Day
One: Matt. 5:17 “Don’t assume that I came to
destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
I RECENTLY WENT on a mission trip to Haiti. In Haiti, Creole and French are the
dominant languages. English, my dominant and secondary language, is not spoken
by many of the native Haitians. Right away, I knew this was going to be a difficulty we
would have to deal with.
On this trip I was with several pastors and we were working
with multiple indigenous Haitian churches. We taught a pastor’s conference, a youth conference, and
worshiped in their churches on Sunday morning. It was amazing being able to worship alongside these
believers, but the language barrier kept presenting problems.
One of our main issues became the lack of interpreters. We had plenty of English Bible
teachers and plenty of Haitian churches to teach in, but we did not have enough
translators.
Having someone to interpret, and interpret correctly, is very important in communication. With matters as weighty as salvation
and the things of God, you do not want something you say to be interpreted
incorrectly and since I didn’t know any Creole and very little French, having a
trusted interpreter was essential.
When you begin to think about how important this is, take
into consideration the importance of Jesus coming to us to teach us what the
Old Testament is really about. Think about how incapable we are of knowing the
way of the kingdom of God without Jesus. He perfectly interpreted to us things known only in the
wisdom of God and made them available to us. He showed things to us only discernible by the Spirit of
God, and then gave us His Spirit to keep guiding us into these truths (John
16:13).He
was not only the perfect teacher but also the perfect interpreter.
What a perfect and matchless Savior we have in Christ, our
Great Interpreter of the truths of God!
PAUSE AND REFLECT
▷▷What qualities does an interpreter need to possess? How was
Christ the perfect interpreter?
▷▷How does the right understanding change everything?
▷▷Have
you ever been in a situation where you thought something was true only to find
out you didn’t understand it correctly?
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