Knowing Scripture IV: Rules for Interpreting Scripture

Welcome to the

Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snider, and with me this week is AC Floyd. Good to have you, AC. Good to be here.

And AC, you might recognize that name, AC is our office manager with Media Gratia.

So if you send an email saying, where are my books? What happened? AC's the guy that patiently tries to find out what's the solution to your problem.

Every time, all right? We're looking in this short series at the topic of knowing

Scripture, and we're using a book by R .C. Sproul with the same title, because as Protestants, we believe in Sola Scriptura, which means that the

Scripture is the authority for all belief in life. So we're not free to just say, well, my preacher says this, so that must be what's right, or my favorite online preacher, his sermon on this, he said this, so that must be what it means.

And we're also not free to kind of drift into that old way that probably many of us approach the

Scripture with the idea that, well, whatever my emotional response to the passages, that's what's true.

So to me, this means this, or this is what I got out of it, or this is what I felt when

I read it. So we want to be careful not to do that. We want to approach the

Scripture from the most biblical and careful principles of what we call hermeneutics, just the study or the science of how to interpret written documents.

Of course, we're applying it to the Scriptures, and so there are some unique aspects, but many of the rules transfer from just regular writings, you know, reading

Shakespeare to reading the Scriptures. Since it's a book that God gave through humans for humans, there are, you know, these human constructs, and if we understand how people write and how we're supposed to read it, it goes a long way to helping us understand

Scripture. So before we jump into the chapter, give you a survey, because there are a lot of points in this chapter, and then hit what we feel are the most helpful ones,

I want to mention that we are doing a giveaway, and the giveaway, these are the books behind me, and they are all related to knowing

Scripture, and we'll talk more about that later, because Teddy won't let me tell you right now. He says you'll just turn us off, all right?

So hang in there. So A .C., tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got to Christ Church, and whatever else you want to tell us.

I got to Christ Church by way of Blue Mountain College. I was a student there roughly 10 or 12 years ago, and in our

Spanish class, I met a young man who was attending a church at that time, and he said,

I really think that you would benefit from and enjoy fellowship with my pastor and some of the other young guys at the church.

So that was in December of 2010. Who was that? That was Will Hill. Really? Yeah.

Okay. So we met in Spanish class with Dr. Arrington, and then had dinner with several other younger guys.

We later that night came to the church, came into basically the wardrobe of Chronicles and Narnia that is your study, and met you and those guys, talked about the books, and I thought that night,

I really would like to end up here. So I was a student at Blue Mountain at that time.

I, a couple of years later, became a youth pastor, and that lasted a whopping eight months before I resigned and came here to just work a normal job, train for the ministry, and prepare myself for what

I thought the Lord had for me next. But it was in those couple of years of first being here that two things.

The first was that I knew nothing about what it meant to shepherd a soul, and more importantly than that,

I knew nothing about God. I didn't know really who He was or what it meant to walk with Him.

So in those two years, the Lord brought me to the end of myself and gave me the grace to look out and away from myself and to Him for the first time, to find

Him to be precious. So since March of 2012,

I've been here at Christ Church. And since January of 2017, I've been the office manager of Media Gratiae.

And since April of 2022, I've been an elder here at Christ Church. Yeah. The first time

I met your wife, Chelsea, who is from Alabama, yeah, she didn't have any shoes on.

And so I made my normal opening charm, you know, I said, so you're from Alabama, that's why you don't wear shoes, you know, a

Mississippi poking fun at Alabamans. But, you know, she's partly to blame because, you know, she was supporting this stereotypical view.

It's true. Yeah. All right. Hey, Chelsea. Shout out to Chelsea. And how many kids?

You guys got? Three. We have. And one on the way? Three boys and one girl on the way.

Yeah. A girl. Yep. Help us all. All right. So the chapter that we're looking at today, it's chapter four of Sproul's book,

Knowing Scripture, and it gives what he calls, you know, just kind of basic rules for reading the

Bible. And these are rooted in the hermeneutical principles, those principles that speak of how we are to interpret a written text, biblical or not.

And so let me run through those, and then we're going to kind of jump back and hit some that we think are most helpful.

First he says that we are to read the Bible like any other book. And while there is unique content and there is the unique author behind this book, and it has a unique impact on us because it is a book given to humans, it is not unique in the sense that it uses, you know, paragraphs and sentences and words.

And we're not looking for some special, you know, code behind the obvious meaning of statements.

We're coming to it and reading it like we would any book in that sense. And I think that's helpful because then you remember that there is hard work involved or, you know, it does take time.

And we'll come back and talk about that a little because that's actually one of my favorite points of the chapter. Second, he says, we are to read it existentially.

And that sounds really highfalutin, but what he means is when we read it, we don't read it kind of always aloof and separate, but, you know, you put yourself in the text.

Now this is not an excuse, he warns us, of warping the text around us, you know, as if every passage

I read is just about me. Some passages are not directly about us at all. They're stating something about how about God and how he deals with humanity.

And there's wonderful application, even if it's just understanding God. But where we can, we want to place ourselves.

You know, it's like you're reading the narrative and you place yourself there. And that just requires that we slow down a little.

And as we read, we think, what would it have been like to hear these words in that situation?

And then, you know, having thought through that and meditate on it and wrestled with it, then how does that affect today?

How do I build a bridge from then to now? And I think that we could say that the foundation for that type of reading is twofold.

One is that we do belong to a God that doesn't alter. So in his fundamental perfections and his determinations, he has not altered.

So when we read a passage and we say, what would it have been like to hear God say that? Well, it's the same

God that we worship today. But also there is, you know, when we speak of the most basic needs of humanity, the human condition, we could say, it hasn't changed either.

And so while there are many secondary things that are different about us, you know, and there is old covenant and new covenant, which we need to understand, those unchanging aspects of God and us allow us to put ourselves in the passage and to benefit from that approach.

So read existentially. Interpret the historical narratives by the didactic.

That is, when we read passages that give specific teaching about some

Christian ethic or moral, that guides our understanding of historical narratives or accounts where we see people behave a certain way and God doesn't give us his moral commentary there.

You know, does he like that or is he offended by that? You know, we're not told always.

So we go to the didactic, the passages that speak directly, and go back and they become the lens that we read the historical through.

Another rule he gives us is use the explicit passages to interpret the implicit.

Use passages that are speaking directly to a topic to help us understand passages that are indirectly speaking or have, you know, indirect application to a topic.

Make sure the clear, explicit passages are the guide.

Next, be careful to understand the meaning of words. And we talked about this a lot last week.

When we go and we look at the scripture, we want to be careful with words. We can do word studies, you can use online helps for that, you can use

Hebrew or Greek dictionaries or Bible software like Logos, or a lot of times good commentaries will give you the meaning of a word.

But you do have to be careful. And we're going to talk about a couple of areas where it's really beneficial.

But you have to be careful not to say, well, since my Strong's Concordance said the word means this, it means this.

And you don't take into account the context, because like with English, many

Hebrew and Greek words can have multiple meanings, closely related, but different.

And the context helps us. Sixth, he says, pay attention to parallelisms, especially in Hebrew poetry.

We see that there are ways of making statements one after the next. And like in a couplet, where in the

Psalms where you'll have just two lines that go together. The first line says something, the second line says the same fundamental thing, but from a different angle.

And that helps us. It helps clarify it. And he gives a couple of good examples of how that helps clarify.

Another, he says, note the difference between proverb and law.

When we read the book of Proverbs, how do we read that different than we read a list of commands?

And I think we could add the difference between proverb and promise, because that's often where I find people getting stuck.

You know, the Proverbs say this, and I did this, and this didn't happen. So did God fail? Or did

I not do it well enough? And sometimes the answer is in the fact that you have misinterpreted how to understand a proverb.

Another rule, observe the difference between the spirit and the letter of the law. So how do you do that without throwing out the letter and saying, well, it doesn't matter what the scripture says, you know, this command, which is very clear, really it's more pointing to a heart attitude.

So you end up ignoring the very specific aspects of obedience because you think, well, it's my heart that God was interested in.

So that's a danger. The other danger is reading the law and saying, all I have to do is keep the letter of the law.

I keep this externally. I did what it said, but the heart, you know, it's unaffected.

Like the Pharisee, we have to be careful. Be careful with parables. And we talked about that last week.

One major point, one great spiritual application coming from just a common everyday illustration from some event in human life, and anyone can understand it.

You don't have to even be a theist. You don't have to believe there's a God that exists, much less be a

Christian. You read the parable, you get the picture, and it has one great message.

He says, be careful with predictive prophecy. And that's a big one.

And he even mentions in the book that he doesn't have time to really go that. And I'm totally throwing that to you toward the end.

All right. So you handle that. He says, interpret the Bible with humility. And that's very helpful too, because the whole chapter in saying, look, you approach this like you would other books.

He is careful to kind of wrap it up toward the end and say, I don't mean that we don't need

God to help us learn. So he talks about that, the humility of how we approach it.

So let's hit some of those. AC, give us one that you feel is particularly helpful.

The first one that I thought was particularly helpful was the last rule that he gave, rule 11, interpret the

Bible with a spirit of humility. Immediately, I thought of James chapter 4, verse 6, when

James writes to that church spread abroad through persecution, and he says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

And I feel like that's such a helpful statement and a helpful application as we would interpret the scriptures.

As we would come to this book known as the Bible, it's God's revelation of himself in time and space.

There is a way in which it has to be approached. There's a way in which it has to be interpreted, and it has to be approached and interpreted on God's terms.

And I think the terms in which we approach it and interpret it are with humility. You read accounts in the scriptures,

I'm thinking specifically of John chapter 5, verses 39 and 40, when Jesus is speaking very firmly and in an accusatory way, as he should have, to the

Pharisees, when he says to them, you search the scriptures in vain, because you think in them you have eternal life.

I think a root of the Pharisaical approach and interpretation of scripture is pride.

They weren't approaching it and interpreting it to know God, to humble themselves before him.

They were doing it, in a sense, to build knowledge, to know how to apply this, to make themselves better.

Like you say often, to use the law as a scrub brush to try to clean up their lives.

But I think they were also using it to kind of get over on people and put their thumbs on people.

To say, ah, you're not as righteous or as holy as I am because you're not obeying the laws that I'm obeying.

That approach is wholly antithetical to God and to scripture itself.

When Jesus speaks in Matthew 18, one through four, he uses a child in their midst to illustrate the way a person enters the kingdom.

So childlike humility is necessary to enter the kingdom of God, and you can take that and apply it to approaching and interpreting the

Bible. I believe childlike humility is absolutely necessary if you're going to interpret the

Bible as it's intended to be interpreted. Don't come to it thinking you're going to master it.

Come to it with a childlike humility expecting to be mastered by it, because of the one who wrote it.

That's his intent and purpose. But I also think of Isaiah 66, one and two,

I think it's specifically verse two, when God says, this is the one to whom

I will look. So if you want God's eye upon you, if you want his face turned toward you,

God is speaking so clearly, and he says, the one to whom I will look is the one who is humble, the one who is contrite in spirit, crushed in spirit, not downcast and downtrodden, unnecessarily despairing and discouraged, but one who has a right estimate of God and one who has a right estimate of themselves.

And lastly in that verse, God mentions that it's one who trembles at my word.

So we have to tremble at the word of God before we approach it and interpret it.

We can't come to it carelessly, nonchalant, as though this is going to be some sort of easy cool -of -the -day hike.

This is going to be an adventure, this is going to be a journey that is going to tax us spiritually, emotionally, physically even at times, in order for us to glean from the

Scriptures what we must. So with that realization, we have to approach this book called the

Bible with a spirit of humility. Yeah, I think, you know, along those lines, as you mentioned, we don't come to master the book, we come to be mastered by it.

If you think that, you know, we come to this word and if we treat it lightly, like you said, it's just, in a sense, there's no benefit.

So while Sproul is giving us a lot of hermeneutical applications, so how do we read this book?

And you know, you read it like you would every other book. And of course, he finishes with this one to make sure we don't misunderstand that.

But I think you could say this, we can understand the basic message of Scripture without the help of God, in a sense.

So I understand what the sentences are saying, I understand this paragraph, I understand the flow of thought from Genesis to Revelation, great, but you cannot spiritually benefit at all.

In fact, all you can do is make your judgment worse if you approach it with a proud attitude of like,

I'm above it to judge it. And so, I mean, we probably have all met professors, and I don't mean on the seminary level,

I didn't at seminary, but I have seen professors, you know, at the collegiate level, where they teach a course on maybe on world religions, and they get to Christianity, and they know a lot about Christianity.

But it's from a distance, it's from a proud perspective. And so they can explain to you, these are the things that that book says, but they have not benefited at all.

Another thing I think of under this point is that you cannot have an argument with this author and benefit.

So I can understand what he says, but for real benefit, for enduring changes in my life,

I cannot be arguing with the author. I can argue with any other author in any other book, and I can still benefit from them.

So I can read, you know, a math textbook, and I'm trying to learn something, you know, for a class, and I read it, and I'm having,

I think, oh, I wouldn't have said it that way. Why did you use this illustration, or, you know, why did you give this type of problem?

I would have given a different approach, and I can have an argument, but I can still benefit. Whether I like the author, and I could hate the author,

I could know the author and say, this person may be a math whiz, but he's a total jerk in real life.

I live next to him, so okay, but you still benefit. But you cannot have that attitude toward God and benefit.

And, you know, so when we approach Scripture, we understand that my attitude toward the

God of the Bible is important, my dependence upon Him and my putting in the time to do hard work or to really study carefully, both of those are expressions of humility, and like you said,

I'm going to be mastered by this book. That's the goal, which means every time I read a passage, there is the possibility that somebody has to be adjusted, me or the

God that's revealed this to me in this book. So the God that wrote the book or John Snyder is going to be adjusted, because, you know, when

I read this passage, there's not a harmony between my life and what God has just said, and so am

I going to try to adjust my view of God and to kind of warp the

Scripture to fit me, and I can always do that by saying, well, Dr. So -and -so in his book, or Professor So -and -so, or this really popular preacher online, well, he says that I'm right, and then you've adjusted

God. So yeah, humility in how we approach. One complaint

I would have about the chapter is that I probably would have started with that instead of ended. But you know, it's good ending with it.

Maybe I'd have started in and said, hey, don't forget my first point. Yeah, maybe it's the thing he wanted to hang in your mind.

Yeah, yeah. So we can see that. One of the things I mentioned that I thought was really helpful was the issue of reading the

Bible like any other book, but having looked at the humility issue, I think the only thing to add there is we don't come to this book as if because it is from God through men, and that's unique, then that means

I don't have to put in the time and effort necessary to understand it.

So it's as if, you know, if my heart is right with God, and I want to know the Lord, and I want to love the

Lord, and I want to live for the Lord, and I say, well, because of all that spiritual stuff is right, then if I just open the book and kind of give a five minute skim over a chapter of the

Bible and then get busy that day, that's all that's required, because this is a magical book.

It's different than every other book, and it will change me. You know, we almost get the feeling that it'll change us just by agreeing that this is the book that God gave us and owning a copy of it, but studying, comparing what

Paul says here with what James says here, what Christ says here with what the Old Testament told me to expect when

Christ came, you know, comparing that and kind of understanding how it fits together, doing the hard work of reading commentaries.

You know, even the simple thing of when I read my Bible, I almost always have a notebook and a pen, because I want to write down things

I'm learning, and oftentimes I have to go back and, you know, say, okay, what did I see yesterday?

I started here, then I jumped over here to see this other text. It talks about the same thing, or I read this author, this commentary on this text, and he said some really helpful things, and so I jot those things down so that I won't forget them, or I want to go back and meditate on them, or maybe

I memorize a verse from a section that really, really it seemed to me was so significant, you know, where I'm at right now.

But memorizing, meditating, writing things down, going back, making sure I don't lose what

I'm learning, all of that is what I would call the kind of the hard work. So if we skip that because we say, well, it's a book that God gives, and God promised to teach us, and so I just have to kind of give a quick, kind of a lazy perusal of a passage, and I'll get it because it's

God's book, well, that's a misunderstanding, you know. Yeah, just two things I would quickly add to that.

Yesterday, I was reading A .W. Pink, and one of the things that he said about the Scriptures is that it is no lazy person's book, that it won't render itself to the lazy person.

Yesterday, I'd read from Luther, where he said the believer must beat against the

Scriptures until it yields itself to you. Then you have the accounts of Scripture itself, you know, a good application of seeking the

Lord in the Scriptures is when Jacob wrestles with God in Genesis 32, I will not let you go until you bless me, or Jesus teaching the disciples to pray in the

Sermon on the Mount, ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking. That's our approach to seeking

Him, and that has to be our approach to reading the Scriptures and studying it, because like you said,

I think there's a tendency in us all to just kind of have a perusal and have a less than diligent approach.

Yeah, and that reminded me of a quote that Tozer gave, it's at the entrance of my study at the church, where he said, the

Scriptures were written by men who wept, and they reveal their truths to those who weep.

You know, that's a summary of a statement, but, you know, and so it's not always every passage, but there are times where, you know, when your heart is in harmony with the heart of the writer, with the heart of God in that passage, and that is one aspect of humility, you know.

Well, when we look at interpreting the historical narrative by the didactic, didactic just meaning passages that are primarily teaching you something,

I think that is so helpful. And it came to mind especially, I guess, last year when we were putting together the study on Judges, the mini -study there.

Judges is one of those books where there are a lot of moral choices made not just by the people who are drifting toward idolatry, and then, you know,

God judges them and restores them, but even the hand -picked leaders, the judges, the military and spiritual and political leader that God has chosen,

God is equipped, God uses to deliver the people, but throughout the process, and this becomes more extreme as the book goes along, we see these spiritual leaders making some bad choices.

And so oftentimes as a pastor I get this question, so is Samson in heaven?

Is he a Christian? Did he go to hell? And, you know, the passage really isn't trying to answer that, but, you know, was

God okay with Samson? Was God okay with Gideon making an idol of, you know, the gold that they gave him?

Is God okay with Jephthah and the vow and the putting to death of his daughter?

I mean, there are a lot of alarming choices in the Old Testament historical accounts, and when we look at those, a lot of times the prophets will come and speak on behalf of God, and they'll say,

God is offended. Other times we don't get any moral commentary, and we have to go to passages in the

Bible that speak about how God feels about different behaviors, and we know that God not changing,

He loved it in the New Testament, He hated it in the New Testament, that means He loved or hated it in the

Old. And so that's very helpful, and it kind of clarifies, you know, a lot of the confusing spots.

Well, A .C., how do you use the explicit passages to interpret the implicit?

That's a great question. It's one that I wish I had learned about years ago when

I'm trying to make sense of some, you know, theological premise or some doctrine.

But one of the things that, well, two of the things that Sproul said

I found to be extremely helpful, just two clear sentences, he said, first, when an implication is drawn that is contradictory to what is explicitly stated, the implication must be rejected.

So I think that's super helpful when you're trying to, you know, tie together, synthesize, however you want to say it, two passages, one clear, one not so clear, one that might lend itself to a question mark, and if you follow that rabbit down its trail, it could lead to heterodoxy or heresy somewhere, and then the passage that stabilizes it.

When you tie those two together and you weigh them against each other, you find, okay, well, where the question mark is here about this topic or this doctrine, here's this passage that makes it so clear.

Okay, so whatever, like, question marks or rabbit trails or heterodoxy or heresy that I could have gone down here, okay, well, this levels it out.

So I need to not, obviously, not throw this verse away, not completely ignore it, but view it in light of what is clear, and that was the second statement that he said.

I love his emphasis, I love the must. He said we must interpret obscure passages in light of the clear passages.

We would save ourselves a lot of, you know, heartache, perhaps a lot of false doctrine if we would simply do that instead of, you know, trying to do it the hard way and work something into a verse that maybe isn't there.

I think something that is related to this, but Sproul didn't mention it,

I have found it really helpful in my own reading of the Bible, and that is if you want the right answer from the text, make sure you're asking the right question, and if you want a wrong answer from the text, then just ask the question that it's not trying to answer.

So you can read Hebrews, for example, and it gives those alarming warnings, and so immediately the only question people want answered is, so are you saying a

Christian can lose his salvation? Well, that book is not trying to answer that question, and if you give the answer and say, well, no, no, of course not, a true

Christian in Christ, no condemnation, you know, ever possible again, you're in the

Father's hands, you're in the Son's hands, you know, there is an eternal life, John chapter 6, everyone that sees me and comes to me, everyone who believes,

I will raise him up on the last day, everyone the Father entrusts to me, he says in the same chapter, I will raise him up on the last day,

I won't lose one of them, okay, so we say, you're not saying a Christian can lose his salvation, and then the warnings are ignored, like, well, those are for other people then, so it's as if the

Christian wants to come to his Bible and write, not for me, not for me, not for me. Well, then, of course, why bother write those warnings if it's of no value to the

Christian? Because I imagine that the lost man is not reading Hebrews a whole lot.

So where do we go for the question, can the Christian lose their salvation? Well, there are passages like Ephesians 1 or like, you know,

John 10 or like John 6, there are so many passages that describe the security of those who are in Christ.

We are kept, we are held holding, great.

What is Hebrews saying, so I can ask the right question, so I can really benefit?

Well, Hebrews is saying, for those who say, I belong to Christ, it's saying, great.

Two things that keep you on track and keep you from ever turning away. One is the superior worth of your

Lord. He is above everything. So look at Him. That's like the right -hand punch.

And then the second punch comes in. Listen to these warnings. So the believer, when they read

Hebrews, because they are believers, they believe what God says. So they say, look at my

Lord. You're right. Why would I go anywhere else? And then look at these warnings. Why would

I turn away from Christ? It is a life and death matter that I hold to my hope in Christ.

And I don't let go of that for anything. And when the believer believes the views of Christ and the warning signs, they persevere all the way to the end by faith and prove themselves to be what they said they were.

I'm in Christ. The unbeliever reads it and says, well, I mean, those are nice descriptions of Jesus.

But look, on Monday morning, I need more than that. I need something a little more practical for life.

Or those warnings. Wow. You know, those are kind of terrifying. But I go to church. I'm a church member. So I don't think those are for me because I've been told once saved, always saved.

And so not believing the worth of Christ, not believing the warning signs, they destroy themselves and prove they never were what they thought they were.

So I think of those warning signs, those warnings in Hebrews, like warning signs on a road.

So you're going through some mountainous, you know, smoky mountains, West Virginia roads. And there's a sign that says, you know, dangerous curve ahead.

If you believe that, you slow down and you don't go off the edge because you believed it.

And you adjusted your life because you believed it. But if you just say, oh, those people don't know what they're talking about.

And you fly around the curve. Then you go off the edge of the mountain and you die. You know, and it's in a sense, it's the same with Hebrews.

The believer asked the right question. What are you saying? And the question and the answer is, do not, do not turn away.

Do not be careless and do not forget the worth of Jesus. And the believer says, great.

How how do I not do that? You know, and and then Hebrews is a benefit. Asking the wrong questions, though, tends to give us the wrong answers.

And that's a big problem. So before we close up the podcast today,

AC, what about being careful with predictive prophecy? This is, in my estimation, out of all of the rules that were in this chapter, the one that feels the most hot button and the one that in my own experience in the last 20 years has been most hot button, just I think probably because of the time in which we live in the cultural context in which we live.

I feel like in the Mid -South there tends to be, at least there was 20 years ago, like a lot of in time craze.

You know, is it this year? Is it going to be next year? Five years? Did I see a blood moon last night? If so, what does that mean?

Russia's doing something. China's doing something. But I feel like Sproul's explanation there in rule 10 of being careful with predictive prophecies was such a helpful, balancing description that would give a lot of level headedness to what is a lot of unbalanced,

I don't know the best way to say it, just crazy thoughts about books like Daniel and Ezekiel and Revelation.

I think his description will do a lot to kind of even out or maybe even eradicate some of the prejudices and even well -meaning traditions that people have in regard to prophecies and last things.

So I think in that section, and really what we could, you and I could say about predictive prophecies is that the goal, the main emphasis of Daniel or Ezekiel or Revelation, it isn't, you know, some of the things that I'd mentioned, the end times,

China, Russia, blood moons, and all those things. It's God. It's more specifically

Christ Jesus himself. It's pointing us to him. And I feel like a lot of the time, sadly, and I think tragically, people get lost in the weeds of the things that I just mentioned instead of looking to Christ and finding him there, making him the focal point, which he is.

I mean, you get to the book of Revelation and you find that it's the revelation of John about who?

Jesus Christ. So we have to approach these things very carefully with a sober attitude, but primarily realizing who these books are about, who they're pointing us to, what events they're pointing us to, as opposed to, you know, the things that we would get so easily tripped up on.

Because those things that people are tripped up on that I mentioned, to some degree, they are fascinating.

They are interesting. There's this element of figuring it out, right?

And I think that's what a lot of people maybe would rather have than the

Christ who is there and confronting them and revealing himself to them.

So when it comes to prophecies, we have to seek them out to understand them for Christ himself.

But another thing that I would add to that, that Sproul said, was that in all of these pictures, these images that we see in Daniel, Ezekiel, Revelation, is we have to seek the general meaning of such images in the

Bible itself. It's, you know, akin to what you'd said in regard to rule four, interpret the implicit by the explicit.

Well, if we see that there's this image in the New Testament, well, that surely hasn't cropped up just here.

Let's go back and let's look in the Old Testament to see this image. So, okay, well, this is what this image meant here in the

Old Testament. Let's look at it here in the New Testament. Ah, well, these people carry with them similar or the same understandings what this image is in these books.

So there's a cohesion that grounds us in what the author meant in both the

Old Testament and the New Testament. And, well, if this is what they agreed to and this is what they meant, then this is what this can mean for me right now and how it can be applied to my life and my situation, but also the situation going on in the church, you know, big

C church all over the planet, in the culture and society in which I live.

So if we do that, you know, seeing the images that God put them in there,

He put that thread from beginning to end, it would do a lot for us to simplify and give us the answers that I think we desire.

Yeah, so without saying that, you know, the specific symbols and things that we're seeing throughout that literature, and you mentioned those that have, you know, apocalyptic literature there, it's very, it's almost like walking into a theater and there's sights and sounds, you know, the kind that just shake you, you know, the surround sound.

It's like the kind of sounds that you feel go through your body, the bass notes. You walk into Revelation and you're faced with picture after picture, scene after scene, and you're walking away with the impact of that on you.

The general impact is, like you said, about who our God is and what He's doing is by far the most significant lesson we can learn.

We know that the other details aren't unimportant, but I guess we could say it this way.

We want our lives and our approach, particularly to these great scenes in prophetic or apocalyptic literature, like Revelation and Daniel and Ezekiel, we want our approach to that to be fundamentally based on who

God is, what He's doing in the person of His Son, the unfolding of that great redemptive plan.

So that's primary. That guides my interpretation, not what

I heard on the news last night. So it's not that what's happening right now isn't important or the details that we find all around these pictures of Christ and His activity, that those are completely unimportant, but I guess let the sight of our

Lord and His ongoing work of unfolding the Father's good pleasure from the throne at the

Father's right hand, let that be kind of the fashioning, guiding fence line that keeps us on course, not today's news.

And then I think if we do that, regardless of how we take the specific aspects, we'll stay within the general category of, you know, safe and beneficial.

Well, before we close up, I want to mention again that we're doing a number of giveaways during this short series of Knowing Scripture, and the giveaways this week are these white and purple and pink commentaries.

Let me grab one without making them all fall over. This is by Philip Eveson on the

Psalms, and there's two volumes by him on the Psalms. Then there's the book of Hebrews by Richard Brooks and Joshua by John Currid.

These are all from the Well -When Commentary series. If you've ever had Well -When Commentaries before, these are the new edition.

So they have a new cover. The old covers, they were black with some picture on the front. And they weren't as helpful, the covers, because they didn't tell you which book necessarily this was.

So it could be Psalms, and it could have some title, but it didn't tell you it was Psalms. So it could say something like, building the people of God.

You think, okay, so is that Nehemiah or is that Titus? So you had to pull it off the bookshelf and then go, oh, that's

Nehemiah. So the new covers, the spines at least, are easier for us.

These books do fall in the category of devotional commentaries. That doesn't mean that they're not theologically careful or they're for children.

It's just that these are commentaries where the commentator has done all the work, and he's brought you the product of that.

They're to the point. They're pretty simple and direct, and they're not very wordy.

So they're helpful in that way. These are commentaries that we often recommend at the church for people who say, hey,

I'm about to study Ezekiel. Do you have a good commentary you could recommend? Well, if you give them the Puritan, it's like, well, that's 750 pages.

So that might kill them. So we say, well, actually, this one. And so I use these a lot of times.

I know you've been using the one on Hebrews in the past. In Jeremiah. Who wrote that?

It's a Welsh pastor, Mostyn Roberts. Okay. M -O -S -T -Y -N?

Yes. Oh, Mostyn. Mostyn Roberts. All right, Mostyn. You gotta sing when you say it. Sorry, we don't know how to pronounce your name.

It's an excellent commentary. Yeah, I think that Wellman commentary series, they're inexpensive. They're all written by men that would be in the camp that we feel, these are men that are careful with scripture and they're devotional.

So they're heartwarming at the same time that they're helping clarify some sticky spots. I would also add to that, it's mostly written by pastors.

So it does have a pastoral warmth and application to it. And before we go,

Teddy has reminded me that if you look at the description, there's a link there to these and you can get a discount if you order through that.

We'll see you next week as we hit chapter five in Sproul's book,