CHAPTER 10
The Goal of Bible Reading
Approaching Scripture
Proper Bible reading begins before we open the book. It begins in our approach. In a pair of sermons titled “On Searching the Scriptures” (John 5:39), Newton explains how four elements inform our approach to the Bible—sincerity, diligence, humility, and prayer.
1. Sincerity
As we might expect, Newton introduces his approach with the language of sincerity.
I mean a real desire to be instructed by the Scripture, and to submit both our sentiments and our practices to be controlled and directed by what we read there. Without this, our reading and searching will only issue in our greater condemnation, and bring us under the heavy doom of the servant that knew his master’s will and did it not.
If we read the Bible for self-justification or to prove ourselves right, or if we have no intention of changing our lives based upon what we read, we’ve already failed in our approach. The Bible was given to teach us, reprove us, and correct us (2 Timothy 3:16), and none of these transformations are possible unless we approach the Bible in submission to what will change us, teach us, reprove us, and correct us.
2. Diligence
The second element of our approach is diligence. Many readers of the Bible are simply ignorant of the precious value of the eternal wisdom they hold in their hands. They lack care, and they need to be urged to search this book of treasure with greater diligence (John 5:39).
The word which is rendered search, ἐρευνάω, is borrowed from the practice of miners: it implies two things, to dig and to examine. First, with much labor they pierce the earth to a considerable depth; and when they have thus found a vein of precious ore, they break and sift it, and suffer no part to escape their notice. Thus must we join frequent assiduous reading, with close and awakened meditation; comparing spiritual things with spiritual, carefully taking notice of the circumstances, occasion, and application of what we read; being assured, that there is a treasure of truth and happiness under our hands, if we have but skill to discover and improve it.
By applying these first two approaches together—sincerity and diligence—we will avoid wasting our lives. “Let us not be like fools, with a prize, an inestimable prize, in our hands, but without heart or skill to use it.”
3. Humility
Third, we must approach the Bible with humility. God gives grace to the humble, and he resists the proud (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). We do not come to the Bible with confidence in our powers of interpretation; we approach with humble dependence on the God who is eager to reveal himself. False teaching is spread by a vain interpreter who has
undertaken by his own strength and wisdom to decide authoritatively on the meaning of Scripture; without being aware of the ignorance, prejudice, and weakness, which influence his judgment in religious matters; without knowing the utter inability of the natural man to discern the things of God, and without attending to those means the Scripture itself has appointed for the redress of these evils.
And so we approach the Bible with deep reverence and humility in proportion to our self-distrust when handling eternal truths.
4. Prayer
Finally, we approach the Bible in prayer. Sincerity, diligence, and humility are all gifts from God, and therefore a right approach to Scripture presses us toward prayer. “Prayer is indeed the best half of our business while upon earth, and that which gives spirit and efficacy to all the rest. Prayer is not only our immediate duty, but the highest dignity, the richest privilege we are capable of receiving on this side of eternity.”
One of Newton’s hymns captures what we participate in when we pray:
Thou art coming to a King,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For his grace and pow’r are such,
None can ever ask too much.
We pray rightly when we pray largely. We approach God as a King only when we pray for things that an all-sufficient King alone can offer, which includes accurate understanding of his Word. Therefore, in light of these prayer privileges, all theological education, our work in the original languages, and our access to commentaries will only stoke our pride if we fail to approach the Bible with true sincerity and humility, evidenced in dependent prayer.
With that in mind, Newton can say that the prayerless are “utterly unqualified to ‘search the Scripture.’” Only the prayerful—those whose prayers are properly King-sized—are rightly positioned to dig into and discover and be changed by the magnificent wisdom of God and the precious things of Scripture (Psalm 119:18; James 1:5).
Christ in the Old Testament
One King-sized prayer could include this aim: finding the glory of Christ in the Old Testament. By opening the Bible we discover that Christ is “the main design and subject” to the entire Bible, and he can be found in every book and on almost every page of the Bible.
Christ should inform our interpretations of Old Testament prophecies, types, and ceremonies. The prophecies of Christ include promises that Jesus would be born to a virgin in Bethlehem 490 years after the command to rebuild Jerusalem; his ministry would begin in Galilee; and he would be despised and rejected of men, betrayed by one of his disciples, and sold for thirty pieces of silver.
Newton divides the types of Christ in the Old Testament between personal types and relative types. The first category includes Adam, Enoch, Melchizedek, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samson, David, and Solomon as types or figures of Christ in his person or humiliation or exaltation. Of relative types he includes the ark of Noah, the rainbow, the manna, and the brazen serpent.
The same is true of the Old Testament religious ceremonies, each pointing forward to a consummate fulfillment in Christ.
The ark of the covenant, the mercy-seat, the tabernacle, the incense, the altar, the offerings, the high priest with his ornaments and garments, the laws relating to the leper, the Nazarite, and the redemption of lands—all these, and many more had a deep and important meaning beyond their outward appearance: each, in their place, pointed to “the Lamb of God who was to take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), derived their efficacy from him, and received their full accomplishment in him.
Indeed “Christ is the end of the Law, the sum of the Prophets, the completion of the promises, the scope of the types and ceremonies, and the great object of the whole Old Testament dispensation.”
One of the best extended illustrations of Christ’s presence in the Old Testament is found in Newton’s two-volume book Messiah: Fifty Expository Discourses, On the Series of Scriptural Passages Which Form the Subject of the Celebrated Oratorio of Handel, a series of fifty sermons preached in 1784 and 1785, which follow Handel’s biblical citations in sermon form.
When the two-volume collection was sent to press the next year, Newton, then sixty years old, called it “my most important publication” (and added, “it will probably be my last”).
Messiah is a significant achievement, designed to confront what Newton perceived to be the dangerous spirit of the age: attending performances of the oratorio as a mere act of entertainment devoid of any necessary spiritual value. (Having attended modern performances of Messiah in places like the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, I resonate with Newton’s sentiment. One wonders how many in the crowded seats are beholding the glory of Christ in the lyrics.)
Newton clearly felt this tension, saw the popularity of the oratorio, and delivered his fifty Christ-exalting sermons to capitalize on the wide popularity of the piece to make the glory of Christ as explicit as possible. Not surprisingly the sermons are joy-filled, God-centered, and Christ-exulting. And yet, of the sixty-three biblical passages that comprise the libretto, thirty-six are taken from the Old Testament. For the series, Newton invested much prayer and preparation in preaching Christ from the Old Testament.