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We begin this new series by clarifying what the Bible is about and why we should study it.
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Details
We begin this new series by clarifying what the Bible is about and why we should study it.
Comment
We begin this new series by clarifying what the Bible is about and why we should study it.
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This transcription is about the importance of studying the Bible and understanding its purpose. The speaker discusses how the Bible is often viewed as a guidebook or rulebook, but emphasizes that its primary purpose is to tell the story of God's redemption of the world through Jesus Christ. The speaker also challenges the misconception that stories are only for entertainment and highlights the power of stories to shape our love and orient us towards what is good, true, and beautiful. They suggest that recognizing the Bible as a storybook can lead to a greater appreciation for its message and help Christians create better art. Ultimately, the speaker asserts that we are created in a story and the Bible provides the main points of that story. For this summer series, we are going to be going back to the Bible, because that is something we, by nature, have kind of strayed away from a bit, due to church history series doesn't take place in the Bible. We're going to talk about how to study the Bible. Now, this is not going to be about whatever the best personal plan for daily Bible reading is, because I can't give you that, right? There is no one best plan for reading the Bible. The best way to read the Bible is to open it and to read it. That's the best way to read the Bible. If you're doing that, good job. But this series is going to focus on interpreting the Bible, and making sure that we're interpreting the Bible correctly, and we're going to look at what concepts are necessary to do that. So, first lesson. Why study the Bible? This is going to be kind of a laying of foundation. Why are we studying the Bible? This may seem obvious. The Bible is God's word. God is the creator of the universe and our savior, so we should study it, right? I understand that. That's a given, right? We get that. But why do we want to know what God says, and how should we understand what God says? These are questions that we don't often think about, right? We just think, I should read my Bible, so I'm just going to go read it. But we're not thinking about, okay, why do I want to know what God has to say to me? If I already know I'm saved, if I already know what's necessary for salvation, why do I need to know what God continues to say to me? And so, we don't often think about these, and so we come to the Bible with a lot of false assumptions. And we do this subconsciously. We don't even really think about these things, but we all do it. So we're going to knock down some of these false assumptions for the first half of this lesson, so that we can then build a healthy foundation for interpreting the Bible. So we're going to go through a couple of these. Let me know if these sound familiar. I hope they do. I know they've been true for me at certain points in my life. Assumption one. Okay, so there's going to be a point at the bottom of a... So it's going to say assumption one, and there's a point at the bottom. I meant to have that not come in until later, but whatever. So assumption one, the Bible is a guidebook. That's the assumption, right? Now, this is not entirely wrong. The Bible obviously has moral instructions for us, okay? But the assumption we all always have, or tend to have, is that the primary purpose of the Bible is to be a guidebook, or an instruction manual, or a rule... Like, how many of you have ever heard, like, the Bible's an instruction manual for life, or something in that vein, right? Now, again, that's not entirely wrong. But is that the main purpose of the Bible? I would say no, okay? Because if you do just a quick survey of the books in the Bible, okay, is it mostly narrative, or mostly commandments? And the points I already have there so you know, it's narrative, right? The majority of the books in the Bible are either history, or something in that vein, they're telling a story, right? The vast majority of the books in the Bible are narratives. So the Bible is a storybook that contains rules for us, rather than a rulebook that's kind of loosely connected by this narrative. But we often think of the Bible that way. Even though we know, like, intellectually, we're like, yeah, the Bible is a story. It's a story about what God has done throughout history to get to Jesus, and then what Jesus has done. But when we come to the Bible, or when we're told, hey, you need to go read the Bible, we often do it with the mindset of, I'm going to read the Bible, it's going to tell me how to fix my problems, how to have the right mindset, what to believe, right? How to act. And again, it will do a lot of those things. But that's not the primary purpose, okay? You can tell the primary purpose of a work of literature by what the general message is. And the general message of the Bible is not, here are your commandments, now do them, and your life will be better. It's God is redeeming the world, right? The Bible is about God redeeming the world through Christ. That's the story, okay? Like, even the title, the Bible, it's not exactly a great title. I'm pretty sure the word Bible just comes from a Greek word which means books. So the title of the book is literally just the books. Alright? But if you were actually to give it a title that was appropriate for its story, it would be the story of redemption. What? History of the story. Nice. Didn't hear that joke a bunch growing up. I remember in, I think it was some elementary history class I was in, they actually tried to say that that was like the etymology of the word history when it said it came from his story. And when you're like eight, you don't question it. But now I'm like, I don't think that's how it works. I think it's just convenient. But an alternate title for the Bible could be the story of redemption or the story of Christ's work, right? It's kind of like, you know, you, you, you, if you were going to say, oh, you should read this book. Say you're going to read Harry Potter. Well, what's the, like, what is the main focus of Harry Potter? Harry Potter. There you go. Because it's named after him. Right? If the Bible was named the story of Jesus, it'd be a lot easier for us to say, oh, okay, it's about Jesus. It's about what he did. Right? Just like, you know, Harry Potter is about what Harry Potter did or Lord of the Rings is about what Frodo and Sam and, you know, all those characters did. Right? It's easy for us to see that, that story there. But when we come to the Bible, we view it as just, okay, here's our guidebook. Right? And all that story stuff, yeah, that's there. I should know that. But really it's about what do I need to do. And that's not correct. We don't think of the Bible as a storybook because we really don't think of stories as doing anything for us other than entertaining us. Right? Also, people think stories, most stories, are fiction. That is true. I remember growing up, little kid, I remember, I don't know if any adults said this to me, but kids would sometimes say like that, like, oh, no, you can't say that the story of Moses is a story, otherwise you're saying it's fake. Right? And they're probably just hearing that from like their parents or Sunday school teachers or something. And I get why. They don't want to say it's fake. But story doesn't mean something's fake. Okay? But we often think of stories as just to entertain you. It's not really to do anything for you. It doesn't change anything within you. Yep. Wake up, Zeke. You're in a simulation. But we read a story. We read a story, guys. We read a story. Hopefully we find it enjoyable. And then we put it back on the shelf and move on with our lives virtually unchanged. Right? That's how our culture kind of views stories. We think for something to apply to us, it has to be a directive. It has to be like, you go do this, you go do that, you don't do this, you don't do that. We think that's applicational. But if it's a story, then we're like, oh, this is just a fun tale about whatever. Right? And the ancients recognized this. Right? Not even just the Hebrews, but also ancient Greeks, ancient Romans. Like, they recognized the power of stories, which is why they emphasized teaching the right stories to their children. If you ever read Plato's Republic, in that book they talk about what's going to be their education for their leaders. And the two main subjects they talk about, gymnastics and music. Now, granted, they meant more things than just what we think of as gymnastics and music. But to them, music was fundamental because it included the poetry and the stories of their people. And they're like, these stories are going to craft our leaders into what we want them to love. Right? Stories shape, they're supposed to shape your love into loving the right thing and hating the evil thing. Okay? It's not just like amusement, it's just like jangling keys in front of a toddler. Right? No, it's supposed to feed your soul in a certain way and orient you towards what is good, true, and beautiful. And no story is more important than the story of Christ. Right? And this is a bit of a side note, but I care about this. This is why Christians today are terrible, most Christians today, are terrible at making films and stories. Because most Christian films are just sermon illustrations put on camera. Right? They're like these ham-fisted moral directions with a thin cloak of narrative around it. Like just barely enough to qualify as a work of fiction. But we make movies this way as Christians because we believe the universe is built on a rule book, not a story book. Right? And so when you think the foundation of the universe is directives and moral instruction and things like that, then you're not going to understand what stories are for. But if you view the world as it's built on a story that God is telling, then you have a much greater appreciation for stories. You recognize what they are for. So if we want to make better art as Christians, we need to recognize the Bible as a storybook. All right. This is the last point. We are created in a story. The fact that the foundation of the world is a story means that story is woven into our DNA. Right? Something we are inclined to love and want to learn from and want to tell stories. Right? We recognize that we are in a story. Right? We view our lives as a story. Even the most nihilistic person out there in some ways views their life as a story. They remember the big moments in their life that got them to where they are. Right? So we are created in this story that God is still telling and that he has laid out the main points of this story in Scripture. Okay? The assumption that the Bible is a guidebook has to be put aside. Yes, the Bible has moral commandments. Don't get me wrong. But it is primarily the story of Christ redeeming the world for the glory of God the Father. Okay? Assumption two. The Bible is exhaustive. Now I don't mean the Bible is exhausting. But I mean by exhaustive I mean that the Bible gives clear answers to like every possible situation in life. Okay? Again, this kind of builds off of the last one. Because if you think the Bible is a guidebook primarily and you are told, oh, the Bible is for instructions in life, then any time you face something challenging in your life, like a challenging decision or something, you are going to try to go to the Bible and find a very clear verse. And if you can't find that clear verse, a lot of times what you end up doing is reading something into the text that is not exactly there. Because you are just desperate to find something. Okay? You'll make some analogy out of some story or some parable and think God is telling you something special through that. And maybe he might be, but it's likely not the case. Okay? This assumption can also include the belief that if the Bible doesn't explicitly comment on something, then Christians shouldn't be concerned with it. Okay? The root of this assumption, I think, is probably based on the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. Scripture is sufficient. That is true. But what is Scripture sufficient for? Let's put it up to you guys. What is it sufficient for? Teaching and reproof. Teaching and reproof. Teaching about what? Jesus. The gospel. It is sufficient for teaching about the gospel. That is true. No, no. Are you speaking about the Bible? No, I'm saying the Bible is sufficient. What is it sufficient for? The Bible is sufficient. Yeah, what is it sufficient for? And you said teaching and reproof. And that's true, but, I mean, a textbook is useful for teaching and reproof on the subject it's written for. So what is the Bible written for? Okay. Again, that's true, but I'm looking for a little more specificity. Yes? Correction and training in righteousness. Okay, in righteousness. Yeah, we're getting more specific. And you're quoting from 2 Timothy 3, which is good. Does anyone have something else over here? Okay. Yeah, that is closer. Right. That is closer, because you're saying what you should have done, what is necessary then to correct that, and then what the results are. Okay, that's closer. So, Scripture is sufficient for really three main things. That's salvation, faith, and eternal life. Okay? This is what I was trying to get at, that when you say anything is sufficient, well, everything has a purpose. Everything has something that it's speaking about. Nothing is sufficient, nothing other than God, is sufficient for everything. Right? Everything has limits. Okay, so, including the Bible, right? It's a limited book. It only has so many words in it. Okay, so what is it sufficient for? It's sufficient for teaching us about salvation, right, what we need to know to be saved, faith, what we need to believe, and then eternal life, what we are looking forward to. Okay? That's what it's sufficient for. Now, yes, the Scripture does talk about things like marriage and work and friendship and so on, but Scripture is not exhaustive about those things, right? Scripture gives you a framework for those things, right? It says, like, you know, you should work heartily unto the Lord. Okay? That's a framework for understanding labor, but it's not giving you specific directions, like this is the kind of job you should go get, this is how long you should work before you retire. Right? That's not its focus. Okay? It gives you the broad framework and then sends you on your way. Okay? And failing to understand that Scripture is sufficient for these things mainly has led a lot of Christians to be stunted in their thinking, because they think they need a chapter and verse citation for, like, everything in life. They need chapter and verse for everything. What we need instead is wisdom, right? We need wisdom more than detailed walls. Wisdom is the skill of living well, and you can read through the wisdom literature, like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and you'll see this. Right? Like, in the Discord devotions, I just send one proverb a day, basically, at this point, and as I've been going through those proverbs, it's just astounding seeing how often Solomon tells the reader to seek counsel from those around them. So even Solomon is acknowledging that, hey, the things I write in this book are not exhaustive, right? There's going to be things you need to go seek out people who know you, or seek out people who are experts, or seek out people who are very knowledgeable on this thing to get their advice, because advice that's useful for you may not be useful for someone else. Okay? That's wisdom. And that's a sign of maturity, right? Right? Little kids need a bunch of detailed rules for things, right? They're very concrete thinkers. As you grow older, the detailed rules can be pulled away because you're wise, right? You can discern things. You don't need as many structured rules. So this is a sign of maturity, is when you can use wisdom in life and not have to say, well, I need a black-and-white chapter-and-verse citation for where I should go to college. It's like, you ain't going to find one. Okay? You're not going to find one. This can also lead to something known as biblicism. Now, this may sound like a good thing, but it's not really helpful at all. Biblicists essentially believe that Christians only need the Bible without any help from outside sources. So they tend to be hyper-literalists in their reading of Scripture, which often leads to them taking verses out of context and trying to interpret them in a vacuum, like saying, I'm not going to look at anything else, I'm just going to look at the words in front of me. And sometimes they're not even going to look at other parts of the Bible to check and see if they're right. They're just going to be like, this is the word in front of me, I'm just going to interpret it as it is. That's not a great way to read the Bible, obviously. You need to read all of it in context. And some biblicists end up creating really crazy doctrines. Some biblicists will go as far as to say that because the word Trinity is not in the Bible, we shouldn't believe in the Trinity. I have met people like this. And if you're taking this very hyper-biblicist view, then yeah, that is what you'll come away with. But this view that you should reject an entire concept just because the word isn't in the Bible is called the word-concept fallacy. Because the word or the phrase isn't explicitly in the text, you have to reject the whole thing. Which again, that means you have to reject the Trinity, that means you have to reject... you can't use the word theology, the word theology is not in the Bible. You can't use the word Great Commission. The Bible never calls the Great Commission the Great Commission. We call it that. That's the name we've given to it. Or the cultural mandate, you know, be fruitful and multiply. We give those names to those things. But the concept's there in Scripture, even if the name isn't. So viewing the Bible as though it's supposed to be this exhaustive text that's supposed to spell out everything in black and white is just meant using the Bible. That's not what it's for. God has created us to be wiser than this, and for the Bible to focus on things like salvation, faith, and eternal life. Alright, last assumption. We must read the Bible to be spiritually disciplined. So we're often told that reading the Bible daily is like a sign of your spiritual maturity. If you're reading the Bible daily, then you're spiritually mature, right? And if we're not reading or praying daily, then we need to discipline ourselves to do better. But can you point out where the Bible says that? Can you point out where the Bible says daily Bible reading is a sign of spiritual maturity? No, it's not there. In fact, it would have been kind of unfair for that to be in there, considering that for the first 1,600 years of church history, very few Christians had personal copies of the whole Bible. If they were lucky, maybe they had a scroll or a letter of one of the books. And if they were even luckier, they could actually read it. But no, for most of Christian history, most Christians did not have access to the Scriptures, which means they had to receive it from the church, right? So clearly, reading the Bible daily is not the end-all, be-all sign of spiritual maturity or spiritual discipline. Now, the Bible does say Christians should live disciplined lives, but that's more than just reading your Bible daily. That's disciplining your whole life, right? Reigning in your heart and your mind and your body to avoid sin and practice goodness. Okay? It's not tied to daily Bible reading, or even daily prayer. It's never tied to that. Because there are people who read their Bible every day and aren't necessarily spiritually mature. Okay? It's true, right? Just reading the Bible every day doesn't inherently make you spiritually mature. And not reading the Bible every day doesn't necessarily make you spiritually immature. Right. And this teaching is why so many Christians feel like they are lesser Christians than those who read their Bible every day. Okay? We've turned the Bible, reading the Bible, into a work to toughen ourselves up. This is like going to the spiritual gym. You go to the spiritual gym, you open up your Bible, you read it, you try to understand it as best as you can, and then you try to apply it. Okay? But no. The Bible... Reading the Bible is a means of grace. Right? It's God's message to us. The Word is a means of grace. It's not a work we perform. Okay? You are the passive party in reading the Bible. God is the active one. Right? Both in the fact that God's the one that wrote the words down, and He's working through His Spirit to help you understand them, and apply them, and believe them. So He is the active one. He's doing something to you. You are not doing anything for Him in that moment. Okay? God's pouring out grace onto you when you read His Word. Now, does that mean that you should never feel conviction when reading the Bible? Of course not. Right? There are going to be times where you will feel convicted and sorry for your sin, because you're reading something, and you're like, oh, that's me, I've done that. Right? I've sinned in this way. But that conviction should lead you to Christ. That conviction should drive us to Christ. Okay? So even when you're reading parts of the Bible that are about the law, and how righteous God is, and how sinful man is, even passages like that can be a means of grace, because then you're saying, right, I am a sinner. I don't deserve this. But God gave it to me anyway. Okay? So it's reminding you. It's encouraging you. It's not, yeah, you've got to do better, man. You've got to wake up 30 minutes earlier and read a little more of the Bible this time. No. Right? The Bible is a means of grace. Okay? Now, daily reading is still wise. I recommend to all of you to read your Bible every day, in some form or fashion. Right? Read your Bible every day. But that is not a law. I'm not placing this as a commandment from God. This is wisdom. This is something that is very good for you. Just like the Bible says, you know, or the Bible doesn't say to brush your teeth every day, but that's a very wise thing to do. You should do that. If you aren't doing that already. So, those assumptions are out of the way. Okay, we've kind of cleared out this messy job site. Now, how should we read the Bible? Alright, what are the basic principles we have to have in mind before we begin studying the Bible? Alright, does anyone know the word um, how do I phrase this? So, we're going to be talking about how to interpret the Bible. Does anyone know what word refers to the study of interpreting things? Or the science of interpretation? What? No. The science of interpretation. Does anyone know what that word is? Starts with an H. No. No. No. In 6th grade you were interpreting hieroglyphs. That's pretty cool. The word is hermeneutics. That's the word. Yeah. So, the hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. Now, this applies to more than just the Bible. This applies to everything, right? You use hermeneutics when you read a cake recipe. You're interpreting the cake recipe. So, this is something we all do every day, even if it's not in our daily vocabulary. The hermeneutics are for any written media. Now, many people, upon hearing a word like this, may roll their eyes and say, like, do we need a method of interpreting the Bible? The hermeneutics are, don't the words just speak for themselves? The answer is no. No words just speak for themselves. All communication involves interpretation. All of it. Guys, you good? Okay. All communication involves interpretation. And you are going to interpret something with the beliefs you already have in your mind. Those beliefs are called presuppositions. They're like a previously held assumption. Something you already believe before you go and do something. Okay? No one reads the Bible in a vacuum. Especially here in the West. The vast majority of people, even if they're not Christian, they at least know kind of what the Bible is. They know it's the Christian book, at least. They know it's about Jesus in some way. So, even they're going to bring that understanding to the Bible. So, no one's just like, what's this random book I found called the Bible, right? Very, very few people today are going to be like that. So, it means if we're all going to interpret the Bible in some way, we need to be sure we're doing it the correct way. That we have the correct method of hermeneutics. But let's look at some common hermeneutics that are prevalent in the church. And we'll discuss why they're not exactly the best. And then we'll get to which one is the best. So, first we have the moralist. The moralist looks for moral application above all else. So, this is the type of person I was talking about in Assumption 1. The person who's like, the Bible is the guidebook, it's the rulebook. I'm going to go in there and figure out what I need to do. This is essentially what that type of hermeneutic is. So, they're going to go, this is especially true when they read stories in the Old Testament. When they go read the story of Joseph, they say, I'll see Joseph ran away from Potiphar's wife so I need to run away from adulterous women too. Like, okay, sure, that's a good thing to do, but is that the main point of the story of Joseph, is just to learn to run away from adulterous women? Or David. David's probably the most egregious victim in this. David went and conquered Goliath. I need to go conquer the giants in my life by faith. And it's like, okay, maybe there are challenges in your life you need to overcome, but is that the main point of the story of David and Goliath? It's jumping right to the application while missing the meaning. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. Yes. Well, Paul is relative, though. Paul is relative, so like a child, children could justify knocking you over if they could do it. What? Oh, no, you're talking about the foreskin there. 200 Philistines. Actually, no. He asked for 100 Philistine foreskins. David went over and beyond. A gentleman. A true gentleman. Well, it's not like he gave it to her. He gave it to her dad. It's not like her. You don't need to keep them French. Anyway. Anyway, so, the moralist is always looking for like, alright, what do I need to do? What do I need to do? How does this apply to me? And again, the Bible does apply to you. You can always find application, but you can't jump over the meaning in order to get there. You have to always go through the meaning. And again, we'll talk more about the difference in a second. So the next one is the liberal. We already talked about this in recent weeks, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it. Liberals interpret the text through a modernist lens, which says that supernatural things can't happen, so when they read the Bible they're trying to pull the truth out of this like, mythical husk. Right? They think like, the real Jesus is there, he's just buried under all these stories about walking on water and rising from the dead and, you know, saving the world and things like that. So, obviously that one's bad. We're just going to move on from that. Intellectualist. This is the guy who, in your Bible study, is like reciting all the facts about ancient Israel that really don't matter all that much because it's Bible study, but he thinks and makes him sound smart. That's the intellectualist. And again, there's nothing wrong with knowing historical facts. They can actually be very helpful. But, if you approach a text and all you're looking for is the historical data. Like, how many, where exactly, what geography, what time period. That's the context, but that's not the point. You're just looking at the data. This may not be that popular one, but it's one I've seen before. It's usually, like I said, by the one guy in your Bible study who wants to sound smart. Alright, and the last one, this is not the correct one. This one's also got some flaws to it, but it's the best one out of these four. That's the historical grammatical. So, this is popular among a lot of conservative Christians. Historical grammatical. So, grammatical, the grammatical side focuses on the grammar, meaning the literal meaning of the words in the text. And they're looking at the actual Hebrew and Greek, right? What are the literal meanings of these words, the normal meanings of these words. The historical side focuses on the original intent of the author. Like, what did Moses mean by this? Or what did David mean by this? Or what did John mean by this? And so because of this, now that may sound fine, but because of this, they tend, they tend to read a book from the perspective of the original audience, which means that they don't really read the Bible as though they already know the whole story. Like, when they go back and read Genesis or Exodus or the Old Testament books, they sort of try to put themselves in the mind of the ancient Israelites and kind of forget all the stuff they know in the New Testament. Like, well, we can't do that, right? Because that's not what the original audience would have known. It's like, true, but Hebrews says that they wanted to know what we know, and so we should read the Old Testament knowing what happens in the New Testament, not just try to pretend like they're disconnected. Right? So they tend to believe that Jesus is prophesied in the Old Testament. Wait, wait, wait. Okay, my notes didn't make sense. They tend to believe Jesus is prophesied in the Old Testament, and it's useful for that, but since Jesus has come in the Old Testament, they'll still use it, but it's not exactly, like, useful for Christians anymore if it wasn't written to us, so these people also tend to separate the Old and New Testament. They tend to be thinking that the Jews and the Christians are separate people. So none of these are sufficient hermeneutical systems. So what is? The, I would argue, the biblical hermeneutic is called redemptive historical. The redemptive historical hermeneutic. Now what does this mean? Redemptive historical. Well, simply, it just means we interpret the Bible as God's plan of redemption unfolding in human history. Okay, so it's, it is relaying historical facts, the historical narrative, but it's using history as a setting for telling us God's story of redemption. Because that's really what history is, it's God's story of redemption. Okay? It reads the Bible as though it is one story with one ultimate author, which it is. Right? From Genesis to Revelation it is all one cohesive, united, focused story from one ultimate author using several sub-authors if you will. Okay? Now what does this mean? It means that Jesus is the main focus in both the Old and New Testament. Okay? He is the main character of the Bible. Even though he's not in the majority of the Bible. He's not even in the majority of the New Testament. He's mentioned, but he's not like the one there present writing. At least not physically. And we know this, we know we should read the Bible like this because Jesus himself did this. So. If you would, turn to Luke chapter 24. And we're going to read verses 44 to 47. Would anyone like to read these? Okay, Zeke. Alright, thank you. So that's Jesus talking to the disciples after he rose from the dead. And it says he opened up the law and the prophets and the psalms. Right? That was the way the Jews divided up the Old Testament. Or what they called the Tanakh. Right? The law, the prophets, and the psalms. Okay, so he's saying all of them in some way pointed to the fact that the Messiah should suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. He's saying the Old Testament pointed to me. I was the point of the Old Testament. He even says this to the Pharisees. He says, you search the scriptures because you think in them you will find eternal life. But it is they that bear witness about me. Right? That kind of goes back to that first assumption again. The Pharisees were treating the Bible like a school book. Right? That's why they called it the law. But he said that's about me. Even the laws are about me. I'm the point of the Bible. Not you. Not what you do. I am the point of it. So when people hear that Jesus is in the whole Bible, they can mistake this for thinking that means there's an analogy for Jesus in like every verse or chapter or something like that. And that can mean to things like just stretching things to be some analogy for Jesus. That's not what it means. What it means is that the whole of the Bible the whole of the Bible is pointing to Jesus. Either pointing forward, looking forward, or pointing back. Saying he already came and he's going to come again. So even if there's like a I don't even know what this verse is but like 1 Chronicles 23 I don't even know what it is. But it probably doesn't explicitly refer to Jesus I would imagine. It's probably something about like the priest or whatever. Sure, that verse taken yeah, that doesn't point to Jesus directly but taken in the whole of 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles and the Old Testament and it's this narrative that's converging on the point of Jesus is coming to be the ultimate high priest. He's coming to be the king. He's coming to be the sacrifice. Right? That's what this means. And since Jesus is the focus that means we should read the Bible from his perspective which means we need to read the Bible with a New Testament priority. Now let me be clear, I'm not saying the New Testament is more inspired or more applicable I should say than the Old Testament. Both are equally inspired both are equally important. You need to read both. Right? But what I mean when I say New Testament priority is that we read the Old Testament while remembering what the New Testament says. We don't try to ignore it saying the ancient Israelites didn't have the New Testament so we shouldn't read it in light of that anyway. No. Take advantage of what you have. Right? It'd be like if you read through a book. All the way. You already knew everything that happened. Then you're going to go read it again. When you read it again if it's a good book, typically you go back and you're like, oh, I understand this on an even deeper level now because I know what happens. That should be our reading of the Bible. We shouldn't go in there trying to think like, well, I can't bring the New Testament into the Old Testament. No. That's the point. The Old Testament is the shadow. The New Testament is the fulfillment. It's the substance. Or the phrase that I like is the new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed. Who said what? The new is in the old concealed. So the message of the New Testament about the Messiah, that is in the Old Testament. The Gospel is in the Old Testament but it's concealed under the ceremonial laws, under these very somewhat vague prophecies. But in the New Testament, the message of the Old Testament is fully revealed. You used to see things in shadow. Now you see them clearly because Christ came. And Christ died and Christ rose again. And we know we should do this because it's exactly what the Apostles did. So we're going to look at three examples of how the New Testament uses the Old Testament. Versus small as I thought it was going to be. Versus Acts 2. This is during Peter's sermon at Pentecost. And he's attempting to persuade the crowd that Jesus is the Messiah. And so he says, That's quoting from Psalm 16. Now the Psalm makes no explicit reference to Jesus by name. Nor does David explicitly say that he is writing about the Messiah. But then Peter comes in down here and he says, So what does that mean? It means this can't refer to David. Because this isn't true. If it's about him, his soul did go down to the grave, which is how you interpret hate. He did see corruption. So it's not about David. Who's it about then? This is Peter going back, grabbing Psalm 16 and saying, hey, this is fulfilled in Christ. This is about Christ. Right? Now that Jesus is risen from the dead, they could explain that. So now, when these believers would read or hear or sing Psalm 16, they would think Jesus. They wouldn't just think, you know, this is some future thing. No, this is Christ. He already came. Right? So that's an example of quoting. Here's another one. 1 Corinthians 10. So Paul here, Paul here is talking about the Israelites. The Israelites in Egypt. And he says, He describes Israel in New Covenant terms. He says here, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses. That's not language you hear in the Old Testament. This is New Covenant language. They were baptized into Moses through the Red Sea. They ate spiritual food and drink, just like we do in communion. They all drank from the same, from the rock that followed them. And the rock was Christ. Talking about that rock that they split open and the water came out. He's saying Christ was there. He was giving them that water. Right? Just like how in the Lord's Supper we drink Christ. Right? And we eat Christ. Not physically. But he is present there. Okay? So Paul is using this imagery from the Old Testament to show that Christ has always been there. He watched over Israel in the Old Covenant and he will watch over the church in the New Covenant. This is showing a connection between the two. That Christ is still there. He was concealed in the Old Covenant and he's revealed in the New Covenant. Paul also says that this happened so that the church could these things took place as an example for us that we might not desire evil as they did. So he's saying, hey, whenever you read the Old Testament church, read it as though it applies to you. Right? Now, not in the same way. There are differences. But the New Testament tells us what the differences are. Right? No more sacrifices, no more dietary laws, or things like that. But when the Old Testament says, you know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, that applies to you too, church. Right? And when Israel commits idolatry and God punishes them for that, that applies to you as well, church. That applies to you, Christians. Right? If you turn away from God, he will discipline you. Okay? So, again, we're seeing Paul is fine taking the Old Testament and saying, hey, Jesus was there in the Old Testament, even though Exodus makes no reference to Jesus being there. Okay? Last one. Hebrews 9. So the book of Hebrews is probably the best example of this hermeneutic, because it's always saying, all this stuff in the past, hey, Jesus is here, Jesus was what it was pointing to, and Jesus is better. Right? He's better than Moses, he's better than the high priest, he's better than the temple, he's better than sacrifice, he's better than all of it, because they were all pointing to him. And so here, the author is saying, he's talking about the tabernacle, right? He's talking about the tabernacle, the priest would go in there, he would sacrifice the lamb on the day of atonement. And he says, comparing this to Christ, he says, Christ is entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God. So he's saying, the tabernacle was a shadow of heaven. Right? That's what it was meant, that's the image it was forming, was this is the image of the throne room in heaven. That's why the Ark of the Covenant was in the holiest of holies, because that's where the presence of God was. Just like how Christ goes into the presence of God the Father, bearing his sacrifice with his own blood, saying, here you go, my people are redeemed. Just like how the priest would go into the holy of holies with the lamb sacrificed and say, here you are, Lord, the people are redeemed for this year. And then he'd come back and do it the next year. Right? But Christ didn't have to come back and do it every year. He did it once. It was perfect. Right? Just like how it says down here. But as it is, he has appeared once for all the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. So, this passage is an example of the apostle showing the continuity between the old and the new. In one, Christ was present in shadow, the shadow of the high priest, the shadow of sacrifices, but in the other, he's present in substance. Christ came in the flesh and he physically died and he physically rose from the dead and he physically ascended into heaven and presented himself to God as a sacrifice. So, we should be fine reading the Old Testament through New Testament lenses, is what I'm saying. That's the main point I'm trying to make. Alright, let's talk a couple Bible study terms and then we'll be done. So, you're going to hear some Bible study terms. You might hear these during this series, but they're just helpful to know anyway. The first one is exegesis. Exegesis. Exegesis means, it comes from a Greek word which literally means to draw out, like a well. Drawing water out of a well. Okay? How many of you have heard this term before? Okay, a couple of you. So, yeah. It means that we start with what the text says and we form our interpretation of what the author is saying out of the text. So, we're doing our best to set aside our presuppositions and we're going to the text and saying what are the words that are being said, what is the context, and what does it all mean? It doesn't mean that you just read one verse or one chapter or even one book and attempt to just exegesis on its own. No. You use Scripture to interpret Scripture. You don't pull... Actually, we'll talk about the opposite of this in a second. But, this can be difficult, too. I'm not saying exegesis is easy. This is why pastors take a while to prep sermons, but fortunately, most Bibles today have cross-references that make this easier, right? So you look, this is blurry, but you can look in your Bibles, too. You'll see little writings here and they're linked to numbers on the page that say, hey, this verse is also related to this verse, this verse is also related to this verse, right? Look in your Bibles, and they are there, and use them. They're very helpful, especially if you read a verse and you're like, even in the context, I don't get what that means. Look for the number and see where it says what other verses it might be related to and then it might shed some more light on the situation. So the opposite of exegesis, which is good, exegesis is good, is does anyone know what the opposite is? I'm curious. Yes? Eisegesis. Eisegesis, yes. Good job. Eisegesis is where you come to the text with a preconceived notion, or a preconceived idea, and attempt to read that idea into the text, okay? A great example of this, or not great because it's wrong, but an example of this is basically any doctrine about Mary in the Roman Catholic Church, okay? They come to the Bible with this doctrine that says Mary was sinless. That's not all the doctrines, but that is one of them. That Mary was sinless, and when you say can you prove that from Scripture, they'll point to a text like Luke 142, which says, blessed are you among women. So if they say she was blessed, does that mean she was sinless? No, it doesn't. The Bible calls a lot of people blessed, that's sin, okay? And they're certainly not the only ones that do this, right? We all do this from time to time, right? We all come to the Bible with our own ideas, and we read things into it. Yes? Is the GST evolution? That could be one too, yeah. You come to the Bible saying evolution must be true, humans must have evolved, and you're going to find a way to read that into the text, okay? Yeah, there's many ways this can be done. Or you can come to the Bible with the assumption that divorce is permissible in any case, right? And you're going to find a way to fit that into the Bible, even though it's very explicitly not the case. So we all do this, which is why we need to question our interpretations of the Bible regularly. Not saying doubt every time you read, right? I'm confident in certain interpretations I have, but I'm always going back to them from time to time, being like, is this really what it says? And, you know, I'll do my best to read it okay. And this is also why it's good to have conversations with people, even people that disagree with you, right? Different Christian traditions, if you have friends in different denominations or things like that, it can be helpful to do this. Alright, next is the difference between meaning and application. So I talked about this earlier, or I mentioned it earlier. People often confuse these two, meaning and application, which is why sometimes in Bible studies you might hear someone ask, what does this passage mean to you? Or what's the application of this passage? Well, that'd be more appropriate. They'll say, what does it mean to you? Now, best case scenario, most charitable interpretation of that, is that what they're trying to ask is, what do you think the passage is stating? That's fine, because that's the point of a Bible study, to get people together and try to figure out what it says. But often this can be a case of everyone kind of getting their own meaning out of the Bible and getting their own interpretation. And this is how we get the postmodern garbage interpretation, because now words can just mean whatever you want them to mean. You know, I think the resurrection is just about how we should be welcoming to illegal immigrants or something. I don't know how you got that out of that, but okay. Right. Right. Yeah. It's like, at that point, not only does the Bible mean nothing, the language itself means nothing at that point. You just make anything mean anything. So, the difference is this. Every passage in the Bible has only one meaning. There is one central meaning to every passage in the Bible. The meaning can be profound, like very deep, or it can be fairly straightforward. Like when Paul asked Timothy to bring his cloak, it's just him asking him to bring his cloak. That's some astounding, profound spiritual thing. He says, hey, can you bring my cloak? It's kind of cold here in this prison cell. Right? So, however, the one meaning of a passage can have numerous applications. Right? So, one meaning, endless application. Okay? So, for example, when Jesus says that whoever looks at a woman to lust has committed adultery in his heart, the meaning is that lust is a sin. That is the meaning of what Jesus is saying. That's the meaning of that text. Lust is a sin. And we can take that meaning and apply it by saying, because lust is a sin, therefore looking at porn is a sin. Okay? Because porn is meant to entice someone to lust. But Jesus' point was aimed at lust, not just porn. Okay? So, we often make the mistake of jumping to the application without actually dissecting the meaning. Another good example is where, you know, whenever Jesus says, you know, I must see about my Father's work. Okay? A lot of people want to jump and say the meaning of that is that we should be about God's work, too. No. That's the application. Okay? The meaning of that text where it says, where Jesus says I must see about the Father's will, the meaning is that Jesus is fulfilling God's plan. The meaning is about Him. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's not about what you do. It's about what Jesus is doing. And then we can apply that by saying, well, Jesus fulfilled the Father's work perfectly. He died. He rose again to sanctify me, to give me faith in God. And because of that, now I should go live and try to obey the Father as well. Okay? You see how including the meaning gives the application so much more depth than it had before. An example of people confusing these two, one of my favorite examples of this is Lord of the Rings. Everyone tries to say Lord of the Rings is an allegory for something. It's an allegory for World War II. The ring is an allegory for the atomic bomb. Gollum is an allegory for drug addicts. Hulkin would have called the police on all of you if you tried to tell him that. He was very adamant. He said, Lord of the Rings is not an allegory for anything. He even said in the opening of the book, I think he said, what is it? He said, I profoundly despise allegory in all of its forms. He said, stop taking this as an allegory. It's not an allegory. But, he also said that the meaning of the story, which is that good triumphs over evil, could be applied to numerous things. He said, yeah, you could apply it to World War II or to the atomic bomb or to addicts or something like that. But it doesn't mean that... No, it's just an application. You can be like, oh, this drug addict reminds me of Gollum. Or, oh, this weapon or this powerful amount of power reminds me of the ring. Right? But that's not the one to one meaning. Yeah. This allows us to appreciate the depth of the Word of God and the world He has made. Right? That the meaning is there, but there's also this depth of application. Which is why every time, you can always keep coming back to God's Word. And you'll find probably the same meaning, unless you just didn't know what the meaning was before. But you'll find a new application each time. And that's what makes it so great. Because as you live life, you'll grow and you'll get new experiences. And you'll be like, oh, that applies to this. This thing that I'm going through right now, whereas it didn't apply in that way before. So, closing out here, God has given you His message of redemption. Right? This is the main point I want to get across in this series, and especially in this first lesson. I want you to start with this mindset. That the Bible's about God's message of redemption. Okay? We should be aware, and you probably are, of how blessed we are to live in a time where we have easy access to Bibles in our own language, in multiple translations. Right? So easy. This is stuff that early Christians and medieval Christians and every Christian before the 1500s could hardly even dream of. Right? But at the same time, we need to remember what the purpose of the Bible is. The purpose of the Bible is for God to give us His message of our redemption. We so often go to the Bible thinking we're giving service to God. Or we read the Bible like it's all the book of Proverbs, and like every single verse is this profound spiritual application. No. In reality, we are the ones being served by the Bible. God wrote the book. He gave us the Spirit to understand it. Right? He is serving us when we read the Bible. And so stop approaching the Bible as though it's supposed to fix all your problems and make your day great if you get up at 6am and read it. Or however early you want to get up and read it. No. Read the Bible to be reminded of God's grace towards you. Right? Be reminded of His forgiveness of your sins and His faithfulness towards you as one of His elect and His justice towards evildoers. That's what the Bible is about. It's about God. And it's not about how God is just sitting in Heaven saying, you know, I really need more out of you. I need more effort out of you. I need more discipline out of you. No. He's sitting in Heaven saying I've chosen you. I have sent my Son to die for you. I have given you my Spirit and I'm redeeming you. I'm sanctifying you. Now read this message that I wrote you that tells you that. And read it every day because you're going to forget it. And I want to remind you of it every day. That's the point of the Bible and that's why we should study it. So, we'll leave that off here.
Luke Vandegrift
good 👍
1 year ago
