A Short Lecture About Biblical Perspectives on Languange
A Short Lecture About Biblical Perspectives on Language
GREEK 1
Arturo Terrazas
There is an old saying within some Hispanic countries: “in heaven we will speak Spanish”. I know that Spanish is a beautiful language and it is worthy to be spoken at this time, but the people that speak that language, like all humankind are fallen and they need redemption.
The book of Job tells us what happened when God created the world: “while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy”. Job 38:7. God also created creatures, God spoke and they came to be. He used the method of speaking to create things and also to communicate with His creation. Even the angels shouted to give praise according to the book of Job. Then God created men in His own image, and He gave men special qualities that no other creatures in the world could have, like the gift of talking, but as we see in the Bible, man committed sin, and although he didn’t lose the quality of speaking a language, from now on it would be corrupted.
Moises Silva answers a question related to human beings, the question is, how can we speak? The answer is, we are made in the image of a God who speaks . The problem we have is that our tongue, is corrupted because of our sin. God cannot tolerate sin, so His communication with us and our communication with Him is not as good as Adam and Eve experienced before the fall. As a result of the fall we really cannot communicate properly because we cannot understand who God is unless He reveals Himself to us.
So this shows that human beings need help with communication and with beginning a relationship with God. It is not only the communication with God that is affected; our communication with other creatures is bad also, and it is all because we live in a fallen world. We need to understand who we really are and our need for redemption. If we don’t realize that, we will be the same people with the same struggles, then the worldview of pessimism as seen in some Hollywood movies will be true in our lives.
I understand the struggles we experience as we attempt to communicate with one another. Sometimes it is very hard for me to express an idea or talk with other people because English is not my mother language; not only that, our own nature reflects our problems. How can a boy communicate with a girl, a father with his son and so on? Living in the southern part of the US creates another problem, the challenge of understanding the English of people with an “impeccable southern” accent.
My sister is going to be a mom soon, her baby will be the first granddaughter in the family. It will be awesome for the family to see a new creature created in God’s image, but I know that after the first days following the birth of my niece, she will start to reveal her sinful nature. She will reveal that by using the baby type of communication.
So here we can see the Evil Speech among people, the kind of speech that is condemned in the Bible and we will see it almost everywhere in our lives. King David communicated a message to his faithful leader to put someone in the front of the battle line to be killed. King David thought he could hide his sin of adultery. Here we have a King who is honored as being a man who lived according to the heart of God and who wrote the Psalm 19:14 “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer”.
That psalm gives us a big image of what we are supposed to pray everyday in our lives. It is one of my daily prayers. Later on he wrote a magnificent Psalm asking forgiveness, Psalm 51. In this Psalm he tried to communicate to God something that he did wrong.
I agree with Moises Silva when he says: “since our sin is tainted with sin, the more we speak the more we are likely to sin”. And that is true, we reflect ourselves in the way we talk and in the way we communicate with our neighbors.
But, God provided something to fix that, He would use His own Word, and not only that but He also became flesh (John 1:14). And he communicates in a language that everyone can understand; we can see one of these examples in Acts 26:14. Paul is telling about his experience when he realized that Jesus was the Lord: “We all fell to the ground and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew…” That voice was the very voice of Jesus. The Lord talked to Paul in a language that he could understand. Not only that, God himself is revealed in a book and that book is the Bible, that book gives us a panoramic view of who we are and what we need. The Bible was written in a language that the people could understand using different styles and examples, and the things revealed belong to “us (Christians) and to our children forever” as Deuteronomy 29:29 says. Silva’s says: “Something is necessary to insure the permanence of the message among God’s people, and this is where inscripturation comes in”. Paul is very clear in this point in 1 Corinthians 4:7, when he stated, don’t go beyond the things that are written. The Scriptures revealed God and we can only have a relationship with Him by living according to the things that He says and those things that are written.
Now I would like to talk about God’s incarnate word and Redeeming Speech, I think that these two things come together as two pieces of wood that form a cross.
If Jesus is the incarnate Word and our Redeemer and we can be adopted through Him only, then the Biblical message can be applied to us even if we don’t know Greek or Hebrew very well.
Silva’s says: “we should note that the Scriptures focus on a language as the object of future salvation”. And we see many examples like that in the Bible.
I will like to talk about two of them; the first is seen in Matthew 25:21 “Well done good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share you master’s happiness! We will hear those wonderful words one day.
The other thing is a passage in the book of Luke. There is a wonderful ministry in Juarez Mexico. The work is with people with AIDS during a terminal stage in their lives. Basically Christians share the gospel with them and take care of these people during their last days. One of the amazing things that you see when you walk through the doors and enter that place is a Bible verse from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23:43, the everlasting promise that Jesus spoke to one of the persons who was crucified next to him, the promise is: “I will tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise”.
I think that is the message that the world needs to hear today; there is still hope because with Christ all things are made new.
I read 100% of Silva’s book “God, Language and Scripture”.
GREEK 1
Arturo Terrazas
There is an old saying within some Hispanic countries: “in heaven we will speak Spanish”. I know that Spanish is a beautiful language and it is worthy to be spoken at this time, but the people that speak that language, like all humankind are fallen and they need redemption.
The book of Job tells us what happened when God created the world: “while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy”. Job 38:7. God also created creatures, God spoke and they came to be. He used the method of speaking to create things and also to communicate with His creation. Even the angels shouted to give praise according to the book of Job. Then God created men in His own image, and He gave men special qualities that no other creatures in the world could have, like the gift of talking, but as we see in the Bible, man committed sin, and although he didn’t lose the quality of speaking a language, from now on it would be corrupted.
Moises Silva answers a question related to human beings, the question is, how can we speak? The answer is, we are made in the image of a God who speaks . The problem we have is that our tongue, is corrupted because of our sin. God cannot tolerate sin, so His communication with us and our communication with Him is not as good as Adam and Eve experienced before the fall. As a result of the fall we really cannot communicate properly because we cannot understand who God is unless He reveals Himself to us.
So this shows that human beings need help with communication and with beginning a relationship with God. It is not only the communication with God that is affected; our communication with other creatures is bad also, and it is all because we live in a fallen world. We need to understand who we really are and our need for redemption. If we don’t realize that, we will be the same people with the same struggles, then the worldview of pessimism as seen in some Hollywood movies will be true in our lives.
I understand the struggles we experience as we attempt to communicate with one another. Sometimes it is very hard for me to express an idea or talk with other people because English is not my mother language; not only that, our own nature reflects our problems. How can a boy communicate with a girl, a father with his son and so on? Living in the southern part of the US creates another problem, the challenge of understanding the English of people with an “impeccable southern” accent.
My sister is going to be a mom soon, her baby will be the first granddaughter in the family. It will be awesome for the family to see a new creature created in God’s image, but I know that after the first days following the birth of my niece, she will start to reveal her sinful nature. She will reveal that by using the baby type of communication.
So here we can see the Evil Speech among people, the kind of speech that is condemned in the Bible and we will see it almost everywhere in our lives. King David communicated a message to his faithful leader to put someone in the front of the battle line to be killed. King David thought he could hide his sin of adultery. Here we have a King who is honored as being a man who lived according to the heart of God and who wrote the Psalm 19:14 “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer”.
That psalm gives us a big image of what we are supposed to pray everyday in our lives. It is one of my daily prayers. Later on he wrote a magnificent Psalm asking forgiveness, Psalm 51. In this Psalm he tried to communicate to God something that he did wrong.
I agree with Moises Silva when he says: “since our sin is tainted with sin, the more we speak the more we are likely to sin”. And that is true, we reflect ourselves in the way we talk and in the way we communicate with our neighbors.
But, God provided something to fix that, He would use His own Word, and not only that but He also became flesh (John 1:14). And he communicates in a language that everyone can understand; we can see one of these examples in Acts 26:14. Paul is telling about his experience when he realized that Jesus was the Lord: “We all fell to the ground and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew…” That voice was the very voice of Jesus. The Lord talked to Paul in a language that he could understand. Not only that, God himself is revealed in a book and that book is the Bible, that book gives us a panoramic view of who we are and what we need. The Bible was written in a language that the people could understand using different styles and examples, and the things revealed belong to “us (Christians) and to our children forever” as Deuteronomy 29:29 says. Silva’s says: “Something is necessary to insure the permanence of the message among God’s people, and this is where inscripturation comes in”. Paul is very clear in this point in 1 Corinthians 4:7, when he stated, don’t go beyond the things that are written. The Scriptures revealed God and we can only have a relationship with Him by living according to the things that He says and those things that are written.
Now I would like to talk about God’s incarnate word and Redeeming Speech, I think that these two things come together as two pieces of wood that form a cross.
If Jesus is the incarnate Word and our Redeemer and we can be adopted through Him only, then the Biblical message can be applied to us even if we don’t know Greek or Hebrew very well.
Silva’s says: “we should note that the Scriptures focus on a language as the object of future salvation”. And we see many examples like that in the Bible.
I will like to talk about two of them; the first is seen in Matthew 25:21 “Well done good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share you master’s happiness! We will hear those wonderful words one day.
The other thing is a passage in the book of Luke. There is a wonderful ministry in Juarez Mexico. The work is with people with AIDS during a terminal stage in their lives. Basically Christians share the gospel with them and take care of these people during their last days. One of the amazing things that you see when you walk through the doors and enter that place is a Bible verse from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23:43, the everlasting promise that Jesus spoke to one of the persons who was crucified next to him, the promise is: “I will tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise”.
I think that is the message that the world needs to hear today; there is still hope because with Christ all things are made new.
I read 100% of Silva’s book “God, Language and Scripture”.
posted by Arty at viernes, septiembre 02, 2005
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