How to Not Be Deceived, Bamboozled or Snookered - Session 2A

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It's time for another edition of Fighting for the

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Faith, Wednesday, April 10, 2013. We will be doing a light edition today, taking a break from our worst

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Easter Sermon of the year contest, even

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I have my limits, I need a break from it. And finding that last wild card sermon, whoo, it's been tough.

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Y 'all have been sending in some crazy sermons. Thank you for tuning in.

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You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. Sadly, there is no shortage of crazy things being said out there. We do the comparative work and teach you how to listen with discernment, with an open

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Bible, and to test, to see if what people are saying are the things that they're saying square with Scripture, square with sound biblical doctrine, if that's really what the

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Bible really says. Because there's a lot of folk out there making a ton of money, ton of money, basically selling you, well, schlocky goods, schlocky theology, stuff that you want to hear.

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It's not true. It'll scratch your itching ears, but it actually won't bring you to repentance and faith and trust in the real

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Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. So deadly stuff here. It'll leave you, well, your wallet lighter and your eternal soul at stake, and we try to save you the, well, the shame and the consternation of that type of negative outcome by equipping you so that you don't have to fall victim to such things.

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Now, last week we played lecture number one, that would be lecture number one from my series of lectures that I did in Norfolk, Virginia, as well as Oslo, Minnesota, entitled,

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How to Not Be Deceived, Bamboozled, or Snookered by Religious Hucksters, Snake Oil, Conmen, or Your Own Idolatrous Notions.

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We will be picking up lesson number two today, which is actually going to be from the

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Oslo Minnesota presentation. So last week we did the

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Norfolk one. This session two is from my lecture in Oslo. And so without any further ado, by the way, just want to let you know the

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PowerPoint slides and the handout will be available in both the podcast and at fightingforthefaith .com.

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So if you want to follow along on the PowerPoint slides and want the handout, just visit fightingforthefaith .com

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or check your iTunes podcast and look for the PowerPoint slides and as well as the handout that goes with this lecture.

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I think that will be very helpful to you. So without any further ado, here is session two of my lectures on How to Not Be Deceived, Bamboozled, or Snookered by Religious Hucksters, Snake Oil, Conmen, or Your Own Idolatrous Notions.

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Here we go. Okay, the next, what we're going to be doing in this next part of today's lecture is that we're going to be reviewing kind of a lay -level overview of the basic principles for rightly dividing

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God's word. Now we could go a lot deeper into this, but I think this is a good lay -level look at just good sound hermeneutical concepts that if you apply them, you will go a long way towards rightly understanding

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God's word as well as protecting yourself and your loved ones from people who are teaching falsely.

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It's a little bit technical. I promise, though, I'll give examples along the way so that it'll help. Sound biblical interpretation, we're talking about rightly handling

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God's word. Think of it as falling into three big block categories. And as simple as this sounds, we're looking at grammar, history, and theology.

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Okay, those are your big three categories. And when I'm talking about grammar, I'm actually talking about nouns and verbs and adverbs and subordinate clauses and stuff like that.

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If you really want to understand God's word, you pay attention to the grammar.

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So principle number one really deals with the grammatical. Since the books of the Bible were written by men in ordinary human languages, no interpretation of scripture is to be accepted which does not agree with the established rules of grammar.

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You're thinking, this sounds like my fifth grade English class. Can't help that, sorry.

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That's right. This is why it's imperative to work from an accurate translation of the Bible and or learn the biblical languages.

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Now, I know that sounds like a daunting task. And as soon as I say, learn the biblical languages, people go, oddly enough, we have quite a few listeners who've taken up the challenge and as lay people, they have learned how to read biblical

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Greek. It's not as hard as you think and it's actually quite fascinating and there's some really good things that you pick up when you're working with a good, when you're working with the original languages as opposed to just an

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English translation. But if you're going to be working with a translation or an English translation, there are certain ones you want to avoid like the plague.

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You're not going to get good theology from a paraphrase. For instance, have you ever heard of the message?

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It's good for birdcage lining, okay, it's very expensive birdcage lining but that's about all

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I would use it for. If you're getting your theology from the message or your pastor is preaching from the message paraphrase, take them out behind the church and rough them up a little bit, okay, in the name of Jesus.

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Okay, maybe not that but, you know, he shouldn't be doing that. You don't want to do that and I definitely recommend that you do not under any circumstance get your theology from a paraphrase, the living paraphrase included.

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What I would consider two of the best English translations, one's not very easy to read and the other one is easier.

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The more difficult one is the NASB. This has been around for a while and it does a very good job of really capturing some of the idioms and phrases of the original languages.

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As a result of it, as an English translation, it's a bit stiff and hard. It's a little bit wooden, not the easiest reading but the one

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I teach from is the ESV or the English Standard Version and I find that to be far superior than the 1984 edition of the

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NIV, although I taught from the NIV for a long time. The problem with the NIV is that there's a lot of interpretive work that they put into their translation that isn't really fit with the original languages and the more

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I worked with the original languages, I would obnoxiously find myself while teaching saying, yeah, that's not what this text really says and always correcting the

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NIV. I don't do that nearly as much with the ESV. Can you say again which is the good one?

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ESV and the NASB. English Standard Version is really good and easier to read.

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The NASB is really accurate and hard to read. ESV, English Standard Version.

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The New Lutheran Study Bible, which I wish they would sell that thing under a different name than just the

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Lutheran Study Bible, but the New Lutheran Study Bible is literally the best study Bible I have ever seen in the market anywhere.

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It has nothing to do with the Lutheran label, it just has to do with just solid biblical scholarship and the notes on there are amazing and it really draws from a depth of Christian commentaries that go back millennia.

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Someone here has the Lutheran Study Bible, if you want to take a look at that, it uses the ESV and it's just a fantastic, fantastic Bible and the notes there are not going to lead you astray.

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Principle number two as we're talking about grammar is that we must assume the speaker or writer would use his words in that sense in which those who he speaks or writes are accustomed to use them.

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Therefore, an interpreter's primary or chief aim is to ascertain the meaning of words according to the meaning and actual popular usage.

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This is called the usus loquendi, if you want to impress people at your next dinner party, you say, hey, you know, that usus loquendi thing, you know, you just throw it around like that and people go, oh, yeah.

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So therefore, the meaning of a word according to the meaning it most generally carried in common popular usage is to be preferred unless there are sufficient reasons to compel the exegete to accept some other meaning.

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Now let me take this highfalutin concept to kind of bring it down. If you have any friends who are part of what's called the

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Word of Faith movement or the prosperity heresy, one of the things you'll note is that they have an affinity towards a

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Bible called the Amplified. Have you ever heard of the Amplified Bible? And here's the area that the

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Amplified Bible engages in. And that is that if you were to open up a dictionary, certain words have multiple definitions and it depends on the context in which the word is being used as to what that definition would be, right?

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Let me give you one from the Hebrew. I forget the word off the top of my head. But in the

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Bible, in Genesis chapter 3, after Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent and they ate the fruit, they were hiding in the trees from God.

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And it says God was walking in the cool of the day in the garden and they were hiding. And what happens is that the word for voice is also the word for sound in Hebrew.

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So as you're translating through that passage in Hebrew, your first inclination, because that word in Hebrew for sound or voice is oftentimes used for voice more than sound.

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And so your first inclination is to check as you're translating, and they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden.

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Now that would be a good translation, except that when you look at the context, then it doesn't make sense because there's no reason to believe that God was speaking to them or calling out to them.

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Instead, when you look at the context there, it has to be translated as sound, not voice, because the context dictates that that's how that word is to be translated in that passage, right?

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What the amplified version does, and oftentimes where people go wrong, is they might get a Strong's concordance or a

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Strong's Greek concordance, and they'll see the definition of a word. They'll see all of the definitions, and they take every one of them and pour them into the word in every single context.

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Well, that creates grammatical chaos, so that what happens is you're playing word games.

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Rather than fixing on the definition of the word that fits in the context and how it's being used, you're pouring every definition in that word every time it appears.

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What that does is it blurs what the language means, and then you're twisting God's word by doing it.

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So I'm not a fan of the amplified because that's what it's doing in certain senses, and that's how people in the

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Word of Faith heresy help create the impression that their teaching is biblical. They use the amplified and say, see, this word means this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and then they select the one that they want without any regard to the context of how it's being used.

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Does that make sense? So that's the idea behind this principle. Let me give you another principle. The exposition of a passage must agree with both the immediate context and the remote context.

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I'll give you examples of both of these. So the immediate context, and if you listen to my program, one of the things we do, we call it our three primary rules for sound biblical exegesis, and they are context, context, and context.

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Just like the three important rules of real estate are location, location, location. Same thing with the

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Bible except for it's context, context, context, and you'll find that there's a lot of monkeying around that goes with false teachers because what they'll do is that they rip verses out of context, so you've got a sentence from here and a sentence from there and a sentence from here, and then they string them all together as if they all hang together and are teaching on the same concept, but they are not, and so what happens is that they can create a theology.

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Now let me give you an example. This is a bad example, but did you know that God wants you to kill yourself?

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Yeah, well, I can take my Bible and I can go like this. Judas went and hung himself. Go thou and do likewise.

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Ta -da! Okay, I know it's a silly example, but that silly example is what people do on a macro level when they twist

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God's word, so what you're always looking for is when people are teaching you a theology, the question is, is that theology in the text itself when

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I'm looking at it in context, and there's two contexts you want to look at. You want to look at the immediate and the remote, and remote can be the entire book or letter, or it could also be taking it up into the entire

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Scripture itself because Scripture doesn't contradict itself, but we'll talk about that in a little bit.

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The immediate context is the more important and usually is decisive. Now how many of you have ever heard somebody say to you, listen,

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I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for your welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope.

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See God is for every one of you, okay? He wants you to have mansions, and He wants all of your crops to be bunker crops, and He wants you to have big bank accounts, see

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God's got big plans for you. That's how this verse is often used.

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Well there's a problem here. Does Jeremiah 29 11 teach that God wants you to have a private jet, mansion, and all that kind of stuff?

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Is that what this passage is saying? Answer, no. How do we know? Context.

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Let's take a look at the immediate context of this passage. This is from the prophet Jeremiah, and here's how this chapter begins.

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Jeremiah chapter 29 begins with these words. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priests and the prophets and all the people whom

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Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the

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Queen Mother, the eunuchs and the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem.

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The letter was sent by the hand of Elisa, the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, whom

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Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, it said.

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Now that's just preface. So the preface in chapter 29 tells us that what we're about to read is the contents of a letter that Jeremiah dictated.

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The Lord told him, Jeremiah, take down what I'm about to say, and then God spoke.

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Who was the letter addressed to? The exiles. Now is anybody here, does anyone here remember the exile?

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I know there's some older folks in here, but anybody that old? Okay. Just checking. Okay. So there's nobody here who was alive.

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So this letter technically wasn't written to any of us, right? The details matter. So thus says the

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Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses, live in them, plant gardens, eat their produce.

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Build houses, live in them, plant gardens, eat their produce, take wives, have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the

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Lord on its behalf for its welfare, and you will find your welfare. For thus says the

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Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream.

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Those false prophets were a problem back then too. Do not let them deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream.

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It is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name. I did not send them, declares the Lord. For thus says the

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Lord, when seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place, for I know the plans

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I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

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All of a sudden when we put it back in context, you understand what's going on here, right? This isn't some general promise that God wants to give you a mansion and stuff like that.

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This is a word of comfort given to the exiles who had just survived, you know, the ordeal of having the armies of Nebuchadnezzar come and destroy

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Jerusalem. They were remnant, they were left, and now they're in exile, right? The temple's been destroyed, they're practically without hope.

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Let me finish the context. Then you will call upon me, and come and pray to me, and I will hear you, you will see me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,

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I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes, gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the

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Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. Just put the verse in its immediate context, and you immediately can spot the fact that anybody who's quoting this verse to tell you that God wants to give you health, wealth, and prosperity, well, they're conmen.

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They don't know how to rightly handle God's word. So this is an important thing. Now, remote context also comes into play.

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Let me give you a passage that is often twisted by our liberal friends. You all familiar with the great social justice passage found here in Matthew chapter 25?

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Those of you familiar with liberal theologians will know that they point to this passage and talk about how the fact that in the last days, people will be judged by whether or not they engaged in social justice, they fed the poor, they clothed the naked, they visit those in prison, right?

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So you're going to go to heaven based upon whether or not you engage in social justice is what they claim. Well, the remote context helps here and gives you a key to what's understanding in this passage.

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Let me read from the tail end of this passage. Then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed.

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By the way, let me kind of set this up. This is talking about the last day when Jesus appears, he says, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

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So he will separate, you know, he's going to separate the nations, okay? Sheep on the right, goats on the left, and then he addresses the sheep and then he addresses the goats.

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That's the idea. By the way, the judgment occurs when the animals are separated. You are judged by what you are, or if you want to be grammatically incorrect, by what you is.

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You are judged by whether you is a sheep or whether you is a goat. And this is important because Christianity teaches that since we're all born dead in trespasses and sins, that when we are born from above or born again, that we are regenerated, that we are brought back to life, that we have a new nature.

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Our heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh, right? This is what scripture tells us. So Christians, although they're human, they have a different nature than non -Christians, a nature that is bestowed on them as a gift by God, okay?

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And the reason why Christians do good works is because that's what Christians do. Think of it this way, okay?

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Kind of put a couple pieces together of this puzzle here. Cows moo, dogs woof, cats meow.

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Sinners sin. The reason why you sin is not because you've committed sins, but because you are, or you is a sinner, got it?

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So you don't have a behavior problem, you have a problem in that you've inherited a corrupt nature from Adam and Eve.

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That's the problem. That's the reason why you sin. Now Christians, because they're born from above, when their sins are washed away in baptism, when they're trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, when this occurs, you are a new creation in Christ.

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You have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, and you are new, okay? And you do good works not because you have to.

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You do good works because that's what Christians do. You have a new nature.

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And oftentimes people say, well, I don't have really many good works. It's because you don't understand what a good work is. You're actually doing them, probably.

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You don't even know it, okay? Something I'm off track here. But it has to do with this. So at the judgment, you are separated by what you is.

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You are either a sheep or a goat. Once the separation's taken place, the judgment has occurred.

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Now it's just left to explain what's going on here. So that's where we're at. The king will say to those on his right, these are the sheep, come you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food,

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I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me,

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I was in prison and you came to me. And then the righteous will answer him, saying,

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Lord, when do we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you a drink and when do we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you?

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When do we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, truly I say to you, as you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

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Now, social justice liberals will leave out those words, as you did it to the least of these my brothers, the way they quote the passage ends up like this.

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Truly I say to you, as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. Ah, ah, you're leaving out an important bit of data there.

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As you did it to these the least of my brothers, what's

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Jesus referring to here? Who are his brothers? Well, thankfully, when we look into the remote context, not the immediate, we start to get the answer because Christ in the

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Gospel of Matthew uses this term several times. So let's look at how this phrase is used in the

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Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 12, 48 and 50, but he replied to the man who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers and stretching out his hand toward his disciples said, here are my mother and my brothers for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

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Or Matthew 28, 10, then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid and go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and they will see me there.

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So when you've done it to the least of these, my brothers, that's not telling us to just generic, that the sheep generically go and feed the poor or clothed the naked, visit the general, the general prisoner.

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We're talking about those whom Christ has sent to preach the Gospel. We're talking about Christian pastors whom

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Christ has sent to you to preach the good news. They're going to get themselves in trouble if they do that, by the way,

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I find that happens to me often. But the point is this, is that preaching the

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Gospel is a dicey business. Sinners don't like to have their idols crushed or destroyed and they often repay in violent ways where they make sure that preacher of the

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Gospel, that man, he ain't going to get, you know, he ain't going to get any money from us, uh -uh, we're going to punish him by cutting his salary or, or, you know, he's going to find himself being put in prison for doing something as obnoxious as preaching the

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Gospel on a street corner or something like that, right? Now we have this freedom in the United States, but this freedom is quickly going away.

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So when Jesus says, I was naked and you clothed me, I was in prison and you visited me as you did to the least of these, my brothers, he's not talking about generic, you know, change the world, liberal social justice kind of stuff.

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He's talking about caring for and feeding and visiting in prison the pastors whom

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Christ sends to you, his brothers. That's who he's really talking about, right?

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And of course the sheep would hear the voice of these pastors and teachers who are sent with the

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Gospel and care for them, right, because that's what sheep do. Then the goats are judged for not doing any of this, right?

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That's the idea. Now we talked about this a little bit, and I'll, you know, just reiterate it here.

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Principle four, every word in the Holy Scripture can only have one intended meaning in any one place, in any one relation. The intended sense is one.

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This is, here's the Latin phrase if you want to impress everybody, the sensus literalis unis est. Okay, this goes back to this idea, don't play with the, okay, what a word means in a particular context, that singular meaning.

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One passage of Scripture cannot have 15 different interpretations. That are all correct. We're looking for that right understanding of what that passage says.

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Let me give you another example. Those of you who are parents, not that you've ever done this, but imagine it's a

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Saturday morning and you have to run some errands. And you've got an eight year old, a 10 year old, and a 13 year old at home.

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And you're going to do the crazy thing. You're going to run the errands without them. And you're going to leave them a note, giving them instructions as to what you intend, expect them to accomplish while you're out doing these errands.

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Okay, I know this is a hilarious scenario. Not that any of you have ever done this. Now, the note could be something to the effect, my dearest lovely children, while I'm gone,

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I expect you all to clean your rooms, finish your homework, no television, no video games.

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I'll be home at X amount of time or thereabouts. Love you, mom or dad.

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You leave the note. Your beautiful shiny children wake up. They see the note. And of course, the first thing they do is get right to work.

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We all know this is how things go, right? Now, let's pretend that things didn't exactly go the way you had intended.

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And that when you arrive back home, your 13 year old, who as a junior high student has already begun to learn how to engage in postmodern word games, says something to the effect of, mom,

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I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by the words, do or finish my homework.

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What do you mean by finish? That's kind of a vague and ambiguous word. Finish can mean a lot of things.

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I mean, does that mean like almost only done or should I do my math and finish that? What about my

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English? I mean, this is all kind of complicated. And this idea that you didn't want us to watch television, well, technically we weren't watching television.

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We were only, you know, and they start engaging in these kind of word games, right? Okay, now, 13 year olds are known for these clever little postmodern word games.

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But what they're basically doing is trying to find an excuse for why they didn't obey the clear teachings right there in that note by attacking the words in the note itself to make it sound like you weren't being clear.

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And of course, the older you get, the more susceptible you are to this little ploy saying maybe I wasn't clear. I don't know.

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You know? I don't know. Trust me, you were, okay? People play these kinds of word games with the

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Bible. They do. Where things are clear, they make them unclear.

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And the way they do that is by playing with the language. And this should not shock any of us because the very, very first deceiver that we run across in scripture is none other than the serpent.

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And what was his question to Eve? Did God really say?

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Satan is a liar and a deceiver. Okay? So the idea is this, is that as we approach

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God's word, as we read God's word, you're not playing word games with it. And what you're trying to find is the one actual meaning that God the

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Holy Spirit intended for you to understand because God the Holy Spirit is not a non -lucid old elderly type of person who can't remember things.

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We're talking about a mind that you and I cannot comprehend. And he knows how to communicate and he communicates in words that he knows can be understood even by us today.

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So we're not looking for 15 valid possible different ways of understanding this text.

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We're looking for the one sense in which God the Holy Spirit intended for us to understand it. And then the literal meaning, principle five, the literal meaning of a word should in all cases be accepted as one intended sense unless sufficient reasons prompt the interpreter to accept figurative use of a word or figurative language.

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The reason for departing from the literal meaning of words is usually provided in the immediate context. In this connection, the literary genre of a

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Bible book should be taken into consideration. This at the onset of the study will help the exegete decide whether to interpret a passage literally, figuratively, or symbolically.

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Now oftentimes one of the things I get criticized for is somebody will say, you're one of those guys who takes the Bible literally.

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And if somebody's going to be really ornery like that, then I usually come back with an ornery reply just because I'm ornery.

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And it's like, no, of course I don't take the Bible literally, except in those parts that it's supposed to be taken literally.

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For instance, here we have in Luke chapter 13, Jesus says as he's approaching

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Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often

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I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing. Yeah, I don't take that passage literally.

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I do not believe that Jesus was a big chicken man. That usually stops the conversation.

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Just want to let you all know that. Just want to let you know that. I can have a tendency to shut the conversation down, but I don't think there was much of a conversation possibility when it starts off like that.

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Anyway, the idea here is this, is that in the Bible we have different genres of literature.

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And I think it's an accurate way to describe the Bible as a library. It is a compilation of many different documents written over several thousand years by different authors, but it has one common author and that's

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God, the Holy Spirit. And so in there we have historical narrative. We also have prophetic writings, which oftentimes the prophecies are shrouded in figurative language.

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We have apocalyptic literature, which is very difficult to interpret. We have these radical wild word pictures with high symbology in them that are not very easy to tease out.

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Then you've got poetry and other types of genre. So the type of genre of the book that you're reading does come into play.

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So where language is figurative, you are to understand it as figurative and not interpret it literally.

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Where the Bible is giving you literal historical narrative, you are not to interpret it as mythological fairy tale.

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And you're saying, well, are you saying then, Chris, that Jonah really was swallowed by a big fish?

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Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Are you saying that the Red Sea really parted and the children of Israel crossed on dry ground?

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Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. You mean that wasn't just some fairy tale and figurative metaphor for how to live your life?

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No, it wasn't. How do you know? Two reasons. Jesus said

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Jonah and the big fish was a real history. Jesus believed that Moses and the children of Israel crossed through the

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Red Sea on dry ground. And I'm not going to contradict him because I think he knows a lot better than I do because he rose from the grave on the third day after he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

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Until I'm able to do that, I don't think my credentials even come close to Jesus's, so I'm not going to contradict him.

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And those passages are all histories. They're not mythologies. Let me give you another thing here.

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And I want to show this and kind of demonstrate this by way of how understanding the biblical languages does add a little bit of a richer meaning to what's going on in a biblical text.

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And what I want to do here is I want to take you through a passage from the

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Gospel of Mark, and I'll show you what I work with. When I'm translating,

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I use a program called Note Shelf, and I copy verses from my

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Greek New Testament into Note Shelf, and then I translate them here. So I want to walk you through a passage not using

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ESV or NIV or anything like that. And the reason why is this. In my own translations,

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I don't try to make them readable. I teach from these notes. And so when

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I'm teaching from notes like this, what I'm trying to do is keep in mind the picture of what's going on.

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Now, real quick, we have some ESVs here. Does anyone have a copy of the NIV here? You have an

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NIV. Okay. What I want... ESVs, NIVs out. Anyone else have like an

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NLT or a different translation? NASB. Okay. At certain points,

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I'm going to ask you to tell me what the phrases are in the English. Because here's the idea.

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And what this is a commercial for, if you think of it that way, I'm trying to sell you a concept.

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Here's the concept I want to sell you. You want your pastor to know how to work well in the original languages.

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This is a protection for you and also a way in which you can be enriched. Okay? Because every translation in English, no matter how good, there's always pieces of it that are lost in translation.

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And so what I tell people is that if you have the ability to read the Bible in the original languages, it's the difference...

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There's a big difference. Think of it this way. Go back to 1956 to that black and white tube television, remember?

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With the rabbit ears, okay? I remember... I lived at the tail end.

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We had color televisions that had rabbit ears when I was a kid. And what I remember is that we had several different channels that didn't quite come in.

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And you had to kind of do this with the rabbit ears, right? And we had a couple of channels where you wouldn't even have to touch the television.

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You'd just go like this and it would come in clear. You know what I'm saying? But imagine it's 1956, you got a black and white tube television with the rabbit ears and it's on a channel that kind of comes in sometimes and sometimes don't.

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You can still see what's going on and you're watching I Love Lucy, right? Great program. Even though it's in black and white and it's on a tube television, you still know the dialogue, you still know the major plot, you know what's going on, you laugh at all the jokes.

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It's something that you understand. Well, reading the... That's what it's like reading an

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English translation, even the best one. That's just the reality of the situation.

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Reading in the original languages is actually more akin to, but actually stronger than this, having a brand new 56 -inch plasma

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HD television with a clear digital signal, with a high refresh rate and, you know, you're watching the

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Vikings, you know, football game on that thing and you're loving it, right? Sometimes the biblical texts are so much clearer that it's almost like actually being at the stadium.

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It's that clear, okay? And so what this is... I want to demonstrate here why the language, the grammar is important and how even in our best

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English translations, there's still stuff that gets lost. And the commercial here is, encourage your pastor to get his head out of just the

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English and get it into the original languages. It makes a difference, okay?

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And so we're going to be reading the story of what I call the two daughters because it's just a fantastic story, plus it's a great story about Jesus.

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We'll start at verse 21. And passing through the sea, that would be the Sea of Galilee, in the boat, to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him and he was by the sea, that he there is

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Jesus. So Jesus had just traveled across the Sea of Galilee. He came back from casting out the demon from the demoniac who lived in the tombs.

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He comes back, you know, to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And as soon as he gets off the boat, there's a crowd that's gathered all around him.

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And out of nowhere, it comes the ruler of the synagogue, whose name was Jairus, and he comes and seeing him, falls at his feet.

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Now, because I've translated this passage all the way through, I have a little bit of data from later in the story that I want to plug in here because it'll help set up the story.

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And that is this, is that Jairus is in a foot race with death.

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Sorry, this story tears me up, okay? Those of you who have kids know exactly what

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I'm talking about. You watch them like hawks and you fear constantly that they're going to get in an accident or something terrible is going to happen to them, okay?

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We learn from later in the text that his daughter is 12 years old. She is suffering from some kind of terrible sickness that is about to take her life.

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And we know from later in the story that her family is fully aware of it, and they know something about Jesus, that Jesus is capable of helping them.

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That's what they know, okay? And so, he literally, seconds before this, sets out in a foot race.

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He's got minutes, minutes before his daughter dies. So if you think to every good story, every good story where there's real tension in the plot.

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The evil witch has put an hourglass down and the sand is ticking, right?

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As soon as the sand runs out, it's over, okay? This is what's going on.

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He's a synagogue ruler, and he literally falls at the feet of Jesus, which is,

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I'm sure, quite a sight to see. And it says, and he urged him greatly, saying, my little daughter, term of endearment here, she's dying.

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Come that you might lay your hands on her in order to save her so that she might live. And so,

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Jesus departs with him. And what's interesting here, and I can kind of point this out. I just erased it, hang on.

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He departs. One of the things I love about Mark's gospel, and you can catch this. And he constantly uses what's called the historical present.

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Have you ever told a story like when you've been ice fishing, and you come home, and you're talking about your exploits.

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And you're talking about it as if it's happening right now. And then he says, and then he says, and then she did.

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And it's not past tense, it's all present tense, right? Mark does this a lot. So he departs with him, and a great crowd followed him, and they crowded him, okay?

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So this is a sight to see. There's a crowd around Jesus. There's the synagogue ruler at the foot of Jesus.

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Wow, it's a miracle. So the crowd is gonna follow. They wanna see the miracle happen, right? And then out of nowhere, and a woman having a flow of blood for 12 years, and suffered greatly by many doctors, had spent all that she had to no avail, but rather have gotten worse.

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So now we introduce into this narrative this woman. For 12 years, she's had a flow of blood.

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For 12 years, according to the Levitical law, she has been unclean.

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For 12 years, she has been separated. Separated ceremonially from the religion of her own people.

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You go 12 years like this with something like this, who do you think is against you?

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God. And everything she had, every penny she could scrounge, she would scrape up and save and go to the doctors in order to be healed, and she only got worse.

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That's the setup here. Okay, this is a woman who is desperate, and the desperation comes out greatly here as we continue.

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She had heard of Jesus, and coming up behind him in the crowd, she touched his garment.

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Now I'm gonna point something out here. In a cross reference in Matthew chapter 9, we get the same story.

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What we know here is that Jesus, as a good Jew, he's observing the

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Mosaic law perfectly. He wore what was called a shimla, and on the corners of it were tassels.

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And so these are called tzitzit, is what they're called in Hebrew. And so we know here that the kraspiduo that she's touching here is the tassel that's on his shimla, which he wears over his shoulder, okay?

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So Jesus, as a good Jewish man, he's got the shimla on. And right around here, there's some tassels hanging off of it off the corner.

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So this is what she does. She comes up, she literally wades into the crowd, comes right up behind him, and touches the tassel.

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That's all she does. For she had said, if only I might touch his garment,

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I will be saved. Now I wanna stop there for a second.

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Verse 28, what's the ESV say? If I touch his garment, I will what? I will be made well.

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What's the NIB say? Healed. Healed, okay? The phrase itself, it's, let me highlight it, it's right here.

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Passive verb, tzotzthesamai, I will be saved.

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All of a sudden, it starts to take on a slightly different feel to it, right? And these are the kinds of details you just can't get in the

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English. We continue, immediately the woman's flow of blood dried up, and she knew she was saved from the scourge, okay?

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Freed from what? Freed from suffering. Now this is an interesting phrase here, freed from the scourge.

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The Greek here actually says, if you take it literally, it's saved from the whip.

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So this starts to get at what she's really experiencing as a result of this 12 years.

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The idiom in the Greek there is saved from the whip, or saved from the scourge. What she is personally experiencing as a result of being unclean because of this flow of blood is that she is experiencing a scourge.

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Maybe a scourging of her own soul, her own reputation. That's what's really kind of mixed up in all of this. It's not that she's just saved from her flow of blood.

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There's more going on here, okay? And this is the kind of detail you just can't get in the English because it doesn't make for good

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English reading. But when you read it in the original languages, it pushes you to see deeper as to what's going on here.

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Now, we get to this. Immediately, Jesus knew in himself, power had gone out from him.

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And turning around in the crowd, he said, who touched my garment? Now, cuz she's unclean, she just snuck a healing, right?

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Jesus is turning around, and what is gonna happen to this woman? First thing she's gonna assume is, no, right?

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So Jesus literally stops, turns around, who touched me?

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She's got nowhere to go. Cuz it didn't say like 15 seconds afterwards,

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Jesus went, wait a second. It's boom, who touched me? She's caught red -handed.

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Who touched my garment? Disciples said to him, you see the crowd crowding you and you say, who touched me?

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And he looked around to see who had done it. Now, keep in mind, remember our hourglass.

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Now, remember Jairus? Sand is ticking, it's ticking.

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So the woman, let's come back to her, fearing and trembling, knew what had happened to her.

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And she came and fell before him and told him the whole truth. She comes apart.

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And the fearing and trembling, I mean, this is exactly what the picture is. I mean, she's just like this, okay?

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So here's this woman, complete emotional wreck, shaking. She's so scared, right?

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Shaking, and what is she doing? She's confessing everything. She's telling him the whole truth, right?

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What is she fearing? Because remember, this whole thing, she wants to be saved from the scourge. She knew she had just been saved from the scourge.

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And now, here's the scourge, right? But he said to her, daughter, your faith has saved you.

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Now, this is one of those times when you've got to look at this. I know your

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English translation says healed you. And yes, her faith, quote, healed her.

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But the verb here in the Greek is saved. Now you have this connection point.

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When you take a look at the depth of this passage, a connection point, not just from salvation from physical ailment, but salvation that leads to eternal life itself.

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The two are a package deal when Jesus heals. Does that make sense? And you miss it if you don't know how to work in the texts.

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Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healthy from your scourge.

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That's the literal translation. Go in peace, be healthy from your scourge. Now pause for a second.

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This tells you of the kindness of our Lord. Jesus wasn't joking when he said that he has not come to condemn the world, that the world might be saved through him.

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This is our Lord and Savior at his finest. Comforting, terrified sinners.

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Sinners like you and like me, because when we think of our own lives and the sin that has wracked us and the problems we've had with our own failing health and the scourges that we felt in our own life, we need words of comfort.

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And they're right here for us. Jesus knows, he cares, and he loves you.

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And he says to you, son, daughter, your faith has saved you. This is the kind of stuff that preaches.

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And unfortunately, not a lot of people know how to preach this stuff, because they don't even know how to find it. We continue.

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And now the story takes a dark turn. The hourglass, the sand has literally run out.

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While he was still speaking, those from the synagogue ruler, these would be from his house, came saying that your daughter has died.

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Stop for a second, think about that. Those of you who've lived long enough have received that phone call in the night.

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Mom is dead, grandpa's passed, I don't care how old you are, you get a phone call like that, your blood turns to ice.

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That's exactly what it feels like. It's like somebody punches you in the face. I remember when

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I got the phone call from my mother saying that my brother had a brain tumor,

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I did not know how to process the sentence. But I would not know how to process the sentence, your daughter is dead.

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They had thought, all hope had run out. They knew that Jesus could heal, but they didn't know that he could raise the dead, that's quite a stretch.

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Why still trouble the teacher? Great phrase, Jesus refused to listen to the word that they were speaking.

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Jesus wouldn't hear anything of it. And this is where even my translation comes flat, and I'll explain it.

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And he said to the synagogue ruler, do not fear, only believe. And this is the present, this is present tense.

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It's really stronger than this. It says, do not fear, keep believing.

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Do not fear, keep believing. He would not permit anyone to accompany him except for Peter, James, and John.

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At this point, Jesus dismisses the crowd. There's not gonna be a circus involved. But the necessary number of witnesses from the

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Old Testament requirements. The truth of a story has to be established by the truth or testimony of two or three witnesses.

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Jesus brings three for good measure. So we got Peter, James, and John, and the brother of James.

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And they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, and he observes the tumult, and the weeping, and the great wailing.

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Yeah, 12 -year -old daughter, girl has just died. I had professional mourners back in those days, which

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I think is an awkward practice. Entering, he says, why are you in tumult and weeping?

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The child is not dead, but is sleeping. Again, English translations can't get this. There's something going on in the

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Greek here. Jesus is not lying, but he's speaking in a way that really only somebody who is

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God can speak. That's the only way I can describe it. You know, we're going from an oblative to a durative sense in these verbs.

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And it's just a weird sentence when you really push hard into what these verbs are doing.

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So they laughed at him. So he threw them all out. I love that. Ekballo, it's a great word, okay?

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Right there, throws him out. Get out of here. And he takes the father of the child and the mother with him, and he enters where the child was.

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And he grasped the hand of the child and says, Talitha koum, which is translated a little girl.

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And the idea, the picture here in the Greek is that it literally comes up to her bed, takes her hand, and it's as if he's lifting her while he's saying it.

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Talitha koume, and he's like pulling her up, and it's like as she's being lifted up by him, she comes to life.

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Okay, immediately the little girl got up and walked, and she was only 12 years old, and they were amazed, and immediately with great amazement.

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And he commanded them strongly that no one know this, and said, give her something to eat. That little detail actually lends credibility to the whole story itself.

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Think about the kindness of Jesus here. We've got a girl who for, we don't know how long, has been suffering from an illness that takes her life, which probably means she had spent the better portion of the last week throwing up or vomiting, not being able to keep anything down, liquids, anything, right?

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And as her life is ebbing away, I mean, the last thing she can do is eat. Illnesses are horrible things, completely wrack our bodies.

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And Jesus heals her, give her something to eat, give her something to eat.

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This is an amazing story. This is the God whom we believe in.

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This is the God who's come to save sinners like you and like me. This is the

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God who died on the cross for our sins. This is the God who walked among us, who's saving us, and who's coming again.

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We've got such good news to tell people. I feel like so many people in church, they know so little about Jesus.

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And what we're getting in church is like plastic bananas. But this is steak, this is meat.

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This is something I can sink my teeth into. And this gives me a reason to want to be like Jesus.

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This gives me a reason to want to believe in him. This story is so much better than any story a pastor can tell me about what he was doing last week at the

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Piggly Wiggly. You get what

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I'm saying? But this is the type of work that a pastor ought to be able to do.

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He needs to be fluent in the biblical languages so that when he stands in the pulpit on a

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Sunday, he can point you to Jesus and show you the drama of his own life and the things that he's done for you.

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And do it from the Old Testament, from the New Testament, it doesn't matter which text. But that's the type of precision that we need.

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And we have more pastors who do this, we'll have more people who are not deceived or bamboozled, but who will be brought to repentant faith and trust in their kind and merciful

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Savior because that's what he is. I can't think of any more of a man who is more kind than this.

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This is the kind of kindness that cuts to my heart and shows me how unkind I am, how cruel

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I am, how sinful I am. And it's not because he's sitting over me with a stick saying, be better, be better, be better, be better.

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It's because he died and he gives gifts so freely. We've lost

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Jesus in the church. He's missing from so many sermons.

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And I don't know how you can possibly call a sermon, a Christian sermon or a biblical sermon that doesn't tell me about this amazing and wonderful man.

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Give me him. I don't care about my pastor. I care about this guy. My pastor is there to point me to him.

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This is the end of session two, but not really. I'm not totally through the material yet, but this is where we're going to break for this week's edition of Fighting for the

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Faith. We'll continue with part two point B next week on Fighting for the

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Faith. So what'd you think? I'd love to get your feedback. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the

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Faith, you could do so. My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com or you can subscribe on Facebook.

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It's facebook .com forward slash pirate Christian or you can follow me on Twitter. My name there at pirate Christian till tomorrow.

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May God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.