Apologetics and Debate: Hermeneutics part 2

Quiz Review and the Purpose of Apologetics

Welcome back to Passing the Torch. I'm your host Randy Adkins, and today, as he.

Has been, your teacher is Andrew Rappaport for Striving for Eternity, and he will continue to teach us apologetics and debate. How are you, brother? Better than I deserve. Looking forward to another class.

This is class number four out of eight, so after this we're halfway done with the class, and I will state that, folks, you should have, those who are taking this class for credit, if you have not gotten in your quiz by now, congratulations on your zero.

You achieved your first zero for the class. The others who actually did, now there's one person who gave the dog ate my homework routine, you know, could not get into the Google form that we have for it.

Yep, well, dog ate your homework, you get a zero. Maybe I'll make an exception, we'll see, but everyone else got at least a 90 or above, so congratulations to those who have done that. So obviously Randy's raised his hands, claiming he's one of them.

I did, I did take the test. Did you get your grade? Oh, no, I didn't release them. I did not. Let me release the grades now. That was on my part. I have to actually physically release the scores, so there we go.

Scores are being released to all. All right. Right there. So you guys got your grades with some comments. I will say I was shocked that we had a multiple choice, and I think everyone managed to get that one.

Some got that right, but no one got a perfect hundred. Even those who got the more, what I thought was going to be the fill-in, not the multiple choice questions, but paragraphs where you give explanation, those that got it, all those still managed to miss something on the quiz.

So yeah, with that, why don't we just, I'm going to go over the quiz and sort of some of the answers quickly, and that's why, well, now if you're, it's too late to take it because I'm going to give you the answers.

So number one was the question, what does the word apologetics mean? A variety of answers that were all pretty much acceptable was, you know, reasoned defense. That is the, you know, a defense of the faith, to give a reasoned defense or answer.

Things like this was the right type of thing we're looking for. The multiple choice question was, what's the purpose of apologetics? I gave you four possibilities, and so as we look at those, the questions were, and what is the purpose of apologetics?

One, convince someone that Christianity is right. Number two, share the gospel. Number three, shut the mouth of the ignorant. Number four, show how Christianity has the answers to life. Number five, defend the Christian faith.

And number six, to win a debate. Now with these, I was glad that 0 of the people said win a debate, and so I was glad for that. But some of these I put in there to sound like they were right, but convince someone that Christianity is right.

Now, this was a trick question because we talked about the difference of presuppositional apologetics and evidential apologetics, and therefore I would argue that Christianity is not to convince someone that Christianity is right.

That's something God does, and therefore the people who feel, who mark that, that's why that was a wrong answer. We let God do that. We provide the reasoned defense, but we don't try to convince someone into the kingdom, right?

Now, some people would have pushed back on that and say, ah, but you know, we do, we are convincing them that Christianity is right compared to other religions. And so I still say it's the wrong answer because we do it based off of what we taught in class.

So, share the gospel. That was correct, and everyone got that one right. Shut the mouth of the ignorant, which I thought might be a little tricky, but people paid attention in class. 100 of the people got that one right, so very good.

Show how Christianity has the answers to life. That was a trick one. The answer was no. That's not what we do apologetics for, and so that would be wrong. The next right one was defend the Christian faith, and that is the purpose of apologetics.

So, when we look at these, just going through them, the right answers for that are share the gospel, shut the mouth of the ignorant, defend the Christian faith. Those would be the correct answers, all right?

Now, when we look at the next question that we had here, the next one is name some of the characteristics of a person that does Christian apologetics and why are they important. So, if you think about what we talked about with characteristics, we talked about, and this was an essay, so you got to put different things, but what we are looking for here, specifically, is going to be the characteristic of humility.

Some people mentioned humility, teachability, the idea of, you know, looking to help someone understand versus trying to debate and prove that you're right. So, basically, what we're looking for there is characteristics of someone who is gentle, respectful, humble, you know, ones that would be weeping.

We mentioned that in Philippians 3 .18, weeping for those who are lost. So, those would have been right answers for that. The last question was why, what is important, and the importance of those things.

Well, I think they're self-evident, but we talked about those in class, right? It's not to be arrogant, not to show you know-it-all, but to show that you're just trying to help them to know the truth.

What is, well, and to shut their mouth when they say ignorant things. What is important to look for in an argument? Now, this was one that I was surprised how many people got wrong, and it just showed that people were, even though I mentioned this in two classes, some people gave really good answers, but it wasn't the answer I was looking for.

The answer I was looking for, and someone got it very briefly when they just said a false premise, and that's what we're looking for. What's important to look for, and I'm gonna go over this because so many people miss this one, is people talk about evidence, proof, look for self-refuting arguments, look for underlying presuppositions.

All of those sort of things were really good, but the answer to this one was you're looking for the premise. You want to examine the premise of their argument, because that is going to tell you how, well, it's going to tell you if they have a false premise, you address that right away, right?

And so, for an example, I will give an example from our Passing the Torch, one of our students. I'm not going to name the individual, but anyone that's in the Passing the Torch chat, you'll know who gets blamed for this.

Well, actually, I already told him this would make it to the show, and I'm sure he's joking, but he says, apparently, hermeneutics are satanic because it comes from the pagan god Hermes. Therefore, Christians who are interested in hermeneutics are actually doing witchcraft.

Then he just said, yeah, you people are dumb. So, I said that will make it to the class, and therefore, it just did. So, that student knows who he is, and the rest of us do, too. But, so, if you're not one of the students at Passing the Torch, you don't know.

So, if you want to be a student on Facebook, get out to the group Passing the Torch, go search for that, join that group, join the chat, then you'll know that Daniel said, I mean, I'm sorry, that someone, someone, but yeah.

So, what's wrong with that argument? Well, evaluating an argument like that, look at what's the premise. The premise is assuming that hermeneutics is based off of a Greek god named Hermes, and therefore, that must be teaching paganism, right?

That's the assumption of the underlying argument. Is that true? No. It has nothing to do with that, right? It's just, that is the, yes, there's a god named Hermes, okay? Is hermeneutics tied to that? Actually, I don't know if that's the origin of hermeneutics.

It is a Greek word that has the meaning of the, of, you know, interpreting things. So, it has to do with the art and science of interpretation. I believe Hermes, if I'm not mistaken, is the god of messages, the one that goes super fast.

You know, I believe, I forget what he is in the Roman names, but I think it's Mercury, or the one that Mercury is named after, or whatever. But the fact that the Greek word would have the meaning based off of, if I'm right in that, that the idea of a message sounds like it just has to do with that word.

But does that, does hermeneutics teach paganism? No. It has nothing to do with that. And so, what you're looking for is the underlying premise. So, in that example, the underlying premise is that just because you use a Greek word that's based off of a name of a Greek god, you must be teaching paganism.

And I'm sure that he is just joking with this, but to look at the argument, because some people may make arguments like this, and so you look at the underlying premise and go, wait a minute, does every word absolutely have to do with the names?

Because if they are, then every day of the week, when you mention every day of the week, you're mentioning a guy. I mean, what is Thursday? Thursday. Oops. But do you worship Thor every Thursday? I mean, most of the days are named after, you know, Roman gods.

Same with months and planets and things like this. So, what we end up seeing is the underlying argument doesn't match because just because its name is synonymous with it or similar to it or an offshoot of it doesn't mean that everything is related back to teaching paganism, right?

So, that's a good reason why, and I really strongly emphasize this because when we get into the debate, you can hear me mention this over and over, but this is something that is crucial in debate. And the reason it's crucial is because you can get into a discussion, do apologetics, get into a debate, and completely lose it in the debate.

Not necessarily lose it, like lose your character, your behavior, but lose the argument in the sense because you make the mistake of thinking that you're both talking about the same things. And people will get you into trying to defend something that you have no reason to defend.

In fact, I posted a meme once the guilty verdict came out with Trump of, you know, someone that had put a meme of Lady Justice being held down and in one sleeve of the person holding her down had the Democrat logo and the other had the social media logos.

And so, the picture of it is that, you know, what happened with Trump being found guilty is that Lady Justice is being held down by the Democrats and social media so that they can get their way. And so, that was the idea of it.

And so, I posted that. Someone's response? Will Republicans do that too? Okay. So, what do Republicans do too? Now, the context was, so, and I asked him to defend was, okay, show me where a Republican president used the justice system to attack his political opponent.

Because that's the context. And the person was like, well, I'm saddened, Andrew, that you would, you know, take such attack like, you know, you should do better than this, you know, you know, okay. Like what?

I mean, this is the context, right? I said, give me the example where Republicans, I mean, because even Biden said this is a first in history. So, where have Republicans used the justice system? So, his argument was, well, Republicans have created a 50-year thing of allowing abortions and not, you know, not talking, you know, about allowing the Roe versus Wade to happen and just saying, well, we have to deal with it.

And then they go after guns and say, well, we're not going to obey those laws. But then, you know, Roe is overturned and they just go, well, we got to find ways to work with this. Now, notice, nothing in that, and you can go see it on Facebook, nothing in there is he actually giving where Republicans use the justice system against Democrats.

So, it's like, so the underlying premise was never answered. So, what do I do? I just keep getting to the premise. So, I said, okay, this is the premise. The premise was, we have a sitting president who used the justice system against his political opponent.

If you can't show that one, fine. Show where the Republicans use the media, because he circled the Democrat logo on the one sleeve. Well, the other sleeve has more social media. So, show me where the Republicans use the justice system.

And then with the force of social media, and the Republican Party prevented Democrats from getting away. Because abortion is actually a, oh, right, a Democrat issue. See, so what this is, is someone who's giving a pass to what Democrats do to say, well, Republicans do it too, but then can't support where the Republicans do the same exact thing.

So, what do I do? I focus on the premise, because this premise is flawed. Right. It's not that Republican do, are there Republicans at local levels that use the justice system against their political opponent?

Oh, I'm sure that is. But there's a difference there, because what you have is a local level. At the federal level, like if they do something wrong at the local level, you could appeal to the federal.

But at the federal level, you can't appeal to anyone. Okay. So, that is some examples of with that. So, where we are now, we talked about the character where you started talking about hermeneutics last week.

The over overarching number one issue when it comes to hermeneutics, which is the art and science of interpretation, is we're gonna give Randy and Hermes a pop quiz here. Last week, we talked about the one thing that was most important, and it was what?

The gospel. Okay, you get an F. Context. Context. Thank you. Someone was paying attention last week. I think I.

Completely missed your question just now. Yeah, you were responding to what's the most important thing in debate. Well, last week, we talked about.

The most important thing in hermeneutics, which is context. Yes, sir. So, context is key, okay, when we're going to discuss this. And so, the number one thing is why we spent one class period on context, okay?

This week, we're gonna focus on two issues, and then we'll have two more for next week. So, this week, what we want to talk about when it comes to hermeneutics is two other principles. And by the way, I should mention, if you go out to YouTube and go to the Striving for Eternity YouTube channel, you will see a playlist called Interpretation Tips, and in there, there's one 20-minute video, which is kind of just focusing on one area of comparing Scripture with Scripture.

But after that, the next several lessons, there's five lessons that are five minutes long, okay? So, everything I'm doing in this class, I have summarized briefer in just five-minute classes, five minutes per each topic that we're gonna cover, okay?

So, you can go and watch that so that you have a better understanding of these or something that you can always go back to. So, what we have that we're gonna look at this week, we looked already last week at context this week.

We're gonna talk about the differentiation between descriptive and prescriptive texts. We're gonna talk about those, define those. Next, what we're gonna talk about today is interpreting the difficult passages by the easy passages.

That's gonna be a second we're gonna talk about today. Next week, we're gonna cover being willing to question your presuppositions. We're gonna talk about the importance of that, and then how to interpret Scripture with Scripture.

Because what most people do when they say they're interpreting Scripture with Scripture is what's called proof texting. We dealt with that last week in ways not to interpret where you just grab a verse from here, grab a verse from here, slam them together and go, well, this is what the Bible says because they're both, hey, I use this Bible verse and this Bible verse.

But if you take those out of their context, you're not actually saying what God says, you're saying what man says. Because it's out of context, it's no longer God's word, it's man's word. So that is where, you know, the importance of this.

So what we want to deal with first is the idea of differentiating between two terminologies, descriptive and prescriptive. So let me define those for us so that we know what they are and then look at some examples.

Descriptive is a passage that is, or a genre that is, and genre just means a style of literature, a genre that is describing what happens. And so in that case, what you're doing is describing what did happen, not necessarily what should or should not happen.

These are going to be mostly your historical narratives. I mentioned this before, but when you study the cults, what I have discovered over many years with the cults is that they often focus on historical narratives and they take those as prescriptive.

So what's prescriptive? Prescriptive is instruction. When you go to the doctor, he gives you medicine with a prescription. What is the prescription? It's instructions for you to follow. So now that's different because that is something that we're now going to apply, we're going to practice, we're going to look at and say these are things we do, okay, versus a descriptive which says this is what happened.

So let's look at some examples to help us understand. David had multiple wives, therefore we should have multiple wives. I hear that one often. I do. I hear that from some folks, especially from Mormons who do believe or did used to practice, they sort of still practice just secretly now, multiple wives, right?

I am waiting. I thought when Obama decided to say, well, we're going to redefine marriage and we could define it as people of the same sex, there were Mormons that were suddenly trying to push, just allow it to say, well, if we could define it as same sex, why can't we define it as one man with multiple wives or one wife with multiple husbands?

You see, they open all of that up. But in the 1800s, Mormons did practice polygamy and they would make, and I had a Mormon that made this argument to me. He said the law of the land prevents it, but there's nothing in the Bible that should prevent it.

And I said, really? In Genesis 1, 2, and 3, do we have instructions there that seem to lead that he made one man for one woman? And I had one Mormon that said, well, that's just describing what did happen.

Okay, good. I'm glad you've realized that because what is Genesis 1, 2, and 3? Descriptive. What is it with David? Descriptive. Now, the reason I asked that is this reason. I wanted them to be able to see that the argument they're making on David is the same argument that I'm going to argue is the same argument from Genesis.

They're going to argue that David is prescriptive, but Genesis is descriptive. But now that I can address that, I could say, well, see, both of those are descriptive. But when Jesus is instructing on divorce and remarriage, he goes back to Genesis and uses it prescriptively.

He's giving instruction based on God creating one man for one woman. Oops. Right? So, now you see that even though it may not be condemned outwardly when David had multiple wives, it doesn't mean we should do that.

It just means that David had multiple wives. Solomon had even more. Right. That caused him trouble. So, we have to note the difference. Let me give an example that I've heard. Well, now this is going back maybe 10 years.

Someone had written a book on whether women should be doing open air evangelism. And one of the arguments of the book was that the woman at the well was, and this was an argument people were making against the book, that the woman at the well was doing open air evangelism.

She was going around the town and she was preaching. Okay. So, in John 4, what do we have? We have a woman who is at a well. She meets Jesus. She turns to Jesus. She finds out, you know, this is the Samaritan woman.

She runs to the town after meeting with Jesus. And what does she do? It says that, you know, she goes and tells everybody, hey, look at this man that told me all the things that I did. Was she, and the word for preaching is to proclaim in the open air.

From what we could tell the text, was she doing that? Yes. It seems from the text that she was doing that. Okay. She went into the city. This is John 4, 39. From the city, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, he told me all the things I have done.

So, was she proclaiming things that they ended up believing? Yes. That verse says so. So, when we look at it, what did she say? Well, we saw this earlier in the passage. In verse 28, she says, so the woman left her water pot and went to the city and said to the men, come and see a man who told me all the things that I have done.

Is this not the Christ? And they went out of the city and were coming to him. So, did she speak to the men openly in public? Yes. That's what she actually did. This is a prescriptive text. It's historical narrative.

Does anywhere in this text say that what she did was right or wrong? No. That's the issue. When we get to descriptive passages like historical narratives, we have to be aware that we cannot try to make it say more than it says.

And we cannot try to use it to say, well, therefore, we must, if this is what it says, we practice this. No, we have to see that this is what did happen, not necessarily what should happen. And so, did she do that?

Yes. Should women teach men or preach to men? I would say no. Now, should they do it within a church context or outside the church context? That brings up a different issue with this, right? Maybe what she did was just fine if you believe that the passage in 1 Timothy is speaking about the church and she's in the public square, right?

So, there's things to wrestle with that. But people that use the argument, I argued against them to say, look, your argument just looking at the way we interpret is not valid because you're using a descriptive passage for prescriptive.

And I'm going to say, when you start out doing hermeneutics, when you're going to do it in the beginning, you're going to practice how to interpret scripture. And I will say that we have a whole course.

You could go to strivingforeternity .org, go to our academy. We have a class on hermeneutics, biblical hermeneutics, to help get you trained up with that. We have playlists on our YouTube channel, Striving for Eternity.

You can go there and see the playlists on how to interpret the Bible. I already mentioned one on the tips of interpretation tips. So, we have stuff out there that you'd be able to look at to help you with this.

But one of the mistakes so many people make is not looking at the text that they're trying to interpret and first starting with, is it descriptive or prescriptive? And the thing I always say, if you're going to start out with trying to do interpretation, start out with prescriptive passages of scripture.

Well, what are they? They're going to be mostly your epistles. Now, are all the epistles prescriptive? No. Just like all of the gospels, which are mostly historical narrative, are not all historical narrative.

We have Jesus doing teaching. We have his sermons. Well, those are prescriptive because he's teaching what we should do. Okay? So, whenever you come to a passage, you have to ask the question, is this descriptive?

Is this prescriptive? If it's prescriptive, it's clearly giving me instructions on how to live life. If it's descriptive, it's telling me what did happen, not necessarily what should or should not have happened.

But we have to keep in mind with that. Just because it's prescriptive, another thing we have to do from last week's class is look at context. So, if it's prescriptive, you have to ask the question, was this for Israel or is this for the church?

And I know some people will say, but Israel and the church are one. Okay. Do you keep kosher? No. So, certain rules and instructions were for the nation of Israel that are not for the church. So, even if you are believing in covenant theology versus dispensational theology, that's okay.

You still know that there is a separation because you don't keep kosher. And if you do, you're probably a tourist term created by a friend of mine, Robert Sahlberg, but Torahism is his book. Go get that.

If you are believing that you have to keep the commandments, keep kosher. If you believe that, go get the book, Torahism by R .L. Sahlberg, so that you can realize how wrong you are. But the reality is covenant theologians, dispensational theologians, we both see that there are prescriptive instructions for Israel that we do not have for the church, such as keeping the Passover forever.

We don't do that as the church, right? Because that wasn't for us. So, when we come to it, you want to ask that question. Is this descriptive? Is this prescriptive? Let me give you a fun one, Randy. There's lots of people that debate this, a fun discussion.

The apostle Paul, is he the 12th or 13th apostle? What say you? So, you brought up a good point at some point. I always had the inclination that he was the 13th apostle as one born out of time, right?

But in Revelation, there's only 12 foundations, which are the 12 apostles. So, that gives me pause as far as that inclination. I was never really settled on what way to actually interpret that, but you also brought up a point about Matthias, right?

Was it Matthias? Correct. What people say is the 12th apostle, right? So, this is out of Acts, right? Okay. And so, some people will make the argument, and so, here's me. I'm going to be upfront with everyone in class.

I am a cessationist, and I'm going to give an argument against cessationism. Not really against cessationism, but against what I think is a bad argument that some cessationists make. Some cessationists will say they define certain gifts as apostolic gifts.

Now, I will argue that I don't know anywhere in Scripture that those gifts are called apostolic gifts. And so, I think as someone doing debate, if I was to be debating on the side of continuation of gifts, I would challenge someone to show me where these gifts are tied to the apostles or the apostolic age.

And people do some arguments to try to make that the case. I wouldn't argue that way. I argue that it has to do with the canon, and that is Hebrews 2 or 3, I think it's 2, says that the miracles and gifts were to vindicate the writing of Scripture.

So, I would see that Scripture supports that. But when people argue for an apostolic age, what do they do? They say, well, here's how we define the apostles, and they go to Acts and look at Matthias and say, well, here's what an apostle is.

He had to have lived in the time of Christ. And they go, that doesn't happen anymore. But by that definition that they have, Paul, the apostle, who God calls as an apostle, would not match. I think this was, let's see, I think it's, I gotta go look, because I forget exactly where in Acts, so I'll look this up.

This is me just scrolling through my Bible really quickly, which is what we do now. We used to have a time that we scroll, the Bible was in scrolls, and then we went to paper, and now we scroll again.

So, if anyone remembers the exact passage where that is, would be wonderful, because I'm trying to scroll quickly. This was one of the examples I thought of off the cuff, so I wasn't prepped for it. And I'm not one of these guys that's great with just memorizing things.

I don't memorize where passages are. I'm not just bad with that. But I know it's earlier. Was it Acts chapter 9? I wouldn't think it's all the way at 9 that they chose Matthias. Oh, no, no. No, that was earlier.

Before that. I think it was Acts chapter... Here it is. So, it's Acts chapter 2, verse 37. Is this it? What should we do now? If I knew how to spell Matthias, I would type that into my search and be fine.

Oh, it's in chapter 1, sir.

Ah, that's why, because I went too far. Okay. I think it's verse 12. I jumped to chapter 2, thinking it was further. So, there we go. Thank you. All right. So, let's see. All right. So, here you have Acts chapter 1, starting verse 12.

And they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, on the Sabbath day's journey away. When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying.

That is Peter, John, and James, Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. Okay. So, this is descriptive. This is telling you what they did.

They were all of one mind, were continually devoting themselves to prayer along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. At this time, Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren, a gathering, about 120 persons were there, and said, Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David, according to Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.

For he counted among us was received his share in this mystery. Now this man acquired a field, well, that's describing the scriptures, what they said in prophecy. So, verse 21,. Therefore it is necessary that the men who have accompanied us from the time of the Lord Jesus Christ went in and out among us, beginning with the baptism of John until the day he was taken up with us.

One of these must be a witness with us of his resurrection. So, you see, they're laying out the criteria of choosing Matthias, right? There's only two men, Joseph called Barabbas, also, who's also called Justice, and Matthias.

Now, out of these two men, they're going to draw straws, which out of two men, one of the two, if there's only two straws, is going to get the short straw, right? Maybe they should have had three straws, and neither of them would have chosen the straw, and they would realize, oh, maybe someone else.

But one thing you don't see in this passage is God saying that this is the definition of an apostle. So, what's the definition? That they accompanied all of us from the time that Christ went out among us, that they were with him from the baptism of John, okay, and was taken up from us.

So, three elements. They had to have been with the disciples, going out with them from the beginning. They had to be with them from the time of the baptism of John. They had to have been there as a witness of the resurrection, okay?

Now, that does not define Paul, and yet Paul is called an apostle of God. So, therefore, you have to face either these men in a descriptive passage, this is describing, they didn't, they did what they thought, okay?

They were not, we don't see anywhere where it says God said to do this. They are quoting scripture earlier, where they're seeing that there must be a replacement for Judas, but they chose Matthias, did God choose Paul?

My argument would be, based on this principle, that I'm going to look at Acts and say that is descriptive. That is not telling us what they should have done, it is telling us what they did do. Therefore, looking, as Randy, you mentioned, and we had this discussion in our group chat at Passing the Torch, we had this discussion, and so what did we see?

We saw that in Revelation, it refers to twelve, that there's going to be twelve of them. Therefore, I look at that and say, well, if that's the case, that there's only going to be twelve, that Paul, who we know is an apostle, was the apostle, because that we have in prescriptive text, this is describing what the apostles did do, but not necessarily what they should have done, okay?

So, that is the difference of differentiating between descriptive and prescriptive. The next thing I want to talk to you about is interpreting the difficult text by the easier text, and this is something a lot of people make a mistake of.

Let me go to some difficult passages. Let me start with Hebrews chapter 6. Hebrews chapter 6 is one that people teach, this is teaching that you can lose your salvation, and they argue that from here, from chapter 6 of Hebrews, chapter 10 of Hebrews, and so it says here in verse 4, for in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.

Now, when we read this, it sure looks like that's saying that someone could be a Christian, have partaken in Christianity, walked away, and lost their salvation, okay? So, taking the step back now, Hebrews is one of the more difficult books of the New Testament to interpret.

The only one that is more difficult would be Revelation. Hebrews is based in a knowledge of Leviticus, which also is a difficult passage for many to understand. If you don't have a good understanding of the book of Leviticus, you're going to have a hard time understanding some of Hebrews.

Hebrews is written to, I know this is really hard, I know, Randy, this is going to blow your mind, I get it, but Hebrews were written to Hebrews. I know, shocker, right? That's who it's written to. So, it's people who have a Hebrew mindset.

It is not written to a general audience. It's not written to Greeks or Romans. It's written to people who have a clear understanding of a Hebrew mindset. In other words, they not only understand the book of Leviticus, they live the book of Leviticus, okay?

And so, right off the bat, we recognize this is a difficult passage to understand, but a passage like Romans 8 is not, where Romans 8 is going to say very clearly that we cannot, and did I get that right?

Is it Romans 8? I thought it was 8 .1, but where nothing can separate you from the love of God. So, let's just do a quick search for love. Romans 8 .1, therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

I thought it was, I thought I started in 8 .1, but maybe I, oh, there it is. Okay. So, yeah, so it's Romans 8 .1 is, therefore there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit in Jesus has set you free.