Thinking With Purpose

We are spending a few days and examining several different Bible verses that are commonly used completely out of context.  We are doing this with the goal of understanding these passages in their actual context.  We don’t want to assign a meaning to a passage of Scripture that it does not have…doing so is to abuse and misuse the Bible.

Before we look at the verse for today, I want to take a little time and talk about proper Bible study.  If you are not interesting in this, please feel free to skip to the next paragraph to see the verse we are examining today.  One person said that my interpretation of a verse that we looked at a few days ago was baseless, so I want to explain how these meanings are derived.  There are several components of context that must be studied and understood in order to have an accurate interpretation of a passage.  (1) Scriptural context.  This is how the verse or passage fits into the larger picture.  How does a verse fit with the paragraph, how does the paragraph fit with the book, and how does the book fit with the overall message of Scripture?  Who was this written to?  (2) Historical context.   This is what was going on in the world at that time.  Was this written during a time of war? Why was it necessary for this to be written?  What was happening in the Christian world?  Was there persecution,  growth of the church, false teachers, etc.? (3) Biographical context.  This is a more narrowed aspect of historical context.  It asks similar questions but about the authors and the readers.  The fact that Paul is in prison during some of his writings adds meaning to what he writes.  The fact that Christians were facing persecution adds meaning to Hebrews 10:25.  This must be studied.  (4) Grammatical context.  This deals with the literary styles, word studies, parts of speech, tenses, etc.  Each of these areas of context need to be studied and understood in order to have an accurate interpretation of a passage.  These misused verses that we are looking at are negligently abused as a direct result of one of these areas of study being overlooked.

With that being said, the verse that we are looking at today is Proverbs 22:28.  This verse says “Remove not the ancient landmark, which your fathers have set.”  This is a verse that is commonly used to talk about not moving from convictions and standards that we have set in our lives.  Or it is used to prove that people should not leave certain traditional aspects of our denomination.  That is a complete misuse of that verse.  In the Old Testament land-owners would mark the boundaries of their property with big stones that they called landmarks.  It was common for dishonest neighbors to gradually move their neighbors landmark/property boundaries in order to give themselves more land. 

This verse, and those like it, are teaching that it is wrong to steal from your neighbor…specifically his land.   Deuteronomy 19:14, Deuteronomy 27:17, and Proverbs 23:10  all show that this is referring to land that belongs to someone else, not personal convictions.   Even if you think that people should hold to their convictions and traditions, don’t twist Scripture to try and prove your point.  To do so is to abuse and misuse the Bible!