I once made a silly offer: “Give me a random Old Testament passage, and I’ll show you how the 5 step process works!” So they offered me 2 Kings 10, the lovely story of the seventy heads offered to Jehu in baskets. (Read it yourself if you don’t believe me.)

My goal was to show how the 5 step process could take us from that passage to a sensible message I could preach in church on a Sunday. This podcast is a summary of what we did. (I say “we” because I made my listeners do much of the work, asking:

1. What DID the story mean? (I.e. what was it supposed to communicate to its early hearers, Jews in or just after the exile.)
2. What are the differences that make a difference? (I.e. what has changed that either makes us likely to misunderstand, or that make our situation significantly different from theirs. One that isn’t mentioned in the podcast, but should have been is that we will be shocked by this tale of mass murder, they probably cheered it on, politics was a rougher game there than for most of us today
3. What does it say about God? (If the Bible is about God then each passage will tell us something about God. And Scritpture IS about God and NOT about us.)
4. How do we understand this in the light of Jesus? Or, since this is an Old Testament passage: How does Jesus complete or fill out what is here?
5. How does that work today?

Listen and see if you think I succeeded, got a message for today, and one which is Christian, and one which is fair to the lovely passage of Scripture they gave me!

BTW my mate Jonathan has been writing about Christian Preaching of the Old Testament, I wonder what he thinks of this example

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This clay tablet contains a letter from a local ruler in Canaan to Pharaoh (Original in Pergamon Museum, photo by Tim Bulkeley)

In our student exegesis assignments we ask them to state the intended meaning for the ancient hearers, ideally in one sentence, maybe two, never more than 50 words. They commonly have two problems. The first is being brief I have a Sansblogue post on writing tightly that helps address this issue. Their second problem is that they often tend to forget that the text ever had ancient hearers!

Yet the Bible is a record of communicative acts, and communicative acts are always contextual. Some “holy books” (like the Qur’an?) are believed to be timeless and decontextual, some (like the I Ching) are thought of as magical or quasi-magical, but the Bible is “just” a complex communicative act.

It’s a very complex one, according to Christians, since it involves the Holy Spirit communicating with people in all sorts of times and places, through human acts of communication at particular times and places. That’s what some hermeneuts¹ call the double agency of Scripture. But doubly agented texts are not unusual – all messages (except written or electronic ones) have double agency.

So why is the notion that an Old Testament text was addressed to ancient Israelites, and/or ancient Judaites or Jews, before it was addressed to modern Christians so difficult?

Other podcasts on this topic already include:

• A Text without Contexts is Dumb!
• Luke 9:1 – 9:36: What’s the point of a miracle?
• Prophets: three principles to unlock the code
• Reading the parable of the Big Feast in context (Luke 14)

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1. If the art and science of understanding is hermeneutics, then the person who does it is presumably a hermeneut.

The “Pastoral epistles” 1 & 2 Tim and Titus offer advice to two young companions of Paul’s travels called to church leadership – Timothy, in the big city of Ephesus and Titus on the island of Crete.

There is even more debate about whether these letters were written by Paul than was the case for Ephesians – but as always the issues are highly technical and one needs good Greek as well as significant knowledge of both what we know and how we know it about the development of the earliest churches so I’ll ignore the issue here and as I did for Ephesians and Colossians just call the author “Paul” since that’s what he calls himself!

Because of the nature of the topics in this epistle there are always questions about where and how far Paul’s advice is ad hoc. And to what extent it is timeless. That question is badly posed. ALL Paul’s advice is timebound and culturally determined! We saw in Luke’s account of Paul’s preaching in Athens that he was too good a missionary not to be culturally sensitive!

If all the advice here is timebound and culturally sensitive then how can we draw teaching for running our churches today from it?

This is where the five step plan comes into its own! (The Five Step Bible Programme: Part 1: Introduction or for all the posts in order from the bottom of the list):

• 1. What DID it say (back then, to the first hearers)?

• 2. What is the difference (between then and now)?

Among the differences here are different forms of church organisation, different cultural contexts and taboos, different expectations on young and old, women and men…

• 3. What does it teach about God and God’s relationship with the world and us (theology)?

This is always the key step – looking for the principles about God, and God’s relationship with the world and humanity – because if we really spot what principle(s) Paul was applying or asking Timothy to apply we can then in step 5 see how they apply today.

• 4. How does Jesus fulfill (fill out fully) this passage?

• 5. What DOES it mean (here and now)?

Applying this simple process will ensure a strong, biblically based, yet culturally sensitive application of the message of Scripture today.

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The final steps, by Tracy O

Part three completes the process as we apply the final steps to our difficult passage from Ezekiel 28 and make real (useful and theologically sound) sense of this obscure and difficult passage!

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Just three of Lincolnian's steps

In this, and the next, 5 Minute Bible podcasts we’ll begin to discover how the Five Step Bible programme helps us make good sense of, and discover God’s message for us in, a rather difficult and obscure passage from Ezekiel.

Because it is a difficult passage, to do this in just two 5 minute podcasts will involve some over simplifying, so do ask questions in the “comments” if you want

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In this and two following podcasts in this series (with later I expect a screencast that will cover much the same material but not in a 5 minute format) will begin to present what I’m calling “The Five Step Bible Programme” which is developed out of teaching a similar scheme from:

Five steps from by Lincolnian

Duvall, J Scott, and J Daniel Hays. Journey into God’s Word: Your Guide to Understanding and Applying the Bible. Grand Rapids Mich.: Zondervan, 2008.

for an introductory course at Carey. I’ve simplified their scheme a little, and applied the step of understanding Scripture through its fulfilment in Christ to all of Scripture, not just to the Old Testament (as they do). The five steps are:

1. What DID it say (back then, to the first hearers)?
2. What is the difference (between then and now)?
3. What does it teach about God and God’s relationship with the world and us (theology)?
4. How does Jesus fulfill (fill out fully) this passage?
5. What DOES it mean (here and now)?

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