16 - Biblical Authority, Part 2

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

I am Andrew Rappaport.

I will be your instructor today and you can get all kinds of information about striving for eternity at the

website strivingforeternity .org.

We're glad to have you with us.

We welcome all of our new students, those who are watching for the first time maybe.

Well, you really want to start in the earlier classes just to get context, just saying.

But this is our school of world religions.

In this school, we're focusing on the major western religions.

This is going to be, basically we've been doing a systematic theology through the major western religions.

This is starting now part two, which is a Christian response to the different religions.

In that, we are seeing in this particular lesson is Christian

authority.

What is the authority that Christians have?

When we look at things, where do we as Christians

find the authority to say, thus says the Lord?

Because that's really what we want to get to, right?

We want to get to the point of saying, when we say something, we can say it authoritatively.

We can say it because thus says the Lord.

When we look at what Christianity teaches versus the other world religions, we need

to have a way to be able to examine and compare what they

are teaching compared to what we believe and know where the difference is.

That's what we want to do.

We want to be able to do that.

With that in mind, we're going to look into this lesson.

We hope that you have a syllabus.

You can pick up a copy of the syllabus, which is a student copy of the study of

western religions at our store at store .strivingforeternity .org.

So, you can pick up a syllabus there and with that, you'd be able to

follow along.

There's a lot of notes that are in the syllabus that I will not go over.

There's a lot more there that's also where you can take some notes.

You'll see we'll talk about filling in the blanks.

That's what we're going to talk about when we talk about filling in the blanks because there's going to be some things where

we're going to be just giving you things that we really want to encourage you to focus on

trying to remember, all right?

So, with that, let's do a real quick review because this is part two.

So, let's look at what we were looking at last class, which was the doctrine of

revelation.

We were looking at the doctrine of revelation and we looked at two.

We looked at natural revelation and in natural revelation, we were talking specifically about creation

and the conscience.

Then we talked about what's called special revelation, special revelation.

In special revelation, we were focusing on things like the Bible,

primarily.

Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of God in a supernatural way,

but we looked at those things which are supernatural, outside of nature.

So, we looked specifically at the Bible and that's what we're going to focus on because, well,

though Jesus Christ is still alive, He doesn't walk among us today for us to be able to ask Him questions

directly in the way that His disciples could when He walked the earth.

So, for that sake, we're going to look at what we have as an authority, which is the Scriptures,

the Bible.

We want to focus in there because this is going to be how we come to the

conclusions that Christianity is right and the other religions are not.

Remember, we saw with the other religions when it comes to their authority, even if they accept

God's Word, the Bible, it's the Bible plus something, always plus

something, and that something is always the works or words of men.

In fact, I just was listening to someone who is a convert from Islam to Christianity,

and he said what brought him to the realization was when he realized that his belief system

was not based on the Qur 'an, the Word of what he thought was the Word of God, but it was based

on tradition.

He realized that the Qur 'an is really, he's believing in the tradition of Islam because

even though they have the Qur 'an, and the Qur 'an would say they have the Bible, but it's really the

Qur 'an and the Hadiths that become the ultimate authority.

Remember, we had said if something becomes an authority that you have to use to interpret

a different authority, then the thing that is the interpreter is the greater authority.

This is why with the Roman Catholic Church, because they say that you need the church to be the authority or the

watchtower, which are witnesses, you need the Imams in Islam.

Because you need these people to interpret God's Word, what that does mean, what that

ends up meaning is that you can't know God's Word without that final authority.

So God's Word isn't enough, you need that final authority to tell you what God's Word means.

When you have that, then that authority that is used to interpret God's Word

is a greater authority than God's Word.

This is the reason why within Christianity, we hold to God's Word alone as the ultimate authority.

Nothing is greater than it.

So if someone disagrees with me, what am I going to do?

I'm going to turn to the Bible.

I'm going to turn to Scripture and say, let's look at what the Scripture says.

Now, you and I may have a differing view.

There's a lot of areas where Christians disagree.

Infant baptism, end times, a lot of different doctrines that you see Christians disagreeing on.

The way to approach that is this.

It's not that, well, we disagree, therefore we got to bash each other.

The issue is, how do you come to the interpretation that you come?

But what is known is that for Christians, the ultimate authority that we

have to test the spirits, as John would say in 1 John, is the Bible, the

Word of God.

Some people, it's an inner feeling.

They will say it's the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit will never contradict His Word.

So when someone says, well, I have this inner feeling where the Holy Spirit's telling me, well, we should always be

able to go back to God's Word as the authority.

That's the only thing, the only objective standard that Christians hold to is

the Bible as the standard, okay?

Why?

Why would we say the Bible is the only standard?

Now, let us get into the start of today's lesson in the

topic of inspiration.

Inspiration.

What does inspiration mean?

This is a term that's misused in our culture.

People sit there, they listen to a song and say, that inspired me.

In other words, that made me feel good.

Or maybe someone that wrote the song says, I was inspired to write this.

In other words, I had this feeling when writing it.

I, it flowed, it felt like it fit together.

Notice, the way that our culture often refers to inspiration is a feeling.

That's not what we will see as a definition of inspiration theologically.

So let's take a look at it, all right?

In your syllabus, if you're looking under Roman numeral two, all Scripture, and that's their first

blank there is all.

All Scripture is inspired by God.

We're going to define inspiration in a moment.

But it's important to know that all the Scriptures, that which is part of what we're going to call the canon.

I'm going to explain that in a minute too.

You know, one of the reasons I sometimes throw out these terms like canon and, you know, or inspiration,

and I'm going to define them later.

You know, sometimes people can just define the terms without ever using them.

And you may hear the term and not realize what that term means.

I'm giving you these terms and then defining them.

So if you know what the term inspiration means, hey, fine, move on.

If you know what the canon is, hey, great, you know.

But if this is the first time you're hearing these terms, we want to help you understand the meaning.

So when you hear it again, ah, I know what canon is.

The canon is a measure.

That's what the canon is.

So the canon was that first, when we look at what is the Bible, the canon was that which was

accepted as being inspired.

That being from God.

What does it mean?

We're going to get that now.

So all scriptures is inspired by God.

This means that all the scriptures are breathed out by God.

OK, so inspiration is a Greek compound word, which means God

breathed.

God breathed.

That's your next blank.

God breathed.

So all scripture is the breathed or spoken from the mouth of

God to mankind.

All right.

It is the writing and not the writers that were inspired.

OK, important note.

So let me first do what God breathed.

I'm going to give you a longer, a more technical definition in a moment.

But the idea when we breathe, when I'm breathing, what am I doing?

I'm pushing air.

I'm speaking.

And when I speak, I'm pushing air out.

That's the idea of spoken.

We speak, we're pushing air and it makes a sound.

The idea God breathed is this idea that it's God spoken.

As he speaks, he breathes it out.

Now, he didn't literally speak it.

He wrote it.

We understand that.

But this term means that idea, that concept of being breathed out by God.

Now, when I say that it is the writings and not the writers, this becomes important because,

say, for example, the Roman Catholic Church would say that the writers were inspired and that they wrote through

dictation.

Now, the issue there is if the writers are inspired, then

everything they wrote would have been inspired.

Now, in the case of Paul, we know for a fact that he wrote at least one and maybe, I

think, two other letters to the Corinthians.

If you read 1 and 2 Corinthians, those are letters to the Corinthians.

Paul references other letters that he wrote to them.

We don't hold those as inspired.

They were not part of the canon.

They weren't accepted as part of Scripture, but Paul still wrote them.

Now, if Paul was inspired, then everything he wrote would have been inspired.

That would be the difference.

So, we believe that the writings themselves were inspired.

So, let me give you a technical definition.

This is where if you have a syllabus, you have the advantage because in the syllabus, the syllabus is

going to have this definition so you can follow along.

One of the advantages of the syllabus.

So, I'm going to give you this technical definition for inspiration and we're going to break it down and explain it.

Inspiration identifies that supernatural work of the Holy Spirit

in which He super -intended, big fancy word for controlled or directed,

in which the Holy Spirit super -intended the reception, that means to the writers, and

the communication, that means to the hearers or readers,

of the divine message of mankind such that the product, in other words, its original writing,

is verbally, every word, and plurinary, completely, both inerrant, that means

without error, and authoritative.

So, let me give you this without the explanations and then we're going to break it down.

Inspiration identifies the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in which He super -intended the

reception and communication of the divine message to mankind such that the

product is verbally and plurinary, both inerrant and authoritative.

So, the idea there is super -intended means this idea that God works

through the person so that everything that they do of their own choice is exactly as God intended it to be.

The fact that it's to the writers and to the receivers, so

it was the writing, not the authors, that's the point of emphasis there,

it's a divine message, it's from God to mankind in its original, in other

words, what we have is manuscripts, we have copies.

We do not have that we know of the originals.

Okay?

So, in its original though, it was without error, every word,

and completely.

So, whether you look at the individual words or you look at the whole book, the whole Bible, it's completely without error

and it's completely authoritative in its original.

Why do I emphasize in the original?

Because we know that there's different people that made copies of the originals and in those copies we

have people that, well, they made spelling errors, maybe they're writing a line, copying a line, they skipped an entire line.

We see that.

We see people that made copying errors.

We have lots of different manuscripts.

We have other classes where we discuss those manuscripts and how that helps us to assure us that we have a good

handle, that no doctrine was edited or changed at all because we have so many

different copies.

All right?

So, let's take a look at a passage of Scripture.

If we have 2 Timothy 3.

So, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 says this, that all Scripture

is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for proof,

for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.

That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So, you see here that it's saying all Scripture is inspired, is breathed out by God.

So, God spoke in his written word in the product of a dual

authorship.

So, we could say Paul wrote Romans, but we could say the Holy Spirit wrote Romans.

So, the Holy Spirit superintended, remember that term now, he superintended the human authors,

that though the individual personalities and different styles of the

human authors in their writing style, they

composed a record of God's word to man without error, in the

whole, or in part.

Okay?

Whether you take it the whole thing or in part, it's all God's word.

Thus, Scripture is completely and totally sufficient for every part of life and godliness.

Okay?

Let's take a look at 2 Peter 1, 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21.

And what you see here, it says, Peter says, knowing

this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from

someone's own interpretation.

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men

spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

So, this is the idea of, you see the carried along, that's the superintended.

But this isn't men who give you an interpretation of Scripture and then they write it down and say, that's inspired.

The Scriptures are not the interpretations of men like the Quran.

The Quran is the interpretation of Muhammad.

You have things, that's not the way we have the Scriptures.

This is something that is the product of God through men.

Prophecy comes through the Holy Spirit as He moved or carried men

along.

So, by virtue that the Scriptures are inspired by God, they

were part of the canon.

Remember I said, the canon is this idea of a measuring rod.

It was something that they said, if it fit these qualifications, it's God's Word.

And if it doesn't, then it's not.

Now, what were some of those things?

We're not going to go into all of them in detail.

We have another class on that in our classes on systematic theology.

We talked about bibliology, the study of the Bible.

But basically, it's that those books were widely accepted as being Scripture at the time

of their writing, not hundreds of years later, not decades later.

At the time of their writing, they were accepted as Scripture.

They didn't contradict other Scriptures.

That's important.

So, there were four basic principles.

I'm not going to go into all of them here.

But basically, that's the general gist.

They were accepted at the time.

By virtue that it's God's Word though, God spoke it, it is

by definition going to be the canon or Scripture.

Now, men only recognized.

That's your blank there.

And that's important.

Men only recognized the canonical books.

They did not inspire them, nor did they declare them inspired.

They were inspired whether mankind recognized it or not.

This goes in contradiction to the Roman Catholic belief that the Catholic Church

gave us the Bible.

The Bible is the Bible because God breathed it out.

God spoke it.

God inspired it.

And because He did that, by very definition of Him doing that,

therefore, it is canonical which means it's part of that

canon, part of the books that are Scripture.

Okay?

So, we as men recognized what God already did.

It was Scripture.

Even if there was a book of the Bible that men never recognized was part of the Bible

and God decided He didn't want to reveal to people that this book was part of the Bible,

it was still part of the Bible.

It's still God's Word because God breathed it out.

It is not because the Church identifies it.

That's an important note because this is an area where a lot of people get into thinking that the Church gave us the

Bible 300 years after Christ.

No, that's not the way it worked.

The Bible was accepted.

When they talk about these councils where they discussed the Bible in the 300s, what you see them

discussing is not the books we see except as the Bible but some of these other books

that people were using that were not canonical.

Those were the ones that were discussed.

So, really what it was was pushing out books that were, these are the ones that have already been accepted as

the Scriptures and these are questionable and they examine those and say no, they're not.

Okay?

Now, inerrancy has an idea in it that because I said down to the singular

word in its part, not just the whole of the Bible, but individual words are without error.

That means that we see that sometimes the words

or the tenses of a word or maybe the singular versus plural sense of a word

is without error and there are occasions where we see in the Scriptures

arguments being made over singular versus plural.

For example, I don't know, do we have John 10?

Okay, we don't have those.

Okay, John 10, 34 and 35.

You could look this up but it says, Jesus answered them, is it not written in your law that I said,

that I said you are gods, plural.

If he called them gods, plural, to whom the word of

God came and the Scripture cannot be broken.

Now, when you look at the context there, the issue of the plurality, he makes an argument versus plurality in singular.

We see this with Paul as well in Galatians 3 .16.

In Galatians 3 .16, he makes the difference between seed, singular, rather than

seeds, plural.

Paul says this, now to Abraham and his seed,

singular, were the promises made.

He did not say and to seeds, plural, as

of many but as of one and to your seed who is Christ.

You see, he's making an argument there over a plural word versus a singular.

You know, John makes the same thing in tenses.

This becomes an important thing when you talk about whether you can lose your salvation or not.

John 5 .13, if every word including its tense is inspired, then John

says he's using this term of eternal life having been past tense.

Not that we will have eternal life, but that we already have eternal life.

It's already been obtained.

John says this, these things I have written to you who believe, you already believe, in the

name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that

you may continue to believe in His name.

You see, the fact that we have eternal life is the argument that is then

made that we already have it, not that we're going to attain it.

Eternal life is not living with Christ forever.

Eternal life is actually knowing God.

That's what John says in John 14,

he says, and this is eternal life that you may know Christ and the one whom he sent, know

God and the one whom he sent.

So knowing God is to have eternal life.

You see, and this is why we have to realize when Matthew, in Matthew 5 .18, it says, for

assuredly I say to you that till heaven and earth pass away not one jot or one tittle will by no

means pass from the law until it's fulfilled.

So the Word of God is an errand.

It's not going to pass away.

A jot and a tittle, a jot in our English, think of a jot as that dot over the I or,

you know, that the smallest part of a letter.

A tittle would be that little change in a letter that makes it a different letter.

For example, if you have capital F and capital E, that little line at the bottom of the E,

removing that, that would be the tittle.

That's the, you know, this is the idea of the smallest part of the Word that could change it.

All right, so whether it be the smallest part of the Word, okay, or the smallest letter even,

it's all inspired.

Now, the reason I say this is because there is a Word, there is a letter in Hebrew, okay, that

would, that uses a word and what we would have is an S sound versus an

SH sound, okay, and what it is is there's a little marking, a little dot on the

right side or the left side and that defines which one of those two letters it is.

That's this idea.

Even to that point, to that dot that could be on either side,

that is without error.

That's exactly as God intended it.

Okay, that's the idea there.

How does this end up playing out?

We said that if it's God's Word, that then means that it is

because God breathed it out, it's inspired.

Why?

Because that's the definition of inspiration, right?

God breathed out, God spoke it and the process of how He did it is that He superintended through the Holy Spirit

so He controlled men so that even though they wrote with their own personality, they wrote exactly as God intended it to be so that it

was without error in its parts and in its whole, okay?

That's the process.

But by definition, because something is inspired, it's authoritative.

Why?

Well, duh, God said it, right?

I mean, it's that, you know, when you were kids and your parents would tell you, you are going to

accept this because I told you.

You're going to go clean your room because I told you, right?

The rule of the parent.

As being the parent, they get to demand this is what you're going to do and the

thing there that you see is that they are saying because they

are the authority, they have the right to make a demand

on you that you're going to do certain things, okay?

And so what you look at there is you look at this notion that we have

a case where God, being God, because He speaks it, it

is authoritative.

Now, one of the other things that comes along with it being authoritative means that it is also

sufficient.

So, let's talk about the sufficiency of the Bible.

Now, this idea of sufficient, the Word of God is

completely and totally sufficient.

That's your blank there.

The Word of God is completely and totally sufficient for the believer in every

area of life and godliness.

Now, this doesn't mean that the Bible is going to answer all the questions you have about science and history.

No, it's about life and specifically eternal life.

It's about how you should be living in a God -honoring way.

That's the major focus, all right?

Uses a whole bunch of different types of ways of doing it, stories, history, instruction, prophecy,

all these different things to point us to how we should be living our life.

It is sufficient.

In other words, we don't need the world to tell us how we are to live.

We don't need the world to say, oh, you need to live this way.

Not needed.

Why?

Because the Bible is sufficient.

This is the reason I believe that pastors, if you are studying the Bible,

you should be qualified and equipped to handle most counseling situations.

And if you're a mature believer and you're studying the Bible, you should be equipped to handle

most counseling situations.

Why?

Because the Bible is sufficient.

That's why.

The scriptures are all that is necessary for the completing and

maturing of the man of God.

Remember that first we looked at in 1 Timothy, where it said, sorry, in 2 Timothy, where it said all

scripture is breathed out by God, right?

And then what does it say in verse 17?

That the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

That's why we have the scriptures.

We have the scriptures so that we would be equipped for every good work so that we're ready.

So we have everything we need to do good works.

Those good works come after we're regenerate because that's when the Holy Spirit will work through us so that we're

going to do those good works.

But God is going to use his word as the tool to instruct us.

Even though we have the Holy Spirit, we're going to talk about that in a few minutes and what his role is.

There is absolutely no human reasoning.

That's your blank there, reasoning.

There is absolutely no human reasoning that needs to be

added to or replace scripture to meet the needs of

the believer for life and living.

I'm trying to really emphasize this because there's so many people that think, well, you pastor,

you just read the Bible.

I need real counseling.

What?

The Bible is all you need to know how we are supposed to live in a God honoring

way.

Go to the Bible.

It's the authority.

It's sufficient.

God commands that no part, no matter how

small, should ever be added to nor subtracted from

the Bible.

Let's look at some passages here.

First one is in Deuteronomy chapter four and you go, Deuteronomy four.

Well, this is interesting because in Deuteronomy four, it says, you shall not add to the word that I command you, nor

take from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord, your God that I

command you.

And you go, well, uh, we got a problem then don't we?

Deuteronomy four, we have a lot of scripture was written after Deuteronomy four.

I mean, by the time Deuteronomy was written, that was maybe the fifth or sixth book that was written.

And yeah, we got like 61 other books that were written after that, you

know?

Well, how do you answer that?

Because what he's saying is don't add to God's word.

In other words, don't add human words to God's word.

God can add to his word because it's still his word and he's just giving you more revelation, but it's

still his word.

Humans shouldn't add to it.

Let's look at another one that we have.

The next one is Deuteronomy 12 verse 31.

Everything that I shall command you, you shall be careful to do.

You shall not add to it or take away from it.

Proverbs 30 verse six says, do not add to his words, least he

rebuke you and you be found a liar.

Then we have in Jeremiah 26 too.

Thus says the Lord, stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to the cities of Judah

that come to worship in the house of the Lord.

All the words that I have commanded you to speak to them.

Do not hold back a word.

And then lastly, in Revelation 22, 18 and 19, I warn everyone who hears these words of the

prophecy of this book.

If anyone adds to them, God will add to them the plagues described in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of this prophecy, God will take away his

share in the tree of life that in the holy city there, which

are described in this book.

So you see in all of these passages, we see God's making it really clear.

We are not to add human reasoning to God's word.

Okay.

The thing that's the authority is God's word.

This is why I have such an issue when you have groups, Jehovah witnesses, Mormons,

Islam, Roman Catholicism, all these people that say, okay, we have God's word.

Let's add to it.

Even Judaism, because they add, they add things to it.

What you have is they're, they're adding other authorities, human reasoning as

equal in authority to God's word.

And like I said, when you do that, what you actually do is diminish God's word and lift up man's word.

That's what you end up doing.

And we shouldn't be doing that.

Okay.

God's word is the authority.

All right.

So according to second Peter, do we

have second Peter 1, 16 to 19?

Okay.

So according, excuse me, according to second Peter 1, 16 to 19, the

scriptures are a more certain determiner of truth than hearing

a voice of God and definitely more than the voice of any person.

So let's look at this.

For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we

made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty for when he received honor

and glory from God, the father, and the voice was born to him

by the majestic glory.

This is my beloved son in whom I well pleased.

We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven for when

we were with him on the holy mountain and we

have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to

which you will do well to pay attention to as a lamp

shineth in dark places until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

So therefore, what he's saying, what Peter is saying is that more important than

hearing a voice from God or hearing others speak of God is God's word itself.

Therefore, it is the scripture alone that is to be our ultimate basis of authority for

determining what is right and wrong, okay?

This is crucial especially because we have so many people now

that are giving these accounts.

They've heard a voice of God.

They've heard from God.

God spoke to them in a dream.

They died and went to heaven.

They came back and they have a message and that message doesn't line up with scripture.

They're wrong.

I mean, that's it.

They're wrong.

You know, this is the reality.

You know, someone comes and they say they heard a voice of God.

Their hearing of voice is not more authoritative than what we already have in God's word.

What God has already revealed to us is the standard.

And if someone says they heard a voice from God, people ask me all the time because there's so many Muslims in the Middle East that they're having these

dreams and visions and people keep asking me, what do you think about that?

I say, I don't know.

I can't answer for someone's experience.

What I do know is there's many of these accounts where people say they see a vision of Christ and he tells them things

that are in line with scripture and they seem to be living a regenerate lifestyle and doing the works

of that seem to have the fruit of repentance.

And so I look at their life and I look at what they're saying and it compares with scripture and it's consistent.

Maybe they did.

But if they tell me they saw a dream and it's something that doesn't align with scripture, their dream is wrong,

not scripture.

We don't want to make God the liar.

Well, we can't.

He doesn't lie.

But when we say that we had a dream or God said something that God's word does not say,

ultimately we're calling God a liar when he says this is what his word

is and we're claiming, no, no, no, I have a more authoritative word.

Really?

You think you have something more authoritative than what God has spoken?

Yikes.

Scary.

Okay.

All right.

Let's move on to the last part of this class and that is the

interpretation.

This is number four in your syllabus.

Interpretation.

Excuse me.

So, the scriptures were written to be understood.

That's your blank there.

Understood.

The scriptures are not some hidden meaning book where you got to look, you

got to find the meaning.

Okay.

You know, I remember a book called, you know, based on the Lord of the Rings, Finding the Gospel in the

Lord of the Rings.

If you have to write a book to explain how to find it, maybe it wasn't there.

You know, maybe you're reading into it.

Maybe Lord of the Rings was just a book written by a Christian man that he enjoyed writing

and this was a monumental work of his life.

Maybe it wasn't meant to be a picture of the gospel, right?

I mean, but the Bible was meant to be understood.

That's why even children can understand it.

It's not in all of its detail.

There's things where we study for years so we get a better understanding of things.

And the more we study the Bible, the more we're going to learn and know but in its basic

doctrines, it's written to be understood.

One of the ministries though of the Holy Spirit, if you remember our classes in systematic theology, if you took those, we had

lessons on the study of the Holy Spirit and we saw that his ministry is to

illuminate scripture to the mind of the Christian.

Illumination is this idea where he brings to light its meaning and its application.

And so the Holy Spirit who indwells every believer, he therefore, true

Christians do not need a priest to interpret the Bible for them.

They have the priest.

This is in Jeremiah 31, 31 and following or in Ezekiel

36, 25 and following.

You see this idea that the promise of the new covenant to the Jewish people was that the Holy

Spirit would indwell each person.

We wouldn't need a man to tell us God's word because the Spirit will indwell us and he will tell

us his word himself.

That's what the Jews look forward to.

As Christians, we often take for granted.

But we do not need a priest to tell us God's word.

They are priests.

Sorry, the priests are those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling them.

This is what we call the term the priesthood of the believer.

In other words, a priest, the role of the priest is to communicate God's word to men,

to other men.

But we have a priesthood as individuals.

When we become a believer, we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us.

And by the virtue of the Holy Spirit indwelling us, it's called the priesthood of believers because as a believer, we have the priesthood.

We know God's word.

We can understand God's word.

We don't need some special gifting.

Now, this doesn't mean that we don't need a pastor.

We don't need to go to church.

We don't need to learn from others.

You see, there is homework that has to be done.

I don't know how many of you have the time to put 30 hours of work into a sermon.

That's really what it takes if you're going to do it right.

20 to 30 hours.

Why?

Well, because you've got to put yourself back in the mindset of the time it was written.

We've got to do all that interpretation work.

If you took our class on Biblical hermeneutics, you know how much work it goes into to really properly interpret the word of

God.

It's a lot of work.

And so, we need men who are going to take the time to study and diligently examine it.

That doesn't mean we can't.

It means that they're going to spend more time doing it so that we would hope they're going to be spending the time to be more accurate.

But the Holy Spirit indwells every one of us.

So, if you're going to disagree with me, the thing I'm going to say is, well, give me the Scriptures.

Tell me how you interpret this.

And I'm going to look at what you're saying and say, is that consistent with what God's Word says?

I'm not going to reject it out of hand just because I have a seminary degree or I've been a pastor

or I do these teaching, these classes.

No!

If you have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit could reveal something to you that I'm blinded to and I'm not seeing the proper meaning because I'm

reading into it something.

That could be.

All right?

So, we have the priesthood of the believers.

And so, because of this, okay, it is the role of the Christian to diligently study, to

show themselves approved unto God, that's 2 Timothy 2 .15,

Acts 17 .11, okay?

They were to diligently study to be approved unto God and the Holy Spirit will reveal

the meaning of the Scriptures to us.

This is 1 Corinthians 2 .4.

Do we have that one?

Good.

And my speech and my message are not plausible words of wisdom but in

the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

You see there that the idea is the Spirit is the one who is giving the understanding.

Since the Bible is progressive revelation, what I mean by that is the Bible wasn't written at one time,

here we go, it's all done.

No.

It was progressive.

We have things.

We had Genesis written and then Exodus and then Numbers and you look at the first five books, we get

more information through some of the historical books, more information through the prophets, much more information through the New Testament.

It was progressive and it's important to interpret the Bible in the progression

of revelation that they had at the time.

So, the progression of revelation has to come into account for proper interpretation.

Not all of the Bible applies to us today.

There are things that apply to the nation of Israel because it was written to them as a nation and it doesn't apply

to us today in the church.

We must interpret it in an understanding of what it meant when it was written

to know the principles that carry over to today.

If you don't understand what the Bible meant to its original hearers from the original author,

you're not going to have a proper understanding.

This is what we call authorial intent.

We need to get back to what did the author mean by what he wrote?

That's what we want to do.

What did he mean?

When he wrote, what did he mean by what he wrote?

Now, this becomes really important because any cult and false religion pretty much

are going to teach, they will teach that an individual member

cannot, that's your blank, that an individual member cannot interpret scripture without

some leader or chief member of the organization.

In Roman Catholicism, you have the magistrates, you have the pope, you cannot have what's called

private interpretation.

I'm going to get to that in a moment, but you can't interpret the scripture on your own.

The Catholic Church does it for you.

If you're a Jehovah Witness, the Watchtower does it for you.

If you're a Latter -day Saint, you're going to have to go to your living

apostles, prophets.

You need to go to others that are going to tell you the interpretation of God's word.

You can't do that on your own.

You know why?

Because if you look at the Bible on your own and compare it to what they're teaching, you can see the error.

That's the thing.

This is what makes Christianity, again, it makes it unique because we say God's word and you

compare what they say to God's word.

We had so many people, as we were going through the classes on world religions, what ended up happening is so many people

kept telling us, you're hating people, you're so wrong because you're judging people.

And I'm saying, what are we saying that's an error?

I mean, we're telling people what these different groups actually believe

and then all we're doing is comparing that to what the scripture says.

Are we saying something that they don't believe?

And that's the irony.

After thousands and thousands of people commenting on the classes and yet all

these people, they have yet to come up with one thing that we said these religions

believe that's inaccurate.

That's the issue.

If we're accurately describing what they believe and we're actually accurately describing what the scripture says,

we're just comparing those two.

And if they are saying something and we're accurate about it, that accurately doesn't apply to scripture or

consists of scripture, then there's a contradiction.

They're wrong, not the scriptures.

Okay.

But what every one of these cults will do is say the Bible is wrong and the organization is right.

Okay.

The Bible is the authority, but within a cult, they make the organization

the authority and they become the ones that define what the Bible means.

It's one of the traits of every cult.

Now, I mentioned this idea of private interpretation.

This is a big thing with Martin Luther.

Okay.

This is where this doctrine of priesthood of the believer came about because the importance of the priesthood of the

believer is the fact, as Martin Luther argued, that we can have a private interpretation of scripture.

In other words, I can interpret the scriptures on my own.

I do not need a church or organization to tell me the meaning of the text.

The argument against this is that people would wrongly interpret scriptures.

The Catholic church argued at the time, if you allow for private interpretation, you're going to have so many people having

differing views.

And Luther said, you're right.

Let it be.

So let it be.

It's the responsibility of the believer to study, to make sure they are accountable to God,

not to the church.

Okay.

It's not the church that's going to do it because here's the problem.

When the church says they're the authority and only they can be the ones to tell you God's word,

if they disagree with God's word, what happens?

They're the authority.

Right?

So it makes the scriptures wrong or your interpretation of the scriptures that are wrong.

Their interpretation can't be wrong.

That's what ends up happening.

But if you accept private interpretation, because the Holy Spirit indwells every believer and

therefore he will help them in the understanding of it, we study to show ourselves approved.

And the only means of interpreting the Bible is in a normal,

grammatical, historical interpretation of scripture, which affirms the

belief from the opening chapters of Genesis, presented in Genesis,

all the way through the infallible rule of faith and practice as we see throughout the book of Revelation.

Okay.

And so the idea here is that we have to interpret the scriptures using the

rules of interpretation, using the grammatical, what does

it say?

What does the text say grammatically?

What's its historical context?

Its cultural context?

We have a whole class.

We go into all of that detail.

All right.

And so as we look at those things, we want to examine those.

All right.

So with this being said, we want to encourage you, if you have any questions, next class, we're going to look at

the doctrine of God.

What is the Christian view of the Trinity?

If you have any questions about this or anything else, please email us at academy at striving for eternity .org.

Academy at striving for eternity .org.

If you want to get our syllabus, you can go to our store at store

.strivingforeternity .org.

There you can also pick up my book, What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Major Western

Religions, which much of the first part of this class was based on.

Also, we'd like to encourage you to maybe talk to your church or group about hosting one of

our Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars.

We are talking about the interpretation of scriptures here today.

It is one of the most important things to do is to know how to rightly interpret God's Word.

Consider hosting one of those seminars at your church so that you could

learn how to interpret God's Word.

And until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of

God.