Hermeneutics Pt. 2: Interpreting the Word of God

But hermeneutics, interpreting the Word of God. This is the second class that we're having on hermeneutics. And just to review, remember we asked the question, what is hermeneutics? It is the art and the science of interpretation.

Why is hermeneutics so important? And remember we looked at this that it's because it's subject to distortion by untrained and untaught people. And also to bridge the many gaps between our culture today and the ancient culture of scripture.

Those are just very compelling reasons why hermeneutics is so important. And then remember this quotation from Professor Ram, there is no prophet to us if God has spoken and we do not know what he has said.

We need to know the correct method of biblical interpretation so that we do not confuse the voice of God with the voice of man. So tonight we're going to begin with some foundational presuppositions. You should not be surprised that we talk about presuppositions since we are a presuppositional church.

And I'm going to give you several presuppositions. These are not things that I'm going to try to prove. These are presuppositions. We're first presupposition is God created man with the ability to understand his communication to him.

All right? We're presuming that. We're not going to try to prove that. God has created us so that we can understand his word. And we see that in Genesis 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3 because God communicates directly to Adam and Eve.

And it's very obvious just through those three chapters in particular that there is communication between God and man. Remember the definition of communication. I went over this in a previous study. I don't remember which one it was in particular.

But anybody remember the definition of communication? Closure. Yep. It's just simply a transfer of information. All right? You can talk and talk and talk, and if no information is being transferred, there's no communication being taken place.

There are three essentials for communication, and this ties in with what Anthony was saying. You need a transmitter, somebody speaking or even a radio transmitter, a receiver, and a language common to both.

All right? So this is what we're looking at here. For communication to take place, you need somebody to be speaking, and in this case, we're talking about God speaking to us through his word. You need a receiver, that's us, and you have to have a language common to both.

All right? If you don't have a language common to both, no communication takes place. And so if I look at one of you and I go Kandusnakonorsk, right? No Kuprendo. Yeah. Kandusnakonorsk. See, no information was transferred, therefore no communication took place.

Even though I said something and she said something, no communication took place because there's no information transmitted. What I asked her was in Norwegian, do you speak Norwegian? And she gave me the right answer, although it'd be in Spanish.

So what we see in those first three chapters of the book of Genesis is that God gives Adam and Eve purpose. That's one of the purposes of communication, is he tells them why he has placed them, why he has created them, and what their job is, and why he placed them in the Garden of Eden.

He explains their obligations when he created them and put them in the garden. There are certain obligations that he placed upon them. He explained the blessings for obedience. He explained the cursings for disobedience.

All right? And it's clear from the text that they understood what God had said. All right? Anybody recognize anything in there, those questions? Yes. You've seen the elements of a covenant relationship.

All right, right in there. All right, one thing I could have put in here, he explains what the future holds for them, which would really round out the relationship. Second presupposition, the Bible is God's chosen method to communicate his truth to man in this age.

All right? We see this in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, Bible admits, we admit that there were times in the past that God spoke in many different ways, burning bushes and whirlwinds, in many different ways he spoke in dreams and visions.

All right? But in these last days, he has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world. The last revelation is through Jesus Christ, right? And this is very crucial, these last days spoken to us in his Son.

This is why hermeneutics is so important. The Word of God is not left up to subjective interpretation, but we'll get to that in a few minutes. Second, we're still looking at God's chosen method. These two verses should be, if you don't have these verses memorized, firstly, shame on you.

Secondly, get them memorized, all right? Because they are so useful. How many times in Bible studies, Wednesday night, have I put these two verses up? Because they are so comprehensive and so broad-based and yet so right on target, right?

We used it for the inspiration of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the equipping of the saints, it's so much jam-packed in these. And what it says is, all Scripture is inspired by God, all right?

That's God-breathed, very good. All right, and profitable, that means useful, all right? It's useful for, and we have four things, teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, and remember, adequate is not how we think of adequate, adequate means perfect.

Okay, reproof carries with it more the connotation of conviction. In other words, I'm going to tell you what you've done wrong and convince you that what you have done is in violation to the Word of God.

Correction is the changing of that behavior, all right? And then the training in, well, in fact, let me just go through that since you asked the question. It's profitable for teaching. Teaching, some of your translations will say doctrine.

In other words, there has to be a standard of what is right and what is wrong, that's the doctrine, all right? When, if you ever hear a church says, well, we don't believe in doctrine, we just preach Jesus.

You can't preach Jesus without preaching doctrine, all right? Because there is a right, there is a wrong, there is truth, so that's what that, reproof is the conviction that comes when you are faced with your sin and you see that, you see yourself as a sinner and in need of correction, which is the next one, and that's where you take the steps to correct it.

Training in righteousness is the ongoing process of discipleship, where you are training in how to be a productive member in the kingdom of God, all right? So that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work, and that's self-explanatory, all right?

The third presupposition, the Bible is the objective record of God's Word to mankind, and we see this in 2nd Peter 1, but know this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of the human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Notice the presupposition is, it's the objective record, all right? It's not, you and I can't come to the scripture and say, well, this means this to me and this means this to you, and that's okay, we're both right.

If we have different views of what scripture says, at least one of us is wrong, okay? Fourth presupposition, the Bible is the inspired inerrant infallible authoritative revelation of God's Word. Does that sound familiar?

Each of these descriptions is important, and we examined each one in a previous study, so I'm simply referring to that previous study on explaining inerrancy. How many were here for this study on inerrancy?

Quite a few, okay, and that is available on the Reformed Rookie, but I'm not going to go through that all again. Fifth, the fall severely limited the ability of man to interpret God's Word. There's no question that sin hinders the ability to understand what God has to say, and here we see that in Ephesians chapter 4, this is the Apostle Paul, so this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they have become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

Now that's kind of a little description of somebody prior to salvation, but I just wanted to focus on a couple. Futility of their mind. Remember, we hold to the doctrine of total depravity. Total depravity, remember, is not utter depravity.

That doesn't mean that the person is as bad as they could possibly be. What it means is that every aspect of the being is affected, so that means that your mind, your intellect, is affected, so you can look at something and think you know something absolutely, it's logical, it's clear, etc.

You can't trust your own thinking. That's why I have to go to the Word of God. The Word of God tells you what is right and what is wrong, not your own thinking, being darkened in their understanding. This explains why somebody can work very, very hard to save the baby seals and yet have no problem killing an unborn baby, darkened in their understanding.

Six, presupposition. Redemption restores man's creative ability to interpret God's Word. John 16, 13, but when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. Now, granted, this first application to this is to the Apostles writing Scripture, but there's a secondary application to us as well.

But He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will disclose to you what is to come. So, we see that the Holy Spirit enables us and guides us, and then this is very important on the same point.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. Why? For they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised, but he who is spiritual appraises all things.

He himself is appraised by no one for who has known the mind of the Lord that he will instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. So, you can see that once again through the power of the Holy Spirit who indwells the believer, we now have the ability to understand what God has to say to us.

Seventh presupposition, the Bible is a totally unique book, and here's what I mean by that. Just as Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, that's God in the flesh, which means He is truly divine and truly human.

He's not 50 one, 50 the other. He's 100 human, 100 divine. The Bible is the inscripturated Word of God. That means the written Word of God. It is truly divine and it is truly human, and we'll explain that a little bit more.

Eighth, hermeneutics must take into consideration both the humanity and divinity of the Bible without compromising either. If you compromise either one and move in one direction and say, well, it's only human or it's only divine, you're going to wind up in trouble.

The source of the Bible is divine. Why? Who's the ultimate author of the scriptures? The Holy Spirit. Its truth and principles are not governed, and take heed to that, are not governed or limited by our human understanding of them.

In other words, just because we may not understand something doesn't negate it, doesn't limit it, because it is, in fact, the divine Word of God. However, that being said, the method of communicating these truths is human.

What do we mean by that? It's in words that men can understand, so it's human speech. All right, so that's the eight presuppositions. Now, we're going to just look at some some principles of hermeneutics.

These are just the basic ones. We're not going to get into anything deep tonight. First, how do we come and interpret the Bible? We believe in literal interpretation, okay? What do we mean by literal?

Well, the Bible is literature, and so how do you interpret literature? Literally. What does that mean? Literal interpretation means to interpret a passage as it was intended to be understood by the author, by the writer, not how you think it should be interpreted, but the writer, using the rules of grammar and logic and the language that it was written in.

So, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions. What was the author's method of communication? Talking about literally now. Is it a parable? Because we know Jesus taught a lot in parables. Is it poetry?

Because poetry is interpreted differently than a parable. Is it figures of speech? And all the other literary genres, the way you can communicate. What is the purpose of it? So, you have to look at the author's method of communication.

You see this abused when you have liberal scholars who go and take Genesis 1 and say, oh, that's poetry, as opposed to historical narrative. It may be written in poetic style, but it is still not poetry per se.

Second, we hold to...did somebody? Yes.

You say sometimes it gets abused on the other side, where things that are meant to be symbolic are read as, now that has to be the literal thing. Yes. The moon and stars, you know, the moon turns red, the stars fall from the sky.

Thank you very much. You know, in Revelation 20, there's a literal dragon with a literal chain with a literal pit. You know, it's not. We'll talk after.

No, you're absolutely right. As Francis Schaeffer once said, you know, you can fall off the horse on either side. And usually you'll find that somewhere in the middle is where the objective truth lies.

Second way we interpret scripture is what we call grammatical historical exegesis. I just threw that in because I wanted to use fancy words. No. What does it mean? We take the grammar, the historical setting, and remember, we know what exegesis means.

Exegesis is interpretation. What is taking the meaning out of the text, as opposed to eisegesis, which is reading something into it, which is not necessarily there. So what do we do with grammar? We use the common use of the grammar of the day.

One of the problems comes when we take something that is said in the pages of scripture and put a 20th century meaning to it. Okay. For example, taking locusts and interpreting it to mean Apache helicopters.

The early people had no idea what an Apache helicopter was, but they did understand what locusts were and what the effects of locusts were. So you can't take our interpretation, something that we might see in it, and put it into the text.

So you have to look at the common use of the grammar of the day. And then you look at the usage of a particular author. For example, one of the big debates is, in Matthew 24, what is Matthew 24 referring to?

Jesus says, this generation, the word he uses there is genea, all right? This generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Modern day theologians have taken genea to mean a generation that's alive today.

Matthew never uses that term. Genea always means the people of that generation that were alive at the time when Jesus spoke. And that's what you have to do. If somebody says, well, this word means this, show me.

Go back to the scripture. How is it used throughout the scripture and how does Matthew use it in particular? You can't just take a word and change the meaning of it to fit your particular theological perspective.

Context versus etymology. We take words and we go back to the etymology and find out what they mean, which is helpful, but the context is more important than the etymology. I'll give you an example of some poor.

Today, we have brides who are going to get married and they have bridal showers. All right, well, bride, I know what a bride is, somebody who's engaged to be married, all right? Ale, well, ale is a malt liquor.

So, we know what these bridal showers are all about. The women are going and drinking beer and getting drunk. You laugh at that, that sounds ludicrous, but that's exactly what some people are doing with the word of God.

They're taking a word and making it mean something that it doesn't really mean, unless you ladies really do drink a lot of beer. Parts of speech. You can't change parts of speech. One of the biggest fallacies is in the Great Commission.

The Great Commission says, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Okay, that's what the Great Commission says. There are theologians who have written books stating that there are four verbs, four great basic commands in that text. That text, that's absolutely false.

There's one verb, one verb only. The verb is make disciples, not go, not baptize, and not teach. Those are participles that modify the verb. So, the command of Jesus is to make disciples. How do you make disciples?

By going, by baptizing, and by teaching. It's a big difference. And yet, you have supposed men who have studied Greek, and they get it all wrong, taking into account idiomatic expressions. Remember when Jesus was at the wedding at Cana, and his mother comes to him and says, they've run out of wine.

Remember what Jesus says? What is that to you and me? It doesn't sound like he's being disrespectful, but it can't be. Disrespecting your mother is a violation of a commandment. If he was disrespectful, he's a sinner.

All right, so he can't be. It's an idiomatic expression. It was a Hebrew idiomatic expression, meaning that's not really our concern, but it's not disrespectful at all. Original languages differ from contemporary languages.

Just because somebody comes from Greece and speaks modern-day Greek doesn't mean they can understand Koine Greek, because it's different, and it's even different from classical Greek. Classical Greek, Koine Greek are different, so we have to take into consideration the grammar.

Secondly, the historical exegesis. What is the historical setting at the time of the writing? What was the political climate? Who was in charge? Remember, Daniel wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if we didn't understand of the captivity and what was going on.

We've seen Nebuchadnezzar and later on Belshazzar. Why was the passage written? This is very helpful to understand. There's a particular reason, and if you can determine why, most of the epistles tell you right in the epistle why it was written to you, why it was written.

Who wrote the passage? That's helpful as well. Who was it written to? That's also very helpful, and we understand. We know what was going place in the church in Corinth. Paul, the apostle, writes 1 Corinthians to correct some wild abuses, abuse of the Lord's Supper, abuse of alcohol, all kinds of things, and gross immorality even in the church.

When was it written? This is important. Take the book of the Revelation. Was it written prior to 70 A .D., or was it written after 96 A .D.? Makes a difference. Third, scripture interprets scripture. This is also known as the analogy of faith.

Take into account the divinity of the Bible. The Bible never contradicts itself. One portion of scripture always complements and agrees with every other portion. If you read something in one portion of scripture, and then you read something in the other, and you say, well, this contradicts that, you've read it wrong.

Always complements and agrees with every other portion. Since the Bible is progressive revelation, later scripture will clarify or amplify, but never correct or contradict earlier scripture. There is perfect harmony from Genesis to the book of the Revelation, and you never have to worry about it.

That's what I mean. If you find that something appears to contradict, you've got something wrong. The Bible is consistent in its use of symbols and figures of speech. You'll find that mountains, for example, I know Lawrence has been doing a lot of teaching on mountains in the Sunday school.

You'll find that that figure of is consistent throughout all of scripture. So whenever you see a mountain, and I'm sure Lawrence has covered this, but you ever notice that whenever they're going to Jerusalem, they're going up, always going up.

If they're leaving Jerusalem, they're going down.

Yes, what do you say? The Bible is progressive revelation. It's complete.

Yeah, but see, how much did Adam and Eve know about the coming Messiah? Yeah, they knew that the seeded woman was going to crush the serpent's head. That's it. Moses knew a little bit more. David knew more.

All right. You see what I mean? And by the time John the Baptist comes, he knows even more, right? That's what we mean by progressive. So it's revealed in a gradually progressive way, not all at once.

Until now, by the close of the canon, which I personally believe for very legitimate reasons was finished prior to 70 AD when the temple was destroyed. We have the complete canon. We have the complete word of God.

We are lacking in nothing. Fourth, theological interpretation. The Bible can be systematized. We call it systematic theology. That means all portions dealing with a particular topic taken together define a theological truth.

And the example of this is the deity in the humanity of Christ. You have Jesus being called the man in some portions of scripture, being called God in other portions. How do you reconcile that? Well, you put it all together, and what do we find out?

He's fully man, and he's fully God. There is no difference. But if you're only taking one certain portion of scripture, you know that Jesus is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Oh, see that?

He's a man. Is he just a man? No, we find out he's also God. Theological interpretation must be consistent with sound exegesis. Today, what we have, we have a lot of theologians coming to the scripture, proof texting, taking text out of the context to prove their particular point.

Fifth, contextual interpretation. Consider the verse in light of the whole passage. Look at the passage before and after it to see how it fits in. Consider the book as a whole. How does the book fit into the whole of scripture?

And then consider the verse in light of all of scripture. Sixth, interpret the implicit in light of the explicit passages. For example, Revelation 2 .5, therefore remember from where you have fallen and repent.

This is the letter to Ephesus. Repent to the deed you did at first or else I'm coming and will remove your lampstand out of its place. I can't tell you how many times I've heard armchair theologians say, see that?

You can lose your salvation. Christ promises to take the lampstand away and the lampstand obviously means your salvation. What they missed was just a few verses prior. As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Has nothing to do with salvation. What Jesus is telling the church in Ephesus is unless you repent, you're going to cease to be a church. Not saying that they're not going to be saved, but they will cease to be a church.

Seventh is to interpret the obscure in light of the clear. In Matthew chapter 20, we have for the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

When he agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. First blush, what does it sound like? You have to work your way into the kingdom. Entered into a labor contract.

That's what it sounds like, right? But it's an obscure passage. What do we do? We go to a clear passage. For by grace you have been saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

You see how it's done. And eighth, interpret the historical narrative in light of the didactic or the teaching portions of scripture. Now, what does that mean? For example, the events of the crucifixion in the gospels are explained in the epistles.

I want you to think for a minute, put all your knowledge of scripture aside, and say, suppose the canon of scripture closed with the book of John. We had the four gospels, but no epistles, no acts of the apostles, just there.

How much would we know about the meaning and what happened on the cross? Granted, we would know that if we repented, that he sacrificed himself for our sins. That's clear in the narratives, all right?

But would we understand about imputed righteousness? I kind of doubt it. Would we understand the full impact of a substitutionary atonement? Will we understand that the wall between Gentile and Jew has been completely obliterated, and we are one in Christ?

It's implicated, but you would have a tough time. That's why we need the epistles. The epistles, the job of the apostles was to write these things, and so we now have the full understanding of who Christ was, what happened on the cross, and how the church is to be organized.

And it doesn't explain it to us, right? No, you're absolutely right. All right, so the gospel is explained in the epistles. Old Testament events are explained by the apostles. We see so many things in the Old Testament that are obscure.

They're implicit, but what do we find out? We find out what their true meaning is in the New Testament. Any questions? That's why I put that last one in there. Yes?

Under the historical, isn't there also like the audience who has been written to and who Jesus was speaking to as well as part of the interpretation, the audience?

Yes, absolutely. If you notice, how many times have I, Sunday morning, preaching through Hebrews, reminded you in my introduction, remember who he's writing to. He's writing to Hebrew Christians, because that's extremely important to understand the context of the book of Hebrews, because he's writing to Jews who had come to faith, and they had a particular bent towards lapsing back into the old covenant.

So that's important that we understand that. John?

You made a point about, you know, reading the passages before and after, and one of the things that I've learned a long time ago is sometimes chapters where they divide things, you kind of think, oh, it stops here.

Read it through, because oftentimes the thought.

Just continues right through to the next chapter. Yeah. R .C. Sproul once said, he's talking about chapter and verse divisions. He said, sometimes I think it was done by a monk sitting on a horseback on a bumpy road, because some of them, some of the chapter divisions and verse divisions don't make any sense.

Yes? When thinking about the historical context of a passage,.

So what would be a recommendation for places to look to study the historical context? I mean, you can sometimes get an idea of the historical context from the Bible itself, but then, like, what would be like another resource?

I mean, is there a specific type of study Bible that you.

Would recommend? Yes, I would be very cautious about study Bibles in making sure that it is of a Reformed persuasion. Otherwise, you're going to wind up with some issues. But also, there are many books that are written talking about, some of them are even named like cultures of the biblical lands, etc.

I have a whole bookshelf full of books like that, which talk about the geography. And, well, I'll give you an example. For example, the Sea of Galilee, you know how Jesus was caught in a storm with the disciples a couple times, all right?

If you understand, that's a common occurrence in the Sea of Galilee, because the mountain, the one mountain is right to the north, and the way the winds are, and so it's very prominent to have a windstorm come up and be very dangerous.

The fishermen on that sea, they head for land as they see one of these storms coming. You have to know that, you know, otherwise you don't have the full context of it. So, getting a good commentary, but particularly the history of the political climate, and also the historical data and the geographical data is very helpful.

If you want, I mean, I have several books on my bookshelf, I can get you the names, I don't know them off the top of my head. Yes?

Anthony, the study you did on Revelation, who's the teacher? Newscore. Newscore is a fantastic historical, he gets into the political climate, he gets into the specific details that you're looking for, he's on YouTube.

And he did write a book too, so it's either been published or it's being published. Any other thoughts? Okay.