Practical Bible Interpretation (07/08/2001)

Park Meadows Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

I asked Brother Otis if he would mind doing the afternoon this way, that for a while I'd like to use my part for studying our

00:10

Bible interpretation, just till we're through with that subject, and he will pick up Ephesians where he left off every other time, and then when we're through with the

00:18

Bible interpretation, I'll probably get in and we'll study whatever we're studying there. But there are some practical things

00:24

I want to do that are not really appropriate for Sunday morning, but I think they might be not only enjoyable, but we'll learn something this afternoon if we would look at some of these things.

00:35

I'd like to take a couple of passages of Scripture, and it'd be fine with me too, as we do this, may do this for a couple, three

00:43

Sundays, afternoons, when it's my turn. If you have some portions of Scripture that have given you a problem in the past of trying to figure out what does it mean, or maybe one sentence, one verse, and you've gone back and forth between two possible thoughts on it, bring them on Sunday afternoon when it's my turn.

01:06

Some of them may require all of us together taking a week and studying it, some of it, some of it in the room may have already been there, and they can help us, or maybe

01:15

I've already been there, but if you want to bring some passages for us to use in this,

01:21

I'd be happy for you to do it. I have a few that I've picked out for today that are kind of interesting to me, have been through the years, and so let's look at, let's look at the, let's go back and review the eight points of Bible interpretation, okay?

01:40

Now really, the six in the middle are the ones that are, you find everywhere, and the first one and the last one are kind of a couple that can be added that have more to do with the whole idea, okay?

01:55

So like number one is understand the purpose of the Bible as a whole. Normally we would skip that because we already, we all agree with that, but if you're teaching a brand new

02:05

Christian, you'd be surprised just because they're saved does not mean that their mind has been renewed yet, and they may not realize that the whole

02:14

Bible is God's word, that God's the author. They may think men wrote it. You don't know what they think, so I think it's good to leave this one in when you're teaching a new convert how to interpret his

02:24

Bible and the purpose of the Bible as a whole. In other words, can you see

02:30

Jesus on every page? Do you believe that God wrote every jot and every tittle, he's the author, and so forth?

02:36

Do you believe it's still preserved and that you can trust your Bible, and so forth, those kind of issues. But now we get to number two, well, let me give you number eight, because they're not really techniques, but they are important.

02:48

Number eight, the necessity of avoiding personal prejudice. Now that comes into play a lot,

02:58

I'll give you an example. I had lunch with a friend of Pat Freeman's, and the friend had brought a friend, and the friend was a younger woman whose husband teaches at TCU, which is a very liberal theology, it's supposed to be a theology school, if you want to call it that.

03:16

But she made it known to me during the conversation, someone had told her I was a pastor, I guess Pat told her that, so she knew that when she sat down, but she made known to me that she believed that her gift that God had given her and her job was to teach the

03:30

Bible. And she let that slide, and a few minutes later she said, to men and women, and she wanted to see how that affected me when she said that.

03:40

And so my face turned red, my hands began to shake, and, well, you see, she had a personal prejudice on that issue.

03:54

She wanted to teach the Bible to men, so she then could go and make the Bible say that that was okay, and she could pick verses and try to make it say that all day long, but she was not free, she did not have a free mind and a free spirit to see what

04:10

God said about it. It was absolutely, I didn't even try to deal with her, because I could tell,

04:16

I mean, she's not open to anything that anyone would say, not even open to what the

04:22

Bible would say. So don't let that happen to you, in fact it's already happened, it's happened to everybody here, so you have to realize that, be honest about it, and say, you know,

04:32

I have certain beliefs that may have very little to do with what the

04:37

Bible says, but they have a lot to do with tradition, either from my parents or my preacher that brought me up, or growing up, or Sunday school teachers, who knows where we get all these things.

04:45

I've heard it in the past, I've heard it on the radio, I've read it in a book, and we get these prejudices of how we want the theology to fit, and then we personalize it, and if someone attacks that theology, we take it like they're attacking us, and we get, it's terrible, and you can't learn anything when you're in that state, really, at least not about that subject, you can learn other things maybe, but that particular subject that you're so sure that it fits within a neat system, you have to be very careful, or you'll lose your honesty and integrity in interpreting the scriptures.

05:19

Always, it's always good to have some black and white in your life, like I believe that, you know,

05:26

I believe in salvation by grace, it would be very hard for a Church of Christ person to change my mind, it would be impossible,

05:33

I ain't moving on that, I got that, you know, but at the same time, don't get so ingrained in your beliefs that God can't teach you something in his own word that you've never seen before, because it doesn't fit your preconceived box of theology.

05:50

One of the men that discipled me the first couple, three years of my Christianity used to put it this way, never let your theology make you be unscriptural, okay, now when he said unscriptural, however, he didn't mean

06:04

I can find a verse that seems to tell me something, he meant in the light of the whole Bible, if you find a truth that the entire

06:13

Bible supports, and you cannot get away from the fact that the entire Bible supports it, then don't let your theology be where you cannot accept that truth.

06:21

So that's number eight and number one, now, those are very important, but I'm more interested in us looking at these in the middle, because they have to do with proper technique for interpreting the

06:31

Bible, so let's move into those, yes, uh -huh, in general it is, but I think sometimes the

06:56

Holy Spirit will lead you to share a verse of Scripture that diametrically opposes their view, you don't, you do it with a soft voice and you say, you know,

07:04

I'd like you to consider this when you get home in prayer, just, you know, just take this and consider how this fits in with your system and prayerfully do that, and then change the subject and go on to something else.

07:16

I didn't even do it that nice with her, did I, Charlotte, but I did something like that, it was maybe a little more detailed, but I gave her something to think about, let's just put it that way,

07:27

I gave her some information from the Scripture that did not fit her system to go home and think about, but I did it in a meek voice and I didn't debate with her.

07:37

She wanted to though, didn't she, Charlotte, she wanted to get, boy, you could, she was just wanting to tangle there and I just didn't want to do it, so you're right, it won't do any good, because their mind is made up, but it will do good to share

07:48

Scripture if you know a passage that's easily accessible, I mean, you know where it is and you can say, oh, let me just share something with you to prayerfully consider, give that to them and then maybe go on to something else.

08:01

Okay, well, let's get into these points of Bible interpretation. Number two, after knowing the purpose of the whole

08:10

Bible, is know the distinctive character and message of each book of the

08:17

Bible. For example, Revelation, the book of Revelation has a lot more symbolism in it than most books you would read in the

08:26

Bible, so does that mean you should interpret Romans the same way you might interpret a passage out of Revelation?

08:34

Probably not, because there's not so much symbolism in Romans, it's a lot more literal truth, and so it does pay to know the difference of the different books.

08:46

Why are the books different, by the way, if the same God wrote them all? And how did

08:56

God accomplish that? Different human persons that he worked in to give us the book, and so he did not destroy their personality and their education or lack thereof, he used them as they were at the point when this was written, but he worked in them, so it's, they wrote exactly what he wanted to be written, but it was through, the interesting thing is not only the end was foreordained but the means was foreordained by God too, predestined, he knew exactly that Paul was going to write the epistle to the

09:34

Romans, and he chose Paul as an instrument for that very purpose, but he used

09:40

Paul's personality and so forth, so there are different books have different personalities, and it's good to know that.

09:48

Point number three, to whom is given, to whom is the given scripture addressed, and are there dispensational considerations?

09:58

Point number four, read the whole context which the verse is found in,

10:04

I mean that's so easy, but sometimes we don't do it. And number five, consideration of all scripture bearing on any given theme, in other words, let the

10:14

Bible interpret the Bible, that's my favorite one, let the Bible interpret the Bible. Number six, discovery of the exact meaning of the key words and text, that has more to do with grammar, understanding grammar, and definitions, and you would use books like these two for that, even as a layman without knowing the knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, you can take a

10:40

Strong's Concordance and learn how to use it as a tool, and you can get into the Greek and Hebrew with this book, and if you want to go even deeper, there are other books like this that give you the

10:49

Greek, but this will give you a hundred more different colors of the same word, but yet it's very, very usable to all of us, you don't have to be a seminarian to use this, this is called, by a man named

11:02

Vine, we call it Vine, but it's an expository dictionary of New Testament words.

11:08

I'm not even showing you a lot of things, but I am showing you things that if you wanted to only buy three or four books, this would be one of them,

11:15

Strong's Concordance would obviously be one, and the other that I don't have is Under's Bible Dictionary, but you need to go to one of these used bookstores and get an old edition of it, because the updated ones, they've taken a lot of the good stuff out of it, and I'm sorry

11:30

I didn't bring one of those, but you need an Under's, you need an old Under's Bible Dictionary, it's not really a dictionary, it's an encyclopedia,

11:36

I don't know why they call it a dictionary, you could certainly use a Vine expository dictionary of New Testament words, it's a beautiful, awesome book, and then the

11:46

Strong's is where you start, and then you go deeper with this book. Now the Under's is, on this particular, like knowing the distinctive character of the particular book can get into some ideas of like the social lures of the day when this book was written, or what about idiomatic expressions, you know we use them all the time and we know what we mean, but what about, you know, 800 years from now somebody reads what we wrote, and we say, well, what is one,

12:18

I can't think of one. We use some expression that makes sense, like, yeah, make hay while the sun shines, let's make hay while the sun shines, well 800 years from now they're going to think that means you're baling hay, and so forth.

12:34

We have a lot of those, but they had them when they wrote the Bible too, so sometimes it's good to know those things.

12:40

What kind of book would you use to find those? Well, Under's Bible Dictionary has a lot of historical information in it, and it's just a, if you just need one source to find a lot of that, that's the best one,

12:52

I think, okay? And this is an example of a concordance, and this is where you try to make sure you don't have your own private interpretation, where you're interpreting something and it really doesn't fit.

13:05

You can go see what other people for 2 ,000 years have thought certain things mean. Now, you may disagree with them, and it doesn't mean yours is not right, because God may have given you a meaning of a certain passage that he did not give this person, so this is not like the gospel, but it's just a check, it's a check and balance system, so to speak, to go look, see what two or three other people think a certain passage meant, and let that at least be in your mind.

13:32

Well, now I want to use a couple of examples this afternoon. Let's pretend that we are faced with someone in our family, say a cousin or nephew or uncle or aunt that's coming to visit, and they happen to be the religious type and they bring up something at the table and they just won't get off of it and they want to talk about it, and let's say that they're a

13:55

Jehovah's Witness, and they don't believe that there's a literal hell, all right?

14:01

So that's the scenario we're in. And let's turn to Matthew chapter 5 and verse 22.

14:12

You know, there's a scripture where we're exhorted to be ready to give an answer for our faith, to always be ready to give an answer for why we believe what we believe.

14:26

You see, the truth is, I don't know that God expects us, I'm being nice,

14:32

I know that he doesn't expect us to convince other people to believe like we believe. If you think that's your job, you have no peace in your life, and I used to be that way.

14:41

I mean, I would literally sit on a porch for two hours debating a

14:47

Church of Christ person, and maybe I was supposed to go on down the street and find somebody that would listen, but I loved that other part.

14:56

Because I thought in the early days, in the early 80s, I really believed it was my calling to convince everyone that my way was right, and to believe like I did, and that it would be so logical that all

15:06

I had to do was share it, and they would see it instantly. Well, I found out that wasn't the case.

15:14

But if it's not true that it's our job to convince others to believe like we believe, what are we supposed to do?

15:21

The Bible says, be ready to give an answer when they ask you why you believe what you believe.

15:27

You see the difference? Because when they say, well, why do you believe that? Their mind is open. They ask you.

15:33

They're saying, I want you to explain to me why you believe that. Well, boy, they're ready to hear. Now sit down with them for an hour, because they just opened the door to their own mind.

15:41

So that's why the Bible says it the way it does. It says, be ready to give an answer. Well, the only time you give an answer is when someone does what?

15:50

They ask you a question. So you don't just shove things down people's throats.

15:56

That answers your question. You just, it won't work. But if they ask you, well,

16:02

I can't believe, I had a lady ask, she wouldn't mind me telling this either. Miss Reynolds. Remember Bess Reynolds?

16:09

I was out just making some visits, and I knocked on her door, never met her in my life, never seen her before, and she invited me in.

16:16

So I figured this must be where I'm supposed to be. It's the only, everybody else slammed the door. She let me in. So I was sharing some scriptures with her and trying to find out if she had been saved.

16:29

And so finally, she was so sweet. I just assumed she was saved.

16:36

I mean, I just made that assumption, and I began to share some scriptures with her. And she said, well, you know,

16:43

I've never been saved before. I said, what? To myself, I can't believe this.

16:49

And I said, well, I'd love to share some scriptures with you. She said, well, that'll be fine.

16:54

She said, I grew up Pentecostal. She said, now, only one thing I got to ask you is you don't believe that old once saved, always saved stuff, do you?

17:03

And she didn't say it ugly. She just, she never met anyone that really believed that and couldn't figure out why anyone would believe it.

17:09

And I said, I said, well, ma 'am, to tell you the truth, I believe that more than I believe anything else in the world.

17:17

She said, you do? Why? And then I had her. She said, why? Why do you believe that?

17:24

Well, I went through and I had a little road map in my Bible and took her through every verse in the New Testament that taught that doctrine.

17:30

When I got through, she looked at me and she said, you know, I see why you guys believe that.

17:38

Now, later on, later that week, she told me that after I left, she looked out her kitchen window and she got saved.

17:44

Because for the first time in her life, she understand that she didn't get saved by works. Well, I wasn't even trying to lead her to the

17:50

Lord, I thought she was already saved. Yes, she was, she was there late 60s and then came to church for a long time, got baptized and was a regular member for a long time.

18:03

And anyway, point is, when they when they ask you to tell them, why do you believe that you should be able?

18:08

Now, let's look at this verse, Matthew 16, 17. Did I say 16? Why did

18:14

I turn to six, 17, 16, 17? Oh, that's not right.

18:23

Oh, it's Mark. Wait, excuse me. It's Mark. Did I say Matthew? It's Mark.

18:31

It's Mark, chapter 16, verse 17, I had the book wrong, the verse wrong, the chapter wrong.

18:37

I'm not going to win this argument, I can tell starting off bad and not for some reason. This is not right.

18:45

Oh, I'm not. Where was I, y 'all help me out. Matthew 522. I'm sorry,

18:51

I jumped to the next point already. OK, Matthew 522, why don't you read it for me,

18:58

Bill, while I'm trying to find it. OK, now pick this one in there, at least 10 other scriptures we could have picked out of the

19:22

Gospels, but I wanted to find one that had the word hell in it. Verse 22, Jesus talks about hellfire and your church, your

19:31

Jehovah's Witness family member is sitting at the table and they're saying, you know, there's not anywhere in the

19:37

Bible where it teaches there's a literal hell. And so you're thinking in your mind, man, there is and you find this one and you read this to him and you think you've got him because it says thou fool shall be in danger of hellfire.

19:51

And he says, well, do you have a Scofield Bible? And you say, well, sure. And he said, well, let me use it now. They don't use it, but they they know you've got one.

19:58

They said, look, look at footnote number two. And you look down there and they say, see there, that's

20:03

Gehenna. Gehenna is the place in the Valley of Henan where anciently human sacrifices were offered.

20:13

Now, I've been to Israel twice and there is still a valley of Gehenna that you can see, it's a beautiful valley now, but it is a place where they used to offer their children to Moloch and they had kind of a rubbish heap that burned continually.

20:28

It's almost like the garbage where they burn the garbage, but it just burned all the time. Smoke came up from it.

20:34

And and so in this particular verse, many times when Jesus used the word for hell that we translate hell, he used

20:43

Gehenna, which was a literal place in his day that always burned out there. That was the rubbish heap.

20:49

And your Jehovah's Witness family member is going to say that doesn't say anything about a literal hell is talking about a place called

20:57

Gehenna. And Jesus was just using that as an example to teach you that you better not do whatever this is he's saying not to do.

21:06

And then they've got you. So you you are a matter of Bible interpretation.

21:12

If you were a new Christian, maybe you don't have a Jehovah's Witness friend and you read this verse and you read that footnote and you're thinking, well, maybe you get some influence by somebody that doesn't believe there's a literal hell.

21:28

And you think, well, no, that doesn't teach there's a literal hell there in English. It uses the word hell.

21:33

But in the Greek, it doesn't even have a word for hell. It's the word for this rubbish heap. So maybe the Bible is and you think, well, it's hard for me to believe

21:41

God would send someone to a hell forever anyway. So I don't think the Bible teaches that.

21:47

Now, my question to you is, which one of these points of Bible interpretation would you use to get a proper interpretation of that verse?

21:59

Would you use let's leave out number one point eight, but out of number two, three, four, five or six, which one would you use?

22:07

To prove that that means a literal hell, even though it doesn't say literal hell, it says

22:15

Gehenna, which is a rubbish heap. How do you know that means hell? Can someone tell me which point of interpretation you would use?

22:25

Which one's for because that we may have a number different. OK, that's that's an excellent thing.

22:36

Read the whole chapter. Now, what's another one? There's another good one, too. Many times you'll have two or three to come into play, sometimes just one.

22:45

This one has at least two. So what's another one? All right.

22:53

And let me let me show you an example. Let's scripture interpret scripture. That's which one is that number five.

22:58

Consider all scripture bearing on the given thing. Turn with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 16, verse twenty three.

23:10

Now, see, if the only verse you had in the whole Bible was the one we just looked at, then then you would have trouble proving that, perhaps, except you could use the context.

23:23

But that might not prove it to someone who doesn't believe the way you do. So you might want to tell your family member, well, look, that verse certainly does not stand alone.

23:36

It has to stand with the whole of the scriptures. Let's see what the whole Bible teaches on this topic. And if you look at Luke 16 and verse twenty three, who has that one?

23:47

Someone read that for me. OK, well, there's also a third approach you could use on this, and that would be the point that has to do with grammar and word studies, because this word for hell is not

24:08

Gehenna. Now, they wouldn't point that out to you. They don't want you to know that they want you to think every time you see it, it's

24:15

Gehenna, but it's not. This word is Hades, which is the same place as you find over in Revelation 20 when it says that death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire.

24:24

It's Hades. Well, Hades is the current holding place for hell. And I happen to believe it's in the center of the earth.

24:31

But someday that will be poured out into eternal hell, which who knows where that is? It's wherever God puts it.

24:37

It'll be away from wherever we are completely away where we'll never even know about it again after that.

24:43

But it'll be there. But anyway, this so this is a different word for hell. But look what the scriptures teach here.

24:49

You have a man that is in this place and he is being tormented.

24:57

And it doesn't seem to be a place where this torment is going to cease, and it certainly doesn't seem to be that he's in a rubbish heap on the face of the earth.

25:04

He's in a different place. And verse 24 at the end, he says, I am tormented by this flame.

25:10

And verse 26 says there's a great gulf fixed so that they which would pass from here cannot, neither can they pass to us that would.

25:20

And that does away with the Roman Catholic idea of the purgatory, where you can go there for a while and get out.

25:26

This says you can't get out. So there's a lot of things you can use in this passage. Turn to Revelation 14, 11 is another good one.

25:36

So you see, the principle we're using is we're using the Bible to interpret that particular verse, the one we started out with.

25:43

What does what does the Bible say about this topic of hell? We must be sure that our verse in Matthew five fits everything else the

25:54

Bible teaches. Well, in Revelation 14, 11, it talks about this same place.

26:03

And it says, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night who worship the beast and his image and whosoever has received the mark of his name.

26:18

So that seems to be a place where there is smoke. There is smoke that ascends up forever and ever and where they have no rest day and night, forever and ever.

26:28

And they're in torment, just like the gentleman in in Luke 16 was.

26:35

So you just you you you have to know where to find a couple of the verses that just as you study, when you know that you have topics, it's good to put a road map through your

26:44

Bible is find a get a piece of paper and put the topic like hell. And then put a verse which will be your first verse of your study and then go into that verse and write in the

26:57

Bible beside that verse, put the place where the next one's found and from there on, it'll take you all the way through. And you just use one or two of these, if the

27:06

Holy Spirit leads you to do what I said earlier, to put that thought in their mind, you say, well, would you prayerfully consider this?

27:11

You know, here's a couple of verses where it's eternal and it's not Gehenna. How do you deal with that? I mean, not that you need to tell me, but just take it home and think about it.

27:19

OK, so there's an example of how to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. It's also a good example of context, because if you read that whole thing,

27:27

Jesus is obviously talking about a place that you don't want to. You'd rather have a hand cut off than to go there.

27:32

Well, that can't be talking about a garbage heap. So the context works.

27:38

And then the word study works because you'll find it's a different word for hell in the other place. It's not Gehenna, it's

27:43

Hades and so forth. All right. Let's use another example. Turn with me to the end of Mark.

27:51

Mark, that's the one I was getting confused about a minute ago. I'm sorry about that. Mark 16 in verse 17.

28:03

And you'll you'll find if you will use all eight of these are the ones that are appropriate for the passage that you're in.

28:10

You would be surprised how difficult passages that you've never been able to know what they meant before.

28:16

If you apply these and do a thorough study, you can know more than you did before.

28:22

You might even you might even get it. You might solve it. Matthew 16, starting with verse 17.

28:33

Well, let's read verse 17 first. Sixteen, seventeen, and these signs shall follow them that believe in my name, shall they cast out devils?

28:44

They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents. And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.

28:53

They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. So then after the

28:59

Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth and preached, excuse me, everywhere.

29:08

The Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. What do you do with that passage?

29:15

You know, what is the passage? Your Pentecostal cousin comes to have dinner with you on Sunday.

29:23

So, you know, I've always known there's a difference between Baptist and us, and I just have, you know,

29:28

I have a problem with you, Baptist, because we Pentecostals are people of the Bible and you're not. And you say, well, what do you mean?

29:35

They say, well, what do you do with this passage? Y 'all don't believe this. It's in there, it's in the

29:40

Bible, and you don't even believe it. So how can you claim to even be a Christian, let alone a Bible believer?

29:46

Our church believes this passage and we live this every day in your church, laughs at it and scoffs at it, says it's not right.

29:53

But you read this passage and you tell me what it means. Now, what would you do at that point? Would you say, well, why don't you just pass the pie and let's drop the subject?

30:04

A good answer would be you just wouldn't understand. Or my answer, the one

30:11

I like is I say, well, let me give you this phone number. His name is Brother Otis. Call him. OK, now, how do we deal with this passage?

30:22

What what points of our six points would fit here? Well, that's number three on my list.

30:46

To whom is a given scripture addressed? Are there dispensational considerations? Well, I don't know that there are so much dispensational considerations as there are to whom is this spoken consideration.

31:00

So and then it brings into play number four, the context, which means you can't just stop there. You got to go back, read the whole chapter and we really don't have to go to the whole chapter, though.

31:09

We can go back to about verse 14. Someone read verse 14.

31:14

Let's see who he's speaking to here. Now, there is another problem we have to address in a minute, but let's look at this one first.

31:20

Who is he speaking to? Says afterward, he appeared unto the eleven, who's that?

31:29

That's the apostle, the very apostles. It is the ones that he is giving, giving the responsibility of preaching this new gospel to Jews who are going to tend to believe it and the

31:44

Gentiles who don't have a clue. And you'll find it as you study that predominantly, if you go into Romans and Corinthians, Paul teaches very clearly that it is the

31:57

Jew who needs a sign. The Gentile does not need a sign or a miracle to believe something.

32:03

The Gentile just likes knowledge, but the Jew needs to see something. He wants to be, it's got to prove this is

32:09

God. Now, in the early church, you have to understand the biggest problem was for the

32:14

Gentiles to believe, I mean, for the Jews to even believe a Gentile could be saved or that this was for the Gentile at all.

32:21

And so the second problem that the Jew had, of course, was believing that the message that these men brought was from God.

32:30

You got to prove that to the Jew. Well, God did prove it to the Jew by giving these authenticating signs.

32:37

So they were predominantly given to the apostles. It says specifically to the 11.

32:45

Now, we know the passage in Acts where Paul reached into the fire and he grabbed a stick, but it was a snake and it bit him.

32:53

And all the natives stepped back and they just waited to watch for him to die. It was particularly poisonous snake that probably with the kind of venom that deals with your nervous system, just kills you pretty quickly.

33:05

And they watched him and watched him and they watched him and he didn't even get sick. He just kept eating and talking and preaching.

33:12

And then they bowed down before him and worshiped him as a God because it was the first man they'd ever seen bitten by this type of snake that lived.

33:20

That was a fulfillment of this passage. It was not probably not the only fulfillment, but it was a fulfillment of the passage.

33:29

Now, what a person would have to believe if he believed this passage should be applied in every local church, like on Sunday, is

33:37

I would have to say if that's true, then the snake handling churches in Kentucky are probably closer to the truth than the rest of us.

33:43

Because at least they go out and get rattlesnakes and bring them into the congregation and the preachers let them bite them all over their body.

33:50

And then they go ahead and preach. If it kills them, they die. If they live, then they fulfill this scripture. That's what a real believer that this applies to us today would do.

34:00

But see, what most people want to do is they just want to pick what they like out of here. Like, let's do the tongues thing. Keep the poison and the snakes away.

34:09

Let's just do the tongues thing. And don't ever expect me to touch someone and raise them from the dead. Because I don't believe

34:16

I can do that, but I can do the tongues thing. So they want to pick and choose out of these signs. They want to pick the ones they think they can do.

34:22

Now, what does that tell you they're doing it in? The flesh. Something they can do or mimic, but don't do the ones

34:30

I can't mimic. Because it's really hard to fake drinking poison and not dying. I mean, you could probably fake that by just having a concoction that wasn't really poison.

34:39

Or by drinking something after it that negated it somehow. But the raising the person from the dead is hard to fake.

34:45

Some of these are really hard. So if you're not going to take the whole package, what do you do with this?

34:51

So that's what I would ask them. Yes, they're interesting.

35:12

Exactly. So that's using number four, the context. Yeah, I know what...

35:46

They wanted Jesus to go rebuke him and shut him up and Jesus said leave him alone. Well, you mean for us to leave the

35:58

Pentecostals alone? Right.

36:06

I mean, that's the... The only time you would ever even get into this is if they ask you, why do you not believe in this?

36:13

Because I'm not going to try to convince them. I'm with you there. I mean, you know, they're doing some damage, but they're doing some good.

36:19

And so, I didn't make them like they are. And God is sovereign, so I agree with you there.

36:25

But my question for today is, we're just making up an example, a fake example. Yeah. Well, that's a good ending.

36:34

Did you bring them to verse 20 and show them this thing about confirming and then that's...

36:43

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's good.

36:50

I mean, that's a good place to leave them. Well, let me show you something even a little more difficult in this passage, though.

36:55

That they could... And Diane, you may, when you see this, you may remember they may have brought this up.

37:01

Or maybe they didn't, but they could. Let's look at something to me a little more difficult for us to handle.

37:07

If we're interpreting this correctly, and if the fact is that the proper interpretation method is we simply need to ask, who is he speaking to, and it will solve it.

37:17

Let's read a little further. Look at verse 15. And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

37:23

Well, he's still obviously talking to them, which is the 11. Now, but look at verse 16.

37:28

What if they had started the discussion with verse 16, and you hadn't really studied up on verse 14 and verse 20 yet.

37:34

And they bring this, and they say, He that believeth and is baptized. Now, here's another good one you use for Church of Christ.

37:42

But that's a whole different subject. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.

37:49

And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils, etc.,

37:57

etc. Now, they might point out to you and say, now, that's not talking about the apostles. That's talking about the people that believed later, which is us.

38:05

Now, how would you answer that? Do you see why

38:12

God commands us to study, to show ourselves approved unto God?

38:17

A workman not ashamed. What would make you ashamed? If they ask you that question, and you didn't know the answer, you're going to be ashamed, because He's got you.

38:26

And what's going to happen is you're going to represent to this person that He's right when

38:32

He's really not. And it builds him up even more, and it allows the enemy to put more of a hold in their mind and heart to make it even more difficult to break that down for the next person that tries, because you didn't study enough.

38:46

Now, all of us are going to get caught, because there are certain passages some of us study more than others.

38:51

And, man, if they hit one you just hadn't looked at in maybe 20 years and really thought it through, they might get you.

38:57

But our whole goal is to be ready to give an answer for why we don't think their interpretation of this is right.

39:04

That particular aspect is more difficult to deal with if they were to go on into verse 17 and read that part.

39:13

What principle out of these Bible interpretative points would be used at that juncture, do you think?

39:33

It is a grammatical... You're warm. You're into the grammatical aspect of it.

39:44

Also, you're into the historical aspect of it, which you can gain from the book of Acts.

39:50

But what's happening here, and this wouldn't meet the eye if you hadn't thought it through, but what's happening here is the very same thing that it's talking about in the whole passage.

39:59

It still deals predominantly with the apostolic... What's the word we're using here in verse 20,

40:05

Diane? Confirmation. Those who believe... Alright, let me just give you the viewpoint of what actually happens.

40:12

And there's a good place you can see it in Acts chapter 10 and even a couple places before that where they preach the gospel.

40:18

And as the word hit their ears and the Holy Spirit came upon them, Acts chapter 10 verse 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, it says that they believed.

40:30

Those that were ordained to eternal life were the ones that believed. It says they believed, and then they began to what?

40:35

Speak with tongues, with languages. So that was not the apostles.

40:41

That was the ones that believed the message of the apostles. But who was that authenticating? It was still authenticating the message of the apostles.

40:50

You see the point? It's still the same thing. It's just that you might miss that if they just hit you with this. Here it says, these signs follow them that believe.

40:59

Well, the signs followed everybody at that point in time.

41:04

Because God was convincing the Jew that a Gentile could be saved. You see it very vividly.

41:10

In fact, if you want to, put Acts chapter 10 right beside that in your Bible in case someone hits you with it.

41:17

You can go right to it and talk to them about it.

41:22

We won't take the time to do that today, but it's simply the same authenticating purpose.

41:30

It's Acts 10, 44 and following. I said verse 1, but it's not. It's verse 44. Sometimes they do it too.

41:57

If you go into Acts, and one reason we call it a transitional book is because we're still in the time period where the gospel is going to the

42:07

Jew first and then the Gentile. We're not in that time period now. It is predominantly a

42:12

Gentile church because of God's sovereignty. He chose to make it that way, and he said very clearly that he was going to partially blind them so that the fullness of the

42:22

Gentiles may come in. It's supposed to be this way. Now, what happened though in the first century, it went to the

42:30

Jew first. Your first Christians were Jewish, and God had ordained that they would have to learn that a

42:37

Gentile is one with me. We cannot even understand how foreign that is to their mindset.

42:43

It's like thinking that they're going to worship with pigs. That's how they thought of us, as pigs and dogs.

42:52

And God is teaching them, no, don't call anything that I call clean, don't you call it unclean anymore.

42:59

And he's beating their head, their Jewish heads, and they are hard -headed people. If Russ was here, he would agree, but anyone who knows

43:06

Russ knows it is true, or any other Jewish person. They are hard -headed. They got it all figured out.

43:11

You're not going to teach them anything. So what God did was, as the apostles would witness, the people that they witnessed too all of a sudden can do the same stuff they were doing.

43:21

And then as they took the message to the next guy, it authenticated their message too, but they were Gentile. And they had to say, oh, this can't be good because the

43:30

Gentile over here is doing these things that this Jew that I knew could do was doing, and now the

43:35

Gentiles are doing it. They must be saved. And, well, let's just do it. You just have to.

43:40

Look at Acts chapter 10, verse 44. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.

43:49

And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished.

43:54

Why? Because the Gentiles were doing this stuff. They were astonished.

44:01

As many as came with Peter because that on the Gentiles was poured out the gift of the

44:06

Holy Ghost. Now how would they have ever known that if they hadn't been speaking in tongues and even as bitten by serpents and all the different things that followed it, same stuff was happening to the

44:16

Gentiles as to the Jewish believers. So it still was an authenticating miracle.

44:22

And once all of this authenticating time period was over, you just don't see this stuff happening anymore.

44:28

Now let me say this. It could happen. And it is not for dispensational reasons that it no longer happens because this was the same dispensation.

44:36

And we've made that mistake for far too long. Most of my life I've made that mistake of trying to make it a dispensational issue when it's not a dispensational issue.

44:46

Because remember how we studied about the urns and how God turns those on when he wants to? He could turn that on right now today.

44:52

And if one of you was out witnessing somewhere and you drank some, somebody gave you some poison, he could turn the urns up where you had the faith where it wouldn't even hurt you.

45:00

Right now. So it's not a dispensational issue. It's just that the predominant use of this was to authenticate the new dispensation which was called the age of what?

45:11

Grace. The grace of the gospel of grace or the dispensation of the gospel of grace had to be authenticated so that the

45:17

Jew would accept it as a new plan, a dispensational economy and so forth.

45:23

Okay. And I'll tell you one of my favorite things that the

46:05

Lord revealed to me in the last couple of years and I don't know why I hadn't seen it before, but you know the passages where Paul was trying to convince them that he was in fact an apostle like they thought he wasn't one.

46:19

And he says, well, he says, but I have the signs of an apostle. And that convinced them.

46:26

Well, if those were available to every human that ever got saved, it certainly wouldn't prove he was an apostle.

46:32

I mean, if I could do them, you could do them, everybody can do them. All it would prove is was he was a saved person. But he used it to prove he was an apostle.

46:39

So I believe with all my heart that the whole of scripture, but you see how hard this is, it's not easy to convince someone that doesn't want to believe.

46:47

The method that deals with letting the Bible interpret the Bible, it's a matter of the grammatical interpretation, the context and the history, which comes from the book of Acts.

46:56

It's a lot, now that's a difficult passage right there we just did, because you take all of those principles in one to get there.

47:02

Now let me give you one more and we'll stop. Turn to Zechariah chapter 5 and verse 1. I had two young men walk in my office over in the old building, sat down and tried to convince me that the book of Mormons was just as authentic as the word of God.

47:23

And guess which verse they took me to to prove it. Zechariah 5 .1

47:29

and they said, there's some flying rolls in here and that's the book of Mormons. Then I turned and lifted up mine eyes and looked and behold a flying roll.

47:43

And he said unto me, what seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll. And they went through and they said, that's where the book of Mormons came into the world.

47:53

So what would be your interpretative method on this? Yeah, well you just, you go back in the context.

48:05

Yeah, you go back and that's very simple. You go back in the context and you point out this is dealing with Israel. It's dealing with Israel 2 ,519 years ago.

48:15

When was the book of Mormons written? And they tell you and that's the end of it. But yet, so it's a context thing.

48:21

And yet they walk into hundreds of Baptist homes, show them that one verse and the guy doesn't know how to answer.

48:26

Because he's never read chapter 4. Never been there, never been in chapter 4, never has read the rest of chapter 5.

48:34

Well let me tell you, if one of them catches you in a portion of the scriptures you haven't studied much, and they show you something, don't panic.

48:42

Just go back to verse 1 of the chapter they're in and read the context. And before they're through talking, you'll have an answer.

48:48

Because their big problem in the cult groups is they're going to take it out of context. They're hoping you'll deal with the one verse and you won't look at what it's talking about in the context.

48:59

And that's usually the one you'll use there. So the flying a roll is a fascinating passage of scripture.

49:05

Well let's have a word of prayer. Father we thank you for your word. We thank you for the great saints of the past, the students of the word, the people like Martin Luther and Calvin, and preachers even like Ironside and Torrey, and the different men that you've gifted who have written books and who have lined out proper interpretative methods for us to use that work, that make sense, that keep us from error, that protect us.

49:41

And we thank you that you even taught it in the word of God when you told us to rightly divide the word of truth into its proper portions so that we might understand it.

49:50

And we thank you that your Holy Spirit is the great teacher that guides us, gives us light, and protects us from heresy, and keeps us from going down the wrong road.

50:00

So Father we ask that we would become experts at this matter of Bible interpretative matters, that we would not cheat the system, we wouldn't get out and have a favorite doctrine that we want to prove, that we would be honest and open -minded to let your

50:17

Holy Spirit teach us the truth and the sense behind each passage. And Father we know this will bring unity in our church if we all use the same method of interpretation.

50:27

And Father we believe it will help us also to be light and salt to this world and to have opportunity where you open the door to give people things to think about that might cause them to see the truth as well.

50:40

And we know it's your work and we thank you so much for making us to be a part of it. And we pray in Jesus' name.