Knowing Scripture I: Where We Meet With God

Introduction to Knowing Scripture

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder, and with me this week is Lindsay Williams. Welcome, Lindsay. Lindsay, we are looking at a new topic and a new series in our podcast, and the topic is knowing Scripture.

How do we approach the Scripture in a way that is most careful? How can we understand the right way to study the Word of God, and is there a way to approach the Word of God that the Word of God encourages us to do, or is it just, you know, human logic?

And for that we're going to be using a little book, and it's by R .C. Sproul called Knowing Scripture, and so it has six major chapters, so we will do six weeks in the book. Now, before we get you to introduce yourself, Lindsay, I need to tell the folks that we are doing a number of giveaways.

In fact, we're going to do a giveaway each week of the six weeks for the podcast, and here are some of the books that would be given away. We want to give away books or Bibles, a study Bible, which are fitting to the theme, how we understand the Scriptures, how we can be better students of the Scriptures.

So you will find information about that in.

The description. Well, Lindsay, tell us a little about yourself. Born and raised in Texas. I think I came to know the Lord when I was around 13, and really spent the next 15 -17 years studying the Scriptures, but never having a whole grasp of it.

So I graduated from college in 2004, and moved to Tennessee for about 10 years, and then that's when I found Christ Church, and heard sermons through that and through Paul Washer that explained the Gospel in its entirety.

The whole idea of Reformed theology was brand new, and it was something that just.

Made the Bible come alive. Well, we're glad to have you today. We are going to be looking at the theme of how to approach the Scripture in a way that is most careful. Let me read from Psalm 115. The psalmist writes,.

And he does whatever he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear.

They have noses, but they cannot smell. They have hands, but they cannot feel. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them.

The reason I wanted to read that passage is because it clearly states that there is no God that we could make, whether it's the ancient gods, you know, carved out of stone and wood, or whether it's a more up-to-date God, something that, you know, is more tech savvy.

Whatever it is our hearts are hoping in, our gods, even though they may claim to have mouths, they don't really speak to us. They never have. There is one God, though, the true and living God that we didn't invent, and he does speak to us.

We didn't carve his mouth, but he's given us his words, and he's given us the words in a book. And there are two implications, I think, that kind of set our course for the whole study in this podcast, and that is, first of all, if we belong to a God that speaks, then the Christian, above every other person on the planet, really ought to be the best listener, or the best student.

And if we have a book that contains his word, that is all that he wants us to have, and just what he wants us to have for Christian belief and practice, then we want to be the best students we can, because, just like the psalmist says, because of his loving kindness and his truth.

So we are going to be using Sproul's book, but it is a book written by a man, and this is not a book written by God. And so, as with all books that men write, there are strengths, and then there are weaknesses.

Hermeneutics Without Overwhelm

And we were talking last week about the first podcast, and Lindsay, you had some questions, some hurdles that may come up for other people that came up for you, so why don't we deal with those right now?

I think some of it he gets.

Pretty specific, which is good, and I love Sproul's writings and his sermons, but it was so detailed for me with things like, you've got to be able to dissect sentences, and you know, diagram a sentence, and you know, no parts of Greek, or being willing to trace it back to where the original words came from, and I'm not unintelligent, I've got a college degree, and I can't do those things.

And so after reading it, I thought, I can't do what he says, so where does that leave me? Where do I go from there? Because I can't do all the things he laid out in those six chapters, they're not possible for me.

Yeah, so it's a good.

Chance, just to say up front, that while the book contains very helpful hermeneutical principles, if you're not used to the word hermeneutical, it's not the kind of word we use when we go to work on Monday, like, how's your hermeneutic doing, you know?

And it just means principles for interpreting a written text, and they apply really to all texts, but they apply to the Scripture, and there are some special ones when we come to the Bible, but the principles in this book for studying the Scripture, and not just reading it, or not just listening to it preached, they're good principles.

But we don't want anyone to get overwhelmed and say, well, does that mean I have to be able to do, to the fullest degree, everything that Sproul mentions, or else I can't understand God's Word? And if that's the case, then we kind of end up in this, you know,.

Hopelessness. Yeah, it's just bogged down. I feel like I've lived there for a few years after being at this church for almost ten years, where a lot of people do study in scholarly ways, and it's great to do that, but at the last few years, I've gotten weary because I can't do it, and so I've just kind of let my feet drag, which is also the wrong response.

Yeah, so what we want to do in.

The podcast, and podcasts, I think, are good vehicles for this. We want to take the highlights from the chapters and kind of boil them down to the fundamentals. What every Christian ought to be able to do, for some of us it's more work than others, but what are the basic principles?

How can we apply them, and are they doable for every Christian that, you know, can read? And a.

Continual question for me to keep asking is, why? Why do we study? Why are we doing these things? It's not just for the sake of knowledge, you know, it's to know.

Him better. Yeah, and what you just mentioned is so significant, because the motivational level for study is important, and we'll mention that in a minute, but why would we want to study? There are a lot of motives that have nothing to do with pleasing the Lord, and so we want to not feed those, but there are motives that are significant.

I think if we lose hope in our ability to study the Bible by some basic principles, then we end up kind of sliding back into the pre-Protestant Reformation approach to Scripture, you know? It might as well be in Latin.

It might as well be understood that, I just can't understand this book, it's so mysterious, it's so spiritual, and I need to go to my priest, and he'll tell me what I'm supposed to believe. But if we're not careful and we slide into that, then I think that, you know, that really opens the door for a lot of abuses.

He mentions a couple of myths, kind of false excuses. One of them is that the Bible is a boring book, and that deals again with a person's appetite and their motivation. We'll hit that later. But he gives another excuse.

So what is it, Lindsey, and.

What you think about it? That it's too hard to do, and there is truth in that from the initial standpoint. It is a challenge. The book was written in a different time of life, so it's not you just pick it up and it's like, you know, literature from the here and now.

So you go to helps that we're given. It's 2023. We've got every help within reach, whether it's on a phone or a book. I like the Matthew-Henry commentary that helps to help me understand, okay, they're talking about the temple.

Why is that important? What does that have to do with X, Y, and Z? And you break those things down, and it's not too hard. It is hard,.

But it is not too hard. Yeah, so the thing you're mentioning is that we do have a gap of 2 ,000-plus years. You know, poetry written in the time of Job is quite disconnected from poetry we're used to.

And so when you look at those events, history, poetry, prayer, you know, rituals which might to us seem so strange, very specific laws, it does take effort to bridge from what it meant to the original reader, and then make that bridge to what does it mean to us today.

And we'll be talking about that as we go through the book. How do we build that bridge? But it is something we have to be aware of. I think one thing that's very encouraging is, even if you think about the New Testament, the language that God used to give us these truths.

The Old Testament Hebrew. Hebrew is a very concrete language. It's amazingly simple in some ways. Every Hebrew word is made up of three consonants, and then you have vowel signs that are added. The Hebrews were concrete thinkers.

So, you know, for example, in Hebrew, a spark that flies up from the fire. So you build a campfire and sparks go up. Well, their word for a spark is the sun of fire, all right? So it's a very concrete, picturesque language.

Greek is very conceptual. You know, it's perfect for the deep concepts of the Christian life. But when God gave us the Greek New Testament, He did not give it to us in the complicated, beautiful, you know, elegant, classical Greek.

He gave it to us in a language that's called Koine Greek, or it's the common man's Greek of the day. Early Muslims, looking at the Christian Bible, said, well, this can't be a book that God gave you, because it's written in common person language.

Our book, the Quran, is written in beautiful, classical Arabic. But I think that that shows not only a misunderstanding that the Muslim might have of the nature of God, but also I think it shows the character of God perfectly, that He gives the most wonderful, deep truths, and He gives it to us in a language that everyone could understand.

Sola Scriptura and the Perspicuity of Scripture

All right, well, let's look at a few of the things in the first chapter, where Sproul just lays out some things to be aware of, and some things to guard against. So one of the things he talks about is the benefits that the Protestant Reformation brought, and he said there were two things.

So the first is sola scriptura, and the second is the perspicuity of Scripture. So what does he mean by sola scriptura?

Well, that it's its own authority. I mean, the Bible alone teaches, it's not the Bible plus anything. Right. Sorry, I interrupted you. You're fine. And it's like what you've been preaching on, is that the Bible is not just pictures that overlay our lives, but it's a map, it's a guide to get us from here to eternity.

And to study that and to know that, it stands alone. Yeah, so the Scripture is the sole.

Authority by which everything else has to be judged. So the preacher Sunday, what he says has to be judged by Scripture. A confession of faith, you know, the Westminster or 1689 Baptist or whatever your church has, has to be judged by Scripture.

In a sense, our conscience, like Luther said, is bound to Scripture as best as we can understand it. Sola scriptura, the only and ultimate authority for the Christian. The Roman Catholic Church believed in the authority of Scripture, but it was adjusted.

It was different from what the Reformers said, and there's a very significant difference. The Roman Catholic Church believed in prima scriptura, so sola, only, Scripture, versus prima, primarily, Scripture.

They believed that the Bible was one of the great authorities God gave us, but then you would have the church traditions, the councils, the Pope of that day, when he speaks as the Pope, would be authoritative.

And so, in practice then, Scripture really doesn't have the authority, because everyone else in that list gets to tell you what the Bible says, and even if you say, but when I read the Scripture, it's very clear, you would say, well yes, but God gave you the church as well, and the church tells you you're wrong.

And so, prima scriptura is not what we want. We want sola scriptura. But for sola scriptura to be something more than just a beautiful concept, some Latin phrase that we say, we're Protestants, we believe this, then we need that second thing they mentioned, the perspicuity of Scripture.

Perspicuity is not a very perspicuous word, it's a word that means that if we say the perspicuity of Scripture, we're saying Scripture has the quality of being clear and understandable. So what the Reformers said was this, you don't have to be a professional, you don't have to have an enormous library, you don't have to be one of the, you or the cardinals of the church to read and understand the basic message of Scripture.

Any person with the Bible who makes the effort can understand what the Bible is saying, because it is a fundamentally clear book. Now, they weren't saying that every passage in Scripture is equally clear.

I mean, there are some passages that are difficult. Peter mentions notoriously that some of the things that Paul wrote were very difficult. So there are, you know, we could say there are passages that are difficult, but we're going to learn in the coming chapters, there are ways to approach these difficult passages or chapters that help us to make them simple.

But like you said, the main message is going to be clear, through Scriptures, and how we are to live, and like you said a minute ago, that the Scripture is to judge us, you know, and helps us to understand where have we gone wayward, and where are we on the right path, and it is a continual turning to that as our guide.

Yeah, so.

Everything the Christian needs to know for belief and practice is clear. All passages are not equally simple. Not saying that. Also, not saying that every time, just because we say, well, the Bible is a clear book, it is perspicuous, it is able to be understood.

We're not saying that if you read a chapter of the Bible and you can say, well, it's talking about such-and-such, that that means that that chapter will impact you spiritually in the way it's supposed to.

There is another dynamic when we talk about going beyond just understanding what does it say, and what does it mean by what it says, but what about the spiritual application? What about the transforming power of Scripture?

And that includes, of course, the teaching of God and the humble, responsive heart of the reader. And so right now, we're not talking about that, we're talking primarily about understanding not only what it says, but what it means by what.

It says. And I think a difference, you know, spending time in churches before here, I've been here the last 10 years, is the idea of reading a Scripture and then thinking, okay, how does this impact me?

How does this affect me? Versus what you just said, is how can this transform me? And that idea of getting past the surface of a Scripture, and looking past myself, and getting that broader picture is what requires that deeper study.

To know what is being said, why is it being said, how can this make me, help me to know and to love our King better? One of.

Why the Bible Can Seem Boring

The things Sproul says that we need to be clear about is that there is the issue of motivation. And that kind of brings us back to that one of the myths that he gives at the beginning of the chapter, that the Bible is boring.

And he argues and says, how can you say that the Bible is boring? It has historical accounts of, you know, of nations and individuals, of, you know, love and war and theft and murder, and, you know, what people would turn their TV on to see these things.

And so he says, you know, so why does it bore you? And I think one thing that we have to be clear about is that the Scripture is written for a very specific purpose. And if you are uninterested in its primary purpose, it doesn't matter how much you love history, or poetry, or love stories, or whatever.

Yeah, you can get that somewhere else. So the Bible is not, it's going to be disappointing to you, if you approach it hoping to use it, to kind of bend it toward a purpose that it's not designed for. And the ultimate purpose of Scripture is, it's not even to fix us, or to thrill us, or to be, you know, a book for us to use to make us a better me.

It's a book that reveals God, and it reveals God in a way that is so perfectly designed, as you mentioned, to transform us, to take those realities, and they become the realities that we live within, and that just penetrate through us, you know, they just roam throughout our imagination, and our thoughts, and our choices, and desires, and plans.

So if we're not interested in getting to know God, as exciting as the material of the Bible is, the content is not boring, it's going to be a book that we will not be very interested in. If you think about motivation, it takes little motivation to do a little task, you know.

Now sometimes we're so lazy, we think, oh, you know, do I have to, you know, you think of a teenage boy, and let's say he's a 16 year old boy, he's got in a car, and he's, you know, and he's just so full of himself, Saturday morning comes, he thinks, I get to sleep in today, you know, no school today, I'm gonna sleep in, and mom comes and knocks on the door and says, hey, I need you to get up, I need you to do such-and-such, you know, you said you would do this, and he's like, oh, mom, I can't, you know, and she has to, you know, just ride his case, just to get him to roll out of bed.

He has very little motivation, and no matter how small the task is, you know, his motivation is so small, the task seems enormous. And for some people, studying the Bible is just like that. I don't really want to know what God says, I kind of prefer just to go along on my own ideas of what life is about, and if someone says to me, well, here are some principles for studying this book, I would say, well, if I'm honest, I just don't have motivation.

Now, if we go back to our 16 year old boy, Sproul says that the problem with many people in the study of the Bible is they're lazy, and well, there's some truth there. We are, you know, lazy people, and we have to stir ourselves, but I think the problem goes much deeper than that.

It's more sinister than just being slothful or lazy, and that is, it's the motivation. Our hearts, at times, are so indifferent to God that if He handed it to us on a platter, we could be...it'd be hard to get us to even lift our hand and reach out to grab it, because even lazy people, I find, when highly motivated, suddenly are...yeah, they're suddenly not lazy anymore.

So, our 16 year old boy illustration. Mom says, get up, I need you to, you know, take out the trash or mow the lawn. You said you would do that this morning before, you know, before this time, and, uh, you know, he can't be bothered.

But now, if he hears a strange noise, the noise of little rocks hitting the side of a car, and suddenly he realizes his little brother's outside, and he thinks, surely he's not doing what I think he's doing.

And he looks out the window from his bed, and he sees that his little brother has picked up rocks, and he's just kind of cluelessly throwing them and bouncing it off his older brother's new car. Suddenly, the boy flies out of bed, yeah, and gets downstairs in a second, because he's motivated.

So, it's not just that we're lazy, it's not that we're busy, it's not that it's difficult, it's that we do need a level of motivation that will match the difficulty. It's not easy, and if a task is doable, but it is an enduring, like a lifelong task, it takes more motivation than a task that's finished in a second.

So, what is the motivation? So, for you, Lindsay, what is the.

Motivation to study an ancient book? What you just talked about makes me think of what Mr. Laney used to say when I first came here, which he would pray that God would help us to want to want Him more.

And that really resonated as I realized my desire to even study Scripture is not really mine, it's a grace that God gives. And the desire to study is that, to want to be more like Him in this life, and to be readying myself for eternity with Him, and to be free as much as possible of selfishness and sin in this life, to look more like Him.

Because if we don't look like Him, what is the draw that others will want to know Him through us, and.

Through our lives? Yeah, I think of the two great poisons to motivation to study the Bible. One would be pride, and pride would just say, you know, I really feel like I appreciate this book, and you know, I'm not an atheist, I think this is God's Word, so whatever's in that book, I'm for it.

And like, yeah, but do you know what's in the book? Well, no, but I'm for it. And so, I mean, in our culture, in the Mid-South, we would still have quite a few people that would kind of pay lip service to the Bible, but our pride says, I feel that I can really handle life on my own, and so unless there are moments of extraordinary crisis, I don't really have a need for that book.

And then there's unbelief, and unbelief kills all motivation to study the Bible, because we think, well, it's a great book, it's admirable, but it is not what it claims to be. It is not this timeless Word, it does not reveal a God that cannot be altered.

So, you know, if you have a lot of extra time, and you love ancient books, and ancient philosophies, and ancient civilizations, then you could study the book. But I am a practical person, and I need to know, I need to invest myself and my time in things that are very practical, and this just isn't practical.

And so, unbelief makes me not do anything.

And I fall close to that. I am a practical in thought, in word, in deed, in all of it, but practically, to build a relationship with the Lord, you have to be in His Word. And so, for me, that is another motivation, is just to know Him, in a friendship, just in a closeness type of way.

If I don't know His Word, I don't know Him. And it is, you know, as you age, and the world becomes more real, and anxieties grow, they have for me with age, He is a rest. He is a place of hope. He is a place of comfort.

And when, you know, the midlife crisis hits, where you need all this stuff the world offers to find comfort, you can say, no, I've got all that I need here. And it doesn't mean you can't do anything fun.

You know, my main car is a Jeep Wrangler, and so I like fun stuff. Yeah, I have taken your car for a ride.

Yes, without permission. Yeah, I know. I did turn off the traction control. Yeah, that's fine. Just so you know. Yeah, it's good. I don't want to have to apologize later. Yeah. Well, at the end of the chapter, Sproul gives us three types of Christians that we don't want to become, or if we find ourselves drifting in that way, we want, by the grace of God, to ask Him, help me not be that way.

So, Lindsay, just walk us through those three kind of slippery.

Categories that we want to avoid. Well, the first one he talks about is the anti-intellectual Christian, who just thinks they don't need to study. It's not necessary. It's not a needful thing. I think I've been there before because it was easy, and, you know, being fed decent sermons was enough.

But then, when that's the case, the Bible stays two-dimensional, and it's when you study and really dig that it becomes the three-dimensional... Like you often talk about, it's like a diamond, and every inch that you turn it, every millimeter you turn it, there's something new in it.

So there's a danger in that. The pragmatic Christian is the second one he talks about. The person who thinks, you know, only things that have obvious practical effects. So, again, I'm such a practical person, but the Bible is more than practicality.

You know, it's a friendship and a fellowship with Christ. And then the sensual Christian, I think I was there for a long time before coming here because I didn't have good doctrine. So it was a continual hopping from this conference or this book or this thought process to get you that good feeling.

Okay, I've experienced God. Okay, but what's next? And so I think being around good doctrine, good sermons, and fellowship with other believers, it has eradicated that, because it's just a steady walk with me, with the Lord, with those around me, and that steadiness has taken that want for that, you know, oh, what's the big experience that I.

Need next? Yeah. It is easy, especially, I think, when if a person cares about other people. When we think about, you know, the outreach of a life, the outreach of a church, and, you know, and then you say, well, let's focus on good principles for studying our Bible.

You know, the thought could come up, and it doesn't sound very selfish, but I think it's misdirected. Well, we need to be focusing on how to reach the world, how to make the church what the people need, you know, how to, how to.

And those sound very practical, but if they're not rooted in what God has revealed about Himself, His character, and what He intends to do, you know, His activity, then I find that those how-to things quickly are skewed, and they become very me-centered or man-centered.

They become tasks to accomplish. Yeah, yeah. You can think of them as things like, well, we did A, B, and C, so we're a good church. But what if what you're doing is not pleasing to the Lord? You think, well, why wouldn't it be pleasing to the Lord?

Well, have you considered what the Scripture says about Him? I think that understanding those deep, kind of underlying, great truths of Scripture about God, His character, His activity, about us, those things that some people may say, well, that's for theologians.

But every Christian taking time to study the Bible as best they can, to be gripped by those realities, to understand them as best they can, those are the things that.

Fuel all of our activity. Those are the things that keep a steady walk for a believer, because there's no end to all that. You just keep studying and seeing something new instead of looking for something exciting, but the newness is there, and it's that steadiness that lets a believer walk.

In faith. So the great truths fuel, and they guide. Why don't we do evangelism a certain way? Well, because of who He is. Because of what I read about Him in the Psalms this morning, that doesn't seem to match Him.

So every area of life, little by little, is being altered, refashioned, or recalibrated by the things that God is saying to me. And really, that's exciting, like you said, it's a lifelong adventure. When I was a kid in church, I remember in Columbus, Ohio, I had a very earnest pastor, and he preached and preached and preached, and he sweated when he preached, and he always had his handkerchief out.

He was mostly bald, so it was like, whoosh, always taking care of the sweat. And I thought, man, that guy is just so earnest about the Bible. And I thought, but poor guy, he was gray-haired, and I'd say, he's probably about to the end of it now.

And once he gets to the end, like that's the end of the adventure, you know, there's nothing more to learn, because he would have finished this book. And then, of course, I became a Christian many years later, and realized what you said, that like there's this constant fountain of truth.

There's the diamond with new facets, and as we apply what God said to us yesterday, you know, there's new things tomorrow. Well, we're going to be looking at chapter two next week, where Sproul gets into some of the specifics.

So I think, just to kind of set our minds in an encouraging way right at the beginning, three things. First, the Bible is this boundless ocean of truth. It is truth that the God, the truth, knows is best for us, and it's been given to us in a way that is best for us.

Second thing, God himself, the author, is also the teacher of every believer. And so, you know, when you think of reading a book, and it looks difficult, and the Bible certainly looks difficult, you can either look at yourself in the mirror and think, are you up to it?

And you know, the answer may be, no, I'm not up to it. Or you can look at the teacher, you know, and you walk in the classroom and you say to the teacher, are you up to it? Could you teach me? You know, I don't find this easy, but if you're a perfect teacher, you could teach even me.

And so, realizing that God himself has undertaken by his spirit to teach us what this book is about in a way that changes us is very encouraging. And the last thing is, there are basic principles, and these are not impossible, and as we look at what they are, we can little by little, with the help of God, apply them to how we read our Bibles and find that the book is, in fact, a book.

That its message is clear, and if we are responsive, then that message changes everything. Well, before we end, I want to mention this week's giveaway, and it's a two-volume commentary on the epistles of the New Testament.

It's called the New Testament Commentaries by Jeffrey Wilson, who...I don't know if Jeffrey Wilson is still alive. He was an older man a number of years ago, but he is a 20th, 21st century man. These are very to the point, and so it's not sermonic and wordy like others, and it's not too technical.

I think that for me, if I could only have one commentary on New Testament letters, it would probably be this, because it just gets to the point. Wilson quotes some of the best of the old writers, but he makes things very clear, and it's in a size that is doable for most of us.

So, two volumes by Jeffrey Wilson, New Testament Commentaries. You have a set of these, don't you? Yes,.

I use those often. I like the Matthew Henry, just because it's all in one, but those are great.

So, for New Testament epistles, and again, look at the description, and you'll see information about that. Thank you.