Interview by Peter Crumpler
Peter Crumpler interviews Andrew Sach, the copastor of Grace Church, Greenwich and a tutor on The Cornhill Training Course. He’s a regular conference speaker and has written the Dig Deeper series of Bible study books with various co-authors. Recent books include Are you 100% sure you want to be an agnostic? and the latest in the Dig Deeper series on 1 and 2 Kings.
Q We are having this conversation as you have just published a new Dig Deeper volume looking at 1 and 2 Kings. Why are you so passionate about Christians going deeper into the Bible? Is that because you feel we’ve been much too superficial beforehand?
I don’t want to present myself as the ‘saviour’ of Bible reading! I think Christians have always loved the Bible. Jesus said, ‘my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. So I think it’s just part of being a Christian. I became a Christian at University, and I had this hunger to devour the words of God after that. The word of God is the ‘sword of the Spirit’. Jesus said, ‘you can’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes to the mouth of God’. So I don’t think that’s my contribution: that’s Jesus’ contribution to his church as people love the scriptures.
PC You mentioned that when you first came to faith, you had a real hunger to read the scriptures andperhaps to go deeper. Do you think that we can take the scriptures for granted?
Every pastor has the feeling of, ‘oh gosh, it’s Christmas! That’s angels and wise men. And I did angels last year. So it’s wise men this year! What is there new to say?
I’ve actually made a bit of a practice of doing the quirkier Christmas texts. One year, I did the Christmas story according to the Book of Revelation (Revelation chapter 12), where there’s a dragon in the maternity ward! There’s so much variety in the Bible and it would be a shame just to stay in the same bits that we know well and not explore. So 1 and 2 Kings is the part of the Old Testament that is less known, but has amazing things in it.
