the character of God. You said it's so true. So often we, especially those who aren't in a rhythm of reading, when they do read, they read just looking for things that specifically pertain to them. So the Bible becomes a series of memory verses that they apply to their life rather than a quest to know God. I've heard you mention previously ways that God reveals himself in the Scripture, Eric. So as you go on a hunt for God's character, what are those ways in which God reveals himself

to us in his word? There may be other ways, but I think it's clear that there are at least five ways we see God revealing himself in the Bible. The first is attributes. He just says, I'm gracious, I'm loving, I'm kind, I'm jealous, right? So he says these things about himself and just gives us attributes. A second way is actions. God acts, he creates, he judges, he establishes covenant, he redeems, he establishes the church. He does these things.

And when we see these actions, we should say, Lord, who are you? I wanna know who you are in these actions you're doing. And then another way is in the titles he gives for himself. He's a father, he's a king, he's a shepherd. Those are beautiful pictures of who God is through his titles. And then he takes it even deeper with names he gives for himself, where we take this descriptor,

but it's at a personal level now. I mean, there's a massive difference between me sitting here and relating to you as Johnny and Eric than just dude and dude or human and human, right? But when it's Johnny and Eric, there's a personal relational dynamic to that that God brings in, in the midst of continuing to reveal himself. And then we have images where God gives a burning bush, he gives fire, he gives these pictures of who he is, a pillar of fire and a cloud by day. These images, even a fruit basket, I mean these things he gives us in the prophetic literature of images

to get our right brains involved and to think creatively about who he is. I would say, I think it's helpful to sort of start as an anchor with attributes because images can go in lots of directions and titles can go in lots of directions. Father can mean lots of things to different people. So if we start with a good comprehensive understanding of his attributes,

we won't be led astray by our experience, say, of a father or a lack of experience of a shepherd. God says he's a rock. Well, does that mean he's an inanimate object? No, we bring the attributes into that. And so I think being aware that that's how God reveals himself in those ways. And then when we see those things, say, Lord, who are you in this image of a rock? Who are you in this image of water? And try to really go deeper into the character of God in that way. And what you just said before about approaching the Bible with an immediate desire of practical application to my life. I want to affirm that instinct,

but I want us to have patience in that. Imagine if I went to breakfast with my wife and she told me things about her heart and who she is. And then I took out a pad and paper and I say, well, what are the practical outcomes of these things, Donna? Wow. Now, it doesn't mean there won't be practical outcomes of what she said to me, but at first I want to commune with her. I want to maybe empathize with these things. But my relational effort to know her intimately has got to be what I lead with. And that may lead to me saying,

okay, so let's go on dates every Friday in light of this thing going on. And so we lead with relationship, get to practical things, but intimacy with God, communion with God, and knowing God has got to be our priority in the Bible. It can be an overwhelming thing to go looking for God's character.

And I can find it mind-blowingly difficult to try to rein in some understanding of God. But there's a beautiful simplicity in this quest because what the Bible leads us to in this hunt for God's character is Jesus. It leads us to a person. It leads us to a person. It leads us to a face. So we're seeking to behold the glory of God in the scriptures. And what the Bible's consistently doing is pointing us to the face of Jesus. So there's a simplicity in this monumental goal of looking at Jesus that the whole Old Testament is pointing us toward, the Gospels are telling us

about, and then the rest of the New Testament is pointing us back to and explaining in greater depth. And so Jesus is this beautiful, clarifying, and in some ways simplifying goal in this character of God quest. Now, it doesn't terminate with just the Son. If we understand the Trinity, the Son will point us to the Father, the Father points to the Son, and the Son will make us depend on the Spirit. But Jesus is the one that we're called to focus on because he's the one who will point us to the Father and make us depend on the Spirit. He's the one who the Bible itself is pointing to as the one who's God for us.

Moses wanted to see God, and God said, "'Who can see God and live?' Well, no one at that time, but what Moses and the rest of us find out eventually is Jesus is the way we can see God and not be disintegrated in the process, in the incarnation. And so the incarnate christ god in the son of man

who is the son of god is the one who brings this beautiful clarifying centering understanding of who god is in the bible that's so good eric and so helpful even in luke 24 it says did you not see that all the things moses written were about me, that even the character of God can become academic unless it's associated with the person of Jesus Christ. And even love what you're saying in 2 Corinthians 3.18, that we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And as we behold that character, we'll be transformed from one degree into another, into the same image we're beholding so that's right and that's where the bible becomes transformative when the spirit

brings us into a greater understanding and relationship with jesus then our characters conform to the image of christ and the fruit of the spirit starts to express itself more so yeah it's it becomes a transformative reality when it becomes a Christ-revealing reality. Yeah, and that's really what transforms it, is you're saying we become like the one we behold. And when we behold God's character as seen through Jesus, we will then, Ephesians 5.1, become imitators of Christ. And don't forget, he's the word become flesh.

And the word of God accomplishes what it does because it points us to the word. And that's why the word of God is what it is. It's sufficient because it points us to the one who is sufficient. So good. So helpful, Eric. Thank you. Just knowing that God's word is crucial to even our understanding of him and what enables us to become like God. It's so important that we

understand these attitudes as we approach the scripture. So thank you. You're welcome.