Paul's Expanded Shema and Important Truths in Handling Scripture

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's the Friday after Thanksgiving. I hope you had a wonderful day with family and friends. This used to be a day, oh, 15 years ago, I remember. There would be local news coverage with helicopters going around the large malls in the valley and even Metro Center Mall, which is now about to be torn down, I guess.

Looking at parking capacity and all sorts of stuff like that, none of that anymore. None of that at all. However, I have deleted over 100 advertising emails from my inbox this morning. So instead of getting in the car and driving to a mall, now you spend most of your day deleting unwanted emails from your inbox on your various email addresses.

That's what today is. And of course, it's a late start on the Christmas season, late in the month of November. And that means that next weekend, beginning a week from tonight, Lord willing, I will be...

Oh, hello. Everything just turned off over here. So just now starting up computers over there or something? We're all fine now? Uh-huh. Sure. Okay. Someone's getting with things. I won't mention who.

So anyway, next week, starting at this time at Covenant of Grace Church in St. Charles, we will be, ironically, redoing what we did last year. That's the first time we've ever done anything like that.

But I think everyone understands that much has changed since December of 2019. There has been a tremendous amount of development in regards to our own society, the advancement of the woke church. I was just thumbing through some tweets.

There was one video especially that was primarily... I had seen this when it hit yesterday or the day before yesterday, where a particular individual was preaching about the gospel. Let me see here. There was some going back and forth.

Reverend Dottie Lewis, and he was preaching about how the whole gospel includes economic aspects and economic restoration. And I remember listening to this going, you know, if the early church actually believed that, then the early church would have had to have been a political, economic, revolutionary movement.

And so when people converted to the faith, they would have been, I don't know, not only demanding their freedom from... Because so many of the early Christians were themselves slaves. And of course, it was chattel slavery.

It just wasn't race-based slavery. All sorts of people. I mean, you could sell yourself into slavery in that context to be able to eat if you were in a situation with famine and ravages of war or whatever else it might have been.

Anyway, that's what the gospel would have resulted in, would have been even more divided, even a more divided society, a more divided church. And so I listened to this type of language. And the only comment I made, I made one comment on Twitter when it first came out.

And it was basically, having taught church history for all these years, I would simply say that the early believers would stare uncomprehendingly at this gentleman and what it is he has to say. Well, there are lots of folks that are defending that and calling it the gospel of the kingdom.

So now the gospel of the kingdom is a neo-Marxist message as well. It's just... Anyway, this kind of thing has happened. And so there is a need to discuss these things. That's what we'll be doing Friday night, all day Saturday.

Saturday is a long day, all day Saturday. And then I will be doing Sunday school and the morning service on Sunday morning, probably not on that topic. Though the thing that we send out or that they send out has it fourth through sixth.

I'll be there the fourth through the sixth. But I mean, I'm not sure. I haven't decided yet what I'm gonna be doing that morning. Sometimes, to be honest with you, I don't decide till that morning. There have been a couple of times I've decided as I walked into the room what I was gonna do that morning.

But that will be at Covenant Grace Church in St. Charles, Missouri. And this will be our 20th year doing this. The poor folks, I've told them they really need to find themselves a much better speaker, a much more exciting one.

Somebody to pack the place out. Maybe it could speak on prophecy or something. Has anyone come up with the Joe Biden is the Antichrist numerology yet? Because they do it for everybody else. I've seen it for everybody else.

From the first person I remember personally to add up the name to 666 thing was Henry Kissinger. And he's still alive. That's the amazing thing. He's like about 143, but he's still alive. And that's starting to make me wonder a little bit about how to interpret Revelation myself.

Because there is something in Revelation about something that can't be killed or something, so maybe that's Henry Kissinger. I'm not sure. I thought Henry Kissinger was old when I was young. And so how old does he have to be now?

That's sort of scary. That's sort of put a head on a different body to keep the thing going type creepy type stuff. So anyway, we will be doing that this weekend. And believe you me, um, that's probably going to be the last traveling for a very, very, very long time.

As it is just so obvious that you're going to have to buy into these programs. And I bet you it's gonna cost money. Somebody's gonna be making money. Everybody's making money. You have to buy into these programs to provide these health clearance stuff.

I wouldn't doubt that some of the stuff I already have will buy into it to where you can travel internationally and probably I would assume even within country. And I understand that New York and some other places are actually setting up roadblocks and checking people as to whether you're supposed to be entering in to those areas.

Even they were doing it over the holidays. And so as far as traveling goes, now, once we have a functional studio, we're getting there, we're getting close. Once we have a functional studio, then not only do we look at scheduling debates and stuff like that, but that's when we will have to start setting up a schedule.

And if you're, your particular fellowship has a desire to engage certain topics, and to do it. And it's not the same as being there. But if you can have interaction, if you can have questions and have conversation, and then personalize it to your particular area, that's a great way to do things.

And so we'll eventually, I would imagine, we'll have to put something up on the website or something about putting together a schedule and doing that kind of thing. It's something we've talked about doing for a long, long time.

Now, we'll have, we're supposed to have the stuff to be able to do that and be able to offer a range of topics from translational issues to the various groups we've dealt with,.

Issues like that. And yes, sir. I was just going to chime in a couple of items here along the lines that, first of all, I've gotten a number of requests that kind of parallel the studio project, which I've decided that the name for the studio will be the 4K Studio.

You can run that by me. Brilliant, huh? Not really. Not really. Yeah. But when you're off traveling around, I'm going to see if I can't have some time. I'm not going to be off traveling around? Next week.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm going to see if I can't make some time to do one of my technical videos and go through how to do, what am I thinking here? Where we push the website out? I don't know what you're talking about.

I am drawing a blank. I hate words that suddenly escape me. You turn 60 and everything disappears. Okay. But...

You didn't tell me about this beforehand, so I can't help you.

I was just thinking about it. You made me think about it, and it's like, oh, there, yeah. Anyway, I'm going to try to do a couple of technical videos showing people how to do... Not IRC. Why do I keep thinking IRC?

Zoom? What's that? Zoom? Not Zoom, but anyway, a couple of technical videos just kind of going through...

This is sort of entertaining, actually. I know. I'm doing a Joe Biden thing here, man. Come on, man! Come on, man! Come on, man!

And the more I talk about it, the worse it gets.

You're going to do some technical videos about something technical. Yeah, something technical. That has something to do with the studio and computers and the internet, right?

I am. And so RSS feeds, that's what I'm looking for. RSS feeds. I'm getting a lot of inquiries, people going, what is RSS? How do I do it? And they're not realizing how to get our stuff on RSS. And so I want to just kind of walk through that where it's up on the screen and people can use that as a guideline and basically do that sort of thing.

And at the same time, I use RSS in a lot of ways. Parler or Parler works kind of like an RSS. I've actually had a little bit of back and forth with their technical people about trying to do more with that and interact with the RSS feeds.

So you can set up the stuff that you want to read from various sources. Like I tap into Newsmax, I tap into Epic Times, I tap into Doug Wilson's feed, stuff like that. So those are the kind of things that we want to be doing because I think we're going to be pushing towards Parler, we're going to be pushing towards MeWe, we're going to be pushing towards RSS, and we need to get our audience start to adapt to that.

I think we need to help them with the paradigm shift, if you will.

Yeah, well, you know, my biggest concern is just being able to, you know, it's sort of like letting your family know, okay, when everything goes dark, this is where we meet or type of a situation. Oh, no, that's exactly right.

When everything goes dark on the internet, this is how we try to get around it or, you know.

Yeah, we have some guys that are in the midst of really thinking out of the box in case YouTube decides to get crazy on us. In case, I mean, we're making some moves on Facebook and Parler as it is, but, you know, we need people to start moving over there.

One of the things that I saw somebody suggest last night, and I went, you know, I need to do that. From now on, the first posts of the shows need to be on Parler and MeWe. I'll eventually, I'll get around to the other ones.

But first, the priority needs to be those. If you say so. I say so. If you say so. If you say so. Those were the thoughts that were on my mind, escaped me, and came back.

Yes, and people online are already mocking you. I'm sure they are. There's already a picture of us watching Rich's brain go to oatmeal. Oh, man. Absolutely no mercy or grace out there at all.

That's great. I blame Thanksgiving fog. I'm going with it.

We didn't get in any Thanksgiving fog, thanks to me. That's for sure. That was ugly. Okay, anyway. So let's make sure everybody knows that eventually we will be looking at replacing time traveled with time in the studio to do special seminars for churches and things like that, which, by the way, can be done without actually using your facility, though it's more fun, I think, to be together and have the fellowship, but a lot of folks would also might maybe find it to be useful to be able to have a seminar type situation without having to be in the same building just simply because of lockdowns and things like that.

So keep an eye out. Keep an eye out for that. All right. Anyway, I do have on the screen some texts that I want to look at with you today on a biblical level. So if you've got your Bible, if you have your Jeffrey Rice rebind available.

I made someone very happy a couple of months ago. I strongly suggested to my good brother John Cooper of Skillet that he get in touch with Jeffrey Rice. And so that particular project came to completion.

I saw pictures of it over the weekend and hopefully early next week. John will be the proud and happy and very satisfied owner of his own brand new post-Tenebrous Lux rebind. And that'll make the holiday season start off just right.

I saw pictures of it. He sort of went with the class. It's easy to guess what John went with. It's your classic black, obviously, with all sorts of nice stuff about it. But he's not going to go for red or something like that.

He's going to do the classic black type thing, and he did. But you can grab your Bible or whatever it is. There's actually a relationship of all of these texts, and I hope you'll stick with me to consider these texts.

And we have talked about some of them, but I'm going to sort of tie them together a bit. When you think about 1 Corinthians chapter 8, if you have extensive history with dealing with the Mormons, you automatically think about the King James rendering of 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

Do I have? Yes, I do. Hold on just one second here. Get out. I was actually talking about this. This is the very Bible I was talking about on Twitter. Oh, good grief. I'm looking. I'm looking. This is the first Bible I read all the way through in high school.

And I'm just sitting here going, how did I read this? And of course, I read it, you know, laying in bed with bad lighting, which is probably why I can't read it now. And I look at all the underlining and marking and all the rest of this type of stuff, and I can just barely read this now.

It's terrible. But 1 Corinthians chapter 8 is a text that in the King James version says, "...as concerning, therefore, the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and there is no other God but one.

For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there are gods many and lords many, but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.".

So, this is the King James rendering, and if you know your Mormon friends, or maybe if you don't, what you need to know is that they look at 1 Corinthians 8 .5, and they will say that the rendering, "...for though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth," and then the key is the paraphrastic phrase, the parentheses, "...as there are gods many and lords many.".

Now, if you don't have experience in dealing with Mormonism, you're probably going, well, Paul's point's obvious. He has said there's no God but one. He said, for us, there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things.

We exist through him. One Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things. We exist through him. So, he's...and in modern translations, such as the New American Standard, it says, "...even if there are so-called gods, as there are many gods and many lords.".

There are many things that are called gods and lords, but for us, we know there's only one God, and however, verse 7, "...not all men have this knowledge.". Realize that, especially if you're talking to a Mormon missionary, the context of 1 Corinthians chapter 8 is not going to be something in his mind.

That's not going to be something that he is at all, in any way, conversant with. Okay, that's the first thing. So, he just sees phrases, and trying to deal with the Bible in a meaningful fashion with people who just see phrases can be some of the most challenging and frustrating things you can attempt to do.

But the point is, there are many Mormons will say, well, the Bible says there are many gods and many lords, and you have to be prepared to go, yes, there were many gods and many lords in Corinth, but they were not true gods.

They were not true lords. They are so-called, those that are called gods, and in fact, legomenoi, the Greek term that is used there in 1 Corinthians 8 .5, would be more than appropriately, you know, with quotation marks, scare marks, scare quotes, if you want to put it that way, so-called gods that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth.

And being able to explain that to someone can be very, very useful. But here's the issue. Anyone who goes out and witnesses to Mormons has already been aware of this, already been aware of this text, has already run into it, had to explain it, things like that.

The danger that I certainly have seen over the years is the fact that when we have a particular text that is misused and abused by either cults and isms, other religions outside of Christianity where they're making arguments against us, or even people who are Christians but have sub-biblical or aberrant beliefs in certain areas, the human tendency for all of us is to interpret a text of Scripture so that we can protect what may even be an orthodox theology from false understandings and beliefs.

But that's not necessarily the same thing as accurately exegeting the text ourselves. And so, I can tell you that I even memorized texts of Scripture as a young person just getting into dealing with all these issues.

And though I memorized the text, I actually did not accurately understand how that text was related to the context around it. That's one of the, again, one of the problems with the type of memorization we do where honestly, and I'm not in any way, shape, or form discouraging anybody from memorizing Scripture.

But we need to be aware of the fact that normally when we memorize Scripture, we are memorizing a sentence, maybe even just a portion of a sentence. We rarely memorize a paragraph. But most of us would recognize that when you're reading great literature or something, a single paragraph exists within a much wider context.

And so, I'm not discouraging memorization, just a recognition that when you do memorize, be aware that you're memorizing something that has something that went before it and something goes after it. And it's really important to know what those things are and how that is relevant to the handling of that particular text.

And so, when we look at 1 Corinthians 8, when we see what it says, it's easy for us to go, okay, I need to be able to explain what legomenoi means, and I need to talk about gods and lords. And then I've got this verse 6, and there's one God, the Father, from whom are all things, we exist through him.

One Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, we exist through him. So, I've got the Unitarians who will come along and they'll say, see, there's only one God, and that's making a distinction between the one God and Jesus.

And so, Jesus can't be God. And so, I have to go, yeah, but it also says there's one Lord. But you would say that God is Lord of lords. You would say that he is Lord. And so, you're not being fair to the text.

And all those apologetic things are fine and good and proper and yay and all that. But none of that can replace starting off with a serious exegesis of the text in its context. In fact, I would say that if there was one thing that I would change in how I did scripture memorization as a young person, and it's a lot easier to do it as a young person than as an older person, let me assure you, the brain just doesn't work that well.

Ask Rich. We just saw that happening just a few minutes ago with the oatmeal thing. But I would try to find a way in the memorization of a text to have some kind of context marker that I would memorize along with the verse.

It might cut down the number of verses you can memorize, but that would be the one thing I would try to find a way to. So, I was to avoid the piecemeal approach to text of scripture and to know how any verse I was dealing with dealt with the text around it, because that would help you to avoid...

Remember how I've talked about for years using the words of Peter, always being ready to give a defense of the faith, yet with gentleness and reverence. And I've made an entire sermon out of talking about how I used that key text inappropriately for decades, not wrongly, but not fully contextually either, and missing really important elements of it.

And I think that's an accusation I could make against the vast majority of apologists. Every apologist knows that text, every single one. But I've never heard anyone else, to be honest with you, never heard any other apologist point out the Old Testament background to what Peter is saying and then go back and look at it and go, look, if we were consistent, then what Peter's talking about here is Yahweh.

And so what does it mean to treat him as holy? Because that's coming straight out of Isaiah. I've never heard anybody talk about it. Honestly, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's not like I sit around listening to a whole lot of sermons, but I've never heard anyone else talking about that, or at least anyone who I hadn't myself influenced and hence emphasized that particular aspect of it.

So, memorizing something in context really, really helps. And when you look at 1 Corinthians 8, what many people miss is if you see it on the screen there, you'll see in the Greek down here, where I'm making it pop around, in the Greek down here, verse 6 is set apart as poetry.

It's set apart as poetry here. So, you notice the indented lines. And so, but we unto God the Father, we are to us, hais theos, one God, hapatera, the Father, from whom, tapanta, kai haemais, we ais auton, we to him, kai hais kurios, Jesus Christos, one Lord, Jesus Christ, diou, normally dia, but you, Greek doesn't like to put long lines of vowels together, unlike certain languages that think that's fun, diou, tapanta, kai haemais, di auto.

So, the same prepositions you used here, through whom is tapanta, same tapanta as 1 Corinthians 8, 6, I'm sorry, the preceding phrase, regarding God the Father, tapanta, through whom is tapanta, and we, same thing, through him, and in the first phrase, it's unto him.

And so, you have a poetic, or at least in the opinion of the editors, a poetic text here, is it a creed? Is it part of a hymn? The assumption being made is that it's one of those two things, and when you look carefully at it, it all of a sudden jumps out at you, and grabs hold of you if you're sensitive to the Hebrew scripture echo that you always must be looking for in the New Testament, and especially must be extremely sensitive to in the Apostle Paul, who is, when you think about it, Paul is, at this point, regularly debating the Jews in public, demonstrating that Jesus is the Christ.

He is outside of what we would call the boundaries of Israel, and therefore, what text is he utilizing? What is he arguing from? He is arguing from this, the Greek Septuagint. Now, does he know the Hebrew scriptures?

Of course, he does, but it may have even, you know, I had never actually pondered this question. We're going to ponder something together here. How available would the Hebrew text have been to Paul after his conversion?

Because pre-conversion, he would have had access in the synagogues to the scrolls, because remember, you know, we, I look back here, and I have a whole thing worth of, you know, I've got my, wow, one of my real old, which edition?

Wow, it's got my, I'm going to have to show Kelly that. That's a sweet inscription from Kelly. This goes back, which edition? I think this is probably, it's probably 26th, I would imagine. My arms aren't quite long enough to get to it, but this is one of the very first ones I had bound.

Yeah, this is a 26th from 1970, 81, 81. So, you know, I don't know how many Nessiolam texts I have. There's a 28th back there. I've got 27th here, there, and everywhere, and that's just what we're accustomed to, but that's not how things worked in the ancient world.

And so, pre-conversion, Paul would have had access to those scriptures as a well-known Pharisee within the context of the Jewish community, but once he became known as Paul, what would he have had access to?

And then once he's outside of Israel, the primary people to whom he is when he's going into synagogues, okay, he could say, well, let's get the scroll of such and such out, but 99 of the people in the room are reading this, not the Hebrew.

They're not Hebrew speakers. And maybe the farther you get from Israel, even the leadership, this is what they're using. Interesting to ask, especially once he's arrested, do you have any idea how large scrolls of the entirety of the Old Testament would be?

Sorry, Roman soldiers aren't going to be going, yeah, go ahead and grab his bags, you know, that's got the wheels on them. No, he's not going to have access to that stuff. Now, how much of it would he have memorized?

Good question. Good question. But the people to whom he's speaking have a written text and it's this, which raises all sorts of fascinating issues. And in fact, in one of the texts we're going to look at, maybe look at, the way I'm going, may not get to it this time around, maybe hold it off for the next one.

That actually is important. And we may do some speculation on that as well, as we're moving along. But the point is, if you are reading this, if you have the Greek Septuagint, man, is it just my eyes or am I just getting that old?

Man, live. Don't blame me for you're sitting out there and not remember what an RSS feed is. I know what an RSS feed is. I don't know what you were talking about. I was thinking about the studio over there.

I'm going, huh? Yeah, three letter acronyms. That's too many of them. Sure, go ahead and make all the excuses you want. I see you doing that on Twitter, even as we're, as I'm speaking here. So here it is.

It's page 297, if you happen to have this edition of the Rolf's Greek Septuagint. Deuteronomy 6, 4. Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4. Most of us know this, but you're familiar with the Hebrew. But that's the Hebrew.

What is the Greek? Well, it's on the, I can, well, here. Oops, that's not the right one. No, that's not it. There we go. Put it up on the screen for you. If you would like, it's right there. But, and that's a lot easier to read than this, but just verifying it here.

Akua Israel, Kurias Hathaias Haimon, Kurias Hais Esten. Nice short little phrase, sentence actually. Here, Israel, Kurias Hathaias Haimon. Kurias, the Lord is our God. Kurias Hais Esten, the Lord is one.

We all know what it is. It is the Shema, because in the Hebrew, it begins Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Here, it's the commandment. Here, O Israel, the Lord, Yahweh, notice right there, there's Yahweh, is our God.

Yahweh Echad, is one. Yahweh is one. So, you have the identification of the one true God as Yahweh, the identification of the people of Israel as belonging to Yahweh, and the assertion that Yahweh is Echad, one.

And so, when you see the key terms, Kurias, Thaas, Hais, and then you go back to what we have here in 1 Corinthians 8, 6. Here's Thaas, here's Hais, here's Kurias, and what should before anything else.

I say should, I don't mean morally should or something like that, but in the ideal situation, the first thing that should catch our attention is not how a Mormon missionary is going to mess this thing up, and not how a Unitarian is going to mess this up.

That is my mindset. I confess right here and now. I cannot help, but when I am reading these texts, to go, my mind is running a subroutine. How might someone misuse this? And it comes from, you know, sitting in a debate with a Unitarian, and he's reading a text, and what's my mind doing?

My mind's going, how is he going to use this? I'm trying to stay ahead of him. I'm trying to, you know, anticipate. That's how apologist minds work, but we have to, in a disciplined fashion, try to control that.

And so, the first thing that should pop into our mind as we're reading 1 Corinthians 8, especially if it's set off as poetry or something, that's almost always the editor's way of saying, hey, there's something in the background here that you might want to be looking at.

But the first thing should be, hey, this is the language of the Shema. This is the language of the prayer that identified the very Jewish people as the people of Yahweh. There's a whole section, I don't have it in here with me right now, but there's a whole section in the Mishnah, a whole tractate in the Mishnah about when, how, why to quote the Shema on a daily basis.

You know, when you should, when you shouldn't, all this stuff, because the Shema is a definitional aspect of the Jewish faith. And so, we look at Paul's use, and would he know it in Hebrew? Well, of course, he did.

But did he know it in Greek? Of course, he did. And so, how can you look at a text like this and not go, Paul's doing this purposely, or was it Paul? See, if you don't sit back and consider, huh, if this is in poetic form, this could be a creedal statement, this could be a hymn fragment that might predate Paul.

If this predates Paul's entrance into the church, then that means from the start, you had the highest possible Christology. Because think about what 1 Corinthians 8, 6 does. It takes the definitional, identifying, setting Israel apart text from Deuteronomy 6, 4, the Shema, and opens it up and expands it.

Who has the right to do that? I mean, just think. And if you do Jewish evangelism, you already know this is as presuppositionally a part of the thinking of the Jewish person that you can't do this as the rejection of the incarnation is presuppositional to the Muslim rejection of Christianity, and for many of the same reasons.

So, knowing what Paul's background is, and by the way, do you notice something about 1 Corinthians 8? Paul does not, what's the very next verse? However, not all men have this knowledge, but some being accustomed to the idol until now eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled, but food will not commend us to God.

We are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. He doesn't stop and say, oh, by the way, let me talk to you about this Trinity thing, about this deity of Christ thing. He does not even stop.

He is not in verse 6 trying to introduce some new theological concept. The very way he does this, just like in Philippians chapter 2, the whole Carmen Christi is not his point. It's a sermon illustration.

In both of them, what we see is what was the common understanding of the Christian people that Paul can then reach out and grab an example of and make his point. These people already understood their theology.

They already understood what the apostolic message was about this person named Jesus. So, he doesn't have to stop and say, I'm teaching you some new thing. They had already been taught this. They already understood what 1 Corinthians 8, 6 was.

They've already got this down pat, and that's why he can just simply use it and say, see, not all men have this knowledge, but he has literally taken the Shema, or if it wasn't him, someone before him.

Whatever the time frame, this is absolutely primitive. And you say, why are you emphasizing this so much? Because if you go almost anywhere, they're going to tell you that this stuff developed way down the line, way after the disciples.

Remember, I've told you the story when Daniel Kirk, Dr. Kirk, used to teach Fuller, doesn't anymore, was debating Bob Gagnon in Scottsdale, and he made that comment about Jesus being a first-century Jew.

We've got to be ready and willing to think past first-century Judaism. Remember that? And I went up to him, and I asked him about the deity of Christ, and what he said to me is, you don't think the disciples thought Jesus was God, do you?

Well, here's one disciple, and if this predates Paul, if this isn't Paul's expression, it could be, even if it is Paul's. We're talking about the middle of the first century. We're talking about in the lives of all the eyewitnesses, in the lives of all of the disciples in those first few decades after the resurrection.

And if it predates Paul, it goes back to the same decade as the resurrection. That's how primitive it is, how early it is. It's not some later development. Now, is there development of language later on to answer questions?

Of course there is. There has to be. But the belief itself is unbelievably early, right here in the text. And we don't see it if we're not sensitive to the echoes from the Hebrew Scriptures, if we're not sensitive to the context of what Paul's doing, to the flow of the thought of what he's doing in this text.

And when we come to a text, when we are brought to a text by a false teacher, when we're brought to a text by a false use, and let's be honest, that's how a lot of us end up at certain texts and paying special attention to certain texts.

I mean, how many who deal with Mormons had to for the first time delve into James 2 .20 because the Mormons brought them there? Not because you had heard a great sermon that showed the consistency of James 2 .10 and following, especially the specific pericope 2 .14 through 24.

You may have heard a sermon like that, but if you had never really been pushed to be consistent about it, you may have never given it second thought. And the scary thing is, the thing that I've experienced in my own life is when you're brought that way, it's very easy to come up with an interpretation that works and then assume that that's pretty much all there is to it.

And very frequently it's not. And to be honest with you, sometimes answers that work on the street corner are not the best exegetical answers that there are. And sometimes the best exegesis is pretty difficult to communicate on the street corner.

So what are you going to do then, hero? Because for a lot of folks, it's very pragmatic. Hey, if it works, run with it, even if it's not necessarily totally accurate. I've told that story before too. Remember the minister that asked me to look up a look up a text?

I did. I wrote a paper up for him. He had a certain interpretation he'd read in a commentary. I was like, yeah, that doesn't fly. And yet when he preached a couple weeks later, that's what he preached.

And he didn't even deal with the objections, didn't even deal with the problems that I pointed out in the paper. But then when he saw me next time, he just put his head down because he wasn't gonna try to defend it.