20 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Prayer

Prayer and Bible Interpretation in Acts 6

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Biblical Harmonetics. I know you're sad. This is actually the last lesson, and if you go and you grab your syllabus, well, this lesson's not in there, so don't bother grabbing it.

All right, so, but you can get a syllabus if you want and you're following along, although I suggest that at this point, if you want to get the syllabus, it's because you want to start back at the beginning about 20 lessons ago and go from there, I hope.

But we do welcome some of the new students that have been joining with us. We appreciate it. Starting next class, we are going to go back to studying systematic theology. So, we will be getting into systematic theology, doing the School of Systematic Theology.

We hope that that will be taking everything that we've been learning these 20 weeks and putting that into practice now in a broader scale, kind of doing that topical Bible study that we talked about some classes ago now, but taking the entire Bible and looking at all the topics that deal with theological things, putting them together and getting our systematic theology, but still using everything that we learned here, still needing to apply the proper rules of interpretation to every text that we come to.

And that becomes really important when it comes to systematic theology, because a lot of times people let their theological system dictate the interpretation and not the text. Big problem. But we'll look into that.

So, you could join that, starting with lesson one of our systematic theology, and you can always go find those on YouTube down here. It goes to the website, and then from there you can go over to the YouTube channel.

The Apostles’ Ministry of Prayer and the Word

So, we are hoping that you are able to join in this class where we are going to discuss the role that prayer has in Bible interpretation. Now, this may seem odd for some because many people seem to think that there is some sort of a dichotomy between studying the Word of God and doing the interpretation and prayer.

This sometimes comes across, you hear people that will speak as if when we read the Bible that is God speaking to us, and if we're taking time in prayer that's us speaking to God. That is true, but it's not a clear-cut dichotomy because there should be overlap between them.

There should be a case where we are having our time in prayer is also engaging with the Scriptures, and our time of studying God's Word should also be heavily spent in prayer. Now, what I'd like to do is to take a look at Acts chapter 7.

If you'd open your Bible with me, because we don't have a graphic on it. So, if you'd open your Bible to Acts chapter what did I say, 7? Sorry, Acts chapter 6. If you'd open your Bible to Acts chapter 6, I want to read the first few, first 6 -7 verses of Acts so that we can see what's going on here because you're going to see that this is going to be where we're going to spend some time discussing here.

So, Acts chapter 6 starting in verse 1. Now, in the days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenist. Now, let me stop. A Hellenist, now we're going to actually kind of practice some of what we have been learning and interpreting this passage.

What's a Hellenist should be a thing that you should ask when you get to this point. A Hellenist is a person of a Jewish descent that was at that time Hellenized. In other words, they were influenced by Greek thought and Greek practice.

So, though they were Jewish, they lived in a Greek culture. So, they were kind of, shall we say, secular Jews maybe or cultural Jews. So, it's something that you'd want to keep in mind when you read that.

So, because that becomes important because there's going to be this distinction between the Jewish Jews and the Hellenist Jews, the Greek Jews. So, it's kind of like as if they're two separate groups of people.

So, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews. See, the Hebrew Jews, notice, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. What's the daily distribution in widows?

And going through and giving some of the background in a way of practicing what we've been learning. The daily distribution was something that would happen in the synagogues would be that the widows would actually, the synagogues would actually raise money to take care of the widows.

And so, the daily distribution would be that, the bread and money for the widows of the community. So, in other words, welfare was not a government responsibility. It was a church responsibility. And in the first century, the church took on that same thing the synagogues would do, is to take care of their own.

If they had someone in the church who was not a, didn't have anyone in the family that could take care of them, the church would take care of them. And they'd have a daily distribution. But what was happening was that the Hebrew Jews were being taken care of and the Gentile or the cultural Jewish people, Hellenist Jews, were not being cared for.

Okay, what do you mean to say Gentile there? That was a mistake. They were Jewish. Gentile means a non-Jew. So, it says here, verse 2, chapter, Acts 6 verse 2, and the twelve, that's the twelve apostles, the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up the word of God to serve tables.

Now, a couple of things as we go through this. They're gathered where? They're in Jerusalem. This is where the church started. This is where we had things happening. Peter preaches, 120, reaches out to 5 ,000.

So, you now have thousands of people. And they gather them all together. Okay, this is something that is, they see this happening, they want to address this issue, they want everyone there to address the issue.

So, they gather everyone to one place so that they can discuss this. And it is an interesting word here. He says, should we preach, should we give up the preaching of the word of God to deacon us? That's the serving of tables.

Does deacon us sound like a word you may be familiar with? Yeah. It is the word we know of as deacon. This is the first use we see of deacon in reference to the church as a possible title or position.

We don't see this mentioned elsewhere. But, so we have here is that, therefore the brothers, therefore brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good reputation. So, first off that we see with the deacons where they were men, kind of have to be a brother and a man.

But they say, pick out seven, and here's the qualifications that they gave, of good reputation, full of the spirit, and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. Okay, so if you notice there, there's qualifications.

There is some question whether these men were the first deacons. There is some thought that they were, but basically what we end up having is we have a case where we're looking at something that could be the first deacons or it could just be this is how they chose to do this, that they were going to bring in these men and basically from there maybe they became deacons, but these men were going to act to fulfill this purpose that they had.

So, that's kind of the goal. So, what we end up with is we now have where we want to be here is in verse four, but we will devote ourselves to two things. So, it's the apostles, those that are proclaiming God's word, are going to devote themselves to two things.

What are those two things? Prayer and the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering and they chose and it gives the names, right? So, really it's verse four we want to focus on here.

It's that the apostles felt that their ministry, their purpose was two-fold. That they were to be in the business of looking to prayer and the ministry of the word, the study and proclamation of the word.

Prayer, Humility, and Dependence on the Holy Spirit

Prayer is actually a very important aspect of our Bible study and it's something that many people overlook and take for granted. But an important thing that you should do as you're studying through a text, you should be praying through the interpretation that you have.

The reason I say that is because what we end up with is that prayer, it is a way of us talking to God, but prayer is also us aligning our will with God, our desires with God. What I notice sometimes is that when we study theology, we study a lot, we look into the meaning of a passage and we're doing a lot of the study, we can get so engrossed in that to thinking that we've got it all figured out.

Prayer helps us to realize that we are dependent upon the Lord. We are not self-sufficient, but that we rely on Jesus Christ. And even in the interpretation of the word of God, we must in that point, of all points, rely upon the Holy Spirit because as we'll see when we look into the systematic theology lessons and the ministries of the Holy Spirit, you're going to see that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to illuminate the believer's mind to an understanding of God's word.

To take God's word and have a better understanding of it and to help to apply it to our lives. That's the role of the Holy Spirit. But if you cut the Holy Spirit out in your study, as if you can study on your own and know that you are going to be the only one to get the right answer.

Yeah. Well, the reality is we must all be dependent upon the Holy Spirit for the ministry that He and He alone does, which is to illuminate our minds to His word. And so we must, when we are interpreting God's word, come to God in prayer.

Praying through the questions that you have in your study. Praying about the answers that you have sought to those questions. Praying about the outline. Praying about how you have come to the conclusions you've come to on the interpretation of the passage.

You should spend at least, or maybe as a ballpark maybe, a third of the time of your study praying. On average, I will spend about 30 hours of work for a sermon. It's about, for me, the amount of time it takes me to put one sermon together.

And I will spend typically about 10 hours outside of the study praying for that message. Trying to get a better understanding. Lord, am I accurate in this? Because that's really what I'm asking the Lord.

I want to make sure I'm correct in my understanding of this. Lord, I was struggling with something. Maybe there was a passage where I struggled with it. I couldn't quite grasp it. Couldn't understand it.

I came to a realization of something. I just didn't like where I landed. I remember a time where I would have a debate with a friend of mine for years on a theological issue and preaching through the book of Philippians.

I realized he was right. I really didn't want to believe he was right. I just didn't like that idea. But he was. He was right. And the fact that he was right made it harder for me to accept what the text clearly said.

I remember praying and asking the Lord, you know, that particular time I actually run. So I pray while I run. It's a nice quiet time because you have nothing else to do for a good 5, 6, 7 miles. You don't want to think about what you're actually doing.

You want to think about something else. So I think about the run. And that's basically what I was doing. And I remember saying, Lord, you know, if this conclusion of this passage is correct, the one that I'm thinking this is saying, you know, I've been wrong in an argument that I've been making for years with people.

And I still think that the text that they would argue, and the issue was in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, some argue that the faith itself is a gift. In other words, the ability to believe, not just the fact that God saves us, but even the ability to believe would be a gift of God.

And I think that in the Ephesians 2, 8, 9, when it says this is a gift, is that referring to the faith or the salvation? Grammatically, it could be either. So I never really felt it was a strong case to say it must be of the faith.

I felt it was perfectly fine to say, I thought it was perfectly fine to say, well, you know, this is referring to the salvation, because the salvation is a gift of God. But then there was a problem. I saw it in Philippians.

Let me just turn there. And in Philippians, as I was preaching through the book of Philippians, I got to Philippians chapter 1. And as I was in Philippians chapter 1, preparing to deliver this message as I'm studying, and I come to this verse, and Philippians 1, he was dealing with the issue of suffering.

It's the last verse in Philippians 1, or second to last. It's verse 29. Philippians 1, 29. And he says, he's talking about suffering. But then he says this, it's kind of interesting. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

It's almost an offhanded comment that he makes. He's talking about suffering. And the reality of what ends up happening in this is he's saying that it has been granted by God for you to suffer. But he wants to encourage them, because it's like, hey, God, grant me with something else, please.

Like, I can think of other things to grant me other than suffering, thanks. But he wants to encourage them. And he says, not only has it been granted to you to suffer, but it has been granted to you to suffer just like it has been granted to you to have belief.

That passage can't be argued around by the grammar to say, oh, it's talking about salvation. And so, I remember praying and saying, Lord, could this be right? Is this what you're saying? I'm trying to understand, Lord, because this is something that I argued against for a long time, and I want to make sure that I'm not doing something, saying something wrong.

And sometimes when we go to the Lord in prayer and study the Bible, we're going to see that we need to humble ourselves before the Lord in our Bible study to know that we're interpreting it correctly.

And sometimes we need to look at what God's Word says, realize that maybe we are the ones that are wrong. But it's a way of going in your study, and it's an important part that, and it's a part that's not only important to Bible study, but it's something that I don't know of any other class that I've taken on hermeneutics, book that I've read on hermeneutics, that includes a section on prayer and hermeneutics.

But it's needed. It's needed because we need to pray through our interpretation, not just take verbatim that we think we got it. And then we got it nailed. We need to go to the Lord in prayer asking Him if what we are thinking the Scriptures say is accurate.

And so we need to come to God's Word in humility, in dependence, not independence, but in dependence. In other words, depending upon the Lord and looking to have the Lord teach us and to guide us to a right interpretation.

Now, I'm not saying I know there's the people out there that it's like, well, I know that my interpretation is right because I prayed about it. No, that's not it. It's not that you prayed about and said, Lord, I know what's right, I just want your blessing on what I know to be right.

No. I think that it's something that we need to come to the Lord in humility and be like, you know, Lord, I could be totally off base here. I could be wrong, but I want to know what you say. The Word of God and making sure that we have that interpreted right is so important.

I mean, go back to the very first lesson that we did. If you don't remember it, then refresh yourself either by looking in your syllabus and cheating or going back to lesson one and re-watching. Okay, I wouldn't really be cheating.

That's why you got the syllabus so that you could use it as a reference. But we talked about the importance of the Word of God and why it's important to study it. And it's for that reason that we need to make sure that we are right in what we say God says.

So we want to study God's Word and we want to do it praying through the study. So each step that we do, we want to do it with prayer in mind. Okay, I hope that makes sense to you. That we would be praying for these things because, you know, we want to have a case where we're not just doing an intellectual study of God's Word.

I mean, an unbeliever can study God's Word and interpret God's Word and actually be right about his interpretation of God's Word. But what he can't do is go to the Lord in prayer about God's Word and getting that ministry of the Holy Spirit who indwells the believer to give them the right interpretation.

So I say that because what we want to make sure that we're doing is we want to make sure that we are looking at the Word of God to be accurate. Not so that we can boast, you know, Paul says that knowledge can puff up and some people can study so that they can have lots of knowledge.

A lot of knowledge and a wrong interpretation is not good. It's not healthy and it's not the Word of God. It's the Word of you. So what do you really in your heart when if you're teaching, even if you're discussing the Bible with somebody and you're going to say this is what the Bible means, what is more important to you?

Is it more important that you are right or that God is right? Is it more important that God's Word is what's understood and known and remembered? Or is it more important that your Word is known and remembered and taught?

Think about it. I'm not asking for a show of hands, but it is something to think about because unfortunately every single one of us struggle with pride. And if you don't admit to that, if you don't know that you struggle with pride, then that just means that your pride has so blinded you that you don't even see it.

So go ask real friends and they'll tell you, okay? The thing is this, is we need to look to God's Word and we need to be about the ministry of prayer and Bible study. Are any of us teachers? Well, if we're going to teach, those are the two aspects we need to be about.

Now, if you're a pastor of a church, that's your main focus. But if you're teaching a Sunday school class, you may not have the 30 hours to spend on a sermon for your Sunday school. So I understand that you are going to want to take maybe some shortcuts in reading commentaries and not putting as much of the time into some of the stuff.

I understand that. But you're going to get out what you put in. And the more you put in, the more you're going to get out, the more you get out of it, the more you have to teach. Because your teaching is going to come from what you have learned, what you have put into practice.

In other words, you can't teach what you don't know. And you need to know it. And so you are going to study to teach, then you need to study. But part of that is also spending the time in prayer. So I want you to think about that because a lot of people don't focus on it.

It's not something that you see in many manuals on interpretation. It's not something you're going to see in books or classes. And yet it's so important. So how do we pray through the Bible study? Well, one of the ways, as I mentioned, is ask the Lord to guide and direct.

One good thing to do. Another thing, as I mentioned, is to ask the Lord to, as you go, is this accurate? Is this right? These are the conclusions I'm coming to, Lord. You know, is it correct? Can you guide me?

And the whole time, you're looking to be submissive. You're looking to be learning. You're looking to be taught by the Holy Spirit that you're wrong. Okay, and that could come from many sources. In other words, don't sit there and pray, Lord, you know, I've come to a conclusion on this passage, and I think you're telling me this, but I have a hard time with that.

I really don't believe that. Maybe you're studying 1 Timothy 2. We looked at this passage in the past, and you said, Lord, you know, I grew up with, you know, my mother was a pastor. And so, you know, I'm struggling with this passage.

It seems to say women shouldn't be pastors. And so, what do I do? I have a hard time. I love my mom. I mean, this isn't my case, obviously, you know, because my parents were Jewish. They wouldn't have been pastors.

And my mom died when I was 10. So, the thing is, is that when we look at that, it could be a case where it's like, you know, it's hard for me to accept, Lord. And we say, you know, Lord, if I'm wrong, would you show me?

Would you just reveal it to me? And then we walk away saying, you know, I don't think the Lord's shown me that I'm wrong. I think women really can be pastors. And then all of a sudden, you hear something on the radio, and you go, yeah, that guy's preaching about women can't be pastors, but I don't like that guy.

I mean, I don't like some of the other things he believes. So, he can't be right on this one. Now, that sounds silly, but I bet that you and I have done that. Okay, I don't know about you. I know I have, but I'm sure you have too.

Not to that same thing, but where we'll ask the Lord for help in something, and the Lord will reveal that we struggle with it. And then we kind of reason to justify what we believe and reject what we just said we wanted to learn.

We do that, don't we? Yes. I remember I was praying once in a tree. What was I doing in a tree? Well, I was hunting. And so, I spend a lot of time when I'm hunting, sitting in a tree, praying. And so, waiting for deer.

And so, I was praying. Yes, Bambi. Okay. I was looking for Bambi, because Bambi tastes good. At least I eat Bambi. I don't just shoot her and let her lie there. All right. Some people. So, you know I'm a hunter.

Peanut gallery over here. So, I was up in a tree praying. And I'm not joking. This is what my prayer was. I was just going through my life and I was saying, Lord, I think that I struggle with patience.

I really, I seem to, when I come to Proverbs and I read through it, I'm noticing that there's things that mention, talk kind of about patience. And I'm going, you know, Lord, I just, I wonder, I think I'm struggling with patience.

I do. And this is literally, no joke, this was my prayer. I said, Lord, if I do have an issue with patience, would you please give me patience now? And you ever hear like you say something and like it smacks you in the back of the head?

You know, I usually would have this with my kids. I would say something to them, you know, and I'm like, why can't you understand this? And it's like the Lord back and hit me in the back of the head. Like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to tell you.

You know, you realize like the words coming out of your mouth or what the Lord's trying to teach you. I literally sat there and I just looked up like, Lord, I'm asking you for patience and I'm being impatient about getting patience.

Thank you for confirming to me that I do have a problem with patience, right? But we can easily justify that and just sit there and go, you know, Lord, I don't like that interpretation. So, I'm going to reject when I hear from this person, you know, what do they know?

They just got saved or they're not saved as long as me, or they haven't studied as much as me, or they're not as smart as me, or I don't like that guy anyway, you know, or that guy's just wrong on so many other issues.

He's got to be wrong on this one. Or I just think he's wrong. I may like the guy and everything else he says, but he's wrong on this issue. You know, we have to be careful of that. We have to be careful that we don't jump in and say, oh, you know, this must be right because I think it's right.

That's what the prayer is there to do. It's there to humble us and to reveal to us our dependence upon the Lord in every aspect of life, including your Bible study, including the study of God's Word. And so, I hope that you don't just do the study, the head knowledge to puff up, but use the spiritual discipline of prayer.

Get on your knees with all your notes laid out, as I sometimes have done with difficult passages. And I literally will spread my notes out on the floor, or on a couch, on the seat, or wherever I'm praying, and I'll just spread it all out, and I will be praying over it, and I'll look at my notes.

I'll read the passage during the prayer, and I'll be like, Lord, what does this mean? Is this correct? Lord, is this really speaking to this issue? Lord, is this a proper interpretation? Is this a proper application of this, Lord?

Am I totally off base here? We need to ask the Lord these things, and even if we have the notes, spread it all out. So, I hope that this has been helpful in looking at prayer and how prayer affects our Bible study.

And so, I want us to use our time in prayer to study God's Word, to understand His Word, to have a better understanding of His Word. We are going to look at Systematic Theology starting next class, as I mentioned, so I hope that you tune in.

Start at Systematic Theology, lesson one, and follow all the way through. But if you have any questions about this or any of the lessons, you can always email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org, academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

I hope all of these lessons have been helpful to you. They've, I hope, been a source of encouragement and teaching and something that you could value, that you could put into practice and use, that you would be able to put this in practice, in your life, to better understand God's Word for the remainder of your life.

This is only the beginning of your study. We have all of our life to continue this work until we die, and then we get to ask the Lord Himself and say, Lord, am I right here? You know, thank you. I was wrong all that time, and He's going to tell us.

I mean, we're going to sit at His feet, and it's going to be a great time to have been shown that we're wrong, right? So, what I want to say here is that we want to be looking at every text that we have, we want to interpret and use these lessons for that.

So, oh, I forgot, yeah, I forgot the, okay, I forgot the fortune cookie. That's right. I was going to bring a fortune cookie. I promised someone that I would. I stole it from their fortune cookie. I actually never read the fortune cookies.

I usually just throw them out. I just like the cookie. Yes, my waistline shows it. Thank you very much. But the fortune cookie that someone had when we were out this week, which is really great because it said that it sounded like if you encourage somebody, they'll never forget it.

You know why that's so great? Because, well, we all need encouragement, and there's different times in our life that we may need more or less, but we all need to be encouraged, and we kind of make it a practice here to remind you to encourage people and to encourage specific people that we're going to name out that we want you to encourage them all day, each day for the week.

And so they could feel that they are very greatly encouraged. Even if you're watching this, you know, not live, make it the week because they may need the encouragement when you're watching. So, the brother to encourage this week is brother Michael Stockwell.

Michael Stockwell right now is in Jamaica, man. He is doing three, I think it's like two or three weeks in Jamaica that he does every year with a team. He takes Cross Encounters Evangelism, which is the ministry he's with.

He and Robert Gray, they take a team with their ministry and go down to Jamaica for a couple of weeks, and they will do a ministry in Jamaica. Huh. You know, think about that. Their ministry is cross country.

Let's see. They go to Jamaica for two, three weeks. Then they do a cross Canada tour. It's kind of more like cross countries evangelism, don't you think? You need to change the name, Mike. But they are in Jamaica right now ministering to the Jamaicans.

They do a lot of ministry there. They team up with some local churches, I think one in particular, and do a lot of ministry. There's many people that look forward to them coming down every year. And so if you could encourage him, Michael Stockwell, he is a full-time evangelist.

He goes out, travels this country. He literally lives out of his car. Well, actually, he lives out of the good graces of brothers and sisters and travels in his car. He's never had to actually sleep a night in his car, God has provided.

But he is full-time just traveling, speaking on college campuses, speaking at parks, speaking wherever he can to share the gospel with people. So I want to encourage you to encourage Michael Stockwell this week, every day this week.

He's on Facebook, and if you're part of our Striving for Eternity group on Facebook, he's probably tagged there already. And you'd be able to tag him and encourage him publicly if you so choose, or you can send him private messages like I often do.

But sometimes it's good for us to encourage one another publicly and for others to see the encouragement. It acts as a reminder to us as well. It's not boastful or things like that. So try to go out and encourage him this week.

And we hope that these 20 lessons have been valuable to you in the interpretation of God's Word and that you would put this to use. And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.