Introduction II: How Are We Doing This?

Alrighty, well this morning as we continue on we're going to be going over, last week Kurt went over why are we doing this and this week we want to go over how are we doing this. What we're going to go over this morning is going to be the principal set of foundations that are going to be expounded upon as we go through the rest of the series. We're on what's labeled as page four on the bottom. It's actually more than four pages in because there's a few cover pages.

As a seminary student and as a believer, this had to be one of the most important classes I took hands down. Growing up in the church without an understanding of Bible interpretation, Bible studies were really not studying the Bible. It was a gather around and you tell me what you think this means and I tell you what I think this means and we all just could agree to disagree at best because we really had no way of proving somebody else wrong because we didn't have a consistent method for studying the Bible. To start out, I actually wanted to read something that I think reveals the practical nature of how we do this.

This is from a website called notalwaysright.com. And this is where people who do tech support write about stories with customers. And I'm sure you've heard a hundred of these. And I apologize if the geekiness of this is a little overwhelming at times, but hopefully it'll be pretty amusing.

The guy who was answering the phone says, thank you for calling so-and-so, how can I help you? And the customer says, I'm in the back office and someone told me that we were supposed to be able to use wireless keyboards, so I cut the cable. The guy answering says, you cut the cable? And the customer says, yes.

And now it doesn't work. You cut the cable on your keyboard, and now it doesn't work. Yes. You're going to have to buy a new keyboard. Why? I was told we could use wireless keyboards. That is not a wireless keyboard. Yes, it is. Just because you cut the cord does not make it wireless. Can't you just make it work? Does your phone have a cable? Yes. If you cut it, do you think your phone will work? And then there was 20 seconds of silence and then disconnect. So we don't know if they cut it or hung up, but. I answered it. Well, it's not a wireless phone. Yeah. Well, you'd think.

But the problem is that if you are unfamiliar with enough of the details, you can make a bunch of assumptions, and you get yourself into a lot of trouble. This website, unfortunately, has thousands of examples of people not understanding. One of the things that is important is to realize that the practical nature of this extends beyond just Bible study. If you were to go into law school, which I don't recommend for various reasons at this point in time, but if you were to go into law school, if you were to go to law school, they would actually require you to take at least one class of how to study documents. Why? Because when you study the law, you need to be able to make sure that you're understanding the law.

One of the problems that we have in our court systems is, if you've heard of liberal or conservative judges, is how they're applying their interpretation of the documents. Do they take into consideration the original author's intent, or do they consider it a dynamic document that can be reinterpreted over and over? So, as believers, we need to make sure that we have a consistent method of doing this. One of the things I'm going to tell you also, memorize the observe, interpret, apply, appropriate process.

If nothing else, when you walk away from this class, if somebody says, how do I study the Bible? You can tell them, observe, interpret, apply, appropriate. When the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, when the Mormons come to your door, they are not using this. They have been told how to understand the Bible. Not how to study the Bible, how to understand the Bible.

What does it mean? It means what these guys said it means. They have not been equipped with the tools to do it themselves. I actually had a discussion specifically with Mormons about this. I gave them a write-up that I'd done. It was Observe, Interpret, Apply. I gave it to them. The next week they came back and I said What do you think? The guy goes, this is really good. Awesome. Can we do this with the Book of Mormon? No. Kind of killed the conversation.

Let's look at some of the basic assumptions that we want to start off with as we're studying the Bible, and we'll start at the top of the page. In order to arrive at the meaning of the Bible that God intended, we need to start with the same set of consistent, biblically-based approach to the Bible. Before we go into some of these details here, what's the problem if we don't have the same consistent approach to studying the Bible? Just to make sure we're all aware of it.

Okay, you can have conflict of ideas. Sure, you have lots of denominations. But you're already starting out with different sets of assumptions. You're almost guaranteed to come up with a different set of results. Well, we certainly do. That's exactly what Bud was saying. One of the things is that in science class, they taught us about hypothesis.

You've got to write down your hypothesis, and then you try to set up tests with the exact same environmental scenarios consistently over and over and over again. The problem with starting out with different approaches is you've changed the environmental variables, and you will never come up with the same result. between the tests because you're changing the environmental variables. You can have inconsistency. I am saying that this is a very similar approach to scientific methods in approaching the Bible, yes.

Yeah, you have to have a God. Well, and that's where you want to look at. We took at 1st Corinthians, I'm sorry, Colossians Is it 117 where he says that Christ holds the universe together? All of this only makes sense if we've got a God who is consistent, holding things together. So the first verse that we have here is we're going to aim towards saying the same thing, which is the unity of the faith and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Would somebody mind reading 1 Corinthians 1.10? Somebody will go ahead and read that. Awesome. Awesome. Oh, no, I'm changing the King James version. OK. But as far as that goes, but I mean, my Lord Jesus Christ speak the same. Yeah. Probably would agree.

So here's where good. Here's where, you know, carefully saying the words sometimes. So why do they translate the Greek sometimes? It's not a good study. Just writing itself right there. One word. you know, agree and speak that way the same thing. Absolutely. Let's study about that. Well, and we're going to, that's the cool thing is that next week we're going to start looking at the practical applications of just that, the language studies and the culture and the history.

Well, isn't it because Greek has so many more meanings to one word than we just have maybe two meanings that you can apply that in Greece? What I would say is that there's nuances in the language that are not part of our English construct. For example, they have an entire parsing structure that, depending on what kind of ending you have, gives you more detail. For example, in the different cases in Greek, we do not have a plural second person.

We say you all or all of you or y'all. I love that in Texas. It was appropriate to say y'all and I bring it with me wherever I go. I bring my yawl, because it's handy. In the Greek, they have a yawl tense. That was good in seminary, to be taken Greek, and to have a professor use yawl, because it made it easier. But the Greek is actually very consistent method, methodic, no, not mythological. There's a consistency to it.

But we want to have the same, be saying the same thing and have unity of faith. We talked about different denominations and this is how we can avoid that is by having a consistent approach to interpreting the Bible. Randy O'Neill is right in a certain respect because there are words that have similar readings and they can be said in different ways. Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm sorry.

So like in the NIV or the New American Standard or whatever, hopefully the author has taken the meaning of the entire book and then they put it in context in their own mind. And so the reason it is maybe different than his is because Both of them are trying to say it as clear as possible in an English language. And there's not always an exact word that transfers from Greek to English. So there's a different way you kind of say it, especially when you consider the tenses.

In a few minutes, we're going to go over. Actually, it's on page six there. You'll see we're going to go over different Bible translations and kind of take a summary view of the different translations and how they fit together. So we looked at 1 Corinthians 1 10 also we could look at Ephesians 4 13 but because of time we're gonna I'm gonna leave that to your own studies.

Please do check that out But we want to have unity of faith We're going to take view that God and now here is this is a Philosophical assumption that is a believer by faith. I think is reasonable I've had many arguments with people who disagree with this, but let's let's read it We're going to take the view that God through the Holy Spirit is the author of the whole Bible So that the Bible has a message consistent with God's revealed eternal and infinite character That is a very important assumption to either start out with or figure out real quick. We are going to start out with the assumption that the Holy Spirit guided the authors of the scripture to reveal God's intended meaning. God had a purpose for revealing his word and he had an intended purpose for what he was saying. It's not that God was confused and uncertain about what he was saying, but he had a specific meaning.

Unfortunately, what is being taught in today's English classes in high school and younger, and I don't know if you've come into this in any of your courses, is this concept of post-modernism or deconstructionism, where your interpretation is all based on your own subjective experience. Yeah, Randy, that's interesting. I thought I had the class just like they have to be recertified every five years. I took a class at Colorado Christian University, I guess, CCU.

Oh no. Well, no, I'm just saying, oh no, and go ahead. The Colorado history, so they had to write a paper about the history of Colorado. She turned her paper in, and the professor said, you know, you didn't tell us what you felt about Colorado history. She said, what I feel about Colorado history? This is the first time she would get, because she was educated much earlier. Oh, yes, we want to know how you feel about it. How do you feel about the Indians of Colorado? How do you empathize with them?

That has nothing to do with history. I want to see history, and that's exactly what's happening, is how you feel about something that's become more important than the subject itself, and you're saying, That doesn't make any sense. Well, it doesn't make any sense. And then he said, well, Randy, I feel this way about God's word. We all have different feelings. Well, that's not what we're asked to do. We're asked to see what is God saying? How do you feel about it?

In my college English 101 class, maybe it was 102, but we were reading Mark Twain and there was one perspective that was homoerotic. about Mark Twain because they were skinny dipping in the river. And I was like, wait a minute. I don't think that if you were to look at the historical context of Mark Twain that he was trying to be edgy and homoerotic. He was just writing about a slave and a white kid naked in the river. That's what he's writing about. I don't want to, this is not dirty and filthy. Jessica had one where in the book they had put in some profane word and the guy had said, well, what if the guy was trying to do this other thing and he just took it off the deep end because he didn't have the author's original intent in mind.

And if God is not the original author of the scriptures, then we've got other issues. I had the same problem in my classroom, with my school, in our reading groups, because I was supposed to do small reading groups. My understanding is I'm supposed to have the kids read the text, and then they're supposed to have a conversation about what they're reading.

Sometimes the kids will go off on a huge rabbit trail. And I raised my hand in a professional development meeting one time while we were talking about this. And I said, what do I do when they chase a rabbit and they're not even talking about the book anymore? They're talking about something else, or their own lives, or whatever. And they're so off-base.

Do I correct them? No. I don't know. And I'm like, huh? Yeah. How are they going to learn, then? Well, even as we're communicating now, we're all understanding and operating with an intended purpose of our statements. I don't listen to what Ruth's saying and go, I wonder what she really meant by that. She's trying to, yeah. Yeah, you're like, let's be back on track. So we have to start out with the fundamental assumption that God has revealed the truth to us for our benefit and that God is taking care of his word and inspired the authors.

And second, in Deuteronomy 3.16, the one reference is probably the best one there. Yeah, it's definitely the most quoted. All scripture is inspired by God. and profitable for teaching, for recruiting, for direction, for training and licenses.

You mean even the Old Testament? I know about the Ancestral Law, but I feel it's only referencing... You know it's interesting, the Old Testament was canonized at the point in time when Paul wrote this. When he said, in 2 Timothy, the Old Testament was canonized, the New Testament wasn't completed yet. So it most definitely had to include the Old Testament. And I know you're joking, but it is just a detail to be aware of. 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21, I think are phenomenally useful as well.

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time, but by the will of man, But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit moved them and carried them along and gave them the words. It was just not of their own volition. It was of God.

So when we start with those assumptions, that gives us a respect for the document, if you will. I hate to say document because it sounds sterile. But it gives us respect for God's Word. We're starting with a respect for it. We're starting with the idea that I can gain something from this.

So many people look at this scripture and say, yeah, it was inspired by God but influenced by the writer. Well, you know, and I would cunningly agree. I would cunningly agree in the sense that, oh yeah, because they have vocabulary that we can see this is Paul's writing style. But in no way does it mean that they could overwrite or overrule God's intended purpose.

And that's where I think the distinction really needs to come out. Paul, in 2 Corinthians, he writes this whole stream of consciousness where he says, bear with me for a while. He says, look, we're going to go through this. We're going to bear with me for a while.

That's Paul's personality coming out, but the Holy Spirit inspiring the document. We don't question the Holy Spirit's involvement, but we also don't ignore the author's involvement as well. But we know that God being God and sovereign has ultimate control and authority over that scenario.

Randy, we have a rabbit trail on the site here in the room. This is for eyewitnesses from JW's account. This one particular guy is the apprentice to Bill. He has a song about the person, there's a person there, a person of the Holy Spirit. A person. That's the way you mean it. A person is a person. Part of the guy is a person.

Sure, but they don't believe in the Trinity. When they read this stuff in there about what comfort he's going to tell you when he comes and one thing or another, this would just clear over their head and the other guy educating them from the beginning, not just grabbing them by the arm and saying, well, we can help you. Yeah.

Along with that, what Ruth is saying too, to me it's kind of like, I can't remember the verses right now, I know there's only Hebrews and there's some in the Old Testament, but it talks about the shadow, being here on earth, of the real thing that's in heaven. for the truth in heaven, like the camp and the meeting place and the tabernacle and all that.

Even though God gave specific dimensions and everything else, that's still just a representation of what the truth is in heaven. So when we say person, to us, a person is an entity, a whole thing, and it couldn't be shared, or it couldn't be in two or more different people. So when you really look at that, that's what it truly is. difficult concept, it's very difficult for me to understand how the person of the Holy Spirit could be in so many different places at once. But so was God, and so was Jesus, other than when he was a man. So these are concepts that will be revealed to us when we get to heaven. But we have to have some kind of shadow of the truth here, so we have a representation. Sure.

Well, you're taking the infinite and trying to put it in a finite description, and you're going to come up short. In programming, you can actually have lots of errors in your program when you take a large, large number and try to condense it down into a tiny little number. You're rounding problems. Sorry, I geeked out again. But let's take a look at the process. We've already said it before, but we want to say it so many times that it's ingrained in our brains.

Observation, interpretation, application, and appropriation. And we're going to take a look at what each one of those words entails as far as steps are concerned. The word observing or observation here is going to engage us with language. We already talked about Greek, Hebrew also being important, and Aramaic. Actually, there are some various languages in the scriptural text. And we have things like the Septuagint, where it's the Old Testament that was translated back into Greek, or forward into Greek. So we have something that is a secondary document but is very useful for understanding the text and what was said.

History. I happen to have taken as many history classes as I could have in college because I'm a history buff. Believe it or not, it wasn't my major. But I like history. Historical context is important. If you understand the history and what's going on, you're going to understand why because historically this was significant. Mark Twain, speaking about and bringing that up again, was dealing with the issue of slavery in modern America back in the 1800s. You have to know that historically. That's why it matters that Jim was a slave.

Context. History. Culture. Culture matters a lot. When we read through different parts of the scriptures, there were things that were culturally relevant and significant historically at that point in time that impacted what was written or what was said or how people understood things. But if you don't have that context and you try to put your 21st century American mindset into this, you're going to come up with some very interesting results. Good morning. That's OK. We're glad to have you. One example of that is the culture in Rome during the New Testament times was very commonly influenced by what were called mystery religions. Mystery religions were little religions for different demographics of people.

There was a religion for the soldiers, a religion for various things. Like in Ephesus, was it in Ephesus? Thessalonica where Paul caused the riot and the idol makers were all ticked off. Why? Because they had their idols that were part of their mystery religion and their groups of things. And so when Paul writes about mysteries, that's significant. Why? Because these people are used to mystery religions where you don't get to find out the mystery unless you're part of their religion. Here he's saying, hey, these are the mysteries of Christianity and here they are for everybody to know.

Culturally significant. So observation, we need to be aware of the language and how the language plays into the understanding of things, the historical context for things, and the cultural context for things. Part of the problem was that the idea of philosophy was so strongly embraced that people wanted to come up with a new idea. Philosophy was a love of new ideas and new wisdom.

And that is a problem in theology. Let's go back and let's look at our first three assumptions that we had on the first page here. We all need to say the same thing. Well that doesn't work very well if everybody is coming up with their own new idea. That God revealed a specific intent doesn't work if everybody is coming up with their own new idea. And the last point on here is that we would take a literal interpretation and take into account language and history and culture and author intent. Well, that doesn't work very well if you're coming up with a new idea.

I remember going into seminary thinking, I'm going to learn some new things and I'll be able to discover new branches of theology because I had no idea how whacked out an idea that was. And I went in and I took hermeneutics and it was like, well, that was really, really wrong. But I didn't know it until someone said, well, what are the consequences of coming up with a new idea?

As a software developer, I love coming up with new ideas. What's a new way to do this? What makes it easier for the user? As a student of God's Word, I am terrified that I would come up with new theology. If I come up with new theology, then you're going to hear it because I'll either apologize or the elders will come and say, Randy's been asked to stop teaching and he's got new ideas.

But we need to understand the content, the context, and the correlation of the words and phrases and topics within the passages of the Bible. The last sentence of the second paragraph down on page 5 I think is really well put. The content is what the passage says, the context is what is said around the passage, both nearby and in a larger view, and the correlations have to do with related passages in other parts of the Bible. So that tells us that we don't study one verse in the Bible all by itself, isolated, without ever looking at other parts of the Bible.

One one thing that we did when we were doing hermeneutics class together. We practically we did things practically went over together we started by reading the whole book and then we narrowed it down to the chapter and Then we narrowed it down to the verses by the verse we were studying and then we studied the verse that way I I didn't have to worry about taking one verse out of context because I knew the context and and so that really helps a lot.

One thing about observation that I just wanted to point out that I was on the phone with my buddy in Texas who's actually taking a hermeneutics class and his teacher said that every student in his hermeneutics class had to do an observation on Acts chapter 1 verse 8 and there were over 600 observations put together for Acts chapter 1 verse 8. Now, we're not going to do that. We're not going to come up with 600 for anything during this class. We don't have the time.

But I want to just point out that observation, if you're careful, if you're looking at the language, if you're looking at the history, if you're looking at the culture, you're going to be able to spend some time in observation. Everybody feel comfortable like you could tell me what observation is? If I say, what is observation? You're looking at the details surrounding the verse. You're not looking at the interpretation. You're not looking at the application. You're not looking at the appropriation. Well, it's looking for details in the verse. For example, when you walk into this room, you quickly scan the room.

You would have observed that there was writing on the whiteboard. You wouldn't have interpreted the writing on the whiteboard. You wouldn't have applied the writing on the whiteboard, but you would have observed that it was there. then you would have evaluated over here. It's a short phrase, it's not even a full sentence. But you would have done something.

You would have noticed the chairs were empty and you would have observed, hey, either this class isn't meeting or they're somewhere else and you'd have looked around. So the observation is looking at the details, whether it's linguistics or history or culture. But does that make sense where it's just the details of things without processing the details?

Think of it as raw ingredients in a recipe. You look at the recipe list. I need wheat. I need flour. I need salt. I need yeast. I need sugar. And I've got the list of ingredients, but I haven't made bread yet. OK, so it's just the details of things. hermeneutics. We're actually studying hermeneutics. That's just the theological or the seminary term. It's H-E-R-M-E-N-E-U-T-I-C-S. H-E-R-M-E-N-E-U-T-I-C-S. E-U-T? E-U-T-I-C-S. Hermeneutics. Technically that's the study of? That's the study of documents or in theological context in the study of God's Word. If you Google that you actually might stumble upon my website, in which case I apologize. I'm not kidding.

So the next step after observation is interpretation. Interpretation is when you take the ingredients and you assemble them into an understanding of what the observations were intended to mean. Not their application, their meaning. All right? If you've ever had to summarize something, that's a good example of evaluating an interpretation of something. If I gave you a whole paragraph and I asked you to summarize the paragraph, you'd observe the paragraph, you'd read it, you'd think about it, and try to condense it down into a restatement of the content. Yeah. So it's kind of like watching a presidential debate. We do the observation, and then the TV station Wow, this is gonna be an awesome recording. Yeah.

Unfortunately, that's the way that we've been trained to think. We let somebody else, and actually that's one of the pitfalls. Usually we'll let somebody else do the interpretation. I don't feel qualified. And that's really kind of sad that we say, well, I can't gather the information and say, well, what's the interpretation of this? Somebody else has to make the interpretation for us.

Part of why people are afraid of Revelation, the book, the Revelation of Christ to John, is because they don't have the tools to go through this. If you are a diligent student and willing to go through these steps all the way through Revelation, you will discover that the Old Testament is quoted massively. So it's not like John's getting entirely brand new Revelation. He's assimilating all of the Old Testament, not all, many of the Old Testament prophecies into a new document that outlines what remains to be done, but you follow these steps and it's not completely mystical and mysterious, it actually has some good content for you to learn and study and grow. If you don't have a consistent approach to interpretation, the Jehovah's Witnesses don't, or theirs is unique.

And they believe that they're the locusts that are described as a plague. But they take it and they twist it and it's a good thing. So, proper interpretation, though, is to take the observational steps and process through them and come up with a resultant or summarized or thesis statement that restates what you've studied. If it comes out really, really different, you probably want to scratch your head and ask, did I do it right? Or talk to an elder, talk to another believer that you respect and say, is this right? Something about this doesn't line up.

If you find yourself having to discover lots of contradictions in the rest of scripture based on your interpretation statement, scratch your head and start over again or ask somebody for some help or something because the interpretation will take into account the intended meaning of the author and will be consistent and fit in with God's intended purpose. It will be consistent with us having unity in our faith. It will be consistent with the language and history and culture. It's not going to contradict it. So everybody feels relatively confident with interpretation.

Application, this is the one where we said that the observation was looking at the details. That's not subjective. That's objective. You're looking at the objective details. Interpretation, the objective understanding of the statement. Application can be, but is not always, subjective. Some text is historical and narrative. The application is very explicit and specific for that person. When Judas betrayed Christ, what did he do? He went out and killed himself. The application was for Judas. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. What does the Bible tell me to do? Yeah. Yeah.

So so application is subjective in some context, but but you need to look again at your you're looking at the context to determine application. And also it says in this paragraph, which probably should have been because it's it's so important. And that is the fact that there is one correct interpretation of any passage. The problem with that is getting at that one correct one, and that's why we have so many different denominations.

And my view, because regardless of how hard you study a particular passage, it's almost impossible to come up with the exact intent of the author. You can come close. You can really, really come close. But in essence, there is only one meaning, because the author had a purpose, and he wrote in a way that he wanted that purpose to be understood. We don't always, every one of us, understand that. We should strive for that as a goal. I feel more comfortable saying that it's not incredibly difficult to come to the author's known intent. There are some places where things get sketchy because we don't have enough context.

And that's really where the problem is, is when scripture reveals one, you know, for example, baptism of the dead. The baptism of the dead, Paul references it once. That's all we've got. And so we don't have context. So I'm going to grant you in some places we just kind of scratch our head and say, you know what, since it's not mentioned a lot, we're going to not understand it. We're going to with the fullness that maybe Paul intended, but we're going to be okay.

But there's so many other passages that are clear on some of the other topics. For example... I'm not saying there's more than one. Oh, I know, I know, absolutely. But what Andy's saying, I think it's important that I think most passages, you know, you can come to the single interpretation with some diligent study. But sometimes there are passages that are that many godly people don't necessarily agree about. But they're few in number. I mean, there's the lion's share of passages. And many times, there's other corollary passages that reiterate that same idea.

And that always gives me great comfort when I say, OK, I see what this says, but then there's another passage that says very much the same thing. I say, all right, well, OK. That's the cross-checking he talks about later on. That kind of backs up, well, okay, I see that I made this interpretation. Is that inconsistent with other parts of scripture? And when you have other passages that back it up, you say, I think I'm on the right track. There's a correlation.

One reason we have so many, there's lots of reasons we have so many different denominations, like you were talking about earlier, and that is, one is because a lot of people come to the Bible and they don't really care what the Bible says, because they're bringing their own desire. So in other words, if I'm a Southern Baptist and I find a difficult passage of the Bible, I'm going to bring my Southern Baptist theology to the Bible, and then I'm going to extract from the Bible what's consistent with my personal theology. That's not an interpretation, because I have gone to the Bible to find out what the Bible says. Yeah, that's called eisegesis. E-I-S-E-G-E-S-I-S. For whatever that's worth. E-I-S. Wait, E-I-S. E-G-E-S-I-S. Okay, wait a minute, I meant to G. E-S-I-S. E-S-I-S. Yeah, and exegesis is out of the text, exegesis is putting it into the text. That's what some of the...

I went through New Tract's Bible Institute, and my entire two years that I was there, every single verse was, that's why you're going to the Michigan, that's why you're going to the Vermont. They put every single class And I was like, that's not what it's talking about.

That's what I did. I did an internship at a church. I was going to be the worship leader and they had an internship for me there and I was supposed to study praise and worship in the text. I didn't have a consistent approach to hermeneutics at that point in time. And every verse I went to, I was taking what I'd experienced and thrust it into the text.

Well, clearly this is what we're talking about. David danced around in his robe, or in his underpants, or whatever you want to call his tunic. And so therefore, what do we do with that? Well, I've been practicing Eyes of Jesus, you get to that part and you're like, maybe I'll do that at home.

I don't feel comfortable in my skivvies at church. So, the problem is that when you do Eyes of Jesus, though, you start twisting things. And I know it's funny, but it's funny for me to look at them. At the time I was kind of scratching my head, how am I going to talk to people about that? Because I didn't have a consistent approach. It's when you thrust it in there, boy what a problem that is.

Alistair Begg is a reformed teacher, but I was listening to him teach one morning and he said he just as a visitor stopped into a Baptist church one morning and they were going verse by verse exposition and he thought, great! They got to Timothy and it talked about elders and deacons. And the pastor said, we don't have elders and deacons, therefore this passage doesn't apply to us. Skip to such and such a verse. right past it. Instead of saying, we don't have elders and deacons, what's wrong? Why are we not studying this and doing something with it? It doesn't apply to us. So, that's eisegesis.

It's not application, it's not observation and interpretation the way it needs to be done. It's not appropriate application when you take your own experience and thrust it in there. Now the next thing we want to take a look at is appropriation. And appropriation is the step where you have looked at the applications and you're looking to apply the applications in your own life.

Now here is the real key thing in the first sentence here. While application is a mental process guided by the Holy Spirit, the appropriation of the truth into our lives will be something that involves both the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts and the sovereignty of God and circumstances. But appropriation of the truths of scripture requires that we have received the true meaning of the original author of scripture, who is the Holy Spirit.

Sanctification. Who can give me a quick definition of sanctification? How about sanctification in the context of our daily lives? Progressive sanctification. Okay, it's God's developing us in spiritual growth over time. It means that we're not finished yet. We're being built on. God is going to work out the appropriation as part of our progressive sanctification. Our condition is being reformed and changed. That's God's appropriation of His truth in our lives.

In spiritual growth. God developing us in spiritual growth over time in our condition. So the appropriation is not something that we just simply do necessarily intellectually. It's not just intellectual ascent. It's the Holy Spirit working it out in our lives.

And that's a really important detail. No, it's not a checklist thing. It's the life of Christ. If Bob were here, I know he'd be saying, it's the life of Christ being worked out in you. He's probably listening to the recording now. He will be. Future tense.

So you're saying application is only mental? No, no. Appropriation isn't only mental. I know it's consequently or conversely. You're saying that application is mental? The concept, yeah, the concept of application is intellectual. The appropriation is the, think of appropriation as one B, okay? Instead of a separate step, think of it as a kind of a inner detail of application. Where it's appropriate, there will be appropriation.

Does that make sense? Is that easier to understand that way, Stan? I always thought application was applying what you learn through the interpretation and observation. And appropriation was, was, what is the word appropriate to, to appropriate or to take or to, to grab. To make it your own. Yeah.

Well, the difference here, this is like rubber meets the road. This is where, when the sky is falling, like with the financial thing, you say, well, I know from God's word, I know the end of this whole scheme. And you say, you know, there may be difficulty along, but the end result will be this. And you appropriate that truth, and you're at peace. You say, well, OK.

Things are falling apart, but the Lord will come at some point. And so that truth becomes true. It's not saying, well, I'm not sure. Is Christ really going to come again? If you're uncertain about that, you've appropriated it, and you trust what God has said is true about that situation. That truth becomes part of you, part of who you are.

The way I viewed this is, when I was taught this, there was no appropriation step when I was taught it. Just observe, interpret, apply. Appropriation I think of, at least personally for myself, as a secondary element of application. Some applications will be purely mental, or the appropriation will be purely mental. And sometimes the appropriation of the application will be physical in essence. I don't think about it when I'm helping people often. It's just the way I operate. I don't do it. And other people say, wow, you're helpful. Really? I'm just doing the thing that I know. I'm not.

The application seems to be a little bit more on my decisiveness. Yeah, and really what we're talking about is somewhat semantical. Technically speaking, what we have to ask ourselves is what's the interpretation and does it have a direct application in my life? Am I hanging myself like Judas? No. Does this apply to me?

No, there's no appropriation. Paul says to love one another, to be hospitable. Who's he writing that to? The church. What's the application? The application is that I'm hospitable. What's the appropriation? I'm going to talk to somebody after church and say, can you come over to my house for dinner? That's the appropriation.

But the difference between these two is huge. Because I personally think that many, many Christians, real Christians, live between application and appropriation. Absolutely. And that's why the Holy Spirit... I live closer to application than I do to appropriations. Even though I've read a lot about appropriation, I've had a really hard time of making that real in my life. Well, and that's why I think that I, when I was putting, you know, reading through this to say what I want to say, I highlighted all of the appropriation paragraphs simply because the point is the Holy Spirit works it out in our lives. We can go ahead is kind of that distinction, that you have had a hard time working that out in your life.

And it's really the Holy Spirit. That's the key point. He wants to work it out through you. If you work it out, then... And sometimes you can't see what the Holy Spirit is doing. I mean, you know, when you reflect back over your day, you can't pinpoint, oh, the Holy Spirit led me here, or Oh, that there is being appropriated there or whatever. Sometimes you don't even see it because it's so gradual. The Holy Spirit is taking you step by step by step.

And I started to mention that somebody saying, oh that, you know, you were helpful with that thing. I wasn't even thinking about being helpful. Somebody was asking questions online and I was just answering them as they were asking the questions. After a couple days, they're like, man, you're really helpful. I was like, Oh, okay, I was just, the Lord gave me this knowledge and so I was just sharing it with you.

And it wasn't me, it was the Holy Spirit doing it. It wasn't me. If you said, Randy, you need to be helpful, I'd be like, oh, shoot. I'm selfish in the flesh. I was doing it from, well, I gotta be really kind, I gotta be really loving. You know, you make it into a law, you make it into something, I gotta do that.

Rather than letting the Lord guide you, if he's giving you information, you share it. Yeah. He's giving you money and it's right here. Yeah. And you do it without a way without thinking. Yeah. It's when you're where that comes to the forefront when you blow it. Oh yeah. Well, exactly, and that is actually where you realize, hey, I've been walking in the flesh.

You apologize to those people, you've blown it for whatever it did, and then you restore your fellowship with the Lord and you go back to that moment-by-moment relationship, that lifestyle that is Christ. Would anybody be offended if we just keep going for the next few minutes and we're just going to briefly cover the last couple pages. You'll be able to study it in more detail later, but But I just want to go over it and answer a few, or make a few comments. So I've got five minutes, okay, with everybody? All right, awesome. If you'll turn to page six, it says, what are some good tools?

When I worked at the Christian Bookstore in college, we had a bunch of Bible translations, but fewer than you see here, that we sold. And I had to be knowledgeable about the different translations and be able to explain to people what the intent was of the translation group or the people who were involved with it. But there's often questions about Bible translations and variations that exist out there.

So let's take a look at this chart. Interlinear, the one that I happened to grab out of the side room when I realized I'd forgotten my Bible, isn't interlinear. And it has, in this case, King James followed by the Greek and then the English translation for that from the King James.

Just line by line, verse by verse. So it's very easy to see the literal Greek word there, if you happen to know Greek that makes it handier, but that's an interlinear. It's very literal. It's word for word from the Greek or the Hebrew. The next concept is thought for thought. If you're familiar with the New International Version or the NIV, that's thought for thought.

And then there are those that are paraphrase. If you've heard of the Living Bible or the New Living Bible. The Living Bible, the way that was constructed is the guy who worked on it first actually every day as he was riding on the subway, took a King James Version Bible and read it and tried to interpret it and write a modern English, modern life description of it for his children. He wanted his kids to really be able to understand the Bible.

But it's not thought-for-thought, it's a paraphrase. It has been through the observe-interpret stage, and so he's reinterpreting it, sometimes with a little application here and there sprinkled in, so it is not a literal Greek word-for-word concept. falls into that category? Actually, Amplified and New American Standard tend to be word-for-word. The problem with Amplified, though, and I think you're right to point it out, is that it can be interpretive or have some application mixed in. Not always to the extent of, say, the message or the living Bible.

But it is one of those things where The new international version is a thought-for-thought, and that would be where they would say, okay, I'm going to take into account the culture and the history and how that would impact the reader and try to bring that over. And they'll change the word order. It'll be a little easier to read because they want the thought that the author originally intended to come across more so than necessarily a rough, more brutal, if you will, Because English and Greek, if you haven't noticed or are not aware, are not necessarily structured and ordered the same way.

King James, just to bring this in a slightly different angle, King James is considered to be written at a college reading level. New American Standard is considered to be written or translated at a 10th grade reading level. And the NIV is roughly somewhere between 7th and 8th grade, depending on who you talk to and what school they went to. So NIV is very easy for most people to read, as long as they're literate, they can usually pick their way through the NIV.

But because it's not word-for-word, conceptually, sometimes it makes it a little harder to understand in the studying element of things. If you're doing verse-by-verse, word-by-word studying, it's a little less confusing. are a little bit more confusing to have NIV. It's not horrible. In fact, if somebody made me pick a thought for thought, I would go with NIV just because I think it's very readable. If you're going to read through the Bible in a year, for example, or you're going to read through the Bible in some amount of time, NIV is very easy to follow and understand.

As long as you're not doing in-depth studying, which you'd want to use some other tools for, the NIV is phenomenal for reading. I'd actually recommend it for that. Since my dad did that also I don't feel like I'll be smoten or smitten or whatever that is. Smote. Pretty sure that my command of the English language has dropped. The next thing we want to look at after the Bibles is a concordance. If you're not familiar with the concordance, it's basically a list of, well, the concordance is laid out in two forms, or two parts.

The first part is a list of every verse that has a certain word in it. If you've heard of the Strong's Concordance, they're usually about $15 to $20, depending on where you get it. You find a word in your King James Bible for the Strong's. and you can go look it up and it'll show you every verse in the King James where that word shows up. And the second part is a look at the Greek or the Hebrew and all the ways that's been translated in the King James from the Greek or Hebrew.

A concordance is not the same as a lexicon or dictionary for the Greek or Hebrew. If you were to take a Greek class, they're going to give you a lexicon, which is a Greek dictionary. A concordance is going to show you all the ways it was translated into English from the Greek or the Hebrew. A lexicon is going to give you a more definitive definition format. For word studies, yes. So that's a concordance. Cross-references are handy. A lot of study Bibles or Bibles that are published today just in general have a cross-reference section.

There's a Thompson chain reference. I actually found an awesome graphical representation of a chain reference, which is not in here, and I didn't want to print it out because it was massive. I could have shrunk it down, but it lost its effect. It actually showed a line connecting all the cross references in the Bible in this arch format. It was linear on the bottom with a line crossing. It was this rainbow of colors. It was phenomenal. The Bible cross references itself phenomenally. It's very rich. like when I first started out many years ago, on the bottom, they would always have C, such and such verse, C, such and such verse.

That's a cross reference. Yeah, but is that a Thompson chain reference? No, no. There is a Thompson chain reference Bible. There is also an external Thompson chain. Thompson put it together. But you know, you'll find in many Bibles will have their own cross-references. Actually, I spent many years, I first started the treasure of Bible knowledge.

That was an interesting one. I'm a little bit, as an older one, that's what I'm thinking about. Yeah. That's an interesting one. But sometimes what will happen is even in the cross-references, you get interpretation in there because they will link verses together that make the Jews and the church equal. And so already you, even within that, You have to be careful because people will take their their and they'll put that they'll say, well, this obviously references that they'll put a reference to the church in Israel together when I don't believe there is a. Yeah, it is interpretive. Be careful. Even the simple cross-referencing. Yeah. I'll take that to be inspired. It's hard. Thanks. That's all right.

With languages there's a bunch of tools. Since we're going to go over languages later on, I'm going to let the teacher at that point in time, I don't know who's going to be the teacher, maybe my dad next week, go over some of the tools. History and culture. This for me was one of the most critical set of tools to get.

I happen to have the IVP, Bible Background Commentary on the Old Testament. Very strongly recommended. Highlight it. Make sure that If you have $20 to spend on Amazon, that's one of your books that you get. The New Testament one, not so good, but the Old Testament one is phenomenally useful. I taught through Genesis and it was an invaluable resource.

Software. I am a software developer and I am not a fan of any of the software that's been developed, but I will recommend the Blue Letter Bible. It's blueletterbible.org. It's online. It's very easy to use and it has a bunch of translations. It has an interlinear and it has a bunch of language tools for free. So strongly recommend blueletterbible.org. When I do preparation, that's usually where I go because I don't like the software, but I like their website.

Parse is verbs. It gives you all kinds of language stuff. Study Bibles. My wife has a Ryrie Study Bible, Jessica. The Nelson Study Bible is also really good. Lots of good commentary from dispensational teachers. They practice the hermeneutics or the Bible study the way we're talking about.

What was the first one? Ryrie, it's the first one on this list. It's on page eight. Sorry, I turned the page. As far as commentaries are concerned, I actually was gifted a commentary that's not on this list because it's not recommended, and that's the MacArthur commentary.

I have almost the entire New Testament, but I never use it. If you are doing your Bible interpretation, you've observed, you've interpreted, you've come up with an application, and you want to check it, then open a commentary, strongly recommend commentaries as a secondary, after I've done my initial homework, step. Because otherwise it's easy to do the eisegesis thing. You look at what they wrote, you look at their applications, and then you start forcing it through the passage without having done the work yourself.

Alright, there's a list of things on page 9 that are commentaries to be cautious about. MacArthur is one of them. And that's running through the tools really quick, but if you've got questions, you can ask me afterwards, but I'm going to close in prayer because we need to finish for the recordings and so we can get into the service. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that we've had to take a light look at your word, but also a heavy look at the ways we can study it and dig deep and know you and your revelation more deeply. We thank you and we praise you, Jesus.