Interpreting the Bible - 2

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Father in heaven, I thank you for this opportunity to again discuss the subject of hermeneutics and what it means and why we are so Why we're so serious about knowing what the Bible says not simply trying to Impose upon the scripture our ideas, but to draw from the scripture what it says and Ultimately what it means for the meaning of scripture is the scripture Father and Help us the day to as we examine a few texts together and the process by which we would come to a right understanding of those texts Help us to Lord have a clear mind.
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I pray that you'd open the hearts of your people to the truth.
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Keep me from error and That you would be glorified in all that we say and do in Christ's name Amen As we said last week we began a short discussion on the subject of hermeneutics Hermeneutics is a fancy word simply means the the the art or science of Interpreting a written text particularly the biblical text comes from the The God the Greek the false Greek God Hermes which was the messenger of the gods and that's where you just get the term hermeneutics in and a hermeneutic is simply a process by which you seek to Determine the original authors intent behind a writing, you know We have there are a lot of things that are, you know ancient documents that have to be interpreted But there's none more important than obviously the Word of God The scripture because it is the Word of God and and you know It wouldn't hurt us to be wrong about Homer's Iliad or it wouldn't hurt us to be wrong about certain Other historical documents, you know, the writings of Plato or someone like that It wouldn't even hurt us necessarily to be wrong about how we interpret the Constitution Even though there are some implications for that that are pretty serious And if you think about it, the Supreme Court is supposed to be a hermeneutical Institution because the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law and in accordance with the Constitution That's their job.
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And yet what do they say about the Constitution? Well, it's a living document it changes over time and so and that gives you the attitude of how they approach hermeneutics very much Like it's can things can change Exactly and and it's funny the I will say this and and I don't say this to hurt anybody's feelings or anything but but there are people who are Constitutionalists for before they're biblicist and they get mad when the Supreme Court Misinterprets the Constitution, but they don't care when somebody misinterprets the Bible and that and there's a little sacrilege there I think there's a there's a there's a problem when you're more concerned about the Supreme Court Misinterpreting the the Constitution than you are a pastor misinterpreting the Bible Because this is the most important thing in the world that we must understand And so last week we began Looking at the sheet in front of you.
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And if you if you look it over you'll see it just talks about The process of interpretation And it's very simple you begin with the Descriptive.
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What does it mean? You move to the rational? Why was this said here and that ultimately involves the context not only what does it mean? but why is it where it is and the Implicational what is the significance? Well, what what's the significance the original author? Significance to the modern audience and does that have any differences or their changes in application? And do we have a different application today? So what we looked at last week was the the first was on the terms what is meant by the term? How does it function in the sentence and what keywords? Need word study and what we did and what we're going to do again today is we just took a verse of the Bible and we Looked at it in regard to the laws of interpretation and tried to understand it better looking at the descriptive the rational and the Implicational and then later it talks about in your little form here.
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It goes from the terms to the structure to the literary form to the Atmosphere and so we're going to try to look at all that today if we are able and and get around to Get around to some some real learning one of the most Misinterpreted passages most most used misinterpreted passages comes from the book of Philippians Turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 4 Which one am I looking at? What does it say? What is 4 9? No No, I was thinking I was thinking 13 But but that's but that's a good one too and we could talk about that We could we could address that one in a minute, but I want to start with 13 somebody read that Okay, very good.
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Yeah that that one is one there there, huh Play ball, yeah There you know, I can do all things Through Christ or through him who strengthens me now.
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I don't have my Greek text in front of me If if somebody wants to run and grab it it's down in the fellowship hall, but if not necessary But I wanted to show you how we would interpret this Based on Where it is in the you know, how do we understand certain keywords? So let's let's very first of all, let's pick an English translation.
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Which translation did you read from Marianna? That is the ESV.
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Okay.
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All right.
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Well, that's our pulpit translation.
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So we'll stick with that one for now So read it again to me all things Yeah, and that's that that's that's what I wanted to through him who strengthens me now That's Philippians 4 13.
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Okay, this particular passage we all know Is used for everything under the Sun It's used for sports people who want to talk about you know They're they can win the game because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me it's used by Mountain climbers, you know, I can do all things, you know I'm gonna go up the mountain and do all things through Christ who strengthens me and and ultimately it's applied to just about every area of life and I Think I misapplied in a lot of senses because the Intention of Paul is very clear in the context.
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I'm going to get to that in a moment, but Just for now, let's do what we talked about last week.
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How do you begin you begin with the descriptive? What does it mean and then why was it said here? And then what is the significance? Well, what does it mean? Well, let's look at the what is meant by the term? Well, we have the you know, the the the beginning here addresses.
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I this is of course Paul is the one speaking But you know a lot of people they make that about themselves and that's fine because we'll see in a little while it can have A personal application, but ultimately Paul is the person speaking and he's the one talking So he says Paul he can do all Things and this is this is the key if you want to talk about a key phrase the key phrase and I just put it over here This one phrase is the key to the passage because this is the this is the part that is Often made the to-do over the all things section And then of course You know a lot of a lot of texts will say through Christ I would have to look directly at the Greek to know whether or not that it's it's Christo or whether it's the whether it's the Pronoun for that probably is the pronoun if that's the way it comes off in the ESV.
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What does yours have brother? Which text do you have? I'm sorry Christ yours says Christ.
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So that's interesting.
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I wonder what they wouldn't know what to Hmm yeah, no, I'm saying yours says him his says Christ If the SV anybody else have another translation And what do you have brother No, what is your new King James? New King.
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Okay.
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All right.
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All right.
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So there's really no doubt based on Based on the Language of Paul of who he's talking about.
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So whether it says him or whether it says Christ is somewhat inconsequential But you know we can put either there and the interpretation of that part isn't isn't the difficult part I Paul can do all things through him who is Christ Who does what who strengthens me and we look at the word strengthen? That means to empower to give the ability to do something.
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We understand all these words are simple We all know it.
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This is not a hard sentence in English.
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It's not a hard sentence in Greek.
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It's not a hard sentence but How is it to be applied? How are we to apply this? Well the you can't apply it Without understanding it first in its original context Okay, so I want to have you go to the passage in Philippians 4 I want you to breathe begin reading at verse 10 Who would like to read? Not that I am I'm speaking of being in need for I have learned in whatever such an odd situation I am to be content I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound in any and every circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger abundance and need I Can do all things Through Christ who gives me strength This is the context contentment read it again, please Read the context again Stop right there.
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This is okay.
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You guys have worries about me.
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This is the Philippian Church This is the church Paul loved this was the church that he wrote to with great love This was the church that he he went to Philippi on his second missionary journey met Lydia there There was this great this this this great Sort of small church that grew out of that and he and he loves these people and these people love him and they know he's in Prison you have to understand Paul's writing from prison.
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That's these are called the prison epistles right the Galatians Ephesians Philippians and Colossians, that's the General Electric Power Company if you're remembering what order they come in They are right written from prison And Paul says I know you have many concerns about me.
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I know you're worried about my situation But you have to understand in all these years of ministry.
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I've learned to live with a lot.
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I've learned to live with nothing I've learned to go hungry and I've learned to be full I've learned to be content in whatever situation that God puts me in I Can do all things Through Christ who strengthens me you see the all things here isn't about throwing a football You might say well, it can be it could be applied to that.
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Well, but let's first figure out what it means before we start applying The meaning for Paul is to be content in all things I can suffer and Still Have joy in Christ I can have much and Still realize my need for Christ.
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You see the the thing is people suffer and Then people have great Bountiful plenty and they think that this is the bad and this is the good and often they're both bad because the suffering Causes us to wonder if God's there and the bountiful plenty causes us to live like he's not there, right? Yeah, because we we have all this that we need.
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What do we need God for? Sure Absolutely Exactly.
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And so that's that and that's what I'm getting around to is Paul is saying I've learned to live with all of it I've learned to live in the suffering.
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I've learned to live in the plenty I've had you know, and I think not every Christian was poor in the first century and most were but there were people like Lydia and there were people like the mother of John Mark who had a who had a place at least large enough to have a courtyard, you know We see this in Acts.
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She was the head the house church there in Jerusalem.
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There were people who had things and So these would often bless those who didn't and so Paul at times stayed in nice places You know Lydia said stay at my house Right, he stayed at places that were nice probably had first century, you know You know, whatever first century goodies were, you know, whatever the Luxuries, that's what I'm trying to think of the word.
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How was that? Yeah, yeah first century Whatever type of plumbing may have been available Servants comforts creature comforts if you will.
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Yeah, and they had things Amazing things they they had the architecture was genius because they would design their Facilities to where it would it would cool itself and heat itself It was it was it was insulated in a certain way that there was amazing You know because they didn't have freon to make air conditioning so they had to come up with more creative ways to make things cool in the summer and high and warm in the and the winter and so looking at this passage The heart is found in the context remember Hermeneutics begins with context and the context of the Apostle Paul is I've learned to live in every situation, but how How have I learned to be content in every situation? How huh? That yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the answer it's the answer to the problem It's the answer to the issue.
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One of the most difficult things that we have as believers is finding content You know, we're always you know, we tend to Either not be satisfied with where we are not satisfied with what we're doing not satisfied with what's happening to us not satisfied what we're Making not satisfied with where we're going, you know All these things this contentment that that it seems so elusive and Paul says I found it.
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I Found my contentment and it's in Christ and I found out that I can do anything Through him who strengthens me see that provides a proper understanding of the passage now We can apply it Now we move from the descriptive.
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What does it mean? Well, we know what it means to the rational Why is it said where it said well because it's fits into the context and the context is contentment now What is the implication? How does this apply to us? Well first the question would be before we start talking about all these crazy things that we think we can do You know, I've heard people say I can do anything, you know, especially the health and wealth Pentecostals Really ride this this like a you know, like a Pony they just ride this verse, you know They make it about you know You can start a business and God's gonna bless your business because you can do anything through Christ who strengthens you Okay, is that is that really the intent of the Apostle Paul in this passage? You know, is that is that really what he's talking about? We said well Yeah, I Mean the whole you know, he is in prison while writing this It was a funny cartoon There's a guy Adam 4d.
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I don't if you ever seen that it's a he puts out Hand hand-drawn cartoons online and it's a and they're very good.
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I think he's reformed He has really good theology and a lot of his cartoons and one of the cartoons was was the Apostle Paul Showing it was coming in a vision to Creflo dollar Using this verse and he goes Creflo Listen, you keep telling people that they can have everything they want and be rich and everything because of my passage in Philippians I was in prison The last the last the last little thing was I was in jail Yeah Yeah, you know, it's like what do you you know, you you're you're telling these people it's all about privilege.
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It's all about prosperity It's all about these things favor.
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I remember the time I went to buy a car and The lady behind the thing, you know, Jennifer and I were there and we were talking about Financing and whether or not we were get a good raid and all these things and she said what do you do? This was? 2006 2007 very early in the ministry And I saw my pastor she goes well you have God's favor you're gonna get whatever you want you have God's favor I Did not get what it certainly was not the the perfect interest rate or anything else But it was just funny.
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You have God's favor.
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You're gonna get anything you want.
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That's the that's the wrong attitude Based on a wrong understanding of several passages this being just one of those Now Christ can't huh? It is and I would say where where the where the where the proper application could come to a modern-day situation is if I were talking to someone who is truly Very discontented in their life and whatever the situation is They're they're Having trouble finding any joy or any peace or any comfort in their stage in life whether it's a through a sickness or whether it's through some type of oppression or depression or something and Reminding them where to go for hope which is Christ Reminding them where to go for comfort and contentment Which is Christ if we can't find our contentment in him we will not find it anywhere else I think that's Paul's ultimate point here is ultimately I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me I can I can I can find contentment anywhere because it's in Christ who is unmovable My Christ never moves though my situation may move You know frequently So that's just one passage and I always like to point out the context of this because it helps us understand it better And it helps us understand the the the heart of what Paul meant when he wrote and this is again why? singular verses Pulled out of their context and put on billboards or on bumper stickers or on t-shirts or things like that can oftentimes Miscommunicate you know I mean The truth will set you free yes absolutely Absolutely, and what's funny? You know and I remember I don't remember what the conversation was and I wasn't trying to be a jerk But I remember having a conversation with a person And I don't remember the context of it I remember this verse came up and they were talking about something that they could do and it was something that I didn't think they should do and Because it wasn't a very smart venture whatever it was it didn't seem like a very wise venture And I said I really don't think this is the way that you should go well pastor You know I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me.
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I said we'll fly up to the top of that tree And she got mad at me well you're mocking me you're mocking the Word of God.
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I am NOT I'm mocking your misunderstanding of that passage Because you are twisting scripture You're saying that your business has to succeed Because Christ is with you You're misunderstanding that passage absolutely misunderstand that passage That passage does not say everybody in here can cook a perfect steak That may sound like a stupid thing But Christ is not in the business of empowering you to cook a perfect steak.
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Not that you're gifting We go by Yeah, you have to understand, and I'm only using that as a simple example it can it can be very broadened yes Every time before I walk in that door Because it felt like it was something I could not do on my own, and I couldn't And I didn't like it on my own, you know I mean, but I needed the money, and I needed to do it Yeah, so I mean well again.
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You were you were finding contentment, and you were finding your Strength for the need that was needed, and I think that that's not necessarily Misappropriating it.
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I think where it's misappropriating it is when we when we make it a demand upon God You know that's what the Pentecostal not necessary Pentecost But the word faith movement uses passages like this to say we're gonna make a demand on God You know I'm good I want to do this thing and Christ must give me the strength to do it because he said he would well That's not the past not the context It's like the guy who I don't know if you remember the video the audio I had on that one Wednesday night Where the guy said when I pray Christ sits up and takes notice when I put a demand on his will That's a kind of Attitude that I think is heretical you know reaching for Christ as your as your strength and difficulty I think is at the heart of this.
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I don't think that's opposed to that Yeah, I think well like I said, and that's where I do think we can bring it to the implicational What's the significance for me today? Well? Yeah? You know there are things in my life that are Difficult, and I have a hard time finding joy in them and yet.
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I know they're needful So where do I find my strength in Christ who strengthens me and so yeah absolutely? Yeah Exactly yeah, yeah, yeah, it becomes an I can the focus becomes the the old I problem thing you know most Christians Have an eye problem You know it's the I The me it's all about the I yeah, I can do it So that was just one passage that I wanted to mention today another one That You know because this is just this is the way I like to teach hermeneutics actually do the work Actually go through the passages because we can learn all this stuff theoretically, but unless you put it to use It's easy to it's easy to lose it um what is the one verse that every Greek student must learn before He is finished with his Greek studies at least in the first semester first first year of Greek What does every Greek student have to learn and I want to guess? It's part.
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It's in John.
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It's usually not John 316 though Yeah, yeah, John 1 1 Yeah, and our K ain't halagas Kaihala gas ain't prostant.
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They on kai theos ain't halagas.
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That's the John 1 1 in Greek and you have to learn it.
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It's very important because it teaches you a lot about sentence structure and Things like predicate nominatives and stuff like that So I'm just going to write it out for you and we're going to talk about this verse because if there's a verse that I like to teach it's this one and It teaches us a lot about How how words work together and how it works in context so we have in the beginning? was the word and the word was with God and the word Word was God a truly magnificent Summation of what we mean when we say that Christ is in essence Equal with the Father and yet in person different from the Father That he is God in Essence and yet personally distinct from the Father As as the Holy Spirit if sure absolutely so this is a this is one of the passages that if you go to look at a Jehovah Witnesses Bible in fact, I'm just going to step over here behind you Mike excuse me If you look at the Jehovah Witnesses Bible You will see that they have miss Appropriated this text this is the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.
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This is the Jehovah Witnesses mistranslation of the Bible I keep it on my heresy shelf next to the Da Vinci Code and Dianetics and all that that if you ever look over there That that whole shelf is stuff from from that I would disagree with or stuff that I would find relatively dangerous Like I said you get Dianetics L.
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Ron Hubbard all that so there should don't ever think I'm reading that stuff just for yeah Just for fun.
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I Use it for research purposes.
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Yeah Research purposes but in the beginning of John 1 in the New World Translation And you guys can look at this one class over one one additional letter It says in the beginning the Word was and the Word was with God and The Word was a God Yeah, oh that it adds the indefinite article a Right there at the most conspicuous place and it also lower cases the G so in the For those who have Bibles that do there's not all translations Capitalize the the the well most of them capitalized God as a because it's as a noun you know, but It it makes the point of adding the indefinite article and the word God in a lowercase In the beginning the word is with God No in the beginning was the word and the word is capitalized The word was with God God is capitalized and the word was a God not capitalized The word is capitalized a God is not And like I said a lot of people never seen that There's no and I will tell you this and you may disagree and you know, we can disagree and still be friends You know, you can be wrong.
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It's okay I'm just kidding.
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Now you you may have a Jehovah Witness come to your door I do not recommend you arguing John 1 1 with them if there's a passage of Scripture that they that they have miss not only misinterpreted, but that they have totally Misconstrued and they will argue sideways left right up down Every direction about this need for the indefinite article and the demand of the indefinite article Is it's of little use to argue something that they have been so ingrained in typically I tend to go to Hebrews 1 Back to Psalms showing them that the son is called Yahweh or Jehovah Which I would usually say Jehovah of talking to them because they believe that the Tetragrammaton is meant to be pronounced Jehovah By the way, the Tetragrammaton is the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew And it is not Jehovah Not it is God's name in the scripture in the Old Testament and not Jehovah can't be number one.
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There's no letter J in Hebrew the J is a Germanic Sound that was later added Jesus.
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His name wasn't Jesus.
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It was yesu, you know They didn't have that sound and the alphabet Yahweh would have been the more likely pronunciation The adding of Adonai with Yahweh Combining the Adonai means Lord Adding the syllables.
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I'm sorry.
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Not the syllables the vowels of Adonai to Yahweh creates a yahoah Sound and they did that so they wouldn't misuse the sacred name of God So they added the vowels from Adonai into Yahweh Creating a yahoah or Jehovah into the word thus would later become Jehovah That's not an argument have with them either Because that's gonna take you nowhere but it's Truth is still truth But anyway, the point is this passage I find very interesting Because it's interesting too that they actually do that they say in the beginning the word was and In our translation that says in the beginning was the word So in this particular section, I would say the word was is a key word even though it is a It isn't one of the main words that most people think of most people we think When you're looking at a passage like this, you tend to focus on the word like word You know, the word word is what in Greek? Lagos All right What is the word? beginning Who said what? Okay, that's right.
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So you have our K Okay.
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All right.
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So in the beginning was the word So is what? In our K.
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This is in n is the word in the beginning is our K RK is where you get the word like archetype or our architecture something from the beginning the starting point RK is the is the is the is the prefix that we use for a lot of things Dark, you know the tallest point the height the starting point in that thing in our K and Ha Lagos ha is the Definite article Do you guys understand articles and how they work You okay if you have if I say Mike is a man That means you're one of many and that's an indefinite article if I say Mike is the man Whether I'm saying he's the man.
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We found him everybody grab him or if I say he's the man like yeah You the man, you know, whatever I'm indicating that out of many.
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He's the one Okay, and that's how the article works.
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It works in English the same way.
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We have the indefinite one of many He's a or we have the definite.
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He is the one out of the many, right? In Greek there is no indefinite article.
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There is no letter a in Greek you will not find that in the language the indefinite article is assumed when the Indefinite, I'm sorry.
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The indefinite article is assumed when the definite article is absent Let me say that again.
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The indefinite article is assumed when the definite article is absent So if I said Mike is mad Sounds funny.
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So like it sounds like I would be speaking like I almost like a robot Mike is bad Or like a caveman you are mad.
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You're a woman That That would be Where we would have to assume I'm saying Mike is a man All right, because I'm not saying he's the man So in Greek the indefinite article is assumed when there is no definite article.
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So here's where the Jehovah Witnesses make their argument And the word was God is actually Chi and Ha Lagos the word wait No, I'm sorry.
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I knew I was gonna get that wrong.
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Where's my eraser? Right here.
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Theos ain't ha Lagos and What's theos? God Ain't is was was the word What part is missing? The definite article God God does not have like over here And the word was with God that actually reads in the Greek and the word was with the God there is a definite article there It's a ain Ha Lagos Chi Prostantheon Prostantheon means with the God Okay, so there is a definite article here in the Greek But it's not translated in English because when you translate it into English It makes an a sentence which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because we don't use definite articles where they're not needed See, this is this is where translation sometimes becomes a difficult thing If you read something like Young's literal translation It often reads very funny because you'll see a lot of definite articles where they're not necessary in English Because they are in the Greek you have to understand the way Greeks Designated certain things was by articles and what they called articular and articular nouns If it was an articular noun it had the article if it was a or an Arthus I'm sorry and Arthus noun was a noun that did not have the article okay, so Kaiha Lagos Ain Prostantheon the and the word was with the God and God was the word it's how it would read in Greek But that is not how you translate it into English because How you translated into English is how English is supposed to be read and how English is read is What do we put at the beginning of the sentence? Typically Subject and the predicate comes at the end right if I say the boy threw the ball.
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What's subject? Boy, if I threw the ball was thrown by the boy.
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What's the subject the ball? Yeah, right it changes when you Senate structure matters in English, right? when Greek Senate structure still matters, but Senate structure is used differently Senate structure is not used to determine subject and predicate What's used to determine subject and predicate is nominative said subject nominate is predicate nominative The the subject nominative predicate nominative here.
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This is the subject.
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This is the predicate so how would you write it in English and The word was God.
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That's why It's translated the way that it is Now the argument from the Jehovah Witness is that God Must receive the indefinite article because it does not have the definite article Yeah, the people who put this together Were not Greek scholars in fact FF Bruce one of the greatest Greek scholars in history Said the only thing they proved by adding the indefinite article is their ignorance of the Greek language The only thing that they proved by adding the indefinite article is that this is all they understood They understood if it didn't have an article then it had to be in an Arthur's now, but it's not It's not an an Arthur's refused so much more of the Bible.
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Exactly.
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It creates a system of polytheism if you add the indefinite article a you have denied John's Context where he would have been a monotheist Because you've created even at best you've created henna theism and at worst you've created polytheism Henna theism is the idea that there is one God who is over other gods, but there are several gods It's still polytheistic, but you have one God who's the highest he's the he's the tribal leader of all the gods That's henna theism and that was that would be similar to what Jehovah Witnesses would believe because they believe Jesus is a created God They still got but he's created So he's a sub God or a demigod I have so much more to say If we could start over next week I'd love to deal more with how we do not need to add because this is not a quantitative noun This is a qualitative noun.
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I'll explain what that means next week and why that matters.
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All right, let's pray Thank you Lord for a time to study together in Jesus name.