That's Just YOUR Interpretation

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While the handouts are going around, I would invite you to take out your Bible, if you have one, and turn to 2 Peter 3.
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This will be our text for the evening, and it is printed on your worksheet.
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So if you don't have your Bible, you will at least have the text we're going to be looking at there in 2 Peter 3.
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I want to welcome you back to our study of apologetics.
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We're getting to the end of this study, and I've been thinking about how we're going to do this, and this is my plan.
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Tonight and next week, we're going to end this section of the study, and then, of course, we have August, where we take a little bit of a break on Wednesday nights.
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But when we come back in September, we're going to start, and I know you probably, in college, you know there's 101, and then 201.
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Well, we're doing apologetics 101 now.
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When we come back after the break, we're going to switch to apologetics 201.
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And what I'm going to do is I'm going to dig in deeper to some of the areas we've looked at, such as creation and what's called creation apologetics.
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We're going to look at some of the things that we didn't get to look at because of the time that we've been in this course.
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We're going to be looking at how we got the Bible, and some history of the Bible text, and we're going to spend several weeks on that.
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So just know you'll have that to look forward to when we come back.
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There's so much I've wanted to say and haven't gotten to say, and I didn't want to just cut and run, as it were.
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So I felt like, well, we've done the overview.
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Now we can go back and break down the constituent parts and really dig in to some things that I feel like would be important.
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So far, you will remember that we have broken the apologetics arguments down into three categories.
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And I put these up every time to remind you what they are.
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The first category is the existence and the nature of God.
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I saw again today a person on Facebook posted an old video of an old comedian who was known for being somewhat outrageous with his words.
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I'm not going to mention him by name, but he was known for being crass and very ugly.
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And I didn't want to listen to what he was saying, but it just happened to have captioned his words underneath the video.
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So I let it run for a few moments, and I would read the captions.
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And he was discussing how disgusted he was with the subject of religion and the existence and the nature of God.
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And it just reminded me of a lot of the arguments we've already talked about.
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The things that he was addressing were things that we have addressed and we have given answers to.
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And he either has never heard those answers or he is not inclined at all to accept those answers.
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And it was just interesting to me, the same things he was saying.
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And this was probably 30 years ago that this guy was saying these things.
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It's an old video.
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They're still relevant today, and they're still the same arguments people are using today about the existence and the nature of God.
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The second thing we looked at was the nature and reliability of Scripture.
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The nature and reliability of Scripture, which in our last study we spent our time on the reliability of the Bible.
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And I don't know if you remember, but I said that this is one of the things that I think we really, from a historical perspective, really have such a vast amount of evidence to call upon because the Bible is the absolutely best attested work of antiquity.
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As far as the amount of handwritten copies they have, the amount of copious amounts of copies that have been handed down through the ages.
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And something I mentioned also that we needn't forget is not only do we have the Greek manuscripts, but also we have all of the other languages that the Bible was immediately translated into.
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Syriac, Coptic, Latin, and the rest.
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And so all of these bear witness to the reliability of what the text actually said.
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But tonight we're going to look at the third category of argument.
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And that is the interpretation and the application of Scripture.
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The interpretation and the application of Scripture.
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Where our conversation with an unbeliever might start with the subject of the existence of God or with the nature of God.
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And it may then move to the nature and reliability of the Bible.
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Almost every conversation I've ever been in with an unbeliever has at some point come down to an interpretation and an application of what the Bible actually says.
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Whether it's something like, well you can't take that literally, can you? That's one of the ones that's real popular.
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Or maybe something like, well that was written 2,000 years ago in a pre-scientific age.
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So you can't take that seriously with all that we know today.
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Those types of arguments get not into really the nature and reliability of the Scripture.
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But more so about how we understand it and how we apply it.
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Now in these other parts I've broken them up.
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But what I plan to do tonight, interpretation and application sort of go hand in hand.
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So this lesson, I've intentionally written it somewhat long.
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Because my thought is that I'll give it part tonight and part next week.
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And we'll deal with both interpretation and application together.
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But I do want to make one point while we're here.
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And that is that when we talk about interpretation, we're talking about what something means.
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And when we talk about application, we're talking about how that meaning can be put to work in our lives.
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How it can be applied.
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And while they are different, one builds upon the other.
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Your application comes out of your interpretation.
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And oftentimes what happens is you see people applying the Scripture incorrectly.
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Because they've interpreted the Scripture incorrectly.
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You see a poor application of Scripture because of a misunderstanding of Scripture.
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So these two do go hand in hand.
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And one must be right for the other to be right.
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Now there are a few times, you know, the whole broken clock is right twice a day.
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There are a few times when somebody could be applying something while misunderstanding it.
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They might apply it properly.
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But that would be in spite of what they understand, not because of what they understand.
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But in general, if you don't understand it, you won't properly apply it.
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So these two do go hand in hand.
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In our last lesson, we asked the question, how can we know what we're reading is accurate? Well, the question tonight is how can we know, even if we know it accurately, how can we know what it really means? And the objection we're facing is the objection of, well, that's your interpretation.
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You ever heard anybody say that? I honestly can't remember how many times.
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Because oftentimes it comes to me, even in conversations with Christians.
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I'll be talking about something, particularly the subject of Reformed Theology will come up, and maybe something as difficult to understand as the doctrine of election.
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And I'll be explaining something from the Bible, and someone will say, well, I don't agree.
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And I'll say, well, this is what the text says.
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And they'll say, no, that's what your interpretation says.
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That's your interpretation.
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And my answer is, well, you're right.
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It is my interpretation, but that doesn't make it wrong.
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And it also doesn't open the door for there to be another.
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Because one of the things we're going to learn tonight, and this is a key to interpretation, and this is actually, I'm getting ahead of myself, but there's only one right interpretation.
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Because when Paul wrote what he wrote, he didn't write it to mean a bunch of different things.
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He meant it to write, you know, if I tell my son, Cody, I want you to get up, I want you to go in there, and I want you to get me a cup of water.
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I don't, but let's just say I did.
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Now, he could say, Dad wants coffee.
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Because I know my dad likes coffee.
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I really don't, but he could say that.
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But that wouldn't be a proper interpretation of what I said.
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In fact, it would be a misinterpretation of what I said.
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Now, I realize that such a thing is sort of crass and very easily demonstrated that what I'm doing is using ad absurdum.
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I'm sort of going to the absurd length here.
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But the point is, when Cody makes a decision to change the interpretation, that doesn't mean that what I said was difficult to understand.
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That doesn't mean that what I said was difficult to interpret or apply.
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But he decided to do it a different way.
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And I've heard this said, and I think it's true, that most of what people have problems with in the Bible is not what they don't understand.
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It's what they do understand and don't want to apply.
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It's not that I don't understand what it's saying.
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It's I understand what it's saying, and I don't like it.
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So that's why interpretation and application do go hand in hand.
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Now, let's read the text for the evening, and then we're going to get deeper into the lesson here.
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This is the Apostle Peter, and he's talking about the Apostle Paul.
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It's interesting because we know that Peter and Paul had a relationship.
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We know that they met one another and ministered together, and were even in the council of Jerusalem together in Acts 15.
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And there was even a time when Paul rebuked Peter in the presence of the assembly because Peter was doing something that wasn't correct.
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It was in the early chapters of Galatians that Paul recounts that rebuking of the Apostle Peter.
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So they had a relationship, maybe at times somewhat strained.
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But listen to what Peter says about Paul.
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Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found in him without spot or blemish and at peace.
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And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.
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There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.
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May God add his blessing to the reading of his word.
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We're just going to stop right there.
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One of the things that most people pull out of this text is the fact that Peter just called Paul's writings scripture.
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Because he says that the unlearned twist Paul's writings, just like they do all the other scriptures.
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And when he uses the phrase other scriptures, he's identifying Paul's writings in with the scriptures.
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He's saying that because he wouldn't say the other scriptures if he wasn't applying that same category to the writings of Paul.
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But there's something else here that's interesting.
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Not only is he saying what Paul wrote is scripture, but he's saying that there are people that twist the scripture because they are ignorant and unlearned.
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And so that reality does exist.
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Do you understand, and I know you do, but I say this only as a sort of a rhetorical question.
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Do we all understand that there are people out there that misuse the Bible? Do we understand that there's a lot of people out there that misuse the Bible? And one of the things that they do is they say, we're the ones who understand.
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In fact, they'll often say we're the only ones who understand.
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That's the thing that makes me always question someone when they say no one else has it right, but we have it right.
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I'm always so afraid when I hear somebody say that.
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Or no one has seen this in the last 2,000 years.
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If you're teaching something that no one has taught in 2,000 years, you might want to think about it.
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And somebody says, well isn't that what Martin Luther did in the Reformation? Not at all.
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You know who one of Luther's greatest influences and Calvin's greatest influences were? Augustine.
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The early fathers of the church, the early writers of the church influenced them.
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Luther and Calvin were not establishing anything that wasn't recognized and understood early in the church.
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It had simply been replaced with false teaching which allowed the power of Rome to sort of supersede the power of the Scripture.
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But it wasn't as if it were new.
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That's why it's called Reformation, not Restoration.
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And that's why I always get nervous when somebody says they want to restore the church.
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Because to restore something means it was lost.
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To reform simply means to take something back to where it was originally.
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But to restore means it's gone.
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The reformers weren't restoring the church, they were simply reforming it back to what it should be.
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It wasn't lost, they were believers.
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But the leadership had gone astray.
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And it needed to be reformed.
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And there is a difference there.
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So, we talk about the Bible, we talk about interpretation.
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When somebody comes up and says, well, I have a new word from God.
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Be nervous.
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Because whatever's coming next could be rather frightening.
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One of the most common things that has arisen when discussing the claim of interpretation is that there are those who believe that Scripture is insufficient by itself to be the foundation for the faith of the church.
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There are those who believe that Scripture by itself is insufficient to be the foundation for the faith of the church.
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This is why, in many groups, there are outside authorities that take the place of the absolute authority, which should be the Scripture, and demand adherence to their interpretation.
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For instance, and I know, I don't want anybody to think I'm just constantly beating on Rome, but the Roman Catholic Church has what is called the Magisterium.
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The Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is the teaching body of the church whose head is the Pope.
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And the idea is that the individual Christian does not have the right or the authority to interpret the Bible for him or herself.
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But they must adhere to the interpretation that is handed down to them through the Magisterial authority of the church.
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One of the doctrines that we hold to as Reformers is the doctrine called Sola Scriptura.
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Can anyone tell me what Sola Scriptura means? Scripture alone.
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I'm sorry, I heard a few, but I wanted to make sure I was hearing the right thing.
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It means Scripture alone.
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Sola meaning alone, Scriptura, this is Latin, Scripture alone.
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But it means more than that, but that's what the phrase means.
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But the term Sola Scriptura means this.
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It means that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith for the believer.
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That's the long term for Sola Scriptura.
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That the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith for the believer.
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In the Roman Catholic Church, Sola Scriptura is considered heresy.
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In Roman Catholicism, Sola Scriptura is called heretical.
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Because they believe that Sola Scriptura cannot be, Scripture must be put on equal playing with tradition.
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Scripture and tradition both equally have authority in the church.
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I'll read to you from the Second Vatican Council.
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This is actual dogma teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.
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Vatican II, quote, Sacred tradition and sacred scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the word of God, which is entrusted to the church.
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It goes on to say, The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the word of God, whether in written form or in the form of tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the church alone.
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End quote.
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So basically, in Roman Catholicism, you do not have Sola Scriptura.
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You have the Scripture, which is one part of the word of God.
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You have tradition, which is the other part of the word of God.
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And both of them are interpreted by the church magisterium.
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So who then really is the authority? The magisterium.
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You have the Scripture and tradition, but both of them have to be interpreted by the magisterium.
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Thus, the magisterium becomes the total authority.
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In fact, Dr.
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James White, in dealing with Roman Catholicism, has said, What Rome has done is they've created another Sola.
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He says, Rome has created Sola Ecclesia.
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Ecclesia means church.
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And they say the church alone is the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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The church of Rome determines how to interpret the Bible, how to interpret tradition.
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In fact, if you ask a Roman Catholic scholar, maybe not a Roman Catholic rank and file, but somebody who knows their history, if you ask them about Sola Scriptura, they will tell you that Sola Scriptura is the reason why Protestantism is wrong.
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Because Sola Scriptura is the reason why there's 20,000 Protestant denominations.
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That is a vastly, vastly exaggerated number.
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But you'll hear that.
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You'll hear them say there's 20,000 denominations.
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There's 30,000 denominations.
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There's 35,000.
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It's always growing.
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But Rome blames Sola Scriptura for the fact that there is division within Protestantism.
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And they argue that the thousands of churches in different denominations exist because we all have a Bible, but no one knows what it means.
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We all have a Bible, but no divine interpreter.
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And without the divine interpreter of the magisterium of the church, we are all left to just wonder what it means.
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Okay, that's the argument of Rome.
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Now, Rome is not the only group that bears such an authority.
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And I'm not comparing these two one-to-one, so just be careful when you hear what I'm about to say, because when I jump from this one to that one, you're going to say, wow, that's a big jump.
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But Jehovah Witnesses also have a divine teaching authority, which says that you can't interpret the Bible without it, which is similar to what Rome has said in Vatican II.
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You can't interpret the Bible apart from the teaching authority of the church.
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Jehovah Witnesses believe that you cannot interpret the Bible outside of the teaching authority of the Watchtower and Bible and Tract Society.
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I can't say it.
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Watchtower, Bible, and Tract Society is considered to be the faithful and discreet slave.
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That is what it is referred to.
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Meaning, it is the servant of God to interpret the Scripture for God's people.
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I'll quote from the Watchtower.
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This is October 1st, 1994, page 8, if you happen to have one.
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But this is from the Watchtower Magazine.
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It says, All who want to understand the Bible should appreciate that the greatly diversified wisdom of God can become known only through Jehovah's channel of communication, the faithful and discreet slave.
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End quote.
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The faithful and discreet slave is the Watchtower, Bible, and Tract Society.
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So the only way you can know what the Bible says, the only way you can have a firm foundation as to what it means, is if you have a divine interpreter.
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And the divine interpreter, according to Jehovah Witness theology, is the Watchtower.
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Now, even further than that, Jehovah Witnesses will condemn the study of the Bible that is done without the Watchtower Magazine, or the Watchtower influence.
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I want to read to you from 1981.
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This is a long ago, but this still matters.
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Because this was written in the Watchtower, which according to them, is a sacred depository of God's interpretive word.
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So, this is what it says.
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Quote, They say that it is sufficient to read the Bible exclusively, either alone or in small groups at home.
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But, strangely, through such Bible reading, they have reverted back to the apostate doctrines that commentaries by Christendom's clergy were teaching a hundred years ago.
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End quote.
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Did you hear what it said? It says, when people read the Bible on their own, or in small groups, they're coming to the same conclusions that the clergy have been coming to for the last 2,000 years.
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Because they don't have the Watchtower.
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And that's what makes it wrong.
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Because they're using just the Bible, and when they're using the Bible alone, they're coming to things like the Trinity, they're coming to things like the deity of Christ, they're coming to things like salvation by grace, through faith.
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Oh no! Because they didn't use the Watchtower.
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They're actually condemning the study of the Bible apart from using God's sacred interpreter, according to them, which is the Watchtower.
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Now again, Rome and Jehovah Witnesses, they're not alone.
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You show me a cult group, and I'll show you where somewhere, there has been some form of authoritative teaching which has sought to put itself either on par with Scripture, or above it.
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Even groups like the Seventh-day Adventists, which there's debate as to whether or not they are even teaching the true gospel, because so much of what they do teach is so foreign to the Scripture.
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But Seventh-day Adventists were influenced early on by the writings of Ellen G.
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White.
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And Ellen G.
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White's writings are considered by many today in the Seventh-day Adventist movement to be prophetic and from God, and they are used to interpret the Bible.
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And so, it becomes in itself a problem.
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As I said, you show me a group that is teaching things that are seemingly cultish or far from Scripture, in almost every case, you can point to someone or some group within that group that is claiming the authority to have the divine interpretation of the Scriptures.
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They alone have the truth.
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Sure.
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And what's funny is they're using writing to interpret writing, which itself has to be interpreted.
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I mean, you're an English teacher, you know all writing has to be interpreted at some point, and they're using some writing to interpret other writing.
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It really is an amazing argument, because you're just stepping back one step.
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Now we've got to interpret the watchtower to interpret the Bible.
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Or whatever.
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Because honestly, if you ask a Roman Catholic, how do you interpret what the Bible says? Well, they use the councils.
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Well, you've got to read what the councils say, and those things are so much harder to understand than the Bible.
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The councils and the confessions are oftentimes much less clear than if you just read the Bible.
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But yeah, it really does.
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It puts off the onus of responsibility of the person studying, as the Scripture says, study to show ourselves approved unto God.
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A workman that need not be ashamed.
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That's actually the placard over my seminary's door as you walk out, says 2 Timothy 2.15, that we are to study to show ourselves approved unto God as workmen, who need if not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth.
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And I mention all this because, you know, going back to our focus, we're studying apologetics.
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And people think a lot of times that apologetics is just dealing with people who don't believe in God.
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It really isn't.
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Apologetics deals with all of this.
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Because whether I'm talking to an atheist, or whether I'm talking to a person who says they believe in Christ, but they believe in a false view of Christ, I'm still dealing with apologetics.
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I'm still dealing with a defense for the true faith.
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And statistically, I'm so much more likely to run across someone who has a false view of the Bible and a false view of Jesus than I am to someone who just says they don't believe in God.
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Statistically, atheists make up a very small percentage of the population, but I'm telling you, heretics are everywhere.
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Heresy abounds.
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I see it all the time.
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People on Facebook posting quotes from pastors who are just out of their minds.
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And they're, this guy's my favorite pastor.
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And I'm just, oh.
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Everything inside of me hurts when I read that.
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But again, much of what we have to consider is about the issue of how do we interpret, how do we apply the Scriptures.
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So, as I asked earlier, are there people who misapply and misinterpret the Scriptures? Absolutely.
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Peter affirms this in 2 Peter.
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We've already read the text.
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Peter affirms it.
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So I want to get to our handout tonight.
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And as I said, you'll notice there's a lot of blanks.
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I don't want to send you home with a bunch of blanks.
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So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the answers.
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And then I'm going to start breaking it down.
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And then we'll stop when we get ready to stop.
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And we'll start again next week.
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But I don't intend at all to try to get through all this.
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Because when we talk about interpreting the Bible, I've done courses that lasted six months on how to interpret the Bible.
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So trying to get through it in one night is not fair.
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But let's look first at the goal of interpretation.
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Again, I'm going to give you the blanks so that you have them.
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The goal of interpretation.
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The science of biblical interpretation is called, anybody know? Hermeneutics.
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I thought Lee might know.
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That's right.
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Hermeneutics.
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It is spelled H-E-R-M-E-N-E-U-T-I-C-S.
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Hermeneutics.
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And the science of biblical interpretation involves the establishment and recognition of principles which govern the practice of, this is letter B, that was letter A, letter B, exegesis.
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Now tonight, after I've given you all the blanks, I'm going to come back and explain these two words.
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But these are the two blanks, the two first blanks.
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Hermeneutics and exegesis.
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Now the next one you have several blanks, so let me just give them to you quickly.
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The principles of interpretation.
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Letter A, the principle of literary interpretation.
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Literary interpretation.
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Second is the principle of contextual interpretation.
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Third, the principle of clarity.
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Fourth, the principle of the grammatical historical method.
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The next, the principle of the singularity of meaning.
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Next, the principle of accommodation.
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And finally in that list, the principle of divine illumination.
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Again, wouldn't dare try to do all that in one night.
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But, the seven principles.
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Principle of literary interpretation, contextual interpretation, clarity, grammatical historical method, the singularity of interpretation, accommodation, and divine illumination.
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Those seven things are essential.
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Now there are four improper methods of interpretation.
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The improper methods are as follows.
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A, allegorical interpretation.
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B, devotional interpretation.
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C, liberal interpretation.
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And I know someone might be a liberal and say, well that's not fair, you're cutting us off at the knees.
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But there is an actual liberal interpretation and that has a definition, which I'll show next week, why that is not the proper way to interpret.
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Really any document, because it's not fair to the original author.
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But finally, subjective interpretation.
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Subjective interpretation.
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So there is all of the blanks.
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As I said, I know there are many.
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That's why I'm not trying to get to them all.
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Let's go back up though.
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What is the goal? The goal of interpretation.
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The science of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics.
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Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word hermeneuo.
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Hermeneuo means to translate something.
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It means to interpret something.
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How many of you know much about Greek gods and Greek myth? There is a Greek god called Hermes.
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Who was he? He was the messenger of the gods.
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His job was to bring the message.
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So the term hermeneuo actually derives from the idea of the messenger interpreting the message.
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But certainly we're not ascribing to Greek mythology.
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It's simply the term that's used.
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Hermeneutics is the process by which we seek to understand the original intent of the author.
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And you need to understand that is the key to hermeneutics.
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What was the original intent of the author? Now, many of you are into politics.
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At least I hear you talking politics at times when I exercise my pastoral prerogative in eavesdropping.
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Just kidding.
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But I've heard you all at times, not all of you, but I've heard people talk about the Supreme Court.
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And I've heard people talk about the original intent of the Constitution.
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Do you understand that the Supreme Court of the United States is by its nature a hermeneutical institution? The purpose of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constitution of the United States to determine whether or not a law is just or unjust according to the Constitution.
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So the way they're supposed to do that is to determine the original intent of the authors of the Constitution.
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That's the only way.
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And you hear progressives will say, No, we need to interpret it as a living document.
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What does that mean? That gets back to that liberal interpretation.
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Now, it can change meaning as times change.
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And conservatives tend to say, No, we want to know what the writer's intention was.
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We want to know what the original authorial intention was because the best person to tell us what something means is the person who wrote it.
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So we have to determine meaning by determining what did the author intend for it to mean.
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Like earlier when I talked about Cody going to get a cup of water.
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I'm the author.
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If he doesn't understand, he should ask me.
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Now, I understand the writers of the Constitution are long dead and the writers of Scripture are even longer dead.
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But the point is to try to determine their intent.
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That's what hermeneutics is all about.
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It's really the bare bones of hermeneutics.
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What was the original author's intent in writing? Because even though the Bible is a book that is miraculously superintended, we've talked about that, and it has been miraculously transmitted down through the ages, being kept from wholesale change and error, the Bible is still a book.
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And it still falls under the category of literature and the laws and rules which accompany the interpretation of literature.
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It's writing.
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The Bible doesn't come to us as a mystical voice that somebody hears this and somebody hears that.
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It's writing.
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And there are rules that accompany writing.
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There are rules that accompany grammar.
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Why do you think I make such a big deal when I'm preaching about looking at the Greek and saying, here's what the Greek means, and here's how this word applies to this word and how this word applies to this word? Because that matters.
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Because we determine the author's meaning by the words he uses and the way he wrote them.
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All of that is important.
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And that's why I think...
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How many of you know what the Message Bible is? The Message Bible is a paraphrase.
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In fact, just this week, the author of the Message Bible, Eugene Peters, I think is his name, or Peterson, the one who translated the Message Bible, he was actually caught some fire because he came out in support of homosexual marriage.
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And then his books got banned from Lifeway and he came out against it.
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It's interesting how he made the turn so quickly.
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I don't know exactly if that's the reason.
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He claims he was misunderstood in the first statement, and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
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He says that he was pushed into a corner by a very zealous reporter who simply wanted to get him to say that he supported homosexual marriage, but in reality, he doesn't.
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And for that, I think it is funny how it all worked out.
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But giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe so.
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But the point is this.
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He authored a translation of the Bible, which is not a translation.
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It's a paraphrase.
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And I call it the Toothbrush Bible.
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Because in the book of Matthew, it talks even when Jesus says, Take your cloak.
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He's telling the disciples to go.
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And he says, Take your cloak and don't take your sack.
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Or he's telling them what to take and what not to take.
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In the Message Bible, it says, Don't forget your toothbrush.
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And I always thought that was kind of funny, because I call it the Toothbrush Bible.
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Because it's interesting.
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It's so much of a strange paraphrase.
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But the point I'm making is, it would be almost impossible to get an idea of the author's original intention by reading the message.
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Because it's so far removed from what the author originally wrote.
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Somebody says, What are the best Bibles to read if we're reading a translation? The best Bibles to read are the Bibles that are written and translated as close to the original as is possible, while still being able to be read.
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Because it is hard to translate from one language to another.
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There does have to be some stylistic changes in there.
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But Bibles like the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, the King James Version, these are all taken, basically word for word, translations into the English.
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That's what we want.
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We want a translation that sticks as close to the original as possible, so that we know we're getting what Paul wrote.
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We know we're getting what John wrote.
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Because that's what our job is.
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If hermeneutics is what we're doing, we're interpreting the original authors, we've got to get as close to that as we can.
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And most of us don't read Greek, so we have to take the English translation.
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But we want the English translation to be as close as it can.
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That's why translation does matter.
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And why I'm not a big fan of the NIV.
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I don't think it's terrible, but the NIV does stray away.
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It's what's called dynamic equivalent.
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It has that sort of...
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It'll make changes to make things make sense.
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But when you do that, it becomes dangerously difficult to be able to figure out the author's original intent when you don't know what he really said.
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You're taking somebody else's word for what he meant, rather than his own.
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So that's what hermeneutics is.
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And again, we're going to finish on this second one, exegesis.
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And we are going to finish, because I know we're out of time.
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The science of biblical interpretation involves the establishment and recognition of principles which govern the practice of exegesis.
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Exegesis means coming...
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The term ex in Greek means to pull out.
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Exegeo means to pull the meaning out of something.
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It's explaining something.
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When I preach, I don't know if you've ever heard me say this, I say I'm going to exegete this passage.
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I don't say that a lot, because it's kind of an obscure term.
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But in Sunday school, sometimes I'll say, we're going to exegete this passage.
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And what that means is, we're going to seek to understand the meaning of this passage by pulling out of it what it says, rather than reading into it what we want it to say.
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That's the opposite of exegesis.
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The opposite of exegesis, sometimes pronounced asegesis, sometimes pronounced isogesis, but it's spelled E-I-S-E-G-I-S.
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One of the great passages in the Bible.
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Yeah.
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It's the same as the word exegesis from the Greek.
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Yep, the Greek word exegesis is used in the text, saying that's what Jesus does about God.
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It says no one has seen God except God the Son, and He exegetes Him.
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He explains Him.
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Jesus shows us who God is, and He exegetes the Father.
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That's right.
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So we have an understanding of what that means.
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And so, that's my job.
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When I get up to preach, my job is to pull out of the text what it says and tell you what it says.
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It's not my job to take my ideas and read them into the text.
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And the same thing goes for you.
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When you are studying the Bible, it is your job to pull out of the text what it says, not read into the text what you want it to say.
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So that's what next week we're going to do.
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We're going to look at the principles of interpretation.
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How do we, using the rules, which are pretty well universally understood, grammar, and context, and understanding literature, how do we use those rules to properly come to an understanding of Scripture that we can stand by and say, we know what this means because this is what it says.
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So that's what we're going to do next week.
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We'll start right there at part two.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for this opportunity to study.
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I pray that it has been helpful and fruitful, and that you'll use it to grow us in our understanding of your word.
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In Jesus' name, amen.