Ask Pastor John
How to Find the Meaning of a Bible Verse
[MUSIC] Welcome back to the podcast on this new week. Today's Labor Day for us here in the United States, and we're taking a break from our work, but we still can use today to learn new skills, specifically to become better Bible readers. Of course, we have dozens of episodes covering a host of very practical tips on overcoming the challenges of studying the Bible for ourselves. I took all of those episodes on Bible reading, Bible study, Bible memorization, even the struggle with Bible neglect. All those many episodes, I put them together in one big digest to show you all the ground that we've covered in the APJ book, that first section on pages 1 to 46, which is also the section that I've heard probably the most compliments about to this point. And this episode will add to it. So what do we do when a Bible verse doesn't make sense on first to read? The question is from Chris, and it's specific. Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast. Chris writes, "You have said in the past that you didn't understand Matthew 6, verses 22 to 23, for a long time. But then you spent more time looking at the context before in the treasuring focus in Matthew 6, 19 to 21, and more time after the text in the money focus in Matthew 6, 24, and those contexts before and after helped make sense of everything in between. Also, what you learned in Matthew 20, verses 13 to 15, you brought back into your discovery as well. Can you explain how you came to understand Jesus' teaching on the healthy and sick eye using both the close context before and after it and the broader context together? These seem like Bible interpretation principles. We all need to master when the text in front of us just doesn't make immediate sense. Thank you." Well, that's true. Matthew 6, 22 to 23 just seemed to dangle without connections to what went before, what went after it. I couldn't see it. I mean, it's my problem, not God's problem, not Jesus' problem. It's my problem. I just couldn't see it. Then one day, as I was reading in Matthew 20, that's what, 14 chapters later, and the ESV footnote clarified a phrase, I saw, "Oh, that's going to help. That's going to help make sense back in chapter 6." So here are the verses. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? Now, if we just take those two verses by themselves, I think I can make sense out of them. If you close your eyes, everything's dark. But if you open your eyes, there's light. And it feels you with light. You can walk. You can not run into walls. You can not fall off a cliff. And so the eye is like a lamp. I'd get that. That's really, I like that. That it's a lamp. And when it's lit and burning, you can see where to go. If your eyes are shut or if your eyes are sick, you can counteract or something, then you can't see where you ought to go. So if the body's going to not kill itself by running into the wrong thing, it needs a healthy eye. So the eye is the lamp of the body. Now I get that. That's a good image. But what puzzled me was it just seemed to come out of nowhere. Why are you saying that here, especially in the sequence of these sayings? Before those two verses comes the familiar saying about not laying up treasures on earth. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is. There will your heart be also. So before the saying about the good eye, the bad eye, comes a saying about money, laying up treasures in heaven and on earth. Don't hoard money here as though your life and your security were in money. Use money here in ways that piles up treasure in heaven, use it in acts of love. Then with no explicit connecting word, Jesus simply says, "The eye is the lamp of the body." And I just found that puzzling. Why do you follow up lay up treasures in heaven with the eyes of the lamp of the body? And then after these puzzling verses, 22 and 23, comes the saying, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." So the sayings before and after the words about the good and bad eye deal with treasure or money. That seems significant to me. So the one in the middle seems like it should have something to do with that. But as far as I could see, the good and the bad eye don't have any clear connection to money. So the saying seemed to just dangle there and I didn't get it for a long time. And Chris in his question is right to notice a principle of interpretation that's driving me here. And you can hear it. It's been coming out all the way along. I really don't like it when I can't see an author's intention in how his words are connected to each other. Seeing connections in a paragraph in a chapter is really important. I don't think I've got a good handle on what the author is communicating if I can't see how his connections are working. So why does Jesus link these two sayings about money with a saying about a good eye and a bad eye? And then I stumble upon the key in Matthew 2015. Jesus had just told the parable of the workers of the vineyard. And some of them, you remember, had agreed to work from six in the morning till 6 p.m. for one denarius, a day's wage, fair wage, good wage. Others were hired at 9 a.m., others were hired at noon. And finally, he hired some at 5 p.m., all he had to do was work an hour. And when the day was done at six, he paid all the workers the same thing, a denarius each. In other words, the master was lavishly generous to those who worked only one hour. And he paid a fair, agreed upon wage to those who worked 12 hours. But those who worked all day, it says, quote, grumbled at the master of the house, Matthew 20, verse 11. They were angry that those who had worked so little were paid so much. They didn't like the master's generosity. They did not like grace. Then the master used a phrase about the bad eye, which is just like the one in Matthew 6, 23. He said, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" That's verse 15. Now, that last phrase, "Do you begrudge my generosity is not a literal translation. It is a very loose paraphrase." And fortunately, the ESV gives the footnote and gives you the literal translation, which is, "Or is your eye bad because I am good?" Oh my goodness, that may bells go off, right? Oh, the bad eye, back in chapter 6, the bad eye here parallels the bad eye in Matthew 6, 23. The verse I was puzzled about. So what does the bad eye refer to in Matthew 20, 15? It refers to an eye that doesn't like generosity. It doesn't like grace. It's greedy. It's a greedy eye. It's a kind of eye that would treasure up things on earth. It's the kind of eye that would serve money over God. So if we interpret the bad eye in Matthew 6, 23, the same way as in 2015, the connections start to make sense. So the flow of thought would go like this. Matthew 6, 19, "Don't lay up treasures on earth. Lay up treasures in heaven. Show that your heart is fixed on the value that God has for you." Now comes verse 22 and 23. "Make sure your eye is good and not bad." That is, "Make sure your eye is not greedy for earthly gain. Make sure that you see with this eye. See heavenly treasure as more precious than earthly material treasure. When your eye sees things this way, you're full of light. You know how to walk without falling off the cliff of greed. And if you don't see things this way, you will, as verse 24 says, serve money instead of serving God. You will seek money, not God, as your treasure. So the bottom line lesson for us is pray for good eyes, healthy eyes. Name the eyes that don't disapprove of generosity or disapprove of grace. Pray for eyes that don't look upon the things of this world with greediness, but look upon them as ways of serving God and loving people. Pray for eyes that see God as your supreme treasure." Yes. Pray for eyes that see God as your supreme treasure. Great way to end. Thank you, Pastor John. And thanks for joining us today. Have a question on Bible study? Ask Pastor John. Find a link to email us and find our complete episode archive at AskPastorJohn.com every episode with audio and full transcripts. Well, here in the pod we talk every so often about wartime living. And we talk about minimalism too, but those are not the same thing. The Christian life is not simply about decluttering our closets and living a simpler life. No, we aim at wartime simplicity, which is a more specific goal, a material simplicity in this world that's on mission, not simply trying to be more organized. That comes up next time because we're going to turn our attention to hoarding, hoarding. That's Thursday. I'm Tony Ranky. See you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]