7 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Incorrect Models of Interpretation

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8 - Biblical Hermeneutics, The Importance of Context

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Biblical Harmoneutics. I'm just going to say right from the get -go, anything can happen today.

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We got some knuckleheads in the studio who are deciding to post before the show starts.

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I'm sitting there trying to wolf down some food real fast, and they decide to put the cameras on. Nice. Thank you.

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I'd probably kill the staff if I could find a replacement. Anyway, before we start tonight's class,

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I do want to give you a little bit of an update. Why am I so rushed? I literally just got back from the airport, ran into the studio.

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My wife was kind enough to bring some food into the studio for me to wolf down as fast as I possibly could.

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I said a quick hello after coming back from the NorCal Fire 2013, which was wonderful.

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It was great. That was probably one of the best. I got to meet some great, great people.

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We had it hosted at the Home Church. I got to tell you something.

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We have never done an event with a better church group than the

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Home Church out in the San Jose area. Campbell, actually, is the town. They got an

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AV set up that was just killer. We might actually be able to get those DVDs and CDs out soon.

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If you want to get the CDs or DVDs, you could just contact us either down here or I think you could just go to shop.

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Is it shop? Yeah, shop at strivingforeternity .org. Shop at strivingforeternity .org

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and we'll be able to get you that. It was great, though.

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The topics, the speakers, the one thing, you definitely want to get the

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DVDs because just to be able to play it at a slower speed,

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I think between all three of us, we gave so much information in such a short time, it was just a lot.

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Matt Slick covered why it's important to get Christianity right and what are the essential doctrines that we need to deal with.

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Then I dealt with the Bible, how we got it, how it's copied to us, whether we can trust it, whether it's actually accurate.

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Did some stuff on what's called textual criticism. A lot of information. Then we started off Saturday on the deity of Christ.

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Literally, I went through about a hundred pages of notes and like a thousand verses that I at least referenced and just rapid fire.

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Tony Miano did a great job with the doctrine of man and the doctrine of salvation. Then we had

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Matt Slick wrap it up with how to answer atheists. Then we did a Q &A and I'm telling you,

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I know that Tony Miano has posted the audio of the

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Q &A on Sermon Audio. You still want to get the DVD for that to see what exactly happened because just hearing the first five minutes of the

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Q &A, it won't do it justice. You'll want to see the looks on Tony's face when he saw the first question and read it and it kind of went downhill from there.

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He posted it. I'm just saying, if anyone wants to call him Mr. Tweed, he posted it.

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It wasn't my doing, but maybe we'll make a clip of just the first little bit. You'll have to watch it to get the humor of it.

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It was great. It was a great conference. I got to stay with Hector and Chrissy Marano.

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I can't even begin to tell you how blessed I was. It was just a tremendous, tremendous weekend.

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Probably one of the best out of all of the ten Spreading the Fire events that we've done. It was probably the best.

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Now, I know that you're going, wait a minute, you said that after the last one. I know, they keep getting better. I'm really looking forward to what the

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Lord's going to do next year, but it was great. I just came back literally, flew in, left

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Hector and Chrissy's house early, early, early this morning.

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I think we left at like 4 .30, West Coast time, and then rushed back and just got in, got in the car, drove to the airport three hours through rush hour traffic in New York, got here, and here we are.

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Then what do we have? We got people watching me trying to eat real fast, and they're turning the cameras on.

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Nice. With friends like this, who needs enemies? Anyway, we are going to talk today, tonight's class, if you have your syllabus, in the

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School of Biblical Hermeneutics is going to be to start in section number three. We're done with all of the sections that we dealt with.

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If you remember, we were dealing with the different tools that you can use, and how to use Bible dictionaries, and all of those things.

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We do want to welcome our new students. We did get a new student from Canada, A, but this individual, it was a blessing to have him join us.

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He actually found us on YouTube, and just said that he had been looking for ways to learn how to use better tools to interpret the

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Bible, found these classes very helpful. Two thumbs up. No, wait, that would be cheating.

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I can't give myself a thumb up. Anyway, we're encouraged by the new students that are joining each week.

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We love to hear about you, and hear how these classes are helping you.

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You can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org, and we'll be able to, with that, be able to interact with you more.

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Send us emails on how the class is helping you. We're done with looking at the Bible tools, and now we're going to get into the nitty -gritty stuff.

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How do we actually interpret the Bible? Well, actually, no. Today, we're going to talk about how not to interpret the

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Bible. What shouldn't you do? In other words, we're going to talk about all those things that everyone else always does wrong.

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I mean, because if you interpreted the Bible consistently and accurately every time, you'd agree with me all the time.

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That was a joke. Maybe. But I do want to give, I actually should give a wonderful thanks to Michael Coghlan as well.

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I know we asked you guys to encourage Michael and Aaron a couple weeks ago. Michael was a tremendous help.

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So, Aaron, if you're watching, thank you. That was probably the reason that this

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NorCal Fire 2013 was such a success. And so, that was great.

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Carrie Atala did the worship, the singing, and it was just as usual. People were getting emotional at the lyrics, so.

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All right, enough. Yeah, thank you. Now I'm being told that I'm talking too much, you know, because I just got back and I'm still excited.

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Sorry. Get the DVDs and you'll know why. All right? Shop at strivingforeternity .org.

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Just tell them you want the NorCal Fire 2013. All right, all right, all right. So, here we go with, in this lesson, where we're going to talk about, we're going to start with the keys to biblical hermeneutics.

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We're going to talk about an inductive Bible study. Now, if you know what an inductive

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Bible study is, great, but if not, an inductive Bible study is the process of allowing the

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Scripture to interpret themselves. No, I'm not meaning it the way

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Harold Camping means it. And this is actually, in this lesson, we could look at almost anything that Harold Camping teaches as a perfect example of how not to read the

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Bible, if you know who that nincompoop is. No, he may actually be a brother in Christ.

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I don't know. Maybe he's not a nincompoop. He's just a really, really bad Bible teacher. All right?

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So, why? Because he does everything wrong. Every single thing that we're going to talk about and say that you shouldn't do are things he would do all the time.

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And so, it's like a great example of what not to do. But the reality is that when he would talk about Scripture interpreting

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Scripture, what he means is, as we're going to look at, he pulls one word from somewhere, a word from another place, slams them together and goes, oh, that's what it means.

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That's not Scripture interpreting Scripture, and it's not Scripture interpreting themselves. Okay? And we're going to go through the inductive

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Bible study. It's going to be the idea of moving from the big picture to the details and allowing the interpretation to be determined based on, ooh, ready for this word?

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Context. Okay, that's a really big word. That is the key word.

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Okay? When you want to study the Bible, if you can remember that one word, you're golden.

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Context is king. As long as you can remember context, context, context, you're going to be able to understand the

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Bible. Now, what we're going to do in today's lesson is probably ruin some of your favorite

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Bible verses. I'm just telling you up front. So don't yell at me. Don't get upset with me if you've been misinterpreting the

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Bible. I'm just going to tell you what it really means. Okay? So, don't blame me.

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We need to identify first, before we can get into the inductive Bible study method and look at the keys to biblical hermeneutics, we first need to identify some incorrect methods to interpretation.

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Alright? And we need to have a correct model of interpretation.

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So, let's look at some models of incorrect ways to interpret.

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Now, we're doing this because these things are so very much prevalent.

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Okay? The thing is that when I point these out to you, if you start to look for these things, if you're going to start to look at the different things

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I'm going to tell you how not to interpret, and you start watching, I'm going to tell you what you're going to see. You're going to listen to people on the radio.

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You're going to watch people on TV. You probably won't see it with your pastor. He's probably accurate.

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But you're going to see it all over the place where people will come and talk to you about the Bible and you're going to see that they're doing these things that are wrong because they forgot to look at context.

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Okay? Alright, so let me give you a real simple thing I do. Someone comes up to me and asks me what a passage of Scripture means.

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And you know what I do? Here's what I do. I read the verses before it. I read the verses after it.

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I love what my friend Greg Cockel says. He says, never read a Bible verse.

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I like that. What does he mean by that? Don't ever read a Bible verse. He means read the whole precopy, the whole section, or the whole chapter, or the whole book.

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If you're going to understand a verse, that verse is found within a context.

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And we're going to talk about different types of context. But you need to make sure you're reading the context. The majority of errors that people make with the

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Bible is because they take it out of context. Now, how many of you guys like to be taken out of context?

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Raise your hand. Come on. No hands are up. Yeah. No one likes to be taken out of context.

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This is the point. God doesn't like to be taken out of context either. So let's make sure we're not taking

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God out of context. And let's make sure that we're being accurate to the Word of God. Alright?

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It really doesn't matter what we believe and what we think. It matters what God says and how

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He wants us to interpret the Bible. Okay? So, let's take a look at some of these. And we're going to look at some examples and ruin some of your favorite, favorite verses of all times so that you can be really upset with me and we're going to have a lot of fun.

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So, let's begin. Some incorrect ways to interpret the

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Bible. Among those who respect the authority and the validity of the

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Bible, there are basically three false methods that we're going to go over that interpreters make.

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The first one is probably one of the more common ones.

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Actually, no, I think they're all pretty much common. So, the first one is called isolationism.

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Isolationism. And here's what isolationism is. If you have your syllabus, you can look it up.

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That's the advantage of the syllabus. But in the syllabus you see, number one, isolationism.

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Interpreting a verse or passage without regard for the context which it is found in.

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So, what we have with this is in this passage here, let's take a look.

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Now, many, many people love this verse. I'm going to ruin it for you. Too bad.

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Alright, here we go. Let's put it up there. Any of you, is this your favorite life verse for anyone?

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Anyone? So, in here we have one that so many people use as a promise.

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Now, I want to tell you right off the bat, this is not a promise. Okay? For I know the plans

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I have for you declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

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Now, leave that up for a second. Alright? Here's why. What I want to point out is

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I want you to see here that in this passage, when you look at this, it sounds really wonderful, doesn't it?

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I mean, it's like, oh, this is a great thing. This is what we want to do and we want to have the promises of God that He's got for us and He's got these wonderful plans.

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Isn't it great? Now, we say that and we look at this and it sounds so wonderful, except for one thing.

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It's not for us. This is not something for us.

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Alright? This is something that was for Israel, the nation of Israel.

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Okay? This has a context. If you read the verses before it, you read the verses after it, you're going to see that this was written to the nation of Israel during a time when

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Jeremiah is being commissioned to tell them they're going to be taken into captivity. They're going to be hauled off into captivity.

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And in that, what's going to end up happening is that with that captivity,

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God is saying He has plans for them. Plans of welfare and plans for good, plans to prosper.

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This is to the nation of Israel and not you and I. Okay? Now, if you want to claim this as a promise, what you're doing here is what they do is they take this one verse and they rip it out of its context and they give it a meaning for them.

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And that's not how we should do things. You know, actually, I love what Greg Cockell says.

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He tells a story about going into a church and he talks about someone that rips a verse out of the

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Bible. They are having an affair. They don't want to be with their husband. And so what do they do?

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What they end up doing is they end up sitting there and saying, Okay, it's a woman, and she goes,

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Well, let me read the Bible and see if God has something for me. And so let's look at that verse again and see what does it say.

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Read it again and see if this is something that should be for you because the reality is that this was not something that was ever meant to be for any one individual.

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This was something that was meant to be for the people of Israel. And people use this as a promise. People use this as something that they say,

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Oh, this is for me. This is wonderful. And I have a verse from God.

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But this is not meant to be a verse for God. For you. How do

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I know that? Because just like that woman that used a verse to say that put on the new man, like Greg Cockell says, put on the new man, and they say,

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Oh, see, I should divorce my husband. Look at just a few verses later.

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Let's look at this. He says, I mean, look at this verse.

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Is this something that people want to have as their life verse? No, I don't think so.

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Why don't people make this their life verse? I mean, it's just a couple of verses, seven verses later. You see, just like in that story that Greg tells, and it's a true story, where someone takes a verse that put on the new man and says,

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Oh, I should divorce my husband and go marry the guy I'm having an affair with. We would clearly know that's wrong.

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People do the same thing with Jeremiah 29 and 11. They try to make it a promise and say that God is a promise and it was a promise, but not to you and I.

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It was a promise to those Israelites taken into captivity. But just as verse 11 was a promise, so was verse 18.

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Verse 18 was a promise too. We don't call that one a promise. We don't go, Oh, that's a promise for me.

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You know, put that back up for a second. You know, that's a promise. Yeah, I want to pursue with a, you know,

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I want famine and pestilence and horror and a curse and terror and hissing and a reproach among the nations.

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I mean, really? That doesn't sound like a promise anyone wants. You see, what people do when they isolate is they take a verse like Jeremiah 29 and 11.

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They go, Oh, that's so good. I like that because I want God to bless me.

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You see where the focus is? Focus should be on God and not you and I.

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So we need to make sure that we're not taking it out of its context, okay? So, what we have then is when we're isolating something, we're taking it out of its context, ignoring its context.

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Now, the reason this one is so popular or that you see it most often is because you're going to see it actually used with the next two ways of misinterpreting the

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Bible because this one actually is, the way this one actually works is that we use it, or people use it.

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I shouldn't say we because we are not going to do that, right, class? Good, you're going to be good. The way that this is often misused is to take a verse out of its context and then what people do is, the next one is proof texting.

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Proof texting. And what proof texting is is stringing a series of verses together.

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Often, they're apart from their context. In other words, people isolate a verse over here and isolate a verse over here and they shove them together and they say, see, we know that this is a meaning and we give new meaning to it in order to prove or to develop a certain theology.

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So let's take a look at some of these. I'm going to start with this one here out of Matthew 18 -19. It says, again,

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I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my

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Father in heaven. Now that seems like a promise and what some people do is they take that and they string it along with some other passages that talk about where two or three, where you ask for anything in my name and the

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Father will give it. And so where I've actually seen this used is back in my college days where a friend of mine wanted me to go give him a ride.

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He was going to go get a car. He wanted to buy a car. He asked if I could give him a ride.

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I gave him a ride. We got there and I found out that he actually didn't need me to give him a ride so much because he had no way of paying for the car.

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What he was actually trying to do was get me to co -sign a loan with him knowing that I had credit and he didn't.

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And he was thinking that I would actually co -sign a loan for a car for him. I didn't do it so we drove back.

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So he had no money for a car but he told me like the next day that he was getting a car.

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I thought, wow, that's pretty good. I thought maybe he went to his parents or got someone else to co -sign. I said, how do you get in the car?

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He said, oh, I got another brother to agree with me in prayer and we prayed and we told

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God that I needed a car. Where'd you get that? He says, oh,

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Matthew 18, 19, it promises that if two or three agree on earth, God's gonna do it.

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Is that the meaning? And what he does is he takes a couple verses and he said that he ended his prayer in Jesus' name and so he takes a verse that says if you get two or three asking for something and God's gonna do it, he takes it with another verse, ask anything in my name and God'll do it and rips those two out of their contexts, slams them together and gives it a totally new meaning that's not in scripture.

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Well, what is the context of Matthew 18? Hold that thought. Let's not get to it. I wanna give one more example actually of isolationism since we're in this text and that is the very next verse where two or three are gathered in my name, there

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I am among them. I know, I know. This is always used for prayer meetings.

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I know you have those two or three people that show up on the Wednesday night prayer meeting and you wanna feel good. Hey, the

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Lord is with us. Do you realize that in Matthew 28 verses 19 and 20, well, specifically verse 20,

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Jesus said that and lo, I am with you always.

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How many Christians do you need to have the presence of God? Well, you might say one because you just need to have one person there so that you can be able to say that we have a, you know,

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God is with us because Christ is with every believer. That's true. Isn't he omnipresent?

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So you really need none. He's everywhere. Just saying.

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So what's the context? And is this the context of a prayer meeting? To encourage the pastor of a small church or the leader of a small group

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Bible study that only a couple people show up? No. The context of Matthew 18 with both of these, okay, passages, has to do with church discipline.

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If you go back earlier in the verse, in the passage, and you read the context, you're gonna see if your brother sins against you, go to your brother alone and tell him his fault.

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If your brother repents, you've won your brother. If he refuses to repent, you go and get two or three witnesses.

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Ooh, so that's who the two or three are. They're the witnesses. They're the people that you went and you got and what are they doing?

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They're coming to hear the exchange and they hear the repentance or non -repentance and to see if there's actually a charge of sin or if it's just in someone's head.

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So say there is a sin and the person's unrepentant. What's the text say? You tell it to the church.

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And if they still refuse to repent, you put them out of the church and treat them like an unbeliever.

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Okay? Because they seem to be acting like one. This is the process. Then it says, when you're putting someone out of the church, assuredly, assuredly

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I say to you, and then we have verses 19 and 20. Why assuredly?

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Because we need the assurance. How many of us like to confront people? Not too many.

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We don't want to put someone out of the church, someone that we would have in the church before that we would call brother or sister, and they're sinning.

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It breaks our heart. And quite frankly, a lot of churches are struggling and suffering because they refuse to do that.

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They refuse to keep the purity of the church. And so they're more concerned with not putting someone out of the church because it's a difficult process.

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And the reality is that's why we have these encouraging words here where God is telling us, don't worry.

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If you went through all these steps and there were people that witnessed unrepentance and you had to put them out of the church, just know that God already did it.

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Whatever you ask. Don't you think if people have to vote someone out of a church, there's going to be a lot of asking,

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Lord, please, is this the right thing to do? Of course there is. That's the context of ask anything and the

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Father will do it. The two or three are gathered for the purpose of being witnesses to this sin and the refusal to repent.

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That's what's going on there, okay? So we're not going to take that and just say, oh, well, let's isolate this and give it a new meaning.

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Now, one other thing is with the proof texting, I remember when I was doing a debate with Joshua Evans. He's a

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Muslim who goes around like a Muslim apologist. He claims he used to be a

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Christian youth minister. He was never a minister. He was just a youth group leader in junior high and then became a

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Muslim in high school as senior year. So he was never a Christian. He was a false convert, okay, who is making lots and lots of money going out and denying

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Jesus Christ and says that he understands the Bible because he used to be a Christian. Well, he wasn't.

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But here's what he did. We get into this debate. Well, no, actually, it wasn't really a debate because they changed the rules just before the debate because he was a dishonest individual.

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Not only did he lie to get that speaking engagement, but we were supposed to go 10 minutes back and forth having opening arguments and then go back and forth 10 minutes for about an hour and a half and then closing arguments.

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He changed it last minute where he just said, boom, you go. I was supposed to go and he was not going to say anything and then they gave me 20 minutes and he went for an hour and 20 minutes.

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Fine. He did nothing but proof texting is what he did. He grabbed a couple of verses. Let's take a look at some of the things that he did.

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He was trying to argue that Jesus Christ never claimed to be God and actually said he was not God and here's how he did it.

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He took this verse, John 13, 16, Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger greater than the one whom he sent.

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Now, he talked about, before bringing this verse up, he talked about the difference between an explicit meaning of a verse and an implicit.

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So he brings that verse up and he says, when you look at this, he says explicitly this is talking about a servant not being greater than a master and I would agree with that.

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That's the explicit meaning. Then what he did is brought this verse up, John 6, and said,

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As the living Father sent me, I live because of the Father who feeds on, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

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Now, notice that first part. As the living Father sent me, now, let's actually flip back to the other, yeah.

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So you see, when we look at this one, it says that the servant, the one sent, is not greater than the master and then you see him saying that he was sent.

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You see what Joshua Evans tried arguing is that Jesus was actually saying, takes one verse out of its context, gives that meaning that Jesus is saying that someone that is sent is not greater than the one that's sending.

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Then he takes a verse which is also true explicitly that Jesus was sent from the

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Father and he then says, see, Jesus was claiming that he wasn't God because he was sent from the

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Father and claiming to be less than the Father. But what he did is he took both of those, ripped them out of their context, slammed them together and gave it a new meaning.

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That's what proof texting is. You see, because Jesus in his human form was sent, okay, and within the hierarchy of the

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Godhead, there seems to be a hierarchy between the Father, Son, and Spirit in that order, okay, but it doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't

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God. Just because there may seem to be a hierarchy within the Godhead doesn't mean he's not

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God. You see, so he took a verse and tried to slam it and here's what he did. He took those two together and gave it a new meaning.

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That's the proof texting. He made it sound like this is what these two were teaching but that's not what those two verses were teaching.

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They had a totally different meaning, all right? So, isolationism, that is when you pull one verse or a few verses out of their context and isolate it from their context.

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We're going to talk about the different kinds of contexts in a minute. Second wrong way to interpret is proof texting.

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It often involves isolationism but it doesn't always but it's the idea where you take something a verse with one meaning take some other verses with other meanings and slam them together.

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Harold Camping used to do this all the time. He also used to do this next one all the time and many others do this.

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Now this is going to be you're going to see it more in certain camps. If you understand the terms covenant theology, dispensational theology those that hold to dispensational theology will be less likely to do this last one.

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Covenant theologians will be more likely to fall into this trap and that's spiritualization. Spiritualization.

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And what this is is reading a truth either spiritually or historically into a text of the

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Bible. So this is basically and sometimes this also is with isolationism but not as much but what this is is when people see a double meaning to passages they see something in the scriptures and they give it a new meaning.

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One of the ones that's often used is when people take Lazarus in the tomb and Jesus comes and says

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Lazarus come forth and they use that as an illustration of salvation.

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Well what happened with Lazarus was a historical event. We have nowhere in scripture that tells us that we should be using that as an illustration or as a proof text for the doctrine of salvation.

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Now I understand you call to a dead man and he's not going to come back to life and I understand that.

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Jesus can call to a dead man and he does come back to life because he did it with more than just Lazarus. But we don't want to give a text a meaning that it doesn't have.

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We start getting into that habit and we start doing some craziness. Let's take a look at one in John 20 verse 1.

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Now I want you to look at this and then I'm going to explain why I'm using this one. Now on the first day of the week

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Mary Magdalene came to the tomb notice this part while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

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Okay so here's what you have. You see that it was still dark. I remember going to a resurrection

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Sunday service. You know that's when you get all the C and E Christians. You know the Christian and Easter Christians.

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They come out just on Christmas and Easter. And so you get the big you know big audience and you get your best sermon supposedly.

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I remember going with my sister -in -law to their church. It was a Chinese church so I sat through the Chinese service and just read my

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Bible. And then in the English service I sat through the English while they went to a Chinese Sunday school. I think the

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Chinese service was actually better. Why? Because this entire this entire pastor's sermon was a spiritualization of the one phrase while it was still dark.

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He talked about Mary coming while it was still dark. And his entire sermon was on darkness in our lives of depression of things that don't go the way we want.

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And that we're you know struggling in life and there's dark times in life.

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And I've got to tell you I was really depressed with the handling of that text of Scripture. It was like I wanted to scream out it was dark because it was early in the morning.

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You know it's like that's why it was dark. It was dark because it was still early. The reason that John says it was dark was to show you that they couldn't wait to get to the tomb.

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They left while it was still dark when it wasn't safe to travel because they wanted to get to the tomb and finish up the process because they rushed to get

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Jesus into the tomb and they didn't finish the burial process. And they wanted to finish putting the ointments on and everything for the burial process.

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That's why he says it was still dark. And I sat there and I'll tell you son I sat there and saw this guy that was right in front of me as you're welcoming the pastor and going out and this guy

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I mean I know he was a senior Christian because the pastor said I haven't seen you since Christmas. And this guy goes yeah yeah

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I know I've been trying to get out pastor yeah I'm trying I'm trying and he goes but I got to tell you that was a great sermon. Man you really nailed it pastor.

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I never would have seen the things that you bring out in that passage. I'm glad that I had learned to hold my tongue because I was about this close to going yeah buddy because even

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Jesus wouldn't have seen what he brought out from that passage because it wasn't there. It was spiritualized.

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And people do this all the time. They give things spiritual meanings that were not meant to have that meaning.

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The real error and danger I see with doing this is once you start spiritualizing things where does it end?

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It really doesn't end it can end wherever you want it to. It goes on any way you want. Then you can make the

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Bible say anything you want it to say. That's the issue. We don't want to be doing that.

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We don't want to make the Bible say something it doesn't say. We want to make sure we're understanding the

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Bible rightly not trying to make the Bible accept what we want. That's a major difference.

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Okay? So I say that so we understand what we shouldn't do.

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Isolation pulling one verse or a couple of verses out of their context. Proof texting where you take a bunch of verses sometimes isolated and slam them together and give it a new meaning.

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Spiritualizing that's when you take give a new meaning a spiritual meaning to a text of scripture that isn't actually there.

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You watch those three you're going to see people do that all the time. You're going to see other lessons as we go through more lessons you're going to see people that do that.

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We're going to show you different people on the radio and whatnot that do those sort of things.

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So what's the correct way to interpret? What's the correct method? Well let's deal with it.

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If you look under letter B we believe in a literal or normal interpretation which embraces the following things.

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And actually I'm changing I haven't been using literal has a bad connotation. Literals the connotation people think when you say literal is that it's every single thing must be taken absolutely literally.

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Ignoring idioms. If I say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow I hope that most of you understand that I can't really eat an entire cow in one sitting.

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And I just am saying that I'm very very hungry and so hungry that when my wife is kind enough to give me some food

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I hope that the knuckleheads don't turn the cameras live so that you all can watch.

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That's the advantage of actually watching live. You never know what they might do before the show. So but the point being is you understand it's an idiom.

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It's not meant to be taken literally. So I used to say that I believe in a normal interpretation but how do you define normal then?

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And so it's I'm kind of moving more toward what I'm calling a literal sorry a literary interpretation.

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In other words as we go through these lessons you're going to see there's rules to interpreting literature.

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All literature. Context is a major one. Authorial intent is another one.

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We're going to get into these things. Okay. And so when you get into these things that's what

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I mean. Understand what the author meant in the context that he wrote. What did he mean by what he wrote?

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That's the issue. Okay. So I'm we're going to teach a literary model or a literary hermeneutic of interpretation.

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A literary interpretation of the Bible. So a literary or literal or normal however you end up wanting to do it is this.

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It's going to embrace these three truths. Number one Scripture is to be interpreted in its historical context.

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Its historical context. Alright. You are going to have a history. We're 2 ,000 years removed from the writing of the

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New Testament. 3 ,500 years removed from some of the Old Testament. So we need to remember that it has a historical context which is different than ours.

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Our words change. Our culture changes. People used to be respectful. They're not anymore.

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People used to say that they were gay to mean happy and now it has a different connotation. The reality is that we see that history changes.

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And so we have to make sure that we're accurate in its historical context. Alright. We have to make sure it's in its grammatical context.

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What do I mean by this? Scripture is to be interpreted according to the normal rules of grammar that includes literary devices such as sarcasm which

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I believe 1 Corinthians 13 1 and 2 are sarcasm. And if you read it with sarcasm it makes a lot more sense

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I believe than trying to take it literal. Only because if you take verse 2 literal that you understand all mysteries and have all knowledge you're claiming to be

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God. So I would argue that there are no angelic languages that are spoken and we don't have all knowledge.

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I think he's being sarcastic. We understand grammatically when we talk about things like sarcasm, exaggeration idioms like that.

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Alright. So we want to make sure we have it in its historical context and with that I would also include with historical

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I would include with historical its cultural context because that's part of history.

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So historical context grammatical context and the third type of context right, context, context, context historical, grammatical, scriptural.

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Scriptural or literary context is this Scripture is to be interpreted according to the literary context where you find it.

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What's before it and what's after it. Okay, so you want to make sure you have those. The before and the after.

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That's very, very important to make sure that when we are interpreting it that we are having this passage in what it meant at the time it was written to the culture it was written to the hearers and readers of who it was written to taken within the way that you should properly be understanding grammar following the rules of grammar.

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You don't make it mean something it doesn't and then following the passage the flow.

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Remember something that the Bible was not written with chapter breaks and verse breaks.

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It was written as a book and the chapter breaks and verses came in later. So people put those in and they didn't always put them in a good spot and so what you have to remember is this was read as one book not the way some of us do devotions just a couple verses here and a couple verses there.

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That's why it's really good if you're going to do devotions read an entire book read a whole chapter so you get the context the scriptural context.

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So we don't want to isolate we don't want to proof text and we don't want to spiritualize but we do want to make sure we're following the rules for historical context including culture grammatical context and which one class?

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Good scriptural context. So three things to not do three things to do.

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That's what we want to do. Make sure we're following through with that. So no isolating no proof texting no spiritualizing unless there are now spiritualizing let me put this caveat there are passages that are to be spiritualized because God does the spiritualizing.

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When He speaks of Jesus saying out of Egypt I will call my son that is referring to Israel in the

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Old Testament but in the New Testament Matthew attributes that to Jesus. God can give it a spiritual meaning if He meant one.

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Therefore when we see a spiritual meaning that God gives it in Scripture then it had a spiritual meaning.

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Marriage has a spiritual meaning. It is a picture of the relationship that God has with His people.

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He talks about that throughout. That is why we as Christians should have an issue with same sex marriage because it corrupts and perverts what marriage illustrates.

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If you change the definition of marriage then you're changing the illustration that God created marriage to illustrate.

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We never needed to be married. It was something that God established. And oh by the way if people want to talk about the government allowing it if they want to believe in separation of church and state then stay out of our issue.

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Marriage is the church issue not the state. It's God that defines marriage not the state.

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And so with that in mind and by the way homosexuals can get married anytime they want to people of the opposite sex.

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It's same sex marriage that is the issue. And why? Because it changes the definition of marriage and perverts it.

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And in that perversion it corrupts what it is picturing. So when God gives a spiritual meaning then we can allow for a spiritual meaning.

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But if God doesn't give that then we shouldn't do that. So no isolating no proof texting no spiritualizing but do make sure you're following the context historical and grammatical historical and cultural the grammatical and the scriptural.

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Now where are we going to go from here? Next week we're going to look at these three identification investigation interpretation and implementation.

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These are going to be the four keys that I want to give you. The four keys to interpreting the

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Bible. So these are going to be four keys to biblical hermeneutics. And if you follow these four these that should be right under there if you follow these four you are going to come to a more consistent understanding of God's word.

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Alright? And that's what we want to encourage you to do. We want to encourage you to be accurate with your interpretation of God's word.

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Now I wasn't able to create a slide for who to encourage this week but I do want to say with the

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NorCal Fire we definitely mentioned them last week I wanted to say again go out and encourage

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Dan Bowen it actually was kind of bad listening to everyone mispronounce his last name

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I sure hope I didn't just do it. But he was Badwin Badmin Bowin I was hearing everyone do everything but the way

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I've heard him pronounce it is Dan Bowdwin and so that's what I call him but encourage Dan because he did a tremendous job helping us out with the

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NorCal Fire and we would not have been able to do it if it wasn't with him at his home church which is called The Home Church His home church is actually called

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Home Church and that's who helped us put the event on but go out and encourage him we want to encourage you to be encouraging people each week.

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If you have any questions from the academy academy at strivingforeternity .org

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email us let us know how these classes are benefiting you let us know how you're using these classes if you're finding them helpful if you're totally bored and falling asleep because I'm speaking monotone no

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I'm not, liars whatever it is if you have things you want to see us improve let us know let's try to improve these things so we hope that this lesson was really helpful to you so you see some things that you should not do in interpreting