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Father, thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather tonight. As we come together, we have the joy of worshiping your name. We have the joy of diving into your word and learning more about what you have to say.
And at the same time, we know that there are people out there that have concerns. We lift up Todd Davis and the burns that he suffered. God, we pray that you would grant him a speedy recovery. Be with the medical professionals that are dealing with him and just have your will be done in that situation as we just sang God.
And as we gather and as we focus on learning more about your word, we pray for the influence of the Holy Spirit and we pray for the illumination of the Holy Spirit because we know that while all of the words of the Bible we know and we understand, there are times when it's only through your power and through the work of the Holy Spirit that we can truly come to understand the true meaning and the true message of the Bible.
It's not that it's hidden, it's not that it's secret or mysterious, but we have to be in prayer and we have to be truly seeking you with humility, God. So we thank you for this opportunity. We thank you for all that there is to learn, Lord.
And I thank you for each and every person who's joined us tonight. Again, we thank you, we love you, and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so this is week three. And like I said, we have an overarching subject of biblical discernment.
And in the first week, we talked about why discernment was important. And the biggest thing about that was, as you recall, we discussed the concept of being able to recognize the right from the almost right, because this is where a lot of our issues in churches come from.
Again, it's not our issue as Christians in society because what's right and wrong in society is just painfully obvious. But what the church down the street is doing and why it's maybe not necessarily all that it could or should be is not as obvious, especially when people are preaching from the Bible.
And I don't even wanna say that that's malicious or anything like that, but sometimes churches and pastors, none of us are perfect, so we can have a lack of discernment as well. So for us, we wanna be able to look at things and hear things and not just get a feeling that this isn't right, but be able to go to our Bible and know why it's not right and what actually is right, because there's a lot of this that is impacting our culture as a church, not our culture as the United States or as Madison County or Virginia or whatever, but our culture as Christians.
Now, in the second week, this was one that didn't get recorded, so I apologize, but we talked about our view of Scripture because this is another one of those issues where discernment is key, because every church out there has something on their website that says, yes, we believe the Bible is the Word of God.
But even contained within that statement, there can be a massive variety in what is meant by we believe the Bible is the Word of God from what we believe, what I believe and what we teach here is that the Bible is inspired and errant and authoritative.
That means it is delivered to the writers 100 from God. In the original writings, it is inerrant, which means there is absolutely nothing in it that is incorrect in any way. There's no mistakes, there's no contradictions, there's none of that stuff.
And finally, that the Bible is authoritative, which essentially means that it is the final word about everything that it discusses. Now, the Bible doesn't tell me how to play guitar, right? So maybe the Bible is not the final word about where to put my fingers to play certain notes, but the Bible is the final word on what God honoring content for a worship song is.
The Bible is the final and authoritative word. There is no other source that matters when it comes to how we live our lives as individuals in a God honoring way. And while that sounds like a painfully obvious thing to say, it is not because there are plenty of churches out there who will preach that certain things are okay, certain lifestyles are okay, certain choices are okay that are very much in opposition to Scripture.
And I don't think I need to name them, but I will name some of them. Homosexuality, abortion, how about two big ones right there, right? There are churches that will preach that that stuff is actually in accordance with the Bible, and I would argue that it's not.
But if you don't know what the Bible says about these subjects, how do you know? Because there are people that are far more convincing speakers than I will ever be that can tell you why that's okay. So again, we're going to go into a topic tonight, which is biblical literacy.
So this is sort of the next in that series. And just so you have an idea where we're going, I wanna cover some of these fundamental foundational topics so that when we get to some other stuff, like I'd really, I envision evenings where we actually talk about what the Bible says about gender and sexuality, where we talk about what the Bible says about abortion, where we discuss these things so that you, whoever shows up or whoever watches this video has clear teaching.
And it might just be a handful of us, and then there'll still be people sitting in these very pews that disagree because they don't actually know what the Word of God says. And I mean, I know that's the case, unfortunately.
So that's kind of where we're going. And hopefully this is something that is useful to you all. I think that it will be. Now, based on those last couple of weeks of topics and in church, I know I've told you endlessly, I say it over and over, that you have to read your Bible.
You have to be in the Word of God constantly. It's not enough to come to church on Sunday to turn to one of the passages that we look at in the sermon or one of the references and then put your Bible back on the shelf and take it down next week.
I mean, as far as the church is concerned, we don't lack for Bibles, but we lack for Bibles that are opened. We lack for Bibles that are actually being read. You know, people, I guess people get the idea that as long as you have the Bible in your house, it's some kind of magical shield, you know, that takes care of all these issues that we have to worry about.
But you have to read it and you have to do more than read it. But I'm confident that if you are here, if you are one of the people that are willing to come back to a service in the evening, that you're already doing it.
But despite that, I also know that there are still times when some of the things that you come across just don't make sense. Now, there's a reason for this. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how one of the attributes of authoritative, the authoritativeness of Scripture was that it's clear.
And then when I said that it's clear, that means you can understand it. And I had a couple of people raise their eyebrows and come up to me afterwards. He'd be like, you sure? Because I read some of this stuff and I still don't understand it.
But as you'll see, sometimes that means it just takes work, but the meaning is not hidden. You don't need a special degree or to learn anything special to be able to interpret Scripture. You really don't.
But part of the reason that sometimes things aren't as clear as they might be is because you don't read the Bible the same way you would read any other book. And part of the reason that we sometimes think it should be that way is because of the format that we have our Bible in.
So obviously, this is one book, but contained within these covers is actually a library of books. There's 66 books, as I know you all know. And the 66 books were written over somewhere, somewhere between 1 ,500 and 2 ,000 years by about 40 different people.
And I won't belabor that point because I know we've talked about it. But the reason that I bring that up is because of the implications of that fact. You see, each one of the books of the Bible is written in what's known as a genre.
Some of the books of the Bible are history or narrative, meaning they're recounting events that happened. And those are, in some ways, pretty straightforward. One of the most controversial things I could say to some Christians is that Genesis is a narrative.
Genesis is a history. It's not poetry. It's not another genre. It is to be read and taken literally. Now, there's other genres. There is poetry. We have stuff like the Psalms. We have wisdom literature, like the Proverbs.
And we have prophecy. We have books like Isaiah that we talked about before, which are looking into the future. That now it's word given by God, but they're looking into the future to see what's gonna happen.
But the whole point of me telling you that is the genre of the specific book within the 66 books of the Bible that you're reading is gonna change the way you interpret what you read. You have to approach different genres in different ways, different methods of reading.
So it's not a novel, although some things are like a story. It's not a textbook, although some things are like history or their lessons or their instruction. But you have to approach it with an understanding of the genre.
But even beyond that, one thing that we really have to remember is that the 66 books, even though they're independent, and I've told you that they're different and this is not just one book, they still come together to create a coherent picture.
And I found this definition or this description of what the Bible is that I think is really helpful. And it goes like this. The one unifying theme unfolding throughout the whole Bible is that for his own glory, God has chosen to create and gather to himself a group of people who will live in his eternal kingdom to praise, honor, and serve him forever, and through whom he will display his wisdom, power, mercy, grace, and glory.
So this is the theme that ties all of these books together. And one of the things that I'm going over with the youth group is not only we're talking about genre a little bit, we're talking about themes, but what I'm trying to show them is how these books connect and they develop a storyline.
Genesis flows into Exodus, which flows into Leviticus, to Numbers, to Deuteronomy, to Joshua. All of the Old Testament is creating, it's building the foundation for the story of God's redemption, for that story of the group of people, which now includes us.
Again, we're not Israel, don't make that mistake, but we are part of God's people. And this is showing how we got from in the beginning, Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
There was nothing but darkness to where we are today. And it's not evolution. So all of this is coming down to the topic that I wanna talk about tonight, which is biblical literacy. And this is a little bit of a slippery concept to get our hands and our minds around, but I'm gonna use a quasi-definition for this as well.
Now, this came out of a little book that I had on the topic. And the author of that book, Corey Marsh, says, biblical literacy hinges on awareness and proficiency. Now, I know that doesn't make sense on its own.
So let me expand on that just a little bit. And more specifically, he says, biblically literate Christians progressively develop in their awareness of the God of the universe by reading through the scriptures while gaining proficiency in their understanding of scripture's meaning.
So this is not something, I'll call it a book, but understand that it's a collection of books. This is not a book that you read through one time and then you put it back on your shelf because now you've got it.
Some books are like that. Fiction books are typically like that, right? It's one and done. You read it and you give it back to the library or you read it and you give it to somebody else. This is different because you are progressively having your eyes open to the truth of who God is through his word.
And I will promise to you that you will never fully master the contents of this book no matter how many times that you have read it through. And I know that sounds to some people silly to say. I mean, I know of people who, you know, they grew up, they went to church schools, they went to church all their lives.
Now they're in their 30s or whatever. And they say, well, I've pretty much learned all there is to learn about the Bible. So now I think I'm ready to teach other people. And I mean, they may be ready to teach other people, but the arrogance that comes along with saying that you understand everything there is to understand about the Bible is absurd.
Because there are just probably billions of pages written by people who are way smarter than we are that, you know, we haven't even gotten. I have so many books, as I've said many, many times. But anyway, so you're continuing to have your eyes open to the truth of who God is through the scriptures.
Now, I wanna illustrate the necessity of biblical literacy with a couple of examples that I hope are humorous. Now, the first one, and these are memes, so we don't have screens. So you're just gonna have to bear with me describing this.
And hopefully you can picture it in your mind or maybe you've seen it. Well, the first one is of one of those little daily calendars. You know, you tear off a day, it's got a Bible verse on it. Inspirational Bible verse to give you something to go out and conquer the world with.
So in one of them, this is, I've seen the picture of it. The verse is, and this is in King James, so forgive me, but I want it to be true to the picture. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
And the reference is Luke 4, 7. Now, that is an inspirational quote. If you will just worship me, everything will be yours. That would be the English translation. But it's less inspirational when you turn to Luke 4, 7 and you realize this verse is part of the temptation of Jesus.
And those words are the words spoken by Satan, where Satan is offering to give Jesus the entire kingdom of the world if Jesus will bow down and worship Satan. So context matters. But again, you pull those words out all by themselves and they're like, amen, I will worship you, God, if you will give me everything that I want.
And I mean, that's the way a lot of churches work these days, but that's not the way scripture works. So again, context. Now, if you have a Bible, turn with me to Matthew 7. Matthew chapter seven, just right there, whatever page that's on.
And this is another meme that I've seen that I think is actually really funny. Now, you have in front of you, unless you brought your own Bible, you have the Legacy Standard Bible translation. But what I wanna give you is the modern evangelical translation of this verse, the modern evangelical, also known as the me version.
And what you do is you take chapter seven, get your pen, and you scribble out everything but the first three words. And what are you left with? Do not judge. This is how liberal Christians, non-Christians, and Christians desiring to live in sin and all interpret this passage.
Do not judge. They see these words, do not judge. The Bible says, do not judge. Therefore, you cannot judge me. But if you actually understand how to read your Bible, you'll understand that's not the message.
The message is not prohibiting us from judging other people. It's a little more complicated than that. And we don't have time to get into that tonight, but we will get into that at church sometime within the next few weeks.
So basically what both of these examples are showing are a biblically illiterate approach to interpreting scripture. And while we're here, let me address something else kind of related. As we look at people who want to interpret, do not judge in that way, because maybe they are wanting to get away with something or maybe they just don't like their sin being named, like none of us do.
But let me give you a question that you can remove from your Bible study arsenal, your small group Sunday school arsenal forever. Never ask this question again. What does that verse mean to you? Or the statement?
To me, this verse means, now why do I say that? Because it's a common thing. What does this verse mean to you? That's a slippery slope to a bad interpretation because if we're being honest, it doesn't matter what it means to you.
Because scripture, since it was initially inspired by the Holy Spirit, by God, the Holy Spirit, to the person that was writing it had one single meaning. It had the meaning that the author gave it under the inspiration of God, the Holy Scripture.
And it had that meaning before you were ever born. And it will have that meaning long after you're gone. So what it means to you doesn't matter. And biblical literacy seeks to understand and apply the actual meaning.
So that's what we're talking about. Again, Corey Marsh, the author of the book, it's called a primer, if you prefer, on biblical literacy. He says this, a Christian's relationship with God is directly proportionate to their relationship with God's word.
So you can think about that and recognize that you cannot truly follow God. You cannot truly be a follower of Jesus Christ if you don't know what they say in their word about what it means to be a follower of them.
You can't be a Christian if you don't understand the Beatitudes or any of the stuff that we've been talking about in the Sermon on the Mount or later on in the New Testament, Paul lays out all kinds of instructional doctrine because of all the places that the church has gone wrong.
It reminds me, you know how stores like Target now, they sell like these old band T-shirts. So you'll see somebody, now, maybe I shouldn't even talk about this, but I will anyway. When I was, and I know for some of you, you're older, but when I was younger, like elementary school was about the time that Guns N' Roses really came out.
Like super famous, massive band, right? Everybody knew who they were. But now, I'm 45, and now you'll see someone who's like 16 with a Guns N' Roses T-shirt on. And it's like, oh, you know who Guns N' Roses are?
And they're like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, name one of their songs. And they can't name a song. You don't know who Guns N' Roses is if you can't name a song. You don't know who God is if you don't know what his word says about him.
Because this is the only way, well, we have creation as well, but this is the way that God gave us to reveal who he is, to instruct us on who he is and how we're to live as Christians, the book. So we have five requirements for biblical literacy.
And then we'll talk a little bit more about this too. But in order to even approach this topic, these things are essential. And the first one is mandatory. And without it, the other ones are not meaningful.
But in order to be biblically literate, you have to be a true believer in Christ. You have to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit in order to have the ability to fully understand Scripture. I will not say that you can't read it and there isn't stuff that you can understand if you're not a believer, because guess what?
This is also how God gave us the information on how we are to become Christians, how we are to receive salvation. But once you get beyond that, you do need the help of the Holy Spirit. And if you don't have the Holy Spirit to help you understand the deeper things of Scripture, it's gonna be difficult or impossible probably to be biblically literate.
Now, the second one is you must have a prayerful attitude. And what this means is that you look to God before you look to Scripture. You look to God, you ask for that understanding. You ask for the illumination of the Holy Spirit before you turn to your Bible.
And the reason that you have to do this, and this will sort of touch on the next one as well, is because you may need, in some of these more challenging cases, the help of the Holy Spirit to understand the true meaning.
Because, and the reason I say this is there are, probably all of us at some point would like to interpret verses in a different way that wasn't quite as convicting to us and it wasn't quite as accusatory towards something that we're doing or wanna do or whatever.
I mean, I remember the first time, I, when I was a candidate here preaching, you know, before I was hired, I did mention this verse. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
And somebody came up to me after the service and they said, well, that's kind of tough. So you're saying to me that basically looking at somebody with lust is the same thing as adultery? I mean, that's the clear statement of the verse, right?
There's, it really leaves no room for question. The only way, and I'm not trying to say that that's what this person was doing. They were like, you know, questioning what I was saying about it. But if you would want to get around that idea so that you could continue to look at things that maybe you should not look at or look at people in a way that you shouldn't look at them, well, you might wanna try to find a different way to think about that verse.
So that's a prayerful attitude. And also, again, the Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture and the Holy Spirit opens our minds and opens our heart to truly receive the Word of God. Now, the third one is that you have to demonstrate humility, which means you're coming to Scripture with a desire to learn.
You're coming to Scripture for it to tell you, you know, what God would want you to know, not to tell Scripture what you want it to say or to come to it because you're smarter and you already know or you know what it should say.
And humility, if we get right down to it, humility is probably one of the most important virtues we could have in the Christian life altogether. Again, we've all been forgiven of more than we deserve.
So you have humility in your life and you have humility with other people, but above that even, you have humility when you approach the text and when you approach God's Word. Now, four, and this is related to humility, you come to the text with a desire to obey God's Word.
Now, it won't be uncommon for an atheist or for someone who is not a Christian to come to the text with a desire to argue with it. And that makes sense. If they don't believe that this is the inspired and errant and fallible truth, well, yeah, you wanna look for holes in the argument.
But as a Christian, again, a true believer in Christ, you are coming to Scripture because you want to know how to live your life the way that is most pleasing and honoring to God or the way God would have you live your life.
And then the fifth one is the one that makes all that more difficult. And that is, you have to be willing to put in diligent study. Some of the things that you read will be very clear upon the first reading.
And some of them will make no sense at all. Some of them will appear to be contradictory to other things in Scripture. I think we talked about that in one of the other sessions too. But I can assure you the inerrancy of Scripture guarantees that no verse of Scripture contradicts any other verse.
And the contradiction is in your head and you need to find the answer. And then you need all these things. You need to be a believer, you need to be prayerful, humble, obedient, and diligent to figure out how that is gonna work.
Now, those are all well and good, right? General principles. But how do we achieve biblical literacy? And again, this is not something that we learn in 30 minutes on one Sunday night, but the principles will help us.
So it all comes down to what's known as hermeneutics. And I know everybody loves when I throw seminary words around. But hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. I believe it's Latin. I think it's Latin.
Forgive me if it's not, but the literal definition is interpretation, how you interpret something. So how do we determine the meaning of any given passage of Scripture? I already told you, there's only one meaning.
So what do we have to do to find that meaning out? So the first question that we wanna ask ourselves is what is the source of the meaning? Where did the meaning come from? And I've already alluded to this earlier.
But the true source of the meaning when we're taking our hermeneutical approach to reading Scripture is the authorial intent, which is just a fancy way of saying the meaning of Scripture is what the author intended for it to mean when he wrote it, okay?
So that, and the reason we know that to be the case is because the person that wrote it was writing it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So their intent coming from the Holy Spirit can be guaranteed to be the meaning, the single meaning behind that passage.
So let's step back just a little bit. How do we figure out what the author's intent was? Now, in order to understand their intent, we have to have context. And this comes in a variety of forms. Context, it could be cultural context, it could be historical context, but it also goes back to what we discussed earlier about the overall storyline of the Bible.
So we have all these different types of context. But I have to tell you this, this is another important principle to understand when you're reading Scripture, because this is the source of many bad theologies and bad doctrines and bad teachings.
No individual verse stands on its own. No individual verse of Scripture can be interpreted by itself. It falls within a framework. If you think about it in ever-widening circles, you have a verse, it's in a paragraph, which is in a chapter, which is in a book.
Now, sometimes you need just the verse, sometimes you need the paragraph, sometimes you need to go all the way out to the context of the whole book to understand something, to understand what it means, to get truly to the authorial intent.
So that's context. And again, we'll get to questions too, so if I'm like being too vague or none of this is making sense, we can at least try to clarify it, no promises. But the next concept I wanna talk to you about very briefly is what's called the hermeneutical triad.
So you can think of this as a triangle. It's gonna go like this. And the bottom corner is observation or history. So this is the context. So you can observe the historical context of the passage. From there, we move to the literary context.
Or the interpretation. So you take the historical context, you look at what's going on in the world, who the writer was, when they were alive, all the things that were happening. Then you move over to the type of literature that it is.
This is gonna help you interpret what's going on. And once you sort of have a grasp on that, you can move up to the top of the triangle, which is the theology. And that includes the implications of the passage and the application.
But look, to get there, you have to know the other aspects of the context. History, literature, theology. And I'll tell you this too. Scripture always progresses, it never regresses. What does that mean?
It means it always moves forward. It doesn't move backward. Now that's important because every passage drives the storyline along in some way. And this is important because we have to understand that all of the Old Testament passages have a meaning of their own.
We were looking at several books in the Old Testament, but we also, we got all the way up to 2 Samuel. And one of the things that is contained within 2 Samuel, oh, I think it was chapter seven. Yeah, chapter seven, starting in verse 12 is the Davidic covenant.
And it says, when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up one of your seed after you who will come forth from your own body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will reprove him with the rod of men and the strikes from the sons of men. There's more, but this is, and the last verse is probably the payoff.
And your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established forever. Now, what that is, is that's God promising David that his line will forever be royal. Now, if we look at the Old Testament, now, if we just look around our world today, we know that Israel no longer has a king.
And if we look at the Old Testament, we see that Solomon was a king, but Solomon died. So how then are we to understand this idea that, and from your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever, your throne shall be established forever?
Well, with the Old Testament, we don't know. But as we get to the New Testament, we see very clearly that Jesus is the fulfillment of that Davidic covenant. Now, God made that promise to David and it had meaning.
But it was fulfilled in Jesus later. So when we look at the New Testament, we're able to look back, and sometimes it casts light on the Old Testament to provide additional context or just additional information to help us figure out exactly what the meaning of that was.
God knows the meaning, but David didn't know the meaning necessarily. So we have that, and we have that understanding that nothing in the New Testament goes back and retroactively changes anything in the Old Testament.
And the Davidic covenant is not the best example of that, but there are schools of thought that now that the New Testament has come, there are promises in the Old Testament that God made to Israel that are now fulfilled in the church.
But that doesn't make any sense because we're not Israel, and God made these promises to Israel. So if we have in Scripture promises God had made to Israel, how can we now say that they're fulfilled in us somehow?
That would mean that God wasn't entirely truthful in what he said in the Old Testament, and we know that that can't be the case. So what do we do with that information? We have to use a consistent hermeneutic.
And again, this hermeneutic is our approach to interpretation. We have to use a consistent hermeneutic to approach all of the Bible. And the most consistent approach that I'm gonna tell you is what's called a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic.
I know we got, we're just throwing out all kinds of things. I mean, you guys are gonna be very well-educated here. But I say that, I say that, but these are the things, maybe not in these terms, these are things that people understood 400 years ago.
They understood that we have to approach the Bible this way and that we have to learn these things. It wasn't a matter of you just show up to church, somebody gives you something, and that's all that you're gonna have to worry about is whatever you're taught.
Well, you gotta go back and make sure that what you're being taught is right. And if you don't know how to read the Bible, you got no way to judge that. That's what discernment is about, and that's why we're talking about these things.
I mean, I truly don't mind if you say, well, I'm not so sure about that, and then you go back to your Bible. Like I said, I'm not perfect. I'm not gonna have the right interpretation all the time. And if you could show me from Scripture, from Scripture only, not from anything else, like your opinion, that I was a little off base with what I was talking about, well, then I'm truly wrong if I won't listen to you.
Because again, we have no other authority. This is the only authority we have. So this is also sometimes called an originalist hermeneutic. And I know this is so academic tonight. But what this means is that you take grammar and the facts of history.
Grammar plus history equals theology, or grammar plus history equals the meaning of the passage. Right, so you have the literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of the passage. Now, what I wanna do with the last couple minutes that I'm talking to you is give you a couple of examples, two examples of verses that are very commonly taken out of their context.
And we're gonna attempt to use, and it'll be so fast, I apologize. We're gonna attempt to use that literal grammatical hermeneutic to put them in their proper context and to understand what these verses actually say.
The first one is Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11. And again, you're gonna know both of these verses. You're gonna be like, oh yeah, that one. So Jeremiah 29, verse 11. See if anybody's ever used this for anything out of context.
For I know the plans that I have for you, declares Yahweh, plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. People claim this is a life verse for their children. I know the plans I have for you, to prosper you and give you a future and hope and all that other kind of stuff.
We have to understand why that's not the right context. So we look first at the history. And this is very instructive, particularly when it comes to something like a prophet like Jeremiah. So historically, who was Jeremiah?
Obviously he was an Israelite prophet. He was a prophet during the time that the temple was destroyed. So there was a lot of bad things, a lot of tragedy that was going on. It was a difficult time for Israel and God was speaking to them through Jeremiah.
Now he had been speaking to them through Jeremiah before. He was convicting them of their sins and he was pronouncing judgment. He was telling them what was gonna happen. But ultimately, that all those bad things did happen.
So again, just this is brief historical context. Literature, it's Old Testament. Now this is a mix of genres like a lot of books are. It's history and narrative because we see some of the stuff that's going on.
But it's also prophecy. So we have to consider these things as well. And this particular verse really falls into the prophetic category because it's talking about something that's gonna happen. Now, now we look at the theology.
So given the history and given the literature, the genre, we have to notice that this verse is not a verse that just pops up by itself. It's in the context of an entire chapter that's titled in the LSB, Jeremiah's letter to the exiles.
And what this means is it's a package of different things. It's a package of curses and blessings. But not only that, it's a package of curses and blessings and future promises to the people of Israel specifically.
And this is God telling Israel that they will bless the world ultimately through the Messiah. So from the history, literature and theology, we take these things and we come to the single intended meaning, the authorial intent of this passage.
And I wrote this down word for word. God will one day restore national Israel for their good and his glory when they seek him with all their heart and call upon him in repentance. Now, what that means is that, for I know the plans that I have for you declares Yahweh, plans for peace and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope is not really directly a promise made to your child as much as we would like for it to be.
It's a promise made to Israel that if they turn from their ways and call on him in repentance, he'll deliver them from the things that were going on that we looked at in history. Now, that doesn't mean that we learn nothing from this, there's still an application that we can have.
And the application for us is to trust God because we see as we read on that God does deliver Israel. And not only does he deliver Israel over and over and over and over again, but the Messiah comes from Israel as well.
God doesn't forget his promises. This is the other application. He doesn't forget his promises to his people, to his church and that our lives should be characterized by distrust in him and by repentance, even when things are difficult as they were for Israel.
So again, does that make sense where we're going? People, I joke about cross-stitching woodwork and hanging these verses on your walls because they sound like a really nice thing to think about. So the second one is from the New Testament.
Philippians 4 .13, and this is the last one and then we'll move to questions. Philippians 4 .13, once again, another one of those passages that you undoubtedly know, especially if you're involved in athletics.
Philippians 4 .13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Hey, what we're talking about here is verses that have been brutally ripped from their context and used for all kinds of different things.
So what do we do? We look at the history, bottom of the triangle, and what is the history? Who's writing this? Paul is writing this. Where is he writing it? Prison, Roman prison. And this is following a number of other difficult journeys that he had, a number of his travels that he was preaching and sharing the gospel, a number of other instances where he was beaten and imprisoned.
So he's writing this letter to the Church of Philippi from prison. That's our history. Literature, what's the genre? It's an epistle. That means it's a letter, and it's a letter to a particular church.
Part of the way that we get tripped up sometimes is that we read ourselves into the scripture. Now, look, there's a difference between having an application that we can apply to our life and having this be to us, about us, because it's not about us.
So it's written to this church. Now, what's the theology? The overall concept here is that we're relying, or Paul is relying on God's strength no matter what. So here's the single intended meaning of this passage.
Whenever distress or, oh gosh, you know what? I can't read my own writing. That's terrible. We'll just say, whether distress or difficulty confronted the Apostle Paul during his ministry, he was able to accomplish his task faithfully through the power and the strength of God, resulting in personal contentment.
So what we're saying here, the meaning of this passage is not that because I say the name of God or I claim that I believe in God, he's gonna help me do whatever it is that I wanna do. You know, like I could check the score right now, but I don't want to, because I could say that the redskins will do all things through God who gives them strength and they'll beat the eagles.
But I'm afraid that that might not be happening right now. So, but that's not what it means, even though that's how we use it. Because we have to consider the fact that this is Paul and he's talking about being content.
This is our application. Being content because God is with you, whether things are good or bad. You can do all things, meaning you can have success in ministry, in life or whatever, or you can slog it through difficult times and still be content because God is giving you that strength.
He's not taking away the difficulty. You are relying on God for that strength. Again, yes, we all wanna win, but that's not what the meaning of that verse is. So that's just two really quick examples.
And I know I flew through those and it was so fast and so brief and we could talk a lot more about it, but I wanted to not take up too much of our time. Now, Parker, do you have the microphone? Because what I would like to do is turn that on.
And if you have questions, I will do my best to answer them. One of my favorite things I've ever heard at a Q &A is that this is not like a stump to chump kind of thing, because you won't have any problem asking me a question I can't answer if you really want to.
But if there's something that we talked about or anything about this biblical literacy concept that's not clear, I'll do my best to try to help get those things on there. Did you turn it on? Okay, and make sure the switch is on and then Dan has a question.
You could probably do a whole night on this, but translations.
Yeah.
Word for word, thought for thought. I like the LSB because it's, to me, one of the most accurate, followed by maybe the ESV. But as far as reading, you mentioned tonight about, what are your thoughts?
Because we read every night and we'll come to a passage and we'll look at each other and it's like, what do you think, what do you think? And we do have study Bibles, but my question is as far as the different translations.
We use the LSB, I kind of got the ESV as a backup, and then NLT, what are your thoughts on bouncing back and forth as far as trying to find the answer?
So I think that using multiple translations can be helpful because while, so the NLT, I read that one before and it was just really easy to read and it was really easy to understand because I think what the translators were going for there was a more of a thought for thought kind of thing than a word for word from the Greek so that, not so they could change the meaning, but so that they could just make it, make the concepts a little clearer.
However, when you use a translate, you can't use a translation like that exclusively because then you miss a lot of stuff. That's why I think the LSB is still my favorite. I think it's easy to read too, like it's not overly burdensome to try to read like some other translations might be.
So there's nothing inherently wrong with going back and forth to other translations like that, but if you're not looking at what's as close to word for word, LSB, ESV, I think the KJV honestly is like, even though it's hard to read because it's in Old English, it's also a pretty literal translation as well.
You need to have one of those so that you're not missing something important because sometimes changing a few words can drastically detract from the meaning if not change it. Does that make sense? But yeah, I mean, that's one of the, I think everybody should have a real Bible, but one of the nice things about the Bible app is that you can just really quickly, see what just about any translation says, get your verse on there and then change the translation.
You can look at almost anything.
Oh yeah.
Just like a study Bible, plus it gives you other resources you can look at.
I like it, the study Bible, whoever wrote the notes in the study section was definitely an English major. Because there's words in there that I've never seen. I've never seen that word before. Now that we've got to have a dictionary.
Yeah, but yeah, I think multiple translations can be helpful, but again, you really do need a literal one word for word. It's called, again, we say word for word, there's no real such thing, from Greek to English, but they've done the best they can.
What else do we got? Sure. Give him the mic, Parker. Thank you.
So as far as doing your homework, any other suggestions on where to do that deep dive and get the correct information instead of some YouTube expert?
Yeah, so I have started on our website, a resources page, and I put a few things on there. I put the study Bible on there, the MacArthur study Bible. I think I also put a couple of other study Bibles on there that are good.
So I'll just say John MacArthur for right now, but there's a couple of these. So he has a one volume commentary on the Bible. I also put the one volume Moody commentary on the Bible there. Those are helpful because it's just one big fat book and it has notes on every, just about every verse.
Now, I think I've said this before to you, but if you go in my office, I have sets of commentaries, right? So like John MacArthur, again, he also has a 33 volume set of commentaries on the New Testament.
So while you can have the one volume version, you can have the 33 volume version. And there's a lot of stuff that's like that. Now, I have, and it depends on what it is that you wanna know. Because I have another book that I've been looking at a lot lately.
And this is MacArthur's quick reference to the Bible. I was showing this to Amy earlier. This has just a brief overview of every single book in the Bible. It gives you a little bit about who wrote it, what the date was, key people, key themes, an outline of it, and some of the key words, key people.
And again, it'll be like six pages on each book. So it's not like, it's not a commentary. It's not something in depth that you're gonna dive into, but it gives you some of that historical information, at least in a small amount that you need.
Now, the other thing that I put on there was a systematic theology. And what that is is a summary. I've told you systematic theology is a summary of everything that the Bible has to say on a given topic.
And I think there's 13 different systematic theology topics. Bibliology, study of the Bible, Christology, study of Christ, theology, study of God, and some more. The soteriology, study of salvation, right?
So it tells you all the things that the Bible says about those topics. That can also be a very useful resource because you can look at a verse and you can find out that it's talking about some specific topic or it's talking about Christ and you don't understand exactly what it means.
You can go to the systematic theology and then you'll get, in addition to a lot of information, other biblical references that talk about that same subject. So again, it's not a completed work, but it's mountzioncommunitychurch .com slash resources, I think is what it is.
And I've been just linking some stuff up there that could possibly be useful. And I also, we can't really go in the church right now, but I have some of these things, like the systematic theology, I have a copy of it that I wanna put in the church library that's outside my door so that people don't have to buy it.
You can go in there and grab it and look through it. And I mean, some people have helped themselves to my books too, so I won't necessarily stop you from doing that either. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is nice to have additional resources to help with this kind of study because if you're stuck, yes, you pray, right?
You ask the Holy Spirit for illumination, but you're still having to do some work along with that. And people have given us really helpful resources and we should use them. Anybody else, it's too simple, too elementary for everyone?
Go ahead, Lynn.
So if we have a cross stitch or embroidery or plaque with one scripture on it, is it bad to have that? Should a person get rid of that?
No, you know what? But understand the context, you know? Understand the true meaning of that verse. Because I keep joking about that because, you know, what do we joke about today? Joshua 24, 15, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, right?
That's a pretty clear context, but if it's just a verse because you like the idea and you don't really, either you don't understand it or you don't live it in that case, maybe you need the rest of the Bible more than you need, you know, this piece of decoration in your home.
Does that make sense? I'm not saying it's bad. And now you're learning the real context and you might look at something that you have and be like, oh, that isn't what I thought when I bought it. But you know, now.
I'll take a tour of my house when I get home with my Bible in hand.
No, I really not. Like I said, I just use that as something to joke about because it's true. You know, people have this stuff in their house. Like when we had the Christian bookstore, Family Christian Store that used to be in Charlottesville, they sold all that stuff.
You could buy all kinds of junk to put up in your house. You know, feel good kind of verses.
We find a translation, a verse, and we're not sure if it's talking about the coming of Jesus. Are there any ways we can be sure? Like if we find a verse in the Old Testament?
This is where your study Bible becomes helpful because you can look at the references that are in there and it might cross-reference you somewhere to the New Testament. So it's a little bit trickier with the Old Testament because the thing you wanna avoid doing is going on a search for meaning and just trying to fit something that might be a meaning but it could very well be, but then you wanna make sure.
So again, you've got your MacArthur study Bible. So you would wanna look at the notes of that Old Testament verse and you can verify that it actually is referring back, or the New Testament, and that it is referring back to the Old Testament.
Does that make sense? So, yes, that's one of those places where you have to get into a little bit of study because then if you're wondering if it's fulfilled somewhere, then you might need to go to a more specific commentary on that verse to see what people have to say.
That's a good question. So this is a question, not an elaboration. Or not a question, an elaboration. So I. It's okay, just don't hold it too close.
Okay.
No, I think you can have all the cross stitches in all the things in the world. I think it's what we're more referring to is people that aren't questioning those and that's as deep as they go. They're like, oh, let's serve the Lord.
And then that's, they put the cross stitch up and that's all they do. But you're here, you're questioning, you're digging in deep. So I don't think we have anything to worry about.
I agree with that. I think I'm talking about the people where that piece of art or whatever is literally the extent of their Christian life.
Yes.
But still know the context of where it comes from.
Again, I think the most important thing about that verse that everybody gets wrong is that that applies even when everything is horrible. Do you still have the ability to be content in Christ, knowing what Christ has done for you?
Because that is the only thing that is ultimately at the end gonna matter. So yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
Or just like me, like Paul going through stuff, we all go through stuff. So I can relate that to myself, so it's like, but as long as I have the right context.
Like I said, I think the danger, it's not that there's no application because there is application, right? There's application for all of it. It's not that it's not for you because it was written for us, but it wasn't written about us.
Like that's such a subtle difference to be written in such a way that we can apply it to our lives, which we clearly can, that verse from Philippians. But Paul didn't say, man, someday Margie's really gonna be encouraged by that verse.
Can't wait till she reads it 2 ,000 years later. Yes, but it should have meaning. Absolutely should. Yes, very much so.
I think that we can still use individual verses as encouragement. I think that's what you were saying, Donna. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't use them outside of context or don't use them, and then that's it.
Oh, I can do all things. I'm gonna go lift this car now, and then that's it. There's nothing wrong with taking an individual verse and memorizing it. That's what we teach our kids, right? And I think that's powerful.
I think it's necessary and important that if we're going to be grown Christians, let's take it one step further and see where the rest of it's coming from. If we don't, and we are just taking it individually, then we are gonna take it as the same people that are like, oh, look, it says eat, drink, and be merry.
Great, I'm set. And then we're not doing the rest of it.
I think that's, yeah, that's probably the biggest issue. But yeah, so you, oh, go ahead, Dan.
Just real quick on the same topic. This morning, you brought up Ephesians and the armor of God. And I do have that on a plaque. It's actually a shield. And it's just a nice reminder every time you look at it.
Well, think about that. I mean, that literally, again, was it, are you in the Church of Ephesus? You are not, but it still applies to you. These are still your weapons in the spiritual warfare. You know, so yes, like that's a great reminder.
You know, we're talking more about, again, that's not even taken out of context, right? It's not so much that we have these things, it's that we use them the right way. That's what biblical literacy is about, and that's what discernment is about.
So yeah, I taught you guys the term hermeneutic and literal grammatical historical hermeneutic and all that kind of stuff. So you can take that, that's right, you can take that back. I'll certainly take any more questions.
And I know that at least one person might watch this video later. So if you watch it, and if you can't come one week and you watch it and you have questions, email me your questions. You know, email Matty at Mount Zion Community Church and I can bring the questions in to this as well.
So, because I appreciate that everybody can't always make it every single evening. I really appreciate you all who do make it. So if there's no other questions, I'll pray and then we can call it an evening.
Father, we thank you. It is, there's no way for us to show our gratitude to you enough for what you've given us. This library of books, our collection of 66 books that we have is truly a treasure. And we ask for your help.
We ask for the assistance of the Holy Spirit in maximizing it in our lives and using it the right way in learning all that we can and in living a life that is truly God honoring, a life that brings you glory as you designed us to do, God.
We thank you for these things. I thank you for everybody who's here tonight. Please see us all safely home and back to church next week, Lord. And we love you and we pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.
