In John 10 Jesus said some important things. He talked about being a shepherd, which doesn’t sound that important, but hang on. He said a shepherd can go through the gate to the sheep pen and lead his sheep out with his voice. He then said he is the shepherd and we are the sheep. Like I said, interesting stuff. But is it helpful?
In many ways Jesus might as well have been talking in Greek. Well, he was. He might as well have been talking about nuclear physics; maybe that is better. His words really don’t make sense to us because we aren’t shepherds and most of our buddies aren’t either. To understand his metaphor,
we have to understand his culture. And, if we can’t understand his metaphor, we can’t understand his point, which means his teaching has no sway over us. We just don’t get it. Which is why we need to INTERPRET what he said.
Interpretation, when it comes to the Bible, is a process that helps us figure out what the original author of a passage meant. If we don’t know what it meant, we can’t know what it means to us. And we can’t know what it meant, if we don’t interpret. For example, to interpret John 10, we need to figure out some things about sheep and shepherds. We won’t do that now, but, just to inspire you, interpretation would help you see that in Jesus’ culture sheep were so connected to their shepherds that the sheep followed when the shepherd called. A shepherd could speak into a pen that was mixed with all sorts of sheep owned by many different people and his sheep would separate and walk toward him. Ahh, see? Knowing that makes it clearer that Jesus is trying to say that his true disciples know his voice and follow. And that is something we need to know.
This mini-Lecture gives an overview of the process of interpretation. You can listen to it and take notes. But then you should practice, probably with some other people. And maybe you will catch the thrill of hearing God’s voice through the Bible as you accurately unpack truth.
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