Hermeneutics Quiz

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. We're here to take your calls as well.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

It is good to be back here live in the studio in Auburn, Massachusetts, WVNE. I appreciate the ministry here from the radio station. It's a privilege to be on the air here. My name's Mike Abendroth, and this is nocompromisedradio .com.

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Well, each day of the week, we have a different theme. Monday, we have preaching. Tuesday, we have Pastor Steve and some issues in the local church. Wednesday, we talk about books. And Thursday, we talk about current issues in evangelicalism.

And so today is Thursday. By the way, I just got back from my chiropractor, and my chiropractor knows I'm a Christian, and he said, I read a book that you'd be interested in, The Shack. I said, oh, really?

We just put that on our book-burning list. And he said, oh, really? I said, yeah, understanding God as a black woman, God the Father, black woman, just doesn't really work for me, wrong view of God. We talked a little bit, and so I think next week, we're gonna have to switch to good books just to take a little break.

Hermeneutics and the Need for Biblical Interpretation

But today is current issues in evangelicalism, which gives me a broad, broad spectrum to pick from. Today, I'd like to talk about hermeneutics. I'd like to talk about Bible interpretation. I think it's the issue in local churches today.

I was asked a while ago in Nebraska when I was preaching, if I had to study one topic that would help me learn about evangelicalism, it's direction, understand the Bible, what's the hot topic that I need to master?

I said, hermeneutics, how to interpret the Bible. So today is a behind-the-scenes look at how to interpret the Bible. Tonight, I teach a class at Bethlehem Bible Church. Hermeneutics is at our Bible Institute there.

You can get on bbcchurch .org and take a look at the Bible Institute. All kinds of classes, syllabi, downloads, audios. And tonight, the class starts seven to nine. I think we've got room for three or four more people.

We'd love to have you if you're out there listening. And I always start the class off with a quiz. So I have right here in my hot little hands the quiz for tonight. If you're listening right now live and you're in the class, you should probably turn the radio off so you don't get the inside scoop.

No, just kidding. You can get the inside scoop, and that's just a benefit for listening to no-compromise radio. So we're gonna talk about hermeneutics and how it is so important and why you have a hermeneutical system now.

And I wanna make sure you have a right hermeneutical system because basically, if you don't read the Bible properly, you can have anybody teach you anything. So get your pencil out, get your Bible out, and we're gonna have a quiz today.

Current issues in evangelicalism, and the issue is hermeneutics. There's all kinds of feministic hermeneutics, gay hermeneutics, charismatic hermeneutic, cessationist hermeneutic, Arminian hermeneutic.

You can have all kinds of hermeneutics. Let's figure out what hermeneutics is, and we'll take maybe calls in a little bit, but we're gonna go through this quiz. I have 15 questions for this quiz. So each quiz can cost you about seven points or eight points.

We'll just have to see. Question number one is an easy one. What hermeneutics is, A, the main rival to Lance Armstrong, B, something only the pastor needs to know, C, Greek philosophy, D, the art and science of biblical interpretation, E, a Christian hip hop band.

Which one is it? It is letter D, the art and science of biblical interpretation. There's a way to do it. There's a very technical way that comes with language and understanding culture. There's an art as well.

It's not quite as easy as just putting the ingredients from a cookbook into a bowl. Now we move to the true and false. They get harder. You might wanna pull over. It's hard to drive and think at the same time.

Hermeneutics Affects Every Doctrine

Number two, true or false, hermeneutics affects every doctrine in the Bible. Hermeneutics affects every doctrine of the Bible, and the answer is it's true. It does. The way you interpret the Bible will of course make you think differently about salvation, eternal life, who Jesus is, and so what I'm trying to say is it's very important.

Number three, every Christian has a philosophy of hermeneutics. Every Christian has a philosophy of hermeneutics, and that is true. As I alluded to earlier, you have a philosophy. It might be a literal hermeneutic, a spiritual hermeneutic, an allegorizing hermeneutic, the hermeneutic of I read the Bible the way I was taught to read it by my father, our mother, our pastor, our friend.

You have a way to interpret the Bible, and so I want to make sure you do it in the proper way. I bought a book by Harold Bloom a while ago, and it's the best English language poems ever written, according to the Yale professor, Harold Bloom, and the first chapter is how to understand poetry, how to read poetry, and we have a Bible that's full of narrative story.

That is, we have it full of prose and poetry, apocalyptic, all kinds of different genres, and I don't think you interpret a love letter poem the same way you do as legal proceedings, summons. Of course not.

All right, we have to keep moving. Number four, the three main hermeneutical camps are the allegorical, the spiritual, and literal, and I would have to say false. There are two main camps. You either take things in a literal, normal, natural way.

I'm not saying in a wooden way, but you would read it in a normal way, and if there's poetry or hyperbole or there is metaphor or simile, you just read it as such, and then there's spiritualizing, where things mean other things, and we'll get to that in just a minute.

If you're bored so far, hang on to about number eight, and you'll be fine. Number five, one's own system of theology needs to guide his or her principles of Bible interpretation. Your own theology should drive your hermeneutics.

Wrong, don't do it. We'd have to burn that philosophy as we're talking about book burning the other day. You don't want your theology to drive your system of hermeneutics. You want this Bible interpretation philosophy to help you understand theology.

Now, you can't unknow what you already know. That's true. I hate to quote John Lennon, but he was a theologian, a bad one, but he was a theologian. You can't unknow what you already know, and so you have a system of theology, that's true, but you don't want to place anything over the Bible and say, I must interpret it with this kind of view.

We'll talk more about that a little later. Six, most errors in Bible doctrine can be traced back to the interpreter's methodology. Certainly, we'd all agree, if you believe in inerrancy and infallibility, that this is God-breathed Scripture.

The problem with the Bible is not the Bible. The problem is we're finite, we're frail, we are creatures, and we're fallen. Our minds have been affected by the fall, our souls, our hearts, our will, everything is affected, and so when we have a problem with Bible doctrines, lots of times it has to do with how we go about interpreting the Bible.

Number seven, even the most skilled Bible student can hone his or her interpretation skills. Yes, true. Even if you're a great hermeneutical student, you can still get better, and so it's worthwhile to study.

If I had to ask you the question right now before we go on, when's the last time you read, maybe you haven't written one, when's the last time you read a hermeneutics book? I mean, maybe it's not really wonderful reading, maybe you like Tom Clancy better, but why don't we pick some books, hermeneutic books, like Bernard Ramm's book, Classical Protestant Interpretation.

R .C. Sproul has written a good book on knowing God. Roy Zook about Bible interpretation. We need to pick some books to help us understand the book, the words of life. You say, ah, you just worship the Bible.

We don't worship the Bible. The Word of God and God are connected. This is who He is. We learn about who He is based on the Scriptures. And as Moses said in Deuteronomy, these are the words of life. As David raised his hands to worship the Word of God because you can't disconnect God and His Word.

Avoiding Allegorical Readings and Strange Symbolism

And so now we come to number eight. Hermeneutically, it'll be interesting. The 153 fish in John 21, 11 symbolize the fullness of the Gentiles and the remnant of Israel. John 21, 11, Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore.

It was full of fish, 153, and even with so many, the net was not torn. Friends, listen to me very carefully. If your pastor comes up with strange, weird, insightful interpretations that you can't reproduce, that you can't see for yourselves in the text with a plain blue collar reading, then I don't think you should call your friends and say, my pastor can get things out of this verse that I never have seen.

Friends, lots of times, that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing to find things in the Bible that aren't in there. And so that's just the pastor off on, I don't know if he ate a bunch of salsa the night before or peyote that morning, I have no idea, but we want to make sure we understand what the text says and your pastor shouldn't try to find interesting, weird, insightful, or new things in the Bible.

He should say, this is what the Bible teaches. And so if we look at 153 fish, you might say, why 153? If you're allegorical or spiritual, you're in trouble. If you're literal, it's 153 fish, you think.

Well, it's one more than 152, one less than 154. It's amazing that a full boat was 153 fish. The nets aren't even torn. The 153 does not somehow talk about the fullness of the Gentiles and the remnant of Israel.

You can't say one, there's one God, a five is two less than perfection, three, the numbers of the Trinity. You can't do that. Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century said that the 100 represent the fullness of the Gentile.

The 50 symbolize the remnant of Israel. And the three, of course, was for the Trinity. So you have to be very, very careful to not go on some kind of insane or inane rabbit trail. Augustine had a theory that is so hard, I can't figure it out, fifth century Augustine.

He said, there are 10 commandments and seven is the perfect number of grace. And that's 17, right? Now, if you add up all the numbers from one to 17 together, you know, one plus two plus three plus four, all the way up to 17, you get 153.

And not only that, but if you were to arrange them with 17 fish in a row and 16 in the next row or 15 in the next row, all the way down to a row of one, you get a perfect triangle. And that perfect triangle, of course, reminds you of the Trinity.

I mean, how crazy is this? But while we might not be that crazy with our Bible interpretation, any spiritualizing or allegorizing of the scripture, we must be very careful to say to ourselves, what does God mean when he says this?

153, different types of what? Different types of fish in the sea, that's what one person said. Symbolic of the church reaching all the people of the world. If I could fly to Mars and there were people that live there who've never read the Bible and I say, Peter was sketching fish and I got 153.

What does that 153 mean? And they would tell you 153 fish. Number nine, Isaiah 41 .13 would be a good verse to help bulimic patients. That's the question. Isaiah 41 .13 would be a good verse to help bulimic patients.

Isaiah 41 .13 says, for I am the Lord your God who upholds your right hand, who says to you, do not fear, I will help you. So you say, what does that have to do with bulimic patients at all? A God who upholds your right hand?

Did you know there was a radio station, a very large radio station in 1997 in Los Angeles that had the Minerth Meyer Christian Psychologist Program on. Christian psychologist in my day, Christian was a noun, not an adjective.

But anyway, I digress. Lady called in and she said she had a problem with bulimia that she would binge and she would purge and she did it for almost 20 years. Of course, we wanna help people like that.

She wanted to know if there's a Bible verse that Minerth and Meyer could give her to help her stop this kind of behavior. One of the men said, do you eat with your right hand or do you eat with your left?

She said she was right-handed and he told her to memorize Isaiah 41 .13. And he said that in that verse, God would promise to hold back her hand whenever she wanted to eat. Friends, I am so saddened by that because I wanna help people who are struggling with sin and problems and anxiety and depression and issues like that.

We have these words of life. We have these words from God and then to somehow mess with them and contort them and to dislodge them. When I was younger, I would pick up my brother by the arm once in a while and not thinking that his shoulder would very easily become dislocated and then he would whine and he would howl.

It hurt so bad until we figured out how to hold the elbow just right and pop it back in. This is a dislocation of that verse with horrible hermeneutics. So we wanna be very careful. We wanna help people and give them hope but not taking the Bible out of context.

Context, Philippians 4, and Proverbs 22:6

Number 10, the Bible says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Who is the I and what are the all things? I think I can help all the audience out there in the congregation listening, if you will, to understand the Bible better when you just ask those kind of questions.

I mean, kids memorize the verse, you memorize the verse, you've probably got a song to go with the words, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. What do you mean all things? Stand on top of the Empire State Building and jump off?

Well, it can't mean that because that would actually would prove the Bible false because you can't do that. Gravity would kill you. Well, what about I can do all things, I can make a lot of money. I can make money out of nothing.

There's all kinds of different ways we can try to describe that. So all things has to have a context. There has to be, what are those all things? What's the nearest antecedent? What is Paul talking about?

And who are the I? I can do all things. Maybe that's Paul the Apostle talking. And simply one of the great things about hermeneutics is to just read the context. Here is the context. Paul said in verse 12, I know of Philippians 4, I know how to get along with humble means.

And I also know how to live in prosperity. By the way, where is he? He's in jail. And he's just said, I've learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. That's verse 11. I've learned to be content.

I've figured that out because the Lord has been gracious to me and generous to me. I also know how to live in prosperity in and, excuse me, in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

Then comes the verse. Here's the drum roll. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. All things like getting along with humble means, living with prosperity, having different circumstances and still having the secret of being content with hunger or with abundance or with suffering.

And so you have to take a look at that. You just can't run with that verse like some kind of fish would run with a line. Off it goes. No. Context determines everything. Well, let's ask another question.

What, 11, number 11. I wonder how you're scoring at home. Proverbs 22 .6. What promises in this verse? That's question 11. Proverbs 22 .6. Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

What does that teach? Well, most people say it teaches that if you train up your child in the Christian faith, he'll become a Christian. Now that's fine sentiment. I think that often happens that when you train up your child in a Christian environment that he becomes a Christian.

But what's missing from that sentence is this. You train your child up in a Christian environment and God by his sovereign electing grace and mercy based on Christ's life, death and resurrection saves that sinful boy or girl and then he becomes a Christian.

And so this verse has nothing to do with salvation. This has everything to do with it's a proverb. It's proverbial in its intent and that's how we should look at it. If you train up a child in a disciplined way, when he's older, he won't depart from that discipline.

Unbelievers can have disciplined lives. People in the military, if they're unbelievers, they can have a disciplined life. Solomon the Saint, just train up your child in a disciplined fashion. And when he's older, he'll be disciplined.

And so we don't wanna somehow take this as a promise. Can you imagine the poor mother or father who says this is the promise that I'm gonna claim for my kid and then the child grows up and rebels and becomes an idolater and then runs away from home and then someone's claiming this verse and somehow thinking the word of God has let them down, God has let them down.

No, their hermeneutical system has let them down. By the way, your pastor, if you have a pastor, your pastor is teaching you hermeneutics every single Sunday. Maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, trying to teach you how do you find what God is trying to say?

What is the authorial intent? When God wrote this 2 ,000 years ago, 3 ,500 years ago, what was he trying to say? And I wanna try to show my people that because I'm trying to teach them how to study the Bible themselves.

I preach verse by verse from the scriptures for a reason. It helps hermeneutically. It helps me teach the whole counsel of God. And I also want people to study the Bible verse by verse by verse. I don't want them running around, flipping their Bible around, kind of like how did the Bay City Rollers pop band in the 70s pick their name?

They took the globe, they spun the globe around, they put their finger on the globe and it came to Bay City, Michigan and they were called the Bay City Rollers. S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, night. You know, that's how they found their name.

And we open up the Bible and we're looking for a promise from God and we put our finger in in a random verse. Judas hung himself. We say, that's not any good. We open it up again. Go thou and do likewise.

And we say, we don't like that. And we put our finger in again and it says, what you do, do quickly. Well, those are all three Bible verses but they have nothing to do in sequential form. And they're not found that way in the Bible.

So we wanna be careful. Number 12. Number 12. What is God saying to America in this verse? Second Chronicles 7 .14. And my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray, seek my face, God says, and turn from their wicked ways and I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

What is God saying to America in Second Chronicles 7 .14? Answer, I hope you're shouting this out. I hope the people driving next to you think you're crazy as you're listening to NoCompromiseRadio .com.

God is saying nothing to America in that verse. He's not talking to America. He didn't have the intention to speak to America. He's not talking to Great Britain. He's not talking to Austria. He is talking to Israel.

My people who are called by my name. Now, there are principles that go along with Bible interpretation. And you could say this is originally for Israel. And what could we learn from Israel? That we should be ungodly, that we should be paganistic, that we should be prideful, that we should not want forgiveness?

Of course not. I think if you say this promise for Israel has some implications for America, let's try to honor God in our society. Let's try to be thankful to him in our society. Then that's fine. But this verse has nothing to do with America.

And I ask you the question and I could answer it. All you have to do is read the context before and after. A good thing to do with Bible study is to ask yourself this question. Is this verse written to me or is it written for me?

I think if you get that, you'll get everything. Is this verse to me or is it for me? All of the Bible is for you. If you're married, the verses about singleness are for you. If you don't have any children, the verses about how to train children are for you because God wants you to know so you could serve other people, so you just know how he thinks.

It's all for you. But not all the Bible is written to you. Sometimes it's written to the apostles, to Israel, to a particular person. So we have to be careful. Is the Bible, is this verse to me or is it for me?

And so if you read the Bible a little bit more, a couple verses before 2 Chronicles 7 .14, a couple verses after, I think you'll be fine. Another thing you want to ask is I think we're about ready to be done with this quiz because we're out of time.

Ask yourself this, is everything in the Bible prescribed or described? And it's actually a mixture. Some things in the Bible is a description, Jesus casting out demons. But just because something's described, it doesn't mean it is prescribed.

When you go to the pharmacist, you give them a prescription. Your doctor prescribes, you take two pills per day, etc. Not everything in the Bible is a prescription. Sometimes it just describes behavior.

People run around and want to cast out demons out of everything and all of a sudden they realize that's just description, it's not even prescription. What would poor Job do if he could actually cast out demons?

Well, then he would have cast out Satan out of his life and God would not have blessed him like that because God used Satan to bless him. There's no verse in the Bible that is written to you to say you need to cast out demons.

Not one, you can't find it. Spiritual warfare verses, 2 Corinthians 10, Ephesians 6, there's nothing in there that says you must cast out demons. You have the authority to cast out demons. It is written for you to know about the apostles and Jesus casting out demons, but it is not written to you so that you might do it.

And so we want to be careful. Is it written to me or is it written for me? Is this prescribed for me to do as an action or a duty or is it described something that I should just understand? We want to make sure we answer this question.

What does this verse mean to God? Not to me. I heard one guy say, what does this verse mean if you were dead? There's only one fixed meaning, one meaning to that verse and you want to try to find it. And you want to try to study history, culture, language, what they did for money back in those days, how they did those things, figures of speech.

We want to be careful we don't run with the Bible and make it say something that we wanted to say. So hermeneutics is the science and art of biblical interpretation. Seven o 'clock tonight we have a class at Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org.

I'd love to have you come and ace the quiz. You've at least got the quiz right. And so you can come tonight, no charge except for the books and syllabus, and you can just sit in and audit the class as well.

Hermeneutics, you have a hermeneutical system. I want it to be biblical, and it stems from understanding the kind of genre, making sure you're looking for God's authorial intent and making sure that you don't take everything that is in the Bible to making it sound like it's to you and not just for you.

And I think that will help you when you read the Bible. Your assignment is to read Mark chapter one tonight and find out what is to you and what is for you. God bless you.

No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth 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 1015 and in the evening at six. 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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.