Interpreting Difficult Passages

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. Steve Cooley, you�re one of my favorite people.

Thanks, I really appreciate that.

Personal Updates, Family Talk, and Food Preferences

Now the next thing you�re going to say is, �What do you want What�s that going to cost me? What am I supposed to do? We have this show, and it�s called No Compromise Radio. This is going into the ninth year, Steve, and we just got that email from that guy Don up in Maine.

He said he�s looking for a pastor and said, �You can always send Tuesday guy up. And you said to me that they could not afford you, and I thought that just meant, you know, you�re here 14 years and settled in and everything else, but that�s not what you meant.

What did you mean? Well, I sort of said what I meant, which was, you know, because I�d have to manage two households because my wife wouldn�t go with me to Maine.

So how many grandkids, and is there talk of more? How�s that all working?

Well, I guess you could say there�s about 6 .8, you know, right now, so one is coming up here in a couple months.

Is it true that in the Chinese culture that they measure birthdates by, you know, conception date because the baby, you know, is alive or something, not delivery date?

Don�t let the last name fool you, but I�m not Chinese. Okay. That�s nice. Do you like Korean food? Not at all. What�s that bimbap or something?

It�s a bimbap. Bimbabop. All I know is kimchi. That�s all I know. Oh, yeah. That�s good. You know what? I eat kimchi when I�m trying to lose weight. Not because it tastes bad, but just because it�s cabbage and hot sauce.

I eat kimchi when I�m bound and blindfolded, and my captors are jamming food in my mouth.

I met someone the other day, and they told me that they served in Korea, and I looked at the guy, and he�s probably 68, 70, and I thought, �You�re too young. Oh, in the Korean War. Yeah. But he went in, it was �69, and he went into the Vietnam conflict, but they sent him to Korea to be stationed, and he was glad for that, because his buddies were going to Saigon and Ho Chi Minh and these other places.

He gets the same place. Yeah, he should have been very glad. I know. So any theological craws, anything stuck in your theological craw these days? Let me see. Uh-huh. No, I don�t think so. Okay. My craw is clear.

Here I stand, I can do no other. Well we, just before the radio on air time, we�re talking about Hebrews chapter 6, so I think we should talk about that a little bit and how categories are important and maybe our background and how we come to such a passage, and maybe, Steve, the show can be how do you interpret difficult passages or what are some pointers when you go to passages that are hard or something like that?

With great care is the answer. That�s right.

Hebrews 6 and the Question of Losing Salvation

Well, let me just get is that your life application study Bible? It is. It�s my go-to. It is. Hebrews chapter 6 has a bunch of language that it seems maybe first blush, first time I ever read it, I think I thought to myself, �Steve, you can lose your salvation or I can lose my salvation.

This is a big, you know, red alert kind of passage.

Well, I mean, when you see something like, �And then fallen away right? Right. �And then have fallen away. That�s what the text says in verse 6. So yeah, it looks like they were and then they aren�t.

Uh-huh.

That�s right. When someone said for daylight savings time since in real time, this is November, I think 15th today. Last week we had to change our clocks and they posted Benny Hinn and they said, �Happy Benny Hinn Day.

It�s fall back day. Yeah. Everybody fall back. I know. Let me read Hebrews 6, 4 to 8, and then let�s talk about a little bit on the show. A couple days ago, we talked about Hebrews 6, 1 to 3, and let�s just frame this and talk more about Hebrews 6 and how to interpret difficult passages.

Verse 4,. �For it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt.

And that is Hebrews 6, 4 to 6. Now, Steve, we don�t have to on this show get into every one of those five kind of clauses on what they all mean and how they can�t be salvific or if they are salvific, but just big picture.

You come to a passage like that and people have questions, you know, how should I interpret this? Any pointers in no particular order on how to interpret tough passages?

Well, the first, I mean, the overall goal, right, is always to understand what the author intended. The best way, the initial way, is to really look at the immediate context, right, to see if you can discern anything from that, and then you kind of expand a little bit in terms of the context, and we were even talking before we went on the air, you know, you have to look at, I mean, Hebrews 6 cannot be understood apart from Hebrews 3 and Hebrews 4, right?

That's right. And what we were talking about specifically is we've had teachers before tell us, you know what, when you come to a Bible passage, don't be bringing in all kinds of cross-references to prove your point.

Let the passage speak for itself. And on one hand, I think that's really good advice, right? Let's take care of the passage first, then let's look at the analogy of faith, but let's not jam in the analogy of faith right at the beginning.

Let's just figure out the passage. So I don't have any problem with that, per se. Do you?

No. In fact, you know, I remember analogy of faith being the last kind of on the list. It was the last in order of importance. But it is important, and you know, one of the things I think that I find as I think I mature a little bit is when I come to passages, and I'm always like difficult passages, I'm like, well, what do other people say?

And here's the reason why that's important. Because if I come to some novel understanding of it, then I'm indubitably wrong. In other words, if I come up with something that no one's ever seen in, you know, 2 ,000 years of church history, then am I just more insightful than everybody else, or am I wrong, you know?

I think the answer is wrong.

R-O-N-G. Right? Okay. Okay. So those are two great points, and let's back up and look at the first point, and then let's look at the second. So you talked about context, and also what does the Christian, what has the Christian church taught over the centuries about this passage?

In other words, it's just not me and my Bible, because there are other people that the Lord has worked through with His Holy Spirit in church history and foundation of apostles and prophets, and you know, we're building upon that.

So let's talk about the context first. This is an easy one, Steve, in the sense that verse 1 of chapter 6 says, therefore.

Because that sort of connects everything.

That's right. And you know, we could argue that it's connected just to the prior warning passage, but I think what you said earlier is so important. If you are going to chapter 9 of Luke, I think you interpret 9 knowing 1 through 8.

The gospel of Jesus, according to Mark, if you're in any chapter, you should probably interpret it in light of verse 1 of chapter 1. This is good news about Jesus. This is not how to overcome ingrown toenails or something like that.

So Steve, Spurgeon said, some people think about their fingernails more than their soul. Yikes. Uh-huh. And I've had this problem with my toenail for two weeks now, and I can usually feel my heartbeat in my toe.

And I'm thinking about my toenail a lot. More than your soul? I'm hoping not. Okay. But I can see how that might happen. The other thing I thought about is, every member's important, right? First Corinthians 12.

And if your toe's... And it's a great reminder, right? You think, ah, it's only my toe, and then it's killing you all the time. I know.

So I think the best thing to do is think of context. And so there could be the chapter context, which would be important. And for me, Hebrews 6, verse 9, is really the main interpreter that I need to make sure I stay aware of.

Though we speak in this way, what way? Verses 1 to 8. Yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things. What are those better things? Things that belong to salvation. And I look at verses 1 to 8, and I think to myself, this can't be about salvation.

These might be things that are foundational to salvation. Good building block concepts, ABCs, grammar of salvation, but they can't be salvation because he just says in verse 9, those things weren't about salvation.

So to your point, Steve, that's immediate context of the chapter. But also, how about the book? What do we know about Jesus in the book of Hebrews? Specifically, people say, well, you can lose your salvation in this chapter, and so therefore you must be able to.

What else do we know about Jesus that would lend clarity to this concept?

Well, I think it's hard to believe that one could lose their salvation because it is Christ who obtained it for us and Christ who secures it for us. So that would be... You know, in other words, it's kind of the

I don't want to go immediately into cross-referencing, but, you know, can I jump out of the Father's hand? No. Can I wriggle somehow out of the control of Christ? No. So, I mean, these are theological concepts, but I think even if you back up into Hebrews, what makes Jesus better than all, you know, than the angels, better than Moses, better than Aaron, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

What makes Him better than all these people? Right.

That's exactly right. And I think there's a place for John 10, security of Christ's sheep, or Romans chapter 8, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. If you come to me in no ways, I'll cast you out.

Is that John 6? I'm thinking it's John 6. Yeah, it is John 6, yeah. So that's fine to do because there's one author, the Holy Spirit, he's written all the Bible and he's not going to contradict himself.

You either can lose your salvation or you can't. I mean, there can't be a middle ground. But what you said earlier is so important. If you just read Hebrews 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, you'll see things about Jesus that would reinforce the fact what Jesus does, He does well.

And when He purges sins and sets down, His job is done. That's in chapter 1 verse 3. And if you could lose your salvation and things were left up to you, I think you would have already lost your salvation.

I know I would have. For sure. I would have lost your salvation too. Thanks. As your federal head. I revoke that draft pitch. Steve, isn't that interesting how people will say, you know what, I don't like it that God picked Adam to be the federal head.

Because basically, what are they saying? God, you're not wise. And God, I would have done better than Adam.

Well, it's Garden of Eden time all over again. You know, it's the federal head, thou gavest me. I mean, this is blame shifting 101. That's not fair. Adam was a dope. I don't want him. Okay. All right, Mr. Mike, you think you can do better than knock yourself out?

So, back here to Hebrews chapter 6 and interpreting difficult passages, immediate context is important. And the context of the book is very important. Even back in chapter 4, we learn that we have verse 14, a great high priest.

That's present tense. And this high priest has passed through the heavens, not just through the Holy of Holies. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, both his humanity and his deity shown there, let us hold fast our confession.

And he is a great sympathizer. He's sinless, and we have confidence to go to the throne of grace, whether we sin or whether we have trials. And I think if you then did the analogy of faith and looked at the rest of the Bible, because the Spirit of God has written it, then we would have to come to this passage and say, I don't know what it's saying, but it's obvious in other passages, you can't lose your salvation.

So, I know what it can't mean, right? I know it cannot mean that I can lose my salvation.

Maybe you can do that, but I cannot do that. So, first thing we were talking about is context, and then the second thing we're talking about is what? Biblicism, and just kind of going to the passage, kind of not checking other references.

I guess maybe I could put it this way, Steve. Why do you read John Owen? Why do you read, you know, somebody new, like a James Boyce and his commentaries? Are there benefits to that? Why don't you just sit down with your Bible?

You have the Holy Spirit. You have the Scriptures. He illumines the Scriptures.

Why do you read anybody else? Well, I'm going to say something, I'm not going to call it dumb. Here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say it's basically ignoring God. God has given the church, it tells us in Ephesians 4 that Christ has given the gifts to the church, and specifically those are people, men, throughout the ages that have been gifted in terms of understanding and interpreting and preaching Scripture.

And now we're going to say, well, you know what? I don't really care what everybody else said. You don't? Well, that's interesting, because you are not just saying, I'm going to ignore those men. You're saying, I'm going to cover my ears to what God has revealed through these men for 2 ,000 years.

Steve, I don't think I'm very smart in terms of an IQ. I have, I think, you know, worldly wisdom, that is to say, I can navigate the world around me. But I automatically think to myself, there are many people who are much smarter than I am, and I'd like to know what they have said.

They've lived many years, they're more godly than I am, smarter than I am, and we have those resources, just, you know, we can click on something or pull out a book. Why would I not use those resources?

Arrogance? I mean, it really stuns me when I hear people say, well, I don't really care what, or they just say, well, you know what, that's old, or it's, you know, like the Word of God goes out of style, or new discoveries are more important than old ones, or, you know, whatever.

Steve, you know what? I think this is a good time to talk about the Internet. Here's the good part about the Internet. If you want to get the latest Louis Burkhoff book on assurance, it's not the latest, but his book, I think I paid 20 bucks for it and just read it, now you can get it on PDF for free.

Well, you can also get Kookville people for free too, and if you have an idea that Hebrews 6 means you can lose your salvation, or its rewards, or one of these other views, if you don't think it's professors don't really possess and they walk away, kind of 1 John 2, 19.

You can find your view on the Internet. I think maybe one of the things that seminary taught me that I've gained the most from my seminary education is who to read and what they're good at. In other words, and let's go back to John Owen, if you want something on the Holy Spirit, he would be good to read.

If you want something to counter Richard Baxter's view of Sola Fide, Volume 5 of Owen is who to read, right? And so what does Whitefield believe? What does Owen believe? What did Perkins believe? And then you can kind of peg them, okay, Anglican assurance of salvation, good, but sudden such wrong.

What do you think of that? Well, I think it's exactly right. I think what a lot of people will say is, you know, those are sinful men. You know, they'll start pointing to their flaws, you know, Whitefield owned slaves, you know, Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, yada, yada, yada, yada.

And all those criticisms may or may not be valid, but they kind of skirt the issue. How did they treat the text? That's, you know, when you go to read somebody, you know, you can't examine their foibles first.

Well, this man, you know, had impure thoughts on whatever date, okay, all right.

I know. Well, this is a little bit different, and it's a category change. But I guess, you know, people could have gone to Jesus and said, you know, I can't really trust the Torah because, you know, Moses, he wrote it.

That guy was a hothead. Remember when he struck the rock, I mean, come on.

I know, I know that, you know, Whitefield wasn't inspired by the Spirit of God, but Moses was, I get it. So, I think one of the best things you could do is if you read trustworthy publishers, that will help you because those publishers have boards, editorial boards, printing boards, managerial boards, and then they can pick out things that are obviously wrong and then not publish them.

In other words, self-publishers, whether that's a blog or a book or something like that, if I find somebody who's self-published and they say, well, Hebrews chapter 6, you don't understand, it's got a certain Semitic kind of Essene language, and here's what it really means, nobody else knows.

I know. I'm kind of wary about that. Did you self-publish? Yeah, I did. You knew I was going to ask that. I know. Vanity publishing. But I have a doctorate. I'm not even going there. Doctor, doctor. So we're talking about how to interpret passages that are difficult, and for me, the other thing that would be very important is if we just come to the passage and humbly say, Lord, I don't understand this, I think you want me to understand it, right, and we're not even talking about preaching it yet because you really have to understand it to preach it, but just the layperson, would you help me to understand the passage and see connections maybe that I'm not seeing, language that I don't understand, that doesn't make sense, you know, words that I don't see their connections from chapter and verses and other things connecting, and Lord, just help me understand.

I think that would be good. Holy Spirit, help me understand this passage.

Interpreting Hebrews 6 in Light of the Whole Bible

Well, and it is a difficult passage, right, and I think to just kind of underscore that, if you read it at first blush, you're going to come away thinking, it sure seems like, I mean, if you just ignored all the context and you didn't spend hours and you didn't do all your research and everything else, you would read it and come to the conclusion that people can lose their salvation, and there are texts like this, and I don't just mean of the sort that seem like you could lose your salvation, but difficult texts.

In fact, that's one of the things you do in a hermeneutics class is you take difficult passages and you write, you know, here are all the different views and here's the one I like and here's why, right?

And the reasons that you give are context, word study, you know, all these different things and you go through and, you know, like Matthew 16, 18, word study, the rock thing, you can go through all that, and ultimately you have to land on one view, and sometimes they're hard.

I mean, like here's my favorite one to give people is 1 Corinthians, what is it, so 1528 or 1529, the one about baptism for the dead, I always get 28, 29 mixed up, but whichever it is, I think there are like 30 different views on what that means, you know, so I mean, that's hardly one that you would, you know, just want to blow through and just go, okay, I fully understand it because you don't.

So I think whenever we're coming to a passage like that, it warrants spending extra time to be patient and to do what you're saying, to study, to pray, and to look at other resources before jumping to one conclusion or another.

Steve, what's helped me interpret chapter 6 is I've been preaching through 1 through 5, and so it's just this flow, and if we want to give what we think it means on No Compromise Radio, and we do, essentially he's writing to these Hebrews, and they're struggling, and some of them are tempted to go back to the old system of Judaism.

I mean, the temple's still up, every time he talks about the temple, it's present tense, so I think it's pre -70 AD. And essentially, he says, if you want to go back to Judaism, there's no hope for you.

It's like re-crucifying Jesus and putting Him to open shame. It's like you were there when Jesus was getting crucified, and you were saying, yes, crucify Him. And if you turn your back on God's only Son, who's the propitiation for people who believe in Him, there's no hope for you, and it's impossible for you to ever repent and believe and trust if you won't trust in this one.

I think that's what he's saying. It's pretty strong. And by the way, it says here, for it is impossible. So what does that happen? If you've ever turned your back on Jesus as a believer, if this text means you can never repent, then that means it's one and done.

Yeah, that there's no...yeah, one sin. And hasta la pasta. Hasta la pasta.

To have fallen away to restore them again to repentance. It's impossible, and I want to say the Greek has got impossible at the front to make sure you realize. This is impossible. But I think you could say to someone, you know all about Jesus, and you won't trust in Him.

It's impossible for you to be saved in any other way. Now that you know about Jesus, you basically are the one spitting on His face again and pulling out His beard and punching Him and crucifying Him again.

And there's definitely a hardness, right, that's associated with that. When you understand the truth of the gospel, when you understand who Jesus is and everything else, and then you still reject Him, when you understand that you can have forgiveness for all your sins and you say, no, thank you, well, there is a hardness of heart, a hardness of soul, you know, an impenitence that besets you, that steers you away from the gospel.

That's exactly right. This text does not say, if there's someone in your family who's not a Christian and they're struggling with, is Jesus real or not, and should they trust in Him, and they sometimes turn their back on Him, I don't think this text has anything to do with them.

This is, everything's laid out. You know everything you need to know about Judaism and Christianity, and you say, forget you, I'm not going to believe in Jesus, I'm turning my back on Jesus once and for all.

I've tasted, I've touched, I've felt, I've seen, I've done all this stuff, I've been around Christians enough, and the answer is no, I'll live my own way. Okay, the end, there's a way that leads to death.

I have decided to not follow Jesus.

Right. I have all the facts, there's no possible way. And if you die that way, then there are consequences to that. This is Mike Ebendroth with Steve Cooley here, Tuesday guy, although I think this is going to play tomorrow, Steve, so that will be the Friday guy.

Any Friday thoughts? It's going to be a shock for people, really. Try the tuna melt, that's my Friday thought. It's tuna fish Friday, that's right.

Closing Credits and Church Information

Okay, thank you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.