Ascertaining the Meaning of Scripture

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Well, I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn again with us to the book of 2 Peter chapter 3.
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We are continuing our lesson from last week.
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We're going to be in 2 Peter 3 verses 14 through 16.
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As you all know, we have been in a longer study on the subject of apologetics.
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And this is the end of our series today, even though we will be picking back up when we come back in September.
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That's going to begin apologetics 201.
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This is the end of apologetics 101.
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Just like when you go to college, there's a basic and an advanced.
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So we're going to get a little more advanced next year.
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Nothing that no one can handle.
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It'll be something we'll all be able to understand.
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But this has been the primer.
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This has been the foundation for what we're going to do when we return.
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But like I said, we've been studying the subject of apologetics and asking the questions, well, what do we do when we face objections to our faith? And we've looked at several objections so far.
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What when somebody says, well, I don't believe that God exists.
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How do we deal with that objection? When somebody says, if God does exist, I think he's a moral monster.
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He's someone I wouldn't want to worship because he's so terrible in the Old Testament.
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And he sends people to hell.
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I wouldn't worship God even if he did exist.
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The nature of God.
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And we've talked about people who would argue for that.
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We've talked about the scripture.
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People would say, well, it's just written by men.
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It doesn't have any value for truth.
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Or some who would say, well, what was written, we have no idea what it says anymore.
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Those who would argue for the tenacity of scripture, the lack of tenacity of scripture, that we don't know what it says.
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And we've answered those questions.
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But the last objection in this course that we're dealing with is the question of interpretation and application.
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Someone looks at you and says, well, that's just your interpretation.
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And we've all said, we know that there are people who say that.
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There are people who, if we try to share something with them from the Bible, they'll say, well, that's not what that means.
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Or they'll say, that might be what it means to you, but that's not what it means to me.
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Here you go, Ms.
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Donna.
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Here's a handout.
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Do you guys have handouts? Do y'all need one? This was last week's, the lesson number nine.
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You mind passing those out for me? Thank you.
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I thought everybody had one.
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My mistake, I apologize.
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So we're on lesson number nine.
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Yep, it's still the same one from last week.
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I gave y'all the answers, but we didn't go through them all.
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Yep, yep, I gave y'all the blanks.
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And tonight we're going to go through those blanks and talk about them.
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When someone says, well, that's just your interpretation.
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What they are saying is true.
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It is your interpretation.
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So in that sense, it's not wrong, because you have to interpret everything you read.
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If I write a note to you and hand it to you, you have to seek to interpret what it's saying.
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If I say something to you, you have to interpret what I've said.
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In fact, I have many, many, many times been misinterpreted when I said it to the person.
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Because maybe I said it in a certain way.
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Or I said it with a certain amount of volume.
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And somebody thought, well, he was angry when he said that.
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Or he was frustrated when he said that.
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Or he was coming down on me when he said that.
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So we all interpret everything that's going around us all the time.
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Interpretation by itself is natural.
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So somebody says, well, that's your interpretation.
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Well, yeah.
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But what you're saying implicitly when somebody says that.
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What they're saying implicitly is either that's your interpretation and it's wrong.
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Or that's your interpretation and it doesn't apply to me.
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You see, that's what they're saying when they say that.
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Well, yeah.
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That could be another one.
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They're saying, you're always wrong.
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Which would be sort of a heavy blanket to throw on someone.
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But yeah, they could be saying, you're wrong because it's you who's doing it.
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And who are you to interpret the Bible? For sure.
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But again, like I said, they're either saying you're wrong.
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Or they're saying, you got it.
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You misinterpreted it.
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Or the application of your interpretation doesn't apply to me.
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Because I interpret it differently.
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I see it this way.
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You see it that way.
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And who's to say who's right? I don't often hear people say anymore, we can both be right.
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They do.
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And they used to all the time.
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That was very popular to sort of try to find, we can both be right.
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Anymore, I hear it's more like this.
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No one can know who's right.
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Because I think they picked up on the idea that if I'm saying A and you're saying not A, we can't both be right.
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And I think that maybe logic caught up to that argument.
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Because it used to be, well, we can both be right.
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Anymore, it's who's to say who's right.
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And that's really the popular statement.
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How many of you ever heard of the emergent church movement? The emergent church, sometimes referred to as the emerging church.
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You don't hear about it much anymore.
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Brian McLaren was huge in the emergent church.
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And some say there's a distinction between the emerging church and the emergent church.
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And there may well be.
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But I know specifically emergent churches, meaning they're emerging out of the dead orthodoxy.
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Their key was having humility and interpretation.
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We might be wrong.
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We don't know.
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So we've got to have some interpretational humility.
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One guy even called it, I remember specifically, epistemological humility.
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Meaning, epistemology is worldview.
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So what he was saying is we need to have some worldview humility.
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You could be wrong.
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What did Eric say on Sunday? You could be wrong about everything you think you know.
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And I could be wrong about everything I think I know.
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And thus neither one of us knows anything.
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And that really is the heart of the emergent movement.
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If you come to an emergent church, if I went to an emergent church, I'd be laughed off the stage.
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Because I would say absolute things.
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And they would say you can't have absolute anything.
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Absolutely.
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I love that.
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That's a good quote.
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Absolutely.
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And that's true.
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They want that sense of earnest in their study, but they don't want to arrive at any conclusions.
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You know, they sound very scholarly, but they're not willing to make a scholarly determination.
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It's always the search.
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Years ago, John MacArthur said something.
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I'm going to write it on the board.
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This is a very important quote.
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It's not on your notes, but I did say it in my prayer earlier when I prayed.
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John MacArthur said this.
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The meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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He said the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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So when we talk about the Bible, the Bible is, in a sense, words on a page.
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When it becomes Scripture, in a sense, I mean, it is Scripture in what it is.
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It's Scripture by nature.
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But when we read it and see what it's saying, then that's the Scripture.
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Because that's when we're hearing God's Word.
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We're understanding God's Word.
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And so, like I said, it's Scripture by nature.
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Because there are some people who say, well, it's only Scripture when it becomes Scripture.
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That's not what I mean.
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What I'm saying is, the meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture.
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If somebody is reading the Bible and interpreting it wrong, that's not the Scripture.
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All they're doing is reading words and giving you a false interpretation.
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And that's not Scripture.
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That's hugely important because I will hear people say, Well, how can you say anything against pastor so-and-so? He's using the Scripture.
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And I say, no, he's distorting the Scripture.
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He's mishandling the Scripture.
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He is twisting the Scripture.
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And thus, he's really not proclaiming the Scripture.
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Because the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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And if you're willing to abandon the right meaning, then you're willing to abandon the Scripture.
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Let's read again from 2 Peter.
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This is our passage for last week and this week.
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The Apostle Peter is writing, Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found in him without spot or blemish and at peace.
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And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.
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There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures.
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So the Apostle Peter tells us that the ignorant and the unstable twist the Scripture to their own destruction.
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Martin Luther talked about the Bible as a wax nose.
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He said that if you can imagine a face with a wax nose, you could form and shape the nose any way you wanted it, to make the person look any way you wanted.
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And he says there are people who do the same thing with Scripture.
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They want God to look a certain way, so they twist and turn the Scripture to make God in their image or to be as they want him to be.
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And that was the danger of Sola Scriptura.
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Sola Scriptura is that we believe that the Scripture alone is the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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And Rome said, no, you can't believe that because if you believe that, then you're abandoning the magisterial authority which tells you what the Scripture means.
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And it becomes a wax nose that anyone can twist and turn.
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And Luther, yes? Well, the Bible does say that there's value in teachers and that we should have teachers.
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And that God uses men as teachers and pastors and shepherds to teach.
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But it would be better in a church where they were having false teachers.
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And that's the one blessing in even a church where there's a false teacher.
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Every time he reads the Scripture, at least he's reading the truth.
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But he's misinterpreting it.
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But yeah, it would be better if he just read it and shut up.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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But Luther said this, and I want to get back quickly just to what Luther said.
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He said, yes, there will be people who twist the Scriptures.
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But hiding the Scriptures in the church and keeping them from the people has not kept the church from twisting the Scripture.
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I mean, by the time of the Protestant Reformation, they had indulgences, they had a corrupt papacy, they had corruption all through the church, and pastors that didn't even know the Gospel, preachers that didn't even know the Gospel, priests who didn't understand what they were saying in the Latin Mass.
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And he says, keeping the Bible from people doesn't keep it from being misinterpreted and misimplied.
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In fact, he saw it the other way.
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He says, if you give the simple plowman the Scripture, and he has access, same as the Pope, then he can then see if the Scripture is being maligned.
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He can look at it and know if it's being mishandled.
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And so, tonight we're going to catch where we picked up, pick up where we left off last week.
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Last week we looked at the goal of interpretation, which is the study of hermeneutics.
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Hermeneutics means to interpret according to, if you remember why I said this, according to the authorial intent.
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The writer wrote it.
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He had an intention when he wrote it.
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Our goal in hermeneutics is to determine what the writer meant.
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And ultimately, just like Ms.
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Anne just said, the Holy Spirit is the author.
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So we want to know what the Holy Spirit meant when he inspired the writing of this work, wherever we are.
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And the science of that governs the practice of what we call exegesis.
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Exegesis is the pulling out of the meaning.
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So that's your first two blanks.
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The first one is hermeneutics, if you don't have those blanks filled.
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And the second one is exegesis.
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Now, we're going to move to the second part, which is the principles of interpretation.
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The principles of interpretation, there are several here.
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And honestly, we could spend weeks on each one of them.
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But I want to give you an overview tonight.
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The first one is the principle of literary interpretation.
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Literary interpretation.
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This is letter A on your sheet.
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Literary means that when we read the Bible, we read it according to the form of literature in which it comes.
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People will ask me, and I get asked this sometimes, not as much as I used to, and I think people pretty much know now.
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But back when I was new to the ministry, people would say, do you take the Bible literally? And my response is, I read the Bible literarily.
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Now, I'm not dodging the question.
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I'm not.
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Because literally has a meaning that sometimes is not intended to be applied.
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Literarily means you read according to the literature from which it comes.
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For instance, the Bible says at a certain point that the trees shall clap their hands.
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Trees don't have hands, and trees don't clap.
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But it's making a reference, in a literary sense, to something that is going to occur at the end of the age.
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When creation itself will be joyful at the coming of the Lord and the redemption of the earth, right? The Bible talks about God undergirding us with his wings.
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But God doesn't have feathers.
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And you say, well that's silly! No, that's literal.
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That's called crass literalism.
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When we read the Bible, we read the Bible according to the literature that it is written.
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We have several different kinds.
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I'm going to give you a few examples.
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We have in the Bible, poetry.
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Poetry has a specific set of rules that goes along with its interpretation.
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What books of the Bible are poetic? Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon.
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You ever read Song of Solomon about how he describes his beloved? If she really looked like that, that was a weird looking lady.
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Seriously, if that's the literal...
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He's using pictorial language that is meant to be understood poetically.
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We know this.
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There is something else.
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There's other types of literature in the Scripture.
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There's something called didactic literature.
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What does didactic mean? It means it's literature intended to teach.
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It means it's intended to convey information.
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It's what we get in the epistles of the Apostle Paul.
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When he writes in Romans, that God has revealed His wrath from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness, and men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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That's not metaphoric or poetic.
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Now it's beautiful.
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It's a beautiful truth about a terrible truth.
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It's a beautiful wording about a terrible truth.
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But it's true that men are suppressing the truth.
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And in the literary form that it comes in, it's not intended to be taken as an allegory.
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There's other types of language.
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Well, just think of this.
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There's historical writing.
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Narrative is what it's called.
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Most of Genesis is narrative.
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Begins in the garden.
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It moves through the flood.
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Goes through Babel.
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Into the life of Abraham and down through the patriarchs.
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All the way until you have Joseph in Egypt.
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Then Exodus picks up the narrative.
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And you have the Israelites 400 years later in Egypt.
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Now, part of that is didactic.
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Because there's certain points where there's going to stop and give you law.
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Exodus chapter 20 gives you the Ten Commandments.
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And so there's parts where you're going to see didactic literature come in.
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And there's parts where you're going to see poetry come in.
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But for the most part, just like the book of Acts, it's a historical narrative.
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And so it has to be interpreted as a narrative.
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That's what it is.
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It's one of the reasons why I believe Adam and Eve are real people.
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You say, well, it sure sounds poetic.
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In a garden and two naked people.
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And frolicking in a garden and having a joyful time.
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And then sin comes in and they have to cover their nakedness.
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It sure sounds like a poetry.
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Yeah, but all of the rest of the story kind of depends on the narrative of that story.
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Because there's an entire list of names that form a genealogy out of the story of Adam and Eve.
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And guess what? Poetic characters don't have genealogies.
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You don't pick up Romeo and Juliet and find a list of Capulets and Montagues.
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Is that right? Maybe I'm thinking of the Hatfields and the McCoy.
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You don't get a list of the generations because you know those characters are fictitious.
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So one of the reasons why I believe that Genesis 1 through 11 is narrative is because of all those genealogies.
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Being unnecessary if this was intended simply to be seen as a poetic interlude about the creation of the world.
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So there are keys to help us see how to interpret these things.
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So literary interpretation means we use the normal rules of grammar in accordance with the literary genre to determine the meaning of a text.
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Letter B, I got to hurry because I have a lot to say.
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Letter B is the principle of contextual interpretation.
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Contextual interpretation.
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I was told years ago, and you probably heard me say this, there's three rules to interpreting the Bible.
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Context, context, and context.
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Because the vast majority of people who take the Bible and run with something crazy have stolen the passages they're using out of their context.
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This is why so many Reformed people are so committed to verse-by-verse preaching.
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And I've been told that, or I've heard pastors who don't do that have said it's bad.
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It's lazy and all kinds of stuff just to go verse-by-verse.
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And it's really hard because you don't get to skip things.
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And you don't get to overlook things.
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Preaching verse-by-verse through books, you got to deal with all of it.
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Because people will know if you just skip it.
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And if you end at verse 12 and next week pick up at verse 20, and you leave out a whole section, people are going to pick up on that.
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Yeah, exactly.
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So it's a way of preaching the whole counsel of God.
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And the whole idea is it keeps you in context.
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You're forced into understanding.
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Because a lot of guys, they'll preach a verse this week and the next week be another verse.
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And like I said, and I have done that.
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And right now, you know, somebody could say we're being somewhat of a hypocrite.
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Because right now I'm preaching through a historical series on Sunday morning.
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But, for those of you who have been here know that most of my preaching is through books or through verses, through sections of books.
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And the reason for that is maintaining a context.
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Maintaining context is essential.
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And the context refers to the setting of the verse or passage.
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And the surrounding verses.
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And the subject matter.
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And the historical or social setting in which the event happened or the words were spoken.
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All of that applies to the context.
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And it's super important because you think about context, you think about something as simple as this phrase.
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If you will just bow down to me, I will give you all the kingdoms of the world.
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Sounds great.
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Until you realize who said it.
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Satan said that.
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To Jesus.
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During the 40 days in the wilderness.
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But you know, there are prosperity people who have used that very passage to describe, if you will just worship God, he will give you all the kingdoms.
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Exactly.
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Ripping it out of its, not even think of who said it.
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So context is also important.
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Number three, letter B.
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Letter C.
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So we said contextual interpretation was letter B.
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Letter C is clarity.
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The principle of clarity.
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The longer word for this is perspicuity.
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And that is the perspicuity of scripture is the clarity of scripture.
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And the reformers really relied on this principle.
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They said the Bible, though it does have portions which are difficult to understand.
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It is primarily very clear and the clear portions interpret the difficult portions.
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So we first look at that which is clear and unambiguous.
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And then if we have something else that is ambiguous, we interpret it in light of the clear.
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We interpret that in light of the simple interprets the difficult.
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And I will give you an example of how that works out practically.
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Because what we are talking about here is the analogy of scripture.
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Meaning we interpret scripture with scripture.
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Scripture interprets itself.
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The book of Acts.
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I preached through the book of Acts.
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There are several times in the book of Acts where things come up that raise questions.
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And then you remember, okay, Acts is narrative.
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And there is a lot of things happening in Acts that have in those things.
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Like for instance, Paul goes to the council of Jerusalem and he says, you don't have to be circumcised to be a Christian.
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But then in the very next chapter, he is encouraging Timothy to be circumcised so that he can be accepted among the Jewish people.
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And you say, well, is Paul a hypocrite? No, there is an entire contextual difference.
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And he is not saying that Timothy has to be circumcised to be a Christian.
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He is saying that if we are going to minister in this community, you don't want to come in and have that roadblock between you and the other person.
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If there is something you can do to connect to these people and to have an inroad into their life, do it.
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It is not going to add or subtract from your salvation.
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How do we know that though? Because we go over to Colossians chapter 2.
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And it tells us that we are not circumcised by the flesh, but that we receive in Christ the circumcision that is made without hands.
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The circumcision of the heart.
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And so that is clear that the believer in Jesus Christ is not saved by an external right, but by an internal change.
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So the clear helps us to interpret the difficult.
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So the principle of clarity.
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Letter D.
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The principle of the grammatical historical interpretation.
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The principle of the grammatical historical method.
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What is grammar? Grammar is the study of how words work together and within the syntax of those words create sentences and have a meaning.
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So we begin with grammar and we look at the historic use of that grammar out of the context from which it comes.
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So that is why it is called the grammatical historical method.
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It is not just grammar because grammar and rules change.
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Grammatical rules today for Greek, if you read Greek today, it is not the same as it was 2,000 years ago.
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In fact, the words have changed.
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The way of writing many of the words have changed.
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Very little has carried over from Koine Greek, which is the ancient form of Greek that was used in the scriptures, to the modern use of Greek.
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It doesn't even sound.
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We don't know what ancient Greek sounded like.
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But the modern Greek doesn't even make the same letter sounds that we think were used.
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We don't know.
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So when we are reading, grammar and history coincide and they go together.
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Letter E.
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The principle of the singularity of meaning.
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I touched on this last week a little bit.
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The principle of the singularity of meaning.
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Every verse in the Bible has a meaning.
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And it only has one.
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This is why when someone says, well this is what it means to you and this is what it means to me.
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No.
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When Paul wrote it, it had a meaning and he meant one thing.
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Now can it be applied differently? Yes.
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There is a story of a professor who gave his students a section of scripture.
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And he said, okay I want you to go find 50 applications from this section of scripture.
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Based on a proper understanding of the meaning.
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Don't give me 50 meanings.
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Give me 50 applications of this meaning.
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And so all the students went back to the dorms and they were calling each other up and going into their rooms and they were studying together.
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And so they all came up with the 50 meanings and they brought it back.
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And they put it on his desk and he said, okay go get 50 more.
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And his intention was simply to show the Bible is a treasure of application.
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But the meaning is singular.
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Of a text.
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And so we want to know what he means.
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For instance, I'll give you really one.
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I'll give you one.
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The Apostle Paul in 1st Timothy chapter 2.
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He says that a woman will be saved in childbearing.
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Okay? Now by itself, somebody could take and run with that with a crazy meaning.
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Right? They could take that and say, well okay, well a woman who's barren is lost to hell.
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She's not going to be saved.
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Or all women who've ever given birth are automatically saved through childbearing.
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But when you read the context, you find out that the word saved there, sozo is the Greek word for saved, is not talking about salvation from sin.
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It's talking about the fact that in the garden, when Eve, because the context is there, it talks about Eve, it talks about the garden, and it talks about the loss of authority and how she is now submitting to her husband as her authority.
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But she hasn't lost her position as having leadership because she is a mother.
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And in that she's saved from any indignity because who has the most influence over all children? Their mother, you see.
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But you wouldn't know all that without the context, and you wouldn't know that that was the meaning if you listen to some of these guys who only rip it from its context and try to give it all kinds of meanings.
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You see? So we have that, the singularity of meaning.
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Letter F is the principle of accommodation.
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Accommodation.
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The principle of accommodation.
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If you want to make a little note off to the side as to what this means.
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The Bible is God the infinite communicating with man the finite.
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The Bible is God the infinite communicating with man the finite.
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As a result, God uses language that accommodates our finitude.
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One of the most simple ways to understand this is when God describes himself as Father.
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Because he's attaching something we understand to something we can't understand.
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And that's his relationship to us.
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We can't really understand how much God loves us.
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Neither can we really understand how God relates to us.
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But he says, call me Abba.
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And know that you can understand that and you can understand me.
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Remember when Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
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He was, in a way, giving an accommodation to their lack of understanding.
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Yes, you don't know God in his fullness, but you know me.
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And know that if you know me, you know the Father.
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This is why there are certain times in Scripture where God speaks as a man, but we know he's not a man.
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And he speaks as if he had limitations so as we could understand in some way how to relate to him.
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Because we really don't know how to relate to an infinite being that is outside of time, outside of space, and outside of limitation.
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So the Bible doesn't lisp when it talks about God saying to Abraham, now I know that you believe in me when Abraham is ready to plunge the knife into the chest of Isaac.
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As if he didn't know before.
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As if God had a lack of knowledge.
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God is speaking to him as a loving father.
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Now you have shown me.
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Now you've shown me that you believe in me.
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And now you know as well.
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God uses accommodating language, and that's important to understand because if we push it too far, we will get a wrong understanding of God.
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We will begin to think he's like us when he really isn't like us.
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Letter G, and last for this, we touched on this earlier, and this is the principle of divine illumination.
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The principle of divine illumination.
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This is the most important because the Bible says it is the Holy Spirit who teaches us all things, John 14, 26.
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Any believer who is studying the Bible to know what it means, ought to, in their prayer, ask that the Spirit give them wisdom.
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The Bible says we ask for wisdom, and we have not because we ask not.
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And so we ask, God help me see in this word the truth.
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And I know that that can be somewhat subjective because there are many men who have taught many false things who said, well God showed it to me.
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So there is some subjectivity to this last one, but it's the necessary subjectivity of being moved by the Spirit of God and filled by the Spirit of God.
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If we are not, the Bible says, a spiritual man, or rather an unspiritual man cannot discern spiritual things.
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So we know that if we are not filled with the Spirit, if we do not have the Holy Spirit, if we are not saved, we will have a limitation on how much we can understand.
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And if we are saved and we are not seeking the Spirit and understanding and trying to force it into our own mindset and our own mental image of what God should be, we will also be limited.
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So we need to ask the author of Scripture to be our ultimate teacher.
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And that's why when I pray, I say, God, keep me from error and please let your Spirit be the teacher.
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Tonight.
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Alright, let me run through quickly improper methods.
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I could do a whole other lesson on these, but I'll keep it short and sweet.
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I giggle, I giggle.
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Improper methods of interpretation.
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I only gave you four.
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The improper methods of interpretation.
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First, allegorical.
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Allegorical interpretation.
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The allegorical school of interpretation teaches that beneath every verse of Scripture, beneath the obvious meaning of Scripture is the real meaning of Scripture and it has been hidden in each sentence and it is hidden in its symbolic spiritual meaning.
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This is but an allegory.
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I'll give you an example.
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John Dominic Crossom.
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John Dominic Crossom, very famous Bible teacher and yet he's as liberal as he comes and he doesn't even really know, he says he doesn't know if God exists and he believes when Jesus died on the cross, he was buried in a shallow grave and his bones were eaten by dogs.
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So he has a really, really odd view.
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And he's a popular teacher in the Disciples of Christ Church, by the way.
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I've gotten books from the Disciples Churches inviting me to seminars by him.
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John Dominic Crossom, in explaining the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, said, this is all a parable.
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Jesus did not feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.
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What Jesus did was Jesus encouraged all of the people who came with food to share with those who didn't bring food.
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And it wasn't a miracle of multiplication.
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It was a miracle of division.
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Will those who have divide with those who don't? It's the great socialist miracle of Jesus.
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Now doesn't that sound great? All you conservatives are saying, no it don't, because it sounds like heresy.
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Exactly, but can you imagine though somebody who doesn't want to believe in the miracles of Jesus Christ, somebody who's looking for a reason not to believe in the miracles of Jesus Christ, and you guys hearing that, and they say, wow, Jesus was a socialist, or whatever, you know, Jesus, yeah, it was frozen, that's how he got across, and there's all kinds of things.
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I want to read, I actually printed this tonight, so I didn't even have this last week, so I'm glad we didn't get it until tonight, I found this this week.
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It's a very, very popular teacher.
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In fact, I think he identifies himself as reformed, but he would be on the more liberal side.
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I'm not going to mention him by name, but I want to quote what he said.
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Quote, I think Genesis 1 has earmarks of poetry, and is therefore a song about the wonder and meaning of God's creation.
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I think God guided some kind of process of natural selection.
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End quote.
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So what's he saying? I believe in evolution, I believe in natural selection, I believe that Genesis 1 is just a poem.
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So that's an allegorical interpretation.
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This is where I was saying earlier, there are poems in scripture, but there are marks of poetry, and there are marks of narrative, and you have to find those and see what they are.
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But I want to read to you from John Calvin.
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I'll be talking about him this Sunday.
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The Controversial Calvin is the title of my sermon.
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Because Calvin, if nothing else, is nothing but controversial, but he is also one of the most important theologians of the last 2,000 years.
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But this is what he said about allegorical interpretation.
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He said, The error of allegory has been the source of many evils, for when it is accepted practice for anybody to interpret any passage in any way he desires, any mad idea, however absurd or monstrous, could be introduced under the pretext of allegory.
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Even good men were carried away by their mistaken fondness for allegories into formulating a great number of perverse opinions.
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End quote.
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You see, Calvin's point was simply this.
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If you accept that all scripture is an allegory, it can become anything you want it to be.
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And there is no truth upon which to stand.
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So, allegorical interpretation, when you're saying every passage is an allegory, that's dangerous.
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Number two, devotional interpretation.
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Devotional interpretation.
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Devotional interpretation emphasizes the edifying aspects of scripture and its interpretation with the goal of developing a spiritual life.
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This method often advocates the reading of scripture as a means of obtaining some type of mystical or emotional experience.
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The Bible is said to be useful for devotional use, prayer, not intended so much to be studied as it is to be simply read and meditated on but not dug into.
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There's an overemphasis on application in the devotional interpretational methodology.
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And it neglects, generally, the standard rules of interpretation.
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Here's what devotional interpretation usually does.
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What does this mean for me? And before you try to determine what it means for you, you ought to know what it means.
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Because if you're just looking for something for yourself, that's the quickest way to come to a wrong interpretation because you're going to fit the interpretation to meet your need.
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It's like the guy who was really down and he said, I'm going to find in the Bible something that, what should I do? And he opens the Bible and he points at a verse and it says, and Judas went and hung himself.
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And he says, well, I don't like that one.
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So he closed it and he opened it back up and he pointed again and it says, what you do, do quickly.
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So that's dangerous.
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Got to be careful.
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And I know people read devotional books and I would say this, devotional books by themselves aren't necessarily bad but what often happens in a devotional book is you get a little small verse of scripture and then this long story that goes with it that oftentimes really doesn't go with the text.
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It's just a pretext to get you into the story.
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I'm not saying all of them are wrong.
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Things like Our Daily Bread, it can be good.
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I don't read that much so it could be bad too.
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So forgive me if you know something bad about it.
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Is it good? Yeah, I think, you know.
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So there are devotional books that are helpful.
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And even some of the Reformers have devotional materials that they wrote that's very good.
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But what I'm saying is when you use that as a method of interpretation, it's all about me and I'm trying to immediately go to me rather than the meaning.
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That's the danger.
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Number, letter C.
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Liberal interpretation.
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Liberalism has a lot of meaning.
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It has a broad meaning.
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But let me just, what do I mean when I say liberal interpretation? Liberal interpretation does not generally accept the Bible as infallible and inerrant and thus it will reject the Bible's authority.
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If it's not all true and it has the capacity to err, then it doesn't really have the authority of God because all I've got to say at any point is, well, that part's just not true.
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I heard a person the other day actually say, well, I just don't like reading the Apostle Paul.
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I don't like what he says.
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There you go.
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I like Jesus, even though I could argue Jesus.
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Jesus, when read in context, is, if not more, just as difficult as Paul in what he says about the heaven, hell, salvation and the necessity of grace and faith and those things.
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I mean, it's not as if Jesus gives a pass and Paul comes along with a hammer and starts whacking people.
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I mean, Jesus was the one who says, you know, you have heard it said, do not commit murder, but I say unto you, do not even hate.
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You know, Jesus gives us a full interpretation of the law all the way down to the heart.
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And Paul was, yeah, absolutely.
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Fourth and finally, subjective interpretation.
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Subjective interpretation is sort of what we've been dealing with all night and it's a good place to end because it basically is the interpretation which says that all of Scripture is interpreted individually and subjectively, and what it means to you is what it means to you and it doesn't have to affect what it means to me.
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Subjective versus objective.
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Objective truth is that truth which is transcendent and isn't affected by me or you.
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Subjective truth is truth which is determined by me or you.
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And the Scripture doesn't lend itself to that, but I will say this, subjective interpretation is and remains the most popular American method for group Bible study because everybody sits down and they read a verse and then somebody says, Jackie, what does that mean to you? And what does that mean to you? That's the heart of subjective interpretation and the reality is it doesn't matter what it means to you, it doesn't matter what it means to you, it matters what it means.
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And that's the heart of subjective interpretation is we put it to the individual rather than to the rules of interpretation.
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No, no, I think...
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There are times and I think it's in all of our lives there have been times where God has given us some form of illumination where we see something we didn't see before or we see how that particular thing affects us in a way that it didn't affect us before.
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But the rules of interpretation are still there.
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If we're seeing something that's not there or if we're reading into it, sort of like the person who is desperate for a husband or a wife and they open the Bible and it says, well, Boaz saw Ruth and that's God telling me I need to find my Ruth or whatever.
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I think that can be, it can be somewhat dangerous in that regard.
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But in other, I think what you mean and I could be misinterpreting you, but I do think what you mean is as we study the Bible and as we read the scripture, God is teaching us and that's the Holy Spirit is illuminating us in these things.
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But again, that doesn't get us out of the responsibility of a proper understanding.
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And that's where I would say we need to be careful because there are people who a few years ago, a lady comes to me and says, Jesus worshipped on the Sabbath and all of the disciples worshipped on the Sabbath.
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I want to worship on the Sabbath because I want to worship like Jesus.
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And I said, okay, you mean Saturday, Sabbath.
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Yes.
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And Jesus obeyed the dietary rules.
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And I want to be like Jesus.
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So I want to obey the dietary rules.
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And Jesus, she named off several things.
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And I tried to help her understand that she was tying herself to a covenant that has been made obsolete.
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Hebrews 8, 13 tells us that because of the work of Christ, that covenant that binds you to dietary restrictions, that bind you to these things has been made obsolete.
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And those were shadows whose substance is Christ.
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Colossians 2, verse 17.
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That is a shadow and its substance belongs to Christ.
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She would not hear of it.
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And that's where I think, that's where I think it can be somewhat, because she, it was so, she wanted to worship like Jesus.
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And I'm not saying necessarily that it's wrong to do those things, but she felt like this was, that this is where salvation was, was in worshiping like Jesus and doing those things.
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And so I think, I think that there are times where in zeal, people can have zeal without knowledge, the scripture says.
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And her desire to interpret that, and maybe that was, I don't know if that story was helpful or not, but that gets me every time I think about it because I know this lady she wanted to do, you know, she wanted to please the Lord, but she found it in a, you know, in a way that the scripture doesn't teach.
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So, but yeah, it's, I'm certainly not telling you don't read the scripture, and I'm certainly not telling you don't read devotionals and things like that, but I'm saying, when you interpret something, there are rules, there are guides, there are things that we use to interpret.
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And it helps us to keep from going off the rails.
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And when you hear somebody say something that's not right, there's generally a very easy way of showing where they got off the rails.
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And some guys say stuff they know ain't right because it sounds good.
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Dr.
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James White tells a story, I'm gonna finish here, I know we gotta go.
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Dr.
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James White tells a story about a pastor who came to him and he said, man, I've been reading this passage and I think I see something.
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And it so touched my heart.
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I mean, this is great, but I don't want to be wrong, so would you take this and study it and see if it's correct? Now, Dr.
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White is a scholar, he's a Greek expert, and he took the passage and he studied it out and he did all the work for the guy and he brought him back and he says, it's what you're thinking isn't correct.
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It's just not, the text does not bear out your interpretation.
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It's not right.
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Sounds good, but it's not there.
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A few months later, the guy's preaching in the church where Dr.
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White was a member.
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This is several years ago.
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He's preaching in the church and the guy preached that text and he gave that interpretation.
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Knowing, mind you, that it was the wrong one.
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As he was leaving the church, Dr.
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White stayed behind and the two met each other in a narrow hallway where the man couldn't get away.
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Facing one another face to face, the man looked at him, looked down at the ground, he said, I know, I know, but it just preaches so good.
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That's the danger.
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That's the danger.
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It can preach real good and still be wrong.
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We want to know what it says and what it means because what it means is the scripture.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth and I do pray that we would have a desire to know the meaning of scripture because that is the scripture.
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In Jesus' name, amen.