Apologetics Session 10 - Hermeneutics

I'll start us with prayer. Father, we thank you so much for so many things you do in our lives every single day,

Lord. You're an amazing, amazing God. Your holiness and your glory and your depth is so something we cannot fathom as brothers.

But we are here together to listen and to learn together, Lord. And we thank you, Lord, for each one of them, that each one of them can make a difference in someone else's life.

And we thank you, Lord, for that honor and that privilege that we can do that. So I pray tonight that as we learn together that it really opens up their hearts and their minds to really become more involved in your word because your word cuts through muscle, cuts through bone, cuts through everything.

So we pray for them. We pray for this class tonight. In your name, Jesus name, Amen. Okay, so hermeneutics.

When I was in school, hermeneutics and... Is there? Oh, yeah. So this is going to be a big thing for you and Jack.

This is going to be big. I wrote a total of 38 papers when

I was in seminar. And more than half of that was about hermeneutics, about interpreting the scripture and what the scripture meant.

And it's a tool that is used to break down what the

Bible says and how you can interpret the Bible. And unfortunately, in this day and age, in the way things are happening within the church, especially in the

United States, they really screw up hermeneutics. They're interpreting the Bible very, very wrong.

So what I'm going to do today is, you know, a hermeneutics class takes a year.

You know, so we're doing it in an hour, a little over an hour kind of going through this. But I'll talk to you about the methodology behind it, some of the tools that I have to use it, and and then how you can go ahead and really explore what the

Bible is really doing. It is a totally in -depth book that is beyond man's comprehension.

Even though it was God read through men, it is something that as you go in there, there's, for the rest of your life, every time you look into the

Bible, you will always get something new out of it. And I was told that when

I was in school, and it's absolutely true, there's so many nuances here and so many layers on top of layers that it's, when you hear people to talk about the

Bible and say, okay, this is what this is, you've got to kind of question yourself, like, no, because there's a lot of nuances there.

So with that being said, let's start.

Okay, come on. There we go. Okay. Let me go back. All right. First of all,

Miroslav Volf is a, he wrote this book called Free of Charge. I would recommend this book for everybody to read.

It is about forgiveness, and it's about, he makes the case in this book that humans, it's impossible for humans to actually forgive.

It is a thing that happens with the Holy Spirit, and he makes the case very, very well about forgiveness being a spiritual thing that happens to one person to another, because it is the example of what

Christ did on the cross. Christ did the ultimate forgiveness, and that part of it, as a believer, we're not humanly capable of doing that without the

Holy Spirit doing that. So, and he makes a brilliant case, but he says this one thing. He says, to worship God, rather than idols of our own making, we must allow

God to break apart the idols we create through the Spirit's relentless and intimate work within our lives.

First, and this is very important, first, we need to know where to look for knowledge of the true

God. It would be a mistake to seek that knowledge primarily in the world around us.

God is not an object in this world, and it is absolutely true about that, and what happens is, because of the way the church is, is that people take taking

God now and putting it in their lives when they should be the other way around, where we should be just having him in our lives.

And so I want to start off with that. So, hermeneutics, it's an interpretation of the

Bible. There's really two premises that ends up happening with this, and you'll be, I'm gonna make sure that you have this presentation there, but the premise number one is the

Bible was written by people to be understood by people, and that's usually the general gist of it, you know.

The biblical writings were written by someone with a specific audience, with a specific historical geographical reference.

Each book was created within a cultural setting of its time. One of the things I will talk about later in this presentation is that I would recommend, and I would pass this around everybody, getting a cultural background

Bible. And this is a really, really good tool to use to, when you're reading scripture, and you want to get another point of view, it's very, very in -depth in terms of talking about what was happening at that time when the book was being written.

The, you know, biblical book writings were recorded in its native tongue, followed by grammatical or figurative language.

You know, this is the commonalities that people have come to really adopt, and the biblical book was accepted and understood in light of its context, and the writings were understood in a historical setting, its basic principles of logic and communication.

That's the first premise. The second premise is this, which we really don't talk about that much. The book, the

Bible is a divine book. Only the supernatural can understand or answer prophecy, parables, miracles, doctrine.

It also contains unity, does not contradict itself, even though people try to make a case between various different verses.

And we'll talk about this later on, but for now, because there's certain verses there that when you look at them just alone, it can mean one thing, but when you look at the context as a whole, it can mean something totally different.

And it often interprets itself. So the obscure and secondary passages are interpreted in light of the clear primary passages.

And that's really true when we're digging into some of the things. And, you know,

I don't know if you're like me, but I avoided revelations for the longest time, because it was like, you know, you're going down this rabbit hole of all these different things, and the allegories within it was tough for me to take, because my mind goes, oh, well, just tell me exactly what the

Bible is saying, and then I can go ahead and use that in my life. And revelations was tough for me to really do that.

Of course, in eschatology, it's really the underpinnings of what God's plan is at the end.

And the Bible contains progression. So through the Bible itself, when you're looking at hermeneutics, you're taking bits and pieces of it.

You're pulling out slices out of it. But when you look at the Bible, or the canon as a whole, it really should be thought of from 30 ,000 foot that there is a general story that's starting in Genesis, and it's all working all the way through revelations.

And the Bible shows all the humanity of its total progression towards heaven and hell, and it's the good and bad, the story of the good and bad and the ugly.

So the word hermeneutics is obviously a Greek word, hermeneuo or hermeneia, and it comes from Hermes, the

Greek god, as its source brought messages to the mortals, communicated to the mortals, anything that was beyond their human understanding.

And Hermes was the god of science, writing, literature, eloquence. He was also the interpreter to the mortals and the gods, and he was the son of Zeus.

So they've taken that whole concept from Greek mythology and made it into this metaphor, or this science, or this art, or whatever you want to call it, of interpreting the scripture.

But in our lives, hermeneutics should be a discipline. It should be part of what we do in wanting to learn about what

God's truth is. So there's a supportive discipline on it, there's a reflective discipline on it, there's a clarifying discipline on it.

It comes, in general, you want to set a premise of what you're trying to find out about, and then exegesis, or the explanation, an exposition, which is what, you know,

Jeff does, and what we should be doing is what its purpose for. But before you even get there, you got to figure out what you're trying to find, like in your mind, like, okay,

Lord, just give it to me. This is the question I have. How can I get to that? Um, most sermons have all three disciplines in it, simultaneously.

You don't know it, you've gotten used to it. Jeff is brilliant with it, and so is John, you know.

And Jack and Jacob, you guys, this is what you're going to be taught. I mean, usually all three are in it.

And unfortunately, because of that, congregants, to no fault of anybody, they kind of get lazy, and they do not know how to study the

Bible. They wait till Sunday to get fed this, when you can be doing this on a daily basis.

So, you know, you, the habit is like to leave it to the pastor to elevate your knowledge.

Really, it's God's mandate that we always elevate our knowledge there. So, studying the

Bible is not the pastor's job. Pastor's job is to share insights that he's going to have, that God has given him, and since he does an expository on the

Bible verse by verse, that's the style that he's doing there. But there's so many different ways to go ahead and study the

Bible. But as believers, and you know, 2nd Timothy talks about this, and Paul talks about specifically, you know, all believers are called to deliver on the biblical text and deliver it accurately.

So, we must know its meaning, we must show its relevance in everyday life, and it has to give us purpose in what we want to try to do.

And it cements our way of providing for the mission that Christ has for each one of us, and our mission is not, it's not the same.

Although we're a collective of brothers there, each one of us has a separate mission that God has for us, depending on our spiritual gifts, depending on the crossroads we come in life, you know.

And God uses all those different pieces to do that, but the starting point and the cementing point is this part here.

And we do not have to be a ministry to be a minister for Christ. Okay. So, we'll go through this process of interpretation, there's major phases, there's a definitive phase.

The first aspect of interpretation is discovering the basic meaning of particulars, like words, phrases, structures, and later on I will show you the different types of books you can have that will complement you as you're diving deeper there.

But you want to get an idea of just the basic premise of what you're looking at.

Hebrew, Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, Assyrians, you know, like looking at things like that.

Garden, I mean, they're kind of like big picture things, but they kind of cement what we're trying to connect the dots to.

And you want to get from that point and then start drilling down from there. So that's the definitive phase that we do, and we kind of do that already unconsciously.

If you're doing a Bible study, like a devotional type of Bible study, we'll have thematic pieces within that and, you know, it could be forgiveness or redemption or justification or something like that.

And they're kind of thematic and you kind of drill down into it. But you can expand it even further and with better grounding and looking at history and the context and what have you.

So that's the definitive phase. And then we have the rational phase. And this is the big part of what we try to figure out.

And again, I'll go back to Jacob and Jack. This part, the rational phase, is what pastors are hammered home to figure out.

So, but it's not, it shouldn't be just the pastors themselves. To anyone, anyone who wants to study the

Bible should be doing this. And it's really an aspect of interpretation, attempts to find reasons underlying the particulars and the general reasons why biblical statements are made, wherein they are true and necessary, and what is the immediate reason or purpose for these expressions, their relevance to the literary contents, specific historical situations.

A perfect example of this was yesterday when Jeff was talking in 2 Thessalonians 2, 3 and 4, and he was taking what

Paul was talking about and he was making relative to what was happening here. So he's bridging that there and he was making it to really hear to today's ears what is actually being said.

And it was that foreknowledge that he was bringing across. That rational phase is extremely important into putting it into into today's context and understanding that, what's happening there.

Now, one of the pushbacks on the rational phase is that you'll have a group of people, and I had run across them years ago, that just believe in the

King James Version. That's it. You know, they're almost like a cult. King James Version, that's it.

Anything outside of that, you're not supposed to go outside of that. Just the King James Version, that's it.

They worship it, they do everything around it, and they follow it literally to what the word is saying.

And there's good things about that, and there's things that are not so good about it that you have to be very, very careful for.

And then, of course, at the end, and Jeff always talks about that, you know, here's the takeaway, here's what

I want you to walk away with, the implication phase. And that's what you want to try to do every day when you're reading scripture.

Like, what are you trying to get out of it? Like, what is God telling you to do, even if it's something reflective or anything?

So it's a statement that implicates more than says it explicitly. It is the outgrowth of presuppositions that you may have, and it turns into presuppositions for other ideas.

And when you take all these phases, all of a sudden you start to connect dots throughout scripture, and they become deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

You know, everybody knows that person that, like, you know, you say a phrase, and they go, oh, that was, you know,

Sextivity 215. Or we did that, oh, that was this, and they pop out verses like it's a machine gun, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know.

And that's good if you have that gift to go ahead and do that. But we have to go deeper than that.

It can't just be like you're just laying out verses like as if, you know, there's some sort of bullets there.

They're good for certain situations, not for everything. Context. So the process of the interpretive questioning is, you know, the meaning of the terms, which

I had mentioned before. The meaning of the structure of what we're trying to figure out, the allegories, how

Psalms is different than Ecclesiastes, that's different than Matthew, that's different than Revelations. We want to figure out the structure of that and what the form was meant to do during that time.

And the meaning of its atmosphere that was taking place during that time. And that Bible that I'm sitting around there really helps in developing that whole atmosphere of understanding what was going on during that time that this was happening.

And so you prepare yourself with questions, the phases of interpretation, primary questions.

What does it mean? You know, why is it said? Why is it said here? What does it imply?

And again, it doesn't have to be a drawn out thing, but it's something that I think that once you start to practice this, it becomes second nature.

And myself, personally, when I went after,

I didn't do so. It's weird. I didn't do it so much in school because I was more like just kind of getting work done.

But afterwards, I started to get more and more into the

Bible only because I saw the antithesis of what was happening culturally.

And I'm saying, what does the Bible say about this? What does the Bible say about that?

And it started a progression of me going deeper and deeper, deeper, trying to figure out what was really being said.

Because so many people, and like I always say, the enemy that we have is, you know, obviously the unregenerated.

But a real big enemy is the church itself, that they don't really know how to understand the

Bible. So they say things as if it's an edict and it's not true. The subordinate questions, though, you want to say, if Susan Ball was the accomplishment, where is this being accomplished?

Again, it goes back to the historical perspective. Again, all this is part of the process that you want to do, that you want to practice.

And then from that, you're getting interpretive answers. They're subjective, some of spiritual state.

I can tell you this, that when you go down a certain rabbit hole that the

Holy Spirit is taking you there, he starts to provide different types of nuances within your heart about what you're reading.

And that's the kind of the illumination that begins to take place. And when it happens like that, it's really,

I almost want to say, cemented to your soul. It's something that is like, I'm going to keep that forever until I meet the

Lord face to face, you know. So in some ways, it should be methodical.

Some ways, it should be self -conscious. But overall, it should be thorough. And it should be for yourself and your intimate time with the

Lord to do that. Does anybody have any questions about this?

This is kind of like, for me, it's kind of basic, but the process itself. Does anybody have any questions regarding that?

Are you talking mainly about the literal interpretation as opposed to the allegorical method of interpretation?

No, well, actually, and we'll talk about that. There is the allegorical.

There is the literal. There is rhetoric. There is the mandated. There's kind of different categories within that that you see.

And as you start to do that, you'll see that you'll begin to expand what you're actually looking at.

The easiest one that people have a tendency to fall to is say, oh, I just want the literal interpretation.

What it says is what it is. But without having enough of a background, that can be very, very tricky.

Some things are straightforward, of course. The Ten Commandments is straightforward. But other things are not that straightforward.

And in fact, and we'll talk about this later on here, about what's going on there. But there's different types that would end up happening there.

This gives you an example of some of the study guides that I have read through. And I would recommend doing this.

Again, it would be part of this. John Calvin, his writings, when he went against the church.

And the reform theology or systematic theology really goes back to John Calvin when he made that break from the

Roman Catholic Church and wrote his 1995 theses in there to really defend what justification was and what grace was and all that.

And so it's a book that you want to go and access to. And it complements what you're reading in terms of his confirmation on there.

Mind you, this is John Calvin that was in the 1500s. And the

Bible was, you know, much earlier and during that whole time that was happening.

And again, this is part of the hermeneutics part is like you say to yourself, okay, what happened then?

And why did it happen now? What happened during that time that there was this whole dark age of biblical theory?

Next one is St. Augustine's, I Can't Recommend It Enough.

In school, that's when we had a study. His apologetics there was so spot on.

And when you read his life story of how much of a pagan he was and then what he turned into, it's absolutely just mind -blowing.

John MacArthur's Strange Fire is really an exposé about what's happening in the churches today.

Prosperity gospel and what's happening and how it moved away, but there were similarities that was happening in the

New Testament during that time. Tinsdale, who converted the Bible from Latin into English and was martyred for it.

An excellent exposé of what he had to go through during that time to go ahead and change what we have now.

I mean, actually, what he did, we can go into our Bible and look at it and do that because of his work back then.

These are thematic, John, to your point, thematic. John MacArthur's slave. John MacArthur does a deep dive into what

Paul was talking about when he starts off most of his books, his epistles, and he says,

I'm a slave to Jesus. I'm a servant to Jesus. I'm this and that. And the actual point of it, and he took a lot of criticism for this, but I would recommend this book very highly for people to read, is that our relationship with Jesus Christ, he bought us with a price.

That means that we are his, literally, slave into that. And it takes the whole context outside of ourselves into what

Jesus is expecting from us. And it's a very, very important book, very timely.

Again, like I said, John MacArthur was really critical about what's happening in churches today, and he was criticized for this.

Polycarp's letters to the Philippians and his martyrdom. Now, Polycarp, if you know anything about Polycarp, he followed

John, and he was the one that was really the understudy of what was happening with John.

A .W. Tozer, if you haven't heard of A .W. Tozer, he was an apologetics, an evangelist, a pastor.

He wrote this tremendous book on how, in the Old Testament, when the

Jews were wandering in the wilderness, how the Lord guided them at night with a cloud,

I mean, day with a cloud and night with a fire, and what were the implications behind that. And he makes the case that that hasn't changed.

That hasn't changed today, you know. And then the last one here is

Know the Heretics. And this is, again, expose from beginning to now of all the different types of heretical teachings that are happening right now from the

Gnostics to the Pantheists to Universalists and so forth and so on until today's age.

Who's the author? The author of this one is Justin Holcomb. Holcomb, Justin Holcomb.

Again, study about theology, systematic theology, the Handbook of Christian Apologetics. Again, these are complementary books that you want to try to do here.

I don't know if anybody's heard of Dr. John Barnett. I would recommend you just go on YouTube and talk about it.

His main thrust is eschatology, but he wrote some terrific books about David, Job, other deep -dive studies of what was really happening there.

And I would recommend John Barnett for anybody who really wants to get involved in that.

And then we have the historical things that you should automatically have anyway. As I was passing around the Bible there, the

ESV Bible Atlas, Bible History. This set of books over here is very, very good to really kind of give you not just the topical stories, but the in -depth stories of biblical history and then, of course, the cultural background.

When I tell you I drive my wife Joyce crazy, when she sees me studying the

Bible, I have three Bibles in front of me plus this. And she's like, why are you so weird?

So I'm looking, as I'm reading, I'm like, oh yeah. And I was teasing because I left this behind, and I challenged

Jack to kind of take a look at this. But I write random notes from learning, and I just put them in a book.

And I have a bunch of these books. And I would really challenge every one of you just to do that.

Just get a book and write the thoughts you get from Scripture. They don't have to be in any order.

Just write them. And then visit them a month later or two months later and see how the Lord has revealed things that you could not even imagine with just writing things down.

You'll be happy to know that Jack and Jacob are both back here writing in books. Right.

And then this is a rhetorical, Han Hanegraaff. I don't know if anybody's heard of him.

He was an apologist, also a Bible teacher. He now is, he is a,

I think a Greek Orthodox now. I think he switched over to Greek Orthodox. Yeah, he had some problems there. Yeah, there was some problems.

But this book itself is very, very good. This is before he switched over. Sinclair Ferguson's The Holy Spirit.

Excellent expose on the Holy Spirit's presence. And about how God's grace allows to have the

Holy Spirit dwell in us. Exploring the Old Testament in the New. So Peter Rogers really talks about the

New Testament and how almost in every single book in the New Testament it refers back to the

Old Testament. So there's a fluid part of connecting all the dots from the Old Testament to the

New. And then this is from Ligonier Ministries, which is The Guide to False Teaching. And it kind of gives you an update about what are some of the things that are happening that you need to look out for.

Okay. And then we have the study guide, Themes, which is free of charge, which

I said earlier is about forgiveness. And then R .C. Sproul's, he has a number of these small little books, but they're gems.

And I just put one up here, which is How Can I Be Right with God? And very simple questions.

And he goes from an apologetic point of view, and he explains this. You know, how do

I know I'm saved? You know, in short, what is systematic theology? So kind of the big questions.

And he has these little tidy books, and they're really easy to get. I would go to Ligonier Ministries. I think you can download some of these books there.

Okay. Again, all these things complement to try to help you understand more of what

Scripture is talking about. And they really cement a good foundation there.

Again, you don't have to be a seminary student. These are things you can do on your own. Last but not least,

Strong's Greek Dictionary and Hebrew Dictionary. They're just excellent.

If you ever get caught on a word and you're not understanding, mind you, when you're looking in the

New Testament and you look at a certain word, there could be up to, like, ten different meanings of that word. And so how do you take that word literally in the verse?

And it's very helpful to learn that word on the various different things that are happening in the Greek. And the

Naves topical Bible, you know about this, Rich. This is, you must have this.

It really is something that you want to keep in your toolkit when you're reading

Scripture and understanding Scripture. And that's the grammatical part. These are basically the grammatical part, and it gives you a better context of what you're studying.

So, now that I got the class, that part of it done, we're going to get into some fun there.

So, hermeneutics in action. So we want to know what is evil, right? So, what is evil? And, so there's some big questions about it.

Okay? And it says, like, who created evil? You know, did Adam and Eve know what evil is? Think about that for a minute.

Did they even know what evil was? You know, because they were in the Garden of Eden, they didn't know anything. You know?

So, did they know? Was evil contained? How did evil turn so great?

Okay? And was evil taught? These are big, big questions.

Like, big questions there. And you can take it, you know, you can study forever on each one of them. But I'm going to make a case, a hermeneutical case, on what's going on here.

So, I'm going to ask people to read certain parts of Scripture. Okay? Starting with Genesis 3, 115.

Phil, can you just read that real quick? Okay.

115. Okay. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

She shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So, 1 through 15. 3, 1 through 15.

Ah. That's more. That's just 15. Okay. Okay. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast in the field that the

Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.

So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and there was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she gave also some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God said to the man, called to the man and said to him, where are you?

He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate it.

And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed you will be above all livestock and above all the beasts in the field, and on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Okay, thank you. So, let's go back to what's said. So, who created evil? Eve. Eve created evil.

Lucifer disobeyed God. Satan created evil? Eve created evil? Did they know that it was evil?

Did they know it's evil? No, they didn't know, but they disobeyed God's command. That was evil. Ron, could you read

Genesis 6, 1 -7? No.

I can. Okay, you can. You got it? Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

So everybody. Breathe, everybody can hear it. Go ahead. Daughter? Daughter. Okay. She is also flesh.

Nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward.

When the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them, those were the mighty men who were of old and men of renown.

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil and continually.

The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart.

The Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I have made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Is that it? Yeah, that's it.

That's it. Okay, so we're having two different positions now that are starting to happen.

So we have sin, we have evil, and now we're trying to figure out the driver of evil.

And we're starting to connect a few dots that's happening over here. Who can read

Genesis 6, 12, and 13? Kevin, you got it?

This is King James 1st and everything else is Spring Woods. It's King James. And God looked upon the earth and, behold, it was so corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and, behold,

I will destroy them with the earth. Okay. So the question now becomes is, okay, so we have evil, we have sin, fallen man, we have

Nephilim that came about, and now we have corruptness, and the earth is now almost like a virus.

Evil has taken over the earth beyond anything that we could imagine. And so, in hermeneutic world, we're starting to see a pattern of why

God was starting to do it with the earth. Now, the old thinking was, is that, oh, well, it's fallen man.

You know, Eve ate the apple, fallen man, sin just happens, everything else like that.

But taking a few steps back, they were in the presence of the Lord. They didn't know any evil.

They didn't even know what to do that was evil. They were absolutely innocent.

Not to say that they're not innocent after they sinned. That's not the thing. But how could something that happened to Adam and Eve end up happening what happened in Genesis 6, 12 -13?

How can evil get so bad in that short of a period of time, which is there, how did that happen?

Okay. After the apple or before the apple? Well, that's...

Because, I mean, I guess, because obviously he must have given Adam and Eve, as with us, free will.

You know, even at that time, you know, when he was, Adam was created, then the rib, and then her.

So, but they were given free will. But Satan had already fallen. So he was within the garden because he was tossed out.

Right. So he was amongst the ground slithering and then tempting her, which was her free will.

Like you said, she didn't even know what evil was. She never experienced it. You know, she was pure. Just like he was pure.

And then after that... I'm having trouble hearing you. I'm sorry, I'll speak up. Yeah, but I mean, you know what

I'm saying? It was free will. And then, like you said, cancer just kept coming with each birth. Right. You know, from that.

You know, like I said, they were all born into sin. Okay. There was no option until Christ. Okay. So, go ahead.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil, right? God knew what that was. He knew what good and evil was because he created that tree.

So he's probably already seen evil at this point, I would think, and kept it from Adam and Eve.

Well, Satan had already fallen, so there already were beings that had free will that had chosen evil. Right.

It's just a plug I have. No, no, no. There's nothing wrong with that. These are actually excellent points.

They're questions. So the question from that is, and there's a question, is that was man taught more evil?

Or man was just evil and they just morphed into more evil? Are they taught more evil, or do they morph into evil?

I'm curious about Matt's comment, because Satan was there. But Matt's saying there was other evil persons.

Right. Well, we know that beings... Wait, I didn't know that. Beings, not humans, obviously. Right. Beings? Beings, yeah.

So we know that... Supernatural beings. Yeah, supernatural beings, and we know that Satan fell. Angels that followed

Satan. Right. Okay. Let's look at Genesis 7, 11, 23.

We don't have to read the whole thing. I just want to read the beginning part of it. Bill, can you do that?

In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

Rain fell upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights. We're going to keep reading here? That's fine right there.

Okay. Now, why would God destroy the earth, save just a few people and all these animals?

Like, literally, in disgust. God was in disgust. Why would he do that?

Like, why does he destroy everything, except for these few? Okay.

Who has Genesis 8, 20 -22? Jack? Then Noah built an altar to the

Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

So there was redemptive quality there. God, by his justice, destroys the earth.

We're trying to figure out why evil was so bad that he had to do that. And then he saved his few, and by his grace, the few made an offering, and all of a sudden, he's going to go ahead and change what his trajectory is going to be to save mankind, humankind.

And basically, Noah ends up being the second Adam. Now, who can read Genesis 9 -1? Go ahead,

Matt. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Okay. So if you took just each one of these separately, you can have a separate type of story or what have you, you know,

Noah, Nathalon, whatever. When you start to combine it, and this is where hermeneutics comes into play, you can see the larger picture of what's going on here and what happens.

So on Genesis 6 -1 -4, the watchers then were clearly celestial non -human beings whose actions are regarded not only as morally evil but spiritually destructive.

While human rebellion first appeared in Eden, okay, it is the action of the watchers that served as the catalyst to spread wickedness among humanity like a spiritual contagion.

They are held responsible for teaching humans the variety of things that engender lust, warfare, astrology, occult practice, etc.

Okay. So what we're seeing now is the reason behind what

God was seeing there and why he had to do what he had to do. And this was

Satan's ultimate plan was to basically undercut God by trying to create another race, another thing that would undervalue what

God's psalmitude was. This is something that another book,

Enoch, talks about very clearly, about what this was all about.

But it's referenced over here in Genesis, and it's also referenced in Jude, and it's also referenced in 2

Peter. Okay. The same thing, I just put it again, the same thing happened in 6 -11, where God looks at justice there.

So what I'm trying to get the idea across to everybody is you want to try to connect the dots over here.

Like, what is going on there? And it's hard to think about, well, why are people so evil?

Like, how do they know to be that evil? Like, what it is, you know? And we're kind of getting an inside look through scripture of what was actually happening at the time that this justice happened.

So, going back to Matt's thing about Satan, it says, "...the

role of Satan is to make man's sinfulness a prominent one for..." And Arrhenius was one of the early apologists, and this was his take on it.

And this is back in around 170. It says, "...the role of Satan in man's sinfulness is a prominent one, as Satan takes on many different titles.

He was referred to as the strong man, the devil, the apostate angel." It becomes evident that Arrhenius uses all these names to signify a single creature who is angelic in nature and the chief adversary to God.

All right. So now we're even getting a bigger picture. So, we're getting a picture that God's destroying the world, you know, he's saving these few people, but there's actually a war going on.

There's an actual war that's happening. And this war is so prominent, so big, that it took over almost all of humanity, and they got involved in it.

And God had to stop it. Sid is directly... Go ahead. I'll throw a little disclaimer in here now, because I haven't heard

Jeff teach on this yet. I agree with what you're saying about 2 Peter, Jude, and as far as Satan's plan.

Basically to corrupt the human race, because if he could prevent the

Messiah from being born, and being the one that would crush his head, that was the goal of all this.

Absolutely. That he is trying to pollute the possibility of a

Messiah even being born. I haven't heard Jeff go after this yet.

So, he'll be on board with what we're doing. Right. So here's the question that we have, because a lot of people, when they're talking about Satan, they said

Satan basically doesn't have foreknowledge, doesn't really know ahead about what was going to happen there.

So, that's a bigger question that needs to be looked at.

Satan's an angelic being, but angels or angelic beings are not omniscient.

Correct. They don't have that quality that God does, knowing all things, right?

Past, present, future. So, Satan wouldn't have the capacity, while he is a powerful being, much more powerful than humans, he doesn't have the capacity that God has to know all things, be in all places, and be all powerful.

Right. So, this is where permaneutics comes into play. So, you're looking at that, and you're saying, okay, we think that he knew, or maybe there was some inkling that the

Messiah was going to come out of here, but he probably didn't know, but he knew to destroy everything in its path to prevent anything else that would happen.

Case in point is when you look at the book of Job, when he challenges God, who's the most righteous man, and he does what he does to Job, to test and see.

And there's a lot of scholarship about the book of Job that says that Satan was trying to learn as much as he possibly can by the whole exercise of doing what he did to Job, about what it was going to be in the future.

But a demonstration of Satan's limitations are that God allowed him to persecute

Job, but restrained him from killing Job, right? So, Satan had to basically ask permission to do what he did.

And I don't think God was at all vague about his plan, and so Satan knew, to Drew's point, knew what the plan was, and was trying to thwart that plan

I'm not sure why he thinks he can, but nevertheless, he's trying.

He's not self -deceived. Again, this is what

I'm going over with everybody studying, and figuring out everything, and just trying to take in what the picture could be and drilling it down.

So, Noah would be the line. Noah's the line to David, the king of kings.

So, he was the first to sin against God, and God would later lead others to that sin, apostasy, and apostasy reaches the same to other angels, and they follow and lead to sin, transgression, revolt, so forth and so on, and we're living in those times now.

And I'll leave the rest of this there to go and for you to kind of explore, but basically, back then, there was really a belief that, that yes, the demonic forces came in there to try to destroy the earth, and God took it upon himself to go ahead and change all that.

One other disclaimer, too. Sorry, I'm just being super careful here.

One other disclaimer is that the Book of Enoch, which Ivan referenced, is a very interesting book, but it is not considered canon or inspired scripture, so read it in that context if you do read it.

Oh, yeah. But what it does is, it kind of opens up your mind of what the possibilities were, and that's key.

Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting. Ivan? Yeah. One thing that we always have to keep in mind is that though Satan's knowledge was limited,

God's obviously is not, and that he knew all this was going to happen, and he knows what's happening today, and that has to be in our minds constantly.

Correct. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious, and everything that God does is for his glory, so it's not for us to go ahead and make a determination about what our next steps are going to be.

Everything is going towards his glory. But, again, you're going back to make presuppositions to say, what would make

God want to destroy the earth? Like, really, how evil was evil to destroy the earth?

And that's a fair question to ask for us to understand God's sovereignty, his power, his glory, his holiness.

What was actually happening? Because, mind you, Jesus hadn't come yet. Grace hadn't really been shown, except for what happened with Noah and his family.

So, it's an interesting thing to study and, say, figure out.

And you may not get to the answer, but at least you'll learn a lot of what's happening. Okay, here's a second one.

So that second one, actually, was what is Yahweh? So, the first one was kind of like this, almost like a

C .S. Lewis fairy tale and all that stuff. This one has actual practical application. So, you know, how many times is

Yahweh found in the Old Testament? And Yahweh, the first syllable, Yahweh, appears 50 times in the

Old Testament. 26 times alone, and it gives it there. And 24 times, it's an expression of hallelujah.

Okay? And then there are seven names for God. And looking at the seven names, you know, a lot of them had been erased, but the holiness or the tetra...

Tetragrammaton. ...grammaton, right? Adonai, Elim, El Hachim, Shaddai, Jevat, some of them, and the

Great I Am, so forth and so on. So these are the Hebrew interpretations of what they call

God. Now, Elohim was used in Psalms, and it means gods, and there are gods, not just mighty

God. And when you look at Psalms 82, there's a reference in one of the verses,

I think it's verse 2, 82 -2, where he goes to the council of gods,

Elohim. And if you look it up in the Hebrew, you see there's a conversation that actually happened between God and these other smaller ones that are basically angels, and these celestial beings that he's talking to about what's happening there.

Again, that's studying what's there. So ish and ishah, or yad and hey, is the

Hebrew word for man, ish. The Hebrew word for woman is ishah. It pronounces aishah.

Here's the difference between ish and ishah, and this is very, very important to understand what's happening today. In the

Hebrew language, there is one Hebrew letter in ish, man, that is not ishah, woman, and that is the

Hebrew letter yad. In the Hebrew word of ishah, woman, there is one Hebrew letter that is not ish, man, and that is the

Hebrew letter hey, or yad, hey. Yad and hey form the basis of the word

Yahweh, or Y -H -W -H, the name of God, that is being used 6 ,800 times in the

Old Testament. What does that mean for us? In other words, when you put ish, man, and ishah, woman, together, you have

Yah, hey, or Yahweh, or God. Now, even the

Hebrew word for man and God depicts a breathtaking construct, and this is it, okay?

Two men do not have the image of God. Two women do not have the image of God.

Only a man and a woman, confidentially, permanently joined, offer the spectacular reality and the image of God, which is

Yahweh. So Yahweh represents man and woman image of God.

That's representation, and I would challenge you to look it up in the

Hebrew dictionary. So why this definition matters? It says that why people are understanding, defending traditional, historical, biblical, and natural orthodox marriage, male and female, it is not ultimately our earthly marriage, or even about the practice of homosexuality as such.

It is the desire to preserve the magnificent picture of the image of God. It is about the ultimate desire for the cosmos, the grand wedding of his son to his prepared bride, which is the church.

And that is why the definition of marriage as between man and a woman matters to you, to our nation, to God.

So his Yahweh is what the image of God is, and when you go into Revelation, when he talks about lifting up the church, that's the marriage, the

Yahweh, that he's talking about. It's another reference of hermeneutical teaching that you can look at.

And then they have all these different verses. Let me see how much time we have. Okay, we have all these different verses that you can go through and kind of look at.

They're talked about every single day. I'm just going to take a few of them, but I won't go through all of them because we're running out of time. But just to understand what the context were.

So Matthew 18, 20 says, For where there's two or three gathered in my name, there

I am among them. What did Jesus mean by that? Okay?

Now we hear that. How often do we hear that? When two or three gather, right? You come together.

Everybody's gathered, right? All right? And the Lord all of a sudden appears. Says, should we take this verse alone, or should we look at verse 15 and 16 and 17?

Those are the questions that you need to look at in context. Now the whole idea behind this verse, which really was a summaration or summary of what church discipline was about.

So when you look at the beginning part of this, he was talking, if a brother sins against another brother, confront him and then two and then so forth and so on.

And you go through the church discipline, and then at that point, you come together and you say, when two or three are gathered in my name, there

I am among you. And it's about church discipline. It's not just where people have the implications, like you just come together, boom.

You know, it's like a vending machine. You know, God just shows up. It doesn't happen like that.

That's an example of looking further than what is actually being said in the verse.

Right, and Paul said that too when he was talking about disciplining the man in 1

Corinthians. He said, even if I'm not there with you, I'm there with you in spirit when you discipline.

And the context of that is totally taken many, many, many times.

Exactly. Because the Holy Spirit's with us now. Like, when I'm praying by myself, the

Holy Spirit is there. He's always there. He's omnipresent. Our bodies are the temple of the

Holy Spirit. But that's why it was always taught not to just take a single verse. Always look at the verses before and after that to get the true thing where people will throw a single verse.

You can't do that. Context, context, context. Yeah, it is context, context. And that's why I'm encouraging all my brothers here, really read the whole thing, not just that.

And you'll see people pull this out as if it's like a mandate or something. Like, you gather two or three people, it's like, okay, what does that mean?

I think I saw a t -shirt that said, I can do all things through a verse taken out of context. Here's another one.

1 Corinthians 6, 9 -10. What was

Paul referring to? Okay. Well, he wasn't referring to unregenerate.

He's referring to believers. But this two groupings of verses is for, it's almost classed for everybody.

But no, he was actually talking about the church of Corinth and what was actually going on in the church of Corinth. And he is saying to people who claim to be in Christ, because all these different influences were happening in the church at the time, is that this, if you're claiming to be in Christ, this should be the result.

You should not be doing. And he was very explicit about doing that. But universally, people take it out of context.

We look back at what Yahweh means and it really addresses this issue there. Jeremiah 29 -11 says,

That's like the prosperity gospel's dream. They use that all the time. But does

God really promise that, that he's going to do that? Not in this context. It's pulled out, but they build a whole industry out of this verse that is dangerous for believers that are deceived very much.

This is basically what God was saying to Israel. And if you go to verse 1, and you're looking at what is happening, you can tell the story.

The destruction of Babylon was coming. And the Lord was basically saying to them, he's not going to wipe them out.

He does have a future for them. Exactly. But if you take it just in this context, you can get yourself in trouble.

2 Chronicles 7 -14, I've seen this verse so much nowadays about the

United States. If they would just do this, this is what would happen. And it's just not correct.

It's again about Israel. Right, and it's again about Israel. It's just not a correct exposition of what this verse means.

You need to read the whole book to do that. John 3 -16 is probably the most controversial.

Jeff and I have talked about this. Whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Who was God talking about? And there's a lot of controversy. And how is this verse misapplied?

So when you're thinking about that, I would ask you to go to 3rd

John and read the book of 3rd John. And take the book of 3rd John and compare it to John 3 -16.

And see how that dovetails in there. Because if you take it on this face value as it is, in a way it is promoting universalism.

And it also in a way is saying that Jesus is a failure because people are going to reject him.

Well, Jesus doesn't fail in anything. So from a logical standpoint, this verse has a big problem.

And I would implore you to really research this verse out. Because it wasn't meant for everybody.

It was meant for the believers who said, I'm going to die as propitiation for what is happening.

And you follow me and this is what's going to happen. And it's misapplied all the time.

So it's very important to keep it in the context. Matthew 18 -20, For there were two or three together in my name, there

I am among them. And in the context it's given, is this misapplied? Again, this is about church discipline.

And then Revelation 3 -20, Behold, this is a famous one. Behold, I stand at the doorknock.

If anyone hears my voice, opens the door, and I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

Well, this is a verse that's always used in revivals. You know, knocking on the door, whatever.

This is the whole context. It was written to believers, to regenerate, not to unbelievers.

And it's specifically to church of Laodicea. And it's really about Jesus and the

Holy Spirit wanting all of us to believe, to be holy, obedient, and in continuous worship.

That's the context of it. Not the universal thing that Jesus is going to come, knock on the door.

Again, you're putting Jesus in a position that he's going to be a failure because if he knocks on the door, you don't answer the door. Well, that's it.

It doesn't even make sense. But people just take it as it is. Again, this is how you dig deeper into Bible study and into your hermeneutics.

Another one is, well, I guess, talking about 3 John 1 -2. You know, Beloved, I pray that all may go with you, that you may be in good health, and as it goes, well, with your soul.

This is, again, Prosperity Gospel Anthem. However, when you read about the context of it in the

Bible that I was giving you there, it was written to Gaius, and it was talking about his journey and how the

Lord was going to be opening up his heart to make sure that he sees how the Lord is going to fill it.

And that John was wishing him well. Not saying that this is what's going to happen.

So in good health, in the Greek, it's sound teaching. Prosper in Greek means good journey. And John was just wishing a safe journey with sound teaching.

That's really what it was. So I have a few more which we don't have here because I think we've closed up, but I think you get an idea of how the nuances here can change so quickly.

And it takes studying and really digging in to really understand what was really the meant, what was meant to be in terms of talking to us and doing that.

Again, I'll have this presentation on when we send out our e -mails.

Does anybody have any questions? Sure. With John 3 .16,

were you saying that the misapplication is because God sent his son to die for the whole world, that the whole world has salvation through him?

Because you put universalism up there. Right. So you're saying the misapplication and misinterpretation is that everyone will get to heaven because of what

Jesus did. Correct. Yeah, that's the misapplication of it. And you can go online and see so many sermons regarding that.

And I don't think it's meaning about universalism, but when you put it in that context, if a person denies

Jesus Christ, although Jesus died for them, and he denies them, then

Jesus didn't do what he said he was going to do. And you can't put Jesus in that light. And so that's where the disconnect is.

It's a great story. Jesus died on the cross, and everybody can get salvation. But it's not the right story.

It's not true. It really isn't. And you're really getting close to that line of universalism when it happens.

That means that, you know, hey, I checked the box off, Jesus died, I got a free pass.

It doesn't work quite like that. I just have a question. I always use the

ESV version because that's the one that Jeff uses in sermons and stuff. But I do have an

NIV at home. And I noticed that in my 80s version of the

NIV, a lot of times in Matthew, when Jesus speaks, he says,

I tell you the truth before he's going to say something.

It's not in the other versions. But it says, I tell you the truth, and then he proceeds to say something.

And I was reading something about that that is just to add emphasis to it? Or why is it that in the

NIV, when he's trying to make some of these points, that only in that version does it say,

I tell you the truth, before? Well, in Scripture, verily, verily, verily, is basically what they're trying to say in modern

English. When he emphasizes it like that, Okay, so it's an emphasis? It's an emphasis.

Yeah, that means, stop what you're doing and listen to what I'm saying. So it's just adding emphasis. Because obviously,

I mean, Jesus is not going to lie. I mean, I tell you the truth. As opposed to what

I normally tell you. I tell you the truth. You know what I'm saying? It's just, I always sort of looked at that and said, okay, there's got to be an extra emphasis.

So you're basically vouching for what I thought anyway. Yeah. And that goes, again, that goes along with the whole thing about therefore.

Verily, verily. Therefore. I mean, here's the situation. Listen. This is what's happening next.

And I would, again, I would encourage everybody just to put a collection of therefores and just see how those dots are connected.

Because they really are sort of the script that we should be following. Because we see what the story is and then the therefore.

Same thing, verily, verily. If he's saying verily, you absolutely need to listen. And everybody should be stopped.

Anyone else? Well, I hope this is helpful. And I wish every one of you just to have that fire within you to learn.

Not everybody can be like Rich. He's like a gumball machine. You just drop in there and boom, he pops out.

Information. And like that. But you can get there. I think

I'm halfway there. So is Drew. We're there. But these things are things that are going to come up.

And you should be thirsty to ask more questions. Say, Lord, just teach me.

Open my eyes. Teach me more about what's going on here. And the more you ask, the more questions you're going to ask.

And you'll get a better grounding. And I would encourage you to have a book just to write thoughts down when this is happening.

And then revisit the book over a period of time. And you'll be very, very surprised how the

Lord speaks to you through doing that. And how it happens there. So I would encourage all my brothers here to do that.

And it's just an interesting process to work out. Drew, can you close us out for a minute?

Father, as we think about what's before us tonight, Lord, there is certainly commands where you tell us to be diligent about studying.

Father, you want us to understand what you're saying to us in the

Scriptures. And I'm so thankful, Father, that, Lord, your Word is enough,

Father, but all of these other study tools are helpful. But, Lord, your Spirit and your

Word are the Teacher's, Father. And we're so grateful, Lord, that you have promised to lead us and guide us into all truth,

Father. I pray that we would seek your face and your wisdom when we open the

Word, Father, that we would really have your

Spirit be our guide and our Teacher, Father. And I thank you, Lord, that even in the simplest ways,

Father, a five -year -old can understand the beauty of your Word, but that there's so much depth there,

Father, that even the most intelligent or grounded Bible scholar is still going to learn more and more and more.