Interpreting Scripture

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If you would open your Bibles with me tonight, we're going to go to the 2nd letter of the Apostle Peter and we're going to look at chapter 1, verses 19-21.
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So 2nd Peter, chapter 1, looking at verses 19-21.
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I know that many of you have been a part of this series and you've been a part of this study, and some of you haven't of course, but I want to, for everyone, sort of just remind you where we are and why we're dealing with the subject we're dealing with tonight.
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We have been, for several months, in a study of apologetics.
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We're actually in what I've called Apologetics 201, because we did Apologetics 101, or the basics of apologetics, last year.
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Apologetics means what? Who remembers? To make a defense, right? Often times people hear the word apology and they think we're saying that we're sorry, because that's the modern use of the term, but the word apologetics doesn't mean to say that we're sorry.
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The word apologetics means we're making a case for something.
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We're making a defense for something.
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So apologetics is making a defense of the faith.
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Never in history has there been more information available to the average individual.
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As I have noted several times, people don't remember things anymore because they can Google everything.
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We don't have to remember math formulas.
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We don't have to remember historical dates or anything like that.
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Where used to, you had to sort of put that in your mind and keep it in your mind if you wanted to know it.
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Nowadays, people just say, well, I don't know, but I can Google it, and they pull out their phone and Google it.
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Well, that has led to a new age in apologetics, because now, more than ever, people have access to all kinds of bad arguments about the Bible, and all kinds of bad arguments about the existence of God, and, might I add, that there's bad arguments on both sides.
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There's bad arguments on the atheist side.
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I would say all of those are bad arguments.
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But there are also bad arguments on the side of believers.
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There is bad apologetics.
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There are people who make arguments that are incoherent.
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There are people who make arguments that are really just not true.
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They argue for the minors and forget about the majors.
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So, apologetics is something that we should study.
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And, to be quite honest with you, I don't think that you can really do evangelism anymore without at least having some knowledge of what people are going to come at you with and what people are going to respond with.
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Because, even though we can share the gospel with someone, and we do, it's almost always going to be rebuffed by the unbeliever with some kind of challenge.
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And we've talked about all the challenges that we get nowadays.
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Well, the Bible was written and changed and edited, and over 2,000 years we have no idea what the Apostle Paul wrote, and we have no idea what Jesus said, and what have we done in the last several months.
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We've showed how those arguments are really ridiculous.
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And the idea of the telephone game, well, this one told this one, and this one told this one, and we have no idea anymore.
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That's really not the way the Bible has been transmitted to us.
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That's not the truth, but that's one of the arguments that we have to deal with.
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And, sometimes people don't want to hear that they're wrong, but if we have the truth on our side, we can stand on it.
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And so, what we've done over the last several weeks, as a microcosm of the larger macrocosmic study of apologetics, in sort of a microcosmic way, we've been looking at the subject of how we got the Bible.
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Because, what did we say? In almost every case of dealing with apologetic questions, one thing is always going to come up, well, I don't know if I believe what the Bible says, or I don't know if that's actually what Paul wrote, or if I don't know that's actually what Jesus said, or what did Jesus really mean when he said this? So, understanding where and how we got the Bible, being able to defend the truth of the Bible, is a very, very important part of apologetics.
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We have gone through seven different studies in this series.
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The first was on revelation.
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What is the Bible? It's revelation from God.
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The second was on inspiration.
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How did God give the Bible to us? He gave it by inspiring it to be written, so that it would be able to be passed down from generation to generation without change.
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Canonization.
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How do we know what books are the Bible and what books are not? We did an entire lesson on that.
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Because not everything that's ever been written belongs in the Bible, we would agree.
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And not everything the Apostle Paul wrote is part of the Bible.
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We talked about this Sunday.
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There are letters that Paul wrote that didn't make it into the Bible.
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We don't even know where they are.
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We don't know what they said, because they no longer exist.
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They are not part of sacred writ.
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Transmission.
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How did the Bible get from Paul to me? How did it get from Moses to me? That was the question we asked, and we did several weeks on that.
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Textual criticism.
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What do we do with all these thousands of manuscripts, some of which disagree? What do we do with the disagreements? And we talked about that.
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The last week that we were here, two weeks ago, we talked about translation.
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Because I don't know if any of you read Greek and Hebrew.
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But if you don't read Greek and Hebrew, then you have to rely on a translation.
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If you don't read Greek and Hebrew, you have to trust that what you're reading has been translated accurately.
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Well, tonight we're going to move to the last of this study.
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And it is the subject of interpretation.
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The subject of interpretation.
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And we could add in a small application.
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So it is the subject of interpretation and, in a small sense, application.
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Because once we interpret something properly, we then have to understand how to properly apply what we have interpreted to us.
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Because I'm going to say this, and this is going to come off.
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I hope this doesn't get misunderstood.
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There are some parts of the Bible that don't apply right now.
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Oh, watch yourself, Keith.
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You're being dangerous.
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No.
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Is anybody here wearing clothes of mixed fibers? 50% polyester, 50% cotton.
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Well, in the Old Testament, that particular law was forbidden to wear mixed fibers.
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Did anybody eat a cheeseburger in the last 10 days? Well, you couldn't mix dairy and beef under the Old Testament dietary law.
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So what changed? Well, the New Covenant came.
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And when the New Covenant came, the dietary restrictions of the Old Testament, according to the book of Acts and according to Jesus himself, were abrogated.
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Those particular laws were dealing with Israel at a particular time and a particular place in history.
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How many of you have beards that aren't trimmed a certain way? Well, maybe nobody else but me.
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Well, Lee has a very nice beard.
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Okay, and Don's here.
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But there were rules on these things because Israel was a peculiar people.
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Peculiar not in the sense of being weird, even though maybe they were a little weird, but peculiar in the sense that they were set apart.
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And there were particular things that were intended for Israel, that were intended for that theocracy, that were not intended for all times.
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And so, yes, I can say there are certain aspects of biblical teaching that don't apply to the New Covenant church.
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Some people get offended by that.
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I hope you don't get offended by it because if you believe that all of that applies to you and you're not doing it, then you're living in sin.
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So that's a problem, right? You either believe it doesn't apply or you're outright rebelling against something you believe to be right.
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So there's got to be a right way to understand it, right? And thus we come to the subject of interpretation.
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How many of you have ever seen the show, The West Wing? West Wing was a popular TV show about a fictionalized president.
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And I never watched the show, but I've seen clips from it.
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And what I have learned in seeing the clips from it, it was essentially about a president who was sort of a figure almost like John F.
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Kennedy.
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Very much a powerful presence and a charismatic figure.
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At one point, there's a lady who is challenging the president on the subject of homosexual marriage.
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And she says to the president, she says, well, the Bible says that is an abomination.
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And he says, you're right, Leviticus says in chapter 18 that it is an abomination.
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But in that same chapter, it also says, and he names off a litany of other things.
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The wearing of mixed fibers, the trimming of the beard, the holding of pig skin.
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He said, are you forbidding your children from playing football? You know, the touching of the skin of the pig.
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And so what the show essentially did was made the liberal president very much the hero.
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And the person who was opposed to homosexual marriage, the villain.
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Because they were using the Bible in a way that the liberal president attempted to prove was picking and choosing.
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Was being unfair in holding to one section from Leviticus and not holding to others.
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So how do we respond? How do we deal with that? It does come down to an issue of interpretation.
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And it does come down to an issue of how do we understand the Bible's application in the context of the new covenant.
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We live in the new covenant.
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We are part of the covenant that Christ made.
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And how do we live in this new covenant? And how does the old covenant apply in the new covenant church? And does it? These are all important questions, right? But again, that's not really the subject for tonight.
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The subject for tonight is interpretation.
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I wouldn't mind taking that little rabbit trail and going down it.
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But that's not my point.
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My point is to say this.
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Those are questions we have to answer.
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Even if someone agrees with you that the Bible is from God.
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Even if someone agrees with you that the Bible is inspired, inerrant, infallible writ.
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You still have to interpret that written word.
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And you'll notice the quote that I put at the top of your page.
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The title of the lesson is Understanding What We Read.
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But the quote by John MacArthur I think is hugely important.
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John MacArthur said this.
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The meaning of Scripture is Scripture.
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Because I've heard many people make many false assertions.
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And what do they always follow up their false assertions with? It's in the Bible.
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Tell me you haven't heard that.
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Tell me you haven't heard somebody give an absolutely asinine perspective on life and truth.
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And then them say, but it's in the Bible.
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No, it's not.
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It's in your mind.
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You're encroaching it.
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You're imposing it on the Scripture.
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But it's not in the Bible.
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You can rip a verse out of its context.
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You can force a meaning into the words that was never intended by the original author.
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And you can make it say what you want it to say.
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As Martin Luther said, people can take the Bible and treat it like a wax nose.
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That they can mold and shape any way they want.
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But that doesn't mean it's in the Bible.
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And that's what John MacArthur meant when he said the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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Because if somebody says, well, this is in the Bible, but it's not what it means, then that's not in the Bible.
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That's not the Scripture.
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It's like somebody trying to prove God has feathers because it says he undergirds us with his wings.
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Or girds us up on his wings.
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Well, then God has feathers.
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And you say, nobody would be so foolish as to say something like that, Pastor Keith.
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Yes? God actually has feathers? No, son, no.
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What I'm saying is some people would say that because they are trying to make a point that the Bible doesn't make.
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I'm glad you asked, though, because I don't want to confuse you.
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I definitely don't want to send you.
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No, I'm glad he asked.
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I don't want him to be confused.
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No, God doesn't have feathers.
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That's okay.
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That's okay.
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No, God doesn't have feathers.
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But you understand how somebody could say that, right? It's just like this.
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The Bible says the trees will clap their hands.
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Trees don't have hands.
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So we have to interpret that, right? We have to make an interpretation that's in accord with the type of literature that's being used.
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And we have to be honest when people say, well, I always interpret the Bible literally.
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You say, really? In every sense, in every case, you always interpret the Bible literally.
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How do you define the word literal? Because I believe I interpret the Bible literally.
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But I would be more honest if I said I interpret the Bible literarily.
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Because literarily means I'm taking the literal sense or the sensus literalis in Latin.
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It's a sense of literal nature that the text is giving me.
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For instance, when I read the trees will clap their hands.
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I have to take that in a poetic sense because it's being written in the sense of poetry.
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I remember one time I heard a prophecy guy.
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And prophecy guys are huge about literal stuff.
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And the guy said, see here where it talks about the giant locusts that are attacking in Revelation? Well, those locusts are Apache helicopters.
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And this is a picture of Apache helicopters coming and raining down fire upon the people.
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Here's the problem with that.
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That's not literal.
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Because if it's literal, it's a big old locust.
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Right? Is that fair? Literal means literal.
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I think.
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Somebody says, I've been awake for literally 24 hours.
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No, you haven't.
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Probably not.
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People use the word literally all the time in the wrong way.
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And when it comes to the Bible, I believe the Bible is intended to be interpreted according to the genre of literature which we are given.
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And there are several genres of literature that we are given in Scripture.
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And I know that I've sort of gone away from the notes.
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I promise I'll be back to them eventually.
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But this is, I just want to, I don't mean to, I'm going to take a left turn.
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I'll come back.
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I promise.
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But just very quickly, let's go through the Bible very quickly in our minds.
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You can all do this.
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Let's go through and look at the different styles of literature that we are given in the Bible.
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We have, breaking up the Old Testament first.
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You have the first five books of the Bible are called the? Several different things.
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Pentateuch, Law, Torah, you can do all that.
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But for the sake of my hand, I'll just say Law.
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Because that's easy.
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Law of Moses.
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First five books.
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Genesis through Deuteronomy.
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Then Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles.
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That's all the first and second.
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There's a song.
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So we got through that.
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What are those called? History.
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So the next set of books is historical.
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Then you come to what? After.
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First and second Chronicles.
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Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job.
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Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, still history, right? They just happen to be after the time of the exile.
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So that's why they're put in a different place.
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But they're still historical, right? What happens in Job, though? Job, we move into what's called wisdom literature.
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Now is Job historical narrative? We would say so.
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But it falls into what we call wisdom literature.
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So we have Job.
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What's the next book? Psalms.
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Proverbs.
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Ecclesiastes.
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Song of Solomon, right? What are those? Those are what we call wisdom literature.
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Right? So we have law, history, wisdom literature.
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What comes after the wisdom literature? Prophecy, right? So we have prophecy.
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Let me ask you a question, and I want you to be honest.
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You've probably read 1 Samuel.
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You probably know the stories of how Samuel was born, how David became king, how Saul became king prior to him, and all the issues that happened between them.
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Do you realize that 1 Samuel is written much differently than the book of Isaiah? Have you ever read the two? And you realize that it is two different styles of literature.
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You were going to say something, Anne.
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I'm sorry.
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I didn't mean to...
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Yeah, wisdom literature, but we would all say poetic in nature.
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The way that they come to us is in a poetic nature.
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And again, Job can be...
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It's considered wisdom literature, but it can also be considered historic narrative.
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There is some debate about that, but the issue of where Job should sit in the canon, it sits among the wisdom literature or the poetry literature.
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So, because we have poetry and prophecy, we interpret them according to the rules of poetry and prophecy.
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Right? There are things that poems do that what we would call historic narrative do not do.
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The first five books, along with the history books, are written in what we call historic narrative.
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So, in the Old Testament, we have historic narrative, we have poetry, and we have what is called apocalyptic literature.
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Historical narrative, poetic, and apocalyptic literature.
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That's three different genres of literature.
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Thus, the rules that apply to interpretation would follow in those particular books.
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We're still interpreting it literally, but we are interpreting it according to the literal rules which go along with these forms of literature.
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Right? Makes sense? So, are there places in the law and are there places in the historical books that could be considered poetry? Don't be nervous to answer.
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Yeah, I was going to say, the song of Samuel's mother.
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Hannah's song, when she talks about the fact that she's blessed with child and that she's going to give him as an offering to the Lord.
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That's a poem, but here's where the danger comes in.
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Because when we begin to look at historical narrative and we begin to ask the question, what's poetry and what's not? That's when people start saying, well, I think the first eleven chapters of Genesis is all poetry.
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Because God didn't really create the world in seven days.
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We all know that.
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I'm not saying he didn't.
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I'm saying that's the attitude, right? We know God couldn't do it that way.
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Or, better yet, we know God didn't do it that way because we know the Earth's been here for 11 billion years.
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I mean, actually, it's 4.5 billion years according to the most recent scientific estimates, but that's the argument.
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The Earth's been here for 4.5 billion years, and if God created the world in seven days, it sure was a lot of time where it was doing nothing.
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So those seven days must account for seven really long periods.
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Or there must have been a gap of time between day one and day two.
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That's called the gap theory, right? But there was an entire people generation in life that lived between day one and day two.
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And there are people who lived there that died and became demons.
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It's really a weird theology called the gap theory.
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That there's an entire generation of people who died and they became the demons of today.
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Really weird.
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No, please hear what I'm saying.
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It's not right.
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I feel bad.
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You understand? I'm making bad arguments.
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But...
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No, it's not true.
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It's not true.
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I'm making...
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I'm...
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Using bad examples.
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Using bad examples, but I'm glad he's asking.
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I don't want to send him home with bad thinking.
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But you understand, though.
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There are times where poetry is involved.
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So how do we...
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Why do we believe Adam and Eve were real people? Do we have reason to believe Adam and Eve were real people? I heard several good answers.
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So I just want to address...
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Larissa says, because it's in the Bible.
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Is that what you said? Or what did you say? It's a short narrative.
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Well, but then we say historical narrative can't have poetry in it, right? So that's the argument that some people are saying.
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Well, it has poetry and the Adam and Eve story is poetry, right? I don't agree with that, but that's the argument they're making.
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Now, you said Jesus believed they were real people.
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I'm going to go back to that one in a minute.
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What did you say, Mike? You said something or something.
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Here's how we would argue that Adam and Eve are historical narrative.
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One, Jesus makes reference to them being actual people.
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Jesus in Matthew 19 when he talks about marriage.
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Did not God make one man and one woman? Right? And he's talking about the subject of marriage.
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So right there, he's addressing them as real people.
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God having created one man and one woman to be married.
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But here's an even...
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Not necessarily stronger than Jesus, of course.
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But here's an even more specific point.
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Is that we have genealogies that begin with Adam and Eve.
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You don't give poetic figures genealogies.
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And yet, when you get to Genesis chapter 5, this is the generations of Adam.
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And Adam gave birth to Seth.
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And Seth begot this person.
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And this person begot that person.
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And the next person that we come to who has huge significance outside of Enoch and Methuselah, we get to the person of Noah.
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And Noah is a historical figure that we can pin an event to.
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The flood.
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Now, people will say, well, the flood was poetry.
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Okay.
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But you understand, the Bible doesn't treat the flood as poetry.
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The Bible treats the flood as a historic event that it describes as it happened.
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It's not given to us as a poetic or mythological event.
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It's given to us in years.
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It's given to us in individuals.
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The genealogy leading to them is given to us.
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And the genealogy flowing from them is given to us.
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The Bible doesn't give to us in that section any reason to say that it's not historic narrative except one.
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It sure sounds fantastic.
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And because it sounds fantastic, the modern opinion is that it can't be true.
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Because it's too fantastic.
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Right? That's the attitude.
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It's not that there's a reason in the Bible to think that it's not historical narrative.
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It's the fact that we have trouble believing in the supernatural.
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Most people today are anti-supernaturalists.
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Meaning they only believe in the things that are in accord with nature.
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What they can see, smell, taste, touch, feel.
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Everything is bound to the natural.
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And we sort of do this to our kids, right? From the very early age, we tell them, you know, we don't believe in ghosts.
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And obviously, you know, we don't believe in ghosts the way movies are like that.
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But we tell them, you know, you don't believe in anything you can't see, touch, smell, taste or feel.
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You know, we sort of do this to our kids.
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And then we tell them to believe in God even though you can't see Him, taste Him, touch Him or smell Him.
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You know, and people have a hard time with that.
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Go ahead, Lee.
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I didn't mean to overwhelm you.
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Yeah, almost, right? It provides such detail that it reads as historical narrative.
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And so we take it as historical narrative.
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And that's the way we interpret the Bible.
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We interpret it as it's given to us.
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I'll give you another example.
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The story of, and you've probably heard me give this example before, but Jesus feeding the 5,000.
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That's a fantastic story.
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I believe that Jesus literally did, with five loaves and two fish, multiply the food to feed 5,000 people.
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And that out of that, there were 12 baskets filled afterwards with the leftovers.
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Because that's what the Bible tells us.
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And it comes to us in the form, what are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John written in? Hmm? Gospels.
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They're gospels, but they're historic narrative, right? They come to us, this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
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That's what Matthew begins with, right? Genealogies are very important for establishing historic consistency.
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Very important in the ancient world that you're able to tie somebody to somebody else to prove that not only did they exist, but they existed at a certain time and a certain place.
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Jesus was born when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
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That's huge, because Luke tells us that to ensure that we understand historic narrative.
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This isn't a myth.
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This isn't the false gods of ancient Egypt or Rome or Greece.
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Horus, the great false god of the ancient world, didn't have a story like this.
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So it's truth, and it comes to us as truth.
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But the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000.
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There's a man by the name of John Dominic Crossan.
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He's a biblical critic, a higher critic of the Bible, and he believes that Jesus didn't feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.
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What Jesus did was on that great day when all of these people gathered, some of them brought food and some of them did not.
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And the great miracle was the first miracle of socialism.
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God, through Christ, encouraged those who had to share with those who had not.
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And thus it was the miracle of sharing.
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Now doesn't that sound precious? And if you were an anti-supernaturalist who was looking for a reason not to believe the historical narrative of that particular story, wouldn't that just tickle you right where you itch or scratch you right where you itch? That would tickle your ears, as the scripture says, because it would satisfy.
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It's like the people that talk about the parting of the Red Sea.
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I've heard people say, it wasn't the Red Sea, it was the Sea of Reeds.
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And the Sea of Reeds is the proper interpretation of that particular text in Exodus.
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And what we realize about the Sea of Reeds is that it's only about three inches deep.
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So for the Israelites to go across three inches of water in the dry season was not that big of a miracle at all.
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And yet God drowned all those soldiers in three inches of water.
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You see how their conclusions don't stand up to scrutiny.
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But this is the question.
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How are we to read the Bible? We're to read the Bible as it's written.
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And I'll say this, and this might come across, I'm saying some things tonight a little controversial.
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I don't mean to be controversial, but it's important that you hear these things.
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We don't read the Bible any differently than we read any other book in the sense that in the Bible, a verb is a verb, a noun is a noun, an adjective is an adjective.
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A prepositional phrase is a prepositional phrase.
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There is no such thing as Holy Ghost Greek.
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That's a R.C.
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Sproul quote.
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But you've probably heard that there are people who say that the Bible has a special language that you can't understand or interpret.
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And they base this on 1 Corinthians, which says that you can't truly understand the things of God unless you possess the Spirit of God.
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So I do want to go to our notes.
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It's the first thing in our notes.
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Because the introduction to interpretation, what we do when we interpret the Bible is called hermeneutics.
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That word hermeneutics simply means the science or the spiritual practice of biblical study and interpretation.
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It involves the establishment and recognition of principles which govern the practice of exegesis.
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Exegesis is a big word.
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It's very important.
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Exegesis means to read out of the text what is in it.
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To pull out.
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Ex means out of.
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It's where we get the word exit.
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Exego, it means to take out of it what's there.
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It is the opposite of the other word, which I know Richard wants to say this.
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How do you say it, Richard? You want to say it? I know you do.
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Exegesis.
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A lot of people say isogesis, but it's actually exegesis, which means to read into something.
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The EI or the Epsilon Iota is the entrance of something.
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And that's what a lot of people do.
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They read into the text what they want it to say, rather than pulling out of the text what it actually says.
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So hermeneutics is the science and the spiritual practice of pulling from the text what it actually says, without introducing into the text our own biases and our own opinions.
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That's tough.
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It's tough trying to come to the Bible tabula rasa.
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That's Latin for a clean slate.
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It's tough to come to the Bible that way.
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We all come with traditions.
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We all come with backgrounds.
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We all come with things that we want to read into the text.
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Certainly, Jesus didn't mean he could slap me on both cheeks and me not hit him back.
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I mean, come on.
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Right.
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So we read into the text what we want it to say.
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That's exegesis, exegesis, to read, pull out of it what it actually says.
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And you'll see in your notes, it is a science.
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And when I say it's a science, this is actually taken from Dr.
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Michael Black's lesson on this.
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When we talk about it being a science, what we're saying is that there are rules that govern the proper interpretation of a passage based on the rules of grammar.
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Paul doesn't make a noun, not a noun.
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God doesn't make a verb, not a verb.
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So if you come to me and you read a text of Scripture and you interpret it and you're not using the standard rules of grammar, then it's wrong.
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Right? Yeah.
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Do this.
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Yeah.
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It's wrong.
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But it's more than a science, because here's the deal.
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A person can approach the Bible understanding the rules of grammar.
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In fact, there are Greek scholars like Bart Ehrman who approach the Bible, who know Greek better than any of us probably ever will.
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And yet they come to wrong conclusions, not based on what the text says, but based on the fact that they are still dead in their trespasses and sins.
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The Bible does say that a proper understanding does require the Holy Spirit of God.
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So while he may properly understand what the language is saying to make a proper application, I'll give you an example of one of Bart Ehrman's most probably most famous arguments.
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And I hope I get this—I don't know if I'll be exactly right, but I'll give an overview of his argument.
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His argument essentially is this, that Jesus didn't really say most of what the Bible ascribes to him, but that his apostles later put words into his mouth.
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In fact, one of his books is called Misquoting Jesus.
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And so what he does is he attempts to interpret the Bible based upon that paradigm.
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The apostles have come along later, they've tried to make Jesus someone that he wasn't really, and so to do so they have to put words into his mouth, such as, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.
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Well, that's something that the apostles would have put in Jesus' mouth if they were trying to make him the sole way to heaven.
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But according to Ehrman, that's probably not something Jesus actually said.
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So what is Ehrman doing? Is he properly interpreting? Hold on.
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Is he properly interpreting? I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.
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He is properly interpreting it because he's saying what it says is that Jesus is the only way to heaven, but he's saying, I don't believe it.
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I believe it was put into Jesus' mouth.
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So you see, his bias keeps him from being able to really understand it.
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His bias keeps him from really being able to accept it.
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It's not that he doesn't understand what the words are saying.
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He will not receive it.
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Jesus said, or the Bible says, Jesus came unto his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him.
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To them he gave the power to become children of God, right? Bart Ehrman is not a child of God.
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He's a child of wrath, according to Scripture.
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I pray for him.
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I pray that God would open his eyes.
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He's such a brilliant man, but he's so blinded by his own genius.
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And so, can he do the science? Yeah.
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But is the science enough? No.
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And that's why I say it's a science and it's a spiritual practice.
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It's a spiritual discipline.
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Without the Spirit of God, we will not rightly be able to understand and apply the Scripture.
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Right? Okay.
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So, I did have you read a passage this morning.
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Or, this morning.
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It's evening time, sorry.
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I had you read a passage earlier.
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I want to make note of that before we move further.
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Because some people make the argument that we really have no right to interpret the Bible.
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How many of you have ever heard that? We don't have the right to interpret the Bible.
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Alright, let me give you a background.
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If you've ever been yourself a Roman Catholic.
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Or if you have ever had a family member who was a Roman Catholic.
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Or if you know someone who is a Roman Catholic.
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The Roman Catholic Church, according to the Council of Trent in the fourth session, made it very clear.
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That there is not supposed to be private interpretation of Scripture.
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That the Scripture is to be interpreted by the Church.
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And that the Church has the authority to make the interpretations.
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And so private interpretation leads to error.
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According to Roman Catholic teaching.
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So, this whole question of interpretation is really not a question if you're a Roman Catholic.
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But one of the keys to Protestantism was the argument that every believer should have the Bible.
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And every believer should have the opportunity to read the Bible for themselves.
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And every believer should have that ability to understand the Bible.
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In fact, that was one of the arguments of the Reformation.
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Was that the simple plowman armed with Scripture was mightier than the greatest Pope without.
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Because he had the Word of God.
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But even the Reformers said that having the ability to interpret the Bible puts upon you a great responsibility.
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Because you have been given God's Word.
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But you have not been given the right to abuse it.
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You've been given God's Word, but you have not been given the right to distort it.
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So, we have to properly interpret.
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The Bible says, study to show yourself approved unto God.
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A workman who needeth not to be ashamed.
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Rightly handling the Word of Truth.
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Let's hope that's not Russia.
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You guys who lived through the Cold War, that's probably not funny.
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But, we're close to the airport.
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It's nothing.
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Yeah, Air National Guard.
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So, I think what I'd like to do is, there's so many principles here that I didn't really get to tonight.
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I think I'd like to carry this lesson into next week.
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Would you guys be okay if we did that? If we go through the rest of this next week? Alright, well let me say this before we finish.
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I want to look at this passage in 2 Peter very quickly.
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We read it earlier.
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One of the passages that's often used to argue that we should not be able to interpret the Bible for ourselves.
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But, we should have to have it interpreted for us.
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Is 2 Peter 1 and verse 20.
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Which says this.
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Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from one's own interpretation.
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I'm going to ask Brother Don.
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You don't have your King James with you, do you? Can you pull it up? I would like for you to read 2 Peter 1 and verse 20 from the King James.
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Because the way the King James reads is often the argument.
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It's how it reads.
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So, read to me what it says in 2 Peter.
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No pressure? That's okay.
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I didn't tell you we were going to do sword drills tonight.
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2 Peter 1 and verse 20.
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Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation.
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There's the word, private interpretation.
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Private interpretation.
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So, they'll say this.
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They'll say, see that's proof.
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It's not up for private interpretation.
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But, here's the point that you must understand.
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This passage is not talking about us interpreting the Bible.
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This passage is talking about how the writers of the scripture received the information that they wrote.
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It says, no prophecy of scripture comes from one's own private interpretation.
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It's not talking about how we interpret it.
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It's talking about how the writers themselves received it.
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Because it goes on to verse 21 and says, The subject here is not about our interpreting the Bible.
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It's about how the apostles and prophets received it.
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And the point of 2 Peter 1 and 20 and 21 is this.
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That nothing that Paul gives us is from Paul.
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Nothing that Peter gives us is from Peter.
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Nothing that any of the writers gives us is from them.
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It's from the Holy Spirit of God.
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And even at one point, Paul does say this.
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I'm saying this, not the Lord.
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Do you remember that? It's actually in 1 Corinthians.
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I'm preaching through 1 Corinthians.
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I'm looking forward to getting there.
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Because Paul is not saying that what he's saying is not of the Holy Spirit.
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But, that particular passage, he's talking about the subject of marriage.
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And Paul is giving us boundaries for marriage that Jesus didn't address.
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See, Jesus was asked about marriage.
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Matthew 19, I mentioned that earlier.
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But Paul says, I'm giving this, not the Lord.
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He's not saying this isn't coming from God.
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What he's saying is that Jesus didn't address this, but I'm addressing this.
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And he says at the end of the passage, And I believe I have the Holy Spirit.
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Which is what he's saying, is even though Jesus didn't say this, And I'm saying this, it's not as if it's not from God.
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That's why I'm not a big fan of red letter Bibles.
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People have the red letter Bibles because they say, I want to see what Jesus said.
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And that's okay, but here's the problem.
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Jesus' words come from the same Holy Spirit as Paul's words.
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And the same Holy Spirit as Isaiah's words.
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And the same Holy Spirit as Moses' words.
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And here's the other thing.
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Jesus didn't write nothing.
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Everything that we know that Jesus said was written to us by the apostles.
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Or their associates.
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and quotations, and Acts, and other books.
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The only thing we know Jesus ever wrote, Is when that woman was brought to him in adultery, And he stuck his finger in the ground, And he wrote something in the ground, And we don't know what he wrote.
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That's all we know that he ever wrote.
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The scripture is God-breathed, and it is his word.
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We have a responsibility to interpret it properly.
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We have a right to interpret it because we are God's people.
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The Bible talks about the priesthood of the believer.
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I no longer need a priest.
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I have Jesus as my high priest.
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I have the Holy Spirit living inside of me.
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That doesn't mean I always interpret the Bible right, Because I do have biases, and I do have problems with my own flesh, That come into my interpretations.
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But I have rules to follow, And I have a spirit guiding me.
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I have the Spirit guiding me.
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And so when I sit down to study the Bible, I try to be consistent with the rules, And I try to be in fellowship with the Spirit.
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So that's what we talk about tonight.
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Next week, we're going to go through some of the principles That help us from moving into error.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that tonight we've had an opportunity To look at a passage, talk about its meaning, And what it doesn't mean.
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And Lord, we thank you that we do have the awesome right And awesome responsibility to study your word for ourselves.
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Lord, I pray that in the days to come, That we would have a desire to study your word.
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And that desire would blossom into true obedience To what it says.
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I pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.