Why Does Hermeneutics Matter?

Well, hello. This is Apologetics Live, with the baby screaming in the background, and your host,

Andrew. No, wait. It's not Andrew. Instead, it's me,

Drew, once again, hosting Apologetics Live, and for some reason, the intro music does not play on my computer.

It's not even on here when I log in. Don't know why. Not entirely sure, but I'm just having fun with the music that's already loaded on here from StreamYard.

Let's turn that off. And it seems like we're having some kind of, or I'm having some kind of technical difficulty.

I don't really know what's going on. I don't really know what's going on right now.

So anyways, tell me if you hear me repeating myself. Here, let's do this.

Let me, we may have to log out and then log in, because I'm not entirely sure what's going on right now.

So you come on, you tell me if you hear me repeating myself, and then we'll see if we can fix that, because I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the audio, what

I'm hearing, because I'm hearing myself talk, and then

I'm hearing myself talk again. So I don't know what's going on with that. So I might have to log out, log back in, and see what's going on.

So if you will give me just one moment. Gotta love technology.

It's fun when it's working. Terrible when it's not. Okay, let's see if that's any better.

So I'm not entirely sure what's going on. But either way, welcome to Apologetics Live. Apologetics.

See, it's muted again. It's weird.

I'm just going to have my headphones off for this. So, oh, and it looks like we have a guest.

Let me bring him in, because he may be able to talk. Yo! What's up, dude?

What's up, man? I don't know what's going on. Do you hear this? What am I? I don't hear anything.

You don't hear anything? I hear you. Really? It's like it's,

I'm talking to the microphone, but then there's a delay, and it's coming back at me.

Okay, now I hear it. I hear the delay. I don't hear anything coming back at you. Yeah, so I don't know what's going on with that.

Oh, I don't know, man. Are you in a new spot? I mean, I'm in my living room, which is where I was last week.

Oh, okay. I don't know, bro. So, that's, see, do you hear that?

Yeah, I heard it that time. And so, apparently, the sound is, Melissa's saying the sound is going in and out.

So, let's try this. Let me turn off this microphone, see if we can't, see if I can't just do it through the computer.

Send it. You're muted.

I'm muted. Can you hear me now? I can hear you now. Yeah, but can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear. And it's doing it again. I don't know what's going on.

Are you going through your soundboard or anything? I turned the soundboard off.

Unplug it. Unplug what? Your soundboard from your computer.

I wonder if it's just StreamYard. It could be.

Yeah, I did that. I unplugged it. That's crazy.

That's weird, bro. It's better. Maybe if I refresh. Maybe. Let's try refreshing.

Melissa, thank you for the prayers. I'll give everybody an update as far as what's good. Yeah. Well, see, I don't want. They're like, why are you in the hospital?

Okay, okay. I'm going to hop out. You give everyone an update about what's going on. I'll hop out.

Okay, cool. Sounds good. So what's up, guys? What's up? Yeah, welcome to,

I was going to say Matter of Theology, but it's not Matter of Theology, Apologetics Live. So, yes, I am obviously not in my home and wearing a hospital gown and very much in a hospital bed.

So quick little update as far as what's going on with me. On Sunday, Sunday night, let me plug this and we don't lose any battery power here.

I've got my iPad Pro. I happen to bring my Bible with me. So Sunday night, I had some food with my family at dinner.

And every now and then, you guys, I'll eat something. And I think everybody experiences this.

You're like, man, I just don't feel like that went down all the way. And so I just take a drink or something, right, and washes it, you know, everything goes down.

And so it didn't do that. And so I was not feeling okay.

Sunday night into Monday, started feeling better Monday, but limited diet on Monday.

Tuesday, went about my normal routine, felt fine until I tried to drink a post -workout shake.

And same thing, wouldn't go down. This time it was much, much worse. The pressure in my chest was real bad.

It hurt to take a deep breath in, like there was pain and uncomfort and pressure. And so I didn't know what was going on.

So I told my wife, I'm like, I need to go to the hospital. And I'm not one of those guys who's like, no, doctors, I can't do doctors.

I'm one of those guys that's like, eh, something's wrong, something's not right. So I came in and as it turns out,

I did a CT scan and made sure it wasn't my chest. My heart is fine.

My cardiovascular system is fine. Vitals are great. In fact, the nurse just came in right before jumping on, you know, the periodic check of vitals, my resting heart rates in the mid fifties, upper sixties, all the blood work and panels and stuff came back.

Everything's fine there. So what they're thinking is it's called, um, akalasia, which I didn't know what that was, um, until a couple of days ago.

And, um, it's where the esophagus, I didn't know this either, but all of us,

I mean, just go here. All of us have this thing. Uh, yeah. At the, at the, when our esophagus goes down and connects to our stomach, it's called an esophageal sphincter.

Didn't know I had one of those right there, but you do too. Um, and it, and it wouldn't open and let everything down.

And so, uh, when, uh, Wednesday morning, um, so that I came to the hospital on Tuesday, Wednesday morning, uh, the

GI doctor who's been phenomenal and everybody here, by the way, the hospital staff and nurses, uh, well -starred

Paulie. Um, so it's literally right around the house. Um, so I, uh, they, they went in, uh, put me under, uh, this is a 41 years old.

It'll be 42 on Sunday. So happy birthday to me. Um, and, uh,

I've never had to have any kind of surgery or anything like that. Never been put under general anesthesia or anything. And so, uh, um, put me under, they went in and the

GI doctor said he removed a bunch of fluid and food and stuff like that. So they're like, but we want to, you know, we want to keep you here.

Um, no solid food, nothing by mouth. Um, uh, you know, IV, so keep you on fluids.

Once you rest, you know, you can move around. I've been doing, if you guys follow me on Instagram, you saw I do my 20 minute walks to keep moving.

And, um, so, uh, so they got tomorrow morning, they're going back in, um, with a light and a scope and they're just going to make sure everything's okay.

And, um, before they send me home on a restricted diet, but then I'll have to see a, um, thoracic surgeon.

Cause how you fix that, um, is you make a small incision, um, uh, underneath the esophageal sphincter outpatient.

So it's going home same day. Um, and, uh, um, and, and that's supposed to, and then they do something else with that as well.

I came from the name of it now. Um, but, um, that's supposed to, to make it to where it opens and closes and doesn't stay open.

Cause if it stays open, that's real bad heartburn and acid reflux and stuff like that. But, um, you want it to open and close like it should, as far as what causes it.

Um, there's a whole list of possible causes. And so they've, they've ruled out a bunch of that, but sometimes it just happens.

I've got a very good friend of mine who is, um, an anesthetist and then the name for that is an anesthesiologist. And he works at St.

Joseph's hospital here in Atlanta. And he was texting me and he said that there was, uh, there was something to do with the endocrine system that's affected by the food that we eat in the

American food system and the chemicals and the stuff that's put in processed foods, which I'm, my diet's pretty clean.

Um, and, um, but that can affect that, you know, the, the esophagus and the lining of the esophagus.

So they did a bunch of biopsies and stuff as well. And I'll get the results of that. But so yeah, I've just had to sit here and, um, you know, thankfully when

I knew I had to go to the hospital, I didn't know how long I was going to be here. So, um, Drew, I showed them my, I got my

Bible, forgot that. And I'm reading the gospel according to the apostles, value of vision.

Drew, you know, I keep that with me. Um, and happened to grab my iPad pro. So nice.

Uh, here we are. Here's a question. So, but first I get to this question, I figured out what the problem was.

Okay. What was that? When, when I logged out of the, uh, and it was good that you were here because you helped me solve the problem because you kept talking.

So when I, I got out of the studio, I kept hearing the show. And I realized that I had the show pulled up on YouTube also, and it was coming through.

And so I'm just stupid. So that makes for an interesting intro since we don't have

Andrew banter, um, but with music and stuff.

So yeah, it's, uh, I'm basically bantering with myself, uh, about why

I'm hearing, uh, an echo and it's no one else can hear it, but me because I've got the headphones on and it's my own computer coming back when you unplugged it.

I could hear the echo and that makes sense because it was coming through your speakers. Right, right, right, right. So here's the question from Jesse.

Hello. He says, were you swallowing or, and swallowing until you vomited? I've had issues with that in the past.

I was wondering. Yeah. So, um, uh, I don't want to be too graphic cause it was, it was violent.

Um, uh, when, cause I would, um, I would swallow and then, you know, cause at times in the past when

I felt something like that, which addressed one of the things I said was, I think everybody has at some point, like you eat something and maybe you don't chew it up enough or, or you're just, you know, congested or something like that.

And you feel like it gets stuck like right here. You take a drink and you tighten up your core a little bit and then, you know, you feel like it'll, it'll go down.

You'll feel it move. Um, and, and that's what would happen. So this time, uh, Jesse, to answer your question.

Um, yeah, so I w I was, I was swallowing. I was trying that. I would try to sip on water.

Um, and, and if you guys have ever watched politics, I'll have, you know, I always have my big water bottle with me. I'm drinking a ton of water.

Um, anyway, so, um, so I would, I would try to do that, but I just, it wouldn't go down.

And so, um, what was happening though, is I wouldn't vomit it up.

It wasn't food and stuff that was coming up. It was just like phlegm for lack of a better, again,

I don't want to be TMI. Yeah. Um, but, but my body was trying to get it out. Um, and it just, it just wasn't.

And so, I mean, it literally kept me up all night, Tuesday into Wednesday. And it wasn't until the procedure

Wednesday morning that I was like, thank you, Lord, you know, relief from the pressure and stuff like that.

So, well, it's a good thing. You're feeling better. Uh, they found the cause of it. Uh, because, you know, when

I put this subject out, you know, first of course, I, I text you and, uh, Hanholtz and Hanholtz may join us a little later, but, uh,

I put this subject out because I know this is one you and I talk about or have talked about a lot.

And it's one I talk about a lot with a lot of other people. And when

I got that, I saw that message or that post, I was like, Bert, my, my first thought wasn't, man,

I hope Chris is okay. It's like, man, I'm not going to have a co -op. It was a close second, right?

It was like the first and greatest one was I'm not going to have a co -op. And then, but right next to that was like, man,

I really hope Chris is okay. And, uh, you know, it's not something serious, um, which it could have been serious if he didn't get to check out.

I mean, and that's what, that's what, I mean, you guys like, I mean, for you guys watching, um, the

GI doctor said that a normal person's esophagus looks like this, right? It's about like that. He's like, dude, yours was like that.

And, and it was just full. And so the concern was aspiration, right?

You're, you breathe that stuff in and that can cause infection into the lungs. That can, that can be a whole host of other issues, tears in the esophagus, and that stuff leaks into your abdomen.

Um, and so I sincerely am, uh, and I said this to somebody, uh, on Twitter when they reached out to me and just said, man, just,

I'm sincerely grateful for the Lord's provision and patience and long suffering and, uh, the grace of, and I, and I told my buddy,

Alex, this, uh, um, I think I told Honholz this too. Um, you know,

Tuesday when all this was happening, it was Tuesday afternoon. It started around noon. Um, I was like, you know,

I just really felt like I needed to come to the doctor and, you know, bro, I'm a cessationist through and through, through and through.

But I, I really wholeheartedly believe it was the Holy Spirit um, as well going, yeah, you need to go.

Not like, not like telling me I didn't hear an audible voice, but it was that it was an overwhelming desire.

Like I've got to get to the hospital and I hate hospitals. Um, and, and I'm, I'm the type of person that unless I'm dying and I know

I'm dying, I don't go to a hospital. Right. My wife has to make me go to a hospital. Yeah. And that was what surprised my wife because Kimberly is the same way.

She's like, you know, for me to go, Hey, I got to the hospital. She's like, what, what?

And I was like, yeah. And then she offered to drive me, but I didn't want our son to have to see. I mean, it was bad enough.

They could hear that I wasn't okay, but I didn't want them to have to see what was happening. Cause like I said, it was a violent thing and I'm not a loud person when

I get sick, but sometimes you just, it just happens. And so, so I was like, yeah, I'll just,

I'll just call 911 and they were paramedics were pros, absolute pros through and through. And so, um, so yeah.

And by the way, so if anybody, if, cause obviously nurses and, and, uh, care partners and stuff may come in.

And so if they do, I'll just mute everything and then come back on. They're just in here for a minute and say, are you okay? You need anything? So fine.

I'm live. Leave me alone. I'm live. We're talking about hermeneutics, hermeneutics, either, either, either go away or pull up a chair.

That's right. But, uh, uh, I'm glad you're okay. Everyone in the comments says that they're glad that you're okay as well.

Um, and that you're going to be okay. So, you know, get that esophagus straightened out and make sure, you know, yep.

And, uh, but heading into today's topic, uh, by the way, the, the topic

I'm thinking of for next week, you might really like, I'm going to try to get a guest or two on to talk about it, but I'll talk about it with you after the show.

But just to, just as a cliffhanger for our listeners and for me and for you.

Yeah. Well, I mean, only till after the show, cause then I'll tell you, but why does hermeneutics matter?

And this is a question that I don't think a lot of people consider people in the church pastors, right?

We're talking church leaders. They don't consider hermeneutics and part of, partly they don't consider it because most of them,

I would say, don't know what it is. And so if you don't know what it is and you view the

Bible and this, and of course this starts with a low view of God's word. If you don't know what it is and you have a low view of God's word, then you're not going to hold, present, teach from scripture as it should.

And when you do that, you're going to mislead people. You're going to lead them in a wrong direction. Now, every once in a while, you may point them to something that's accurate, but like we discussed last week, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day, but you're still going to lead them astray.

And this is one of the things that I deal with, with a lot of people where I am. And some of the people that I go to church with, they don't have a hermeneutic.

They don't know what it is. They approach the Bible first with a self centeredness.

Okay. What is this saying about me rather than what is this saying about God? How is this revealing

God? And then how is this leading me to worship him? And then what does it say about myself in light of who

God is? And then how am I to apply that in my daily life? So whenever we come to scripture, we first have to have in our minds that hermeneutics matters.

And so what is hermeneutics? Well, to put it simply, hermeneutics is, some would say, the science of interpretation, specifically interpreting the

Bible. And in order to interpret the Bible, in order to gain a proper hermeneutic or understanding, we have to begin with context.

That's right. Now there are three rules to Bible interpretation, and that is context, context, context.

We have to seek to find the context. What a lot of people do nowadays is they come to a passage, they'll take one passage, one verse, they'll divorce it from its context, and then they will try to talk about that passage in a way that the author never intended.

They will try to apply that passage in a way that the author never intended. So they're using the

Bible more as a reference book, and they don't understand its composition.

And so if that's how I'm approaching scripture, that is an indicator

I have a low view of scripture. Yeah, man. And let me jump in just for a second.

I think what we have to remember is, I believe it's Psalm 138, where the

Lord talks about His word as being equal to His name. And so if we have a low view of scripture, we ultimately, we have to be honest with ourselves.

We have a low view of God. Now there may be reasons why that we have low views of God.

It may be that the Lord has just saved us. We are infants in the faith. And so we understand the formula of the gospel.

The Lord has granted us repentance in faith, replaced our heart of stone with the heart of flesh.

He has gifted us, because faith is a gift, the ability to understand scripture, appreciate scripture, love scripture, love

God, love Christ in return, obey scripture. All of that is a gift given by the Spirit of God, applied through the efficacious and completed ongoing work of the

Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. So we have to understand that, but we have to hold

God's word above ourselves and above our own interpretation. I think back to Thomas Watson in A Body of Divinity, and he said, till we be above sin, we will never be above scripture.

And so we have to approach scripture in that way. If we have a hermeneutic of, where am

I in here? Where am I in the text? Where am I in the story? Am I David?

Am I Goliath? Am I the apostle? Am I one of the apostles? What apostle do

I most identify with Peter? Because I have a big mouth usually.

It gets me in trouble. But that's how we have to approach scripture and how we approach scripture matters.

And I think, especially in our country, in the Western church, because of the influences of the charismatic movement, because of the oriented movement, because of the

Stephen Furtick's, because of the Bethel, and again, the list goes on and on and on.

We have, and pastors have, just a surface level immature hermeneutic that ultimately gives license to do exactly what

Satan and the demons do, which is twist the scriptures to fit their own desires instead of obeying and honoring the scriptures to fit the desires and the glory of God.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So when I look out at the landscape of the church, especially in America, it's very noticeable that God has given a famine in the land, and a famine for His Word, as we can look at in Amos chapter eight, right?

And now in order to, before we really get into talking about hermeneutics and gaining context, we have to understand the nature of scripture, because if that's the source that we are to be interpreting, and as preachers, if that's the source we are to be expositing and explaining and proclaiming, we have to understand first the nature, because people will go to church because they want to hear what the

Lord gave the pastor to say, right? They don't want to go to hear, thus says the

Lord from the Word. They yawn when you say, turn in your Bibles, right?

They're disinterested. Immediately they check out. Now I have been seeing some of this kind of creep up, where there's more, some people are starting to take interest more, because I think in some, the blinders are starting to be taken off, where they're paying attention and they're going, what he said,

I don't think that's right. That doesn't, I can't pinpoint it, but I don't think it's right. But this guy, when he opens the

Word, there's something about it that I can latch on to. And so, but I still say for the vast majority, because we look at the popularity of the

Furtick's, of the Bethel's, of the Mike Todd's, right? The hype, the,

I won't even say hyper, I'll just say the charismatic movement as a whole. When you get these pastors that say something like,

I had a message prepared, but the Lord gave me this Word. Okay. No, He did not.

Because what's going to happen, you're going to give that Word and all the verses you use are going to be taken out of context.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I'm glad you didn't say hyper because I would even, and I know our sister,

Melissa Owens will agree with me here. Like I, I, I put Michael Brown and Sam Storms, and in that category, it's like, if, if what, what is your standard?

And if scripture is not the standard, rightly divided, accurately handled.

And you can, you can see this if you watch the, the, the round table discussion, Sam Storms, Michael Brown, Jim Osmond, Justin Peer.

You can see it clearly. Very clearly. Very clearly. So when we, when we look at the church and the people who want a supposed

Word from the Lord that the pastor gave, and they, they sit on edge for that, and then they go, oh, wow, the

Lord speaks through him. But then they, they, they, they turn off, they shut down when they say, when you say open your

Bibles. Well, let's, let's, let's talk about that. Because a supposed

Word from the Lord, okay, is subjective. And the reason it's subjective is because it's not actually rooted in any kind of biblical foundation.

It's, you haven't had time to do any study within this Word that you got to even validate whether or not it's true.

Right? You, a verse came to your mind. Okay. That a verse came to your mind.

But how are you going to apply that verse? What's the first thing? Now I know, what's the first thing you and I are going to do?

The first thing you and I are going to do is we're going to go to the scripture and we're going to go, what's this verse talking about?

Yep. Yep. What is the original context, the authorial intent and context of that specific passage?

Yep. But what, what's very popular is a word, a passage came to my mind.

The Lord brought something to my mind. I think He's showing me. So it's subjective. It's not objective.

Right? Well, and the problem with this, man, is, is ultimately, this is what this leads to. And this, this kind of is, is calling back to last week when we were talking about Driscoll, John Lindell, that whole thing that happened.

It's you know, the, and, and the post that I put on Twitter, I go back to that interview that MacArthur did with Justin Peters at Chef Con a couple years ago.

You know, the greatest threat to the Christian church today is, is an abysmal lack of biblical discernment. And where that starts, where having that abysmal lack of biblical discernment starts is with an improper hermeneutic.

That, that you have to have a proper hermeneutic when it comes to studying the scriptures. And it's not difficult.

It's not, it takes work. Yes, but it's not difficult to do. It's, you just go back to what the scriptures teach.

It's not just, it's not just about what does the Bible say? What does it mean by what it says?

Right. Yeah. And so, so getting back, right, a supposed word then is usually pretty vague and it's open to all kinds of interpretations.

Right. And what happens when it, when you have a vague word and it's open up to all kinds of interpretations, it then becomes confusing.

Why? Because it's not rooted in objective truth. Whereas the word of the

Lord scripture is clear, is direct, it's distinct, right?

It's explicit in its meeting. So we would, we would look at the perspicuity of scripture, what you're talking about, the clarity of scripture, because then there is no confusion.

And now that's not saying there's not difficult passages, but where there are difficult passages, there's usually someplace else that will explain it further.

Correct. Correct. I remember, and speaking of that, I remember Martin Lloyd Jones saying that if you, and I want to be careful saying this because there is some nuance to it is, is, you know, if you come to a theological conclusion, but that theological conclusion can, is only found and supported in one place in scripture, start over.

Yes. Start over. And now that doesn't mean that just because, for example, example, head coverings, head coverings is talked about in first Corinthians 11.

That doesn't mean that there aren't other passages in scripture that support that. Paul gets into the specifics there.

So that's not what I'm talking about. But remember also too, let me say this on the flip side of that is just because it's written one way, just because it's written in one place in scripture, that's enough.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And now, so another thing with the supposed word from the

Lord is that it tends to feed on emotion. Because if I can say something that I know is going to stir the emotions, and we have a, look at this interruption we have in a point that I was getting ready to make.

Well, finish your point. So the, the supposed word feeds on the emotions and if I can get a hold of your emotions,

I can make you go wherever I want. Whereas the word of the Lord preached from the scriptures, it cuts right to the heart and it does that regardless of how you feel about it.

Amen. Okay, go ahead, Andrew. Welcome to the show from the Philippines. Andrew. Yeah. Well, we're just getting ready for church camp.

Justin Peters is going to be speaking first. But I just brought a glimpse of this and saw

Mr. Huff in a hospital bed. Clearly did not know. I'm like, what in the world is happening?

What are you doing? You're in a hospital. What in the world are you doing on the show? You're confusing me. What happened, brother?

Check out Twitter. I explained it. It's an issue with my esophagus and food not going down, fluid not going down.

So they had to go in and get most of that out. They're going in tomorrow morning to go all the way down to where my stomach is and just make sure everything's working properly.

And then I'll probably have to have an outpatient surgery later to correct the issue, but I'm doing good, man. They just wanted to keep me here because they want me to go home and eat a bunch of food and aspirate and all that fun stuff.

So, so you're, you're having a problem with your esophagus. So what do you do? You come on the show so you can talk a lot.

Yeah. That makes sense. You can't keep them down. Yeah. Well, hey, you know, sorry.

I can't see it on Twitter because I made a mistake and maybe you guys want to deal with this next week and I hate to wait this so long, but you know,

John MacArthur posted something about PSD not existing and ADD not existing.

And then he goes on to explain the experiences and gives them biblical terms. I made the mistake of telling people to like,

Hey, let's like listen in context. Let's, you know, hear what he actually said. Yeah.

I woke up this morning to like a thousand messages, all nasty. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. So yeah, that may be a good topic for next week, but yeah, no,

I just, I popped in cause I saw Mr. Huff there and I'm doing good brother.

I'll, I'll shoot you a text until you end this more. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I may not be able to get it because someone here, one of the three of us is a knucklehead and went into a sauna with his phone.

So I have no phone until I get back to the States. Yeah. But then

I identified which one was the knucklehead. So yeah. But so yeah, it's, it, it's been good.

This is, we're in a, in a church camp. I'm actually really surprised because we're in a, at a church camp with the church that, that owns this church camp is one of the churches that the last time

Justin and I were here, we spoke against. Oh wow. Now we're renting their facility because it's a really nice facility.

So I'm wondering if, if any of their folks are going to listen and be like, Hey, wait a minute. Wow. I know that it's against charismatic movement.

Isn't that the same guy in the wheelchair that we kicked out of here last time? Yeah. Yeah. So Justin's getting ready to speak.

I think his topic, I can't remember what his topic is right now. I know Jim's tomorrow is going to be on passing a torch to the next generation, but I think

Justin's is something like on glorifying God, but I don't remember the rest of it. So, but I'm looking forward to it because well, it is.

You know, Andrew, when I had this idea for, for this topic tonight, my very first thought was it'd be great to have

Justin because people don't recognize Justin as an expositor and it would be great, but he's in the

Philippines. Yeah. Well, maybe we could do this because, you know, this is, this is the topic that's kind of where I focus on is how to interpret.

Right. So it's, it's, this is the most important issue I think for Christians today, because, you know, as I said at the, at the strange fire conference here in the

Philippines, the real danger of the charismatic movement is the fact that it takes

Christianity from thinking to feeling from the sufficiency in scripture to my experience.

And that is what has led in all the other things that we now see.

And it's, you know, like it really shocked me this morning to see how much people are reacting emotionally to what

John MacArthur said. And they're like, Oh, PSD exists because, because I have it. No one said the experience doesn't exist.

I mean, he goes on to explain that, but simple logic and hermeneutics reading, reading something or hearing something in context and not having a knee -jerk reaction, but we now are a culture that has such a knee -jerk reaction to everything that comes to scripture with a preconceived idea and say,

I got to make the Bible safe. I got to make the Bible teach. And that's not how we're going to interpret the

Bible, right? We have exegesis, which is to take meaning out of the text in the right way to do it.

Look at the text of scripture, understand what it is actually saying in its culture of context and its grammatical context.

Get the meaning from the texts. We have exegesis where people come to the Bible with an idea in mind of what it's already teaching.

But as I said at the conference, and I think we got it here from Apologetics Live is where I stole it from, though I couldn't remember who it was that said it, but Drew probably remembers.

And then there's wissages with Jesus where people just wish the Bible said something. So they just try to make it say what they wish it said.

So there's wisdom Jesus. Yep. That's exactly right. And you bring up a good point, because it's not just about reading in context.

This is about listening in context too. Because how many times, Andrew, have we been on this show and someone has come in and they've missed what you're saying, they've missed what

I'm saying, that they don't get it because they're not listening to what's being said?

Yeah. And even when we correct them, it's funny because there's times where we correct them. And then they still go on saying that we said something we didn't say.

And it's like, you do realize we've corrected you a couple of times, right? Well, what I find funny too is

John has dealt with this before. This isn't the first time John has said this. And if you listen in context,

Andrew, you're absolutely right. And Drew, you said it too. You listen in context, he's very clear. He's not saying it doesn't exist.

That's not what he's saying at all. Yeah. No, he's saying to use biblical terms.

Look, I had someone on Twitter that was like, oh, well, what would you call plantar fasciitis?

Should I go to the Bible for that? No, because that's not dealing with your spirit. I mean, the

Bible deals with our spirit. Yes, it deals with physical things. I mean, I'm going to be teaching a course for the

Passing the Torch group, the class that they have on apologetics and debate.

And a lot of what came up with this Twitter is that I'm going to end up using it because they're like, you know, when they're talking plantar fasciitis, well, you've got a category there.

Yeah. I mean, the fact when they go, oh, well, you know, is plantar fasciitis just leprosy?

Because the Bible talks about leprosy. Well, OK, now you have a hasty generalization, right? You're just trying to instead of actually looking at what's being said, you're looking to how to poke holes at it and then, you know, call people names when you can't answer.

Right. You know, and that's not how we should be interpreting the Bible. Look, I don't know if you guys have experienced this.

Actually, I kind of know you guys, so I know you have. But many of the listeners probably have experienced this as well.

I have as well, where you have a position you hold when you're early in your Christian walk. You think it's what the

Bible teaches, but then someone comes along and educates you and you suddenly look at you and go, oh,

I was interpreting it wrong. I mean, I I've shared this story before, but I came out of the charismatic movement. I was from a

Jewish background. I just trusted the charismatics I knew in college. They told me what the Bible says, and I thought

I don't know anything. So I trusted them. But then sitting in a Bible study, I wasn't even in the conversation.

Two men at the other end of the table. And one guy just says, you know, not everyone believes the gifts continue to today. I went, wait, what?

And I just went through the Bible and read 1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14 in one sitting in context and went, wait a minute.

This is teaching everything that the charismatic church teaches today.

It's actually condemning the behavior. But I was taught that this is actually what it was teaching us, the charismatic movement.

And I realized how backwards it is. And that's what got me into studying hermeneutics, because I never wanted to be wrong again. I never wanted to.

I want to be. I mean, the more that we follow the rules of interpretation, the less likely we are to get things wrong.

And then we get into the question, you know, there are different hermeneutics that people apply to the

Bible. You have a dispensational view, you have a covenantal view, and there's there's different. But those are the two broad ones.

And there those are different ways of interpreting. But there you know,

I can respect someone that even though I'm more dispensational and others are more covenantal, I can respect someone who's covenantal and interprets it with a consistent hermeneutic that they believe is the right one, rather than someone that just says, well,

I'm just this must mean this because my systematic theology teaches it. Right. You know, when I do our

Bible interpretation made easy seminars in churches, I always teach that there's two ways to interpret.

You can either interpret by the rules or you can interpret by yourself.

It's going to be your systematic theology, your personal experience, whatever it is. But that's what people end up doing.

They end up interpreting by what they come with, a preconceived idea. And we all do that, by the way, as well as you guys.

We come with preconceived ideas. Frameworks. Correct. It's presuppositions that we have to be willing to question our presuppositions when we come to a text because we could be wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. Some of the now, Andrew, you and I have had conversations hermeneutically, right, where we're going through a text.

We'll say Daniel 9 because we did this on Theology Throwdown a while ago, maybe even been about a year ago.

But we're going through a text. We're going through Daniel 9, but I'm laying out my hermeneutic and I'm showing you what

I'm connecting to, where it's leading to, and I'm giving you a path through Scripture to follow, right?

And you would do the same. And so that way you can see what

I'm seeing, how I'm seeing it. I'm not just coming in with a blanket statement and saying something like,

Andrew, this is what I feel the Lord is saying because this is what it is.

And the Lord told me, and I believe that's what it is. And so I'm just going to go with that. And then whatever you say after that,

I'm just going to dismiss it. Well, am I dealing honestly? What I say after that is the

Lord told me you're wrong. And then I open Scripture. Right. But in conversation and looking at these things, there's a way to approach it.

And so I was in a Bible study recently where we were looking at 2

Peter 1. And so if you look at 2 Peter 1, you got verses 3 all the way through verses 8, maybe 9, might even be 10.

But that's basically one section. And in there,

Peter is speaking of specific character traits that are to be amplified and pursued by our faith.

If we have a true faith, we are to pursue these character traits. They should be within us.

They shouldn't dwell us. And so it should be evident by those character traits. And so I'm sitting in this

Bible study, and I say, and this is how we know, because if we look at verses 9 that follows, it says, if you lack these qualities.

And then in verse 10, it basically says the same thing. I said, so what qualities is it talking about?

Verses 5, 6, and 7, where the qualities are found. And so I brought everyone to the text to show them this is what the text is talking about.

And afterwards, you know where everyone went? They went completely outside of the text to talk about some kind of personal experience with something physical, that they see something going on, rather than dealing with the character traits that are to be portrayed within a believer.

This is why so many of the Bible studies that people attend, I had a pastor who used to refer them as a show your ignorance study.

Because people come and say, well, this is what it means to me. It doesn't matter what it means to you. It matters what it means. That's why

Josiah Nichols has the little booklet that we have called, What Does It Mean to Me?

And that, you know, to me is crossed out. You're right. Because it doesn't matter what it means to me. It matters what it means.

And so many people come to the Bible with the idea of, I want the

Bible to tell me what I already believe. Instead of saying, am

I wrong? The Bible's right. We're not. We're only right in as far as much as we agree with God.

And so if we're not in agreement with God, if we're coming to his word, let's put it this way.

This is what a paraphrase from John Cowell is. I mean, I don't speak the same language as him.

He didn't write in English. But he basically said, if you take God's word out of context, you no longer have God's word, but man's word.

Right. Because you've just taken it from the context that God has given it and given a new meaning. And all of a sudden, you're no longer dealing with God's word anymore.

And this is the thing that we have to realize. So I got to get going because Justin's going to start in 15 minutes.

Okay. And no offense to you guys. I don't want to miss Justin. I'm sure when you get back, we'll have another episode on hermeneutics.

But thank you for stopping by your show. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you letting me come in and bombard my own show.

I appreciate it. I'll give you guys just a quick look if I can.

Can I turn my camera around? If I can turn my camera around, or I'll just turn this. I'll show you the church that's been hosting us and taking good care of us.

So these are the folks who are helping with the church here. So here's... I'll come back out so I can hear.

This is Pastor Armand right here. He's the pastor of Rock and Refuge. And he's the one that puts a lot of this together.

So be praying for him. He's got to put up with us.

Yeah. And that's no easy task. Pray for Andrew's tummy. He has trouble.

Yeah. I haven't been feeling good for a week since the Strange Fire Conference. So you can pray for me. But thanks.

Keep up the good work. Chris will be praying for you. Thank you. Thank you, brother. Thank you, Pastor Armand. He needs sanity after we leave.

He needs some rest after we leave. I bet. We know that one. All right.

Thank you. See you guys. Thank you. We'll see you. So we want to thank

Andrew for stopping by his own show. So let's get back into talking about the nature of Scripture.

Because really, hermeneutics doesn't make any sense if we don't understand the nature of Scripture.

And that's where it all starts. It starts with our view of what Scripture is. And so real quickly,

I'm just going to begin in 2 Timothy 3. It's a passage we all know.

Paul is speaking, and he says, And I like how the

LSV renders that, because after equipped, it says, thoroughly equipped. Thoroughly, yep. Right afterwards.

So equipped, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Which is really funny, because when we went to Cruciform 2020, and I was preaching, and I was basically doing an exposition of this passage, and I think a passage in chapter 4, and I was speaking to pastors, and I said,

Are your people equipped? And I think I said, Are they thoroughly equipped or adequately equipped?

Something like that. That's really funny, because I don't use the LSV, I use the

NASV. But it's neither here nor there. But either way, the

Scriptures are inspired. So we believe, first and foremost, in the inspiration of Scripture, that they are

God -breathed. They come from the very mouth of God Himself. And since they come from His mouth, that means they are

His words and His thoughts. And since they are His words and His thoughts, that makes

Scripture the source of truth. And in ministry, right, when we do ministry, when we preach, we deal, or just for Christians in general, we deal in truth.

And so people have always been seeking to find what is truth.

I mean, that's one of the age -old questions. What is truth?

At least until we get to the 20th century, when we have postmodernism and took over societies.

And postmodernism, what that is, is it denies absolute truth. And what it does is rely on relativism.

So relativism is what's true for one might not be true for another.

And we see this in the church. We see this in Bible studies. We see this when we talk about passages, and a person may go, well, that's your interpretation, right?

Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. If you say that, you're dealing in relativism.

Correct. Because if relativism is true, when we come to Scripture, then we can't know what

Scripture says. It has to have an objective meaning, which means, and because God's not the author of confusion, because His Word is clear, we know that it is true.

Therefore, we must seek to find the truth in the Scripture, not what it means to me, as Andrew was saying, but what does it mean to God?

What does the author mean? And this is where we get into authorial intent. What does the author mean by what the says?

And you can quickly disprove relativism. Okay? One person says, they say,

I don't believe in gravity. You believe in gravity. I don't believe in gravity. That works very well until you jump out of a plane without a parachute.

I happen to be on the fifth floor of the hospital, so we could test that theory if someone doesn't believe in gravity. Well, I don't think hospital windows open anymore because of that reason.

No, they probably don't. But you find out very quickly that there is a such thing as absolute truth, that gravity does exist.

If you jump, you will fall. Correct. Correct. Well, and it's incredibly important when it comes to understanding, and I already mentioned this once, but who

God is, but then kind of going back to, this can kind of play into what

Andrew was talking about with what Dr. MacArthur said. When we submit to the absolute truth of the

God -breathed scriptures, the Theanistas, right? When we go back to the source, ad fontes, back to the source of the two scriptures, when that's where we live, that's where we breathe, that's where we search for all meaning, not only do we understand first and foremost who

God is, but his nature, his attributes, we understand who we are in light of that thrice holy

God and what we need in all matters as it pertains to life and godliness. Peter said, speaking of 2

Peter, we have that in the scriptures. And so understanding that we can't gather that if we go to the scriptures and go,

I have a thought, I want to go prove it. That's not how we get that. How we get that is by going to the scriptures.

What does this mean to God? What was the original authorial intent? And what is the application?

Now, I want to talk for a second about frameworks, because frameworks are important. Frameworks are important for us, even in reformed circles and the circles that we're in.

We constantly have to be, I mean, you need to think about the way we approach scripture in our mind's eye and with our heart.

When I say heart, I mean the inner man, with windshield wipers, constantly wiping away the blocking of the framework that we think we have.

Even if we think it's correct to constantly challenge and test ourselves to whether or not we are reading our frameworks into the scriptures or that we are truly gathering our frameworks from the scriptures.

And that is a constant process. That process never ends. You will never arrive when it comes to examining your own heart and mind to make sure that you have a proper hermeneutic and a proper way of interpreting scripture.

So I want to piggyback on what you read out of Second Timothy with Psalm 19, and it was at that same

Cruciform Conference that I preach out of Psalm 19. And starting in verse 7, the law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul.

The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever.

The judgments of Yahweh are true. They are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold, sweeter also than the honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them your slave is warned, and keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors?

Equip me of hidden faults. Also keep back your slave from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me, that I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my redeemer."

Like when we approach the scriptures with that attitude of they're more desirable than gold.

I mean, think of the most desirable physical thing you have. Do you value and desire your time here more than anything else?

This is not a toot of my own horn at all. When I knew I was coming to the hospital, this is the first thing

I grabbed. This right here. I was like, if I have this, I'm going to be good.

Not a problem. I'm going to keep up my reading. I'm going to keep up my studying. Why? Not so I can check something off a list, because I want to know who

God is, and I want to know who I am in response to who He is, and I want to know mentally and emotionally how the scriptures need to influence those things and not my emotions, my frameworks.

Try to make them influence the scriptures. We can't. But it's super important that we view the law, the testimony, the precepts, the commandments, and the fear, the judgments of the

Lord in that way, understanding that it's everything we need pertaining to life and godliness. That's right.

Yeah. And what you're getting at is that we have to have a standard of truth.

Correct. We have to have a source for which we can always refer back to. And if relativism is true, we have no reason to come back to this source time and time again.

Correct. So we have to view scripture as objectively true, meaning it's grounded, it's firm, it's not going anywhere.

It's actually what we start with. And so one of our positions on this show in terms of apologetics is presuppositional apologetics.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't use evidences or we don't rejoice in evidences or understand evidences.

I mean, we've had Dr. Jason Lyle on this show. Anthony Silvestro uses evidences.

But evidences... Well, the scriptures do. The beginning of Psalm 19, the heavens are telling the glory of God.

Right. But we have to have a place to start in order for those evidences to even make sense in the reality we live in.

So we have to start with the Bible first. And so just listen to what

Jesus himself says, okay? John 17, 17. Jesus is praying.

He's praying to the Lord. And he says, sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth.

Amen. Right. Now, even take Jesus in John 18, where he's responding to Pilate, right?

Pilate, he's asked Jesus if he's the king of the

Jews. And Jesus says, what does he say? He says, everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

And Pilate responds, what is truth? And then walked away, right?

And not even realizing that he was in the presence of the embodiment of truth, right?

That's right. Okay. John 14, 6. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me, right? All truth is found in God's word.

All truth is found in Christ. And if anything is true at all, it is true because God, through Christ, has made it to be true.

Correct. Okay? So God's word is our source of truth, right?

Now, because it is our source of truth, it has things that make us profitable, or it has profitabilities, right?

It is profitable for, meaning it has a benefit, it has a value, for teaching.

The relaying of information of what God wants us to know about himself and about ourselves, and then how we live in communion with him.

It gives us information about how to be saved and how we are to love him and love our neighbor.

Okay? So the scriptures are profitable for teaching. It's instruction about godly things.

Correct. Now it's also profitable for reproof, right? The exposing or calling out of sin.

So the scriptures hold up, because they are the source of truth, they hold up the mirror to us so we can see ourselves in light of this source of truth, in light of his standard and his holiness.

And it does that so that it can bring about correction. So it is profitable for correction, right?

It's almost like Paul is a master teacher here, and he's doing just a little flow chart, right?

So he brings about correction, which is the need to fix it, the instruction on how to fix it, in order to bring us back in line.

And then it is profitable for training in righteousness, right? Growing in holiness.

How do we know what it means to be holy? The scriptures, they teach us, right?

Where do we get our examples of holiness and righteousness? We get them from the scriptures, right?

So the scriptures are profitable for our teaching about godly things, but it's also for our training in godly things.

And so we have to understand the nature of scripture before we get into actually interpreting what it means.

Correct. Because, and again, I go back to churches across the land, there's a lot of unhealthy churches.

And how can you spot the difference between a healthy church and an unhealthy church? A healthy church is

Bible -centered, it's Bible -focused, it's Bible -driven, it's Bible - regulated. And when it is centered, focused, driven, and regulated by the

Bible, that means it is also going to be Christ -centered, Christ -exalting,

Christ -worshipping. I mean, that's how you can tell a healthy church from an unhealthy church.

It's not self -focused, it's not self -driven, it's not seeking to go the, where is me in the

Bible, and doing narcissus, reading myself in if I don't find myself there.

I forgot about that one. Yeah, right. So we have to come to scripture understanding its nature.

Anything you want to add to that? No, man. I mean, you hit the nail on the head.

I mean, we have to remember that with the scriptures, we have the very mind of God. Paul said that in Corinthians, that we have the mind of Christ in the scriptures.

And that's a fantastic point. You can walk in, again, using a gentleness, reverence, and respect, but you can walk into churches, and you should be able to tell pretty quickly.

I'm not going to put a time limit on it, but you should be able to tell pretty quickly whether or not this church is a

Bible -believing, Bible -focused, Bible -centered church. And I like the way you draw that correlation.

It's His Word. It's Christ's Word. It's the mind of Christ. And so when you have a church that is

Bible -focused through and through, it's regulated. That's one of the reasons we talk about the regulative principle so much, or have throughout the years, is because when you are regulated by the mind of Christ, the church is not going to look like the world, number one.

It's going to be a glimpse of heaven, number two. It's going to be a, oh, cool, look at that. My iPad even does the reactions.

That's kind of fun. And then number three, it's going to be a, like every better way of saying it, a hospital for sinners.

A place to come and to be unified and to grow in holiness. They're going to pursue that.

They're going to hold themselves to that standard, and they're going to admonish you to do the same thing.

You're going to walk away. You're going to walk away on the Lord's Day or walk away from time in the Word with your brothers and sisters at that church, not applauding the pastor, but falling more and more in love with the

Lord Jesus Christ because of what has been proclaimed through His Word. That's right. That's right. Now, moving into hermeneutics, okay?

When we look at reading the

Bible, okay, we're answering the question, what does it say?

When we get into interpretation, interpretation answers the question, what does it mean by what it says?

And we've said that several times on the show tonight. And so I was taught if the teacher repeats themselves more than once, that's something you should write down.

That's a good point to write down. What does it mean by what it says?

And so in order to understand what it means by what it says, in order to interpret rightly, we have to gain context, right?

And so I open the show by saying it, but the three rules of Bible interpretation are context, context, context.

You will hear it time and time again. You hear it on this show all the time because context is that important.

Every verse of Scripture, every passage that you will read is connected to a larger context, okay?

You have an author, you have an audience. The author writes a specific letter or message or we'll say instruction to a specific audience for a specific purpose at a specific time.

Maybe they're dealing with something and the author is writing to go, this is how you deal with this.

Okay. Now, Chris, if I were to write you a letter and in this letter,

I say a lot of things, right? That letter, now

I may talk about several different things in this letter, right? So within the letter, there may be a couple of different contexts.

Contexts. Contexts. Contices. I like it.

Okay. Let's go with it. There may be a couple of contexts because I may change the subject, right?

Because maybe I don't see you for a while. We don't talk for a while. And so I'm writing you a letter about what's going on.

Maybe I'm giving you some kind of instruction. So somewhere along the way, there may be a subject change.

Therefore, the context may change. Okay. But I can't take a sentence out of that letter and apply it to something that it was never meant to, right?

Correct. So let's say I write you a letter. You're in the hospital. You get this letter. A nurse comes in, reads this letter, reads one sentence, takes this one sentence, and this one sentence says, burn the house down, right?

Now you read the letter, so you may know what I mean. I may be even quoting someone, right?

Or it may be an inside joke. But there's a context to it. And this person takes that and goes off and starts burning houses down and says, well,

I read it. It says burn the house down. Okay. You've completely divorced it from its context and what it meant by what the author said to the recipient.

That happens all the time in churches. Yep. Yeah, it happens.

It happens a lot. Going back to the things that you guys have talked about on this show in a second,

I'll be right back. Okay. So yeah, we've talked about a lot of things on this show. And so I'll let

Chris make his point when he comes back. But finding the context of a passage is drastically important because that's what we have to teach.

If I take a passage and I remove it from its context and I begin teaching that passage void of its context,

I'm misleading people. I'm going to arrive at a false application.

I'm going to arrive at an application that's not really beneficial. And that person's always going to come back to that passage and that teaching that I did.

And they're going to look at that and they're going to seek to apply that in that way. And then they're going to tell someone else and they're going to tell someone else.

I'm leading people astray when I take a verse, remove it from its context, and try to apply it in a manner that's not appropriate.

So now, how do we find context? That's really a key question.

How do we find the context of a passage? Well, there are several gaps that we have to bridge because the

Bible was written in the first century. We live in the 21st century.

There's a whole different culture there. And so we have to bridge a gap from that culture to this one in order to understand how to rightly apply what was being said in our time.

And so first, there is a language gap that we have to bridge.

There's a language gap. So the Old Testament, we know this, was written in Hebrew, majority in Hebrew, some in Aramaic, and then the

New Testament was written in Greek. So an example of bridging this gap would be the word world.

Now in English, when we say the word world, we think of just the earth, the planet, every person on the planet.

But in the Greek language, there's several different words that mean world, that they're translated as world.

Take, for instance, John 3 .16, for God so loved the world.

The term used there is kosmos. So the world would refer to the whole world across the planet.

Now even that gets into an interpretation, depending on does it mean every person on the whole planet, or does it mean all the believers on all the planet, or all the elect who would come on all the planet.

Either way, the word world, kosmos, is used to mean the whole world.

Luke 2 .1, Caesar, he sends out a census, taken of the world.

Well, Caesar can't send out a census to the whole world. He doesn't rule the whole world.

The term used for world there is oikumene. Now this term refers to a specific governed political area, right?

Because again, Caesar cannot tax the whole world. He cannot tax areas that he does not have control over.

So in that case, world would mean a specific area. But people will come to the scriptures, and they will see world, and then they will go, well, that just means the whole...every

time it says world, that means the world. And then you have people who would say maybe

KJV -only -ists that...and there's a clip of this going around, by the way. Oh, and welcome back to the show.

But we'll say there are some KJV -only -ists who have the authenticity to say things like, the

KJV corrects the Greek. I'm sorry, I don't think so, right?

So there's a language gap that we have to bridge. Is there anything you want to add to the language gap?

Oh, hang on. My connection is a little spotty. Hang on one second. Your connection is a little spotty. Yeah.

There it goes. It's getting a little better. I'm going to turn my camera off for just a second. What was the last thing you said?

You were talking about the KJV tries to correct the Greek, and then you said something else. Yeah, so we're right now in this portion talking about how do we gain context, that there's a language gap that we have to bridge.

Because the scriptures were written in one language, we speak another, and how

English translates words is not always helpful, right? The deficiency is in the English language.

It's not in the Greek language. Greek is actually a very clear language.

It's the English that has the deficiency. But we have to be able to bridge that gap to understand what the author means.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, and I like where you're going with world and the difference between the two. I think that's important.

And yeah, the point that I was going to make kind of leads into what you were saying, where you were going as far as determining that context.

But we see an example of things taken out of context, I think, when it comes to the spiritual gifts. When we look at 1

Corinthians chapters 12 through 14, and we see people try to take things out of context and draw lines that aren't there.

And one of the ways that you see that is the language gap that you're talking about as well.

But context, context, context. So no, I like where you're going with that, man. A whole lot. And yeah, anybody who thinks that any

English word is sufficient for correcting a Greek, I don't care whether it's the

LSV or the KJV, they're wrong. Run away. Yeah, exactly. And Jesse makes a good point here.

He says, like, all right, when people say all means all, and that's all, all means, well, not necessarily, right?

Because, and I've done this example before, probably not on this show, but there's an audience relevance to the term, right?

So let's say, Chris, let's say you and I, we're in a building, okay?

We're in a building. We'll just say a church, okay? It's you, me, maybe my family's there.

And I say, hey, we should all go get lunch. Now, when I say we should all go get lunch, do

I mean everyone in the building? Do I mean everyone in the city? Do I mean everyone in the county, everyone in the world?

No, there's an audience relevance. I'm talking about the all in whom

I'm speaking to, right? So when I say we should all go get lunch,

I'm talking about Chris and my family. We should go get lunch because I ain't paying for everyone.

Yeah. I ain't got that kind of money. You ain't got that kind of cash. That's right.

I ain't got Aston Martin money yet. Okay. But, but let's get into the next gap that we have to bridge.

And that's a cultural gap. Now there is a huge difference between that culture and ours, right?

And just in terms of technological advances alone, right? There's a huge, huge difference.

Even in the Middle East today, right? There's a huge cultural gap between that time and this time.

But now here's an example. The Bible does not mention the teen years of Jesus, right?

Now we assume, or people assume, that Jesus was a carpenter. Now they assume that he was a carpenter because Joseph was a carpenter.

Now why would they assume that? Well, because there is actually a culture that existed where once a boy turned 10 or 12, he would then become an apprentice to what his father did, or maybe he went into some other type of trade.

And that's what his teen years would be doing until he got his own business and established and did his own work.

He would be training. So that's actually a cultural thing. Now I'm not saying that's definitive because Scripture doesn't speak on that.

So I want to be clear. I'm not saying Scripture teaches that, but there is a culture that would have taken place.

And so we don't see Jesus again until he begins his ministry.

And so what was he doing during that time? Well, it makes sense if you're considering culture that he was probably doing some carpentry.

He was probably learning that trade because that's what Joseph did. And being a good

Jewish boy following in that culture, he probably would have done that. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. That's good, man. Keep going. Great. Okay. Let's move on to the next gap, okay?

The next gap is a geographical gap that we have to bridge, right?

Here's one that I use all the time because I hear it used all the time. I hear it used all the time wrongly.

Revelation 3 .16, okay? The city of Laodicea. Now often when we hear this taught, it's taught as though being on fire is a good thing, and being cold is a bad thing, and then being lukewarm is you're on the fence.

You're kind of half in, half out, right? Well, and in that teaching, hot usually is equated to belief while cold is related to non -belief, okay?

Right. Now let's, if we understand geography, the layout of the land here, geographically,

Laodicea lies in the middle of two cities, okay? Correct. Heropolis and Colossae.

Heropolis was known for its hot, soothing springs. Colossae was known for its cold, refreshing springs.

And what Laodicea wanted to do was they wanted to have the best of both worlds. So they developed aqueducts to receive hot water from one city, cold water from another city.

The problem is by the time that water got to Laodicea, it was lukewarm, which meant it was useless.

Right. So if we understand the geography and what was going on, it's not that hot is good and cold is bad.

In this case, hot is good, and it serves a purpose. Cold is good, and it serves a purpose.

But lukewarm is utterly useless. Yeah, and I wonder how many people listening and or watching knew that, knew the geographical historical context of that section of scripture.

And this goes back to what I was talking about with frameworks. Or do we just, did we hear someone talk about that and say, well, if you're hot, you're good.

If you're cold, you're bad. If you're lukewarm, it's really bad. Just be one or the other. Be hot or cold. Right.

Instead of the proper context of each, the hot being useful, the cold being useful.

But being lukewarm is absolutely useless. And then applying that from there.

I would just love to know how many people listening had never heard that before. Right. Yeah.

And, uh, you, you said it earlier. This is something that takes work, right?

It's, it's not that it's hard. It just takes time. Yeah. You have to devote your, and this is the thing.

Do you want to know God's word or do you not want to know God's word? Yep. And so I have to take the time to study it because what

I, everything we've been talking about tonight is not something for the Navy SEALs of Christians, like, like Votie Bachum would say, this is for everybody right now.

Now let me, let me tell the people the difference. Okay. Because I've gone to school.

I've gone to seminary, right? I have, I have degrees behind my name. Chris, do you have any of that?

No, absolutely not. Right. Chris has not gone to school. He's not gone to seminary, but he has devoted himself to the scriptures.

What does that tell you? You can get the same knowledge without having to pay a lot of money for it.

That's it, man. That's it. I mean, you go to Charles Spurgeon. Yeah, that's right.

And then he started a school. So, yeah, I mean, look at, but Lloyd Jones, Lloyd Jones never went to seminary. Right. You know,

I mean, obviously he was very, he was a literal doctor, so he did go to school. But, but that,

I mean, that, that kind of brings up something I was going to ask you. It's like, okay, so if you, you hear all this stuff true, it's like, you know, one may ask, it's like, man, that's a lot of work or,

I mean, you know, can we, can we really know that what the scriptures say and then what they mean by what they say?

I mean, without those degrees, can we really know, you know, what it means to be hot versus cold versus lukewarm?

I mean, you know, what if I didn't know that? And the answer to that question is we have to remember that the same

Spirit of God, the same Holy Spirit that was present when the world began, who breathed stars into existence, the same

Holy Spirit lives in you that wrote these scriptures, that this was

Spirit -empowered writing. God breathed out His Word through human authors, and so that's why it's important.

It's not just, you know, a mystical thing that we do when we sit down before we read the scriptures and study the scriptures to pray and ask the

Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to what the scriptures teach and say and what they mean by what they say, to give you a heart and a mind to study

His Word. But that also means that you don't let go and let God, which is awful.

You put in the work. You know, it's one of those things that, you know, I mean, people who follow me on social media see

I say be a pro, right? Like this is the highest level of what it means to be a pro when it comes to studying the scriptures.

You put in the work. You know, you don't just sit back, okay, I prayed. The Lord's going to reveal this to me, and I don't have to do anything.

No. Open up the scriptures. Start there. Read in context.

Read big chunks of scripture all together. My brother Alex Rodriguez and I, every year we've been doing this thing called

The Reset, which in December, what we do is in December we read all the Gospels and all of Paul's writings before the beginning of the next year.

And reading, just sitting down and just reading is huge. But then there's nothing wrong with consulting commentaries.

There's nothing wrong with consulting books and stuff like that. But just be careful.

Test it all against the backdrop of scripture. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's funny because Mr. Tracy here says, my pastor with a degree gets it wrong.

Yeah. I can tell you, there's a lot of pastors with a lot of degrees. Let me give you an example.

Stephen Furtick. Yeah. He went to a Southern Baptist seminary and guess what he's doing now.

He's a heretic. Right. So just having degrees behind your name doesn't mean a whole lot.

No, I mean, look at, you want to talk about an extreme example. Look at Francis Chan right now. Oh yeah.

Francis Chan went to the master's seminary. Yep. Yep. Right now. I love

TMS. I love Dr. MacArthur. Those are my people. But they didn't teach him all that. No, no.

I mean, you know, it drove my wife nuts, bro. Do you remember that series some years back, the Bible that Roma Downey did?

Do you, do you remember that? There was a, there was a series that Roma Downey, I can't remember her husband's name now. Um, but they did this series where they, they told stories of the

Bible. They, um, by, by making them, it was a TV show. It's like an A &E or something like that.

And, um, what I did is my wife really wanted to watch it. So I was like, all right, I'll watch it. I think I know what you're talking about now.

Yeah. So, but guess what I did? I watched it with this in my, well, not this Bible, but my Bible in my hand.

So when they were telling the story of Samson, I was flipping through it. I'm going, that's not in there. That's not, that didn't happen.

That definitely didn't happen. And she's like, at first she was like, really, Chris, really? Can't we just sit back and enjoy it?

But at the same time, like afterwards she goes, okay, I see why you did that. And you're right.

I see why you did that. And so it's like when, when the chosen comes up, right? People, I know people right now, right now, friends of mine, personal friends of mine that I call right now that have reached out to me this week while I'm going through this crazy nonsense and, and, you know, praying for you, stuff like that.

They love the chosen. They love Stephen Furtick. They don't see anything wrong with Elevation.

They don't see anything wrong with Mike Todd. They don't see anything wrong, you know? And it's like, how can you sit there with the scriptures in your hand and not see it?

All goes back to hermeneutics and frameworks. Yep, that's right. So let's move on into how we further gain context in order to rightly interpret the

Bible, okay? We have to understand the difference between indicatives and imperatives, right?

Indicatives are statements of fact, right? An example would be when

Jesus says, all authority in heaven on earth is given to me. That is a statement of fact.

Imperatives are commands, right? Go, therefore, and make disciples.

So you have indicatives, statements of fact, imperatives, commands. And you have, and from that you have descriptive text and you have prescriptive text.

So descriptive text, just describe—it's in the name—describe what's going on in the text.

Prescriptive text, similar to an imperative, is the application, what you are to do, okay?

So a lot of times, we see people—and we've talked about this on Theology—that take a descriptive text and they try to make it a prescriptive text.

We see this, we talked about, or I would say more, we probably referenced it more last week when we were talking about pastors or Christians who use foul language.

And then they justify it because they read a descriptive text in the

Old Testament, and they see someone in the Old Testament who did it, and they ignore the prescriptive text in the

New Testament that forbids that kind of language. Yep, yep. Well, I mean,

I saw the, you know, I read that the Apostles healed and had the gift of healing.

I read that the Apostles could speak in tongues and had the gift of tongues. I read that the, you know, like you're reading these narratives and thinking, well, going back to what

I said earlier and twisting it a little bit, well, the same Spirit of God lives in me, so I should be able to do that, right? Wrong.

Wrong. Like, look at what the prescriptive versus the descriptive says. That's a good point, man.

Yeah. So we have to pay attention to those things. Another thing that is helpful to pay attention to is word order.

And I say this because typically, now it's not always a rule, but typically, we'll just use

Greek, the first position in a word order is what's called the emphatic position.

Now that's different from, say, English, right? We typically place the emphasis on the last thing in the list because we're building to the last point, whereas in the

Greek, they would put the emphatic at the beginning and then work down. So when we see something like, you are to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, there's a reason for the word order, right?

Why? Because what are psalms? They're scripture. We are to sing God's word.

Now, Chris, how many churches today sing the psalms? Very little.

Very little. Very little. Very, very little. Yeah. If I had to put a percentage on it,

I'd say less than 5%. Out of the organizations that gather that call themselves churches, we'll put it that way.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. I still think that's too high. And it very well may be.

But we'll be gracious. We'll say 5%. Also, the hope in all things in Corinthians 13.

So we have psalms, singing God's word. What's next in the word order?

Hymns. Hymns. Why? Because when we look at the hymns, and we can look at the great hymns that have been penned throughout history, even ones that are in the

Bible, right? Because we see hymns that are in the Bible. They are packed with theological truth about God, and they always point to God.

They're always Christ -exalting. And then we have spiritual songs.

Now, spiritual songs don't trump psalms, right? Correct.

So we can see kind of this downward tier in the word order.

Now, what is the emphasis put on today? It's put on spiritual songs. Correct.

And people will say, they'll even bring up that verse. We are to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

We're singing spiritual songs. Okay. What about the first two? What about the first two?

Yeah. Because the spiritual songs you're singing aren't even spiritual songs about God. They're ones that elevate yourself, and they talk about self.

I'll be back. All right. So let me just remove him off of there.

So word order is important, but it's not a rule because there are places in Scripture where it kind of breaks that rule, right?

Faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love, right? So the emphatic is at the end. But typically the word order is going to play a big role.

So we have to take into consideration all of those things that we mentioned tonight, right?

The language gap, right? They spoke a different language than us. Now, I'm not saying you have to go out and you have to learn the

Hebrew and you have to learn the Greek, but there is a tool that can help, and that tool happens to be one of our sponsors, and that is

Logos Bible Software. Now, I use Logos mostly for word study.

Now, I do have Greek New Testaments, so I can sort of handle the

Greek. I can recognize words, but usually I have to use

Logos and look up how the case ending of the word in order to be able to rightly apply or connect what's the object, what's the subject, and what that word is talking about.

But Logos Bible Software is a great tool if you want to put together

Bible studies, if you want it to assist in your word study.

It's I don't know what the discount is. You'll just have to find out. Maybe 15 percent?

I don't know. Either way, it's still a pretty good deal. I think even if you get the basic, because the basic is only 50 bucks.

That's what I got. And so you can get the basic promo code SFE, get some type of percentage off there, and use that in your

Bible study. And like I said before, learning these things takes time. And one of the great things about Logos when you're looking at a word is it will tell you if it's an imperative.

It will give you the parts of speech that it falls under. That way you know how this word is being used in this passage.

So I mean, really, we have no excuses. We really have no excuses.

Jesse here says basic for 50 for how long? As far as I know, the basic's always been 50.

I got it a couple years ago. And so last time I checked, last time I was on it, the basic was still 50.

So go check it out. And if it's not, if it's a little bit more, then use that promo code SFE, get a discount on it.

And if anything we've said tonight bores you, well, then you can go to our other sponsor, which is

MyPillow and get you on MyPillow. Again, type in the promo code SFE at checkout, and you will get a nice pillow that is really great.

I love my MyPillow. I love it. I would take it to my office if I could, but then I'd sleep all the time.

Is that per month? No, it's not per month. It's just you buy it once. Now there are plans that you can get.

And usually once you upgrade in plans, you're really upgrading your library. And there's some functions that you can get when you upgrade.

Some of those are more beneficial for say pastors, because it teaches you how to outline a sermon and things like that.

But if you're going to do it just for word study and just kind of be able to have different, you can have libraries where you can get commentaries.

I've got some commentaries through there, but you can also have different translations. Sometimes it's helpful to use a different translation, but you can have multiple windows open and it's very helpful.

Sometimes I do it when we prep for a matter of theology. And the last episode of matter of theology we did was last year a while ago, but it is very helpful.

So you just pay for it once and then you can upgrade from there, but you're really just upgrading your library at that point for the most part.

And it just depends on how big you want your library, but it can get very expensive the more you upgrade.

But again, if anything we've said tonight bores you, feel free to go get you my pillow.

SFE gets you a discount. It's great. But if you're not bored, but you're having a hard time staying awake, right?

You want to learn about hermeneutics, but maybe you've had a long day. You want to stay awake, then head on over to our other sponsor,

Squirrelly Joe's Coffee. I don't know if there's a discount promo code. Andrew didn't tell me about that, but Squirrelly Joe's is a sponsor of the show and I'm going to have to get some just so I can try out what it's like, because I don't have any.

Andrew has some and hopefully he's growing in integrity, but I don't have any.

So I'm going to have to try it. But let's get to some comments. See that were made.

I know. Let's see.

And Chris is back. What's up? Nurse say everything was good. Yeah.

Well, it was the charge nurse. So she's in charge of the whole floor. And she was actually here when I got here.

And so she's like, Oh my gosh, you look so much better. You're breathing better. And so she's like, well, hopefully after tomorrow you get to go home and all that stuff.

Nice. Great. Yeah. We'll see. So she was really sweet. Now, before I get into some of the comments, was there anything you wanted to add about indicatives, imperatives, descriptive, prescriptive?

No, man. I mean, you, you, you killed a brother and that's, I mean, just, no, nothing more

I'm going to add. Just keep it simple. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Study the scriptures, period.

I mean, and if you have questions, ask questions. There's nothing wrong with asking questions.

There's nothing wrong with going, I mean. Teach. Yeah, it is. I mean, bro, I've done that with you, right?

I'm like, bro, explain this to me, right? The times that we have talked about eschatology, explain this to me, explain what you, because I'm not seeing that.

You know, something I'm very, very careful to say, right, and I think I've said this on Apologetics Live. I know I've said it on Matter of Theology, is even if there's someone like a, you know,

John Piper, for example. I love John Piper. I've benefited from John Piper's ministry for a number of years.

There are things that John Piper says that I don't see in the scriptures. However, John Piper has been studying the scriptures for longer than I've been alive.

So I'm going to be respectful and be like, I'm not going to say I disagree. He's wrong. You know, it's like everybody with John MacArthur.

It's like, dude, he's been pastoring the same church for 55 years. Most of the people that are out there harping on John MacArthur, same thing.

He's been studying God's Word longer than they've been alive. Now, that doesn't mean that he's right in everything, because he'll be the first one to tell you.

Interpretations can be flawed, but it's just so important that we that we know

God, and how we do that is by knowing His Word through and through in context.

So if you don't understand something, you know, go to your pastors. I would hope that you can go to your pastors.

If you can't go to your pastors, then that may be an indication that it may be time for you to find a new church.

There's nothing wrong with that. Don't church hop. Don't go looking for the perfect church, because you're not going to find one. As R .C. Sproul used to say, if you think you found one, as soon as you arrive, it's no longer perfect.

But yeah, that's, I mean, you nailed it, and it was spot on as usual. Well, Humble Clay says discernment.

Yeah, we have to have discernment. And here's the thing, right? How do you have discernment? By knowing the

Word. Well, I don't know if you said this, because I took my headphones out for a second while Judith was in here talking, but it's like, you know, when you look at people who are involved in law enforcement when it comes to counterfeiting, but we've talked about this before.

You and I have. I know we have. You know, they don't study all of the fake counterfeit bills.

They study the real thing so that they can spot the counterfeit when they see it. And it's the same.

That's what discernment is. It's knowing the difference between right, as Charles Spurgeon would say, right and almost right.

Not right and wrong, right and almost right. And the only way you're going to be able to do that, the only way you're going to be able to look at a situation like what happened with Driscoll and Lindell, that whole thing, is by studying the scriptures.

Because when you do that, it's like, ding, ding, ding. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There are so many things wrong with this.

Yeah. And you know, it's interesting about counterfeits because, so the thing, there's a reason why you don't study the counterfeit, right?

Because every counterfeit is different. And so if you're trying to spot the differences in all the counterfeits, you're not going to be able to.

And usually a counterfeiter is only good at really one aspect of the counterfeit, whether that be getting the paper or the color or the art, you know, the etchings and things, you know, they're only good at so many things, right?

We can see that in the church. How many pastors, when you show up, their sermons are always about miracles.

They're always about healing, right? They're always about the gifts of the Spirit. How many pastors, when you show up, are always putting an extra burden on people, right?

Constantly trying to bring works -based salvation into it, right?

With things that don't even matter, right? You must use the KJV. Women can't wear pants.

They must wear skirts, and they must grow their hair long, and they can't cut it, and all this, right? You can spot the counterfeit because you know the real thing.

And then you can spot that one thing that that one counterfeiter is only good at, talking about that one thing.

So yeah, that's good. So let's get into some of these.

Melissa put up one. She said, I like that Drew said, it takes time. How many times are we guilty of rushing through our

Bible reading just to check it off a list? Slow down, yeah.

Now, there's different ways to read the Bible. My buddy,

Dave Jenkins, he's written a really great book. Now that I mention it, I wish

I had it so I could tell you what it is. But he's written a really great book on just reading the

Bible. And in that, he talks about there's different ways to read, right? We read for study.

We read for devotion, right? There's different aspects in how we read.

But when we read to understand, right? We're reading to study.

We're wanting to know what God is saying by what God says in his word.

It's going to take time. It's going to take work. If you, and like you said, if you don't know something, a question, write it down.

Ask, yeah. Ask. Go to someone. Like, you know, it's that same, when you're reading

God's word to study God's word, and I like how you just said that, to know what

God is saying by what he has said. We have to understand. It's like weight training in this way.

If you lay down under a bench press bar, right? You lay down under a barbell and bench press.

You grab the bar. You might be able to throw it up real fast, right? Real dynamic, okay? But the more weight you put on there, it's like, man, this is heavy.

Well, guess what? It's supposed to be heavy. Studying Scripture to understand the intricacies of Scripture and who

God is, the God of the universe, think about that. It's supposed to be heavy.

It's supposed to take time. It's supposed to need consistency. That's where the real change happens.

So when you reach those moments, you're like, I don't get that first, second, third read. Read it again.

Stop and pray. Read it again. Write down your questions. Go ask those questions.

It's supposed to be heavy. Yep. Yeah. Humble Clay says, you cannot spend too much time reading, studying

God's word. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And one of the things, so I tell people all the time that you must study theology, and they're usually kind of taken back because they're like, study theology?

That's like, college, and that's hard stuff. So if we understand what theology is, it's just the study of God.

It's just getting into your word. Dr. Steve Lawson, in his teaching on the attributes of God, said, it is the greatest study that you will ever do, knowing who

God is. And how many people can tell you all of the years that their favorite team won a championship, or didn't win a championship, or almost won a championship, or all the stats of the players that have ever played on that team, but they can't tell you one attribute of God.

But yet, they call themselves Christians. They may lead a small group or something.

They may sing on a worship team. Those are people who don't know

God. Now, they may know enough to be able to be a statistician of their favorite team, but that just shows where their heart is.

Yeah, we have to remember that we are, all of us who the Lord has granted saving faith to, we are all theologians.

It's just what kind of theologian you're going to be. One who studies to know

God and who He is and who you are in light of Him, or one that doesn't.

I mean, it's that simple. Right, yeah. You're either going to be useful, or you're going to be useless.

You're going to be fruitful, or you're going to be fruitless. You're going to be hot or cold or lukewarm. Hot or cold or lukewarm.

That's right. You're either going to bring the hot fire, you're going to bring the cold truth, or you're just going to be useless, lukewarm nonsense.

I like that. Good one. Now, these two comments that I'm going to get into,

Andrew mentioned talking about them next week, kind of this topic, you know, what John MacArthur talked about.

I had a different topic planned for next week, but we can still touch on some of this next week. But it has to do with Pastor MacArthur's topics on PTSD and things like that.

And so, Brother John, he says, question. Do you agree with Pastor John MacArthur says there's no such thing as mental illness calls

PTSD grief? I didn't listen to the clip yet.

I have it Satan bookmarked. It was from a Q &A that he did at Church of the Valley there in Southern California.

Kosti Hinn was there. I'm familiar with some of the brothers there. I have heard him talk about this before.

And let me read the question one more time. It says no such thing as mental illness. I think that our society,

I'll say this, and again, I haven't listened to exactly what he said and how he worded it. I think our society, and I've been sitting here and I've had the

TV on and Jurassic Park has been playing all day, all three of them. So I've had it on mute run off.

But some of the commercials that I've seen are all about OCD, PTSD, mental illness. Mental health is a big deal.

It is. I won't get into all this now, but I think had

I been going through what I'm going through right now five years ago, how I've approached this season that I've been in this week is much different from a mental health standpoint.

That has nothing to do with pills I've taken. That has nothing to do with, there's the reaction singing it.

That has nothing to do with the focus on that. That has everything to do with the study of scripture, honestly.

It has everything to do with prayer life. It has everything to do with understanding that we live in a fallen world, that there's sickness, diseases, and death, and that we're all bound to experience stuff like this.

And so again, I don't know the context of how he worded it this time, but I have heard him talk about that before, that the whole focus, the pharmaceutical focus, the government's focus on mental health,

OCD, PTSD, mental illness, the money -making scheme that that is, and ultimately how those diagnoses, diagnoses, that's not a word, but how those have replaced for a lot of people dealing with the issue, and the issue is sin.

The issue is thought life. The issue is prayer life. The issue is diet, not what you eat, what you consume, what you put before your eyes, what you put before your ears, what you study, what you dwell on, what you meditate on, all of that stuff.

And the physical aspect of how you care for your body, all of that plays into it. So I'd have to listen to it in context.

I've heard him talk about it before, and the way I've heard him talk about it before, I do agree. And how he's talked about it is he never said there isn't such thing as mental illness.

He never said there isn't such a thing that I heard. That might have changed. There's no such thing as PTSD.

I mean, I have friends of mine, very good friends of mine that saw some horrific things in war and in battle that were military veterans and experienced and saw things, and they very much have

PTSD. My wife was in a car accident and had a brain injury, a physical, physiological injury, and deals with post -traumatic stress from that.

But it's how she approaches that that matters. It's how you approach the physiological, you know, something physical that happens is how that plays out.

So that's a very long -winded way of answering the question. Yeah, yeah.

I think, you know, there were some other things that Dr. MacArthur listed in there was

OCD. I don't know that OCD is like a mental illness. I think that's just something where if things are out of order and it just aggravates you, right?

So I don't know people who, and I could be wrong here, that have to take medication for OCD.

Now there could be different forms of OCD I'm not aware of. I'm ignorant to. You don't have to have to tell me about it.

But as far as what I know is, or what I'm speaking of, is when things are out of order or things are messy and you just, it aggravates you if it's not clean or it's not in its place.

You know, I don't know that that's a mental illness. I would say that's someone that just likes things tidy and likes them a certain way.

You know, but ADD or ADHD. Now that I've been,

I have said in the past, it's not a thing, right? I said, what you lack is self -control because you have no problem doing the other things you want to do.

But when you have to sit down to do something you don't want to do, now you blame it on ADD. And now you have to give kids medication and Ritalin and it just basically deadens them.

Right. And so, you know, that, you know, that's, but, you know,

I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but I do think the greater point that Dr. MacArthur was trying to make had to do with the pharmaceutical companies.

Absolutely. Getting people hooked on drugs and they get hooked on these drugs to where they need them and it fuels the pharmaceutical companies, but they spend all their money and give everything and sell everything for all these to obtain all these drugs.

And then they end up homeless, uh, you know, on the street and the, and in their mind, they think the only way

I'm going to get better is if I have these drugs. Right. So I have to do what I can to get more and more of these drugs.

Cause that's, what's going to make me better. And there was a comment here that Kathy made.

She said, under biblical counseling, you come at it differently. And that's kind of what you're, you're getting at as well.

When we're, when we, when we take these things and we take them to scripture, how does scripture speak about certain things like sin?

Right. Scripture teaches us how to deal with grief, how to deal with guilt.

Right. Right. Cause there's things, right. I know the guys you're talking about who have been through war, right.

The baddest of the bad, the Navy seals, right. They have seen things that no man should ever see in their life.

And without a doubt that leaves trauma on the brain. Absolutely. But how are they dealing?

Cause now if they were just left to their own devices, well, we see what happens. You see what happens.

Suicide happens. Yep. And that's, and that's the thing when you look at, I read something a few weeks ago about suicide rates and how high they are and how they're only going higher.

And, and, and, and that goes back to this issue where we're not dealing with the sin issue.

You're not dealing with the heart issue. And the only prescription for that is the scriptures.

The only prescription for that is God himself. So, sorry,

I didn't mean to interrupt you, but yeah, that's. Yeah. Yeah. No, but you know, it really depends on how we approach, how we come at it, because now what have these guys done in order to mitigate that, right?

They've developed basically a workout program, things about being healthy and what is, and, and other trainings in order to help other people.

Right. And, and that's how they can use their training and the things they've experienced and the things they saw.

And, and then it takes the things they've been through, the trauma that they've actually experienced, and now it gives it meaning to where it can be passed on to someone else for someone else's benefit.

Right. You know, so there was a comment here by Humble Clay that says when people experience traumatic things with your mind in ways and absolutely,

I would agree because those guys were talking about those Navy SEALs, right? They've seen things no man should ever see, and they've seen things

I've not seen except only in movies. And that doesn't give you the real effect because you're not feeling what they feel.

You're not seeing what they see and you're not having to deal with the, the afterwards that comes with that.

You just roll onto the credits in a movie, right? In real life, it doesn't, it doesn't do it.

It doesn't happen that way. Right. Well, and, and, and let's, you know, and, and I know this just because of what, you know,

Kimberly's been through. And I want to be careful and not talk about a lot of her stuff publicly, but you know, it's, it's,

I know this because of what she's experienced. Post -traumatic stress and trauma isn't, and, and, you know, one of the guys we're talking about is

DJ Shipley, who I would consider a friend. He was SEAL Team Six guy, served in Naval Special Warfare for 17 years.

He's, you know, you guys will see me if you follow me on Instagram, I tagged him in a lot of the fitness stuff that I do just because I do the program that GBRS prescribes.

But I mean, DJ and I have talked about post -traumatic stress. I was last year,

I had the opportunity to go up there and hang out with him for the afternoon and which was really cool. I never thought I'd be able to meet one guy who was on SEAL Team Six, but the fact that I got to sit there and there was like four of them in the room, it's like, that's, that's just, that's cool.

Anyway, just from a guy standpoint, right. But, but DJ and I talked about that. He's like, look, stress or trauma is trauma.

Physical trauma is physical trauma. It doesn't matter whether you were in the military or in a car accident or experienced it growing up, or I mean, fill in the blank, trauma is trauma.

And the brain doesn't know the difference between what the trauma that he experienced versus what my wife experienced or what anybody else would experience.

All the brain knows is it's traumatic and it has a physiological effect on the brain.

It's not some mental illness. There's a physiological issue. It causes, it can cause a change in demeanor.

It can cause the way, the filter, right, to which you take in and respond and or react to things.

But how, but Scripture, how Scripture deals with that, just kind of bring it full circle through proper hermeneutic, proper framework is you have to, this is where knowing the

Scriptures and taking every thought captive to the glory of God, being able to recognize when that's happened, happening, being able to exercise self -control, utilizing the means available to you according to the

Scriptures. Again, Holy Spirit, prayer, study, slowing down, whatever you got to do, go take a walk, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

All of those things deal with how to mitigate and manage that.

So it's not just medicate and isolate. It's not just ignore and override.

It's no, you apply what the Scriptures teach. Yeah, absolutely. Humble Clay had another comment

I wanted to put up. Humble Clay's on a roll. He's on a roll. That's right. Okay. Here it is.

Mentally abused people develop OCD partly because it gives them a form of control unconsciously.

Okay. So there you go. So mentally abused people, people who have experienced a trauma through the brain, right at the hands of somebody else, they develop

OCD because it's something that they feel they can control. So they have control over this aspect and whatnot.

So yeah, that's a good point. I didn't think about it that way. You know, I didn't know that.

So that's a good point. That's a good call out. Here's another one from Mr.

Tracy. How about addiction? Now here's what I would say about addiction. And I've held this view for a while and it's that addiction is just another form of idolatry because you're giving yourself over to a another

God. You're saying that that thing therefore now has power over you and it controls what you do.

And we can, I mean, and just think about things like AA, right? AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous.

What happens when you, when an alcoholic goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, they have this 12 step program.

You get this book, this binder, which is essentially, which is basically their scripture, their, their

Bible. They call it their Bible. They call it their Bible. You follow these steps, right?

So you're working through a sanctification process. Listen to me, dude, I sound just like Mark Driscoll in that stupid video.

I'm so sorry, everyone. I feel like I'm doing that. You're not, man. You're good.

You're good. Send it. I feel like I am. But, but it's basically giving yourself over to another

God, right? And then how you work through that is through another religion, right?

Whereas we need to devote ourselves, give ourselves over to the one true God. Yeah. And my dad, you know, if you guys know me, my dad was, was a big time drinker until two and a half years ago.

And he's been, he's been sober now for two and a half years. And he, what an amazing journey.

So I know addiction very well. I mean, from the longest time I can remember until that time, our relationship was very tumultuous.

Our relationship was very strained. But now we are closer than we've ever been. Just to give you guys an idea of how close

I am with my dad today versus growing up versus, you know, just from less than five years ago is you know, when all this is happening on Tuesday, Kimberly asked me, she said, okay, hey, who do you want me to let know?

What's in your family? Do you want to let know what's going on? And the first person I thought of and said was my dad over my mom, my sister, my brother.

Um, you know, uh, I, I didn't, I was just, just thinking about him and she's like, if you, you know, you know, if you, who do you want to come up there and sit with you?

Because if you guys don't know, my wife has a lot of allergies and sensitivities and hospitals are a, they can be a really,

I would think since they're like the cleanest places, it's what they use. It's what they use the hand sanitizer, the cleaners and stuff like that.

Like she has extreme sensitivities to that. And so when Noah was born, that was very problematic. We brought our own hand soap for the nurses to use so that they wouldn't use hand sanitizer.

Like, uh, we asked him to take as much of it out of the room as possible. And we had to be careful with the medication that she was given.

So that was a whole other issue. But, um, you know, when she's like, you know, she couldn't, she was going to drive me up here, but she, unfortunately we've had a lot of FaceTime calls with, uh, with us, but she hasn't been able to come up here.

But the one person that I was like, you know, if there's one person that I want to come, I want it to be my dad. No, he's in the keys. Good for him.

Uh, hanging out with my brother, uh, cause they're doing a big river run down there with the, with the boat that we grew up on.

So that's kind of fun, but addiction, I'm sorry. I mean, long winded addiction is, um, it's a, it's a, it's a very real thing.

And drew, I agree with your assessment. It's, it is idolatry. And, uh, for the longest time, my dad did not have

Christ in his life. Um, he, uh, his mom, my grandmother preached the gospel to us a bunch growing up, but we all rejected it.

All of a sudden. Um, and it wasn't until AA and he heard the gospel there along with those steps that he repented to receive the

Lord as his Lord and savior. And, um, now one of the things I've been working on with him is dad, you know,

I'm, I'm, I'm an alcoholic. I'm always going to be an alcoholic. Nope. Yep. You are in Christ. You are a new creation at one time.

That is who you were. You were, you were suffering from the idolatry of addiction, but that is no longer who you are or who's you are.

Um, so addiction is, it is idolatry, but it is also, uh, it can be a very powerful sin.

Yeah. Um, and we can become another thing to talk about too is not only addiction to bad things, right?

Alcohol in and of itself in moderation is not a bad thing. It's actually good for you. Sure. Okay. Um, physical fitness, that is good for you, but that can become an anything that, that anything that you become obsessed with above and beyond the

Lord Jesus Christ himself is you're addicted to in a sinful way. And again, we just have to be on guard and be careful that we're not spending more time working out than we in the word.

We're not spending more, whatever it is, fill in the blank. Um, that's something I wanted to bring up as well. So, but addiction, man, that's a whole other topic, bro.

That's, that's something we could really open up. You know, you mentioned your dad, uh, heard the gospel in AA.

Um, now that doesn't happen a lot, right? Um, but Amy here, uh, she was in the comments saying that AA helped her tremendously and that she knows a lot who have come through AA, not knowing

God and have found God, which is a good thing. Um, there's many, there's many who don't, um, or there's, uh,

I mean, I've even known of people who have gone to AA who have, who thought they knew

God and then came out not caring about God. Right. Uh, but you know, here's what

Amy says. She says, I always start my introduction as I'm Amy by the grace of God and through fellowship of this program,

I haven't had a drink today. And that's, that's great. I love that. Yeah, that's great.

I love that. That's good. That's good because that's breaking the norm of what AA does where you were just talking about it.

You have to identify with yourself as an alcoholic, right? Right. Like, Nope. No, if I am in Christ, I identify with Christ no longer.

Amen. Absolutely. And you know, one of the things, and I was going to save this for next week.

This may give a hint of where I'm going for next week, but things that are good for you that can be sinful and bad for you.

Gluttony is still a sin, right? But we live in America, Chris, you and I, we live in the

South where everything is fried and it tastes so good. I love fried food, bro. Why you got to mention food right now?

But if, if we, how many people consider that they might be overweight and how is that taking care of your body?

The temple that the Lord has given you. No, I'm trying to find, but because, but because like, we'll just use you and I, for example, since we're in the

South and everything's fried, right. And everything tastes good, fried. It does taste good.

Fried Oreos is what I want right now. Oh, I was, dude, I was about to say, have you had fried Oreos from the carnival?

But funnel cake, fried Oreos and Chick -fil -A. That's what I want right now. But, uh, dude, you need to have Guthrie's.

I had Guthrie's today. I think it's, Oh man, I've heard it. I haven't had it, but I've heard really good things about it. It's similar to Baxby's, but, but anyways, we're getting off topic.

We're talking about fried food and causing people to stumble. Um, so, but we see a lot of people right in church, especially in churches and even pastors who are overweight.

And let me just, let me just clarify something too. Like, you know, when we say, when we say overweight,

I'm not talking about, okay, I got a little muffin top going on. Hold on. Let me put this comment up here.

Kathy says fried Oreos. If you haven't had fried Oreos, life changing. I'm for real.

Just cheat meal. Have one. Um, have two, one for me. So, um, so we're not talking about, oh, you're a little bit overweight.

You know, uh, we're not, we're not talking about, um, I want to be very, very careful here.

Sure. Um, yeah, I want to clarify some things too. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, we're not talking about, uh, you know, men, the standard is not

Dwayne Johnson, right? Women, the standard is not, I don't even know. Like the standard is not some fitness model.

Um, we're not talking about muffin tops. We're not talking about, okay, you have a few pounds, you need to lose.

We're not talking about, um, uh, you know, something like that because neither one of us are looking like Dwayne Johnson, you know, that's not my goal.

I mean, if you follow me on Instagram, like I've been limiting social media on purpose, just from to my mental health, right.

This is just for my own mental focus. Um, but the only thing that I post on Instagram or what I do as far as routine and fitness, and that's it, that's it.

Like the scripture occasional stuff. If I see something that's just like, okay, this would be edifying and admonishing overall.

Okay. Um, I'm trying to be really careful to watch even how I'm calling out false teachers because to the unbelievers that follow me, are they going to get this?

Am I making myself a slave to them? That's a whole other topic in a conversation. But anyway, not the point. What we're talking about is the morbidly obese.

Yes. What we're talking about is, I mean, you can't walk up a flat to a half a flight of steps about being winded.

We're talking about the, that, I mean, the, the, the, it's obvious that there is a sincere lack, sinful lack of self -control and self -discipline in your life around that area.

Now I was on my way to that in 2013 and 14, like, um,

I was pushing two 60 and I looked at a picture of my wife, myself, her sister and her brother on our refrigerator.

And I was like, who is that very fluffy individual right there? No, no more.

Changed my diet, started working out, felt better for the last year and a half. I've been doing the

GBRS human performance program. And that's what you see me post. Why I post it is for the program.

I'm going to be 42 years old in a few days, Lord willing. And I am more mobile, stronger and feel better overall, at least

I did this week. Um, than I ever have ever have. That's not tooting my own horn, but that's just saying

I want to, as far as it depends on me, care for the temple that the Holy spirit is given or the

Lord has given to carry the spirit of God and to exercise whatever he has for me during my time on this side of eternity.

And there are far too many, and this is something that my buddy Alex and I have talked about you and I've talked about.

There are far too many believers and pastors who have turned facts like you may very well may have a thyroid issue.

You may very well have a some sort of health issue going on, but they've turned those facts into excuses as to why.

And they may start, but they don't finish. There's no consistency. Um, you know, and that's sinful.

That is a sin that it shows lack of self -control and self -discipline, which is why I said last week on this very show, that if you are a pastor and you are morbidly obese and you know what

I mean by that, then you are temporarily not qualified to stand in a pulpit and preach.

You need to step aside according to what the scriptures teach, the pastoral epistles.

And the reason I say that is you lack the character of self -discipline and self -control.

You're not modeling that. And so for a time, not permanently disqualified for a time, you need to step away and address that sin with the help of your fellow elders and other people in your church locally.

But then we talked about technology earlier with the joys of technology to be able to connect with other brothers and or sisters that can help keep you accountable with that.

Like, and again, I'm not trying to look at what Chris does, but I've had people just in the last two weeks that I don't know that live all the way across the country, but I came in, can you keep me accountable with this?

Cause I'm doing a terrible job at it. And just because they see the consistency of me doing it, it's a struggle.

Discipline matters. What we do with our body matters. So sorry, I know I go off on a tangent about this stuff because I'm passionate about it.

And it's because I care. I see my brothers out there and I could name a couple right now, but I'm not going to, but my brothers out there who

I love, who like, if they called me, I need your help. All right, I'm on a plane. What do you need? Whose car are we taking?

Right? It's that kind of mentality that they're experiencing this. And it's just like, brothers, you're not setting, you're not representing

Christ well and what it means to be a model for people to imitate.

I'll shut up there. Yeah, no, I mean, I remember last year, beginning of last year, uh,

I think the close out of, wait, what's the, this 2024. So to close out 2022 going into 2023,

I was pushing one 90. And for, for people who haven't seen me in person, right.

Chris has we've right. But I'm a small guy, right. I'm five, seven. Okay. One, I've never been one 90 in my life.

Right. To me, that's heavy. Right. It's amazing that my clothes still fit, but I started, uh, basically

I started like, I remember this conversation, how I hated just feeling that way, being sluggish and all that stuff.

But you know, I wanted to be fit. Uh, I wanted to not be like, cause

I grew up an athlete, right. I went to college to play baseball, right. I was an athlete.

I've, I've never been above one 50, right. Except when really getting into heavy lifting weights when

I went to put weight on, but you know, I was always around one 50, one 50, uh, area.

And now I'm down to one 68, one 67, one 68. But I had, uh, one of the things

I had to do was I had to cut out sugar because Chris, man, you know,

I love honey buns. I love them. I love,

I love any, I love honey buns. I love donuts, right.

They're just, they called to me, but I had to cut them out.

I had to cut out all of that heavy sugar. And, and you can notice it now.

Now sometimes there's fluctuation, right? Um, so my face slimmed up.

Yep. So, so my face is a lot slimmer and that's usually the first place you see, you notice when you cut out sugar.

Uh, I started intermittent fasting. I would, um, I mean last month

I did a water fast. Yep. Right. And man, it was hard, bro.

I'm doing that right now. The headaches, the headaches were the worst because of having all of that sugar all the time and the headaches were just killer.

Um, it's not so much the hunger that kills you. It's the lack of the nasty stuff that your body is getting.

It's addictive. It's addictive stuff. It's designed to be that way though, right?

Exactly. It's, it's, it's manufactured like the processed foods and sugars. It's manufactured for like,

I read something a couple months ago that Doritos, one of the ingredients in Doritos, which look,

I love me some Doritos. I used to, I haven't, I can't remember to tell you last time I had any like, but one of the ingredients in there is, is it's meant to keep you eating them.

Like it's, it, it, it purposely, uh, bacon fast. Why my gosh, don't do that.

Bacon's really good for you. Bacon's actually really good for you. It's awesome. If you take bacon, wrap it around cauliflower and then bake it in the oven for a little bit.

You got to stop. But he, no, Hey, humble Clay said something, um, about gluttony on, in the comments that don't want you to grab it.

And gluttony just doesn't have to do with, with food. And he's absolutely right. Um, it doesn't.

That's why I said earlier glut, gluttony doesn't just encompass food and drink. When I, whenever you hear me say diet,

I don't mean what you eat. I mean what you consume period. Yeah. What you watch, what you listen to, what you drink, um, what, you know, the, the influences that are around you, um, the people that are around you, all of that is, is, is encompasses your diet and you can be gluttonous and all of those things.

Um, so I'm glad he said that because that was just like, yeah, yeah, spot on. Yeah. And he, he also made another point.

Um, and it's one of the points that I wanted, when I said I wanted to clarify some things is that there are medical issues, right?

There are like people have glandular issues. There, there are thyroid issues and things like that. There, there are some medications that people have to get on because of health issues that, that cause you to maybe retain water or, you know, things like that.

And it causes you to gain weight. So, the, but those aren't things that we're talking about, right? We're talking about someone.

You can use those, you can use those fast. Why I said facts become excuses. Facts become excuses.

Right. Right. And because, you know, it's just like we, I think a lot of people may be listening, have had those jobs where they have those managers and bosses where they're like, you know, why didn't you do this?

Why didn't you do that? And you tell them, you're like, don't give me excuses. I'm like, I'm not, I'm telling you the facts. You asked why

I'm telling you there's a difference between fact and an excuse, a fact.

Okay. I've got a very good friend of mine right now who has, has an issue with his digest digestive system.

This isn't me. I'm not talking about me. And I would just, you know, I would say it's me, but he's got an issue with his digestive system where he has to be very careful with what he eats and he can't lift heavy weights because if he does, it could cause a tear in his lower intestines and lower.

And sincerely he could bleed out and die. And so that's a fact until he gets that surgically repaired.

He can't go lift weights as much as he wants to. He can't do X, Y, and Z, but you know what he can do is he can go walk.

He can go ruck. He can go put a rucksack on and go ruck three miles, very light rucksack. He can change his diet to where he's eating a lot of bone broth and high, you know, high protein, low fat stuff, stuff that's easy to digest.

He can do pull -ups, he can do pushups. He can, he can get outside and play basketball with his kids. Like, like he can do that stuff.

He can put the food down and he can do something. And so that's what

I mean. And I want to speak for you, but I'm pretty sure that's what you mean too, is like that all of us have something going on at some point, you know, it's like next week,

Lord willing, get all this taken care of for me this week. Next week, I'm not going to go and, and, you know, put three 35 on a squat bar or a barbell and squat it like I was doing last week.

Like I'm just not going to do it. Like I'm going to ease back into it, but I'm going to do something. You know,

I'm going to start somewhere and I'm going to get 1 % better every day. That's going to be the focus. Why? For me?

So people look at me and go, Ooh, look at Chris. No, because, because my body represents the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's why I want to be as healthy as I can for my wife and my son.

Right. And to, like I said earlier, to accomplish whatever he has for me on this side of eternity, why he has me here.

That's right. That's right. Well, we hope you've enjoyed this episode of Apologetics Live.

We are, I know we're 20 minutes into Anthony anytime. Yeah, we're not. I was actually planning on having a shorter show.

I was planning on maybe an hour, but we went a little longer.

It was a good conversation. Yeah. Between you, me and the wall. Yeah. Just, yeah.

But we will see you back next week for Apologetics Live.

And I have an idea. We've kind of been talking about it some now, if you can't guess what it is, then well, hold on till next week.

But I have an idea. I want to try to get some people to come on to talk about it who are a lot more knowledgeable in this area that I think will be able to give good biblical arguments and cases for certain things.

What I want to do, what I want to do for next week. So there's your cliffhanger. Hang on to that till next week.

We'll see how strong your forearms are. Grip matters. Grip matters.

But until then, we will see you next week and strive to make every day an eternal day for the glory of God.