Basic Hermeneutics

Getting the Most Out of Your Bible

Let's take out your handouts that I gave you. The title of tonight's lesson is, Getting the Most Out of Your Bible. Reading in 2015. We have been given a Bible reading plan. Of course, there are several different Bible reading plans, but the one that I gave you, I like because it breaks each day up.

You read the epistles one day, you read the law another day, you read from the history books one day, the poetry books another day, the prophetic books, and the Gospels. And so you get this, sort of get an opportunity.

And I've enjoyed it. I started last week, and I've just enjoyed being able to sort of invest a different day in a different type of study. And it's been a very enjoyable so far, a very enjoyable study for me so far.

But my goal tonight, since we're seeking to encourage people to read through the Bible, is to give you tools to help you study and read with more confidence that you understand what it is that you're reading.

Let me read the introduction tonight. It says, As we look forward to a new year of study, many of us are planning to read through the whole Bible together. Others may not plan to read through the whole Bible, but instead are planning to focus more intently on certain portions, like the New Testament or the books of Moses.

Whatever your personal plan, reading Scripture is one of the most valuable things you can do to grow in your faith. As we are reading Scripture, we are also interpreting its meaning. To help you get the most out of your reading, we're going to go over the basics of biblical interpretation.

As John MacArthur says, the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture. As we read the Scripture, our goal is to understand the meaning of what we read. So, with that in mind, tonight we're going to look at three things.

We're going to look at an introduction to Bible interpretation. We're going to look at the principles of interpretation. And then we're going to look at improper methods of interpretation. And, beloved, there are many of those.

Hermeneutics, Exegesis, and Eisegesis

So, let's begin with an introduction to interpretation. The science of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics. We're going to get to that word, yes. But the science of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word hermeneuo, which is translated to interpret. It is sometimes connected with the mythical Hermes, who was the messenger of the gods. So, that's likely one of the places that it came from as far as the root of the word.

It is summarized for us in 2 Timothy 2 .15. And this is going to be sort of our text for the evening that's going to lead us to our focus. So, I encourage you to open your Bibles to 2 Timothy 2 .15. When I was in seminary, this particular verse was engraved on a brass plaque, and it was over the door of the seminary from the inside, so that every time you left the seminary, you read this engraved statement.

In 2 Timothy 2 .15, I'm sorry, let me turn. I'm in 1 Timothy, that's not the right verse. 2 Timothy 2 .15 tells us, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

In the King James Version, it says, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. I just remember it that way because that's the way it was engraved on the plaque at school.

And we always, because the word study is found in the King James. Study to show thyself approved. And of course, the more modern vernacular is do your best. Do everything you can to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that need not be ashamed.

And how do you do that? By rightly dividing or rightly handling the word of God. This book is not just a textbook. This book is not just a history book or a book of stories or poetry. This book is the word of God.

And when we take to the reading of it, it's something that we need to place above other activities of life. We need to focus and be intentional in how we handle this book. Understanding what it is. Now, the science of biblical interpretation.

This is your next blank. The science of biblical interpretation involves the establishment and recognition of principles which govern the practice of exegesis. Exegesis. This is the study of the text of Scripture in order to bring out the meaning that is there.

This is the, in opposition to eisegesis, sometimes called eisegesis depending on how you pronounce it. But the opposite of exegesis is eisegesis, which means to read into something. The prefix ex means to come out.

When you look at the sign on the wall, it says exit. That means that's the going out. So when you exegete, you're taking out of the text what's there. Eisegesis means into. So it means that you're reading something into the text that is not there.

So our goal is to take out of the text what is there, not to put into the text something that is not there. Everybody understand? People do this a lot. People read their own traditions into the text. They read their own desires into a text.

They read their own personal sensibilities or wants and wishes into the text. And that is dangerous. So our goal in hermeneutics is proper biblical eisegesis, to read and take from the text what is there.

Yes, sir?

John 1 .18, I think. Yes, when you talk about eisegesis, turn everybody in your Bible to John 1 .18. This is a good example. When it's speaking of the Father and Christ, it says no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side.

And sometimes that's translated, I think, as only begotten Son, depending on the translation you're looking at. But it's speaking, of course, of Christ. It says no one has seen the Father, essentially, but the Son who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.

The phrase there, made Him known, is the Greek where we get the word eisegesis. It literally means that Christ explains or exposes or demonstrates, shows who the Father is. As Jesus says, if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father.

You know what God is like if you know what Jesus is like. That's one of the things that I think sometimes we forget. People say, I wonder what God is like. Well, God is like Jesus. It's something hard for us to imagine sometimes, but Jesus is God in the flesh.

He's the second person of the Trinity. He is God the Son. And so when we want to know what the Father is like, we look at the Son. He exegetes the Father to us. Okay, so there we see it, and we see it in a biblical passage.

So that's what we're trying to do. When you're reading the Bible, some people say, well, I'm just reading through the Bible. Yes, you're just reading through the Bible, but you are always interpreting what you're reading.

You're always feeding on what you're reading, and you're coming to an understanding of something. So the goal is to come to a right understanding. The goal is to come to a proper understanding, because it's no good if you're reading something and you're just kind of going through it just to fill a certain quota.

That's the one danger in reading through the Bible in a year, is that we simply just read through just to get through. But we shouldn't try to do that, and that's another reason why I like this particular reading plan, because there's only two days in the week where there's a big bulk of reading.

Tuesdays and Fridays you have a big bulk of reading, but the rest of the week it's really only one or two chapters, and you can spend more time investing in one or two chapters than you can in five or six chapters.

So I like that. I like the fact that we only look at two verses of Psalms, or we only look at two verses from the Epistles, because we get to chew and gnaw on that a little longer, and let it mull around in our minds a little bit longer as we deal with our interpretation of the text.

Principles for Interpreting Scripture

So let's look at the principles for interpretation. We are going to look not at all principles, but at the most important ones. The first one, letter A, is the principle of literal interpretation. The principle of literal interpretation.

Now, literal simply means this, that we read the text in accord with its normal and plain meaning. This does not mean that we are crass in our literalism. For instance, the Bible talks about God undergirding us with His wings, or holding us up on His wings.

Does that mean God has feathers? I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's crass literalism. Someone who says, Jesus says, I am the door. Does that mean He has rusty hindus, and that He's put together with nails and wood?

No.

And that's why I say, when we talk about literal, what we mean is that we are seeking to use the rules of grammar in accord with the literary genre that the statement is coming to us. We read poetry different than we read didactic literature.

We read apocalyptic literature different than we read historical literature. Narrative is different than didactic. And so we have to understand that the Bible comes to us in a plethora of different types of genres of literature.

When I read the Psalms, I understand that I am reading the Psalms as poetry. When I read the book of Genesis, I understand that I'm reading historical narrative. When I read certain books of the Bible that are apocalyptic, Isaiah, Jeremiah, these books which are the prophetic books of the Old Testament, they read much different than Romans, which is a didactic theology of the Apostle Paul given to the church at Rome.

So understanding that literal does not mean crass literalism. What it means is that I read it according to the standard common sense understanding of what this text would mean. Now, moving on to number two, letter B.

We've looked at literal interpretation. Number two or letter B is the principle of contextual interpretation. Contextual interpretation. No verse should be interpreted in isolation from its context. In fact, you've all heard me say this and I'll say it again because it's the truth.

When you're talking about Bible interpretation, there are three rules. Rule number one is context. Rule number two is context. And rule number three, big surprise, is context. It's context, context, context.

So when we talk about the principle of contextual interpretation, we're talking about the immediate context and the larger context which have to be examined. We're looking at the setting of the verse, the surrounding verses and their subject matter, the historical or social setting in which the event happened and how the words were used at that particular time.

All of those things are involved in the context. Do we understand that the Apostle Paul lived in a different context than did David? That his context was much different. He lived post-crossed. That's the first thing.

He lived after Christ. So that means that when we interpret Paul, we're interpreting Paul after the cross. We're also interpreting Paul in the time of the establishment of the new covenant church versus David who lived under the old covenant law of Moses.

And when we interpret Abraham, we're interpreting someone who lived prior to the old covenant law of Moses. He lived prior to the giving of the Mosaic law. I remember years ago I had a guy ask me, and I don't say that this man was a dumb person.

He was not a dumb person. But he did. He said, you know, did Moses and Jesus ever meet? And all that meant was he didn't understand the historical timeline of the Bible. There are centuries that separate those two individuals and thus they live in different contextual situations.

And he didn't know that. And like I said, I don't disparage him. He just wasn't a Bible student. I don't even think he was a Christian. But the reality is that's one of the things that we need to understand as we're reading is that each book has its own context and each passage has a context within the book.

Okay?

Number, letter C. I keep saying number. I don't number these. I letter them. Letter C is the principle of clarity. Clarity. This one is very important. Difficult and apparently ambiguous verses should always be understood in the light of the verses that are perfectly clear.

Let me say it again. The verses that are difficult to understand should always be interpreted in light of the passages which are not difficult to understand. We call this the analogy of Scripture. Latin is, I think, analogium scriptorum or something to that effect.

It's the analogy of Scripture. Compare the Bible with the Bible. The best interpreter of Scripture is itself. So, if I come to a passage which is difficult to understand and it's talking about a subject and so I say, this is a difficult thing to understand and yet there's another Bible passage that is very clear on this subject.

I go to the clear passage first and I say, well, this is no doubt what this is saying so I interpret the difficult in light of the easy. For instance, last Sunday, I preached on the verse Acts 2, 38. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And I said the controversial section of that is the word for because the word for can mean in order to, it can also mean because of. So, if you go back and read it. Repent and be baptized in order to the forgiveness of sins which is how a person would read it if they were trying to argue that baptism causes the forgiveness of sins.

But now go back and read it the other way. Repent and be baptized because of the forgiveness of sins. Now you say, well, which one is right? Well, if a person argues that baptism is in order to the forgiveness of sins or causes the forgiveness of sins, then they have created a work which causes the forgiveness of sins.

So, what do I do? I go to Ephesians chapter 2. I look at Ephesians 2, 8 and it says, For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God not of works lest anyone should boast.

So, I have a passage which is very clear. It says that salvation is not of works and thus I can go back to Acts 2 .38 and I can interpret it. Repent and be baptized because of the forgiveness of sins being confident that that is what it means because I have compared it to a much clearer and less ambiguous passage of Scripture and I have allowed Scripture to interpret itself.

Make sense?

That is what we mean when we say the principle of clarity. You could put beside that, you could put the analogy of Scripture because that is what we are talking about. The analogy of Scripture. Comparing Scripture with itself.

The next one is the principle of the grammatical historical method. The grammatical historical method. Now, let's just very quickly, we know what these mean. What is grammar? Grammar is understanding how words work together and how they function together.

Syntax, definition, language, things like that. Lexical understanding of words. And what is historical? Meaning the historical way in which certain words were used. We talked about this in earlier class.

You know, I teach the young people earlier on Wednesday. We were finishing up our Greek course and we talked about words that we use in Old English that we no longer use anymore like the word ye. You know, that was an Old English way of saying you or you all or if you are from the South, y 'all.

You know. So, we don't use that word anymore to express the plural you. You is now plural and singular. So, when we go back into the study of the New Testament or the Old Testament, we want to see the grammar that's being used and how was that grammar used in accordance with the historical setting.

I'll hear people say all the time. They'll read anachronistically into a word. They'll say, well, this word is x and x means this. And I'll say, but wait, that's not what it meant to them. That word means that to us.

For instance, the Greek word dunamis means power. The gospel is the power of God and the salvation for all who believe. To the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Right?

Romans chapter 1. The word dunamis would later be used for dynamite.

Okay?

That's where the term dynamite comes from. The Greek word dunamis. So, you'll hear some pastors who will say, Paul was saying that the gospel is the dynamite.

Well, no.

That's anachronism. There was no such thing as dynamite in the first century.

Is it powerful?

Yes.

Can the gospel be like dynamite?

Yes.

But to say that that's the meaning Paul had in mind is not correct because that's anachronism. That's reading something back into it that Paul would not have any idea about. So, we have to be careful.

Is it powerful? Yes. Am I saying that they're 100 wrong?

No.

I'm saying that that's an exaggeration of the use of language. Yes, dynamite comes from dunamis, but that's not how we ought to understand the language because we're reading something back into it. That is a later construction.

Make sense?

So, when we talk about the grammatical historical method, what we're saying is that we need to understand a historical statement in accordance with its grammar and history. Here's something I wrote and I want to mention this.

The common sense for the author may not be the common sense for us because we don't live in 1st century Palestine. We don't live in 5th century B .C. Israel. We don't live in these places or these times.

So, a lot of times people say, well, that's the common sense meaning. For you it may be, but that doesn't mean it's the common sense meaning for Paul and that's always the goal. It's not what does it mean to me.

It's what did it mean to Paul? What did it mean to his hearers? Because that's how you come to a right understanding.

Okay?

The next one is the principle of the singularity of meaning. Singularity of meaning. Every verse in the Bible only has one meaning. Now, it could have 5 ,000 applications, but it only has one meaning.

And that's an important thing that people mess up because they try to apply all these other meanings to the text. Like, for instance, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Well, what that means is that Jerusalem is a representation of heaven and we're all supposed to be following Jesus up to Jerusalem because heaven is up and up is good.

And so we make this big to-do about the fact that Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. Now, I will say this. Biblically speaking, Jerusalem is always considered up and anywhere you go from there is always considered down because Jerusalem was considered a high point and a high place and it was spiritually a high place.

So it's not incorrect to say that every time you see them going to Jerusalem, they're always going up. But the point is they make a meaning out of something that's unintended. And it's dangerous to do that, especially with these guys.

How many of you have seen, you're watching TV late at night and you see the guys with the Bible code? And they're trying to sell you the Bible code book and how they'll tell you everything has these secondary meanings and these tertiary meanings and you just need to buy our book and you'll learn all about what the Bible really has to say because there's these meanings that underlie the real meaning that you think you know, but you don't really know because there's a deeper meaning.

You see?

The one correct interpretation is always the one that mirrors the intent of the author. And he had a singular intent in writing. The author being the Holy Spirit and the human author being the writer himself.

Singularity of meaning. Letter F. The principle of accommodation. The principle of accommodation. What do I mean by that? Well, the Bible is to be interpreted always in view of the fact that it is an accommodation of divine truths to human minds.

God the infinite is communicating with man who is finite. And the truths of God make contact with the human mind at a common point, the Bible, to make God knowable. We must be careful then not to push accommodating language about God and his nature to literal extremes.

God does not have feathers and wings. We've already addressed that one. That one's silly. Nor does he have arms or hands in the sense that we do. And you say, well, nobody believes that. Well, the Mormons do.

The Mormons believe that God is a man and that he lived on another planet. He was born as a man. That he grew up as a man. That he became a God through his fidelity to Mormon teachings and that he lives on a planet which encircles a star named Kolob and that from his elevation to Godhood, he gave birth to all these spirit children and then he came to earth, physically impregnated the Virgin Mary so that she would have Jesus who was his spirit son.

This is what they believe. So when you say, nobody believes God has arms and hands. Well, yeah, they do.

Yes, they do.

There are people who do believe that. Through the Scripture, God accommodates our humanness by explaining himself in ways that we can understand because there is not a way for us to understand the infinite because we are finite.

And I'll use that as an explanation. Do you realize that the only way that we can describe infinity is by using finite as the explanation? We say, what is infinity? Not finite. That's all we can do. We can't really explain what it is.

We just know what it's not.

And when we start talking about God, there are certain things about God that are difficult for us to understand and so God condescends and he uses the language of accommodation. He uses the language of anthropomorphism.

Anthropomorphism is simply to use the anthropos for man. To use man-like qualities to describe God. His hands, his eyes, his feet, his hinder parts. As he said to Moses, I will pass by and you'll see my hinder parts.

No, but the idea is that there is this accommodating language so that we can have some idea of this God of whom we are speaking because we are finite, we are creatures, he is the creator. We are finite, he is infinite.

All of these things are difficult for us so God condescends to us. He talks about God repenting. We know God is the God of the universe who does not change his mind and he says he never changes his mind the scripture tells us but yet the Bible does talk about times wherein God repents.

How do we analogize those two passages? We understand that this is God from our perspective. He was going to do one thing and then he did another and from our perspective it's like he changed but from the mind of the finite God he's never changed at all because he knew from the moment of creation what he was going to do.

And so we have to understand that this is an accommodating type of language.

Make sense?

Can I move on?

Okay.

What about the verse in Genesis? Yes, that's what I was talking about where it says he repented of having made man or that he regretted or even the newer versions which I don't agree say he was sorry that...

Yes, we have to understand that... And again we look at the text and we compare that which is difficult to understand with what is not difficult to understand and we see the very clear passage in scripture that says God is not like a man who changes his mind nor is he the son of man that he would change his mind.

So we see God from our perspective doing one thing and then doing another and we say oh it's like he made a change and there's language that seems to indicate a change but we know that ultimately when we understand God and his perfection that God doesn't and cannot change and here's the quick analogy that I'd like to give people that helps make this very simple.

Is God a perfect being? Does scripture describe God as perfect? I'm asking you can... Okay, yes, the answer is yes. If God is perfect and he is described to us in scripture as being perfect if he were to change for the better that means he wasn't perfect to begin with.

If he would change for the worse that means he ceases to be perfect and if he were to make a linear change neither for the good or for the bad it would still indicate a need for a change and would indicate that he wasn't perfect.

So when we say God is perfect we're also saying God is immutable. Immutability means he does not actually change. From our perspective there are things that seem like changes and even descriptions of himself as if he changes but from the perspective of God there is no change and that's sort of where we talk about accommodating language.

We can't understand a being that never changes. We can't understand that. So God describes himself in such a way that we can better relate to him. Does it sadden him that we sin? Yes. Does it grieve the spirit of God that we sin?

The Bible says so. But he knew we were going to and it is a part of his plan in bringing about his redemption. He has a plan of redemption that he began from the beginning.

Began from the beginning.

That's kind of redundant. He has a plan of redemption that he started and he is seeing through all the way to the end. This is why he can talk about the cross as a past tense event that took place before the foundation of the world.

He says that Christ is crucified from the foundation of the world. Well no, Christ was crucified 2 ,000 years ago. There were 5 ,000 years of history before Christ. How can we say Christ is crucified from the foundation of the world?

Because in the mind of God, the infinite mind of God, these things are past tense. He talks about us in Ephesians 2 being seated in heavenly places with Christ. But we're not. We're here. But in God's perspective, it's done.

The deal is over. He's not bound by time. This is why when you start dealing with predestination, you start getting into the mind of God. You start getting into the mind of him who is not bound by past, present, and future.

God is not bound by time at all. And that's something that we cannot really wrap our minds around. That's why I would say that all of those things fall into the category of accommodation of language.

Alright?

Letter G. The principle of divine illumination. The principle of divine illumination. You might want to write beside it, John 14, 26. Jesus tells us that He will be taken away and when He goes, He will send us another Comforter.

And what does the text say? It says the Comforter will teach you all things. Ultimately, any believer who has the Holy Spirit within him or her need to call on the Holy Spirit when studying Scripture to give the divine illumination.

And here's the way I've experienced it in my own life. You'll read a text. You won't understand it. You'll read a text four or five times and not understand it. You will pray and God will illuminate your mind to a text.

May not happen that day. May not happen that year. But there will come a time when God opens up your eyes and the scales will fall off and you'll understand better than you did before. Most of us who have done Bible study for a long period of time have experienced this multiple times where the Holy Spirit will bring illumination.

Now, there needs to be a caveat made. Illumination is not revelation. We talk about revelation. We're talking about God speaking directly to an individual through the process of divine revelation and that's what we believe God did with the prophets.

It's what we believe God did with the apostles. It's how we believe we got the Scripture. We call the Scripture revelation. We talk about the book of Revelation but the whole Bible is the revelation of God.

But we would argue and contest that God no longer is giving revelation, that the revelation concluded at the end of the apostolic age with the last apostle who was John and that now we receive illumination or the Spirit's guidance in understanding what He has revealed.

Rather than revealing more things, He is illuminating us or lightening us to what He has already given. For instance, you'll hear people say, well, God told me... and they'll address it as if they're a prophet.

This happens every year about this time. Somebody will come out, a pastor or a prophet or prophetess or apostle or apostoless, if there are such a thing. They'll come out and they'll say, well, God told me that...

There was one that was on this last past week. I saw somebody on Facebook said, God had given them the Word for 2015. The Word was expanse. Last year's Word was intense or something. And the Word before that...

Every year, God gives this person. They come out on their little stage and they say, the Word this year is... You know what the Word is never? It's never repent. It's never you're a sinner. It's always expanse, intense, awesome.

I'm going to talk about this Sunday, about how we've gotten away from the ordinary means of grace. Everything now has to be so out of sight. Everything has to be so crazy and extreme. We can't just have the Word and the sacraments and the prayers anymore and the fellowship of the saints.

It has to be a show. It has to be Grinchmas. And we're having a stage lighting effect with dancers and stage managers. You've got to have all this stuff because the Word and sacrament and prayers.

Are not enough.

Not anymore.

See, that's where we've come. But the reality is, getting back to the lesson, the principle of divine illumination is simply this, that when we go to the Scripture, we need to pray before going in. Pray when coming out and pray while we're studying.

This is God speaking to us through His Word. And if you want to know what the author intended, ask the author himself. Simple enough. You go there. Now that does not, and we're going to get to this in a minute, with improper methods, that doesn't give us the right to twist the Scripture.

Because there are some people who say, well, God told me that, you know, John 1 .1 doesn't mean Jesus was divine. Well, no, He didn't because that's what the text says. There are rules of grammar and all that other stuff that also apply.

And you're twisting it when you say God told me. Again, that's the whole revelation versus illumination problem. All right, let's move on to the improper methods. And I don't have a clock. What time is it?

Okay.

So, got a few minutes. Let's look at the improper methods of interpretation. Number one, allegorical interpretation. Allegorical. Let me, I'll write them over here. Allegorical interpretation. The allegorical school teaches that beneath each verse of Scripture, beneath the obvious meaning, is the real, quote-unquote, meaning of the passage.

This is believing that the hidden message in the sentence or statement is the symbolic spiritual message and we just have to find out what the allegory is. The best one I've ever...

You need to order that book.

Huh?

You need to order that book.

Yeah.

You got to get it. It's the Bible code. Well, the best allegorical interpretation I ever heard,.

Best worst,.

Best of the worst. I didn't say that.

I don't want to say it's best as if it's good.

The best of the worst was by a man, a man by the name of John Dominic Crossan. John Dominic Crossan is one of the leaders in the Jesus Seminar. That is a group of liberal scholars who have come together and have totally tore the Bible to shreds.

He's very influential in the liberal Protestant churches. He actually teaches in the Disciples of Christ Church. I got a magazine from the Disciples of Christ when we were still... When the church was going through transition.

We still had those ties and I remember turning the book over to the back and it said, have John Dominic Crossan come to your church and I was like,.

No.

But here's one of the things.

He said.

He said everything about Jesus' life on... Well, he didn't say everything. He said most everything.

We know about Jesus.

Is a parable. So Jesus didn't really feed the 5 ,000. What Jesus did was he convinced the ones who had food to share it with the ones who didn't have food. And so what we see is not a miracle of Christ taking five loaves.

And two fish.

And making more. What we see is the miracle of socialism is that if those who have will take care of those who have not, then the world will be a better place. And if it goes through the hands of the disciples, that's the biggest blessing because that's how the transfer came.

It came from those who had through the hands.