How to Interpret the Bible | Andrew Rappaport | Striving for Eternity | SFE

How many of you, like me, wish that Matt would actually say what he thinks? I just wish for once he stops beating around the bush.

I mean, really. All right, so Matt said a lot of things. And I could sit up here and correct all of it.

But instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to teach you how to do that. All right? My goal, this is going to be a condensed version.

We have on our class, we have a Schreiber -Currin Academy. We have a bizarre model.

We figure we'll teach you for free. You can go on YouTube and get 20 classes for free. And that's how we make money.

No, that doesn't quite work. But they are available. There's 20 lessons that we have out on how to interpret the

Bible and how to do Bible studies. This is a condensed version of our seminar where we come into churches.

And we do it in eight hours over six sessions. And we try to teach people one weekend, we try to teach people what's wrong with all the people you've been listening to on the radio or on TV.

All right? Matt, maybe some names? Why are they wrong? Well, we're going to show you how to identify what's wrong with some of those teachers.

And so the thing is that this is the most important thing we could do. We hold in our hands, many of us, something that many of our brothers and sisters around the world, even today, do not have.

It's called God's Word. There are places in the world where they do not have full copies of the

Bible. We do. Many of us have many copies of the Bible, collecting dust.

So what I want to do with you guys is to show you ways to simply understand how to follow rules of interpretation.

I grew up in a Jewish family. So I didn't understand all the Christianese that you all speak.

You kind of talk funny. You don't realize that because some of you grew up in a church. But you have plenty of ways of speaking.

And you have language. It's all your own. And it's a thing that I ended up discovering, that there's ways that we end up seeing things in the

Bible if we understand who wrote it, why they wrote it, when did they write it, things like that.

Matt mentioned already, this is why I love Matt. He's one of the few people I know that actually gets this passage right.

You see, when the first time I heard someone preaching on the passage, and they asked

Jesus about the end times, and he says, no man knows the day or the hour. And I heard this pastor that was preaching for 20 minutes explaining why

Jesus Christ was fully God and knew everything, but somehow he didn't know this. I was very puzzled.

You know why? It's a Jewish idiom referring to marriage. I didn't see a problem in any of that.

He's just saying, the father decides when the marriage festival is going to begin. The son doesn't know.

In other words, he's saying, no man knows. The father knows. He's speaking of a marriage ceremony that the father decides when the time will begin.

And it was so simple to me. Why? Because I was grew up in an area with understanding that idiom.

We have idioms, right? I say, I'm so hungry I can eat a cow. How many of you believe

I can eat a cow? OK, one person has seen me eat. All right.

I have gone into a restaurant. We went down to South Carolina when

I was in college because there was a restaurant where if you had a 24 -ounce steak, you only had to pay half price.

They had a 48 -ounce steak where if you ate the whole thing, you didn't have to pay for it. My buddies wanted to see me do it.

I was 110 pounds, 120, maybe 130 at the time. Pounds. We went down there and I was not.

These big guys would eat this. I ate a 48 -ounce steak. Yeah, so me being the

Dracula Joker and the guy I am, I said, you know, I'm still a little hungry. The guy says, you know what? If you eat another couple of pounds, your whole table eats for free.

My three friends said, thanks for dinner. Thank you. But you realize that there's an idiom.

There's things we use in language that doesn't exactly mean literally what it should mean.

Right? So there are things we can talk about.

Like, you know, good, he's not here. So like the fact that we can sit here and say that, yes, when we look at something like Spriggan for when it speaks of Aaron, is that how the

Aaronic priesthood would be anointed? Yeah. Jesus was not

Aaron. He was Mount Kizzadak. Oops. Aaron's my family line, by the way.

So what I want to do is I would like to go over with you a little bit of a quick version of a seminar that has to come with a warning.

That's never good to start off with a warning. There's a high probability that at this hour,

I will upset you. I know this up front. I have no delusions.

I will teach you how to properly interpret God's word, which means I could expose at the best many passages you have in your favorite verse that at the beginning of your favorite verse for all of your life,

I'll say I'm sorry up front. Some of them are even my favorite verse, maybe. But I will try to teach you how to interpret by rules and not feelings, not your experience, and as Matt said, not your theological system or denomination.

One of the things that Matt and I have in common is we're men of the book. We don't fit perfectly into any theological system.

But dispensationalism is the right one. Um, hey, it was good enough for Paul.

It's good enough for me. So I first want to start with some tools.

And this is going to be really quick. The one thing I do like about being in Jersey is because in Jersey, we speak fast. I can actually speak like my normal pace.

And the rest of you can understand when I go around the country, I have to start to speak like this because they're not used to the way we are, right?

We're in a fast -paced culture. So let me start with some tools. You guys have, if you have a

Bible, OK, you have your phone, so same thing. You have the most important thing that you have to understand with your

Bible. That's the first thing. To understand the Bible, I want you to understand there's three different types of Bibles that you can have,

OK? If you're going to do serious study of God's word, you're going to want to stay in what's called a literal or a formal equivalent.

What this is, this is going to be where they translate from the Greek or the Hebrew, and they take the word, they translate it into, we'll use

English because that's what I hope we're all speaking. If anyone doesn't understand what I'm saying, then I'll get a big problem.

But if you take one word, you translate it, you take the next word, you translate it, and after you translate word by word, then you start to look at the language to figure out how you might need to shuffle words around or add words to make it flow better for that language.

How many people speak more than one language? You guys probably weren't born in America. We only speak one language here.

That's a problem you have, right? I had 11 years of Hebrew. I still didn't understand it, right?

So the thing is that when you see is when you have to translate, languages don't perfectly translate over.

So sometimes what you have to do is put words in to make it flow better in the new language. A word for word translation is going to get you closest to the original meanings of things.

So you're going to have your King James, your New King James, your ESV, your Holman, your

New American Standard Bible. All of those are going to be a literal or formal equivalent.

That's word by word. Those are going to be ones you want to look at and you want to use when doing serious study.

Now, I'm not saying that the others are bad. But if you want to do serious study and you don't want to go into the original languages, which, if you want to do real serious study, you won't do.

But I'll show you in a few minutes why that is later. But if you want to just stay off the English, you want to try to stay to one of those if you can do study.

So the next one down would be something called a freer or dynamic equivalent. This is going to be where you're taking sentence by sentence.

This is going to be like your NIV. Is NIV bad? No, that's fine to use an NIV for your devotions.

But if you're going to sit and use an NIV and try to focus on the specific words in the

NIV to make a doctrinal point, you may get into trouble. Because it's trying to translate the sentence, not the words.

The third is called a paraphrase. I'm not going to ask how many of you read the message. But read it like a commentary.

What that's trying to do is translate thought by thought. You're getting someone's interpretation of the

Bible. Is it bad? No. I read commentaries all the time. And I read something like the message or an

Amplified Bible because it is helpful. But you have to remember what type of translation it is.

Does that make sense to you guys? OK. So let's talk about models of interpretation. This is where I'm going to get in trouble.

All right, so let's look at some incorrect models. Now, OK, let's hope that you're a pastor that's on TV or you listen to the guys on the radio.

You're going to watch these things happen often. All right? First one is isolationism. Isolationism is going to be where you take the passage.

You're going to interpret the passage without any regard to the verses before it or the verses after it.

I love when I come into contact. Any of you have experiences with black people or Israelites? Some of you are saying, what?

Praise God, you don't know what they're like. I do street ministry. They are probably one of the roughest guys in the

UN, especially for someone like me. They believe that only blacks are going to heaven and that the

African slaves were brought over and that those were the Israelites. I present a real problem for them.

They're like, oh, wait a minute. I can trace my line all the way back through Levi. Can you?

Oops. That's how we figure out genealogy. They have a way of thinking. They say, the way you interpret the passage is not to read it like it's a alphabet.

They say, you have to read it line upon line, here a little, there a little.

So they say, you've got to grab here, and you grab there. No, that's not how you do it. So what they do is they grab one verse, they take it out of context, they grab another verse out of context, and ultimately what they do is they slam them together, and that's called proof texting.

You grab a verse over here, regardless of what the context is, you grab another verse over here, and you slam them together.

I'll show you some examples. The last one is spiritualizing, where you try to take something and give it a meaning. Let me give you the most popular one,

I believe. The Song of Solomon. What is the

Song of Solomon about? Is it about Christ and the church? So it had no purpose for 700 years?

Right? Actually, 500 years. No. You see, it's actually something that is glorifying of God.

It's talking about a marriage. It's a whole marriage ceremony. That has implications for the church.

By the way, side note. Why is it that we should be against same -sex marriage for a very simple reason?

What does marriage represent? It is a covenant between God and His people. Why is it that they don't want to just call it same -sex unions?

You know, it's funny. The one thing I always find is these are the same people that say there should be a separation of church and state. Really? Who gets to define the definition of marriage?

Oh, that's a church issue. Stay out of it. Right? They don't want to stay out of it. So let's look at some examples here.

First example on isolationism. If you know that this verse has now taken over in the last three years as the most popular verse over John 3 .16.

This verse, Jeremiah 29 .11, is on more refrigerators, backpacks, things like this.

This is now the most likely verse for more Christians. For I know the plans

I have for you, declares God, to give you a future and hope.

That's so good, isn't it? It makes me feel good. I just wonder, if I look at the context of that, why is this the known -to -life verse?

It's only six verses later, seven verses later. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Behold, I am sending on them sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like file figs, that they are so rotten they cannot be eaten.

I will pursue them with sword and famine and pestilence and make them a horror to the kingdoms of the earth and be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I've driven them.

How come no one's got that on their refrigerator? I did a seminar in Georgia, and one of the guys took that verse, put a nice picture of a sunset, and put it up on his

Facebook wall. And people were liking it. And he's like, I didn't even read it.

Wouldn't it be nice? I mean, if God just would tell us, who is he speaking to in Jeremiah 29?

Wouldn't it be nice if he... Oh, wait. One verse before, he just did that. For thus says the

Lord, when 70 years are complete for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill to you my promise to bring you back to this place.

Were any of you in the captivity for 70 years in Babylon? Then that verse wasn't for you.

You see, if we take the verse that we really like and it makes us feel good, so we rip it right out of its context and say, this is a promise.

God's gonna give me blessings. Seven verses later, he told Israel that he wasn't gonna give them blessings. He was gonna make them a horror to the nations.

Right? Context becomes important. When you rip a verse out of its context, you might make it say something it doesn't actually say.

This is a verse that was for those people who were taken captive in Babylon. And that's who that's for.

So if you were not one of those Israelites taken into captivity, the verse doesn't apply directly to you.

Oh, but wait, could it apply? Sure it can. You know what this does? When you look at this? What's this?

He will fulfill his promise. That's right. This verse is there to show us that God is faithful.

The things he promises, he will keep. He made very specific promises to the nation of Israel, and he fulfilled those promises.

He told them they would go into captivity for 70 years. They went into captivity for 70 years.

He said that during those 70 years, he would cure them of their idolatry. Guess what? Israel never had an idolatry problem since that captivity.

They traded in him for legalism. So let's look at another example.

Another one of the most misused ones. Matthew 18 to 19.

Again, I say to you, if two or three agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done to them by my

Father in heaven. Had a friend of mine in college who told me he had no money for a car. He was trying to give me a cosign of loan for him.

Yeah, I'm not that dumb. And so the next day he said, hey, I'm getting a brand new car. He had a brand new car.

Where did he get the money from? Did your parents suddenly change their mind and give you money? He said, no. I got a couple of friends of mine who agree with me on earth.

And where two or three agree, God's going to give me a new car. You know what? The very next verse is another one that's misused.

Look at this one. For where two or three who are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst. This is like every pastor of small church's favorite verse to use in a prayer meeting.

Well, for two or three who are gathered, are either of these verses dealing with either of those two contexts?

Church disciplines. Church discipline. These are dealing with an encouraging people when you're having to deal with a church discipline situation.

No pastor likes to deal with church discipline. I've counseled many pastors through different church discipline settings.

I've never met a single pastor that ever slept well before church discipline had to take place.

Okay? This is an assurance to someone that had to do something that's very uncomfortable. All right?

That's the two or three. This one, let me give you this one. This is proof testing. Grab one verse from one spot.

Grab another verse from another spot. Slam them together. This was used on me when I did a debate with Joshua Evans.

Joshua Evans is one of the leading Muslim apologists, Montclair State University.

By the way, Joshua Evans now has in his contract, after that discussion,

Joshua Evans will not be on stage with a Christian ever again. In other words, he always likes talking to people about what

Christianity believes to people who don't know what Christianity believes. Here's what his argument was.

He said that he was going to prove to his audience that Jesus Christ was not God. He said, see here?

Truly, truly, I say to you that a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

John 13, 16. He said, see, Jesus is saying that if you have our servant, you can be greater than your master.

You can't be equal to your master. And then he goes to John 6, 57 and says, as the living

Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he will also live because of me.

And he says, see, the Father sent him that makes him a servant. Therefore, Jesus can't be

God because he was sent. And if he's sent, he can't be equal to the Father. You see, each one of those have two totally different contexts.

And neither one of them were trying to make the point that he was using. But no one in the audience that was

Muslim understood that. Here's one that, when we talk about spirituality,

I went to, my wife is from Hong Kong, and so we went to church once with her sister.

And this was Resurrection Sunday. This was the pastor's verse. John 20, verse one.

It says, and now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark, and they saw the stone and it had been taken away from the tomb.

That's a good verse for Resurrection Sunday, right? Yeah. You know what? I got more when I was sitting in the

Chinese service and not understanding a word of what was being said and just reading the Bible than I did out of this message that this guy preached.

Focused on one word. Dark. His whole message was about dark times in our lives, and we have spiritual depression, and we have things that don't go our way.

The whole thing was on darkness in our life. At the end, when people are reading the pastor, this one guy that was two in front of me was saying, you know, pastor, you know, first of all, the pastor said, hey,

I haven't seen you since Christmas, so I kind of figured out who he was. But the crazy guy says, oh, pastor, that was such a great message.

I would never have seen that in a text. Madness, spiritual paroxysm. I suffered from it.

I'm just a little bit more in my sanctification because I learned to hold my tongue that time. I was going to go, of course you wouldn't have seen it in a text.

Christ wouldn't have seen it in a text because I wasn't in the text. You want to know why it was dark?

The sun had arisen. That's why it was dark. While it was still dark.

I mean, does that take a lot? I mean, it seems pretty easy. It was still dark.

The sun hadn't risen. It wasn't talking about depression. This is not a verse talking about depression.

He didn't mention what the tomb was representing, but spiritually I was kind of always wondering, as he was preaching through this, okay, if the darkness is talking to depression, what's the tomb?

What's the stone going to be? Let's deal with some correct models. It's always good to have some correctness.

We want to use an inductive Bible study. We want to take what the text says and look at it in big picture and understand what the context is of things and break it down piece by piece.

We want to use what I'm going to say, a normal or literal interpretation. As a dispensationalist, we would always say we use a literal interpretation.

If you don't know the term dispensationalist, that's okay, but we can talk about it. The thing is,

I say a normal interpretation. Why? Because if I say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow, that's an idiom and you know not to take that literal.

There are certain things that you know not to take literal. In other words, if someone has a literal dream of a dragon with keys, you know it's a literal dream and you don't have to take the keys as literal.

Just saying. So the importance of context, right? You guys are picking up where Matt and I kind of have some disagreements.

I'll let you know which one's right. Just saying. So let's look. The first thing

I want to talk about is there's going to be a biblical context. What's happening at this time biblically?

There is a big difference between what happened in Israel and what happened in the New Testament. For example, someone asked a question to Matt about the baptisms.

What was the baptism of John? Many of you probably don't know what the baptism of John was.

The baptism of repentance. Why would John the Baptist did so strange? Very simple. John was doing a

Jewish ceremony when a Gentile would want to be Jewish, he would be immersed into a pool as a ceremony of conversion to Judaism.

That's what John was doing. That seems really strange that John is doing that to Jewish people.

Right? That's the whole thing. So what's going on in a biblical context?

What's going on in a historical context? That becomes important. Where are you in history?

As we just looked at Jeremiah 29, where is that in history and how does that play into it? Cultural context.

I already gave you the example. One of the few times when Matt... When we talk about the fact that this idiom of only the father knows the day and the hour, that's a cultural thing.

You have to understand the culture to pick that up. Grammatical context. We can look at that, but there's times where even the specific letters, the specific extensive words can make a difference.

A spiritual context. Alright? So let's look at some examples. I'm going to try to go through this kind of quickly.

And now I have the advantage of going this way. You can go to Carm and follow up and see more details of everything he went over on the doctrinal grid.

Same thing here. I have all this on... We have 20 lessons on YouTube. So if you want to slow down and go at a slower pace, it's all available to you.

And it's really expensive. It's free. So...

That's strange, right? A Jew giving things away. Jesus Christ.

I'm like the only one that's not a lawyer in my family. Right? You know? So... So when we talk about historical context, we want to understand...

Think about understanding the Book of Jonah. Why is it that Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh?

You know, when I preached through the Book of Jonah, there were so many commentaries about how bad the Ninevites were. They were wicked people.

They would take their enemies and they'd put them in like a plaster paris with their mouth open and have them...

And all these commentaries were saying, Jonah was afraid. No, no, no, no. Jonah says what? In chapter 4.

He knew God would show mercy and he did not want that kind of mercy. He did not like those

Ninevites. He wanted justice. He wanted judgment. Actually, I think he went up on that hill in Jonah chapter 4 to get you watching.

I'm waiting. That fire's going to come down just like it did in Sodom. I'm waiting. He did not want that because they were enemies.

Kind of like Republicans and Democrats. They could never get together. So you have to understand if you're going to look at Daniel, you're going to need to understand something about Babylonian history.

When is that? You're going to need to understand the Medo -Persian Empire if you're going to understand the Book of Daniel. Okay?

So much of the Old Testament is going to require some study of history. Understand the history of the times.

Something else that is helpful is geography. Let me show you a quick picture to show this. It doesn't come up so well on the thing here.

You see here? These are all mountains. You see that? Those are all mountain ranges in the

Sea of Galilee. How many people have been in the Sea of Galilee? Matt tried walking on water there. It didn't work well for him.

If I was there with Matt, I would baptize Tim and just held him under until he gave up.

But here's an interesting thing. I'm going to show you how just understanding something of geography might give you a better appreciation of the

Bible. Do you remember when they were talking and they're on a boat and all of a sudden a storm comes up and the sailors get nervous?

They were fishermen. They're used to being on this water. Okay? Let me tell you something about the way how many people have been into boating?

Very few. I grew up in a Jewish family. I understand much about boating.

I've been in some rough waters. I've only been steered once on a boat. It was when I was at the bridge of the my father had me to steer, to pilot the boat.

I could see the wave, the next wave that we were supposed to go over. I'm 35 feet off the sea.

That's how high the bridge was. Well, these guys had that experience. Why? Because you see this bridge.

They're in a valley. A storm's going to come. They can't see over the mountain range, over that hill range when they're in this water.

So storms come in from nowhere. See, if you see a storm, if you're out at sea, when you're in the ocean and you're far enough out, you can actually see storms from miles away and you know where to avoid them.

But when they come in over a range, they almost seem like they come out of nowhere.

In other words, if you're fishing on a regular basis, like we're all fishing on this bed of water right here, you're used to being in storms that you couldn't prepare for because you didn't see them coming.

So does that tell you something about this storm that they were caught in? When they get nervous. These are people who are used to being caught in storms and they're scared.

That was not a normal storm. Okay? Something like just this ridge line helps us to understand that there's something different about that.

Let's take a look at a cultural context. Is Jesus Christ God when

He says He's the Son of God? Well, if you have that, knock on your door with people that want to give you a magazine called

The Watchtower and they're going to want to share with you that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not

God. Is that what Son of God means? Well, it's a simple question to ask them.

Does that mean He wasn't a man? Because He called Himself Son of Man more than anything else. Just ask Him. And by the way, if He was like not

God, why did He always have to remind people He was the Son of Man? Why would He have to keep saying He's a man?

I mean, at some point, if someone keeps reminding you they're a human being, what do you do at some point? You're like, of course you're a human being. What do you think you are?

Why did He have to keep reminding them? What does Son of mean? Does it mean offspring? Well, let's see.

Here we see James and the son of Zebedee. Who's his father? Zebedee. That seems pretty easy.

No, it actually can't be. He's the Sons of Thunder. See, James and John are the Sons of Thunder. Zebedee must be a storm.

That's the name of lightning, right? Zebedee and Mary were two clouds of, clappings of thunder that got together.

No. No. This means they were loud and bolsterous. What do you mean? They're open -air creatures.

Did you know So, the thing. By the way, you know, the pastor said that it makes him nervous.

I get nervous doing street evangelism every time I go. I have a friend of mine who actually has been a professional fighter in cages.

He said he would rather get in a cage and fight someone than go on the streets of New York with me and openly proclaim the gospel.

That's how afraid he is. But here, what you see is Son of has a different meaning.

It means the character of. So, when it says Son of God, it means he is the character of God, not the offspring of God.

That Jesus is the character of man, not just the offspring of man. It can mean offspring, but that's not the only meaning of it.

Let's look at a grammatical one. 1 John 5 .13. Matt was talking about the fact of can you lose your salvation?

Well, I'm going to give you a verse to show that you cannot. Read this. And this is where grammar matters.

This is why you should go back into the original languages if you can. And afterwards, I can give you some helpful tools that can help you.

But I write these things to you who, what, believe, what context is belief? Is that past, present, future?

Present. Okay, so you currently believe. To those who currently believe in the name of the

Son of God, that you may, what's this? Is that future? Past, present.

You may know that you have, you're going to get it later? No, you have eternal life.

If you know God, then you have eternal life.

It's not something you get later. Just the simple thing of the tense in the

Greek can make all the difference. Sometimes our English doesn't have that worded too well.

Let's look at an example of that. Now, if you have eternal life, eternal life, eternal life, eternal eternal life.

Is that Yes it If you Not because he denied Him three times and he asked Him three times. He was grieved because Christ was questioning the level of love that he had.

Here he's saying, do you love me? Oh, you know I like you. No, no, no. Do you love me? You know I like you.

Do you even like me? You know all things, Lord. You know that I at least like you.

There is, after what he went through, yes, he was questioning his own level of love. But you see, even in something like this, the grammar matters.

The specific tenses, the specific words used make a difference. I'm not going to get into this, but I'll just touch on it lightly.

Revelation 3, when you end up seeing there, the focus that people do is, they say that the hot and cold, people try to argue the hot and cold, or whether you're really on fire for God, or just dead.

Does God want you, as a believer in Christ, being dead? No. Okay?

So this is not speaking of that God would wish that you were really on fire, or just warming a pew.

It's just, He doesn't want you in between. That's what people talk about. They talk about being lukewarm. No, this is talking about historically, culturally, where this is geographically.

You understand that this, in Laodicea, there was two streams of water. A hot springs that was good for medicating.

Many of us like to go into a hot tub. It feels good, especially after doing some heavy training or something.

Or they also had a cool stream of refreshing water, and even like a nice cold glass of water.

Refreshing. How about lukewarm? What do you do when you have lukewarm? Water that was really cold, but you left it out in the summer?

You left it out on a hot summer day, and then you tried to drink it. You wanted that cold, refreshing water. What do you want to do with that water?

Spit it out. Exactly what He says there. It's talking about the water basis. They would understand immediately.

But for us, we might have to understand something about that area. So let me deal with something called genres.

You're going to study the Bible. The first thing you need to know is a genre. Some of you maybe now understand what this term is, because you use iTunes.

Not Matt. He doesn't like Apple products. Some of us are enlightened.

Some of us still want to be in the Dark Ages. But one of many other things we disagree.

See, it's not just theology that he and I disagree with. So genre is a type of literature.

And we have several different types of literature. We have historical narratives. In the

New Testament, this is going to be your gospel. It will be historical narrative. You're going to have Hebrew poetry.

You're going to have wisdom literature. You're going to have instructional literature.

So let me go through some rules for these really quickly. And I want you to have these, because this is going to tell you, how do we follow these rules to make sure we are interpreting the

Bible correctly so that we know what things Matt said in the last hour are wrong? Okay?

So historical narratives, this is really important.

Historical narratives do not directly teach doctrine. In other words, just because David had many wives is not a cause for you to have many wives.

You know why it records that David had many wives? It's going to blow you away, right? Because David had many wives.

It's what actually happened. It's not saying it's encouraged and you should do it.

Okay? In fact, if you actually read the Bible, you realize that the Bible says this got him and more so his son

Solomon into a lot of trouble. And he shouldn't have done it. So historical narrative is going to record things that don't directly teach doctrine.

They do not always record what should happen. They're going to record what did happen.

See, the Bible is 100 % accurate in its written writings, and what it records is what actually happened, not necessarily saying you should follow all these things.

Historical narratives do not always include statements of whether it's good or bad. Okay? There's things that you end up seeing that it's just because the

Bible describes something doesn't mean you go and follow it just because it's in the

Bible in a historical narrative. Just because, you know, for example,

Matt touched on women preaching. One of the things in the open air or evangelism circles is should a woman get up on a street corner and do evangelism in an open air?

One of the most common verses people use to justify that is the woman at the well. They will try to say it.

I'm not saying I'm giving a position on this. I'm not saying what my position is. You can come back to me after. But the thing is that what people will do is they'll say, well, see, the woman at the well, she went into the town and she proclaimed openly what happened.

It doesn't say whether that was good or bad. Rahab, what did she do when the spies came and people asked?

She did what? She lied. Does that mean you can lie? Oh, I don't know.

How many Christians I've heard use that as proof that they can tell a lie to protect themselves? You know what?

The Bible doesn't say what she said was good or bad in that situation. But the Bible elsewhere tells us that lying is a sin.

But she's in the Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11. Not for her lie. She's in that text because of her faith.

Okay, so she failed in that one area of having faith. Let's not be too hard on her. I mean, Abraham, he did it not once.

He did it twice lying about who his wife was. So, hey. All right, so. Historical narratives are not allegories with hidden meanings.

You know, like our covenantal friends would want to say. But no, seriously, there are people who take historical narratives.

And I'm going to tell you something. You deal with any cults, you're going to find that almost all of them want to focus on Old Testament historical narratives.

Why? Because they can make it say things that they want it to say. Because most people don't understand the history to know what it actually said.

Historical narratives are stories about God first and foremost. All right? Hebrew poetry is really hard.

This you're going to deal with different types. I'm going to just put these up here. But you're going to deal with parallelism.

Where you have two lines. That one will be a climactic. One line builds on the second.

Maybe they're the same. Maybe they're opposite. You have different types of poetry. You have to understand a type of poetry to understand the interpretation of it.

Wisdom literature. They often use parallelisms. They use comparisons, contrasts, metaphors, similes, portraits.

Proverbs 31, a portrait of my wife. She's not here.

I won't get in trouble. She hates when I say that, but it's actually true. But you end up having with wisdom literature the generalities.

By the way, wisdom literature. I'm going to probably go a little bit over here. I'll just say.

Many people take a parable. Train up a child in the way he should go.

And when he is old, he will not depart. I don't know how many parents see a child that went way on. And they say, that's a promise.

I taught him as a child. He's going to return to me. No. That's not what that passage is saying.

Why? Because when you look at Hebrew, you know what it says? You train up a child in the way he intends. In his own desire to live.

You spoil a child. Let him be selfish. Give him everything he wants, and he's never going to depart from that.

That's what the text actually says. Now, reverse of that means we have to train up our children against their own selfish tendencies.

If they're ever going to be anything other than selfish. You spoil a child. You ever see a spoiled child?

You ever have to work with them when they become adults? Yes. So this is wisdom literature is not going to be their generalities.

Prophetic literature, if you're going to do something in the prophets. You want to understand who the prophet is.

The reason for the prophecy. Who his audience is. Identify the time of his prophecy. The location of his prophecy.

These things become important. Just like we went through with Jeremiah. These are important. You have to know who he's speaking to.

You have to understand who the Ninevites are. Who Jonah is. And why he didn't want to go. Instructional literature, by the way, is the easiest to interpret.

If you want to start interpreting scripture. Stay to, like, mostly you're going to see in the New Testament. Those epistles.

Those letters. They're mostly instruction. Now, when I say mostly. Because, you know, there's times when you have things that are historical narrative.

But then there would be a part where there's instruction. For example, you would have something like Matthew. Matthew is historical narrative.

For the most part. But then you have Matthew 5 through 7. That's instructional. You have to know the exact text you're dealing with.

Which genre is it? Okay? So when you come to instructional literature. You want to understand who is it speaking to.

Ladies, should you have your heads covered? Yes. Depends. Okay. So it depends on the specific issues being addressed.

Okay? So you have to go into the context of the audience.

What did the writer mean to the audience in who he was speaking to? This is essential.

Because otherwise people start trying to make it about saying anything they wanted to say. Here a little. There a little.

Right? Just grab the brackets and all slam them together. No. You know, when you sit there and you look at the context.

You can see that Paul writes to Timothy. And writes specific instructions for that situation.

That may be true for only that situation. Okay? So you have to look at the context.

Now this I want to look at in investigation real quick. This is going to be something you can do with any text of scripture.

I have in the available if you want is a little sheet. That just goes through these five questions.

And will ask you. So you can take a text and ask who? Try to determine who is the writer?

Who are the recipients? Determine any characters that are mentioned in the text. Determine if there is any details about them.

Like their nationality, their occupation, their family. You know, anything about them, their characters.

Paul writes and says, hey, notice I'm writing you this with my own hand. How do we know he's writing with his own hand?

Anyone know? Well, he says so. And he gives an example. Notice the big letters

I'm using. Why would he use big letters? Because a lot of people think he had eye problems.

Okay? He needs glasses like old men like Matt. So ask where?

Don't worry. I'll get it back tomorrow. You know,

I wasn't going to say, you know, you guys. You may not realize it. The speakers this weekend need an accumulative

IQ of over 320. If we throw that in, it might be 350.

All right, so where? You want to ask where? So when we talk about, you want to determine where is the author writing?

Where did John write the book of Revelation? In exile in Patmos. Hey, that has something to do with what was going on there.

Determine who the recipients are. Okay? Determine any of the significant geographical features or localities.

Why, you know, I mentioned in the Sea of Galilee earlier. You know, why is it that Jesus, he speaks to 5 ,000, they're feeding 5 ,000.

He gets on a boat and gets off and pushes off the sea. Anyone know why he might have done that? See how many of you guys understand open air?

The sound, exactly. The water amplifies off the sound. Do you know that there were guys that would preach to 10 ,000 people and they didn't have these little microphone things?

They actually could be heard. They used the surroundings around them to be able to amplify their voice.

That's why Jesus goes off on the water. He wasn't, as one commentator tried to say,

Jesus was not afraid that the crowd was going to trample him when he preached.

Okay? He wanted his voice to be heard. That's why he ends up doing that. All right? So you want to look at the when.

Okay? When is the text written? You want to look at, determine if there's a time of the year, maybe a day, maybe festivals.

Determine where this may fit into God's plan. You know, you'll end up seeing, well, I'm going to give you an example here.

Nehemiah 1, Nehemiah 2, right? You see here it mentions the month of Herod.

Now, by the way, that's going to, you've got to pretend like you're going to spit, okay? It's a Chai of Herod, okay?

Teach you guys a little Hebrew. So the month of Herod is about, you know, going to be like November, December time frame.

This now says Nisa. Nisa is going to be about March, April time frame.

In other words, between chapter 1 and chapter 2, when Nehemiah is sitting there, before he goes before the king, he's been had.

You know, like people sit there and go, well, gee, it seems like the king said, what's on your mind? And he's got a whole plan.

Yeah, he's got a whole plan because he had a whole four or five months to think about it. It's not like it just caught him off guard.

He had time. How do we know that? Because the months are mentioned. We also have the 20th year mentioned, so we can date that to 446

B .C., all right? So you want to look at the what, all right?

When we look at what, we want to determine, you know, any key themes. If there's going to be key indicators to the text.

You know, there's going to be, you know, things like the fact that he had four different gospels that focus on four different aspects of Christ.

His kingship, his servantship, his manhood, his divinity. Four different aspects of him.

That helps in understanding the different writers and what their goal was. Determining any quotations from non -Biblical writings is another thing.

You end up seeing things that are quoted from other books. Just because the Bible quotes some book doesn't mean that other book is inspired by God.

The book of Enos is not a book of the Bible just because someone quotes it.

Okay? It would be like me and my book that's coming out, you know, stealing an image from Qarm and then saying that Qarm's actually inspired.

I did actually. Matt, if you're loving my book that's coming out next month, he says, hey, that's the only thing he noticed in the entire book.

The one picture that I took from Qarm, you know? Alright, so that's why. Determine, you know, why the author provides the purpose for the text.

And with this, let me give you really quick, let me give you some things why.

How many of you guys love studying the book of Leviticus? A few of you. You know, here's what you do.

You want to figure out why God has Leviticus? I want you to do something. I want you to read Leviticus in one sitting.

Try this. And look for repetition. Look for words that repeat. You're going to find something.

The first half of Leviticus is going to have repetition on certain words. Cleanliness.

Uncleanliness. Purity. Unpurity. Okay? You're going to see them throughout. The second half, you're going to see a different repetition.

I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God. Actually, if I was to pull out

Leviticus, it would be repeated and I would have to keep going. Leviticus is trying to say that we can't just enter into God's presence.

We can't just rush in. He was saying that they had to be cleansed. And he could give them these rules because he has the right to because he is the

Lord, they are God. Let me give you an example, though, out of John 20, verse 31.

But these things were written. Isn't that nice? John is letting us know why he wrote them. Now we don't have to wonder why. He's saying these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

Christ. That's not his last name, by the way. Christ is a

Greek word that means anointed. It's the same word we have in Hebrew meaning

Messiah. Christ the Messiah. That you might believe that Jesus is the

Messiah, the Son of God. We know that, right? What's he saying? He's the Messiah, he's God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Why is John writing this? So that you can know that Jesus is the Messiah, he's God, and that you might have life in that name.

See, John makes it easy because in another book of his he gives us a reason. First John 5, he says I write these things so that to you who believe in his name, the name of the

Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. He gives us the why.

So, when you do all that, all that is the research you should do when you come to a text.

Before you come to any interpretation. You say, that sounds like hard work. Yes! It could be because none of you are 2 ,000 years old.

I know Matt looks like he's 2 ,000 years old. He walks around like he's 2 ,000 years old, but he actually isn't.

So, the thing is this. He was walking with a cane. But the thing is that none of us understand and remember that culture.

We have to do that research. Because if you don't do that, if you don't do all this study, how do you know you're interpreting it correctly?

Let me give you some things to do when it comes to the interpretation. What's called charting a passage.

When you chart a passage, what we want to do is notice sentences. If someone asks me, how do you know that you're following the right way to interpret the

Bible to know what it says? I say very simply, God gave us language. Language has grammars.

Things like sentences. First sentence you need. A verb, a subject, and a complete thought.

That's what you do. Start looking for those things. So let's take an example of that. So many people use this passage.

I don't know any mission conference that doesn't deal with this passage. Matthew 28, 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And what is the verb? Anyone know? It is not to go.

I color coded it so it should be easy. It's in red. Make. Do you know that in the

Greek, the word for go is actually an adverb. It's a supporting verb. In other words, it should be translated go be, make disciples.

In other words, as you go about your day, do you know what you should be doing? Making disciples. Alright. Let me deal with this one real quick.

An example of how to chart. One of the things to do is you never want to focus on the minors. Okay? So when you deal with this, what you want to do is look at prepositional phrases.

I know. I'm using language that most of us hated when we were in school. Right? I failed

English. That's why I went into computer science. It was a language I could understand. Okay. So what you have here is, let's say we want to get rid of the prepositional phrases.

Right? Because this is a passage people bring up. 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17.

All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man about may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Sorry. I didn't get anything in the translation. So let's deal with some of them. First I want to show you some of them.

There's some parallelism here. Any of you pick up on the Jewish parallelism? No. Okay, let me make it easier for you. Here you go.

So what is teaching? It is right thinking. What is the proof? It is wrong thinking. What's correction? Deal with wrong behavior.

What's training? Deal with right behavior. You see the parallels? I color coded it to make it a little easier for you.

You see, you have these parallels between right and wrong thinking and behavior. In other words, this is trying to show that whether it's in right or wrong behavior, right or wrong thinking,

God's Word has answers. But check it out. Those are all prepositional phrases.

So let's cross out the prepositional phrases. I'm not like Thomas Jefferson trying to scratch out the

Bible. Please don't hold this against me. It's to illustrate something.

So what is the importance? Well, let's strip that out altogether and make it easier to read. All scriptures breathe out and prophetical that the man of God may be completely equipped.

You know what the purpose of God's Word is? So that you would be complete and equipped by the

Word. By the way, tell the answer right there. We'll deal with that tomorrow when it comes to Thomas. First Corinthians 13.

When you do this, you want to start... I'm going to go through these kind of quickly and just put them up here for you.

But you want to start examining the context of all those things. You want to do research. Why? Because the reality is that hopefully you're seeing how easy it is to misinterpret

God's Word. How easy is it? Super easy. It's done all the time.

All you've got to do is turn on the TV, on Christian TV, and you'll hear it. All you have to do is turn on the radio and you'll hear many guys who are going to misuse

God's Word. How hard is it to get God's Word, the interpretation of God's Word, right?

It takes study. But is there anything more important that we should be focused on our time to get it right?

This is the God of the universe who is speaking to you and on and telling you and on what is going to make us thoroughly equipped and complete.

I mean, people want, some of you go, well, I just want to know God's will. Study the

Bible. But I want to know, should I marry this person or that person?

Well, God's not going to tell you that. I know there's some people that think that, you know, a friend of mine,

Roy Purple, tells a story about someone, he was in a church and the guy was looking to marry someone. He married someone in the choir because God told him to.

It was in the Bible. Grace be unto you. And her name was? Grace. That's not how you read the

Bible. That's not what that passage means. By the way, he found that out because he was telling a case where someone was reading the

Bible and not sure if she should go be with the guy she was having an affair with or whether she should stay with her husband. And God spoke to her through his word and he should agree to Colossians and said, put on the new man.

Wow. Yeah. Now, if you cringed at the second and not the first, they're actually both the same problem.

This is why it's so important for us to do the hard work, what may be hard work. By the way, let me end on this point.

I do hope that those of you who are here, and I hope if you see just an inkling, this is just really quick and 55 minutes, okay, of going through this word.

There's a lot more that needs to be shared in how to interpret God's word. And you know what? Your pastor, if he is faithful, does this every week.

A sermon could take 20 to 30 hours of preparation. Do you pray for your pastor?

Most people think that a sermon is just something they think of Saturday night. I know, because one of the rules

I have when I was a pastor, I had guys that thought they were called to ministry. I had a very simple principle. You feel called to ministry?

Okay, here's what we're going to do. You prepare a sermon. When you think you're done, you come with me. I want three full weekends of your time.

You're staying in my house, and we're going to get to work. And one guy that did this is I got on a show. This is what you're going to do, and then you're going to preach.

Three weekends. You know what we did on those three weekends? We went through all the work of interpretation, and he discovered what he thought was a sermon wasn't anything like what a sermon was.

Because when you're going to declare thus says the Lord, you better make sure you're right. And you better put that work in, because this is not something to be toyed with or played with.

Literally, people's spiritual lives rest upon a right interpretation of God's word.

It's not something we should take lightly. We have the God of the universe speaking to us.

I have a friend of mine that when he goes over to Jordan, he goes to Jordan, and when he speaks to people, he has to be careful.

He has to be careful because when he goes to Jordan, he goes at the invitation of the king.

You see, he knows the king of Jordan. He went to school with the king of Jordan. So everything he does represents back to the king of Jordan.

You know why? Because when he walks the streets, he walks the streets with the royal guard. Brothers and sisters, when you and I walk the streets of earth, we walk the streets reflecting back to our king.

And when we open God's word and teach people, we're saying thus says the king.

Let us make sure we're accurate. Let us not toy with it or take it lightly. Let's make it something we can rush into.

This is God's word. God has spoken to us.

In a world that is believing that everything is relative, we have something that's authoritative and absolute.

And we can say thus says the Lord, and know this is what he has said. But we want to make sure we're accurate.

Alright, so let's close with that. Lord, we are humbled that you would entrust us with your word, that you would give us something that we can look to and know when we declare.

As Matt discussed, there are some things that are very clear. There are some things that are the priority issues that we must get right.

And Lord, there's a lot more issues that we struggle with, that we go through the scriptures and as brothers and sisters in Christ, we come before you knowing that we could be wrong in some areas.

And asking that you would help us to understand your word so we would rightly divide your word, so that we would be able to get it right, because it is thus so important.

And Lord, even though as brothers and sisters in Christ, we differ with you. May we differ,

Lord, with humility and charity and love for one another, because we all are trying to be diligent in the study of your word.

May you, by the person of the Holy Spirit, illuminate our minds to an understanding of your word, as we put you in the study and the work, because we love you and we want to know more about you.

You reveal yourself through your word, so we want to know. We thank you in Christ's name. Let's thank