How To Study The Bible

We're going to be taking a look at Principles of Interpretation Part 2, Facts to Meaning. Last week we took a look at the various elements about the attitude that we should have when we approach scripture about its accuracy and its reliability and how it should apply to our lives. And this week we want to take a look at context and understanding how context impacts our lives. The first principle that we want to take a look at is that our interpretation of a passage must be consistent with all of scripture.

When you interpret a passage and you come up with something unique that you've never heard anywhere else before and you can't find any other scripture to back up this concept, you may want to step back and start over or figure out where you got inventive. I used to When I was younger, I used to think that it was really cool if I came up with some new idea in theology that no one had thought of before, because I didn't understand that scripture should be consistent with itself. Needless to say, I don't believe most of the things that I thought of that were really creative at the time, because that's usually not the Holy Spirit, that's usually Randy, or the flesh, I should say. When we take a look at scriptures, we need to, again, we talked about historical context, as we're going to review context again.

I wanted to go over an example of a different subject when it comes to progressive revelation. God revealed things over time progressively throughout history. So I wanted to take a look at one that I've had an argument with one particular person about in the past. And that is the concept of dietary restrictions. This has nothing to do with what we talked about last week, Bob. You know, I had a private conversation last week.

Genesis chapter 2, verse 9. If you'll turn with me there real quick. Genesis 2, verse 9. And it says, Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And we can take a look at a few other passages, but the initial creation of man shows that man at least appears to be vegetarian or fruititarian. And so we have this initial part of Revelation that shows us mankind was Adam and Eve were vegetarian. Well, if you go to the Noah Covenant.

I know, but we're not there yet. That's where you get meat. And that's where I'm going to go next is Genesis 9.3. But he knows where I'm going.

But it's important for us to take a look at the idea of developing a doctrine, looking at all of scripture and seeing how that doctrine develops throughout scripture. That way when you teach, you don't just grab something in the middle of the doctrinal whole, if you will, the whole concept of the doctrine. So Genesis 9, 3, God is making a new covenant with Noah for all mankind. Noah represented all of mankind. And he says in Genesis 9-3, every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you.

I give all to you as I gave the green plant. So God references his first agreement with Adam and Eve. He says, hey, you can have all these green plants. Enjoy. They're tasty, and they're fresh, and they have nutrients. And he made them just for Adam and Eve. Set them aside for mankind. Well, mankind blew it.

Got hunting and things like that take place. We get to Genesis 9 and God says, hey, I'm officially giving you God-given instruction to have some meat. Or meat is acceptable would be one way to put that. Maybe that's because he didn't have guns and bow and arrows. Well he said the animals are going to be afraid of you too now. So they at least have a fighting chance. Before the animals there was no real problem between humans and animals as far as we see revealed in scripture.

But then if we move to Leviticus 11.3 and I'm just following this doctrine through the scriptures just as an example. Leviticus 11 3 and we're almost done with this example by the way in case you think we're going to hit every Old Testament passage that references food. Leviticus 11 3 if somebody's there would you go ahead and read it?

Whatever divides a hoof is thus making split hoofs and choose to cut among the animals that you may eat. Okay, and then if we were to keep reading, which we won't, we'll see that there's even more restrictions on the various types of foods that were given for the Jews in the Old Testament context. So, we went from just vegetables, to vegetables and meat, and now God for the Jews is giving them tighter restrictions.

Okay, if you're familiar with various parts of the 613 lobsters write-out, that was considered to be a problematic. Of course, it's a bottom feeder. It would be kind of like eating the equivalent of an ocean rat. But it's expensive, ocean rat. But you see that God brings the doctrine in. But if at any point in time you're reading scripture, and let's just imagine, just for example, that we're not overly intelligent human beings.

If you just read Genesis 2.9 by itself, you might say, oh, we're supposed to be vegetarians. Or if you read Leviticus 11 by itself, you'd say, oh, we can eat some meat, but it's got to watch for the cud, and they have cloven hooves, but it's not a pig, and you go through the rules.

Or you jump to Acts 10.13, where for the New Testament saints, you get God speaking to Peter. And God says something to Peter, and Peter gets a little offended.

And I think this is kind of funny for here. God's speaking to him, gives him a vision, and he's like, oh, no way. on the next day as they were on their way and approaching the city Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray, but he became hungry and was desiring to eat. But while he was making preparations, he fell into a trance, and he saw the sky opened up and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground. And there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, Get up, Peter, kill and eat.

But Peter said, By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean. And again, a voice came to him a second time, what God has cleansed no longer consider unholy. Okay, so God now, he removes those mosaic restrictions for the diet of the New Testament saint. Peter was saying, hey, I've followed Leviticus 11 to the T, I've never had any unholy meat. And God says, hey, I've made it whole, quit your whining. He does it three times, there's repetition.

But when you look at a doctrine, you need to make sure that you've looked at all of the context for that doctrine, and you look for doctrinal consistency. You have certain issues where you have doctrinal consistency based on New Testament consistency, and certain things are consistent all the way through the scriptures, but you need to make sure that you've looked at it in context. If you look at these rectangles, down on this section here, it takes a look at John 1, 1 through 3. We've got the local context of the verse by itself, a greater context of what's that doctrine in the Gospel of John, a greater context of how is that doctrine in the four Gospels, what's the doctrine in the New Testament, and then what's the doctrine in the whole of the Bible.

And we just took as an example of that, we just looked at the food issue, where we can see each one of those verses by their context, but then we start to see where they fit in the timeline of things. John 1 through 3 is, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. Now we've got some pretty awesome resources. I didn't get here early enough to make photocopies because of the snow, so I apologize.

But what I have here is just a printout from online. It's cross-references of just John 1-1, and it's each one of the three phrases, the beginning, the word, and the word was. and I'll pass this around but there's a lot of different verses and this is from the Treasury of Scripture and Knowledge which is available free at blueletterbible.org in case you want to go there. Each one of the verses has a link to see the cross references blueletterbible.org. Actually if you go to .com it will redirect you to .org.

Just parenthetically, that's a great site. Yeah. And it's free. It's free. Blueletterbible.org. I use it all the time. When we're studying it's fantastic. So just think that I'm the favorite. It's on the internet? Yeah, it's online. It has language tools, it has commentaries, and it has cross-references. There are only a few things I wish that it had, and that's stuff that I've never found another site that has either. So it's not like I can say, oh, we just need to go to another site. It's a really useful resource. links to live audios and teaching too.

Some of those you can pick and choose which one you want to listen to. If you really want to drill down and hear what others think about you, you can read written text or you can listen to these various sections of scripture presented. It's a really neat resource to have. I'm gonna just set this out for you guys to look at after if you want to or when you pass it around.

Well, it's like 15 in the beginning, another roughly 12 for the word, and maybe like 17 or 18 for the word was. And so you get cross-references for these phrases that were there. And so with these resources, it makes it a lot easier to determine the context of how is this used in the Gospel of John, how is this used in the four Gospels, and the New Testament, and the whole Bible. So you get these references, and I love it because it would have taken me decades of my own life in studying and putting all these resources together.

What was the one ahead of Blue Letter that was Treasures of Scripture something? Oh, this is there. It's the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. It's available on the blueletterbible.org. What's it called? Treasury? The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Now that's a book. It is a book. It's available in print form if you prefer paper. Let me just offer one caution about that. Sure. As a young believer I used that when I was saved. I started using that. As a treasure of scripture knowledge? And I, like I went through the Gospel of John and I looked at every single reference for the first ten chapters over the course of several years.

But what I found after a while is that they list every possible reference with not regard to is it Israel or the church. it occurs in the Old Testament does not mean that's something that the believer in Christ in the New Testament. So they'll have references to the, they do a great job to everything, but it's... You still need to be discerning. You still have to be discerning and say, well, does this apply to me now as a believer?

And as a young believer, I kind of just took it all in. I said, wow, this is great. And I just, and I found as I got older, well, wait a minute. That doesn't really apply to me. That's Israel. That's not me as a believer now. So just a caution. I used it extensively. I think it's a fabulous... You just have to have discernment. You have to have discernment. Like with any reference. Don't just say, well, this is a reference. Somebody must have... It must be true. Must be true.

Like Wikipedia. But in a sense, that's kind of the milk-meat contrast we talked about last week. Yeah. It's just like with the food restrictions. You can complement that by a lot of additional resources. But getting into meat in terms of who you are in crisis is a whole different ballgame. So you've got to rightly divide the word of truth.

And what they claim is reference sometimes you may take exception with. I found over time, as I got more into it, like with any reference, the more you look at, the more you see with all their They're thinking this way because they use this as a reference. I don't think that reference really is a good reference.

You want to have discernment, but it's a good reference for free to just take a look at and evaluate. But just keep your brain engaged. That's the same thing if you read any kind of Christian book. The stuff we used to sell at the Christian book store was embarrassing. Just because it's a reference doesn't mean that's a good reference. The particular sentence may be applicable.

But it's not necessarily in context. Yeah, and we're going to take a look at that in a few moments. Oh, I'm sorry. Sam, that's twice in one brief. But don't you think as a whole the things you buy in Christian bookstores don't rightly divide the Word of Truth? Often that's the case. I hate to make an entirely sweeping statement, but there's a lot of... There's probably good stuff. Yeah.

I found major Bible themes at a Christian book store. There are good resources, but the problem is that what is considered pop Christianity is not necessarily based on scripture. It's based on trends and fads. Well, the social gospel, too, is based more on that. It's like health health books.

There's 9 million of them necessary to lie to you. Well, that's why a guy says that you're supposed to meditate in a good sense, because like Jacob, or whoever it was, went out in the field when they brought Rebecca back, and he was meditating on the Scripture. So, in the good context of meditation, that's to study the Bible and think about it, and let it become part of your whole knowledge. And, you know, it's great to read through the Bible in 90 days. I hear these people that are winning over that. know there's parts of the Bible I admit that I have not read because I have not been able to study them into an understandable and most of its prophecies like Jeremiah and stuff. I've read through it but it doesn't make any sense to me because I can't put it all together you know unless I really do an intense Bible study.

But still that's where That's where discernment comes from. The more you read, the more you study, the more you meditate on it. That's why when you start going out and reading outside books and you don't really focus on the Bible, that can be a problem because the outside books can actually take you away in the direction that the scripture is actually leading you. So if you want to go to basic truth, It's always found here and nowhere else. It takes work and it takes time.

I had somebody try to tell me that the Old Testament law, this was back when I was a junior higher, and I had read just a little bit of the Old Testament, not enough to know it really, but they were saying, hey, the Old Testament law applies to believers. And I was like, that just sounds really weird. It just doesn't sit with me right. He's like, I don't know. The Old Testament applies to believers.

So I went back to Leviticus 15, and I'll spare you all the details, but it talks about various emissions from the body and the way that it was supposed to be handled. And I said, so are we supposed to do this? And he had a hard time answering that. because it was really, you know, it was about health and hygiene in a different context than we have today and he couldn't really answer that. So you want to have discernment, you want to have context and look at these things.

Let's take a look at this John passage here. The innermost rectangle is the verse by itself. The second most rectangle is the Gospel of John. And what is good as a believer studying is to attempt to be able to evaluate all of these scopes when you're looking at a doctrine. So first you want to make sure that you understand the verse by itself, but then you want to look at the doctrines that it's presenting in the context of the Gospel of John.

One of the things that is good is to have a rough idea about the book you're reading. I recommend if you're studying a passage in a book, try to read the entirety of that book if you can. If you can't, at least read the entirety of the chapter and the surrounding chapters if you can. At least have read the chapter. Don't ever fall into the trap of reading one verse out of context and saying, I must need to do something with that because that will be potentially horrific, and doctrinally problematic. But it's good, if at all possible, to read the entire book. And then, hopefully as believers, like Stan said, you may read through the entire Bible and not understand all of what is said, but you read it so that you start to have a grasp and an understanding of things.

The Gospel of John. Who can tell me anything about the Gospel of John before we talk about the Gospel of John in the context of all the Gospels? First of all, John was the disciple that Jesus loved and John many times speaks about love and compassion and the caring of your brother and that sort of thing. So that's why it's a good gospel to study.

Also, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are more geared toward the Jews and John then is not. Isn't that correct? John, I think uniquely among the four, really reflected on the age which was to appear shortly in terms of the church age. Much of that text is written to us today. The way I wrote it in my notes, just like what Bob was saying, John is theologically more interpretive. He says, here's what happened and here's some theological ideas and concepts that tie in with it. When we look at the John 1 one through three texts here, what does John do?

He gets philosophical, if you will, and he links the Messiah with the creation of the universe at the very outset. He goes, okay, we're going to talk about the importance of who this Jesus is and we're going to start, bam, this is God and he helped create the universe. Matthew and Luke talk about the genealogy. Who is this Messiah? John says, oh, we're going way before the genealogy. He says, we're going to talk about the creator of the universe, who happens to also be Jesus.

John 1.14 is a good parallel verse to talk about that. But you have this verse in the context of the Gospel of John, which is unique and has a writing style.

And then you've got the four Gospels, and we just kind of talked about the differentiation between John and the Gospels. And another thing on the four Gospels, there's a book, which I'm sure you're all familiar with, and that's the Harmony of the Gospels. And that's really a good reference tool to have. Because if you want to see that a particular verse is in another gospel, all you have to do is look it up in the Harmony. I think it follows through on Luke. Harmony in the Gospel.

It's definitely worth checking. What publisher is that? There's two or three different kinds, and I've got two different ones. I didn't know there were multiple versions. But it's neat also you can look through the harmony and if you see they're in you know the page will be divided into either two columns if it's in two Gospels or three columns if it's in three and at one time I went through it and I just read the ones that have four columns. Because that means it was really important to God to put it in all four Gospels. And that's really cool. To see the priorities that God would give different topics in the Gospels.

There's another reference called the Life and Works of Christ by Pentecost. Dwight Pentecost. That's the one I have. Actually I was thinking it's a different one than you were. Which is similar. The Life and Work of Jesus Christ by D. Pentecost. Dwight Pentecost.

But when you look at John and you keep in context this is the creation of the universe and this is Christ being God and being the word and being God, I mean this is theologically rich material. Then you look in the New Testament and you can say, OK, which New Testament passages tie in with that?

And again, I'll let you take a look at this handout, and I can make photocopies after the class. And there's lots of cross-references there. And then we talk about the whole Bible, and you go back to Genesis. Now here is something that I'm just going to throw this out. It's a theological rabbit trail, but I just want you to have it in your mind to think about after class.

What is the significance of a literal and regular interpretation of Genesis chapter 1, which is the creation account, and John 1, and taking that literally? What are the consequences of taking one of them, not literally? What happens to your theology? You're taking one literally and one not? Yes.

Well, because the thing is that I've run into a lot of people that don't take the creation account literally. They don't want to take the creation account literally. Six days, oh, that's ridiculous. Why would God make the world in six days and reveal it to us literally when he could have done it in a non-literal fashion and not told us about it?

That's kind of interesting because if you look at John, I never thought about that before. He's talking about the Word, and the Word being Christ. And if you go to Genesis 1.1, it only talks about the Holy Spirit and God.

So that's Elohim. Actually, that's a plural. Right, it is. But it doesn't specifically list It doesn't say God, Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ or anything like that. It does refer to the Trinity, but it doesn't necessarily say Jesus. So, you know, that's an interesting addition. I see it as an addition or an expansion of Genesis 1-1.

Yeah. And if you exposit Genesis 1-1 and ignore John 1, you're missing out on some of the doctrine. If you look at Colossians, I mean, let me grab my reference For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. and we can keep reading this is such a rich passage about here's this is Jesus if you take any one of these passages by themselves they're still rich but when you look at the doctrine throughout all of scripture it's massive and it's humbling and it's amazing that here's the God of the universe who can do this who is this person and he has an intimate relationship with you.

That's humbling. Another thing that's interesting is that John lived with Christ for at least three and a half years. And Paul had a vision on the Damascus road. And so Paul, who according to the letters didn't spend a whole lot of time with the disciples. I mean he went up a couple times and kind of had a little bit of a problem. And so he spent most of his time alone. But he came to the same conclusions that John did, having the testimony directly from Christ. Remember John too experienced the Lord Jesus Christ on the Isle of Palace too. An even much more expansive experience. Time is limited. I hope we can get through all the awesomeness that we have this morning.

So you can see that context and looking at a doctrine throughout the scriptures and keeping that context in mind is not only important, but can be really rich for your theological study. Don't just passage it and think of it outside of the context of its local context, its broader context to what's the time period in the other books that were written. Why do we talk about the minor prophets? Because it's a group of prophets that were roughly written about the same time impacting the same set of scenarios. Oh, okay, they're grouped together, but they interact with one another with theological context. and then looking at the New and Old Testament context and then also how does this fit together in the whole Bible. Now we talked about Genesis 1 and how do we look at something figuratively or literally, we have to have a way to do that.

I'm going to hand this out, and this is what Bob had suggested last week, and it's actually a fantastic resource. I'm glad that you printed it out, or else I would have had to, but either way I was glad to have it. I was actually short on ink, so that was convenient for me. If you'll turn to page 39, at the very top of the page is something that I think is a very, very important concept to keep in your mind.

When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. Therefore, take every word as its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning, unless the fact of the immediate context studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths indicate clearly otherwise. Now that's kind of wordy, but if I had to be simple about it, you need to look at it and if on face value it makes sense and you can't find conflicting scripture or problems where taking it literally would be problematic or there's not language that's obvious. Now this handout, and this is what I want to take a look at, indicates all of the rules or concepts and principles that should apply for us to know, hey, this is figurative or this isn't figurative, or I have to do some more studying. I think it's important to state that this is in the context of the book of Revelation simply for example. Sure, but the principles apply across scripture.

I was listening to a Mormon tape once and they were talking about the same thing here. The guy was against Mormonism. He was talking about how you should not take all of scripture literally so that you can twist it to your own means, which is what they do a lot. And so he was talking about the passage where God gathered her chicks under his wings. And so he said, so what is he, a chicken? Yeah. If you take it literally, you've got the wrong context.

Just for the example, because we were talking about the creation in Genesis, even though this is Revelation, let's take a look at these and then jump back to Genesis and see if any of these things are good key indicators as to why we should take Genesis 1 figuratively.

So, the first thing, obvious textual indicators. Those would be like, or as, or similes. I'm sorry, that's number three. Obvious textual indicators, which say Jerusalem is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. The textual indicator is something that tells you very directly, this is spiritual. This is figurative. Paul writes figurative language when he talks in Romans, when he talks about Israel and the church. He writes figurative language, but he makes it very explicit.

I'm using this analogy. This is an analogy. The language tells you plainly, I'm about to tell you an analogy. So there's a linguistic or textual indicator. In Revelation, specifically, number two applies. Use of the word wonder or sign. okay? That is one option. He's going to say, this is a sign, and so then now there's some figurative statement. Use of the word like or as, okay, so a simile or metaphor.

Identical correspondence, same symbol used in the Old Testament. So something was used as a symbolic thing and clearly stated as a symbolic thing in the Old Testament. If you see that reference in the New Testament, often that's going to be consistently used. interpretation in the immediate context. If another passage in the immediate context uses the term figuratively and you've got no other indicators telling you otherwise, you're probably still using that term figuratively. And lastly, it's an obvious absurdity.

Okay, Revelations 12.1 is the example here.

A woman clothed with the sun could not be literal because the heat of the sun would destroy her. Since a literal interpretation yields an absurd result, symbolic language must be used. When we go back to Genesis, can we see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 in the context of Genesis chapter 1? And we don't have time to do a verse by verse look at Genesis chapter 1 and say, is there absurdity? Is there an obvious textual indicator?

Instead, the account is given in a very factual, point-by-point, day-by-day manner, using very clear language. The Hebrew language is a storytelling language compared to the Greek, which is very It's like an engineer designed the Greek language and somebody who was passing on stories and trying to communicate as much as possible in a friendly, familiar context put together the Hebrew language. But it's not that the Hebrew language is without rules and syntax so that it can't be understood and taken on face value. But the term day here is used consistently throughout the Old Testament to describe a million years, a billion years, a 24-hour day. It's used consistently. So the language by itself doesn't offer us any obvious textual indicators.

It doesn't say, I'm speaking spiritually here about the creation. Nope, nope, that's missing. So one, can't use number one. Number two is actually directly for revelation, so we're going to skip that. Number two, or number three, is the use of the word like or as. The use of the word like or as is not in Genesis 1 to describe the way that things were. It is stating the way they were in a very factual fashion.

Identical correspondence doesn't count here because this is the Old Testament. This is creation and there is no prior reference. There is no interpretation in the immediate context that tells us that there is symbolic language. So that number five doesn't work.

It's not obviously absurd in the context of a God who is creating the universe for it to be a one-day period. It's absurd only when you try to take outside science, if you will, and cram it and shove it down into the passage. Then it becomes absurd. But the context itself does not speak of something that is absurd in God's doing something. The funny thing is that if you try to make the evolutionary system fit in here, you end up saying that this is absurd because it doesn't fit in with the suppositions that I've got in place here. But I'm saying to you, when I'm defending Genesis 1, I have a God that is so great that He can speak this into existence. That doesn't make God absurd, that makes God awesome.

Randy, that takes us back to what we were talking about somewhat last week, this whole issue of faith. Remember, what I think we talked about last week is the faith to believe that God created the heavens and the earth in 24 hours is based on what? It begins with our own personal salvation. If a wretch like me will be taken to Calvary and crucified and buried in prison again, I'm going to trust him on these other issues. We mentioned a lot of things last week, but it's all founded in the faith of who we are.

Absolutely. And also, along with this, when we did the preset studies and stuff, they always told us to have at least two outside references. One, of course, was the concordance. And to use your same example here, you can go to the concordance and you can look up what the number is for day, which is yom, and it will show you every specific occurrence of that particular word in scripture. And if you want to go through all the laborious work of checking each one of those out, you can. Or you can pick up what they call binds, and that's a guy's name. And it's a very consistent, and he's a very Christian, and he's considered very reliable. And so you can look up the word day, and he'll go through there and tell you that it means yom in Hebrew. And then he'll succinctly go through there and tell you the different passages that in his particular point of view stand out relative to that word and where it is used and how it was used. And how the context impacts the way it is used. And almost any Bible reference or study that I've ever seen, any program, usually uses vines. I don't know if you've seen different. No, vines is pretty much common.

It's integrated into the Blue Letter Bible.org site as well. Also, Zodiates has another one that's good. I use both of those. There's actually a couple of other ones that are... a little bit more contemporary, but friends kind of come across and got Mike and I on too. I haven't seen electronic at this point yet. Yeah, there's so many good references. And we continue to have more and more good ones.

It's sometimes frustrating that I don't have like a third job. Instead of spending a whole bunch of money and going out and buying all this stuff, which would be great to have as far as a library, if you could hone it down to maybe one or two or three or four, and use those until you become familiar with them, But Vines is excellent to start with. I start with Treasure of Scriptural Knowledge. I use that. I use Vines. What's the other one you use so much when you teach, Roger? The other one is Wiest. Kenneth Wiest. W-U-E-S-T. What's that about? It's Kenneth Wiest.

He did an expanded translation of the New Testament. And what's good about that is he does it And he amplifies the Greek tenses, especially the verb tenses. So if you're studying the verb tenses, like I was showing in Zodiaces, you can say, I may not be too good at getting the verb tenses, but I'll look at how it binds to it.

Oh, he took that. perfect you know acid perfect and he did that all I see what he did it helps you make that connectivity yeah it's you know what's the name of the book? well it's actually different ones that I've seen at least has a four volume set up I'll bring it in the next week. Expanded translation new testament is what you said it was right now there's actually three other volumes that he has his some of his studies he did he was at Moody for in the 40s I think 40s and 50s I don't have the dates on that but whatever he has four volume set, and actually it's pretty inexpensive. Well, maybe $30, $40, something like that. But well, for the richness that it has, the resource that it is, it's worth 30 or 40 bucks. But definitely check it out.

But Randy, you know what I was going to, I was thinking while we're talking about this is not one of the references, but how interesting it is that I've been in so many churches where when it's so obvious in the Greek that this is the word they're using, a day. I mean, and it's used throughout the Bible as a day.

And yet, they can stand up there at the pulpit and preach about how this is not a day, not a 24-hour day. I mean, it's like, do they just disregard? But yet, they want to use the Greek on many other things, if they'll say this is the Greek. And yet, they take this, and it's like they cannot They don't have any context.

What we're doing in this class, how to study the Bible, is we're coming up with a consistent methodology that we're looking to apply to our study life. And most people have never been through a hermeneutics class, including many pastors, unfortunately.

To where they can say, am I being consistent? Am I following the same rules? Some people actually have a totally different approach to hermeneutics, but they can tell you that they've abandoned this and gone to something else, in which case then you've got to go, wow, we're never going to see eye to eye because we're just starting from different places.

Let's pick and choose which one we believe in. Sure. Well, yeah, and that's obvious that some of these pastors, that's exactly how they don't believe in a six day creation. Yeah. But Margaret, some of that is, and I'm not saying this is right or wrong, But I've heard that some of it is that when you get people to come to church, they first come to church but don't go to Sunday school class. So when they go to church, they kind of want to hear the watered-down words so they stay there and then start going to Sunday school's class so that they can start learning the true word and the true meaning of the word. And I could, you know, whether that's wrong or right, I can understand why they do it because a lot of people aren't going to go to church if they think that it's totally inconsistent with their worldview. Stan, anyone that would purposely misrepresent the word of God... I'm not saying they misrepresent it. I'm just saying that they give a watered-down version of it so that when they come to Sunday school...

No, I think it has more to do with membership and building buildings and all of that kind of stuff. Exactly. That's really more what I mean. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm saying that's a philosophy to bring people into church. Let me just say this. Randy, you aren't finished. We only have one more section, and it's actually the least important of all the sections. Go ahead. We can be done. We'll just continue to fellowship. I'm just going to comment on the teaching here.

I've been invited to look at a very high-powered job on the East Coast that really is something very enlightening and potentially baiting for the world system. You know, one thing that settles in my brain here is leaving this body and the kind of fellowship we have here in the teaching is a real downside to thinking about anything like this. Just it really has a major way of playing into my thought processes as to whether I should be accepting this opportunity. So I'm just not saying how wonderful you are to have. The issue, you understand what I'm saying, is leaving this kind of fellowship and this kind of teaching. You know, Ruth says the same thing. He hates to go anywhere because he hates to miss the Bible study on Tuesdays and also on Sundays.

It's extremely important and he makes a point. So critical. See Bob, you can take it there. Well, that's true. Now, Stan, you're encouraging him to leave. No, not at all. I'm just kidding. I'm being very selfish, I must admit, having this kind of fellowship. It's the fellowship more, because when you go away, then you're the lone island out there. what is as important as the teaching is the fellowship around the teaching.

I understand, but God uses people. Sure. He grows them up and tours them to a place where they can be, you know, teachers and bring the word to other people. So, you know, how's the world going to grow in Christianity unless you have people who can do that? That's true. You're absolutely correct. Every time I leave. The edification of our fellowship is critical. And it's rare. It's very rare. Because we've gone to so many different churches ourselves.

And you don't find that a lot of it is fluff and makes you feel good. It's kind of garbage. You don't want to think. Except what you had for dinner last night. I had brisket tacos, it was delicious. Or the alternative is the list under law. Yeah, legalism. I would take what you had for dinner last night over the legalism that I've heard so many other places.

I'm going to redirect this back in just because we've got one more section and I think we can cover it quickly. As an example of this last point, and you'll see bold on page 39, compare scripture with scripture using clear passages to interpret one that is less clear.

If you have ambiguity on a passage and it uses a term and you're not sure what it means, the Ephesians 3.1-7, which I'll spare you the reading just for time's sake, uses the word mystery and Paul doesn't define mystery, but he does define mystery in Colossians 1.25-27. So you can see Paul using mystery and go, man, I don't understand. You can open a concordance, that's a good one, or the cross references. Where else is mystery used? And then you would see Colossians 1, 25 through 27, where Paul defines in verse 26, that is the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to his saints. So Paul defines what he means by mystery in another passage. There are some things that do not have clearer passages. There are not a lot, but there are some of them. In those cases, it's almost always important to look at the observation.

What are the language elements? What are the cultural elements? What are the historical elements? One that got brought up was the women's head covering. In that passage, if you don't have a cultural context, it doesn't make sense. I wear my Rockies hat all the time, but I don't wear it to church. And now for some more heresy. But you have the context. The head covering is not obvious. You have to have the cultural context to understand Paul's talking about temple prostitutes. Okay. If you've got temple prostitutes, they shave their heads. Oh, so you need to wear a head covering until your hair grows out. Men don't wear head coverings because that's dishonoring to God. Now I've got it all put together and I'm putting Rocky's head back on. No, but he's talking in the context of worshipping and fellowship and the Lord don't be distracted by all the fashion things and we can get into application of that down the road.

But Paul, getting back to the mystery thing here, there's a clear passage and an unclear passage. Often you can look at the cross references and find a clearer passage if you're uncertain. The good thing about Paul's epistles, for example, is that he does cover so many topics consistently in the different letters. So that if you're uncertain about being identified with Christ in Colossians 3, you can go to Ephesians and see, oh, okay, well, he covered that in Ephesians. I am identified. I don't have to be worried about it. Maybe it was a one-off thing. No, he really meant it.

So you can look for a clear passage somewhere else, but you're going to find consistency in scripture in the end, just like we started in this lesson. You're going to have consistency in scripture. You may have to look at the context to understand why there's consistency or what appears to be inconsistency, like with the food thing. Hey, how come he says I got to eat veggies here? I've got to eat animals here. I can't eat some animals here, and then I can eat all the animals over here.

Why is it? Progressive revelation, dealing with things. One thing to point out with the Old Testament law for the Jews, just because I think this is a doctrinal thing to know, and then we'll close in prayer because I'm running long. Why was the law given to the Jews in the Old Testament? To convict them of sin.

I'm looking for one other reason, actually. That's true. I can't say that's me. Well, God for what it revealed, right? That's the atonement issue. Show the holiness of God. Okay. That's still not what I... We'll land this now. He was our chosen people.

He wanted to set them aside and keep them culturally unique so that they weren't tainted by the secular societies around him to preserve his holiness because he wanted to reveal his holiness. Believe it or not, the rules and restrictions were for evangelistic purposes.

If you go into another culture to trade, or whatever it is, I'm a Jew, I'm going there to trade, I walk into your house and I do this Jewish thing in your house, you're going to scratch your head and say, hey, you don't have to do that, what are you doing? Oh, well this is something that the God of the universe, who happened to create it all, and loves us, has done. Let me tell you about it. Instead, they said, oh, these are rules and restrictions we're going to keep to ourselves and not tell anybody.

And instead of it being evangelistic, they took it the opposite direction. But the law is important for us to keep in that context. It wasn't purely just to make their lives difficult. Let's close in prayer, and we'll get out to the main service and have some fun. Even though they couldn't keep any of the laws. Well, and they couldn't keep it. God knew that. It was there to convict them. They couldn't keep the laws. Or 613, yeah. Now they have a few and we can't keep them either. Yeah, so.

That's why we've got to abide. Let's go before the Lord. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just continue to allow us to see how this consistent approach to studying your word can impact our relationship with you, our intimacy with you, and our understanding of what you've revealed. Thank you for your love in our lives and thank you for your Holy Spirit to reveal your work to us. We praise you in Jesus' name.