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Today is Bible Sunday, and the Bible Society particularly draws our attention to Romans 15: 4.
Let me read it again:
"Kwa kuwa yote yaliotangulia kuandikwa yaliandikwa ili kutufundisha sisi; ili kwa saburi na faraja ya maandiko tupate kuwa na tumaini."
I'd like to emphasise 2 words: "kutufundisha" and
"faraja".
"Yaliandikwa kutufundisha sisi"
na "ili kwa faraja ya maandiko".
Are you following me?
Is there anyone who isn't with me so far?
Of course you're not!
Because Kiswahili is not your language!
But isn't that just how the Scriptures come over to millions of people who hear them in English, or some other language,
but cannot hear or read them in their own language?
Isn't it the same?
How can they possibly be expected to understand them?
The verse that I read in Kiswahili reads in English:
"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance, and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope."
And the 2 words that I emphasised were to teach
And to encourage.
That's what St Paul is saying.
The Scriptures are given to us to teach us
and to encourage us.
1. We need the Scriptures to understand the faith, to understand about God, and the Good News of Jesus Christ, to understand Christian doctrine. Understanding involves our minds.
2. We also need the Scriptures to encourage us, to inspire us to live out the Gospel, to have faith, to experience the Holy Spirit. Because, says Paul, that is what gives us hope. Encouragement involves our hearts.
So we need the Scriptures for both - the mind and the heart.
Neither is complete without the other.
If we only use the Scriptures for intellectual study, it can become a dry and academic exercise.
Many theology students have lost their faith while studying theology. I know one or two.
Mind alone is not enough.
But nor is the heart alone enough.
Without understanding the faith, and studying the Bible, we can get carried away with all sorts of superficial experiences and unbalanced teaching.
The Scriptures are for both mind and heart,
teaching and encouragement,
and that brings a healthy balance.
The Christian church in many countries today, especially in Africa and South America, but also in China, is growing at a phenomenal rate.
But if that growth is to be strong and lasting, and not just an expanding bubble, then there has to be depth and substance to it.
A few years ago I found on the beach in the Maldives a large brown shiny seed. I brought it home and planted it, and soon a green shoot popped up - a long green tendril.
And it grew at a phenomenal rate - several inches a day!
It looked as though it would take over our conservatory.
But there was no substance to it.
And come a bit of dryness and cold and it withered away.
It was all growth, no root!
Conversely I brought a seed from northern Australia. I planted it, and it germinated, but then it just didn't grow. In the end I threw it out as a worthless plant - and found a whole mass of roots growing out of the bottom of the pot.
It was all root, but no growth!
One plant was all foliage. One was all root.
Christians need both - root and foliage
mind and heart
teaching and encouragement
knowledge and experience.
Like us, the church in the third world needs both.
And for both, in order to be healthy, all Christians need the Scriptures,
and they need them in their own language.
Not our old King James version cast-offs, that we can sometimes barely understand ourselves.
But Bibles in their own languages.
One of my schoolboy heroes was Alexander Mackay, one of the first missionaries to Uganda.
And Mackay's first priority was to translate the Scriptures into Luganda.
I quote from a biography:
"They set up a printing press, and distributed everywhere portions of the New Testament in Luganda. It soon became fashionable to learn to read, and chambers of the King's court were turned into reading rooms. Everywhere lads might be seen, sitting in groups on the straw covered floor, reading the New Testament."
That was in 1885.
Very soon after King Mutesa of Baganda died, and the new king, Mwanga, began an intense persecution of Christians.
Those same young men, who had been so avidly reading the Scriptures, had their arms cut off, and they were slowly roasted over a fire, because they refused to go back on their new faith.
As they died they sang a hymn, "Kila siku tumsifu Yesu",
"Daily, daily sing to Jesus".
The Scriptures had, in a short time, made their faith strong, encouraged them, and given them hope - courage and hope enough to die as martyrs.
And so the church in Uganda was born.
And it wasn't only the Africans who were buoyed up by Scripture.
Uganda's very first Anglican bishop, James Hannington, never quite reached his diocese.
He was murdered 122 years ago tomorrow - the day when he is commemorated.
In his last few days, imprisoned in a hut by King Mwanga's men, he wrote: "I am very low, and cry to God for release. But much comforted by Psalm 28."
And on his last day he wrote in his diary:
"A hyena howled near me last night, but I hope it is not to have me yet. Sustained by Psalm 30, which came with great power."
Those were the last words in his diary, written on the day he was murdered.
The Word of God, giving encouragement and hope, right to the death, to converts and missionaries alike.
I remember, as a child, my Dad, in his mud and thatch office in northern Kenya, working day after day, and often far into the night, with his team of local Christians, translating the Scriptures into Boran, so that the Boran people could have teaching, and encouragement, and therefore the hope of the gospel.
Bible translation is not easy.
It's not just a matter of changing words.
It's about concepts, ideas, doctrines.
There are all sorts of subtleties, the constant possibility of mistranslation, of misunderstanding.
Some ideas have to be paraphrased.
When the Bible says "I will cast your sins into the depths of the sea" - what is "sea" to a people who live in a desert, and who have never seen a bigger stretch of water than an oasis?
When it says "Your sins shall be as white as snow" - what is "snow"?
The Boran people of northern Kenya have no word for snow. They can't conceive it.
My father translated "as white as salt" - the salt that glistens on the desert surface.
My uncle was a missionary in the Arctic all his life, and did Bible translation into Innuit.
He had no problem with the word "snow"!
But how do you translate "I am the Good Shepherd. I know my sheep.'
Sheep? Shepherd? What are they?
They mean nothing to the Innuit. But huskies! Yes!
And so today the work and the challenge of Bible translation continues all over the world, thanks to the United Bible Societies, the Summer School of Linguistics and others.
Today the Bible, or parts of it, have been translated into nearly 2,500 languages.
But still another 3,000 languages remain, with no part of the Bible yet translated.
At this very moment the United Bible Societies are involved in 546 Bible translation projects.
Of these projects 320 involve languages into which the Bible is being translated for the first time.
That's translation.
What about distribution?
Last year the United Bible Societies distributed 393 million Scriptures worldwide, including 26 million complete Bibles.
And these were nearly all sold at subsidized prices,
or given free.
So that Christians in every corner of the earth can read for themselves, in their own language, the living Word of God,
- which teaches
- which encourages
- and which, therefore, gives hope.
I looked around the bookshelves in our house.
These (lifts up a large bag of Bibles) are the Bibles and New Testaments that I found!
They are all in our own language, English.
They represent 11 different versions of English.
In addition to these I have a bookcase of commentaries and Bible study aids.
Our children were brought up on a Bible story every night, from beautifully illustrated children's Bible Story books, stories that soaked in to them from an early age.
We have what is like a supermarket trolley of Bibles.
And yet millions of Christians would give their eye teeth for just one portion of Scripture in their own language.
We have a Scripture glut. They have a Scripture famine.
So let's support, in every way we can, the vital work of the Bible Society.
Because "everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."
Let me finish by reading that same verse, Romans 15: 4, again, this time in Boran:
"Woonti akanatiifi waan t'aafi keesati t'aafani chufa aka nu barsiisaniifi t'aafani, aka nu abdi maro jabeenaafi oofsa t'aafiin nuu kennitu argannu"
Those, to us, incomprehensible words, bring today teaching and encouragement, and therefore hope, to the Boran people of northern Kenya.
And that is a story repeated over and over again.
David Webster
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