With Rights Come Responsibilities

The Responsibility to Interpret Scripture Accurately

Well, welcome again on this Wednesday night, we gathered together to study and we are picking up where we left off last time. If you have your Bibles, I'm going to invite you to turn to the second letter of Peter, so 2 Peter chapter 1, and we're going to look again at the passage that we began looking at last week, 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 19 to 21.

The subject of course, this is the close of our longer study on how we got the Bible, and we've looked at a lot. We've looked at revelation, inspiration, canonization, transmission, textual criticism, and we looked at translation for several weeks, but tonight we're going to, as part of last week, we're going to look at interpretation and application, because honestly, this is as vital in communicating the truth as any other part.

Because while God has done the work of revealing the scripture, inspiring the scripture, ensuring that it has been recognized, canonized, and transmitted to us, and translated into a language that we understand, it still befalls us the responsibility to interpret the Bible accurately.

Because at the end of the day, we could have all of those other things and still bring to the scripture a bias and a wrong understanding, which would turn the scripture on its head and ultimately render its effects null in our life, because we are unwilling to properly understand what it says.

So we are going to look at this text, 2 Peter 1, it says in verse 19,. And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And so ends the reading of God's word. This text tells us something very important. It says we have something that is sure. It's the prophetic word. It's God's word. It's the inscripturated word. And it says that no prophecy in this book came from one's own interpretation, meaning we talked about this meaning last week, that no one sat down and simply wrote his own opinions and his own ideas in this book.

But rather this book comes from God. I mentioned this last time and just to, as by way of reminder, I know a lot of people who would say, well I don't like what Paul wrote there. As if Paul were speaking from his own self.

Or they'll say, well, you know, I don't really like the books of Moses, all those wars and all that bloodshed and all that difficult law about what we're supposed to eat and all of those things. And I just don't like that.

So I'm not going to consider that. That's just Moses's opinion. Well this text tells us it's not just Moses's opinion. It's not just Paul's opinion. It's not just Luke or any of the rest. It tells us that they spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit and no prophecy came from their will.

But as I also noted last week, this particular passage has been used incorrectly to argue that we're not supposed to interpret the Bible for ourselves, where it says that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

The rendering of the King James at that point is a little bit, it lends itself to a different understanding. Brother, would you read the King James version of verse 20? Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.

Thank you. That particular phrase has been used to argue that no one has the right to interpret the Bible privately. That the only ones who have the right to interpret the Bible are the clergy, particularly in Roman Catholicism where they argue that only the church, i .e. the magisterial authority of the church, the pope and the bishops, had the authority to give a right understanding.

You don't have the right to interpret the Bible. You don't have the right to make an understanding yourself. You are not worthy. You have to listen to what you're told and you don't have the right to interpret it yourself.

And they use that text from the King James as their argument. It's not of private interpretation. But as I think the more modern versions make clearer, it's not talking about our interpreting of the text.

It's talking about the fact that the writers of the text did not write from their own interpretation or their own experience or their own ideals. They wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit of God.

But I want to take a step forward from that because that's where we ended last week. I want to take a step forward from that and say this tonight. Even though I can argue from the Bible that we do have the right of private interpretation, meaning every person is filled with the Holy Spirit of God who is a believer, and thus every believer, the Bible says, is a priest unto God.

One of the arguments of the Reformation was the priesthood of the believer, meaning that none of us has to go and sit in a cubicle next to a screen where there's a man on the other side who's taking our prayer requests and confessions as a priest.

We only have one mediator between God and man, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he is our priest, and thus every one of us has access to God through him. And in that sense, there's a priesthood that is of all believers.

And so all believers then have the right to read the Scripture with the Holy Spirit and seek to understand it. But with every right comes a responsibility. With every right, I mean, it's just like anything else.

If you're given the right to drive, you have the responsibility of obeying the rules of the road, even though a lot of people choose not to do that. Ain't that right, Brother Mike? We talk a lot about people who do not drive well.

And we talk about in our dads and dudes, we've just mentioned a few times how that can be frustrating to our sanctification, having to get caught in traffic. So we know that there are rules, and if you are going to drive, you have a responsibility to follow those rules.

Same way I teach pistol classes. I teach concealed weapon classes, and I tell people, I say, if you are going to carry a handgun on your person, that's a right that you have to do that, but with that right, you have a tremendous responsibility because you are carrying a tool which can quickly and decisively end a human life.

I say that just that way in every class. You have a tool on your person that can quickly and decisively end a human life. Thus, you have a great responsibility that comes with the right. Well, if you have the right to interpret the Bible, and I believe that we do, then we have the responsibility to handle it properly.

The Bible says to be diligent or to study. I like the King James at this point. I'm not anti-King James. Don't ever think that. I like where the King James says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Now that word study we often think of means to sit down with a book and study something, but actually the word study there means to do our diligence, to be diligent. That's why modern translations will say be diligent, but I like the word study.

At the seminary I attended, when we would walk out the door, there was a plaque and it was inscribed in 1611 King James English, and it said, study to show thyself approved unto God. And what it meant is be diligent in your study.

Be diligent in everything that we do, and certainly that comes to a very important place when we talk about dividing the word of God or dividing the scriptures. Rightly dividing the word of truth means to rightly understand what it's saying.

And if we've been given the right, then certainly we have the responsibility. So tonight we're going to pick up where we left off in our notes. We were looking at the introduction to interpretation, and we talked last week about the word hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the science and the spiritual practice of biblical interpretation. Hermeneutics is an interesting word. A lot of our words come from the Greek language, and a lot of the Greek gods are associated in our language.

A lot of words we don't realize are associated with Greek gods. Well, this is one of them. Hermeneutics actually is the root of that, is the name of the god Hermes. Hermes was the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, and so Hermes was responsible for bringing the message of the gods to the people.

And so hermeneutics is the practice of properly understanding the message. Now, it's not got anything to do when we talk about it from the Bible. It doesn't have anything to do with Greek gods or anything like that, but it's more along the lines of understanding the intent of the author.

I have said before, and some of you may have heard this, the Supreme Court of the United States is by nature supposed to be a hermeneutical institution because the Supreme Court's job is to determine whether or not laws are in keeping with the original intent of the United States Constitution.

Is this law constitutional and have they broken the Constitution by enforcing this law? So by nature, they're a hermeneutical institution. Their one goal is supposed to be, even though they don't always follow it, and I'll be careful how I say that, I don't want to be accused of being too political, but their one job is supposed to be interpreting the Constitution.

So in that sense, they're supposed to be a hermeneutical institution. Their goal is to interpret the original intent. So that's our goal, but not with the Constitution, however noble that may be. Our goal is not to necessarily understand the Constitution of the United States.

Our goal as Christians is to understand the Bible, and we want to understand the Bible in view of the intent of the author. So often, Bible studies begin with this phrase. They'll read a passage and then they'll look to someone and say, Brother Jack, what does that mean to you?

No offense, I don't care what it means to you. I care what it meant to who wrote it. You understand what I mean by that? Even though we may differ as to what we think, the ultimate answer is what did Paul mean?

Or what did Peter mean? Or what did Moses mean? And then there's a one step back from that, because who is the ultimate source? The Holy Spirit of God. So really it doesn't matter what Jack thinks it means, or what I think it means, what matters is what it meant when the Holy Spirit had it written.

And so the goal is that. You'll never hear me start a Bible study with the question, what does this mean to you? Because it doesn't matter what it means to you. What matters is what it means. Now there may come a time in a Bible study where I'll say, okay, now how does this apply to you?

That's different. Because we can understand the meaning of a text, and it might have an application in your life that's a little different than the application in my life. In fact, R .C. Sproul tells a story of his days in seminary when there was a man, a teacher, who was known for giving out a very difficult assignment.

He would ask the students to take a passage of scripture and find 50 ways to apply it. And he would give them the weekend to go home and apply this text in 50 ways, and they would be calling one another up, and they'd be having study groups and getting together and trying to find the 50 ways they could apply this section of scripture.

And they would come to those 50 conclusions, they'd come on Monday, and the whole class would present this 50, and he would say, okay, now go find 50 more. And the point of the professor was that the riches and depths of the scriptures are completely vast, and we could never plumb their depths completely.

We could never mine them to their emptiness, right? They're just completely full of the riches of God. In fact, there's a book called The Treasury of Scripture, and what it is is simply, it's like a collection of Bible verses that are topical, but I just like that word, treasury, because that's what the Bible is.

The Bible is a storehouse of truth, and we have a lot that we could apply. But application is based first on interpretation. Because if we misinterpret it, then we're bound to misapply it. If we don't get the right meaning, then we're certainly not going to get the right supposed-to out of the meaning.

You know what a supposed-to is, right, what you're supposed to do and what you ain't supposed to do? Well, the supposed-to has got to come after what it means. If you put the supposed-to first, then you're all out of whack, right?

So we've talked about hermeneutics, we've talked about the fact that the rules that govern the study of Scripture are the same rules that govern the study of any other document in the sense of this, the Bible is a book of words, and a verb is still a verb, a noun is still a noun, an adjective is still an adjective, there is no Holy Ghost Greek, there's nothing special about the words themselves, save one thing, I will say this, the one thing about the Bible that is interesting is there's a lot of made-up words.

What do you mean, Pastor Keith? There's a lot of words that didn't exist until they were essentially created for use in the Bible. At least we don't know of them being used anywhere else. One of them particularly is the word in 2 Timothy 3 which talks about the Bible being God-breathed, theanoustos, right?

That is not a word we find outside of Scripture. We know what the two words mean, theos means God and pneuma means breath or breathe, and so we know that God-breathed, we know what it means, it's a compound word, but it's a word that Paul created.

So if you wanted to call anything Holy Ghost Greek, well, you might could do that. One of the words that we're going to talk about Sunday in the passage that we're in in 1 Corinthians 6, it's the word for homosexual.

I am not aware of it being used outside of that particular place in 1 Corinthians 6. It's arsenokoites, koites, where we get the word koides, or sex, and arsenos being a use of the word man, and it means a person who has sex with men, a man who has sex with men, and so we know what it means, but it's a unique word, right?

And so we see those words that are unique, and how do we find out what they mean though? We study their roots just like you find out any other word meaning, right? We don't imagine their meanings, we find their meanings based on the words that are used in these compound words.

So tonight we're going to look at the principles of interpretation. We know it's a science, we know also that it's a spiritual practice, meaning that it's something that God says unbelievers will be unable to fully comprehend.

1 Corinthians 2, 14 says, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are a folly to him. The word of God is foolishness to those who are perishing. Amen? Everybody understand?

In fact, this week, a buddy of mine from down South Florida, he put a post up, and he said, and he's a believer, and he put a post up, and he said, the Bible, he said, this is for all you Bible scholars out there, I have a question.

He said, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2, 14, that the, no, he didn't say that verse, he said, where the cross is foolishness. He said, but the cross isn't foolishness to me. I don't understand this passage, can you help me understand it?

I said, and I kindly, I just said, read further. It's foolishness to those who are perishing. That's the answer. Just read a little further. To us who are being saved, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

But to those who are perishing, it is foolishness. All right, so moving on to principles of interpretation. All people interpret everything that they read as they read it, and the Bible is no exception.

When you pick up and read something, in fact, do you know you can't look at a word without reading it? Do you know that? I want you to try it. Actually, this is something I learned in high school. I thought it was really neat.

I think Jennifer told me this. And ever since then, for 20 years, every time I look at a word, I try not to read it, and it doesn't happen. When you see a word, your brain reads it. It's sight reading.

It's just something we do. We naturally read what we see. But then there's also a natural interpretation process. Okay, we see the big octagon with the four letter stop. Your brain says stop, and there's an immediate interpretation, right?

This is why oftentimes when you're reading the Bible, your face, and I've seen it from the pulpit, people go. And it's because that face is, they're interpreting it, but they're not getting it. They're interpreting it, but there's a disconnect.

They're not understanding what they're interpreting, and maybe it's because their interpretation is wrong. Their immediate reading, you understand that sometimes our immediate reading of something can be wrong, right?

Sometimes you read something, and you immediately have a thought of what it meant, but it's not what it meant. That happens all the time, right?

Or not liking it.

Oh, well, that can be a not liking face, too. That can be a, ooh, I don't, eh, yeah. Usually that face is more like, eh, you know? It's a groan, almost, from the face. So there are principles that we use to interpret.

Even though we interpret everything we read immediately, we don't always have the right understanding right away, so we do have to go back through the principles to make sure that our immediate understanding is actually in line with what the right understanding is.

I've given you these principles in your outline. I believe that there are seven or six. Is there six in your notes? There's six notes. We're going to go through these rather quickly, because I've got a lot to say.

Contextual Interpretation

The first one is the principle of contextual interpretation. No verse should be interpreted in isolation from its context. Both the immediate context and the larger context need to be considered. The context refers to the setting of the verse, the surrounding verses, and their subject matter, and it has to be also considered within the historical setting of the event that the words were spoken in.

This is very important, because we can easily, easily apply something to ourselves or interpret something to ourselves for ourselves that's wrong interpretation, because we're simply taking it out of context.

And people get upset about this, because they'll say something, and they'll say, well, it's in the Bible. And I'll respond, and I'll say, no, you've taken that out of context. And they say, well, how do you know what the context is?

Because it's not by itself. You know, if the Bible were simply one word sentences separated from everything else, and it didn't really combine to make any sense, then, yes, it would be easy to take all of those things out of context.

But there are contexts that these passages that are in that bound them, that keep them from being used improperly. If we think about the cults, oftentimes the passages that they use are devoid of any of the context that surrounds them.

They just simply take one passage out, and they use it to argue with, and you say, where does that passage even come from? What is the before? What is the after? And what does it mean in relationship to those things?

That's a huge question. I tell you, that will save you from so much bad interpretation. And let me tell you something. It's not just the cults. I know of pastors who every Sunday, they just preach a different verse of the Bible.

And they'll just come to that verse, and they'll preach that verse. They don't talk about what came before it. They don't talk about what came after it. They don't talk about any of that. They just like what the verse says.

I think I've told you this story before, but Dr. James White had a man ask him about an interpretation once, and he came to him, and he said, Dr. White, I like this verse. I think it means this. Can you please study it and see if I'm correct?

See if what I'm saying here is in line with the context and all. So Dr. White took the passage, went and studied it, and came back, and he said, actually, what you said is not correct. It just doesn't align with the context here.

And the man said, okay, thank you for helping me. A couple weeks later, the guy was preaching in the church, and he preached that text. And he preached the wrong interpretation, the one that Dr. White had told him.

No, that doesn't fit with the context. That doesn't fit with the Greek. It doesn't fit with the syntax. It's wrong. But the guy preached it anyway. And as he was leaving church that day, he caught Dr. White as they were passing one another.

This was back when he was at a bigger church, and they passed each other in the corridor, and the guy sort of hung his head, and he looked down, because he knew, you know, it's not like he didn't get caught.

You asked. And he looked at Dr. White, and he says, I know. I know. But it just preaches so good. He's not alone. He really isn't. I would go as far as to say this, and I might catch flack on social media for this, but I would say every passage that's ever used to attack Reformed theology is ripped out of its context.

I've never had someone come against Reformed theology and show me a passage that I would say is not absolutely ripped from its context to make the point. The worst being John 3 .16. If you can't, if you don't know where Jesus was when he said, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life, if you don't know who he was talking to, then you might not really understand that whole passage.

That's connected to a larger conversation that Jesus was having. And it's connected to a larger context about being born again. And you know what it says in that same passage? Jesus said, The wind blows where it wills, and so too is the work of the Spirit, meaning that God's work in causing regeneration is God's will.

And like I said, so it's just context, context, context is number one. Number two, the principle of clarity. Difficult and apparently ambiguous verses should always be understood in light of the many verses that are perfectly clear.

This is the foundation for the process of allowing Scripture to interpret itself. The Bible is its own interpreter, meaning this, the Bible doesn't contradict itself because it comes from God, and God is a God of truth, and we know that truth is based on consistency, right?

If you hear somebody say something one day, and the next day they say something the exact opposite of what they said before, then you know that that person is not a truthful person because that person is exercising inconsistency in his speech.

God is consistent. So when God says in Ephesians chapter 2, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, and not of works, lest anyone should boast. And then you go over to James chapter 2, and it says faith without works is dead.

You can know that those two things, though seemingly contradictory, actually can go together in harmony. Because you go back to Ephesians 2, and you read on, and it says, For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

You see, we're not saved by them, but we're saved for them. We're not saved by what we do, but when we're saved, what we do will change, and we'll be conformed to Christ. And so there's a great internal consistency in the Bible.

And so if you're reading a passage, and it disagrees with other passages, you know one thing absolutely certain, either you've misunderstood that one, or you've misunderstood the others. And the question then becomes the issue of clarity.

Which ones are more clear? Which ones are coming from the perspective of a didactic statement versus a narrative? Here's what I mean by that. If Paul says to us something very clear and didactic, such as, For by grace art thou saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

If Paul says that very clear, and then we go over to a narrative passage, and we see a conversation between people, and in that conversation it might seem as if someone is talking about salvation by works, then we know we've misunderstood them because Paul has been so clear in this passage.

The clear interprets that which is unclear. That make sense? All right, number three. The principle of the grammatical historical method. Every effort should be made to understand precisely what the words mean as they are employed by the authors.

We talked about this a little bit ago. The historical situation which produced the writing must also be subject to careful investigation. The grammatical historical method of studying the Bible instructs us to look at the passage carefully to see what it says literally, and to understand a biblical statement in light of its historical background.

We are to understand a historical statement as a straightforward statement, and do not change its literal grammatical sense. This is also known as the common sense reading, but be careful with that last one because some people will say, well, that's the common sense meaning because to them they want it to say a certain thing, right?

For instance, getting back to John 3 .16, John 3 .16 is often used to argue against reformed theology in this one perspective. Reformed theology teaches that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died particularly for the elect.

Even though his blood has the power to save all men, the blood of Christ was shed specifically for those who would believe. That's what the reformed teaching is on the cross. That Jesus Christ, though sufficient for all, was not made for all.

It was made for those who would believe, i .e., the elect. That's known as limited atonement. People will say, I can't believe in limited atonement because the Bible says God so loved the world. And they use that phrase.

And I say, yeah, but finish the sentence. In this way God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son. That all the ones believing would not perish, but would have everlasting life. That's limited atonement.

Because even though God loved the world, he did not intend to save the whole world. You say, how do I know? Because it's not all saved. Jesus said, broad is the way and wide is the gate that leads to destruction, and many there are who find it.

Narrow is the way that leads to life. And what is the way to life? Jesus. So we know. John 3 .16 can't be used to argue against limited atonement, even though it has been. It shouldn't be.

He loved people in all parts of the world.

Yeah, absolutely. And we talk about the fact that when it talks about all, even the word all has a context. I've heard this. I'm not here to argue Reformed Theology, but I've heard the people say, all means all, and that's all all means.

And I say, yeah, except for when it don't mean all. And they say, well, what do you mean? I say, well, in the Gospels it says all Judea went and was baptized by John. I can prove that the all there is context driven, meaning that the all refers to all kinds, not all without exception.

It's all without distinction, not all without exception. In the same way you might hear someone say, if the president were to come to town, all Jacksonville turned out for the president. It means all without distinction, not all without exception, because I'm pretty sure there were nursing homes and hospitals that were still full, even though the president was here.

You understand? Words are subject to context, and this is why we talk about a semantic domain, meaning that every word that's used in the Bible has a domain of usage. Did you know the word world is used almost, I think it's 11 times, I'm sorry, 11 ways in the Gospel of John alone?

For God so loved the world. That's one way. Do not love the world, neither the things in the world. That's a different way. That's both from the Gospel of John. And it goes on, there are several different ways the word world is used, like I said, up to 11 different ways if you look it up in a lexicon, and just in the Gospel of John.

So these are all important. This is part of understanding grammar and understanding the history that surrounds that grammar. I'm not going to finish tonight, am I? Let me keep going. This is important, though.

It really is. And what we're going to do, we're going to apply some of this in the weeks ahead. We're going to pull out some passages and study them using these methods, and we're going to do some studying of our own.

Number five, the principle of, I'm sorry, number four, the principle of singularity of meaning. Singularity of meaning is this. A Bible passage only has one meaning. Now, as I said earlier, it can have multiple applications, but it doesn't have multiple meanings.

It means what it meant when the author wrote it. And as I said, it can have multitudes of applications, but the one interpretation that is correct is the one that is consistent with the meaning of the author.

My daughter, if I come to her in the morning and I say, honey, I'm going to leave. I got to go to work. When I come home, I want your room clean. All right? That's a pretty fair possibility that I would call for such a thing.

Right? I only have one meaning. Now, you could argue to the hilt that I'm talking about her closet, or I'm talking about under her bed, or I'm talking about the fact that she spilled something last night and she needs to clean that spill up.

But I know my meaning, and I hope that I've conveyed the meaning to her, and there's only one meaning. And if I come home and the kitchen's clean and her room is still dirty, I'm not going to commend her for cleaning the kitchen.

I'm going to get on to her because she didn't do what I told her to do because it had one meaning. Well, I interpreted you to say I want the kitchen clean because that's the room I like better than my room, so I call that my room, or the living room with the TV or whatever.

That's my room. No, you don't get to change the meaning. You don't get to reinterpret it based upon your particular idea of what is and what isn't. I had a meaning. You understood my meaning. I was clear in my meaning.

And I only had one. Last week when I was studying, or when I was preaching, I mentioned a text in 1 Corinthians where one Bible translation said it one way and another Bible translation, it was ESV and King James disagreed on how to understand that passage.

And it wasn't a matter of text, it wasn't as if there was a textual variant there that made the difference. The difference was simply how do you interpret the verbs and the nouns together to make that sentence.

The ESV had a totally different interpretation, or rather translation, than the King James. I will say this. They both could be wrong, but they both can't be right. I think one or the other is right, but they both could be wrong.

But they can't both be right, because they say something different. You understand now what I mean by singularity of meaning? I'll finish up these last two and then next week we're going to go to part three.

Is that okay? Is it bad? Or do you all want to keep going tonight? I keep here for another hour. It's like, no, I'm ready to go camping. We're doing the celebration this weekend. Okay, number five, this is very important for us to remember.

The principle of accommodation. What is that? The Bible is to be interpreted in view of the fact that it is an accommodation of divine truths to human minds. God the infinite is communicating with man the finite.

As a result, the truths of God make contact with the human mind at a common point, which is the Bible, to make God knowable. And we must be careful not to push the accommodating language about God and his nature to extremes.

I've said this before about God having feathers because it says he girds us under his wings. That's actually called an anthropomorphism. What that means is it's attributing to God something that God doesn't have simply to make a point about God's nature, not to confuse, but to try to give an insight.

When the Bible says God looks upon his people, it's not as if he has orbital sockets and eyes like we have. God is infinite and unable not to see anything. We have to understand that and we really can't.

Even the idea of eternity. You know what eternity is? Simply means the lack of an ending. It does mean lack of a beginning too, that's true, but when we think about eternity like our going into the future, we can't imagine not having an ending and yet, that's what we have.

We have eternity. The only way to understand that is the lack of something. There's times where the Bible talks about God repenting. You say, wait a minute, does that mean God changes his mind? The Bible says God doesn't change his mind.

In fact, very clearly, it says God is not a man that he should lie, neither is he the son of man that he should change his mind. Very clearly, that's a didactic statement. Very clear. Yet, it talks about God's repenting.