Eis-Ex-pect-e-Jesus?

“…All authority I will give you, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give to whomever I wish.  Therefore, if you will worship before me, all will be yours.”  -Luke 4:6-7

Wow!  What an uplifting passage of Scripture!

Context.  Context.  Context. 

This simple word was pounded into my cranium from, what seemed, “dawn ‘til dusk” during my years at the BMA Theological Seminary.  It didn’t matter whether my colleagues and I were in a church history course, a preaching course, pastoral ministry course, or systematic theology, “CONTEXT” was the underlying theme built upon the foundation of coming to know and love our Savior, Jesus Christ, and His Word even more intimately than before.

I can’t tell you how much this simple word means to me now, especially in light of the trends in our culture and churches today.

            We live in an environment now, and likely for the remainder of human history, where information is simply a click away.  Not only that, but we have the ability to share our every waking thought, opinion, belief, observation, and interpretation whenever and however we see fit through the medium of social media.  With this freedom and ability, we can obtain and accomplish much more than we could before, but conversely, we can also distance and damage much more than we could before. 

            There are two terms in the theological world.  These words are commonplace today among pastors, theologians, scholars, and even many in the laity – but still many are not familiar with them.  They are the terms exegesis and eisegesis: Both have everything to do with context, context, context but remain on opposite ends of the spectrum.  I’ll explain.

Exegesis defined: the process of drawing out the meaning from a given text in accordance with the context and discoverable meaning of its author.

Eisegesis defined: the process of imposing one’s meaning or interpretation into and onto the given text.

            In other words, exegesis aims to get to the bottom of what the original author was saying in a given text in the original context.  Eisegesis aims to read into a text what the reader believes to be so, regardless of the original author’s intent or context.  Exegesis allows for the text to interpret itself for the reader.  Eisegesis often “cherry-picks” a text, normally those that agree with the interpreter’s position, and/or “reads into” what isn’t there.  Essentially, eisegesis has an "I" problem.

            As a pastor, I’ve seen these two terms and preaching styles become conflated – like they both mean the same thing, when they are actually entirely contrasting to one another.  I’ll give you an example: We’ve all heard a sermon on David and Goliath.  In a typical Western sermon, in many of our pulpits today (or free roaming stage areas these days), we will hear something along the lines that in that Bible story, you and I are David, Goliath is our problem or tribulation, and the stones can be any number of things we use to defeat the Goliaths or giants in our lives.  This type of sermon leaves the hearer feeling inspired, energetic, victorious, hopeful, and it’s quite the self-esteem booster.  However, this type of sermon is an eisegetical sermon and is completely wrong in its interpretation.  An exegetical approach to this story would be as follows: David is Messiah (Jesus), Goliath is Satan (our greatest enemy, along w/ death/sin), and the cowering, helpless Israelites are us (completely unable to save ourselves; in desperate need of a Savior).  What a difference the approach makes!  (And after all, Jesus did say it was all about Him.  Luke 24:27, 44) 

            I could give numerous examples, primarily coming from Old Testament stories taken out of context, that would prove again and again this point.  But you may be asking, why does this matter?  Apart from maybe pulling what I feel the Lord is saying to me, even if its different than what you think, is that really that bad?  Exegesis and eisegesis both pull out solid, helpful examples and applications for my life anyway right?  So what difference does it make?

            Go back up to the top of the page and read that Luke 4:6-7 passage again.  Uplifting right?  God’s going to give you and every other child of His the Kingdom if we will just worship Him right?  According to Pastor Eisegesis, that would be what Luke 4:6-7 is teaching us.  After all, it is a true statement that God will give His children the Kingdom.

BUT, go ask Pastor Exegesis what he has to say.  He’ll point out to you that the context says that God wasn’t speaking in Luke 4 – Satan was……

Context.  Context.  Context.