The Text Can't Mean What It Doesn't Say

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00:01
Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand Scripture, defend truth, and engage culture.
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Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
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I'm being joined today again by my friend and fellow pastor, Kenny Roberts of Mission Way Church here in Jacksonville, Florida.
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Hi, Kenny.
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How are you? I'm doing well.
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I just bought a brisket for a men's event for church, so I'm doing really well.
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Awesome.
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That's great.
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Now, are you cooking the brisket yourself? I absolutely am.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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All right.
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Well, I may have to come to your— I saw your men's event being posted on Facebook, and I may have to come try your brisket.
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Come check it out, man.
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Awesome.
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Awesome.
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Well, tell everybody when it is, if anybody is interested.
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This Friday night at six o'clock at our church, we're just getting some men together, having some meat and fellowship, and I feel like those two things just go really well together.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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All right.
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Well, Kenny, today I invited you on the program because of a previous conversation that we've had.
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We're going to be talking about the sister subjects of hermeneutics and exegesis.
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Now, those are terms that I'm sure that many of our listeners are familiar with, but just in case they're not, I do want to define what we're talking about.
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When we use the word hermeneutics, we're talking about the art and science of interpreting the Bible.
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The term hermeneutics actually can be used to interpret anything.
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I've often said the Supreme Court is a hermeneutical institution because its job is to interpret and apply the Constitution.
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That's the job of the Supreme Court.
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So hermeneutics really just means giving a proper interpretation and application of a text, and we talk about biblical hermeneutics.
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Well, that's what we're doing.
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We want to interpret the Bible properly and apply it in a way that is consistent with what it says.
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Exegesis is really the way that that works because exegesis means to draw out from the text what is there and not to impose upon the text something from the outside.
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When you do that, when you impose your own ideas or you impose a thought onto the text that isn't there, that's called eisegesis.
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The prefix in the Greek ex means out of, and eis means into.
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So exegesis means to draw out, and eisegesis means to read into the text.
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We could give a thousand examples of eisegesis, someone reading something into the text that simply isn't there.
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I'm currently teaching it on this in our hermeneutics class at Sovereign Grace Academy, and one of the things I posted, which created this beginning of this conversation with me and you, Kenny, was this statement.
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The text can't mean what it doesn't say.
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I'll say that again.
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The text can't mean what it doesn't say, and that caused you to reach out to me and say, hey, I have something I want to talk about, and you said you've seen this in action recently.
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I wanted to hear your thoughts on that.
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Yeah.
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I mean, it stuck out to me for a lot of reasons because I think this is actually one of the biggest problems that has led to faulty doctrine in the church.
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I really believe that.
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I think that, first of all, this is what people do all the time.
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They read into the text something that's not there, and a lot of times it's, well, the text says this, but what's really going on here is this, and that's a problem.
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I even have a friend that recently said something to me along the lines of, well, the Bible is not inerrant in the way it was written, and when it was written, it was not inerrant, but it's inerrant when we read it.
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In other words, the inerrancy of the scripture is when I, as a Christian, come into the text, and literally, my friend said, read in the lines of the text and draw out meaning.
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I was like, I mean, at what point do we realize that that's going to lead to heresy and that's going to lead to everybody having their own interpretation of the text? It stuck out to me for those reasons.
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I mean, I've seen this in action far too often where we read into the text things that are just not there.
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It's a simple thing, but we so often get it wrong.
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Absolutely.
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That's interesting that he would say we have to read between the lines.
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I don't know this person.
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I don't know what he meant, but it's hard not to imagine, like you said, all kinds of opportunities for dangerous things to come out of that.
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I've used this example before many times, but John Dominic Crossom was a member of the Jesus Seminar, and I remember him teaching on Jesus.
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Jesus Seminar, for those who don't know, is a group of people who they're liberal scholars who believe they were searching for the historic Jesus.
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They don't believe the Bible represents the historic Jesus.
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So the Jesus Seminar were guys who don't believe the Bible tells the story about Jesus.
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They're seeking to find their own story.
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He's a liberal professor, liberal teacher, and one of the things he said when Jesus fed the 5,000, he didn't really take five loaves and two fish and turn them into food.
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What he did was he encouraged those who had to share with those who didn't, and it's a great socialist miracle.
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I tell this story all the time because if there's ever an example of eisegesis, if there's ever an example of reading something into the text that's not there, but your friend, if he said you got to read in between the lines, well, that's certainly in between the lines because that's not in the line.
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It's not in the text.
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That was eye-opening for me because we had been discussing different texts and I realized his interpretation of those were incorrect.
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When he said that, I realized, oh, so that's what you're doing.
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I've heard people say, well, they're doing that as they read all of scripture.
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I've heard this argument.
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Well, I'm trying to use all of the Bible to interpret this one text and there's a good principle in that, but that's not really what you're doing when you try to make the text say something that it's not saying.
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You're not doing that.
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You're using an excuse that sounds right to accomplish eisegesis at that point.
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Absolutely.
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Recently, I was teaching, or I am still in Genesis 22.
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I'll be in my third week this Sunday preaching through Genesis, actually fourth week this week preaching through Genesis 22, and it's the offering of Isaac by Abraham.
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One of the things I mentioned in my first sermon was that the text never says Abraham was sad.
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I believe he was.
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I believe it was a tough walk.
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It was three days journey, and then he had to go up the mountain to offer his son.
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I believe when Isaac said, father, here's the wood, here's the fire, but where's the lamb? I believe Abraham probably had to choke out the words God will provide.
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I think that we can, as R.C.
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Sproul said, read the text existentially, meaning look at these as real people.
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These are not robots.
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These are not wooden puppets.
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These are real people going through the real pathos of this situation, but that doesn't mean that—and I use this example in the sermon.
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There was a movie I saw where it was the story of Abraham and Isaac, and Sarah was running up the mountain trying to stop him, and I was like, now, wait a minute.
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That's not in the story.
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That's not only Isaac Jesus.
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That's like a whole other story because the text doesn't tell us that he told her what he was doing or anything.
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She's not in the narrative in Genesis 22 at all, so there's one thing when I say, you know, we can't—let me get back up.
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When I say the text can't mean what it doesn't say, I'm not saying that we can't have some sanctified imagination at certain points, and try, you know, I think about the death of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron.
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When they died, it says Moses told Aaron, you know, those who draw near to me must consider me as holy, and it says, and Aaron held his peace.
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Well, I think the statement Aaron held his peace was put in the text to remind us that he was feeling the pain of having lost his sons, but he didn't lash out at God, even though others may have, and so, you know, I'm certainly not saying that we can't study the text more deeply, but I think the concern that you have and that I would have as well is when we begin to interject all of these other things.
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Right.
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Well, and when you say the text can't mean what it doesn't say, that word mean is important because you take the example of believing that Abraham was sad when he had to—thought he had to offer up Isaac.
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I mean, we can pretty easily and logically conclude that, but that doesn't—it doesn't change the meaning of the text, whether or not he was sad, right? That's right.
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So we have to be careful here of when we're reading the narrative of Scripture and saying, it's easy to assume that something else was going on here.
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This person had this emotion or that was happening.
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We can think that may have happened, but don't ever read into the text something that changes the meaning is what's important.
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We need to bring our—this might be a weird statement, but I think it works here.
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We need to bring our humanity into our reading of the Bible and remember that these are real people with real emotions, but don't read into the text something that changes the meaning or causes the text to say something it's not saying.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And that's really the heart of what we're talking about today.
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When do we come to the point where we've changed the meaning? Yep.
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When do we come to the point? Because so much of what I hear people say today is really not biblical, but yet at the same time, they are claiming biblical fidelity.
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They're saying, no, I'm a Bible-based Christian.
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I'm a, you know, I'm a Sola Scriptura believer, but yet their theology and their bibliology is so out of whack.
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And the scary thing, I mentioned this to you before the program, it seems like it's not just coming from wild-eyed, you know, crazy sources, but it's coming from some of the people who we would identify as the good guys, the good, solid reform, you know, guys that we would trust, because what's happening, and I'll let you share your opinion on this, but I'll tell you my opinion, what I think is happening is people have become far too willing to allow their theology to be influenced by other things than the Bible.
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For instance, whether it be their favorite preachers, their favorite blog, or hey, their favorite podcast.
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I don't think mine's anyone's favorite, but you know, there is a danger in podcast culture where podcasts can be helpful, but if that's the only diet that people are getting of biblical theology is what they're hearing from their favorite podcaster, you know, and here's the thing, I mentioned this to you, I know there are people out there who could probably name all of Doug Wilson's grandchildren, but probably couldn't name all of the 12 disciples, or the 27 books of the New Testament, or, you know, because they have become, you know, they've got their Spurgeon is my homeboy t-shirt, they've got their, you know, Paul Washer cover photo on their page, but they're not spending time in the Bible.
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Yep, yep.
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Oh, for sure, and I see this happen so often, even some people that I know who I'll discuss doctrine with, they'll share an idea with me that is foreign to scripture, and if I call it out, they'll appeal to a preacher, or somebody that they heard teach this doctrine before.
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I'm a part of a few Facebook groups, mostly for fun, I don't actually even engage with most of them, I just observe, I'm a people watcher, and I do that even on Facebook, but there's a group called Reform Christian Teaching, I think, and so many of the people on there are constantly posting, hey, use Paul Washer for example, he taught this, what do y'all think about that? And I think it's good to examine the teaching of men and women, but I think the danger is they're spending so much time evaluating their teaching, and they're not spending time in the text.
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And there's another danger here, I think, if you've got two or three favorite podcasts, you can actually really fall into the danger of not studying the whole counsel of God, because most podcasts, not all, most podcasts are, they have certain topics that they're going to hit on more than others, and rightfully so, and they're going to be places of scripture that they never go, because their podcast isn't intended for that, and that's okay for them, but if that's your only diet, there's just going to be parts of the Bible that you never get into, because all you're doing is you're pulling in sermons or podcasts or whatever it may be, so we've got to be careful to make sure that we're studying the whole counsel of God too, that's an important point here.
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Absolutely, absolutely, and when we think about the Bible as what should be the steady diet, and all of the rest of these things being the periphery or the, what I said, you know, the appetizers and desserts, these become the steady diet, and you hit on something really important, I hadn't even thought about it, but you're right, if you go to, and I'm not, it's, I'm not picking on Doug Wilson, but you go to put Doug Wilson's site, they're going to be the things that he focuses on, which right now tend to be, you know, social justice and things like that, things that he's, that, you know, which is good, I mean, we need voices in the church community who are saying some of the things that guys like Doug Wilson are saying, guys like James White, who, and I mean, I grew up on the dividing line listening to James White, you know, I loved listening to his podcast, you know, when I say I grew up, what I mean is, you know, a lot of my formative years, you know, I would listen to the dividing line twice a week, because it came on twice a week.
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So I know, I know where a lot of people are.
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Right.
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But if that's, if that's, if that's the majority, or if that's all, you know, what, what is our devotional time? What, what is our time in the word really look like? And, and I think that, and this might not be true for everybody that's listening to this right now.
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But for me, I was scrolling through my latest episodes in Apple podcast, just scrolling through, like, what are people talking about right now? And it was mostly centered around the current issues of today.
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And that's good that we have voices talking about that.
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But are you ever spending time in the word to just simply abide with Christ? Or, or is your Bible consumption coming from teachers who are dealing with current issues? That's an important section.
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But if you're never spending time to abide with the Lord in His word to study, you are missing out on a key part of our relationship with Christ.
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And I think that you're spiritually starving yourself.
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And again, I noticed that in my own life, in my own life, I tend to become very spiritually dry, when I'm spending more time in podcasts and sermons than I am in the word.
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And so that it's crucial, this, this doesn't just matter, because like, we're afraid that people are going to get led astray by some of these people that we're talking about necessarily.
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But if, but if your authority is James White, or Washer, or whoever, and not the scriptures, and if your, your spiritual diet are those guys, and those podcasts, and not the scripture, you're going to end up being pretty anemic soon.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And when you were talking about the, the lost my place there.
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I'm sorry.
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No, no, this is just thinking about all of the, the, the things that are going on right now.
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This is where exegetical preaching is also very valuable, and, and, and something that a lot of people, you know, over, over the last year and a half, so many people have abandoned their churches.
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I know, I don't mean to go off on a side note, but this, as you were saying this, it came into my mind.
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If you're in a church that's always preaching current events, and is not preaching exegetically through texts, and it doesn't have to be, you know, I, I, I do believe for me, preaching verse by verse through books is the best way for me to preach.
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But I do know there are some men who effectively do that differently.
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So I don't, I don't believe that exegetical preaching has to, has to necessarily mean you start at Genesis 1.1 and go to Genesis 50.
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You know, I, it doesn't always have to look like that.
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You can preach sections of a book.
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You can preach, you know, different things.
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But if, if, if every time you step foot in your church, your pastor's talking about critical race theory, or he's talking about all of these things, even though these may be the pressing issues of the day, you know, if there's not a robust and rounded diet, as you said, you know, then, then you're missing out on so much.
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And, and so it's, you know, that, that could be for any preachers listening.
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Are we preaching our hobby horses? Are we preaching only, you know, and I know there, there are people that might accuse me and say, well, you know, I hear you preach a lot about Calvinism, but you really don't.
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You hear me say I'm a Calvinist when I'm on the podcast.
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But as far as preaching the doctrines of grace or the five points of Calvinism, this is not, you know, it was so funny last night, I was at the, the, the booth we're doing our evangelism booth right now.
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It's our 10 days of evangelism, uh, at the fair.
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And I had two church members with me and somebody came up while, while we were there.
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And, um, I was, I was on one side of the booth.
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They were on the other.
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So we weren't close enough to talk or hear each other.
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And somebody came up to one of the ladies, um, and she's been a member of our church for a while and said to her, um, you guys are Calvinist.
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I don't want to take your tract, which, you know, that that's, that's fine.
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Right.
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But the, but the lady who's church member walked over, she goes, the lady just told me she didn't want to take our tract because we're Calvinist.
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I said, yeah, I understand.
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People sometimes are like that.
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And she goes, can you explain to me again what that means? And I was like, that's fine.
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You know, I mean, that just goes to show that, you know, even though we try to teach these things, it's not, it's not the only thing, you know, is that we're that, you know, that, that people might assume that because we're Calvinistic church, that everybody is branded with, you know, a tulip when they walk in and we're just constantly force feeding, you know, these things.
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Um, yeah, we can't, and I would just, I mean, this would just based off of what you were saying, this is a challenge to pastors and, uh, those who are not pastors even to read and study texts, uh, that, that you're uncomfortable, that you don't fully understand that you're afraid to go to, um, maybe the top of that list for a lot of people would be revelation.
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Um, but, but go to texts that you, you're afraid to.
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And I, and I challenged myself in this sometimes when I'm thinking through preaching calendars and where we're going to go, there's times when a text or a book of the Bible will kind of come to my mind and I'll go, well, that's, that's going to be really hard to work through.
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Um, and I want to force myself to do it.
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Uh, I think that's important because if you don't, you're going to be leaving out, uh, parts of the script.
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You're going to be leaving out parts of the whole council of God.
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And that's not to say that as a preacher, you failed.
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If you don't preach from Genesis one to revelation, uh, 21, uh, throughout your lifetime, but you got, you got to preach the whole council of God.
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That's right.
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22.
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Sorry.
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No, no.
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Yeah.
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You're fine.
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I tell you what I will.
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Um, I'll, I'll give you a thought on that.
20:49
I recently have been, um, doing, I've changed, changed the way I do my, uh, Bible reading.
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And, uh, we, my wife and I did a whole Bible reading last year.
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We read through the whole Bible together.
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And, uh, you know, it's, you do that.
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It's like seven or eight chapters a day.
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It's a lot.
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Um, but, uh, this year I decided to do it differently.
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And what I'm doing is I'm taking a section of scripture every month and reading it every day.
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So right now I'm reading revelation one through seven.
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I really read that every day.
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The next month it'll be eight through 14 or whatever, 16 or whatever.
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But, um, two months ago I was in first John and I read first John every day.
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Now, a lot of, a lot of people find a lot of comfort in first John.
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Um, but I, but I get around chapter three and I start getting really convicted and it was, and it was really can be, you know, cause it talks about he, who's been born again, will not sin and things like that.
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And we know that there's a meaning that doesn't mean that we're going to be perfect.
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That's not preaching sinless perfectionism, but there still is a, there's a certain conviction that lays upon us about our sin.
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And, you know, I don't remember the last time I heard that as somebody's primary preaching text, you know, that is, is, you know, that people will go to first John.
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They really liked the portions, you know, about, you know, if we do sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, you know, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
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Those are, those were the passages in first John everybody likes, right.
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But you, but you start getting into chapter three and he really goes, you know, the old joke, he went from preaching to meddling, you know, and he really starts meddling in our hearts.
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But that's what that text is.
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What makes this conversation important to the text, the text can't mean what it doesn't say when you read in first John three, he was born of God doesn't sin.
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Or I'm, I'm, you know, paraphrasing, you needed chapter two before you got to chapter three.
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Because, because if all you have is chapter three, you're not getting what the text actually means.
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And so that's an important part of this whole discussion.
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And this is why it's important to read the whole counsel of God, because you, you need the text, all of the text, and then those local specific contexts to know exactly what is meant by what is said there.
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I think, I think the danger, one of the dangers here is proof texting, right? This is what people do all the time.
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They, they grab a verse like that, that says he was born of God will not sin.
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And they form a whole theology around that, but that's not what the text actually is saying and meaning.
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And so we needed chapter two before we got to chapter three.
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Absolutely.
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And, and that's absolutely right.
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The, that text can easily be drawn out and used, you know, for Wesleyan perfectionism and people who hold to a view of, of sinless perfectionism.
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And when I teach on hermeneutics, when I teach in class, we talk about what we, what I call, and I don't know if this is some, this is something me and my fellow elders, we use this term.
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I don't know if it's used by other people probably is, but, you know, we didn't invent it, but we, we talk about the term parameters.
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And by that, we mean the borders of the text.
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You know, exegesis, if you're going to draw out of the text, if you're going to, if you're going to find out what the text says, you also have to stay within the, the parameters of what, what is allowed to be said by that text and not go, not go and be, exercise creativity and bring in, you know, your own opinion.
24:29
And this was something I mentioned to you before the program, I had it in our pre-show notes is the idea of the Westminster concept of what is called good and necessary consequence, you know, and good and necessary consequence.
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I'll read it.
24:46
It's actually from the Westminster confession, chapter one, which is on the scriptures and part of portion six, it says this, it says the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man, salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequences or consequence may be deduced from scripture under which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the spirit or traditions of men.
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And I mentioned that because what you just said, when I mentioned first John three you know, if all you read was first John three, it would be easy to fall into the trap of sinless perfectionism.
25:27
But what you did was you looked at the context, which is necessary for interpretation.
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Obviously hermeneutics is, is, you know, the three C's of biblical interpretation or context, context, and context.
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You know, we, we have to look at the context and thereby through good and necessary consequence, we deduce what the meaning is.
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And of course, what I believe the meaning of first John three is, is a pattern of unbroken habitual sin.
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That, that, that is not something we see in the life of someone who was born again, someone who continues in a pattern of unbroken, habitual, unrepentant sin.
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And even in the Greek, when we see, I believe the word sin there is in the ongoing tense, you know, the idea is, is continual.
26:07
So but, but would you agree with me if I said this, there are some people, there are some interpreters who take good and good and necessary consequence to, to a place where it does become eisegesis, where they're reading into the text.
26:24
Absolutely.
26:27
I'll use an example.
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So in revelation, there's two passages that I was talking with somebody and they used, they said, there's a part of revelation that says the gates of, of heaven, the gates of the new kingdom will never be shut.
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And then just a little bit after that, it says the spirit and the bride say come.
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And they put those two texts together.
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And they said, what does this mean? This means that those who are outside of the kingdom are invited to come in, you know, after judgment, after judgment, that those cast out of the kingdom, because the gates are open, then those and then because the spirit and the bride say come, then that's the invitation for all of those outside the kingdom to come into the kingdom.
27:16
And you just read two verses after the gates are never shut.
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It's very clear that, that there are those who will never be allowed in that they are cast out of the kingdom, eternally damned.
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And so that's an example, I think of, they're trying to use this principle of bringing other scriptures to bear on this text.
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The problem is they're not reading the context of either of the scriptures that they're putting together.
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They've, they've taken two concepts and they've removed both of them from their context.
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And they said, they're basically trying to say, even though they wouldn't use these words by good and necessary consequence, you put these two together and you have universal salvation.
27:53
And I'm, I'm like, that's not how you read the text.
27:57
Absolutely.
27:58
And it reminds, that actually reminds me, and I don't know who this person is you're talking about, but it reminds me of a conversation I had on my front door with a lady who was a Jehovah's witness.
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And, you know, we, we were talking about salvation.
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We were talking about when you die, what happens? And she said, oh yeah, when you die, you get another chance to repent.
28:18
Yeah.
28:19
Yeah.
28:19
You, you, you're not eternally condemned.
28:23
God's going to give you a chance at the judgment bar to repent and believe.
28:28
And I said, you know, I said, that certainly is, you know, could be a comforting thought for people that we know that have died in their sins.
28:38
They're going to get one, one more chance.
28:39
I said, but where do we get that from the text? And what you just said is, you know, she could have probably run there and said, well, here, the gates are never closed.
28:46
And, you know, the bride says come.
28:49
And so I had never heard that interpretation, but it's interesting how you, the creativity of eisegesis.
28:56
Well, and, and I'm, I'm seeing something that's, that's kind of moving through some people's theology and some churches where, and I think this applies to the conversation.
29:08
I hope it does.
29:09
Yeah.
29:10
They're basically saying, well, let's have a, let's have a hopeful view of scripture.
29:15
In other words, the, the text says, for example, that these people are cast out of the kingdom for, for eternity.
29:23
But, but what if, what if our concept of eternity is different than the Lord's and, and what if our concept of judgment is different than the Lord's and, and there's a lot of what ifs that are brought in.
29:34
And that's why you go back to the statement, the text cannot mean what it does not say.
29:39
It can't, and we have the completed full revelation of God.
29:43
And so the things that are necessary for life and salvation are given to us in the scriptures.
29:48
There's never a question as important as judgment and final things that God has not already given us the answer to.
29:57
Absolutely.
29:58
Absolutely.
29:59
And you know, what's funny is you mentioned that, and the doctrine that kind of came to my mind is the, the, the doctrine of annihilationism.
30:09
Yeah.
30:10
You know, that's the thing a lot of people find somewhat comforting is maybe at some point God's just going to snuff out the existence of His enemies and rather than there being, you know, an infinity of punishment, perhaps there will simply be the cessation of life, cessation of existence rather.
30:32
And there have been so many, I would say godly pastors, godly preachers who have, who have, I don't say fallen into the trap, but maybe dip their toe into the soothing pond of annihilationism because they couldn't, they couldn't rectify the idea of eternal conscious torment.
30:55
And, and even, you know, and I could be wrong on this, but I'm going off to the listener.
31:01
I'm going off something I heard, not something I read.
31:03
So forgive me if I, if I'm an error, feel free to send me an email.
31:07
I'm sure they will.
31:09
Yes.
31:09
Yes.
31:10
People are very quick to correct.
31:12
But I, but as I understand it, even Luther, the great, you know, German reformer had, had at a certain point, lean towards annihilationism in regard to how he understood the possible condition of the, the, the final condition of the dam.
31:30
And again, you say, well, how does somebody get there? Especially somebody as knowledgeable as Martin Luther, how could he get there? Well, I think it's easy.
31:40
It's so easy to emotionalize the concept of eternity.
31:46
And what you just said, it's almost a more hopeful view for some, you know, and.
31:53
Well, and I think some people would hear this conversation and call us and people kind of talk this way, arrogant and saying, we know what the scripture is saying and we have it all figured out.
32:06
We have all the answers.
32:07
But I'm not relying on my interpretation of the scripture as much as I'm relying on what the scripture has said.
32:13
And I understand interpretation has to matter here.
32:16
We all interpret what the Bible is saying, but the goal is to interpret what the Bible is saying, not what I want the Bible to say.
32:24
And.
32:24
Amen.
32:27
That, I mean, that, that plays into so many conversations.
32:30
You put every culturally difficult topic in insert that in here.
32:35
And that's what people are doing.
32:37
They're saying, well, I know the Bible, this verse in this passage says this, but really what's going on here is, and then they go off on what they want the Bible to be saying.
32:47
And that none of that has actually ever said in the text.
32:50
So that's a, that, I mean, it's, again, it's such a simple hermeneutical principle that people, I think would, would say, yeah, that's right.
32:59
It can't mean what it doesn't say, but then in practice, this is exactly what people do because we want to do it.
33:03
And I, and I'm not saying I'm immune to this.
33:05
I think we all want to at times take the scripture to, to mean what we want it to say.
33:10
But we are bound by what the scripture has said, not what we want it to say.
33:15
Absolutely.
33:16
And I think this is a good point in the show to sort of go toward what we were going to do at the end.
33:22
And that is talk about the, the way that we find these parameters, the way that we study the Bible.
33:31
And, you know, cause the, the, the urgency of this podcast for you, the listener who are listening is that we, we do want you to study the scripture.
33:41
We want you to have a steady diet in the word, use books, use podcasts, use YouTube videos, use blogs, but let them be your appetizers.
33:50
Let them be your desserts.
33:51
Don't let that be your, your primary sustenance.
33:55
The primary sustenance is, is your time in the word of God.
33:59
And, and, and as, as Kenny just said, the word of God first and foremost has to be read before we interpret.
34:12
And, and one of the things that I stress and in the hermeneutics class that I'm currently teaching, which is based on the book living by the book by Howard Hendricks, who was a legendary professor from Dallas seminary.
34:27
Now he wasn't a Calvinist, I don't believe, but he was so, but, but he was a great teacher.
34:32
In fact, one of the greatest teachers I've ever heard.
34:34
He just had a wonderful way of connecting with his students.
34:37
And he gives a three, three-fold method for Bible study.
34:42
And his first method, the three method, the three-fold method is observation, interpretation, and application.
34:48
And what he says, he says, he says, everybody jumps to interpretation almost immediately.
34:54
And, and, and they almost always bypass sincere observation.
35:00
And what observation from his, from the book is what he says is observation is what does this text actually say? Not what does it mean, but just what does it say? And I was going to ask you this, Kenny, I know I didn't prepare you this for this one.
35:18
So forgive me if I'm asking something odd, but I'm going to ask you when you, when you sit down with the Bible, when you're getting ready for a sermon, or even when you're only doing your own personal study, what does that, what does that process of observation look like for you? That first part? Well, very specifically and practically when it comes to sermon prep, which is very similar to my devotional reading, by the way, when I, the beginning of my sermon prep looks very much like when I'm just sitting down personally with, with the scriptures, not with the goal of writing a sermon.
35:50
I'll print out the text that I'm preaching on and I just sit with it.
35:55
I'm here at my desk and I have my computer in front of me, but I literally, I will, and this, this is kind of just intentional in my own mind.
36:02
I turn my chair to another part of my desk where I have the scripture laid out in front of me with nothing but a pen and a Sharpie and a highlighter so that I can figure out what is this text saying? I don't, I don't want to, like people will ask me sometimes that our worship team, for example, will say, well, what are you preaching on? And a lot of times, if I haven't yet read the text, all I can say is, well, I'm preaching from this passage and I think this is where I might go, but that might drastically change when I sit down and read the text.
36:34
Because there have been times when I thought, Hey, it's going to go here.
36:38
But that's not what the text was saying.
36:40
Where I wanted to go was true and it was biblical, but it wasn't what that text was saying.
36:46
And so that's an important thing.
36:47
And then I'll, one other thing I'll say is right now we're going to start preaching through the book of Matthew in December.
36:53
And before we ever get there, before I ever start writing a single note for sermon prep, I picked up one of the ESV journal Bibles that they have the scripture notebooks.
37:04
So it's just the gospel of Matthew.
37:06
And on the left page is scripture on the right page is a chance to take notes.
37:09
And I'm just reading through it and just taking notes as I go of what's being said.
37:13
There's no cross references in there.
37:15
There's no commentary in there.
37:16
It's just the text.
37:18
And I think that's an important principle.
37:20
I think, you know, study Bibles are great.
37:23
All those tools are very helpful, but before you ever open a commentary, before you ever do the cross references, study what the text is actually saying.
37:33
Absolutely.
37:34
And boy, you, you, that that's what you just said is, is so close to my own.
37:40
It's, it's awesome.
37:41
And I love the fact that, that, you know, we, we share a similar method.
37:45
I have changed from paper though.
37:48
I did a while back, my wife bought me an iPad for a present.
37:54
I think it was my birthday or something.
37:55
She bought me an iPad.
37:57
And so now I have a pencil and so I put the text on a white, I copy and paste it to a white background in Notability, which is the, the note taking app that I use.
38:10
It allows me to write with my pen.
38:11
And again, I can use it as a highlighter.
38:13
I can use it as a red pen.
38:14
And I tend to, I tend to write questions was probably the biggest thing that I write when I, when I sit down and read the text.
38:21
And like you said, I read it a couple of times and I look through it and sometimes I'll go through and I'll circle, you know, verbs, you know, what's, what's happening, what's the action or, or go through and underline the nouns and pronouns and connect them back to who's the, who is the he in this passage, who's the you, you know, and, and just making those notes.
38:39
But a lot of times I'll, I'll actually write down, you know, what does this mean? That might, that might be all I write, but I just, what does this mean when he says this? And that's what leads me to the deeper study.
38:52
And that's what does lead me to the interpretation, which is the second part.
38:57
But it all begins with observing what it says.
39:01
Yep.
39:01
Yeah.
39:01
You have to do that.
39:03
And another, this kind of goes off deeper into this conversation, but something that I got convicted about in my own preaching was early in my ministry, which I guess I'm still early in my ministry because I'm young, but earlier in my ministry, I would use cross references a lot.
39:23
And I still do, but I would, if there was a cross reference that seemed to be talking about the same thing, I would just pull it in and say, and see in this text agrees with what's going on here.
39:31
I got convicted about that.
39:33
And now I will not use a cross reference in my sermon.
39:36
If I have not studied the context of that cross reference and made sure that it's saying the same thing.
39:43
Now scripture doesn't contradict itself.
39:45
I'm not saying that, but there are times we can misuse scripture by saying, Oh, the same word is in here.
39:52
And so let me bring that over to this sermon because it's saying the same thing.
39:55
We can actually lead people astray in that.
39:58
I think that's the kind of stuff that leads to reading Philippians 4.13.
40:01
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and go, you know what? I can do anything I want because you pair that with asking me anything in my name and I'll do it.
40:09
And you put those two cross references together and you're like, anything I want, it can happen.
40:13
It's through Christ.
40:14
And that's how it happens.
40:16
That might be an extreme example, but that's where that kind of faulty study leads.
40:22
Absolutely.
40:22
And it's interesting that you mentioned cross-referencing because as much as we know, there is an important concept in Bible study, the analogy of scripture, which means that the scripture will agree with itself.
40:35
And therefore it's the scripture interprets the scripture.
40:39
What you just said though is a lot of pastors need to hear what you just said, because if they weren't listening, what you were saying was sometimes we cross reference passages that do not have anything to do with what we're actually preaching.
40:54
And we think we have, we think we have bolstered our point, but all we've done is given our people a bad example of eisegesis because we read into it.
41:02
Not that the text disagrees, but it's not saying what you're saying that it says.
41:07
Yeah.
41:08
Yeah.
41:08
And it's subtle and it might not seem like a big deal, but it is because you have no idea who in your congregation has been meditating on that passage that you just cross-referenced and you might've led them to go, wait a minute.
41:20
He just used this here.
41:21
And it's saying something completely different than I thought it was.
41:23
And again, that sounds subtle and that might sound extreme, but I personally got convicted of that.
41:28
And I think, I think we have to be better with how we lead our people to see the scripture and study it.
41:35
Absolutely.
41:35
Absolutely.
41:36
And one of the things Dr.
41:38
Hendricks does say in his book, and like I said, when I'm teaching on it, it just happens to be on my mind.
41:42
So it's a lot to come out today, but you know, he says that this is so important that the better we are at observation, the more accurate we will be in interpretation and the more meaningful will be the application.
41:55
Yep.
41:56
So the, so that, that first part of what does the text say is really the heart of getting to the meaning and getting to how that meaning applies to us.
42:07
Yep.
42:08
And, um, I think, you know, what you showed, what you talked about with, uh, pulling out a piece of paper, printing it out or, or having it, or, or even that journaling Bible, that is a wonderful way for people to get into the text and, um, and hopefully people were, were listening.
42:25
Uh, I think that's a good example.
42:27
And just practically too, for anybody listening, I think it's helpful.
42:30
Some people are intimidated by that.
42:31
They're intimidated by something like a scripture notebook where I've got this blank page.
42:36
Um, you don't have to fill the page up first of all, like just use the space that's there.
42:40
You don't have to write profound thoughts.
42:42
I mean, you just mentioned earlier, sometimes you go, what does this mean? Um, just, just write stuff down, right.
42:48
Amen.
42:48
I mean, just write something engaged with the text.
42:51
Um, make sure that you are thinking through it, um, and asking yourself questions of it too.
42:55
So don't be intimidated by it.
42:57
It doesn't have to be, you know, I think the Instagram culture is, has played into this a little bit where you see people with beautifully highlighted and noted Bibles and all this stuff.
43:08
And, um, it doesn't matter.
43:10
It's cool, but it doesn't matter.
43:13
Um, you need to be able to just really engage with the text.
43:17
Um, so it's kind of like I can walk into an office, um, of a professor who has a very neat and tidy desk.
43:24
There's no books, there's no clutter.
43:26
Um, and I wonder, does he do anything? But if I walk in to the office of somebody, there's papers everywhere and books, and this one's open and there's markers here.
43:34
I'm going, this guy's doing some work.
43:36
Um, that's what I want to see.
43:38
So.
43:40
Absolutely.
43:40
Absolutely.
43:41
And that, you know, I hadn't thought about the Instagram thing, but I have seen many pictures of beautifully annotated notes and Bibles and people whose handwriting is great.
43:50
If you look at mine, it looks a little bit like one of those pictures of the guy with the wall, with the red lines drawn all around it.
43:56
You know, like this is the, the, the conspiracy theory I've thought before.
44:00
And I know, I know of at least one preacher who does this.
44:03
He has a giant whiteboard and he maps out a sermon on his whiteboard.
44:06
Like he writes the whole text out.
44:08
And I said, if I did that, it would look like a crazy person.
44:11
People come into my office, they would run thinking I was a completely scary person.
44:16
But I tell you one thing, uh, just to add to what you just said though, for, for the listener, a great way to become a better Bible student is to, is to become a better reader and to try to learn more about language and try to learn, you know, how, what do verbs do, what do nouns do, what to, what, you know, what, what are pronouns and how do they connect and what's an antecedent and, and what's an, you know, adjective, adverb, these things, because, uh, did you, Kenny, you, you were from the Bahamas, right? Did you go to public school or private school or were you? Okay.
44:49
Did, cause they didn't do this with me, but they may have, may have done this at your school.
44:53
Did you, did you learn how to, um, diagram sentences? Not until college.
44:59
Yeah.
44:59
I felt like a fish out of water because everybody already had a premise for it.
45:03
I had never even heard of it.
45:05
Yeah.
45:05
Well, my wife actually, for my children did this because they're homeschooled and I was like, Oh, looking over her shoulder going, Hmm, I, I, I think I like this because we'd ever learned, you know, and I, you know, I have, I have, uh, uh, you know, uh, when I went to college, I didn't take any English classes.
45:23
I clapped all my classes because I took advanced placement English when I was in school, but I had still never done that.
45:29
I had never done diagramming sentences, but that is something that's really cool from a biblical perspective.
45:34
You can take a passage and break it out.
45:37
You can come to great, especially if you're using a good translation, you can come to a much better understanding of the text than, than a lot of people who, um, who just take a, you know, our daily bread style, read one verse and you know, that's your verse of the day kind of thing.
45:55
Yep.
45:55
And, and one other method too, that just came to my mind.
45:58
Um, this, and I want to give a caution here, this method can lead in a dangerous direction.
46:03
So I want to clearly spell out what I mean.
46:06
Um, read every word of the text, um, and emphasize a different word every time you read the verse.
46:12
So let, let's take a verse like, for God, so love the world, um, for God, so love the world, um, for God, so loved the world.
46:20
And then for God, so love the world.
46:22
And that brings you to a place of literally having to every single word in the text and what does it mean, um, with each word.
46:29
So that's a simple thing you can do like out loud.
46:31
You don't have to have a PhD.
46:33
Um, just force yourself to look at every single word, no word in scripture as a throwaway word.
46:39
Absolutely.
46:40
And that's, and again, going back to the premise of today's podcast, the text can't mean what it doesn't say.
46:45
So how do we know what it means by what it says? And you start, you know, what does it say? What does the text say? Absolutely.
46:52
Yep.
46:52
Well, Kenny, Kenny, thank you so much for coming on the program and you've really shared a lot of thoughts, good thoughts and wisdom with us today.
46:58
And I'm sure it's appreciated by our listeners.
47:01
So continue doing the great work that you're doing.
47:03
And don't forget listener, if you're anywhere near mission way church this Friday, and you are a man and you like good food, good brisket, uh, they're having a men's event.
47:14
And if you would like to get any information about that, uh, tell them your website so they can missionwaychurch.org, not.com.org mission way church.
47:24
All right.
47:25
Well again, Kenny, thank you so much for being with us today.
47:29
I appreciate it.
47:29
Yep.
47:30
And listener, thank you for being with us throughout this time.
47:32
I hope that this has been profitable to you and may I encourage you in the week to come spend more time in the word than in anything else.
47:41
May God bless you.
47:42
And thank you for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.
47:45
My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
47:48
God bless you.
47:51
Thank you for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.
47:55
If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
47:58
And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
48:07
As you go about your day, remember this Jesus Christ came to save centers.
48:13
All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior.
48:19
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
48:21
And no one comes to the father except through him.
48:25
May God be with you.