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"You Can Understand the Bible" with Dr. Bob Utley
2009 Bible Interpretation Seminar Lesson 13
For more information, contact: www.freebiblecommentary.org
I want to thank you for going with me
on this 13-week pilgrimage through Bible interpretation
and I hope you will pray with me
as the Lord opens the door for me
to share this video with people worldwide.
I really want to be a blessing to the body of Christ
and there are so many places in the world
where theological education is not affordable,
not available, and I thank you for your prayers
and I thank you for your attendance.
I have been dealing in this section
with reminding you about three things.
That Bible interpretation is a logical process
so that we can share with other human beings
made in the image and likeness of God
what we believe.
It has a rational component.
Also, it has a textual component.
The Bible is the only source for faith in practice.
But God gave his word at a particular time,
to a particular people in a particular language.
And the only inspired person in Bible study is the original author
so we must put ourself back into the place of the original hearers
to properly understand the Bible
and give that textual evidence of what we believe it says
and why and then let other Christians pray about it,
evaluate it and walk in the light that they have.
And the third component is, of course, a Spirit-led teachability.
There is no, no Spiritual truth available
without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, amen?
We just cannot do it ourselves.
Our education cannot do it.
Our gift cannot do it. Our calling cannot do it.
We desperately need the author of Scripture
to help us understand the major intent of the literary units.
I want to remind you again,
words only have meaning in sentences.
Sentences only have meaning in paragraphs,
and paragraphs make up literary units.
And the best way to follow the original author's intent
is at a paragraph-level outline throughout the entire book.
And if it's a book like Jeremiah, God bless you.
But you must do it by literary units to a book like that.
Now I was dealing with several kinds of pitfalls
that come to sincere Bible interpreters.
So last time,
I dealt with examples of a presuppositional bias.
Sometimes we come to the Bible, thinking it can only say this
and we limit what the Bible is trying to say
by our preconceived biases.
We often call this a theological grid.
You come in looking for a certain thing
and the verses that kind of, sort of mean that, you pick up on,
and the verses that don't, we ignore.
Or the use of certain metaphors or that kind of thing.
So I think what's helped me more than anything
is to understand this added element.
Remember I told you that we must document our Bible understanding
from six areas,
the historical context of the original author and hearers;
the literary context, need to read all they wrote;
the grammatical feature, which deals with grammar and syntax,
is there anything unusual,
are markers that tell us what they were trying to say;
the contemporary meaning of words, not Webster's Dictionary;
parallel passages,
because the best interpreter of an inspired text is an inspired text;
and finally, genre.
Now I've picked just 1 or 2
probably out of my own experience here
of teaching these 40 years,
but these are ones that I can remember still each of these
and the pain that I felt connected to them.
I remember as a young student
on the campus of East Texas Baptist College
and an older student came up to me and said,
"Do you believe the Bible?" And I said, "Yes."
And he said to me, "Do you believe the hills skip like rams
and the mountains skip like rams?"
And I said, "I think that's poetry."
And he said, "I knew you didn't believe the Bible."
Well, of course, that comes from Psalm 114.
Brothers and sisters, to take poetry literal
is not to be a conservative, it's to be dumb.
If you read into an original text
that which the original author did not intend,
it is improper interpretation
and we're going into wisdom literature,
be it New Testament James or Old Testament,
we're pulling little pieces out of larger units and saying,
"Thus saith the Lord," and with a broad sword,
we are wiping out those
who do not happen to agree with us.
The second one is the Book of the Revelation,
particularly in the "seals," "bowls," and "trumpets."
I've said to you and I hope this is humorous
because I do not really want anyone to fight about it,
if you are expecting to see a pregnant woman
run across the night sky, chased by a dragon,
cancel your subscription to the Syfy channel.
You have already been warped almost beyond repair.
Please tell me you do not believe
that everything is literal in this highly symbolic book.
And yet that's exactly where our interpretation is failing.
We're treating Revelation as if it were the historical narrative
somewhere in the Book of Acts.
It's a highly, highly symbolic
using Jewish, inter-Biblical literature
and highly symbolized numerical symbols
and we're taking it literal.
The third one is, of course, parables.
I hope you know that Luke introduces parables
by a little phrase, "And a certain," ...
"A certain man went out to sew."
There is a series of five parables in Luke 15 and 16.
The chapter divisions of the Bible,
like the verse divisions, are not inspired.
And these are related parables to a group of Pharisees.
That's how you always look.
You look at who it's spoken to, if you can,
and then you look at those who heard it
and if they say something about it.
I have heard and you have heard, of course,
this is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
And many people have described this as heaven and hell.
There's just one problem.
The text itself says that the rich man is not in hell, Gehenna,
he is in Hades, the holding place of the dead.
This is not, this is not the eternal resting place of saints.
This cannot be used as a way to describe heaven and hell.
I promise you nobody is in hell tonight.
Now hell may be prepared.
It wasn't prepared for you, by the way.
It's prepared for the devil and his angels.
But those who do not believe,
not 'til after the Great White Throne Judgment,
will anybody be in Gehenna.
And yet we have let preachers take King James
because it translates Hades in Luke 16 as hell
and preach sermons on what hell is like.
It's just not true.
Now, the second one, number D here,
is the misuse of cultural idioms or figures of speech.
And yet the Bible does and we turn it into literal.
I'm going to show you three of these.
I haven't heard about it so much lately but years ago,
there was a group, Sun Myung Moon, "the Moonies," we called them,
would send their recruits out to college campuses
and they would say, "Do you believe the Bible?"
The students would say, "Yes."
And they would read a text that says,
"Unless you hate father and mother, you're not worthy of me."
"If you believe the Bible,
"you'd break off contact with your family
and follow us to our camp."
And young people, sincere, naïve, gullible, young people,
took that literally and went into those movements.
The word "hate" and I've listed several texts for you here,
mostly going back, starting with Jacob's two wives.
My New American Standard Bible translates this word "unloved."
The Hebrew word is the word "hate."
Now, he did not hate Leah, she was just not his favorite, right?
So it's an idiom of comparison.
Now, I've marked several places. Malachi also, talking about Esau.
God does not hate Esau, but Jacob was the chosen line.
What we have to say when we come to those texts in the Gospels
that say you must hate father and mother,
we understand that because of the idiomatic use of that word
in Deuteronomy and Malachi, that what Jesus is saying is,
"I've got to be number one in your life."
It's an issue of priority, not an issue of rejecting your family.
The second one here, and I have kidded you about this.
People say to me, "I just take the Bible for what it says.
I just read the Bible and do it."
You do not. Every one of us are interpreters.
You say, "No, no, I just take it for what it says."
Okay, well, let's take the Matthew 5,
"If your eye offends you, pluck it out.
If your hand offends you, cut it off."
I want a one-eyed, one-armed person to stand up right now
and tell me you take the Bible literally?
Those are idioms for taking sin in the life of the believer seriously,
"Better to be maimed and enter the kingdom
than be whole and miss the kingdom."
To take that literally, we still hear people
who all of us feel are somewhat mentally deranged,
who poke the eye of their sister out
or poke their own eye out.
We hear it from time to time on television,
that take this verse literally.
God have mercy on us
for forgetting the Bible is written in normal human idiomatic language
and all language is metaphorical.
We don't have a vocabulary big enough
to cover everything in concrete terms.
The third one here has helped me.
I think you've heard me preach enough
to know that I am not a Calvinist.
I am a sovereign of God person because I believe the Bible.
There's no place to start a theology without a sovereign God,
but too many times we take a systematic theology
and I'll just say to you,
I think John Calvin would throw up over Calvinism today.
You ever read the "Institutes,"
you would know that he is much more balanced
than this logical conclusion drawn from some of his points.
There are some folks
if you don't believe in the "TULIP" you can't even make heaven.
I'm getting into heaven because of Jesus not a tulip.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about,
you're probably better off.
What is said to me usually is,
"The Bible does not say that Jesus died for all.
Jesus only died for the many, i.e., the elect."
Now my friends, I hope that what I've done in hermeneutics
has caused you to begin to question something like that
because "Jesus only died for some," it's called limited atonement,
cannot fit in the same book as John 3:16.
Or John 1:12.
I want to turn your Bibles to this.
I don't want to just talk through it, I want you to see it with me.
Would you turn to the great passage
on substitutionary atonement in Isaiah 53.
Now really this text begins in 52:13
but most of us usually take just 53.
And here's what Calvinists
and I'm really talking about ultra-Calvinists here,
not just Calvinists.
I can live with Calvinists and love them to death
but the ultra ones give me a hernia.
In verse 11 and 12, would you look at the fourth line of 11,
"My servant will justify the many."
Will you look at the fifth line of verse 12,
"He himself bore the sin of many."
What they say to me is, "It doesn't say he died for all,
it says he died for the many."
Now wait a minute, same context, same Servant Song,
would you look at verse 6.
Look at verse 6, line 3, "All of us, like sheep, have gone astray.
"Each have turned to his own way but the Lord, Yahweh,
has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon him."
Now what I've been saying
and I hope you hear the logic behind this,
you cannot let one inspired verse
negate or diminish another inspired verse.
You can't say, "I like this verse better than I like that verse."
Nobody put you in which-verse-is-better committee.
You cannot allow a systematic theology created by humans
to skew texts to one position
when the Bible itself speaks with several voices.
Now, this is not the only place this is done.
Would you turn one more time with me to Romans chapter 5,
beginning in verse 12 through 21,
which is one example of the Adam-Christ typology.
We see it in Philippians 2, we see it in 1 Corinthians 15.
And it is based on the idea.
Go with me to verse 18 and 19, "So then as through one transgression
there resulted condemnation to all men."
We're talking about Adam sinned and the human race fell.
"Even so, through one act of righteousness,
there resulted justification of life to all men."
By the way, this is where universalists proof text the second line and say,
"Look, Jesus died and everybody's saved."
Again, terrible use of context, pulling half a clause out,
ignoring all the rest because you want to back up a theology.
Notice verse 19.
The exact same thing is said.
This is Hebrew parallelism.
The exact same thing is said in verse 19 that's said in verse 18,
except the word "many" and the word "all" are exchanged.
Watch this please.
"As through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners."
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just a point of theology.
Do you believe when Adam sinned, some fell or all fell?
No, no, no.
When Adam fell, did everybody fall or some fall?
Everybody fell, right?
So the word "many" is parallel to the word "all" in verse 18.
Now look at the rest of verse 19,
"Even so, through the obedience of one,
the many will be made righteous."
Can you use this as a proof text that not all are righteous,
just the elect are righteous?
Only if you abuse the parallelism of 18 and 19
and only if you proof text the clause out
and ignore the rest of the context.
So you mean to say in the Bible, "many" and "all" are parallel?
That is what I'm saying.
People say, "That's not true in English."
Guess what?
This isn't English.
Context determines word meaning, not dictionaries,
not the receptor language, not what you wish it would say.
Context gives meaning to words.
This parallelism in Isaiah 53 and Romans 5
shows that "all" and "many" are interchangeable theologically.
You cannot let Calvinism be built on the "many."
I really think the first point of Calvinism is absolutely Biblical
and the other four are logical, not Biblical.
I, as a Baptist, cannot live with limited atonement
and irresistible grace
because it violates every principle of the revivalist background
that I come out of where people must personally receive Jesus Christ
after being wooed by the Spirit
and will be judged eternally for what they've done
with the offer of salvation.
Would you go to an oversimplification of truth.
Here again, this is kind of a variety of proof texting.
It means we pull one truth out of the Bible
and ignore other Bible truths
and yet claim that our one statement by implication
is all the Bible teaches.
Just a couple. "God is love."
I've forgot the name of that Indian teacher
up there in Washington that said,
"Yes, the Bible teaches God is love
so let's all go make love together."
Well, it's a very popular theology.
The problem is God is love.
But if you have not heard the first few chapters of Romans,
God is distressed at the sinfulness of his creation.
You can't preach God is love
without preaching the judgment of God.
They are twin, two sides of one coin.
Just like we wouldn't want someone always preaching judgment,
we can't allow someone always preaching love.
There is more to the gospel than love.
There's a couple more. What about "saved by grace?"
Well, I believe that, absolutely.
But isn't it true that although we're saved by grace,
not from human merit, we must receive the gift of God?
Just think of Ephesians 2:8, 9, and 10.
One sentence in Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 10,
"For by grace have you been saved, through faith,"
not saved by faith, saved by grace, but faith must receive it.
And then notice the disclaimers.
Think about this verse.
"By grace through faith, not of yourself, gift of God,
not of works lest any man should boast."
You can't let someone just preach grace, grace, grace, grace, grace.
There's almost a whole theology now called "supergrace,"
so once you trust Christ, no matter what you do or how great you sin,
you're going to always--
I do not believe in "once saved, always saved."
If you trust Jesus Christ and the rest of your life
is a godless disaster of rebellion, something's wrong.
"By their fruit, ye shall know them."
Good fruit does not grow on bad trees.
We have over-emphasized grace
and left off the human necessary commensurate responsibility
of initial and ongoing repentance and faith.
I do believe in the security of the believer.
And that's the Biblical definition of believer
and the present tense verb that emphasizes "continues" to believe.
You say, "I don't like that."
That's because you've heard only Romans 4 all your life.
I challenge you to go home and read James 2:14 through 26.
Another one maybe too.
Let me drop down to "Salvation is free," number 3.
But I promise you this demand for good works is there.
I've given you the text, I hope you'll look at it.
Remember, the last point of Ephesians 2,
the first sentence, is 10.
We always leave that out. We always leave that out.
Baptists love to preach on Ephesians 2:8 and 9
and always ignore verse 10.
"You were created in Christ Jesus for good works,
that it was foreordained you should walk in them."
I want to remind you of the predestination verse
of chapter 1, verse 4.
He, God the Father, chose you in him
before the foundation of the world what?
What was the purpose of him choosing us for?
That we should be holy and blameless before him.
The call of Christianity
is not a call to go to heaven when you die.
The call of Christianity is Christ's likeness now
so others can go to heaven with you when you die.
It's a perversion.
Individual perversion of the gospel,
what American individualism has done
to turn salvation into a ticket to heaven
instead of into a daily intimate personal relationship
that gets more and more like him as the years go by.
I'm over it now.
Number F, selectivity of certain passages.
And again, this is a form of proof texting.
How many times have I heard, TV preachers particularly, say,
"Whatever you ask in Jesus' name, you'll get it."
And they quote some verses.
I hope you'll look at the verses here, John 14:13 and 14,
John 15:7, John 15:16, John 16:23.
Those all say, "Whatever you ask."
But they also add, "Whatever you ask in my name,"
which is a whole 'nother Hebrew concept
of being in the character of Jesus before you ask.
And then if we go beyond that,
there are so many other texts like Matthew 7:7 and 8,
"Keep on seeking, keep on asking,
keep on knocking and it shall be open."
Or what about the James text, James 1:6 and 7
where it says you have to pray without doubting
or what about the James 4:3
that says you can't pray with the wrong motives
or how about the 1 John text
that talks about you have to pray and you obey,
is how you get it.
Or the 1 John 5 text, "Whatever we ask according to his will."
No, no, no, we just throw all that out
and quote one verse out of Jesus and say,
"Jesus said whatever I ask I get."
The worst thing God could do to most of us in America
is answer our prayers
because we're asking for all the things
that pull our heart away from Him.
We're asking him to deliver us from persecution
and problems and suffering,
the very thing that made Jesus, humanly speaking, perfect,
Hebrews 5:8.
God have mercy on us and what kills me
is that believers buy this method of proof texting
and do not even check the parallels and just say,
"Well, the Bible says it, that must make it true."
If the Bible says it, we take it seriously
and find out what else the Bible says on the same subject.
How about long hair?
I remember a church in Oklahoma called me one time and said,
"We've got a question for you."
I thought, "What could they ask me? I'm in school, about to graduate.
"Could they ask me, do I believe the Bible?
"Could they ask me my view of salvation?
What they going to ask me?" They said, "Do you have long hair?"
I said, "No, I don't have long hair
but that's your only question, we would kill each other."
So Jesus can't preach at your church, huh?
John the Baptist can't preach at your church.
Holy moly, what are we doing?
Crew cuts are a sign of the Kingdom?
You don't know your Old Testament well enough
to know about the Nazirite vow of Numbers 6
for men and for women?
There's an abysmal ignorance of the Bible
among people who claim to be people of the Book.
That's why we kill each other
over these proof texts out of King James.
Not you, but the Baptists in California.
How about women keep silent in the church?
God have mercy on us.
We're more like Muslims than we are New Testament Christians.
Or we love 1 Corinthians 14:34, "Women keep silent,"
forgetting there are three groups
that are told to be silent in that context,
three groups, and we always pick on the women.
Then five verses later, in the same book,
in the same literary unit, to the same church,
it says, "Do not forbid them to speak in tongues,"
and we ignore that.
And we're Biblical?
And we ignore 1 Corinthians 11:5 where it says,
"When women pray and prophesy in public worship,
let them cover their head."
Now we've got an affirmation in 11:5, a prohibition in 14:35
and groups just pick the one they like and say, "God said"
and ignore the other group.
I want God to be true and every man to be a liar.
I wanted the Bible speak and not my denomination,
not my personal preferences, not my personal experiences.
What's authority around here?
What you're used to or the word of God?
Well, the problem is, it's what you're used to.
I get called a liberal because I'm not like your grandfather.
I'm desperately trying to get back to the New Testament
and you're griping over what your grandfather did and didn't do.
I guarantee you, if your grandfather came to Lakeside,
he'd throw up on Sunday.
About speaking in tongues is passing away.
That's 1 Corinthians 13:8.
Because there's a different verb used for "tongues"
than there are for knowledge and wisdom.
Not realizing that the whole context says,
"Everything but love is passing away."
There is no emphasis here on tongues passing away first,
unless you do a study into etymology of the original verb
which nobody does
and which is inappropriate for New Testament Greek studies.
because I guarantee you don't know the origin
of most of the words you use either.
How about food laws?
I was just Interim at a large church in Louisiana.
I mean a large church.
I had a guy come in and teach that if you would keep the food laws
and wash your hands a certain way you would live longer.
And those Louisiana women bought it.
I said to them, "Of all the people in the world,
"you shouldn't have believed this.
"But if you do, I want you to pack up all the gumbo you've made, frozen,
"I want you to mail it to me along with your lobster and catfish.
Just send it right to my house."
because I know my Bible well enough to know that Jesus said,
"It's not what goes in a man that defiles him,
it's what comes out,"
parenthesis, (thereby negating the food laws.)
You're not right (with God) by what you eat or don't eat.
Yet we let people say to us, "Ohh, ohh, you ate a catfish."
Well, send me to hell. Just send me to hell.
What's the matter with us?
We're drug around by the nose by King James proof texters
that do Old Testament texts
and don't know that gentiles are not bound
by the Old Testament law, 1 Corinthians 15.
Let me deal with the crucial element of salvation.
I skipped the one on trichotomous.
I just don't want to holler over that.
How many times have I had Church of Christ tell me,
"Turn to Acts 2:38," and then tell me I'm not saved
because I wasn't baptized by the right formula.
I'm going to get to heaven and my daddy's going to say,
"I know you love me, I know you trusted Christ
but you didn't use the right formula so you go to hell."
Does that sound like your daddy?
Baptism in the first century was not the mechanism of salvation,
it was the occasion for the personal profession of faith.
They did not have churches.
They worshiped in forests and caves.
And when they made a public profession,
it was at their baptism,
and many of us believed there was a standard formula.
"I believe Jesus is Lord."
Had nothing to do with the formula by which they were baptized
or the character or theology of the one baptizing them.
It has to do with the heart of the candidate,
that's evangelical theology.
How about the charismatic emphasis if you don't speak in tongues,
you're not really in?
Charismatics normally like me
because I believe in the gifts of the spirit of functioning.
Until they say, "Now, are you filled with the spirit?"
By which they mean, "Do you speak in tongues?"
And I say, "No, I speak Texan."
East Texan maybe.
And then suddenly they quote the Samaritans,
Acts 8, the Samaritans.
Philip preached, they trust Christ
and then Peter and John came down and preach again.
They all receive the speaking in tongues and see,
there it is, right there, don't you know that Acts,
Luke records what happens, not what should happen?
And if you take all the conversions in Acts
and you list the order of what happened,
none of them are the same?
That Acts is historical narrative
and is not meant to base theology on historical narrative?
And so we can't let somebody pitch 2:38,
somebody pick chapter 8 with the Samaritans
and then what do the Baptists like in Acts?
Where is our proof text in Acts?
Philippian jailer, "What must I do to be saved?"
Come on.
"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
No mention of repentance.
And we just pull that out and say, "This is "the" plan, "the" standard,
by which if you don't fit, you're not in."
Holy spit, is that dumb.
And yet, we are grabbed by that, "Look, it says it right here."
How many times have I been to Baptist testimony services
where somebody says, "Oh, I was sick,
and Jesus came in and touched me and now I'm healed,"
and I'm thinking to myself,
"I have been sick as a dog and I've never seen the boy."
So I must not be saved.
I haven't been touched so I'm not saved?
Deliver me from Baptist testimony services,
give me a New Testament.
If it happened to you, I'm happy for you.
It doesn't have to happen to me.
Well, I'm kind of agitated. Majoring on minors.
To whom and what did Jesus preach while he was in Hades?
First Peter 3:19, 1 Peter 4:6. I should know.
And what bothers me is you think you do.
How will the earth be destroyed by fire?
Second Peter 3:9.
Won't be water, be fire.
What is the sin unto death, 1 John?
Well, probably the same as the unpardonable sin,
which I believe is not saying something one time by accident.
How many drunks have called me at 3 o'clock in the morning
on a full moon?
I always tell them, "If you're sober by 8,
call me again at the office."
The unpardonable sin, the sin unto death, is probably,
because 1 John's written to Gnostics
and the unpardonable sin is written to Pharisees
who heard the Gospel clearly over and over
and refused to respond to it.
I submit to you those two have to do
with a clear understanding of the gospel
and a personal rejection again and again
to the point where light becomes dark
and there's no ability to respond.
This next one you're not going to like.
I have just put a 5-hour summary
of my view of the Revelation online this week
because I knew I was going to deal with this.
Several of you asked me last week
when I mentioned that I was a post-Tribulationist,
that I believe the church would go through the Tribulation.
About four of you said, "I never heard that."
Well, you don't read very much.
We buy one stinking commentary on Revelation
and it's logical and don't know
that if you bought 50 of them, none of them would agree.
But you bought one and it's your favorite teacher
and now everybody doesn't believe the Bible
if they don't agree with you.
The millennium is a non-issue. Now, this is all on tape.
If you want more than this, it's on tape,
it's in my commentary online free, you've got 5 hours of video.
Don't be chewing on me 'til you look at it, then email me.
Why would I let six verses,
three chapters from the end of the Bible,
that's never mentioned by Jesus once,
never mentioned by Paul,
never a hint in the Old Testament,
why would I let six verses,
three chapters from the end in a highly symbolic book,
change my whole view of the Bible?
Particularly, when the number (1,000) itself
is one of these key numbers, tripled,
which is the Hebrew emphasis of the superlative.
Now if you're a millennialist, God bless you,
there are some great, wonderful, Godly people believe that.
But please don't consign me to the nether regions
because I do not agree with you.
The church has never agreed on this.
We're always saying, "Oh, the Lord's coming soon."
We've been saying that for 2000 years.
We sound like whistlers in the dark.
Every generation interprets Revelation
by their own morning newspaper
and every one of them have been wrong.
If you want to hear another view on Revelation,
I hope you'll get this 5-hour summary and take a peek.
And then pray for me.
Somebody said, "What if you're wrong?"
You cannot imagine how fast I can repent.
The abuse of historical settings.
How many times have I asked somebody,
"Would you go on a mission trip with me?
Would you pray?" A student or a church member.
"Bob, yes, I'll pray.
I'm going to pray, I'm going to put out the fleece."
I always want to throw up right then.
What they're going to do, they're going to say something like,
"If my Aunt Flo calls me--" hasn't called me for 37 years--
"so Aunt Flo calls me and says, 'Mary Poppins,'
then I'll go with you." Well, you're safe.
Don't you know that Gideon's fleece
is an act of unbelief by Gideon?
In the presence of four or five supernatural acts,
Gideon still does not believe and respond.
The Bible records that which it does not advocate.
Besides, if you don't have a Pier 1,
you couldn't find a fleece.
I got to move on. Now what have I done tonight?
Brothers and sisters, if you think that I think I know
in these issues, you don't understand my heart.
I am trying desperate to show you how proof text-oriented,
literalistic we are in our interpretation
and I do not want you to agree with me,
but I want you to know that you don't know everything either.
All of us see through a glass darkly.
All of us are affected by our parents in our denomination.
None of us are objective readers of the Bible.
We do not have the right,
just because somebody says stuff we never heard
to call them some bad word.
We have the responsibility to check their Biblical evidence
and be willing to follow the Bible wherever it leads.
I learned long ago if I follow the Bible where it leads,
I won't get invited to many state meetings.
About page 45, practical procedures.
I've waited 'til the last to deal with this Holy Spirit issue
because I must admit to you
I do not believe you can interpret the Bible without the Holy Spirit,
but it has just caused me unbelievable grief.
How many Godly, wonderful,
theologically trained people disagree over this book.
I heard D.A. Carson say one time,
I thought it was a penetrating quote when he said,
"For us to claim the Bible is inerrant
"and then we can't agree on what it says
is self-defeating."
We're willing to hold this book up and use all kind of adjectives
the Bible never used for itself, divide our church,
split our church, put ourselves in different camps
over issues that aren't that clear.
Sometimes not even present in the Bible.
Why is it that we disagree so much?
I want to make a few comments
and see if you can follow me in this.
Number one, I think every time we pick up this book we need to pray.
Us praying says, "God is not my personality,
"not my call, not my education.
"I can't do this on my own.
"I'm not coming to this book with what I believe.
"God, I need you desperately that we come to this holy book
"with unclean hands.
Have mercy on us, O God."
Every time we open the book, devotion,
Sunday school preparation, whatever,
we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us.
Every time.
Number two, we need to pray for personal cleansing from sin.
Most of us want to know just enough of the Bible
to believe we're saved, live selfish lives,
and have a great Christian funeral.
I want to tell you the Bible
will make the comfortable, uncomfortable.
We have turned the line of the tribe of Judah
into a toothless, barkless, Baptist lapdog.
We don't let it speak
because we already know what it should say in issues.
When it does speak on an issue,
our Sunday school literature jumps it in the "Quarterly."
Amen or oh me?
If you have unconfessed known sin in your life,
why do you want more Bible information?
We've got to act on what we already know,
for God to give us more.
It's a step-by-step moment of faith.
We must, we must pray for personal cleansing
and we must be obedient to what we understand
until we get more light.
We must. There's no game plan here.
God's not going to give you more and more.
It's always amazed me that about 90% of the Bible is pretty clear,
pretty unambiguous and we will fight to the death
over the 5% to 10% we don't understand
and don't live in the 90% that's clear.
What is the matter with us?
We need to pray for a greater desire to know God.
I think of Psalm 19:7 through 14.
I really think of Psalm 42, "As the deer pants
after the water brook, so does my soul pant after you."
Why do you want to know more of the Bible?
You just want to show off in Sunday school?
You just want to win Bible Trivia with the in-laws?
You just want to confound the Methodist neighbors?
What? Why do you want to know more?
If not to give yourself to the God who created you.
The more we know, the more godly,
self-sacrificing, self-giving lives we ought to live.
God doesn't want degrees.
He wants servant leadership.
Number four, we need to apply new insights
to our own life immediately.
Now I would say and I tell students this,
"If you come up with something
"that nobody in the history of the church has ever seen,
take two Tylenol PM, take a nap, and read it again."
If you have come up with some interpretation,
go to people you trust, go to a pastor,
go to a professor, go to a Sunday school teacher,
go to a family member,
see what they think before you act some crazy way.
But we must apply truth immediately.
If you're asking God for more information,
he's going to see what you do with it.
He wants to know what you'll do with it.
I want to quote H.H. Rowley,
"It perceives that no merely intellectual understanding of the Bible,
"however complete, can possess all its treasures.
"It does not depreciate such understanding,
"for it is essential to a complete understanding.
"But it must lead to a spiritual understanding
"of the spiritual treasures of this book if it is to be complete.
"And for that spiritual understanding
"something more than intellectual alertness is necessary.
"Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and the Bible student
"needs an attitude of spiritual receptivity,
"an eagerness to find God
"that he may yield himself to him,
"if he is to pass beyond his scientific study
into the richer inheritance of this greatest of all books."
A book that's really helped me.
I just love Gordon Fee, his little book,
"Listening to the Spirit in the Text,"
is an emphasis on the Holy Spirit in Bible reading.
I do believe that Baptists are talking more about the Holy Spirit
but I do believe Gordon Fee can help us,
as a charismatic, a balanced charismatic.
I believe his book on "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth"
with Gordon Fee and Doug Stuart
is the best book on hermeneutics that I know of.
I believe that his book on "Gospel and Spirit"
is the best text I've seen on the Baptists' misuse of the Spirit
and the women's issue and I believe this
"Listening to the Spirit in the Text"
is a cry from a Pentecostal
of why don't we talk about the Spirit more in Bible interpretation.
Now the logical process,
and what I'm going to do the next just couple of minutes
and I know I have about 5 more minutes
and I think I can be through in about 10
so there shouldn't be a chicken in the oven at night so.
The logical process.
I've tried to take the Antiochian school of Biblical interpretation
from Antioch of Syria, the philosophy from Chrysostom,
Theodore of Mopsuestia, those guys,
and put it into a logical process
that modern Americans can follow.
It's not my plan, it's not my approach,
it is an approach of the ancient church
reacting against the allegory of Alexandria, Egypt.
Number one, allow time to read the whole book.
A part cannot mean
what the whole book is not talking about.
We can't make one paragraph go off on some subject
that the whole book is not dealing with.
And we never can let a verse become the basis for a doctrine.
Paragraphs are the smallest literary unit with meaning.
That's why English teachers tell us every paragraph
has a topical sentence or a topical truth
and everything in that paragraph delineates,
explains, defines that truth.
We need to start learning to interpret by paragraphs
as the minimum of Bible information.
Read the whole book at one sitting and say to yourself,
"What is this whole book about? What kind of literature is this?"
And then find the text that gives some evidence of what you think.
Number two, re-read the entire book or literary unit
in several translations from different translations--
New American Standard
because I want the archeological discoveries
of later Greek manuscripts
to influence my understanding of the Greek text.
And the Greek text we use in school is an eclectic text.
There is no ancient text like the ones we use
because we feel like no ancient text completely preserves the original.
So a word-for-word with a dynamic equivalent.
And I would say if you would read New American Standard and NIV.
Now listen to me, I don't care if you know Greek or Hebrew or not,
when New American Standard and NIV disagree,
you got to go to the commentaries because it's a problem.
It may be a manuscript problem, it may be a theological problem,
it may be a word problem.
There is something up.
Then you got to go to a more technical level to find out.
So as Sunday school teachers,
I hope you have two translations to look out of.
And don't look at the footnotes until you read the Bible.
Somebody said, "Wow, the Bible throws a lot of light
on the footnotes of study Bibles."
Basic principles. Seven questions, remember those?
What do the original authors say? Textual criticism.
What did the original author mean? Hermeneutics.
What did the original author say elsewhere?
What did others say elsewhere?
This grammatical feature.
The parallel passage feature. Those are things we bring in this.
And then the application questions.
What does this mean to me? What does this mean to my day?
Those seven questions. I hope you'll look at those.
Four reading cycles.
If you'll turn over two pages in your notes,
there is a sample category of note-taking.
What I've tried to do is outline these four readings
and what information you get at every reading.
Now this is meant for you because you, the Bible,
and the Holy Spirit are priority, not a commentary.
Thank God for commentators.
But you never go to a commentary first, because if you do,
you're led around by the nose, by the opinions of one person.
You can do it.
You and the Holy Spirit and the Bible.
God wants to speak to you.
Four reading cycles.
And then in graded steps, the use of research tools.
You ought to have an introduction to the Old Testament and New.
You ought to have a good study Bible.
You ought to have a Concordance.
You ought to have one small set of commentaries like Tyndale.
These are things that Bible people need.
I've encouraged my churches through the years
to buy these and, when I go to their homes,
they're always over the ice box on a shelf.
They look so good but nobody can reach them.
They bought them and didn't use them.
First of all, don't buy them unless you're going to use them.
Second, don't tell me you can't afford it
because these books cost less than a meal out
and Americans afford what they want to and is priority.
If a book can make you a better interpreter of the Bible,
you're going to not buy the book?
I don't believe that.
Number four, these procedures
are an attempt to check all the interpretative steps.
They are similar to a way a professional pilot
has a take-off and landing checklist.
These guys have taken off and landed
tens of thousands of times
but every time they do, they go through that checklist.
I got my private license at one time.
I was flying out of Midland, just started, student pilot.
I didn't need that checklist.
I left the flaps down,
almost couldn't take that Cessna off that runway.
Brrmm, brrmm.
Now I thought I knew. I didn't.
When we interpret the Bible we think we know what it means
because we've heard it so much but we haven't checked the history.
We haven't checked the whole context.
We haven't checked the unique grammatical forms.
We haven't checked the contemporary meaning of words.
We haven't checked the significant parallels
and we haven't noticed what kind of genre is it.
We've got to go through these steps
to make sure we've checking off these points of information.
I've added this little point here. I hope you catch what I'm saying.
"Pilots have a very important job.
Hundreds of lives depend on them."
How many lives depend on your understanding of the Bible,
Sunday school teacher?
If that pilot can kill 100 or 300 or 500 people by making a mistake,
what are you going to do with the eternal destinies of people
who've heard what you've said in God's name
but you haven't prayed,
you haven't studied, you haven't prepared.
You read that "Quarterly" at 10 o'clock on Saturday
and walked in a class and gave your personal opinion.
God have mercy on us.
I want to tell you we're responsible
for what we say the Bible says.
We'd better pay the price to be willing to stand before Him.
Now we all make mistakes, we're all wrong,
we all change our opinions.
I understand that.
But this is an awesome spiritual responsibility.
And we take it lightly and quickly.
God have mercy on us.
Our process of interpretation
and the reasons for our interpretation need to be documented
so that other rational creatures made in the image of God
can follow our logic and evaluate our Biblical evidence.
Good interpretation is, number one, listen to this, not PhD,
not seminary, not a 140 IQ,
good interpretation is primarily "common sense" interpretation.
Common sense is the big factor.
Number two, textual.
Show me where the Bible says what you just said.
That's not a bad question for anybody
who claims to speak for God.
Number three, logical.
Explain to me what you mean and why.
Show me the text.
Spirit-guided interpretation. Did you pray before you?
Are you walking in the light you have?
Are you living holy lives?
Biblically consistent interpretation.
Have you checked the parallels?
Are you sure you're not just quoting James and forgetting Paul?
Or quoting Paul and forgetting Isaiah?
Now on the next page, Roman numeral II, Good Note-Taking,
this is just those four reading cycles
with an explanation
of how each reading cycle should gather certain information.
Just quickly, you read it once to get the big picture.
What's the whole book about?
Show me the verses that point toward that
and tell me what kind of genre, reading number one.
Second, go back in there and try to tell me
what are the main subjects.
Outline the book.
The main subjects, number two.
Number three, tell me the historical.
Who wrote it? Who did they write it to?
Can you tell why they wrote it? When they wrote it?
Where they wrote it?
Usually, this all comes in the first three verses.
But it's very important to know who wrote, why they wrote,
where they wrote and yet we skip that.
Then the fourth reading is a little more technical
but it looks for special words, difficult words,
that we have to check on,
parallelisms, repeated phrases or words.
These are things you get used to after doing it a while
but it becomes the things on which Bible interpretation is made.
Roman numeral III, I would say there are several books
that every sincere Bible interpreter ought to have.
I think you ought to have a Concordance.
I think you ought to have an introduction
to the Old and New Testaments.
I think you ought to have a good study Bible
and what I've told you,
a Bible of another translation theory,
no matter which one you have and carry to church.
I think the Tyndale paperback, you can get them on Amazon,
the whole New Testament and Old Testament
written by international conservative scholars,
excellent little material,
and it'll start you out thinking but you do it first,
you do the steps first and then go to the commentaries.
Now what I'd like to say to you is that this has been a long trek,
emotionally for me and you, I know.
I hope that you will pick some short New Testament book.
Don't put Jude, it'll kill you. It's short but it'll kill you.
Pick Colossians, pick Titus. Try to read it all at one time.
Try to run through these four cycles.
Try to use the research tools at graded steps.
I think you'll be amazed at how much you can pick up.
And so I say, whatever you have,
if you have young children it's hard to do.
I know some women, only quiet time they have is in the bathroom.
Take it to the bath tub, sister.
Do it 15 minutes in there with the bubbles.
Maybe you can only do it on Saturday.
Maybe you work so much you have to take it to work
and do it during lunch; find a time.
When you do it, how often you do it,
and where you do it, is not the issue.
But that you make a commitment
that you're going to become a Bible reader
and you're going to set aside a quiet time
and you're going to find one book
and stick with it 'til you understand that book.
Most Christians,
I can usually recommend three books to new Christians:
the Gospel of John, to know who Jesus is.
Read it over and over.
The Book of Romans, to understand Biblical Christianity
and the Book of 1 John, to know how should we live.
If you can do those three books,
nobody will knock you off the platform of stability.
But God's people don't know God's word
and so every new fad that comes along on the TV
or down through culture, they're rattled by it, confused by it.
"Da Vinci Code" comes out, they're all going, "Oh, God!"
If you'd have known your Bible,
"Da Vinci Code" wouldn't have bothered you a lick.
And you can go see "angels and demons" and enjoy it.
So here are my final exhortations.
"Remember that we receive truth in increments."
Sorry, there's no pill for this.
It won't happen in 6 weeks.
If I see you again in 6 years and you try this,
you will hug my neck.
I can't tell you the number of people across the years
who years later have said, "Bob, thank you.
"You freed me. You gave me a track to run on.
You protected me from all this weird stuff."
Well, I hope I do. I'm sure praying about it a lot.
I sure want to give it to you. It's not from me.
The Bible is priority
and it must be interpreted in light of its original author intent.
"Do not take shortcuts in your study."
Sure you can but don't do it, it'll cripple you.
"Do not expect instantaneous results.
Do not become discouraged."
You're going to find that different commentaries disagree.
Hermeneutics cannot tell you what a text means,
but it can tell you what a text cannot mean.
If I've got five possible interpretations
and the system of Bible interpretation
can eliminate three of those
and now I've got to pray about the other two,
I've come a long way.
"Stay with the program.
"Expect tension and disagreement in interpretation.
"Remember that interpretation is a Spirit-led task
"as well as a logical process.
Read the Bible analytically."
Ask questions.
Who is this person? Why are they here?
Of all that the Bible could have recorded, why does it record this?
Ask those questions. "Use research tools critically."
Just because the commentator says it, doesn't make it right.
I can't tell you the number of commentaries
that talk about those women not cutting their hair, say,
"Well, that's from the Temple of Diana
up on the Acropolis at Corinth, and that's why."
That temple was destroyed
150 years before Paul and never rebuilt.
People say, "Oh, that little door in the City of Jerusalem
"and the little camels can crawl through it
and that's what an eye of a needle is."
There has never been one documentation
of an eye-of-a-needle door in the Jerusalem gate.
And yet I've heard these interpretations
over and over in the church
and not one scrap of historical evidence to back it up.
One commentator read another commentator,
then you read a commentator and you quoted him.
Not you, but the Baptists in California (humor).
"Make a commitment to at least 30 minutes a day, if you can.
"Find a quiet place. Set aside a specific time.
"Choose a short New Testament book first.
"Assemble some research tools. Get some paper, pencil.
Pray. Start."
Our Father, I do not know why we disagree so much on the Bible.
I thank you so much in a post-modern world
that you have revealed yourself, clearly revealed yourself.
I thank you that we're not left to just speculation
and whim and personal biases, that there really is a revelation.
There are some absolutes.
Thank you, Lord, thank you.
Even if my brother and I disagree, we still know it's you speaking
and we must walk in the light we have.
I thank you for the pluralism in your church
and I pray that we can reach those
that our personality will attract and identify with.
Forgive us, God, for passing on just what we've been told
and never check it.
God, forgive us for being trapped by denominational indoctrination
and never going to the Bible first
and never asking someone to show us in Scripture
where they get this.
God, we pray, if we're going to be people of the Book,
that we'd be the people of the Book.
And I thank you for these who come week after week,
have been willing to let me rattle their cages
and tear up some things they've been comfortable with.
But God, I tear up these things, not for people to agree with me
and not to be impressed with anything I do,
but to develop a hunger for you and for your book
that we can stand in a culture like ours
with information on how it is that we should live for you.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Lord, please have mercy on us.
I know you're speaking.
I know your Spirit's present
and whatever barriers there are in our heart
that we cannot hear clearly, forgive us.
Thank you for working with us.
Keep us together as your family.
We love you.
We love your Son.
We love your Spirit, and we love your book,
and we want to love one another more and more,
in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you, thank you so much for coming these weeks.
God bless you.
For more information, please contact:
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www.freebiblecommentary.org