Why Does Hermeneutics Matter?

Technical Difficulties and Hospital Update

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.

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.

You've got to 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 on 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—oh, 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.

Oh, 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 and 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, yeah, but can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you loud and clear.

And it's doing it again.

Are you going through—.

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—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 back in.

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 night—let me plug this in. We don't lose any battery power here. I got my iPad Pro. I happened 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.

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 it wouldn't—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.

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—they 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 rate's in the mid -50s, upper 60s. All the blood work and panels and stuff came back. Everything's fine there. So what they're thinking is it's called akalasia, which I didn't know what that was until a couple days ago.

And it's where the esophagus—I didn't know this either, but all of us, let me just go here. All of us have these things. Yeah, 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. And it wouldn't open and let everything down. And so Wednesday morning—so I came to the hospital on Tuesday, Wednesday morning. The GI doctor, who's been phenomenal—and everybody here, by the way, the hospital staff and nurses.

What hospital are you in?

Wellstar, Pauley. So it's literally right around the corner from my house. So I—they went in, put me under—this is the first—I'm 41 years old. I'll be 42 on Sunday. So happy birthday to me. And I've never had to have any kind of surgery or anything like that, never been put under general anesthesia or anything.

And so 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 keep you here. No solid food, nothing by mouth, IV. So keep you on fluids once you rest.

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. So yeah, tomorrow morning they're going back in with a light and a scope, and they're just going to make sure everything's okay.

And before they send me home on a restricted diet, but then I'll have to see a thoracic surgeon. Because how you fix that is you make a small incision underneath the esophageal sphincter. It's outpatient, so it's going home same day.

And that's supposed to—and then they do something else with that as well. I can't remember the name of it now. But that's supposed to make it to where it opens and closes and doesn't stay open, because if it stays open, that's real bad heartburn and acid reflux and stuff like that.

But you want it to open and close like it should. As far as what causes it, there's a whole list of possible causes, and so they've ruled out a bunch of that. But sometimes it just happens. I've got a very good friend of mine who is an anesthetist, and then the name for that is anesthesiologist, and he works at St. Joseph's Hospital here in Atlanta.

And he was texting me, and he said that 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 my diet's pretty clean.

But that can affect the esophagus and the lining of the esophagus. So they did a bunch of biopsies and stuff as well. I'll get the results of that. So yeah, I've just had to sit here. Thankfully, when I knew I had to come to the hospital, I didn't know how long I was going to be here.

Drew, I cut my Bible. Forgot that. I'm reading the Gospel according to the apostles, Valley of Vision. Drew, you know I keep that with me. And happened to grab my iPad Pro.

Here we are.

Here's a question. But first I get to this question. I figured out what the problem was.

Okay, what was that?

When I logged out of the and it was good that you were here because you helped me solve the problem. Because you kept talking. So when 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 my headphones.

And so I'm just stupid. So that makes for an interesting intro since we don't have the typical Andrew banter with music and stuff.

It's a different kind of banter.

Yeah.

I'm basically bantering with myself about why I'm hearing an echo, and 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 a question from Jesse Heller. He says, were you swallowing and swallowing until you vomited? I've had issues with that in the past.

I was wondering what that was.

Yeah.

So I don't want to be too graphic because it was violent because I would swallow. Because 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 you're just congested or something like that, and you feel like you get stuck like right here.

You take a drink and you tighten up your core a little bit, and then you feel like it'll go down. You'll feel it move, and that's what would happen. So this time, Jesse, to answer your question, yeah.

So I was swallowing. I was trying that. I would try to sip on water. And if you guys have ever watched Apologetics Live, I always have my big water bottle with me. I'm drinking a ton of water. Anyway, so I would try to do that, but it wouldn't go down.

And so 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. But my body was trying to get it out.

And 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.

Well, it's a good thing you're feeling better. They found the cause of it. Because, you know, when I put this subject out, first, of course, I text you and Hanholtz, and Hanholtz may join us a little later.

But 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, my first thought wasn't, man, I hope Chris is okay.

It's like, man, I'm not going to have a co-host for the show.

It was a close second.

It was a close second, right? It was like the first and greatest one was I'm not going to have a co-host. And then, but right next to that was like, man, I really hope Chris is okay. And, you know, it's not something serious, which it could have been serious if he didn't get checked out.

Oh, man. I mean, and that's what, that's what, I mean, you guys like, I mean, for you guys watching, 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. 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.

And so I sincerely am, and I said this to somebody on Twitter when they reached out to me and just, and man, just, I'm sincerely grateful for the Lord's provision and patience and long suffering and the grace of, and I, and I told my buddy Alex this, I think I told Honholz this too, you know, Tuesday when all this was happening, it was Tuesday afternoon.

It started around noon. 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 really wholeheartedly believe it was the Holy Spirit 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.

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, uh, 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 there just in here for a minute and say, Hey, are you okay? You need anything?

Fine. I'm live. Leave me alone.

I'm live. We're talking about 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 it closes, 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.

Okay. Um, but just to, just as a cliffhanger for our listeners. All right. And for me and for you. Yeah. Well, I mean, only till after the show because 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 it's, 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 and faith, replaced our heart of stone with a 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, even that.

I think back to Thomas Watson and 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, you know, 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?

Am I the apostle, Paul?

What apostle do I most closely relate to?

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 seeker-oriented movement, because of the Stephen Furtick's, because of the Bethel.

And, you know, 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, yeah, that's exactly right. So when I look out at the landscape of the church, especially in America, right, 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 8, right?

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.

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, 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'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 put Michael Brown and Sam Storms in that category. It's like, what is your standard?

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

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

Very clearly, very clearly.

So when we look at the church and the people who want a supposed word from the Lord that the pastor gave, and they sit on edge for that. And then they go, oh, wow, the Lord speaks through him. But then they turn off, they shut down when you say, open your Bibles.

Well, let's talk about that because a supposed word from the Lord is subjective. And the reason it's subjective is because it's not actually rooted in any kind of biblical foundation. 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?

A verse came to your mind.

Okay?

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.

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

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

It's like, you know, 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 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 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 about what does the Bible say? What does it mean by what it says?

Right, yeah.

And 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 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 meaning. So 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, you know,.

If you come to a theological conclusion, but that theological conclusion is only found and supported in one place in scripture, start over.

Yeah.

Start over. And now that doesn't mean that just because, for example, example, head coverings, right?

Right.

Head coverings is talked about in 1 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 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, look at this interruption we have in a point that I was getting ready to make.

Well, finish your point.

So 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.

Yeah.

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, welcome.

Well, we're just getting ready for church camp. Justin Peter's 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?

Man, 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 didn't want me to go home and eat a bunch of food and aspirate and all that fun stuff.

So 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, sorry. I can't see it on Twitter because I made a mistake, and maybe you guys want to deal with this next week. I know I hate to wait this long, but 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 listen in context. Let's hear what he actually said. Yeah, I woke up this morning to like 1 ,000 messages, all nasty.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that may be a good topic for next week. But, yeah, no, I just popped in because I saw Mr. Huff there.

Yeah, man.

I'm doing good, brother. I'll shoot you a text until you end this morning.

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.

I like how you said one of us here. I like how you said one of us.

Yeah, but then I identified which one was the knucklehead.

So, yeah.

But, yeah, it's been good. We're in a church camp. I'm actually really surprised because we're in a church camp with the church that owns this church camp. It's one of the churches that the last time Justin and I were here, we spoke against.

Oh, wow.

And so now we're renting their facility.

Because it's a really nice facility.

So I'm wondering if any of their folks are going to listen and be like, hey, wait a minute.

Wow.

Especially if they're in confidence.

Against charismatic movement.

Isn't that the same guy in the wheelchair that we kicked out of here last time?

Yep.

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.

But I'm looking forward to it because, well, it is Justin.

You know, Andrew, when I had this idea 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, hey, you know, this is the topic that's kind of where I focus on is how to interpret.

Right.

So this is the most important issue, I think, for Christians today because, you know, as I said 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.