Sufficiency of Scripture

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:02

People don't have a high enough view of God, and they have too high of a view of man. And I think those who really have a right view of God will honor

01:10

God as well as his word, recognizing that that's how we grow, that's how we live. Jesus said to Satan himself, right, man shall not live on bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

01:21

Jesus Christ, when he said that to Satan, that was the ultimate example for us. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

01:36

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the

01:43

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:52

Well, welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, joined by, well, this isn't just The Wrap Report.

02:00

So I'm normally joined by Bud, and Bud is here also representing this time his own podcast.

02:07

So, Bud, before we introduce all the other voices, why don't you introduce yourself and your podcast, because there's some people who are on neither of our podcasts that may not know you.

02:17

Thank you, Andrew, for this opportunity. I am Bud. I am the host of The Bud's Own Podcast, and I'm also co -host of Truth For You with my pastor,

02:26

Dr. Andrew Smith. And we're kind of crashing from The Wrap Report podcast.

02:32

I should actually introduce myself then, too, right? I'm Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

02:37

Christian podcast community, and all the podcasts represented here are on the Christian podcast community, but we're crashing

02:43

Truth Be Known. So for my audience and, Bud, your audience,

02:48

Nathaniel and Eki, could you introduce yourselves, your podcast, to our audience? Yeah, so thanks,

02:54

Andrew, for having us on. Eki and I do the Truth Be Known podcast. It's a podcast where we deal with theological topics every week, and or sometimes we'll deal with hot topics as well.

03:05

We're not too shy about those things. And I'm Eki Tepspornshai. I work with Nathaniel. Nathaniel does all the planning of topics.

03:12

He does all the recording and editing, all the work. I just show up and run my mouth. Eki, how much time do you have to prepare for these episodes?

03:21

I mean, when do you know about the topic? Sometimes when I dial into the Zoom call, he'll tell me ahead of time, hey,

03:29

I thought we talked about this. Okay, and we'll hit record and just go. Yeah, let's talk to you. Brother, I feel your pain.

03:35

I feel your pain. When I'm organized, we have the topic sometimes weeks in advance, but I think that's only happened a few times in like a year or so.

03:48

What has the show notes a year in advance right now? I mean, we're going through a series of what we believe the doctrinal statement is striving for eternity.

03:56

We're basically doing a systematic theology. It's going to take us a year to get through. He shouldn't complain. He's got the show notes.

04:02

Yeah, I do have to say right now, it's pretty easy. It's not Saturday night or a

04:08

Friday night. Hey, we're going to record at eight in the morning, and here's what I want to talk about. I've got to scramble.

04:14

I'm somewhat lucid about it, but nevertheless. We decided we'd get together, each of us having podcasts, and just kind of get to know each other's audience and record together and be able to share the brilliance of Eki and Nathaniel, but you agree that's what this is going to be?

04:32

Absolutely, yes. Just figured I'd check. We talked about different topics. I said, let's deal with what

04:39

I think, and you guys didn't disagree with the topic, so I'm assuming you agree with me, of the two most problematic things in the church.

04:48

I've listened to your podcasts enough that I kind of thought you'd agree. What we want to cover today is two issues that are problematic in the church.

04:57

The sufficiency of scripture and hermeneutics. They kind of go together.

05:03

We have no show notes here, so Eki could feel like this is a regular show for him.

05:11

Oh yeah, we never have show notes. So I guess you're better warned this time,

05:19

Eki, because you at least knew the topics weeks in advance. So let me throw this out for each of us.

05:25

I'm being kind of bold, I guess, in saying that I think that the sufficiency of scripture is the biggest problem we have in the church.

05:33

I actually am doing a Twitter poll just to see. I gave four things that I think are the biggest problem in the church today, and the number one that I put for the poll was scripture not sufficient.

05:48

The second, social justice. Third, word of faith. Fourth, new apostolic reformation.

05:54

And I've been interested. I mean, granted, as of right now, I just took a look. It's like 80 % are agreeing with me that the sufficiency of scripture is the number one problem.

06:01

And what I think interesting with that is people who, in my opinion, who look at social justice, word of faith, new apostolic reformation, the problem with all of those three that I have is that the lack of sufficiency of scripture.

06:16

The problem with all three of those is they want to add to scripture because scripture is not enough.

06:22

Do you guys agree? I'll just toss it out. I guess I'll start with, Eki nodded his head, so I'm going to start with Eki.

06:30

What do you think? I mean, is this the major problem in the church? You think there's something greater than this? And if this is a problem, why do you think it's such a problem?

06:37

Well, yeah, I saw that poll as well, and I voted for sufficiency of scripture for the exact reason that you just said.

06:42

I looked at the other issues, all of them significant issues, but all of them at their root is a lack of sufficiency of scripture.

06:49

The social justice movement adds their own theology. They do twist and distort what's there as well.

06:57

The new apostolic reformation claims that there are apostles for today who have their own revelation from God. What was the third one that you had mentioned?

07:04

The word of faith and new apostolic reformation. Yeah, very, very similar. Yeah, so all of it, all of it very similar.

07:10

And it's invading the church, and this is how Satan gets into the and starts to convince people who call themselves

07:17

Christians that the Bible itself is not enough, and you need to have some additional knowledge.

07:23

And really, it gets to the point where it's not just that the Bible is not enough, but that these outside ideas that are being brought in, get brought to the level of scripture and sometimes even beyond to the point where you listen to people from each of these other movements, and you'll hear a lot more of their own ideas, which, by the way, often coincides with the world's ideas.

07:42

You'll hear a lot more of that than you will hear actual citations of scripture, and when you do hear citations of scripture, it's often taken out of context, and that's going to lead to the topic that we'll talk about later, hermeneutics.

07:53

Yeah, I mean, I think they are tied together. I think they're closely knit together, but I know that,

08:00

Nathaniel, your favorite thing to hear, right, is when someone comes to you and says, God has said to me, or God has spoken, right?

08:07

You love hearing that, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. And then right after, they open their

08:13

Bible and read a passage. That would be the biblical way for God to speak.

08:19

Yeah. Why do you think that this is such a danger in the church? I mean, that's a really simple question, right?

08:28

Why would it be a danger in a Christian church when you do things that aren't Christian? And opening up your

08:34

Bible and highlighting passages with a black magic marker is not the Christian thing to do. So, if you're adding to the text, you're taking away from the text.

08:43

I mean, you know, basically, it's a self -judgment against God. I mean, you're effectively saying,

08:49

God, I don't like what you wrote, and so I'm going to add my own spin against it. You know, I want to be a million miles away from that kind of thing.

08:57

Bud, your thoughts? I agree with both comments here, and I think the issue of sufficiency is born out of a lot of the trajectory that we've seen over the last number of decades with regards to church growth.

09:13

We've accommodated culture. We have sought to appease the masses to bring them in.

09:20

Well, that necessitates the need to compromise the gospel. My big thing is we've jettisoned any notion of the law of God, so you've kind of got a twisted gospel there that's really aberrant.

09:35

This speaks to a lack of faith in the Word of God. Sufficiency means we have faith that it is sufficient.

09:45

I mean, Peter has told us that. Now, we're warned by, you know, Paul and Colossians about philosophy and empty deceit.

09:54

This is where the church is now. It is consumed with a sort of worldly thinking, and it doesn't know that we have a book that actually provides everything we need.

10:06

So I agree with what these gentlemen have said. Yeah, and let me add to that when we talk about sufficiency, because every time there's always one or two people that get the definition of wrong, or at least it's inconsistent with what

10:20

I'm saying. When we say sufficiency, we're not saying that every aspect of our lives, the answer is in Scripture.

10:27

But what I do say is that it is sufficient for everything that it addresses. It is sufficient for the means to salvation.

10:35

It is sufficient for our sanctification. It doesn't mean that when you're sick, you don't go see a doctor. If you're sick, go see a doctor.

10:41

If you need medication, take some medication. You have a bad back, go see a chiropractor. Those are things that Scripture does not claim authority over.

10:50

We have access to people who can do that. We can use our own judgment on that. But when it comes to things that are actually addressed by Scripture, Scripture is the gold standard.

10:58

I always say, I have it in my book, What Do We Believe?, I say that Scripture is the standard for faith and practice.

11:05

It is the objective and absolute standard. There is nothing else we have to rely on. And what boggles my mind is when people sit there and say, well,

11:13

I need more. Wait, wait, stop. You have the Word of God, the creator of the universe, who just with his voice, with a word, could create out of nothing this entire universe.

11:30

And you go, it's not enough for me. I need more. Have you fully understood everything that the

11:38

Word of God has to say? No? Then there's no need for anything else. Why do we think that we need the words, the ideas, the thoughts of men compared to the

11:50

Word of God? I mean, just put that comparison, right? We have this comparison. You have God's Word and man's

11:56

Word. And I somehow think I need man's Word to complement God's Word because God's Word is not enough.

12:03

This is where I feel like R .C. Sproul saying, what's wrong with you people? People don't have a high enough view of God and they have too high of a view of man, right?

12:13

So some of this is the depravity of man and understanding the holiness of God. And I think those who really have a right view of God, or at least a more right view of God, will honor

12:23

God as well as his Word, recognizing that that's how we grow. That's how we live. Jesus said to Satan himself, right?

12:30

Man shall not live on bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And he was quoting Deuteronomy 8, verse 3,

12:36

I want to say. But Jesus Christ, when he said that to Satan, that was the ultimate example for us.

12:42

See, we're not God in human flesh, but we do have access to the Word of God. And we can use the

12:47

Word of God not only to be able to stand against temptations of the evil one, but also to just grow and to live and to spiritually become more like Christ.

12:57

Anyone else want to jump in? Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about this, and I'm thinking of recent surveys, and there's a lot of statistics out there.

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I mean, one of the primary issues, or the reasons, rather, we're having this issue is that people just don't know their

13:10

Bible, right? You can look at the stats of how much time Christians spend in their

13:16

Bible, and some of them are, you know, less than 10 % of believers spend any time regularly in their

13:21

Bible. So it really should be no surprise that we're fighting the battle of the sufficiency of Scripture, because people just don't know what's in Scripture, right?

13:30

And I would give a little pushback when we talk about people who we say sufficiency, and they say, well, what about cancer?

13:37

We get those. I think almost all of those are disingenuous, because no one believes that we're talking about—the

13:45

Church has never talked about the fact that you should—oh, let me take that back, because you mentioned the

13:51

NAR, and they do go to those kind of places, but in the healthy parts of the Church, we know that you aren't talking about if you need to change your tire, go to the

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Word of God, right? And so I think those are disingenuous things, but a lot of that, I think, stems from the fact that they just don't know what's in the

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Bible. So if you have cancer, yeah, you know, you need to go to a doctor if you want to get cancer treatment, but here's the reality.

14:15

Scripture still actually speaks to that issue, because there's more that a person deals with than just the physical ailment.

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For instance, how do you respond to people around you in the midst of dealing with the physical ailment?

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How are you viewing your life because you have this cancer, right? Are you angry at God? Are you angry at your relatives?

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Are you depressed? How do you view your situation in light of God's truth?

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And so even with those things, though the Bible doesn't speak to the medical treatment, it certainly does speak to how we deal with those issues, but people just don't know their

14:52

Bible. And so when I talk about the sufficiency, when people fight that, my mind instantly goes to, well,

14:59

I wonder how much time you actually spend in the Word at all, right? Does your

15:05

Bible have so much dust you can write a message on the front cover, and then you're going to tell me that it's not sufficient?

15:10

Well, of course you are, because you don't know what's on there. And so I think we want to encourage people to get in the

15:18

Word and get in the Bible. And then, of course, another thing is we have people that aren't really interested in Christianity.

15:28

We have tares mixed in with the wheat, and we've got those folks too, right? Do we still call those worldly Christians secular

15:37

Christians? I don't. I just call them secular, worldly. And so we've got to filter through all that too.

15:42

But I think our generation and in the foreseeable future, the sufficiency is the battle, because everything you mentioned at the beginning ultimately stems from that.

15:53

It's the reason a big part of the church believes in this chasing after signs, wonders, and miracles, because they don't believe the

15:59

Bible's enough. And so they need some emotional hyped up experience. The church is pushing for racial reconciliation, because they don't believe that we're truly reconciled at the cross, right?

16:12

With one another, first to God, and then with one another. I mean, all these feminism, right? Feminism is a problem in the church, because we don't believe in God's good design, which we're told in Scripture.

16:22

So everything comes back to that. Yeah, you know, something you said, Nathaniel, that I always ask when I'm evangelizing, because especially down south, where everybody's a

16:31

Christian, right? You go and share the gospel. Oh, I'm a Christian. Yeah, you know, you're drunk. You got two beers in your hand.

16:37

You can't stand straight, but you're, okay. But I always ask this question. I say, okay, let me, let me just ask you a question.

16:42

How many times a month have you cracked open your Bible? I mean, not counting when you're at church, if you're at church.

16:49

The most common answer I get is three or four times out of a month. And so I'll ask them,

16:55

I'll be like, okay, let me ask you a question. You get married, you go on your honeymoon, and you get back from your honeymoon, your spouse says to you, hey, you know, had a great time.

17:05

It was beautiful. Really felt emotional about all that, but I'm going to go back to my place.

17:10

I'll give you a call three or four times a month. And one lady's like, I would kill the guy.

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I said, I was like, why? Because I have no relationship with him. And then like with this one woman, soon as those words came out of her mouth, she realized exactly why

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I was asking the question and she stopped and stared at me. And I went, so what's that relationship you say you have with Christ?

17:32

I mean, if you're not praying to him, talking to him, if you're not hearing from him, reading the

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Bible, what kind of relationship would you have? I mean, all of us are married.

17:44

We've spent time getting to know our wives. Some people, as soon as they put that ring on, they stopped that study.

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Don't do that. Continue. But I still am trying to learn everything

17:57

I can about my wife. Why? Because I love her. How much more do I want to learn everything about my savior who did far more for me than my wife could ever do?

18:10

And then I'm going to go, oh no, I have to actually hear, I have to get a feeling from God or have a voice or a dream or something like that, because then it's going to count.

18:19

Yeah. The issue truly is, Nathaniel has nailed it, if you are inactive in the

18:25

Word, the Word will be more than insufficient for you. You have to know what the

18:32

Lord has said. That's an indictment on the modern church. It's also an indictment on the typical evangelical pulpit, because we're going to flash a verse up on the screen behind us, and then we're just going to launch off into whatever we want to talk about.

18:48

And that's more the norm than the exception. If the scripture in the pulpit is not a priority, why should we expect that it's going to be a priority in the pews?

18:59

And I mean, that's my experience. That's my observation. But yeah, if you're not engaged with the

19:05

Word, it's completely insufficient for you, because you're not using it. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of cultural influences here.

19:13

I mean, when we think about, well, first of all, I just think the evangelical movement, which I think has made the big mistake of just emphasizing the personal relationship we have with Christ at the expense of being a part of a healthy church, right?

19:25

And then on top of that, we have the seeker -sensitive movement, where we have people more and more trying to appeal to the world.

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And I didn't get a chance to watch that documentary on Hillsong Church, but I remember seeing a little snippet of that, or some sort of interview, and it was with Brian Houston talking to Stephen Furtick, and he was explaining the philosophy of ministry that went into Hillsong.

19:46

And he said that he was a businessman, and he imagined to himself, what would make me want to go to church as a businessman?

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And so he had this vision of what kind of church service he would want to be at, and that's what he made Hillsong into being.

19:59

So in other words, he turned the church into something that would appeal to the world. And even the worship music, they make worship music that sounds contemporary, that brings people into a certain state of mind.

20:11

So it's very worldly, it's trying to draw people in, and it's really allowing people to be satisfied with shallow platitudes of what we see in Scripture, rather than diving deep into what the

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Word really says. And it really goes back into what Paul had warned Timothy, that there's going to come a time where people are going to seek after teachers to tickle their own ears.

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And that's what we're dealing with, with the, I think, the vast majority of the evangelical churches in America.

20:36

Those pulpits, and the preachers behind the pulpits, are more interested in trying to make the people feel good about themselves than they are about opening up the

20:44

Word of God and saying, this is what the Word says. And so that's, it's a conviction that has to come from the

20:49

Word. It's also a trust that the Word has something to say. And it's also just a devotion to holiness, that we are not the world.

20:57

It's like what Martin Lloyd -Jones said, that when someone walks into your church, they should be able to see that there's a difference between your church and the rest of the world.

21:05

If your church looks like the world, they're going to walk in and they're going to ask, well, this looks no different than the world. This must not have anything different to offer.

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So we have to be holy and different, even if the world doesn't like it, but they will respect it, even if they don't say so.

21:17

That is so right on. And people may not know, I remember John Ankerberg explained that the way they, the

21:22

Willow Creek, which is the model that everyone wanted to copy for the church growth movement, because look at how they grew.

21:28

And he was actually praising the fact that what they did was go to the neighborhoods and they did a survey.

21:35

What do you not like about church? What do you like about church? And they created a church for unbelievers.

21:43

They created a model that would be appeasing to the unbeliever.

21:49

And then they were like, see, look how many people we have here. We have so many people, this must be a good thing.

21:55

But the numbers don't show that. I mean, how many people did, do we see in the

22:01

Old Testament? You know, Elisha, okay. Hey, there's, you know, it wasn't the majority.

22:07

It wasn't all these numbers. People, I think, make the mistake of thinking that the numbers prove

22:13

God's blessing. And that's not true. It's actually kind of the opposite of what God says.

22:18

We end up seeing though is that they went out and tried to create church to appease unbelievers, the goats.

22:25

And they wanted the goats to come in. And it's interesting because if you look at the history of that church, the scripture wasn't enough.

22:31

So they're going to do drama. They're going to make it entertaining. And on Wednesday night, they'll have the deep session where people learn the

22:37

Bible. And they realized no one's coming to Wednesday and no one on Sunday is growing because they're goats.

22:43

And they're too busy trying to feed goats instead of tending to sheep.

22:50

And I think that's really what we end up seeing. And all of the American church was like, oh, we got to mimic this, mimic this.

22:56

And when that failed, they're like, okay, what else can we do to get people in the pews?

23:02

Because that's what it becomes all about. And I think when you bring up the pulpit, that's the big issue is pastors.

23:10

And several of us here are pastors, but when we're preaching every week, what's the goal?

23:16

Is it so that we can get a big audience, that we can get new people in the church? Or is it that the people that are in the church are understanding the word of God and growing?

23:28

Paul Shirley has a book that he has out on sanctifying preaching, basically saying how expositional preaching done properly brings a sanctifying work to the person in the pew.

23:41

And that's the goal. The goal is not having a big church. The goal is the people in the pew are understanding the word of God so that they can live their life.

23:50

And I think that the big problem is many churches have missed that. Yeah, absolutely. I think of Ephesians 4 .11

23:57

when Paul talks about how Jesus Christ gave to the church apostles and prophets. And we were actually just talking about this a little bit before we hit the record button, but I don't think any of us here believe that there are active apostles and prophets for today.

24:11

Even if you want to argue that God could bring back prophets, I don't believe any of the prophets I've seen fit the biblical model.

24:17

But I remember when I went through that passage, I stopped on those two words to try to explain to my church what was an apostle, what was a prophet, and why

24:24

I don't believe any of what we see today fits that same model. Well, at the same time, we've had a number of people, at least some people within the church, that maybe were not as used to expositional preaching, and they thought, well, you know, my preaching style feels more like a

24:39

Bible study rather than an actual sermon. And when I hit on that message, teaching about prophets and apostles,

24:47

I even said to the church, I said, look, I know some of you think that my preaching is more like a Bible study, and you prefer more preaching.

24:54

But the question is, are you learning this in your Bible study? And if you're not learning this in your Bible study, where are you going to learn it?

25:00

And I remember the moment I said that, I could see a number of people in the congregation actually wince, you know, like I got them, right?

25:08

But they appreciated it. And I think at that point, a number of them understood why I'm doing what

25:13

I'm doing. And you're absolutely right. I mean, people don't want to learn the Word of God, and you see that reflected in the fact that they only come on Sunday mornings, if they come at all, and they're not in Sunday school, they're not in the evening service, they're not in any kind of midweek service, they're not plugged into a

25:28

Bible study, you know, so or, or if they do any of those things, they do those things so sporadically, that it's of limited benefit.

25:35

So we as pastors, when we're behind the pulpit, we have to recognize that for whatever the reason, we're going to have the biggest audience at that time on Sunday morning service.

25:46

And so the time to make sure that you get the most important truths to them is right there on Sunday morning service, we still have an evening service, we still have

25:53

Sunday school, all those things are important to help solidify the faith, but I need to make sure that the entire church, if they're at no other place aside from the

26:00

Sunday morning service, that they're hearing the truth of God. Amen. You are preaching for the outcome, not the income.

26:07

That's right. Great way of putting it. I like that. Yeah. You know, I think that, you know, just the fact that we're having this conversation about what churches do and don't do takes us back to kind of anecdotal evidence that sufficiency is the problem.

26:22

And I say that because clearly, there are a lot of men behind pulpits who actually have no clue what the

26:28

Bible says about church. We don't even know ecclesiology, and we saw that in a big way, right, during all the

26:35

COVID stuff. But even that in itself is proof that sufficiency is an issue.

26:41

Now, I'm thinking of 1 Peter 5, where it says, "...shepherd the flock of God among you, exercise oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God."

26:50

Shepherd the flock of God among you, not shepherd the unbelievers that you can attract to you.

26:59

And I think we see a lot of that. And just as you say, guys who, you know, they start a church by thinking, well, you know, if I was going to go to a secular concert, what would

27:09

I like? Oh, let's do that in the church. Well, that's not the purpose and function of the church. You know, the church isn't for unbelievers.

27:18

And if you say that publicly, I mean, you will get people who will fight you tooth and nail.

27:25

Well, what about evangelism? Yes, we're supposed to do evangelism. I mean, Andrew, you're an evangelist. We're supposed to do evangelism.

27:31

But that is not what the church is for. The pastor's role is to equip the saints for the work of their ministry.

27:39

So then they go out and do the evangelistic stuff. And so the fact that we don't know this, right, just demonstrates that sufficiency is such a huge problem.

27:52

And, you know, of course, when you break down, I don't think we're losing that battle, right? The church is not going to lose any of these battles in the end.

27:59

Christ has already won, but we certainly do have to fight them. And I think every generation has their own battles.

28:06

You know, you go back to the Chicago statement and the battle for inerrancy and all of that.

28:11

And I think for the most part, that's still one. Although I would argue that we're seeing that degraded, too, because it just kind of goes with sufficiency.

28:21

You have to come up with reasons why the Bible is not sufficient. And one of the things that I'm seeing more of is, well, it's not sufficient because it's not wholly accurate.

28:30

Well, what do you mean it's not wholly accurate? Well, Paul, that Paul guy, he wrote a lot of stuff that was just his own opinion.

28:37

He didn't really mean women can't be pastors. That was just Paul's own opinion. Right. And so, well, if you're going to eliminate

28:43

Paul, you're eliminating half minus one book of the New Testament. Yeah. Well, what kind of Christianity do you have left?

28:50

Don Green said it well at the Truth Matters conference, the real issue. He was encouraging the pastors.

28:58

He said, pastors, we must feed the sheep, not pet the goats.

29:05

Yeah. Yeah. And that's where we got to get away from the seeker sensitive because we, you know, and here's the thing.

29:12

Yeah. Do the work of the evangelist. And there's preachers and there are evangelists. And at the same time,

29:17

I know that every message that I give, they're going to hear the gospel, but that's going to be towards the end, just to support the idea that the entire book points to Christ.

29:26

So everyone's going to hear the gospel, but that's not the primary purpose of the sermon. It's to feed the sheep, which is the people who have already been saved through that gospel message.

29:35

And, you know, let me just throw in some practical results of that. Right. Right. When I saw my pragmatism.

29:40

But if a pastor focuses on equipping the saints, equipping the believers on Sunday morning, then guess what?

29:49

You're naturally going to see the effects of that. Right. As your people mature, as they grow, you're going to see people who want to go out and evangelize.

29:58

You're going to see people's gifts come to light and begin to flourish. I mean, just look at, you know, always think of John MacArthur's church.

30:05

Look how many ministries they have. I mean, they have ministries. It'd be easier to count how many ministries they don't have.

30:11

Right. And, you know, here's the thing. Why do they have so many ministries? Well, it's not because John MacArthur is some, you know, super,

30:22

I was almost at super apostle. He's clearly not that, but it's not that he's some super pastor.

30:30

Is that what you're going to say? Yeah. You know, why do they have so many? Because John MacArthur has taken the sufficiency of scripture seriously, and he's focused on equipping the saints.

30:41

And they regularly have people that come to the elders and, you know, you went to church or you can validate this, who regularly come and say, you know what?

30:50

I feel called really just God's put on my heart to do this feeding ministry. God's put on my heart to do this evangelistic ministry in this particular community.

30:59

And they say, great, you've been equipped. We're here. If you need anything, go and do it. And they have all these ministries that bloom from that.

31:05

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of that trellis in the vine approach. The body of Christ is going to have, you're going to have all kinds of different gifts, all kinds of different impulses and desires that the

31:15

Holy Spirit is putting into their heart. And as long as it's consistent with the scripture, that's really how healthy church ministries start.

31:21

They don't even need fog machines. No, no fog machines. Yeah. I mean, you just, because the fog machines just bring up a whole nother issue of church music and which reveals again, why we don't think scripture is sufficient, right?

31:39

I mean, we need to have something to heighten an emotional experience. Why? So that the word of God, the word of God is not enough to give us an emotional high when we think about we were wretched sinners, enemies of God.

31:55

He came to earth to die on a cross that we could have eternal life. That is not enough to get our emotional high.

32:02

If it's not, then either you're not saved or there's something wrong. If you could think about the verse second

32:10

Corinthians 5 21, he who knew no sin became sin that you may become the righteousness of God.

32:17

If that does not get you excited again, either you're not a Christian or there's something wrong with you.

32:23

I don't need a smoke machine. I don't need music. I don't need some emotionalism. The word of God should be sufficient to get me to be like in awe of who

32:34

God is. Yeah. I think another possibility to that is that a

32:39

Christian has only received shallow teaching. So they don't realize that there are depths to scripture that really should get your heart aflame over what the marvelous truth that we have in the word of God.

32:50

I mean, this is as pastors and people who study the word of God, you guys know this. We can look at a passage a hundred times and on a hundred first time, we see something that we didn't see before or we make a connection that we hadn't made before.

33:02

And it's all right there in scripture. It's nothing that's outside of scripture. I say this often about the charismatic and Pentecostal movement.

33:08

They spend a lot of time seeking all these emotions and experiences because they have never tasted the power of the word of God itself.

33:16

They have never tasted just how deep and how just marvelous. I mean, it is amazing how you can go through passages and sometimes

33:23

I just have to step back and take a breath because I cannot even believe that this level of wisdom can be found in a written piece of work.

33:31

But that just goes to show that the word of God, it is living and it is active. But yeah, the music today is a mirror of all these problems that we're talking about.

33:39

It is focused upon the emotional and not only that, but let's water down the words because if we make it too theological, then it's going to be harder to sing to.

33:47

It's not going to be as emotional. So let's make the words simplistic. And that's why we have a lot of these, what

33:54

John MacArthur likes to refer to as the 7 -11 lyrics, the same seven words, 11 times or something like that.

34:00

So you get these repetitive songs with music in the background and the words themselves, they might be fine.

34:06

They're not heretical, but when you just stay on the surface, you never really get to taste the true power.

34:12

It becomes a mantra is what that becomes. And, but, you know, I never thought about this until you said it, but it is so true is that within the charismatic movement, as they're so looking for that experiential, emotional type of worship, it actually reveals the shallowness of their theology and relationship with God.

34:32

The word God isn't enough for their relationship. They need some emotionalism rather than getting to know the

34:38

God. It's like saying, well, I, I really, I really like Trump. I mean, I just, he's wonderful.

34:43

I just, but I don't know him. Right. He could be a complete jerk in person. Well, actually everything

34:49

I've heard with Trump, he's a jerk online and really nice in person, but maybe I think he's a real jerk, but you get to be, you know, there's a difference between actually knowing somebody and knowing a lot about somebody.

35:03

And it's almost like the charismatics, they know a lot about Christ, but if you're not where this is true for anyone,

35:10

I guess, that doesn't really trust the sufficiency of scripture. They know a lot about God, but they don't know him deeply.

35:16

They don't drink deeply of that. Well, I love the illustration. I first heard it from MacArthur of taking a ball of beach ball in the pool and you put it under just like an inch and let it go.

35:27

And as kids, we've done this and you, it bubbles up just a little bit. And then you realize that if you go a little further, it pops up even more.

35:34

So your sister, brother, whoever friend will go to take the ball to the bottom and let go. And it flies out of the, out of the air.

35:40

Right. And that is really a good picture that MacArthur gives of the deeper we study our

35:46

Bible and our theology and know God, the higher our worship is going to be because we don't need the emotionalism and the songs and the fog machine to worship.

35:56

The more we study the Bible, the more in awe we're going to be and say, God, we are so unworthy and you are so worthy.

36:03

Amen. And this is, we're not portraying a straw man either, because I read a book from R .T.

36:09

Kendall and R .T. Kendall was the successor to Martin Lloyd Jones. And I don't really recommend him.

36:15

He's he calls himself both reformed and charismatic. And he wrote this book called Holy Fire.

36:20

And it was kind of an indirect response to strange fire back in the day. But even in that book, he makes the argument and he's trying to, he's trying to bridge the two sides together.

36:29

He's trying to make an argument for both the charismatic gifts, as well as understanding the truth of the word.

36:34

But he says on the one side, you have the reformed camp that really knows the word of God. And on the other side, you've got the charismatic camp that really don't know the word of God, but they, they get the emotional part of it.

36:45

So, I mean, even from his own mouth, you know, and, and forget his premise. I, the book was not very good, but even from his own mouth, as he's making his argument, he even concedes that the very side he's trying to defend, they don't know the word of God.

36:57

Yeah. So let me do this. We'll switch to the next, the next topic, but, you know, I know you guys don't have ads on your show, but we have a sponsor, so we have to throw a word in for our sponsors.

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38:55

So let's move to, I think that the two issues we're bringing up, one leads to the other. If people don't see a sufficiency of scripture, how is that going to affect the way they interpret scripture?

39:06

But you've been the most quiet, I'll let you start us off. I've been quiet? Oh, bummer.

39:11

I said the most quiet. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I think it's a situation where one feeds the other.

39:18

We've really been talking about the issue of what I would consider an overemphasis on pietism, an overemphasis on individualism, an overemphasis on the sort of devotionalism that the faith seems to be posited at the culture now.

39:36

That's what they see it as. Well, if it's really a subjective relationship that I'm supposed to have with Jesus or with God, then

39:44

I don't really need too much in the way of doctrinal preaching. I don't need too much in the way of theological education.

39:54

These things tend to make it more difficult for me as just sort of a nominal believer to feed my legalistic desire for religion, and we're all legalists at heart.

40:06

So the one does feed into the other, and I think that on the whole, now I'm not saying you guys, you guys stand in the pulpit and rightly handle the

40:14

Word of God, but on the whole, I think the church at large, what we see is a disregard for interpretation, unless that interpretation can be oriented towards something that's very pietistic, very subjective, very individualistic, and promotes this sort of devotional sense of the faith.

40:33

So that's my observation. You guys are the guys in the pulpit tomorrow morning when we're recording this anyway.

40:41

Yeah, I often think of three aspects of Scripture that I always want to uphold. One is the inerrancy, and the other is the sufficiency, and then the authority.

40:50

And really, we talked about the sufficiency, and when we talk about hermeneutics, that gets to the inerrancy.

40:55

And really, these three aspects of Scripture, I mean, they're all codependent, right? I mean, you take one out and you affect the other.

41:02

And so for those who believe that Scripture is sufficient, we also want to be sure that we are exercising proper hermeneutics, because there are some

41:10

Christians who will say, yeah, the Scripture is fully sufficient, but then they'll use the Scripture and twist and distort it to justify female preachers, for instance, right?

41:18

So it's all about hermeneutics, and this is where expository preaching really shines, is that it puts good hermeneutics on display.

41:27

So there's a lot of people that may preach verse by verse, but verse by verse preaching by itself is not expository preaching.

41:34

Expository preaching is preaching in context and bringing out in context the meaning of statements, the locations, events that are going on, the agenda of the writer, why the writer decided to include that event at that point, and how it supports the entire purpose of the book.

41:49

And hermeneutics also takes certain presumptions to the Bible that the Bible is perfect, that it does not contradict, right?

41:57

That it is sufficient, that what it says is everything that we need. So hermeneutics takes all those into account.

42:03

And when taught in context, and we can't emphasize the context part enough, right? I mean, if someone were to ask, well, what's the most important law of hermeneutics?

42:11

You know, the first three laws are context, context, context. So knowing the context, teaching it in context helps us to understand what it meant to them in that day.

42:20

And then from there, we can then extract the principles that apply to us today, and then figure out how we apply it to us, but not until we understand it in context to the original audience.

42:31

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things for me is in every message I preach, and I've said this for years,

42:37

I will teach hermeneutics, whether directly or indirectly. I mean, sometimes I will say things like, we see the therefore, okay, that's there for a reason.

42:46

So I may explain the word therefore, or but, that gives a contrast. Other times,

42:52

I'm just going to give some of the background. I may ask the question of, did you ever think, here you have the disciples, they're on a boat, and they're in a storm, and they're scared.

43:03

What were they thinking? That's the questions we need to think about, because you have four of those guys, at least four of them, that were experienced fishermen at that sea, where you have a mountain range all around you, and the storm's going to come over.

43:16

You're not going to see a storm because you're in the valley. They must be experienced at being at sea and being caught in storms.

43:23

Well, if they're caught in storms, often that way, they're going to be desensitized to that. If they're desensitized to that, and they're scared, does that change the type of storm this might be?

43:33

In fact, now we can look at the Greek and see that it's called a mega hurricane. It's a mega storm.

43:38

It's not just an average storm. It's a super storm. That might explain why these guys were freaking out, even the experienced fishermen, and Jesus was asleep.

43:47

Now you take that, and let's look at this, and it says it was a mega calm.

43:53

I mean, instantly, when Jesus says he speaks, it goes immediately. I mean, no ripples in the water. It goes immediately to a mega calm, flat.

44:01

Now do you see why those guys would be scared? Being in the center of a storm is nothing when you realize

44:06

God's in your boat. Right now, they're really scared. They'd rather be back in the storm.

44:12

You see, some of it might come about that way, where even in explaining the text, I want people to think their way through that, and I might walk them through that.

44:22

That's not original with me. Actually, it took me many years of listening to John MacArthur. If you don't know the key to John MacArthur's preaching, here's what it is.

44:30

Two keys. One, he uses illustrations from the Old Testament. So he illustrates what he wants to say in the

44:36

New Testament by sticking in the Bible, so you learn the Bible more. Instead of an illustration of some football team, he's going back to the

44:43

Bible, so you're always getting Bible. The other thing that he ends up doing that's really, I noticed it many years after, and I didn't even realize it was happening until one day

44:53

I heard him in an interview say something that made me realize, he walks you through the thinking of the text.

45:00

It could mean this. It could mean this. It could mean this. He'll explain why, well, if it means this, here's the problems with it.

45:07

If it means this, there's a problem. He walks you through it to the point when you end up realizing, well, it must mean this, because he's actually walked you through the process of the hermeneutics so that you realize this is the only option it can be.

45:22

Then he says it, and you're like, oh, John MacArthur agrees with me. No, you're agreeing with him. He just walked you down that path.

45:28

You didn't even notice it. I think that's the brilliance of his preaching, is he's preaching hermeneutics.

45:34

A lot of people don't pick up on that, and a lot of pastors don't do that, because I think the major problem with the church today is people preach application.

45:43

Because like Bud said, everything's so devotional, they think it's all application, application, application.

45:49

Well, what good is that application if it doesn't apply to me? Nothing. But give me the interpretation, and the

45:54

Holy Spirit could do the Holy Spirit's job, which is to illuminate the scripture to my mind and apply it.

46:00

So give me the interpretation and let the Holy Spirit do what he does best, and he'll apply that right interpretation to my life.

46:07

Yeah, he focuses on implication rather than application. Implication should be universal.

46:13

There should be principles that everyone can take, and then from there, take it to the next step and figure out what the direct applications are.

46:21

Yeah, and we're talking about hermeneutics, and I was just thinking about guys out there, they're like, hermeneutics?

46:27

I mean, clearly, by now, people should pick up on we're talking about how you interpret the Bible, right? But I mean, really, if someone were to ask the question, okay, well, you're talking about this, and how important is it?

46:39

How do I start to do that? We could simplify it and just say, look, you want to read the Bible in the same manner you would read any other book.

46:47

You want to pay attention to the genre. You want to ask the questions, who, what, where, when, and why. You want to consider the context in all those questions.

46:55

If you do those things, then you're going to be reading the Bible better than the vast majority of people currently, right?

47:02

And so you aren't cherry -picking passages. You're looking up references. I mean, in today's world, especially if you live in the

47:09

West, right? If you live in the West, there's no good reason at all that you can't do just excellent study on passages with all the tools that we have online now.

47:20

I mean, we've got Logos and BibleHub and all these different things that you can use.

47:26

And you're right. Pastors should be, in my opinion, helping people learn how to—I mean, that's part of what you're doing on Sunday.

47:34

You're helping people learn how to read and understand the passages, right? And I think expositional preaching naturally does do that because, like you said, it's more than just preaching verse by verse.

47:44

And these two things are tied together. The sufficiency of Scripture and hermeneutics. I'm not sure what direction they go in, right?

47:52

But if people start with the premise that God's Word is not enough,

47:57

I just automatically assume it's because they aren't in the Bible much anyway. And if they are in the

48:03

Bible much, which would surprise me, and they think it's not sufficient, well, then you see hermeneutical issues generally.

48:10

And in fact, in every case, Paul didn't really mean this. He meant that. Now, that could be true if you're talking about proper context.

48:19

For instance, the Apostle Paul wasn't saying everyone should be celibate. Well, why do we know that?

48:24

Well, because you go back and God's given man a general command, right? Be fruitful, multiply.

48:32

And yet, we understand that some people will be celibate. So we don't pick those passages apart like that.

48:37

We've talked a lot about the problems, but I would like to also encourage people. They're like, well, maybe I haven't taken the

48:44

Bible as seriously as I ought to. Maybe we certainly don't want to discourage those people.

48:50

We don't want those people to feel like, oh, well, maybe I'm the goat. Because maturity comes in all ranges.

49:00

And so for those people, I think the first and foremost thing we probably all agree on is if that's you, make sure you're in a solid

49:08

Bible -believing, Bible -teaching church. If you're in Joel Osteen's church or any of these other guys where you get 15 -minute sermonettes for Christianettes, go find a real church because you're not going to grow if you're singing songs about fire falling down from heaven.

49:26

And that's the verse you sing 18 times. By the way, anytime fire fell down from heaven, it was never good.

49:32

Just going to throw that out there. But again, we joke about the worship and we talk about the importance of that, but that is a sufficiency issue, right?

49:40

Why? Because they don't know that the Bible actually tells us how we are to worship

49:46

God. We don't even talk about terms like the regulative principle versus the normative principle of worship anymore.

49:53

People are like, what is that? We're fighting about fog machines or organs, or modern music versus choir style.

50:02

But those are all sufficiency issues, right? When we come to worship, we sing first and foremost.

50:10

If we understand our Bibles, we ought to understand that we come to worship not for you anyway. Worship isn't about you.

50:16

Worship isn't about your feelings. It's not about leaving, being lifted up, or feeling better. Those may be results of the worship.

50:25

But if you know your Bible, then you understand worship. Well, it's worship. You are worshiping someone and that's not yourself.

50:33

You're going to worship God. And when you go with that attitude, it changes what kind of lyrics you want to sing.

50:39

It changes what kind of music you want to listen to that you want to sing to. It changes the way you do it.

50:46

I mean, it's supposed to be a holy event, right? It is. It's a called out assembly.

50:51

It's a holy event. But you don't know any of that if you don't know what's in the

50:57

Bible, right? And so these are just some of the issues. And then if you don't know how to read your Bible, by the way, we should tell people that there are several different hermeneutics, right?

51:07

There's the feminist hermeneutic. There's all sorts of hermeneutics. There's the redemptive historical.

51:14

And there's the grammatical historical. We have all these different hermeneutics. And maybe one of you guys can speak to which ones we want to look at if people are like, well,

51:24

I want to learn more. Where do we go to do that? But basically, we want to read the Bible and ask the questions that you guys have mentioned.

51:33

Who's the author written this to? Why is he written it? What were they understanding when he wrote it, right?

51:40

And all those things are applicable to us. Because Paul didn't write something to the church in Ephesus and mean something different for them than for us when we read it today.

51:51

The application might be different, but the meaning is the same. And the author determines the meaning, not our culture.

51:58

No, you're right there. And one of the things I've always said when I, and for resources, you said resources at Striving Fraternity, we have an academy,

52:05

Striving Fraternity Academy, just go to strivingfraternity .org. And we have a course of 20 lessons on how to interpret the

52:11

Bible. It's biblical hermeneutics. And what I do throughout this, I keep saying that there's two ways to interpret your

52:17

Bible. And regardless, like you're saying the different ways of hermeneutics, the different hermeneutics, but there's two ways to interpret the

52:24

Bible. You're either going to do it rule -based. You're going to follow the rules of hermeneutics, or it's going to be some personal reason, personal preference.

52:32

And years ago, that personal preference was, and sometimes still is the theological system I hold to.

52:38

So I look at the Bible, I look at my theological system, and I say, well, this must mean this because my theological system says this.

52:45

And so what's driving which, well, your theological system is driving your interpretation of scripture.

52:51

And that's not the way it should be. Your hermeneutics should drive your theology. Then we got into the charismatic phase where it's personal experience that drives scripture.

53:01

So what I experienced, like, I know this is true in scripture because this is what I experienced.

53:06

Well, you can either follow the rules or your experience. Now, either the rules are going to give you the interpretation and going to tell you what

53:13

God thinks about your experience, or you're going to let your experience tell God what he thinks he should be doing.

53:20

But again, it should be ruled following the rules. But in our generation, we have a new thing coming up that I see, and this is going to trigger you

53:27

I get that. But it's either you're going to follow the rules or you're going to let culture interpret scripture.

53:32

Either we are going to sit there and say, well, God says women shouldn't preach. Homosexuality is a sin.

53:39

Social justice is not biblical justice. We're going to say those things following the rules of interpretation, or we're going to let culture say, well, but love is love.

53:48

I mean, love conquers all. We should just love one another and just never get to what's proper definition of love, because the biblical definition of love is self -sacrificing, and you're defining love as it's all about me.

54:01

Complete opposite, right? But I see that as the major issue. Now, when we get into what are the rules, you're right.

54:07

There are different rules. I mean, you have more of a dispensational view. You have a covenantal view, and people often don't even get that those are two hermeneutical systems.

54:17

Dispensationalism is not an end times system. The premillennialism is a byproduct of that, but it is a hermeneutical system, just as reform theology, or we would call covenant theology, is a hermeneutical system, and they're following the rules of that.

54:33

And we could differ on those rules, but the strongest thing I feel too is we got to be following the rules rather than letting our theological system, our experience, or even worse nowadays, the culture define the scripture.

54:45

What drives it should be the rules, not the culture. Yeah. I mean, for instance, when you take feminist theology, you're starting with a feminist worldview, and you're reading that into the scriptures.

54:57

When you take standpoint epistemology, kind of this standpoint hermeneutic, where it's really about your emotions or experiences, well, now you're saying that your emotions or your experiences really define what the truth is, so you're going to read that into the scriptures.

55:09

When we talk about the rules of hermeneutics, what's amazing about this, because hermeneutics, the word itself sounds very technical.

55:16

It sounds like we're saying that you have to go to some mystical school to study up on all these lessons that you wouldn't have understood without it.

55:24

But really, when you step through those rules of hermeneutics, what you discover is that, oh, we're just applying common sense.

55:32

And the example I often give is for people in the workplace, like when they're sending an email to someone else, look, you send an email, it's an important email, it's an update about a project that's going on, you're going to a big meeting, and then someone else goes in there, and then misinterprets your words.

55:46

What are you going to do? Well, you're going to correct them. You're going to say, that's not what I wrote. That's not what I meant when I said this and this and this, look at it again.

55:53

So when you write something, even today, you expect it to be understood in a very specific way. It's not up to them for them to decide what it means.

56:01

It's really what they're trying to do is they're trying to read it so that they understand what you mean. And it's just like if you were to pull out an old letter, a love letter from your grandmother to your grandfather, you're going to understand who the author is, you're going to understand who the audience is, why those words were mentioned, you might even understand the historical times, the decade or the era that they were in and understand some of the references.

56:21

That's all we're doing. We're trying to understand what did the original author mean? How did the original audience understand it?

56:28

And what was God's purpose through it? And it can't mean something different today than what it meant back then.

56:35

And so I think the flavor of the day has been the standpoint hermeneutics, people interpreting according to their own emotions.

56:41

And that has been turned into kind of this racial or some ethnicity kind of based hermeneutics, where they say, well, we need to get the different interpretations from different people, from different aspects, from different walks of life.

56:55

And if you do that, well, who's the arbiter of truth? Because they're not all going to agree. And at what point do you know that you've received all the truth?

57:01

Because there's always going to be someone else that you haven't received it from. And it also presumes that people from, let's say, the

57:07

African -American community are all going to interpret it the same way, which is absolutely insulting. So the best and most surefire way to understand the scriptures is to read it, trying to understand what is it that God and the original author meant when he wrote what he wrote.

57:22

I would just say that I agree with that. A couple of resources I would encourage people if they're trying to figure out what is hermeneutics all about.

57:32

There is, I think Nathaniel mentioned the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. Well, there is also a

57:37

Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, which is very helpful in kind of outlining what this science of biblical interpretation is all about.

57:46

So that would be a good resource. Folks could go Google that, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics.

57:51

And then the other really gracious, helpful book that influenced me was

57:56

R .C. Sproul, which Andrew quoted earlier with his, what's wrong with you people quote.

58:02

R .C. Sproul wrote a wonderful little book called Knowing Scripture, and he kind of walks through some of these basic principles and helping people understand here's how we read it, which is consistent with what both you guys have already said.

58:14

So I would just encourage folks, those are a couple of resources that can give you a broader perspective on what is this science of interpretation.

58:22

If you want something really basic for this, Josiah Nichols has a book, and we sell it at Striving Fraternity as well.

58:29

It's a strange title, but it's When My Ox Scores My Neighbor. And you go, what in the world is that?

58:35

What he actually does, he takes that passage out of Exodus and walks you through all the steps of interpretation.

58:42

How do we take that text to an application for us today? And he does it in a very easy to read way.

58:48

And I say it's a great primer to starting this, but Roy B. Zuck is a guy who has a very easy to read book,

58:56

Basic Bible Interpretation. Yeah, great book. I recommend that because it is an easy to read one.

59:02

There's, I mean, you can get into Harmonical Spiral by Osborne and get real technical stuff. But Zuck's book,

59:07

Basic Bible Interpretation, is an easy to read. It's a little thicker than Josiah's, but you're never going to forget just the name of Josiah's book.

59:17

Because some of you are just going, yeah, I want to know what, how do I apply When My Scores My Neighbor to my life?

59:22

Well, go get the book and go to strivingfortory .org and order it. Yeah. And I think, you know, fundamentally people seem to just forget how to read when they pick up their

59:34

Bible, right? When you read poetry, people automatically read it generally the right way.

59:40

When you read history, people read that the correct way. When you pick up the newspaper, OK, that's a bad example because it's all lies these days.

59:47

No one knows how to read that anymore. But, you know, when you pick up a science magazine, you know how to, OK, well, that's another bad example.

59:54

What's real science these days? But you get my point, right? And when people pick up the Bible, it's almost like they forget all of that.

01:00:01

Although I will say I think a lot of it is just lack of education that's come from churches.

01:00:06

People may not realize that the various books in the Bible are comprised of different genres, right?

01:00:12

We have history. We do have poetry. There are metaphors and, you know, all this different colorful language.

01:00:18

There's prophecy. And when you get to those books, you need to know which books you're reading.

01:00:24

For instance, we have an entire segment of the church that gets the vast majority of their theology incorrect because they don't realize the

01:00:33

Book of Acts is a history book predominantly, right? The Acts of the

01:00:38

Apostles. Most people don't even realize that. If you read the Book of Acts as an account of the historical records of the

01:00:46

Acts of the Apostle, well, guess what? It all of a sudden changes how you view and understand what's there.

01:00:53

You're no longer trying to recreate something that you've read. You're rather trying to understand what its purpose and function was, just as an example.

01:01:02

And so just people absolutely get those materials. I think they're good. Every Christian who wants to take their faith seriously should be trying to grow in these areas.

01:01:12

You don't need to go to seminary for any of this. But, you know, pick up your Bible, know that you're reading different genres, and ask those questions, who, what, where, when, and why.

01:01:20

Very simplistic, right? I think you guys would agree, if you really actually took the time to ask and answer those questions as simple as they would, your

01:01:31

Bible study would be far, far deeper than what we find in a lot of places today, even in what we find in a lot of pulpits sadly.

01:01:40

Yeah, you're right. You know, I mean, at Striving Fraternity, I end up doing weekend seminars.

01:01:45

I come into churches and we have a seminar called Bible Interpretation Made Easy. There's two outcomes from that. One, people who aren't really studying the

01:01:53

Bible learn, I can do this. That's one effect of it. The other effect is people say, to do this really well and right takes a lot of work.

01:02:03

And they go, wait, this is what my pastor does every week. So there's two results to that.

01:02:09

One, people start to realize, I can do this. A second is, my pastor, I got to start praying for him and appreciating him more.

01:02:16

But to what you said, Nathaniel, is I would go on the streets in New York and we had a guy who used to work at Striving Fraternity.

01:02:23

He had just gotten saved. He was in Word of Faith and he would come out to Union Square and hear me do open air evangelism.

01:02:31

And I'd get challenges from all these different people. Bible says this, the Bible says that, and I'll say, where does it say that?

01:02:36

And they'll give me a verse. And all I would do is if they're giving me verse 17, I back up to verse one.

01:02:42

And I would just start reading the context. I haven't had a chance to study it. I don't have my Logos software with me.

01:02:47

So what I do, I read the context. By the time we get to verse 17, everybody in the crowd realizes what the guy said doesn't fit the context.

01:02:53

I don't even have to say it. This guy ended up going to church and started applying that very same thing in his Word of Faith church and went, oh, this isn't biblical.

01:03:01

And he goes, I learned. So he went from there to a charismatic church to a reformed Baptist church.

01:03:06

He's like, I learned my theology from some crazy street preacher. Like that's all it took for me to learn how to read the

01:03:12

Bible. And that's really, it is that easy. Read, don't read a Bible verse. Yeah.

01:03:17

I was just at a, I was at a baccalaureate event. I was one of the speakers and one of the speakers that came before me quoted

01:03:23

Philippians 4 .13. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And of course, you know, that verse is one of the most popular verses to take out of context because even if you just look at the immediate context, starting from verse 10, you know that what

01:03:36

Paul is talking about is God's sovereignty over his circumstances, right? And learning the secret to being content there.

01:03:42

But even if you expand that out to the entire letter, where in that entire letter does Paul ever even suggest that God wants to strengthen you to do what you want to do?

01:03:51

You won't find that anywhere in the letter, let alone even that immediate context. And so, yeah, the good news is this.

01:03:58

Once you get a hold of the idea that the Bible is meant to be understood as the whole and in context, it actually makes interpretation easier.

01:04:09

It actually frees you, or at least frees the text to be able to speak what it intended to speak.

01:04:15

You don't have to get creative. You don't have to start using your imagination. You don't have to start pulling into all kinds of other people's ideas.

01:04:22

Just read what it says and what it meant in context. Absolutely. And for what it's worth, you know, we're talking about the danger of people trusting in their own heart for the interpretation and their emotions.

01:04:34

I'm just going to throw this out there. Proverbs 28 says, he who trusts in his own heart is a fool. So don't interpret your

01:04:40

Bible that way. It's foolish. But that is the culture that we have to fight against.

01:04:45

I mean, that's the temptation, right? I mean, even us as all of us here fight the temptation of wanting to be right, wanting to be loved, wanting to be liked, all of those things.

01:04:57

We want the passage to say, you know, nice things. Sometimes the passage tells me that I'm, you know, a wicked sinner and I need to repent.

01:05:07

And that's God's gracious mercy that it tells us those things, right?

01:05:13

I wanted to bring up a couple examples, maybe since we're talking about the need to be able to interpret the

01:05:19

Bible correctly. Maybe we can just throw out a few passages that really make a difference.

01:05:26

People that throw it out versus if you know what it says. So I'll start because I'll do an easy one and then

01:05:31

I'll pass it on to Andrew or whoever. If you're going to grab the one that I have queued up, but we'll see. I'm going to Leviticus, baby.

01:05:38

Okay. So one that we hear all the time today is, or at least I have, especially recently is, well, the

01:05:44

Bible was only translated the word homosexuality, you know, like a hundred years ago. And so the

01:05:50

Bible is not against homosexuality. Okay. Well, I mean, there's a whole lot of issues with that.

01:05:55

Just not understanding language is one of them, but fine. Go back to Leviticus 20 and it doesn't use the word homosexual.

01:06:03

It says, if there's a man who lies with a male, as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act.

01:06:12

They shall surely be put to death under the law. That's really plain and clear.

01:06:19

And that's not even an interpretation issue really, but it does come together and it does come to knowing your Bible, right?

01:06:25

Opening it and knowing what's in there. I get this one all the time. What are some other ones that you guys hear?

01:06:32

Let me just add this one real quick to add on to that. And I'll jump to the one that I had queued up, but Romans one to that is just as clear for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator who blessed them forever.

01:06:48

Amen. For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions. For women exchanged the natural function for that, which is unnatural in the same way.

01:07:00

Also men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving their own persons, the due penalty of their error.

01:07:17

So yeah, that's kind of clear. And we don't need to use the word, the definition suits just fine.

01:07:23

Here's the one that I had queued up the world's most favorite passage in the life verse,

01:07:29

Jeremiah 29, 11, for I know the plans that I have for you declares the

01:07:34

Lord plans of welfare, not calamity to give you a future and a hope. I mean, it just sounds so good.

01:07:39

And I want that for me. I sure hope I don't drop down like six verses and read this in verses 16 and 17 for thus says the

01:07:49

Lord concerning the King who sits on the throne of David concerning all the people that dwell in the city of your brothers who did not go into exile.

01:07:56

Thus says the Lord of hosts behold, I am sending to them a sword, a famine, a pestilence, and I will make them like split open figs that cannot be eaten and rottenness.

01:08:07

I will pursue them with a sword, with famine, with pestilence, and we'll make them a terror to the nations of the earth and be a curse and a horror and a hissing and a reproach among all the nations

01:08:19

I've driven them. Why is that not on anyone's refrigerator? Like, why don't we have that? I mean, wouldn't it like, wait, which is it

01:08:26

God? Are you going to, are you going to give me all the plans that you know of a future and hope and all these good things or am

01:08:32

I going to get all the famine? How do I know who this is talking to? Wouldn't it be nice if God told us, oh, wait a minute, verse 10,

01:08:41

Jeremiah 29, 10, for thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you and bring you back to this place.

01:08:53

Oh, so this is easy. If you live the 70 year Babylonian captivity, this is for you.

01:08:59

And if not, no, it's not for you. So I mean, Andrew, are you saying that this has no meaning for you?

01:09:05

No, no, no. We can learn some principles from this. God was faithful throughout those 70 years to fulfill what he promised them, that he'd bring them back into the land.

01:09:14

And he did. And he was faithful and he's going to be faithful to us, but that would be mine.

01:09:20

The important thing is that you have to get the meaning first before you can get the principles right.

01:09:26

You can't mix those up or you'll get them wrong. Are you saying I put the cart before the horse? Some people do.

01:09:33

I'm wondering if Ecke is going to be slaying his Goliaths next. I was actually thinking of how often people talk about how

01:09:43

Jesus said, ask me anything in my name and I will do it. He says that a number of different times, especially from John chapters 14, 15, and 16.

01:09:52

And so they use that as some sort of magical formula for God to give us whatever we want, similar to the

01:09:57

Philippians 4 .13. But what I often point out is, do you even know the context of chapters 14, 15, and 16?

01:10:04

That's Jesus Christ in the upper room with his disciples. He's preparing them for the great commission. He's preparing them for the work that's to come.

01:10:11

And in the great commission, they're going to die. They're going to be martyred. They're going to be persecuted. And so in that context,

01:10:18

Jesus even says in John 15, 18, if the world hates you, remember, first of all, that it hated me.

01:10:23

And at the very end of this talk, at the end of chapter 16, he says that in this world, you will have tribulations, but rest assured,

01:10:31

I've overcome the world. So in the context of those three chapters, there is a very specific mission that Jesus Christ has given to them.

01:10:39

And that's also where he reveals that he's sending another helper. He's giving the Holy Spirit. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is going to be the one to testify about me.

01:10:46

He's going to convict the world about sin and righteousness and judgment and all those things. So if you see that in context, you understand that Jesus Christ has a very specific mission for you.

01:10:56

And in the context of that mission, ask whatever you wish, and it will be granted to you. And guess what?

01:11:02

It was fulfilled. It was fulfilled just by reading through the book of Acts and seeing how the apostles standing firm for the cause of Christ and being able to, even being willing to be martyred for the sake of sharing

01:11:13

Christ with the world. So in that context, it was fulfilled. And if you want to understand that and see an example of it, just look at not only those three chapters, but look at the book of Acts and then understand that when we ask

01:11:25

Jesus Christ anything in his name, it's anything within the will that he has given to us.

01:11:31

And just like the Great Commission says, go and make disciples of all the nations. And of course, we know about the part about baptizing them in the name of the

01:11:37

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but we often skip the second part, which is teaching them to observe everything that I've commanded you, all that I've commanded you, which means that we as Christians, we're not only sharing the gospel, but we're helping to disciple other people in understanding the commandments of Jesus Christ so that we may continue to be sanctified and become more and more like him in our daily walk.

01:11:59

Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I think this, hopefully this has been helpful for folks. Can I do one more?

01:12:05

Can I do one more? Of course you can. Just because it's my favorite one. Well, I had one more set up, but I figured we'll see if it's the same and then we don't have to.

01:12:13

We just proved that I'm no prophet, by the way, because I predicted that Eki was going to go with the

01:12:19

David and Goliath, but he didn't. Okay. So I want to go to 1 Corinthians. Does that mean this Sunday when you preach out of Ephesians 4 and talk about apostles and prophets, you're going to announce you're not a prophet?

01:12:29

Yeah, I'll do that next. That's the next one the next week. We're doing apostles this week. So, okay, I love this one.

01:12:37

1 Corinthians 13. This is one of the ones that I dealt with when I was first coming out of the Charismatic Church a long, long time ago.

01:12:44

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

01:12:51

And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but I have not love,

01:12:59

I am nothing. I mean, you guys already know this, but I love this one because this is such a wonderful picture of why hermeneutics is important.

01:13:08

It's also a great illustration of why grammar is important, right? So he's using hyperbolic language here, and we know that for various reasons.

01:13:19

So oftentimes in the Charismatic Church, they'll take this passage. They'll say, see, there's tongues of angels.

01:13:25

So I'm clearly speaking in tongues, ding dong. But the problem is that in the same sentence, he also says that he's a noisy gong.

01:13:36

So let me ask, you can't separate that. It's the same thought. So do you think

01:13:42

Paul is just all of a sudden going to turn into a big metal gong? Because if you don't believe that, then you also can't take the first part literally.

01:13:51

But it's even better because he then goes to say if he understood all mysteries and all knowledge.

01:13:58

So if you think, if you take the first part literally, that he speaks in tongues of angels, then you also have to assume that actually

01:14:06

Paul's claiming to be omniscient, which would make him God. So if you don't believe that, then you can't take the first part of that statement literally either.

01:14:17

And so this is a really good passage, I think, because people naturally, even people with little sense naturally would say, well, no,

01:14:25

I don't think he's going to turn into a gong. I don't think he was claiming to be God. And so you have to look at all that together and understand what kind of language you're reading and what different parts of speech that he's using here.

01:14:38

It's hyperbolic. And the whole point, if you read the whole context of the passage, what's the context?

01:14:44

Love, right? I mean, he's talking about the supremacy of love. All these other things are ways to illustrate his point there.

01:14:53

Okay, I'm done now. But do you have any? Well, I was going to go with, and I don't know if y 'all already did this, maybe you did,

01:14:59

I had to step away for a minute, but judge not. Oh, judge not. That gets out there a lot, but I really don't want to do that one because there's, you know, you can go to Matthew where it says judge not, but then you can go over to John where he says judge with righteous judgment.

01:15:14

So this proves the point that there's also another hermeneutical principle that analogy of scripture, you compare scripture with scripture, and that there's no conflict there.

01:15:23

The one I actually want to go to only because when this airs. Before you jump off that, in the John passage,

01:15:29

John 724, the better part is because that's actually commanded. Jesus is actually, it's an imperative.

01:15:35

The word judge is an imperative. Jesus Christ read letters, folks, read letters. Jesus is commanding people to judge.

01:15:43

It's an actual imperative command from Jesus to judge one another with a righteous judgment because, you know, they get big on the red letters.

01:15:51

If it's red letters, it's more important. Yeah. Well, the thing I wanted to point out would be it's often not quoted fully and it's

01:16:01

Proverbs 29, 18 in the NASB. It says where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained and we've got all these vision casters out there.

01:16:11

They're eat up throughout the SBC. If you guys are affiliated with the SBC or aware of it in any way, everybody's casting vision.

01:16:19

Andy Stanley's casting vision. Everyone casts vision. But the verse says that where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained.

01:16:28

But that's not all the verse says. The verse also says, but happy is one who keeps the law, which is exactly what we're talking about.

01:16:38

If there is no prophetic vision in Israel, there's no prophet speaking, thus sayeth the

01:16:43

Lord. What are we to go back to? We're to go back to the word of God. We have that word.

01:16:50

And that's what much of the church dismisses and disregards right now. You're not only taking it out of context, you're chopping it up to fit your narrative.

01:16:59

That's just a wicked thing to do with scripture. All right. I'll end on a twofer in the same passage.

01:17:05

Context matters, right? Matthew 18, 19. For again, I say to you that if two or of you agree on earth about anything that you may ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven.

01:17:18

And I actually had a friend of mine who in college, he asked me to co -sign a loan on a car for him because his parents wouldn't co -sign.

01:17:26

And there was no way I was going to co -sign. But the next day he told me he's getting a brand new car. How? I thought you didn't have money.

01:17:32

Your parents weren't going to give you money. He said, Oh, I got two other brothers to pray with me for a new car.

01:17:39

That's how he applied that. Very next verse though, for where there are two or three gathered in my name, there

01:17:45

I am in the midst. I mean, this is, this is the classic passage to be used for a Wednesday night prayer meeting when no one shows up.

01:17:51

Well, there's two or three of us. Christ is here. Wait a minute. Is it, doesn't

01:17:56

Matthew 28, verse 20 say, Christ say, and lo, I am with you always.

01:18:03

So the question I always ask people is how many Christians are necessary to be present for God, for Jesus to be present.

01:18:10

And people will say one to which I say, no, God is omnipresent.

01:18:16

He's everywhere present. It doesn't take any Christians for God to be present. The context of that is church discipline.

01:18:24

And I have counseled hundreds of pastors around the world, especially, unfortunately, in the area of church discipline, when they have to deal with it.

01:18:33

And usually they deal with it when it's late and it became a big problem. And what ends up happening is they sit there and the night before they have to go before the church,

01:18:42

I mean, their stomach, they're up all night, their stomach is churning. They don't want to have to do that. And if you've gone through the process biblically, it is an assurance to the don't want to do it.

01:18:56

No, you don't want to have to go through this, but be assured that what was done on earth has already been done on heaven.

01:19:02

Be assured that where two or three of you have agreed, Jesus is, he's there in that agreement, but it's in the context of having to put an unrepentant sinner out of the church.

01:19:13

And so context matters. So what you're saying, so what you're saying is where two or three are gathered, someone is getting disciplined.

01:19:24

I gotta go guys. Nice seeing you. What I am saying is that if you have, if you have one or two

01:19:32

P or if you have one person or, you know, it doesn't mean you don't have church because you don't, but you can't say, well, there's two or three of us.

01:19:41

Therefore we do have church. The definition of a church is not two or three people. I actually heard this as an argument.

01:19:46

A person made an argument that women can't do open air evangelism because on the street, if there's two or three

01:19:53

Christians on the street, that is church. And therefore her getting up is preaching because that's now church.

01:20:02

That's not, not what that verse is saying, but we can use that verse maybe to correct your views and discipline you out of the church.

01:20:12

Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny because, you know, you said something about Nathaniel, you were saying about how people want to be liked.

01:20:20

And the quote that I am most known for that, I don't know if you guys had this, where you say something and you don't realize it's going to be the quote you're like known for and it goes around the world.

01:20:29

But the quote I'm most known for is that people do not water down the gospel because they care about people's souls.

01:20:36

They do it because you want them to like you. And we just frankly have to get over ourselves.

01:20:43

That's the thing that I think the big problem we have with sufficiency of scripture and interpretation of scripture is the fact that so many pastors want to be liked.

01:20:53

And instead of preaching what the word says, they soften it, hoping that people will like them.

01:20:59

And you know what? The true genuine Christian wants to grow. They want to hear God's word and pastor, you know what they end up doing?

01:21:05

They look at you and go, you're not telling me the truth. Guess what? They don't like you in the end. And they move on to someone that's going to teach the truth.

01:21:14

So just cut to the chase, teach the truth and let God bring the people. I got news for you.

01:21:19

It's not your church anyway. So let's go around, bud. I'll let you, you know, as we close out, let you say anything you want to say, closing out to your audience and then

01:21:27

Nathaniel, Eckie, and I'll close out. I just appreciate this opportunity to be with these brothers.

01:21:33

It's a blessing to focus on something that is truly at almost epidemic levels.

01:21:39

I know that's not a good word to use in these COVID era days, but the sufficiency of scripture because of the lack of intake of scripture is at crisis levels in the pews and in a lot of the pulpits.

01:21:52

So you need to be engaged with scripture. If you're a genuine believer, you're going to crave it. And you're going to crave to find a place that is going to teach it to you in a systematic, methodical and sound way.

01:22:04

This is what a godly man in the pulpit is going to do. So the sufficiency of scripture is absolutely at crisis levels in the church.

01:22:14

So find a place where you can be exposed to that and measure it by your growth and understanding what the word of God is saying to you.

01:22:23

Our goal, Christ saved us. God saved us to be conformed to the image of his son.

01:22:28

And if that's not happening in your life, then you're not doing your part in a synergistic sanctification process.

01:22:36

Amen. Yeah, I think you said it right, bud. I think the greatest pandemic today is biblical literacy.

01:22:41

You know, I appreciate you having us on, Andrew, and I actually want to leave the audience, for my part, with what scripture claims about itself.

01:22:50

It's a passage that we all know very well, but it's just a good reminder. 2 Timothy 3 .16,

01:22:56

all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

01:23:08

This is scripture's claim about itself, and we can trust it, and we should trust it, and we should go to it rather than going to whatever other sources we have been, whether it's the world or our feelings.

01:23:21

It's the scriptures alone that are profitable for these things. Yeah, if we are

01:23:27

Christian, that means we have put our faith into Christ, but that also means that we are disciples of Christ, and to be disciples of Christ means we follow

01:23:34

Him. Just as Jesus said, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

01:23:42

And part of the Great Commission is making sure that we teach disciples to observe all that Jesus Christ has commanded.

01:23:48

So the word of our Lord Jesus Christ is not just in the red letters of the Gospels, it is in all of the scriptures.

01:23:55

So we devote ourselves to learning the scriptures, to doing the scriptures, because we are disciples of Christ, and we follow

01:24:01

Him, and there's no such thing as following Christ without following His word. Amen. And I'm just going to, I'll close out by saying this, if you want to check out, if you like what you heard from Bud, check out

01:24:10

The Bud Zone, you'll get to hear him all by himself. If you want to hear Bud and I, you can go to my podcast,

01:24:17

Andrew Rapport's Rapp Report, that's Rapp with two P's, just put in Rapp with two P's and you'll find it. It's not about rap music.

01:24:25

Bud's podcast is talking about his buds in the faith, just talking with different people. Bud and I do a show, we're talking about applying biblical hermeneutics to everything.

01:24:35

Basically, we want to interpret God's word and apply it to life and culture. If you want to get some really great theology, and even

01:24:44

Eckie doesn't know what the topic will be, so we just don't either, but it's usually packed.

01:24:50

And I mean, packed with great wisdom. If you're not listening already to the Truth Be Known podcast, you want to be downloading that on a regular basis and listening because you've already seen the brilliance of those two men here today.

01:25:05

So check out our different podcasts. They can all be found at the Christian Podcast Community. And with that, as we say on my podcast, that's a wrap.

01:25:14

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:25:23

Hey Scott, what brings you into the pharmacy? I'm thinking about getting one of the updated COVID -19 vaccines.

01:25:29

Great. Do you know which type of vaccine you'd like? There's more than one. Yep. There are different types of vaccines available.

01:25:37

You can learn more about them at wedovaccines .com. If you have questions or want to make an appointment, give me a call.

01:25:43

What was that website again? Wedovaccines .com. Thanks. I'll check it out.

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