As Jesus followers we are called into the Kingdom Life. This blog will help us converse and learn what that means. It will contain thoughts on Scripture, Sermon Reflection, Leadership Training and interesting reads. -Pastor Jeff

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Day 4: Naming and Exchanging our Lenses

It would be great if we could claim to have a “God’s Eye View,” to be able to stand in a place, looking down upon the world, unencumbered by the peculiarity of our time, our place, our culture, our experience, or any other factor that makes us uniquely us.  It would be great to be able to say, “I can see TRUTH for what it is and I have a firm grasp on it.”  This would be remarkably helpful when we read the Bible.  We could read a passage, one that is obvious and self-evident to anyone that has the remarkable ability to know exactly, without a shadow of a doubt, what God means in the text.  (I hope you can grasp the level of sarcasm in this.)  It would be great to have a “God’s Eye View”…but we can’t.

Last time I checked, there’s not one of us that are God.  See, we all come to the truth of Scriptures wearing a set of lenses and most of us don’t even realize it.  By lenses what I mean is that we look at the text, or read the text through a perception defining filter.  I see what I’ve been conditioned to see.  I see what I’ve been accustomed to seeing.  My field of perception is limited by my limiting experiences, culture, my religious or non-religious background, etc.  For instance, some of us read the Bible through the lens of our political party.  We assume because of our already well established social conservativism that obviously God is on the side of the Republicans.  Likewise, in our defense of the “little guy” and Jesus’ tendency to hang out and care for folks down on their luck, the Bible is best read through the lenses of liberalism or being a Democrat.

That’s just a couple of the lenses we can wear when we read the Scripture.  We read it through the lenses of color and class.  It’s amazing how much the God of the Bible, read in the suburbs all across America, becomes the champion of white middle/upper-middle class values.  We read the Bible through the lenses of ideology, Capitalism, Democracy, Socialism, etc.  We read the Bible through the experiences of abuse, insecurity, feeling unvalued, or confusing and hurtful religious backgrounds.  We read the Bible through the lenses of our denominations, Baptist, Pentecostal, Nazarene, or Lutheran.  We all have lenses.  They are unavoidable.  These lenses impact and ultimately limit our embrace of Scriptural truth.  Until you confess that you too are limited, you will unwittingly read Scriptures in ways that align what’s said with what you already hoped to hear.

So what do we do?  We have to become aware of our lenses, name them, pray about them, ask God to, as much as possible, break our reliance on them, and commit yourself to a more faithful set of lenses.  Notice, I used the word faithful.  When we are committed to reading the Bible through our lenses we become convinced that we are right.  I’ve come to realize through a whole lot of humility that I’m less concerned with being right, because I’ll never be able to grasp the full expanse of God’s truth, and much more concerned with being faithful.  This means I seek to read the Bible in the way that best approximates God’s desires and produces the kind of life that makes God smile, even in my imperfection.

So what’s this new set of lenses look like?
I’m going to cut to the chase here and just name it, “Jesus.”  I believe we are called to read the whole of the Bible through the lens of Jesus.  I’ll work this out in a greater detail in the coming days, but I’m making a pretty substantial claim.  I’m suggesting that everything prior to Jesus in the Bible points to Him.  Everything in the Bible after Him, points back to him.  And, when we’ve seen Him in the Bible and encountered him in our life, the whole of the Bible is to be read through him.  A couple of quick cautions on Jesus (lest you read HIM through YOUR lenses).


  1.  It’s hard to pin him down.  He doesn’t fit well in any of our social categories or political parties.  Jesus does not exist to baptize your agenda but seeks to make God’s Kingdom agenda known.
  2. He has a certain set of priorities that keep emerging over and over again (themes): Mercy, Love, Grace, Justice, Selflessness, Compassion, Freedom, Kingdom, Reconciliation, Restoration, Redemption, etc.  Jesus ought to be read as consistent with the themes of His life.  (We will talk about how these themes will affect our whole reading of the Bible in a few days.)
  3. He doesn’t do ism’s very well.  We live bound by our “ism’s”: Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, Classism, Liberalism, Conservativism, etc.  Ism’s turn life into policy and ideology.  Jesus is far more concerned with people and stories.  
  4. Not even those closest to Him had a “God’s Eye View.”  Listen, if the guys that literally walked with Jesus (super-closely) for three years had trouble grasping His full truth, what makes us think we will.  Jesus is unpredictable, doesn’t line up with religious expectations, acts disruptively, and often leaves people scratching their heads, troubled, mad, or intrigued.  

That’s just a couple of things to note.  That’s the reason why we are starting in the book of Luke instead of Genesis.  I want you to get to know Jesus before you get to know the rest of the story.  Only through contact with Jesus will the rest of the story begin to make sense.

See what I mean?
Today I want you to read Luke 4:14-44.  I want you to take special note of verses 16-19.

  • What did you discover there?  What grabbed you about the announcement of Jesus?
  • Now, I want you to read Isaiah 61:1-3.  What similarities did you notice?
    • So check this out.  When Jesus announces his ministry, he reaches all the way back to a book written 500 years earlier, a book that was speaking about God’s desire to restore His people and Jesus says, “Yep, that’s happening.  That’s happening in and through ME.”  Jesus says, when you read Isaiah, you’ve got to read Him with me in mind, because, even though Isaiah didn’t know it, when he wrote those words, he had me in mind.  
    • Want another example?  Read Isaiah 7:14.  Compare that to the story of Jesus birth.  Friends, Jesus stands as the hinge point of all of human history and as a result, all of Scripture should be read and understood as much as faithfully possible through the lens of Jesus.  

My claim:  Get to know Jesus a lot better and the rest of Scripture will begin to make more sense.

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