Wrong Methods of Interpretation

2 Timothy 3:16 and the Inspiration of Scripture

2 Timothy 3 and 16 is a passage which we have looked at previously, but tonight specifically we're going to be talking about one particular section of this passage which relates to the subject for the evening.

But we'll go ahead and read it together. 2 Timothy 3, 16. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching. For reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

That particular passage has been used many times and pointed to many times to talk about the subject of the inspiration of the Bible. You all are familiar with that word, inspiration, because this series we have talked about the way that we got the Bible and we said the Bible is revelation from God and it's revelation that comes to us through inspiration, meaning that God inspired it to be written.

Oftentimes when we think about inspiration, we think about the authors themselves and people talk about Paul was inspired to write, or Peter was inspired to write, or so on. But the reality is the Bible doesn't say Paul was inspired, it doesn't say Peter was inspired.

It says what they wrote was inspired. That's the inspired thing. Not everything Paul ever wrote was Scripture. Not everything Paul ever said was Scripture. It is what he wrote that God superintended that we call the Scripture and when we talk about that word inspiration, I do think it's a word that's often used to confuse or can be confusing because when you think of inspiration today, we often think of things like when we see a beautiful sunrise or we hear a song and somebody says, well, I was inspired by that.

Or somebody gives a motivational speech and somebody says, well, I was inspired by that. But the word actually means God-breathed, which is why it's the King James Version that gives us the word inspired.

All Scripture comes by inspiration of God. But the ESV uses the more appropriate phrase, all Scripture is God-breathed or breathed out by God. Theonoustos is the Greek word and it means God-breathed.

The Fourfold Purpose of Scripture and the Need for Proper Interpretation

But the part that I want to look at tonight is actually following that where it says that the Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training. That fourfold use of the Bible.

To teach and to reprove, to correct and to train is the fourfold purpose of the Scripture. But to get those four things, to be able to have those four things be a reality, it is required that we have a proper understanding of the Bible.

I have had people try to correct me with the Bible with a wrong interpretation. I've had people try to teach the Bible with wrong interpretation. Have you ever sat under someone who was teaching a text and they were teaching it wrong?

Don't remember? I mean, I've sat in churches where it happened, but I could say, I remember one night many years ago, probably ten years ago now, where we were having an in-home Bible study at my house and we had invited some people over and I was talking about the prevalence of false teaching and false teachers.

And I said, at that time we had satellite TV. And satellite TV boasts like 5 ,000 channels. You know, you get like all the channels in the world. The problem is most of the channels are, you know, selling you something or it's most of the stuff you don't want.

And they have like 15 religious stations. You know, they've got the Catholic Network, they've got the CBN, they've got all these other, you know, TBN and all these different, these networks. And I said to the group, and I wasn't trying to be ugly or mean, I said, false teaching is so prevalent.

I said, at any time that we would want to in our home, because we have at that point, I think it was eight different stations. I said, at any time we can turn on the television and find someone who's teaching something and they're using the Bible incorrectly.

And so, to prove my point, I simply turned on the television and turned it to the first of the eight stations. The very first one we pulled up, the very first thing we heard was a horrific and awful biblical teaching.

When I say biblical teaching, it was a non-biblical teaching, but a guy was proclaiming what he was preaching. The preacher was one of the health and wealth gurus. He was arguing why he had a brand new black Maserati that he had just purchased, and how no one in the church should say anything to him for what he purchased, because he had just put $10 ,000 in the offering plate, and unless somebody could match his offering, they ought not say anything about his blessing.

And I said, well, that didn't take long to find absolute corruption coming from the mouth of someone who's supposed to be teaching the Bible. So, and my wife and I, we remember that to this day, because it was so obvious.

I mean, it just didn't take a minute to have someone just throwing out flagrant false teaching, and boastful false teaching. And so, when we talk about, and our subject for the last few weeks has been interpreting the Bible, we have to understand that to do what the Bible is supposed to do in our lives, to teach us, to reprove us, to correct us, and to train us, to do those things requires a proper understanding, a proper interpretation.

And so we've been dealing with interpretation, and we've been dealing with the subject of how do we interpret the Bible. We have said that the art, rather the science, and the spiritual practice, some could call it an art, but the science and spiritual practice of studying the Bible is called what?

Does anybody remember? Starts with an H? Hermeneutics, right? And what is the goal of hermeneutics? That starts with an E. This is the one you probably were going to say before. Exegesis. Yeah, okay. Yeah, you got it.

It wasn't quite on the tip of your tongue, but you knew. Okay. So, the art, or the science, and the spiritual practice of studying the Bible is hermeneutics. Hermeneutics simply means to understand the message.

And the goal of hermeneutics is proper exegesis, meaning that we're taking out of the text something that is there, not reading into it something that is not there. And I'll be honest with you, ministers are the worst, because every Sunday we are expected to get up and preach a message.

And what we should be doing is studying so we have something to give when we get up to the pulpit. We should be doing that. But sometimes ministers don't, and they get up to the pulpit, and so they start to just look for something to say, or pull out something, or push something in there that isn't there.

Or even sometimes when they do study, they have a hobby horse that they like to ride. And I've seen a lot of Reformed guys, and I are one, so I can talk about them. At least I'm a little R-Reformed. I'm a Reformed Baptist, which some people say that's not quite Reformed, but whatever.

I'm a little R-Reformed. I'm enough Reformed to be able to say this. I've seen a lot of guys that are so concerned about talking about predestination and election that every sermon they deal with is going to make its way back to predestination and election.

Just like a lot of Baptists, the sermon is going to make its way back to baptism or something. They've got a hobby horse that they want to ride. And so they push into the text something that isn't there.

And so the goal of Bible study, the goal of Bible interpretation, is to pull out of the text what's there. In fact, I was at a minister's meeting. I try to go once a month, but I don't normally get to go.

I usually only get to go once every couple months. But I meet with a group of pastors in town, and we have a coffee together, and we talk about our churches and pray for one another. And Shane over at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church across town puts it on, and he does a really good job, and I appreciate what he does.

And our last time I was there, we were talking about this. We were talking about how when we preach, we should only preach what's in the text. That we should not introduce ideas from outside or try to be creative or manipulative, but that we should be very, very limited to what we're doing in the text.

And if it's not in the text, we ought not preach it. And I believe that's true. I mean, when we're preaching exegetically, we're to preach what's in the text, not force other ideas into it. Certainly, there are places for what we call topical preaching or subject-based preaching, which is a little different.

But the subject, what we were talking about is verse-by-verse exposition and being very, very strict to not force into the text something that isn't there, but to pull out from the text what is there.

That is the goal of study. And I use this phrase sometimes. It's an old Latin phrase. And I've actually been told, I've been in an argument with a person one time who said this is wrong. But I'll tell you what I think.

And if somebody wants to argue that it's wrong, we can have this conversation later. But I say, when I come to a text, I want to come tabula rasa. Tabula rasa means a clean slate. It's an old Latin phrase.

And it simply means when I come, I don't want to come introducing my biases onto the text. I want to come introducing. Like I said, I'm Reformed, right? So when I come to a text that is, it might kind of rub me a little wrong on my, on some, when you talk about knocking somebody out of their tulip bulb, you know, Reformed theology.

If I get one of those passages, it makes me have to think a little bit about what I believe about those things. I ought not force my ideas into the text. But I ought to try to say, what is the text actually saying?

And be fair and be honest with it. And so that's the goal of biblical interpretation. And last week we talked about how to get there. How do we get to a proper interpretation of the Bible? And we said that the primary way, the primary methodology for biblical interpretation is to be bound to context.

Context will help us always in interpretation. And since I was given this beautiful board, I will write on it. So we said the principles of interpretation are first contextual interpretation. And then we had the other five, which are clarity, grammatical and historical methods, singularity of meaning, accommodation and divine illumination.

But I always point to this one first. Context is key. If we abandon the context of the passage, we can make it say or we can introduce anything we want to. This week, I always like to give you a heads up on what I'm preaching on Sunday.

By the way, did that work last week? Did I get you interested in what I was going to say? And did you come ready to hear what I had to say? We're going to do it again. This week, I'm preaching on 1 Corinthians chapter 7, where Paul talks about the subject of marriage, particularly the subject of sexual interaction in marriage.

And the question that begins, or rather the context of this whole section, verses 1 through I think 16 of chapter 7, is Paul says, now concerning what you wrote, I say to you this. Now concerning what you wrote.

Here's the fun part. We don't have what they wrote. We don't know if they asked a question or if they made a statement. We don't know if it's interrogative or declarative. We don't know what they wrote because we ain't got it.

We don't have a copy of what the Corinthians sent Paul. But we know that everything he writes in chapter 7 is in response to what they wrote to him. Because he says that. He says, now concerning what you wrote.

So what does that tell us? Oh, somebody honked the horn. I locked the door. Mike, would you just walk down and make sure I didn't lock somebody out? Thank you, thank you. So that lends itself to a very important contextual problem.

Because before we can start even trying to determine what Paul is saying in chapter 7, we first have to try to come to a conclusion about what is he responding to. And we don't know for certain, so we have to make some conjecture based upon his answer.

We have to make some determinations based upon what he's saying. They must have said this for him to respond in this way. Or they must be concerned about this. One of the things that was a huge problem in the first century Corinthian church was the subject of marriage and divorce.

A lot of the Corinthians had been in multiple marriages and multiple relationships and situations that had brought them to a state where, what do we do now? We're now Christians and divorce itself is not something that is good.

And yet many of us have been through that or whatever in this situation. So there's a context that has to be understood when we're reading. Was there anyone out there, brother? Okay, I'm sorry to send you out there.

I appreciate it. So all of that's going to play a part in how we understand 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Because, I'll be honest with you, the first verse, Paul says it's good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

And yet, is that a universal declaration? Or is that what they were saying and Paul's responding to it? Because Paul goes on to say that God actually has called men and women to have an intimate relationship.

And that they shouldn't hold themselves from one another because the body of the man belongs to his wife and the body of the wife belongs to her husband. And they have that relationship and it's not bad.

It's a good thing. It's good if a person can be single and Paul says that. Not everybody's gifted to that and singleness is a gift. Not everyone can do it. I know I couldn't. I mean, I wasn't built for that.

You know? And I think not a lot of people are in the sense of being able to live a completely celibate life. And Paul addresses that. He says it would be great if you could all be like me. And what he meant was he was celibate.

Not everybody can do that. Do you think the Roman church used that in part to establish the celibate priests?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I'm probably going to mention some of that in the message. I haven't pulled together all my notes yet. I'm still working everything out how I'm going to say it. But I do think a perversion of a misunderstanding of the celibacy statement of Paul was used to put forward the idea that the papacy and the priests and everything else should be celibate.

I haven't done all the research on it yet, so I don't want to make that statement absolutely. But it seems to me like it would almost have to be, there would have to be a connection there. And we have seen the horrors that have...

Back to interpretation. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think a lot of people come to 1 Corinthians and they don't even try to consider the fact that a lot of what Paul is doing is responding to things that have been said.

And if I respond to something and you don't know what I'm responding to, then you could twist my words every which way but loose.

Sure, you may sound like, well, if they were all like him and not having sex, then none of us would be here now or something.

Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of ways that texts can be misinterpreted, they can be misapplied, they can be twisted, and it almost always is done by ripping it from the context, by abandoning the background of the passage.

The Allegorical Method of Interpretation

Well, tonight we're going to look at the last part of this study, and that is the improper methods of interpretation. We've looked at the way that we should be doing it, looking at the context, using the grammatical historical method, understanding clarity of meaning, understanding all those things.

But tonight we're going to look at the improper methods of interpretation, and I have four that I have listed. There are certainly more than four, but there are definitely not less than four. And we've sort of touched on these over the last several weeks, but we haven't addressed them directly.

So tonight we're going to address directly the four, what we would call improper methods of interpretation. The first one is the allegorical method of interpretation. Allegorical method of interpretation.

Now, let me ask this before we even begin to talk about it as an improper method. Are there allegories in Scripture? Sure. Yeah, that's the—I mean, honestly, we could say that parables are a form of allegory.

Right? A parable—in fact, what is a parable? Does anybody want to take a stab at the definition?

With the characters that are in it, I can't remember exactly, but I know I've heard that definition before. Well, I've heard people give the definition,.

And it's an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Something like that, yeah. The actual definition of parable, it means to lay beside something. The word para is where we get, like, parallel, right? And the idea of laying a story beside something that is intended to parallel that thing.

When Jesus tells a story, it has a parallel to some spiritual truth. There's a parallel. There's also something called hyperbole. You ever heard of hyperbole? Somebody says, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse, right?

Or, yeah, I'm so thirsty I could drink all the water in the ocean, right? Somebody is using—they're laying something beside in a hyper way. That's called hyperbole. Well, to do so in a non-hyper way or trying to lay a—that's a parable.

There's hyperbole and parable. Parable is to simply lay aside, lay beside something that is intended to be an analogy. To be an analogy of something. When Jesus tells stories in the Scripture, like he says, there was a man who was going out to sow in his field.

And as he went along the path, he dropped some seeds along the path, and the birds came and ate those seeds. And then he dropped some along the rocky soil, and those sprung up, but they withered away quickly because they had no root.

And then he dropped some into the shallow soil, and it sprang up. I'm—I think I jumped past one. Which one did I—it was the rocky soil, the pathway, and the one with the weeds. Yeah, among the weeds, and it was choked out, and then it was the good soil.

And the good soil grew up and gave the harvest of, you know, 20, 50, and 100-fold, right? What is the parable? Well, this is one of the few times where Jesus gives an understanding because the disciples ask him in private, what does that mean?

And he gives the interpretation. He says, the seed is the word. And the pathway where the seeds were dropped and the birds coming, that's the person who hears the word, and Satan comes and snatches it away immediately.

And then there are those who are like the shallow soil, or the rocky soil, that when it falls in, it springs up for a time, but they fall away because they have no root, right? And then there are those who it springs—it tries to grow, but it's choked out by the cares of this world.

That's a person who hears the word, and they're encouraged to believe it, but the world drags them back out because they're so consumed with the world and worldly things. He said, but the one who is the good soil, the word of God, springs forth and bears a harvest.

Jesus tells us the meaning, right? He gives us the interpretation. But what is the story? The story is an allegory. It's intended to be an allegory. And like I said, is allegory bad? No. What's one of the greatest Christian works outside of the Bible?

The Pilgrim's Progress. What is the Pilgrim's Progress? It's an allegory. It was intended to be an allegory. Christians, you know, traveling on the path of redemption, right? And through all of the Vanity Fair and all the different places that he went through and the Slew of Despond and all these different places, it was intended to mimic or allegorize the Christian life.

So, allegory is not necessarily bad. Allegorical interpretation, though, is when the Bible is interpreted in such a way that everything has a double meaning. Everything has a meaning that's beyond what simply is said.

Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Everybody goes up to Jerusalem, right? And I've heard it said, Well, the reason for that is because Jerusalem was considered to be the most important place for the Jews. So, every place in the Bible that talks about Jerusalem, you're always going up to Jerusalem, whether you're south, north, west, or east.

It doesn't matter. You're always going up to Jerusalem. Yeah. Yeah. That's not necessarily allegory. That's just recognizing a pattern. However, some people can over-allegorize that, right? Can make it something that it's not.

What are some other places in the Bible that people tend to allegorize?

The first three chapters of Genesis. Absolutely.

The creation story. It cannot be simply God creates man. He then creates woman out of man's rib. He then takes those two, and He puts them in a garden, and He says to do everything here that you want except don't eat of this tree.

They decide to eat, and God decides He is going to punish them because of their sin and, of course, their posterity as a result, and that's how sin entered the world, and death through sin, and death spread to all men because all men sinned, right?

That's the simple message of Genesis 1, 2, and 3. What's the allegorized version? Well, people who say, well, I believe that God created the world billions of years ago, and over periods of time these things happened, and so I don't interpret Genesis 1 as being literally seven days.

I interpret it as periods of time, and so that becomes allegorizing, and Adam and Eve weren't real people. They represented the first thinking hominids who God had through the process of evolution brought to life, and so everything becomes an allegory.

I've told you guys the story of Jesus feeding the 5 ,000 and how the guy said, well, it wasn't that Jesus gave them five loaves and two fish and multiplied it, but He encouraged those who had to share with those who didn't have, and that's the miracle.

There was another one about the... Well, there was... yeah. There was another one, though, that I think R .C. Sproul tells a story about a pastor he heard preaching on Jesus turning water to wine. Did I mention this one?

About how he said that it was... He said Jesus didn't really turn water into wine. That's not what happened. What it was was that Jesus helped them understand that wine is better than water, or water is better than wine.

That's what He did. Jesus didn't do the miracle of turning water into wine. What Jesus did was He took a group of drunks who were drunk, and He gave them water and helped them to realize that water is better than wine.

But that's the allegorical interpretation, right? We're going to take the text, and we're going to make it say something it doesn't say because it satisfies our desire for it to not say what it says.

Yes, I heard one that Jesus walked on water, but a real bad freeze had come in that... Yeah, now that...

It was chunks of ice that was falling. And that's almost the same as the one I told about the Sea of Reeds. Remember? The Red Sea wasn't really where they crossed. They crossed the Sea of Reeds, and that time of year, the Sea of Reeds is only about an inch deep.

And so when they walked across, it wasn't that big of a deal. I've also heard that the way that the water split when Moses rose his arm was a meteor hit the river. And the meteor hit the river, and that separated the water.

The only problem with that is if you read the story in Genesis, or rather Exodus, of this departing of the sea, it says the water stood as a heap on both sides. And there's one thing water doesn't do.

It doesn't stand. If you pour water on that table, it's not going to stand up as you pour. It's going to pour out. And even if you hit it with a rock, and it splashes out, it's immediately going to come back if there's a slope.

The water doesn't stand up as a heap. Yeah, they walked across on dry land. And it wasn't the only time that it happened. Remember, the water parted again when they crossed over the Jordan. So there's so much in the text that in our desire to either rob the Bible of the miraculous, satisfy our scientific pursuits, or sometimes to make it apply to us, when it doesn't always necessarily directly apply to us, we over-allegorize the text.

And that last one, I think, is probably the one that I hear a lot. And it often begins, you know, well, how does this apply? What does this mean to you? And somebody says, well, what it means to me is this, because in some way I can allegorize it to point to my life.

You know, Jesus was 33 when he went to the cross, and this is my 33rd birthday. This is going to be my cross to bear. And you think I'm being silly. That's the kind of allegorizing that people do to apply something to themselves that had nothing to do with their 33rd birthday.

It has nothing to do with that at all. So allegorizing for an interpretation. I'm going to read my notes real quick. It says, this method of interpretation was rejected by all the reformers. Luther called it a scourge.

Calvin called it satanic. Those holding to the principles of the Reformation generally regard this method of interpretation as undermining the power and impact of the literal word. And so that is, you know, that's something that we need to consider.

Again, that doesn't mean that when we read the Bible, it says the trees clap their hands, that we believe trees have hands. Obviously, there are places where allegory is used in Scripture. Obviously, there's places where certain texts of the Bible use simile, metaphor, things like Jesus says, I am the door.

It doesn't mean he has hinges, you know. I know that's silly, but, you know, you can stretch certain things to a crass literalism that takes an extreme. This is my body. Yes, and that's a good point. Rome has made a true argument for this is my body.

When I say they made a true argument, they've made an argument for truth that that's Jesus meant literally that this is my body. And I say he couldn't at that moment because his body was still there. He wasn't consumed.

Yeah, he was there, and yet he said this is my body. That is a time where Jesus is using the language of, and I'm not even sure that allegory is the right word. He's using the language of this is my body in the same way that we are his body.

There's a connection here. It's not the physical connection. There's a spiritual reality in the bread and the wine. In fact, that's a, I don't want to get too far off on a tangent, but there are more than two views of the Lord's table.

Most people are only familiar with Rome's view and what has become the typical Protestant view, and that is that Rome believes that you have the body and blood of Jesus, and it becomes his body and blood when the priest sanctifies it.

And at that moment of consecration, Jesus' sacrifice is made again for sins. There is a transubstantiation which occurs, which causes a representation of the sacrifice of Christ on the altar for sin. That's the doctrine of transubstantiation in a nutshell.

And then the other view is typically known as the memorial view, which is that the bread and the wine simply are memorializing the body and blood of Christ. Well, between those two extremes, one is saying it's absolutely Jesus' body and blood and he's being sacrificed again, and the other, which is saying it's simply a memorial to his body and blood that were sacrificed on the cross, there are two other particularly different views.

Luther believed that it was the body and blood of Jesus, literally, but that it was not a sacrifice. It was not a perpetuatory sacrifice. Thus, his view became known as consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation.

Luther didn't call it that, but his followers would call it that. We one time, years ago, we had some people who came and joined our church who had come from a Lutheran church, and you guys would know if I could remember their name, I would say it, but I can't for the life of me think of their names.

But I remember the man, because he would go and serve communion when we'd have communion, and he would say, this is the body of Christ when he would hand it to people. He did it here. This was before my time as pastor, but I remember that particular, because he had a Lutheran background.

That was his, that was how he had always done it. And so he would say, this is the body of Christ. This is the blood of Christ. And that's how he would give it when he was handing out the elements. So that's the Lutheran view.

Taking a literal but not transubstantiatory view of that. The Calvinistic view or typical reform view is what is known as spiritual presence. That the physical elements do not change, but that they do undergo a spiritual imbibing, if you will, or a spiritual, there's a spiritual presence of Christ in the bread and in the cup.

So when you are participating in communion, there is a spiritual union that's happening with you in Christ through the partaking of the bread and the cup. That is typically known as the Calvinistic view, usually believed by Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists.

I tend to lean more toward the memorial view than that, but I don't have a problem with the spiritual presence view. I see merit in both. The reason why I would hold to the memorial view is the words of Jesus where he said specifically, do this in remembrance of me.

And so there is wording of memorial in his language. However, if somebody said, well, I believe there's a spiritual union happening here when I take this, I wouldn't argue and say, no, I don't. So I think the Calvinistic view and the memorial view is held by Ulrich Zwingli, the other Swiss reformer.

And Ulrich Zwingli and Luther absolutely divided over that. They came together at the Marlboro College. I can never pronounce it. I always say Marlboro. It wasn't the Marlboro. That's the cigarette. No, it's the Marlboro Colloquy.

And they gathered for 15 points of doctrine. They agreed on 14. But the 15th one that they couldn't agree on was whether or not Christ was physically present in the bread and the cup. Luther said he was.

Zwingli said he wasn't. And they divided so, so harshly. Luther said some really terrible things about him over that one point of doctrine. Luther was not a man who minced his words when it came to people with whom he disagreed.

But that is an issue, though. One could say, well, are we taking an allegorical approach? I don't think we are because Jesus himself said, do this in remembrance of me. We are taking the word remembrance and using it, understanding it that way.

And when someone says, well, Jesus said, unless you eat of my body and drink of my blood, you have no place with me. He said that to a group of people. That was actually said in Caesarea Philippi. He's preaching to a group of people.

And he says it. And they respond by leaving because it was such a hard thing to understand. I do not think that Jesus was talking about the physical bread and physical cup of the communion table because that had not yet been instituted.

It would be a long time after that that would be instituted. Jesus was talking about faith in him, which comes from receiving him fully. And he used the expression of eating my body and drinking my blood so as to understand.

And there were times that Jesus did say things that divided the wheat and the chaff when he said them. In fact, going back to the subject of parables, what did Jesus say about parables? I speak in parables so that seeing they cannot see and hearing they will not understand.

There were times when parables were not intended to do anything but to confuse the unbeliever. People would say, why would Jesus do that? Because not everyone who was listening to him were his sheep. My sheep hear my voice.

Devotional Interpretation and Lucky Dipping

They know me and they will follow me. Absolutely. So allegorical interpretation. I've got to run through the last three because I've spent a lot of time on that one. Devotional interpretation. Devotional interpretation.

Well, what is that? Devotional interpretation emphasizes the edifying aspects of Scripture in their interpretation with the goal of developing one's spiritual life. This method often advocates the reading of Scriptures as a means to obtaining some type of mystical experience.

The Bible is a useful tool in devotion and prayer. It's not meant to be studied. It's simply meant to be read and find yourself in it. Devotional interpretation is often done when people are not reading the Bible to know what it means.

They're reading the Bible to find some type of direction or some type of personal insight. Again, the whole thing about going up to Jerusalem. Someone might be wondering, well, should I go to get the job in Georgia or should I go to get the job in Miami?

I'm going to open the Bible. Oh, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Well, Georgia's north. That's up from here. So I guess that means I should go up to Jerusalem. I should go up to... And again, it's not the same exactly as allegorical interpretation, but you can see there's some bleed over there.

The actual thing, I do see this in a lot of devotional books. I'm not a big fan of devotional books. I think the Bible's the best devotional book, but there are some that are helpful. If it encourages you to study, that's good.

But some devotional books simply have a Bible verse and then a story that goes with the verse. And it doesn't seek to at all understand what the verse is saying. It simply uses the verse as a springboard to tell a story.

That's a devotional interpretation. It's not really concerned with knowing what the text means. It concerns with trying to use the text to explain something in your life or to get you going in a particular direction.

You ever heard, I think I've mentioned this, lucky dipping. We've talked about this before. Lucky dipping is when somebody says, I don't know what I need to do, so I'm going to open the Bible and point my finger at a verse and read it and do whatever it says.

You've heard the old joke about that. The guy opens the Bible, points at a verse, and it says Judas went out and hung himself. And he says, oh, I don't like that one. So he closes it open again, and he points it here.