Analogy of Scripture

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is today, March 20th, Friday, four o 'clock in the afternoon, and there's nobody around the church.

Is it legal for me to be in the studio alone with all of you here? Is that going past the ten people?

Probably with our ratings, no. Off the blood thinners, thankful for that.

I've gotten several notes and cards. They said something to the effect, don't stop the ministry.

We're praying for you. Get better soon, real fast, right away.

Anyway, thank you for those. I appreciate that. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are going to talk about a variety of things today, and I'll try not to mention the word virus one time.

How's that sound? If you've got friends that want to have some straight shooting Bible teaching, you can turn them toward NoCompromiseRadio .com.

Sunday's now at our church, like almost every other church, it's live streaming, so if you want to just go to bbcchurch .org, it'll take you either to the

YouTube or the Facebook live streaming. Anyway, I'll be in Psalm 23 this

Sunday, and then back to the book of Hebrews. Very interesting times, but we are thankful that we can still have opportunity to do things like this.

Today, I'd like to talk to you about several things. It's kind of like a potpourri show. I always want to say spiritual potpourri, but I never know how to spell it, and on our upload for the shows, it doesn't have a spell check, so I just can't do it.

Study Bibles. I want you to know that if you have an ESV study

Bible or a Reformation study Bible, knowing how many books

Reformation Heritage puts out these days, maybe they'll have a study Bible too, although that'll be in King James. But if you have a

Reformation study Bible or an ESV study Bible, you may have forgotten this, but there are great articles in those two books, and maybe you have a preference for the

NAS like I do, but this is a great way to kind of brush up on theological issues, because while theological issues come and go, they've already mainly went.

They've gone before us. Other people have dealt with issues before.

That's why it's good to read catechisms and creeds and other things. But here you have...somebody

just sent me something. I sure wish the Logos Bible stuff would stop sending me all the March Madness competitions between various apologetic ministries, and you have to vote.

I wish I could vote for tithes so no one could go further. Anyway, great articles written in those two books, and the one

I have in front of me happens to be Interpreting Scripture by Scripture in the

Reformation Study Bible by Michael S. Horton. I'm reading Horton's Pilgrim Theology right now, which is a condensed version, a layperson's version of his larger systematic theology, the

Christian life or something, the Christian pilgrim way, but I don't know, the Pilgrim's Guide?

What is it called? I have no idea. Something pilgrim. Reminds me of John Wayne. Does it not remind you of John Wayne?

Anyway, he's written an article, and it's called Interpreting Scripture by Scripture. So my main point today is, if you've got a study

Bible, once a week, why don't you read one of those articles that you find in the front or the back that will help you.

You know, most of the people look to the back of their Bible for, there's a topical index maybe, or there's a reference guide, what do we call those things?

The alphabetical, trying to find a word, concordance. Maybe you'll find some maps in the back, maybe a

Bible reading plan, right? But here in the ESV, as I'm looking at it right now, yes, there's an introduction to the books, introduction to Esther and all that, but there are lots of good articles.

And so let me just take a look regarding these articles.

Overview of the Bible, a Survey of the History of Salvation. That's found right there in the front.

And then I think throughout the book, you've got other, I don't know where those articles are. Where are those articles? This is going to bother me.

Oh, duh, at the end. Biblical Doctrine and Overview, Biblical Ethics, Reading the

Bible, Reliability of Manuscripts, How the New Testament Quotes and Interprets the Old Testament.

That's interesting. The Bible and Christianity, the Bible and Religious Cults, History of Salvation in the

Old Testament. So the show today is basically, use that tool that you have, either online or hard copy, and it will help you.

Horton, Interpreting Scripture by Scripture. Now when I was taught to study the Bible, I was taught to push out all presuppositions and come to the text freshly, newly, independently.

Now I don't think it was stated that way, but in essence, I think that's what it was. And I think it was the desire for us to understand what the human author intended.

And we were told that the analogy of the faith should be pushed back to the very end.

That should be something to check only. And the analogy of Scripture, I'm not sure I was even taught what that would be.

But generally speaking, if you want just kind of an easy definition, analogy of Scripture, what do other parts of the

Scripture say about the same topic, right? Interpreting Scripture with Scripture, that's Horton's article. And then analogy of the faith would be, what does all of the faith say?

What do we know about God's triune nature? And as you come to the Bible, how can you ignore what you already know about the person of God and the work of Christ?

And like Clark says, you can't read Jesus. People are saying you can't read

Jesus into the Old Testament. And Clark is saying, rightfully so. You can't read him out. You know, we're trying not to read him out.

And the focus needs to be on the divine author, right? You cannot just say, well,

I'm not going to think about the divine author. In other words, can you study the Bible like any other book?

If you say yes, what about the divine nature of this book? Well, anyway, I'm just going to give you a case in point.

Interpreting Scripture by Scripture with Michael Horton. And it says here in this book, in this article, the unity and diversity of Scripture.

Quote, Scripture is a canon because of its diverse genres and authorship spread over many times and places.

The Bible is often properly said to be more of a library than a book. Nevertheless, there is unity inherent to the

Bible. We do not impose this unity on Scripture from outside. We do not force the pieces to fit.

Scripture is inherently unified in its basic plot and teachings, which unity endures even as we see diversity in the course of God's unfolding plan.

And therefore, you have these human authors, yes, that God moved along, the Spirit of God moved along, 2

Peter chapter 1, verses 19 through 21, and you've got these human authors that are used by the

Lord, the Spirit in Hebrews 1 in many times and in many ways.

But what you've got to do is you've got to make sure you say to yourself, I just can't come to this with a blank slate.

I mean, can you really come to the text with a blank slate? Now, if you say I've got an idea what this text is already teaching, and therefore

I'm going to front load it with my personal preferences, I don't think that would be right.

But coming to a text, I think you just need to recognize that there are presuppositions that you have.

And if you even go to an Old Testament passage in Genesis chapter 3, how do you know it's even

Satan, the serpent? Because we don't learn that until later in the Bible. And therefore, as we study the

Bible, things later in the Bible help us understand things that are earlier in the Bible, right? Since we have one divine author, that should not surprise us.

Now, Horton goes on to say this, redemptive historical interpretation, we are sometimes bewildered by the diversity of the

Bible, wondering how Leviticus or Esther bears any relation to Matthew or Romans. What is the thread that holds together all the narratives, laws, wisdom, prophecy, poetry, instruction, and exhortation?

Christ is the thread, the unifying message from Genesis to Revelation. When we read the

Bible in light of its main plot, Christ, things begin to fall into place. Behind every story, proverb, hymn, exhortation, and prophecy is the unfolding mystery of Christ in His redemptive work."

Now what I regularly hear from people is, well, we're not trying to find

Jesus in every verse, and He's not found in every word of the Old Testament.

I honestly don't know one person who does that. I think that's just a false statement to get you deviated from what's going on and not think through the issues.

There's not one person I know of now, you've got the internet, so you can probably figure this out if you want, but I don't know who does that.

I'm not saying He's in every verse, but I'm saying the human authors moved by the

Spirit of God because of the divine author. There's a lot more Jesus to be found in the

Old Testament that you might imagine. Now I was taught that you weren't allowed to have any kind of types unless those types were explicit in the

Bible. So Joseph, I was taught, would not be a type of Christ. And that's what

I was taught in seminary. Even though I would read the MacArthur Study Bible, for instance, and he would say, rightly, that Joseph is a type of Christ.

And I was taught that you can't have a type unless it calls it a type, and if there are 30 things that are similar in Joseph's life to Jesus' life, well, we still can't call him a type because we don't know the number.

Is the number 31 similarities? Are 42 consistent analogies that might show type, anti -type, might show type's shadows?

And therefore, we were restricted, and I think one of the things that does, it keeps Israel and the church separate, two peoples of God, but I don't think it's very helpful when you're thinking about the one divine author.

Anyway, my name is Mike Ebendroth, and we're talking today here on No Compromise Radio about not only the diversity of Scripture with the human authors in different time periods and writing different styles in different ways about different topics, generally speaking, specifically speaking, but also the unity of Scripture.

That is to say, the Holy Spirit, He wrote all the Scripture, and we ought to make sure we see things properly in light of that.

Horton goes on, quote, in Jesus' time, the Pharisees were the guardians of the Bible. For their followers, they were its authoritative interpreters.

Yet for them, the Bible was primarily a story about Sinai, the covenant under which Israel pledged to fulfill all of the commands of God's law.

For the Pharisees, the law was not the subplot, the guardian leading to Christ, as Paul states in Galatians 3 .24,

but the main thing. According to the Pharisees, the Messiah would drive out the Romans and reinstitute the

Israelite theocracy under the Mosaic law at His coming. The Messiah was merely a means to an end, not the end, that is, goal of the law, as Paul identifies in Christ.

Horton goes on, Jesus Himself told us how to read the Bible the right way. He said to the religious leaders, you search the

Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me.

Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life, John 5, 39 and 40.

Jesus taught His disciples to read the whole Bible, at that point the Old Testament, in terms of promise and fulfillment, with Himself as the central character,

Luke 24. No matter how well they had memorized certain Bible verses or how quickly they could recall key moments in Israel's history, the

Bible was a mystery to them before Jesus explained it as His story.

Therefore, dear reader, dear no -compromise reader, I want you to make sure that when you study the

Bible, you don't do things like this, I'm going to come to the text like I'm the first person to interpret it.

That would be wrong, too, because now you're ignoring the Holy Spirit's work in humans as they would interpret the

Bible. You're ignoring His work in the church as the church is trying to understand Scriptures.

You're trying to say, you know what, I don't care what these other guys said, whether it's Luther or Calvin or Athanasius or Anselm, I'm coming to the text, and therefore

I'm kind of the arbiter. So I guess maybe my point today is don't ignore the

Holy Spirit's role in the church as He, the Holy Spirit, is helping the church understand the

Scriptures. Therefore, you might want to read church history, right? You say, well,

I'm just going to find out what's in the text, and it's just going to be me, myself, and I. I'm going to have no presuppositions.

You have all kinds of presuppositions, anthropological presuppositions about depravity.

You have things about inspiration. You have things about the triunity of God, the deity of Christ.

You can't go back now. Those things are true. And in addition, do not ignore the

Holy Spirit as the unifying author of all 66 books of the Christian Bible.

You have 66 Christian books, books that talk about the

Lord Jesus. And when you see God's hand unfold the truth in the

Bible, you're going to see a redemptive thread. You're going to see a thread that has overarching covenants, like the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works.

And you're going to hear things about creation, fall, redemption, consummation, are you not? Because we have those four broad categories.

And you're going to see that in the Bible, especially as you read the Old Testament. And that's going to really help you in many areas.

And here's one. You're not going to then read the Bible as a book of TED Talk, how -to, moralistic, therapeutic exhortations on how to live a good life.

That's not going to happen. As Horton says in his article, dare to be a

Daniel sermon, those are going to go out the window if you're just trying to read the

Bible, looking for moral examples in a chopped up fashion where there's no cohesive unifying element, i .e.

the divine author. Therefore, I think in our society today, we have so stressed trying to find out what the human author says.

And I'm not even saying it's wrong to find out what the human author says. I'm obviously not saying it.

But if it's to the exclusion of how is that human author used in the proverbial hand of the

Holy Spirit, to use language of sailing would be more biblical, of course, from 2

Peter chapter 1, moved or blown, the Spirit of God moves those authors as the way

He wants them to write. And I don't think that He has them write exactly, even though He uses their personality and it's not necessarily dictation.

Although there is some dictation in the Bible, and you can go to the Old Testament to find that if you'd like. That's my little trick question.

I want you, dear listeners, to read the Bible, remembering the

Holy Spirit. That's the point today. So, we're 16 minutes in, and I'm trying to refine this as we go.

I want you to recognize the Holy Spirit's work as you read the Bible. Work in the

Church over the years, over the centuries, over the last 2 ,000 years and longer, and how

He has helped the Church. See, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, ah, that sounds like real, that sounds

Catholic. I can't understand the Bible without the Church. Well, what's the other option? You have to understand the

Bible yourself? I mean, you? Me?

I regularly say to the men here in the discipleship class, before we had no men in the discipleship class because of the lockdown, whatever it's called, would you rather have me in the

Bible sitting here teaching you about life and death and hell and parenting and being a good dad, whatever we talk about, or all these books surrounding me?

We are in a long line of men, and of course, there are wives who have come to God's Word and tried to understand what

God has said when He wrote it. Therefore, if you ignore the Holy Spirit in the life of the

Church understanding the Bible, you are going to be impoverished. Second of all, if you don't understand the role of the

Holy Spirit as He has one unifying message in the Bible, you will also be impoverished.

Why do I like that word, impoverished? A couple was in my office, we were doing premarital counseling, and they were asking about having children, and should they delay, or should they save up some money, or should they get to know each other for a while?

I like to tell the couples, if you're doing things the right way, you get at least a nine -month waiting period where you're together as a couple without kids.

Obviously, it's their choice. I have nothing but just a suggestion to, you know, this is what

I think. And I also say, but children never impoverish.

Maybe they cost a lot of money, but in terms of just overall impoverishment, they will never impoverish.

Horton goes on to say at the end of the article, Therefore, we have no canon within a canon, no selection of passages that are more important than others.

All scriptures God breathed. And therefore, useful for norming the Church's faith and practice. We need the box top and the puzzle pieces, the forest and the trees.

In fact, it's the pieces that make up the puzzle and the trees that make up the forest. We need to recover our confidence that the

Father who inspired these texts by His Spirit with His Son as its central content and it's His covenants as its architecture, is

Lord of the parts and Lord of the whole. Reformation Study Bible, edited by R .C.

Sproul, Orlando, Florida Reformation Trust, 2015, page 2366 -2368.

That'd be a good article for you to read. Scripture helping you interpret scripture.

I mean, who else is a better commentary, commentator on what he's written earlier or even later than the

Holy Spirit? That's called the analogy of scripture. And then the analogy of faith, where we understand points of doctrine, things about God that will help us interpret the passage.

And therefore, if your only goal is trying to figure out authorial intent of the human author alone, you are going to be disjointed.

You're going to ignore the supernatural nature of this book. I tweeted a while ago, do you study the

Bible like any other book? And it was like 50 -50, if memory serves me. That's wrong.

You do not study the Bible like any other book because no other book of the Bible is God -breathed.

No other book but the Bible is supernatural. No other book is like this book.

And therefore, if you're just going to say 40 different authors over 1 ,500 years, disjointed, three different languages, and you don't have the unity, and therefore having the continuity, you're going to have a lot of problems.

And I think you're going to probably think the star of the show is pretty much going to be Israel. Well, she's on hold now.

I don't think the church is the parenthesis. I think Israel is a parenthesis.

And she has done her job, has she not, as a nation, and she's birthed the

Messiah. And when you look at Jesus and you think about sacrifices in the Old Testament, types and shadows,

He is the ultimate sacrifice. When you look at the Old Testament temple, Jesus talked about His body is the temple.

You looked at the Son out of Egypt, Matthew chapter 2 via Hosea 11, and you're going to say this

Son is Jesus. You're going to say that often when you think of the unity of Scripture by the

Holy Spirit. Therefore, as I started the show, I'll end the show. If you have a study

Bible, use it to study. Of course, you can use it for other things. I mean, my personal study

Bibles that I have, and I have a lot of them, I usually don't carry around with me because they're just too much information.

But I don't want to ignore them because there are so many good sections. The history of salvation in the

Old Testament, preparing the way for Christ, it just has verse after verse after verse in the

Old Testament that tells me something about the Lord Jesus and what He will be like when He arrives on earth.

Of course, He has always existed as the Eternal Son, but He will add humanity and arrive on earth right through the conception, virgin conception, the virgin conceiving by the power of the

Holy Spirit and not a man. Well, my name is Mike Gabendroth. You can always write me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

As of now, we're still going to plan on going to Israel next February 24th through about March 4th with a trip to Rome.

We'd like to go. I've had two conferences cancel, John Tucker in Ohio, had community there, has canceled the

April conference, so I won't be there in April for a conference on the gospel and sanctification.

And the Shepherds Conference that was going to be held in Germany, I like to call it the German Shepherds Conference, but then you'll think it's a dog show conference,

German Shepherds Conference. That's also, I'm not going to be able to make it over there as well,

I was going to teach a preaching class in Germany for a lot of students, 15 students in Western Europe, different backgrounds from Poland, Czech Republic to Germany, Switzerland, but that's not going to work either.

So, I don't know if it'll be online or what it'll be like. I was going to have my wife fly out and we were going to have our 31st anniversary in Rome.

We had our 15th in Rome. In the 30th I was out of town and 31st

I was going to take her back to Rome, but my life is not my own and I cannot predict all these things that happen. Who knows if the world will ever be the same and we'll make it there, but I will have planned, we're still planning on going to Israel, that's the point.

So my name is Mike Ebenroth, this is No Compromise Radio. Today we talked about reading the

Bible, remembering the Holy Spirit, that's really what we're talking about, and therefore I'd like you to do that very thing.

Coming to the Bible and trying to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying through the human author.

Of course he uses human authors, I'm not against that, but we are reading the Bible as a supernatural book.

Richard Barcillas has a lot of good stuff to say about that as well if you want to follow him. Again, you can write me,

Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com or go to the YouTube site, YouTube name is

NoCompromiseRadio for lots of two to three minute videos. See you soon. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.