Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

We're proceeding through the Church History series here. We have today, the topic is History of Bible Interpretation. The Bible has not been interpreted uniformly over time. Surprise, surprise, right? Isn't it interesting, during our own lifetime, how many different approaches are there to Bible interpretation? Gobs and gobs, yes. Lots and lots. And why is that? Different opinions, yeah.

We looked at previously the tendency for people to start different groups based on geography, following a personality, politics, all sorts of things like that. And the consequence of that is that it forces differences in Bible interpretation. It forces differences in Bible interpretation. If the primary driver is geography, politics, and the different things that cause different groups to start, it forces a different understanding of the Bible. Anyway, we'll be taking a look at that here this morning. History of Bible Interpretation.

The two primary approaches, and you have this slide on your handout there, are literal and allegorical. The literal interpretation takes things at face value. Now, when we say literal interpretation, does that mean that we take figures of speech literally? No, in other words, literal interpretation understands that there are figures of speech, right? And so it doesn't mean that we have what is called letterism, where you just look at everything flat out and don't understand figures of speech. But that's still literal interpretation. The allegorical interpretation understands that there is a primary meaning that is literal, but that the interpretation of the passage is then allegorized. An allegory is forced on the passage.

And one of the fun ones that I like to look at is in Revelation chapter 7. It says that there are 144,000, and it says they're of Israel, and it names each of the tribes of Israel. And it says there's 12,000 from each tribe. So the number is given, the total is given, it says there of Israel, it gives the tribes by name, but the allegorical interpretation, which frankly most of Christendom has used, is that that's about the church denominations and the tribe names don't matter and it's not about Israel and the numbers don't matter. Oh boy. So that's allegorical interpretation. The allegory is forced on the passage regardless of what the passage says. Because it can't possibly be Israel. Here's some examples.

Literal example is Christ's second coming will take place literally. He will actually come to the earth physically. Invisibly, when Christ comes to the earth to reign for a thousand years, the thousand years is taken literally. After all, it's said six times in Revelation chapter 20 that it's a thousand years. So we take that literally.

However, the allegorical interpretation, and this is a key indicator, there might be several different allegorical interpretations. Here are a couple of them. Christ's second coming refers to his coming into the hearts and minds of those in the church reigning through the church. That's his second coming.

Another allegorical interpretation would be Christ came already in 70 A.D. That's the Reconstructionist or Preterist interpretation. That's, by the way, what the Seventh-day Adventists teach, and there are degrees of that. Christ came in judgment through the Roman soldiers in 70 AD. Are you impressed? Okay, now this you have as your last page. It's a color printout and I think it's a key one.

We have on the top literal interpretation of Scripture and there have been over time a number of different groups who have interpreted the Bible literally, and we track those in kind of broad scale here on this color chart. On the bottom part of the same chart is allegorical interpretation of scripture over time, and the way that got started is the Greek philosophers, Plato being one of them, major name, the Greek philosophers who were skeptical of these Greek myths started interpreting them allegorically or at least suggesting that that's how they ought to be interpreted and ultimately the church took that on. The church took that on. So it's from the pagan Greek skeptics, if you will, that this allegorical interpretation got started and it took over much of, in some periods of time, most of the church. And today what you have is literal interpretation is done by some Protestants and by Jews, some Jews, and then the allegorical interpretation is typical of Reformed, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist churches. some other groups as well, but those are some main denominational groups that take some degree of allegorical interpretation. Now here's the interesting part.

Once you decide to allegorize, how do you determine what you're going to interpret allegorically and what you're going to interpret literally? How do you determine that? That's right. The bottom line is you could decide differently because there is no control over where you decide this is allegorical and this is literal. Plus, once you decide to allegorize, what is the allegorized meaning? And what control is there over that?

There isn't. So a lot of it is by tradition. We have always allegorized this way. We have always allegorized this part. And so tradition takes over. I have in electronic format a commentary by a Coptic Orthodox author on the book of Revelation. Extensive commentary. It's fascinating to read it, but it's a little hard for me to believe. Most of the cults will allegorize. The cults will allegorize. Why would the cults allegorize?

Yeah? It goes on emotion. That would be one reason. Why else? That's right. Yes, in other words, so what they will do, what they will do is they will, because you can allegorize and without any controls, you can make it say what you want it to say. Right? So, what's that? Because of how you feel. Because of how you feel, a lot of times it's an appeal to emotion, it's also an appeal to control. In other words, we control things by controlling the interpretation.

Right? I've got a Jehovah's Witness commentary on Revelation, and that's fascinating reading, if you like fiction. Here you have this slide, the setup for church interpretation. This goes back into older times, up to the New Testament time. The writing of the Old Testament from around 1400 BC to around 400, so about a thousand year period of time was the time of the writing of the Old Testament. Literal interpretation of that followed, and as a matter of fact, during the time when the Old Testament was being written, literal interpretation was the standard. The Greek myths, and Homer and other authors, began to be interpreted allegorically by authors, and we give Plato as one of the key names there for starting allegorical interpretation.

Now, Alexander the Great's empire, which we covered some time back, included a city called Alexandria. And there were more than a half dozen Alexandrias, but this is the one whose name stuck. Alexandria in northern Egypt. And we bring that up because that is a place where allegorical interpretation started in the church. Alexandria was the home of Philo. Philo was a Jewish scholar who took the Greek allegorical interpretation and interpreted the Old Testament allegorically.

So here's Alexander the Great. He established this colony. A lot of Greek-speaking Jews were located there. And the New Testament was, of course, as we covered previously, translated into Greek. And Philo was a Jew living in that Jewish colony, 20 BC to 54 AD.

And that meant that he was a contemporary of Christ. He was probably a teenager when Christ was born. And when Joseph and Mary took Jesus as an infant down into Egypt, he was there. And so in terms of timing, that gives you a sense of where he was. He began taking that allegorical interpretation that had been for some centuries by his time, used with the Greek myths, and applied it to the Old Testament.

Here he explains Genesis 2.24 which is, you know, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

Now you might find this entertaining. Philo wrote, on account of the external sensation, the mind, when it has become enslaved to it shall leave both its father, the God of the universe, and the mother of all things, namely the virtue and wisdom. Are you impressed? So the two become one flesh and one passion. So anyway, that's allegorical interpretation for you.

So as we step into the New Testament era, so Jesus called his disciples, was crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended, and then Philo was still alive writing these interesting interpretations. The church began on the day of Pentecost and spread from Jerusalem, then Judea, Samaria, and then to the surrounding areas in the Roman Empire. And the apostles in the very early church interpreted scripture literally as the Jews in Israel interpreted the Old Testament for the most part, especially the Pharisees. Now let's ask this question. The prophecies in the Old Testament about Christ's first coming, were they fulfilled literally?

Yes. A virgin shall bear a son. Did a virgin bear a son? Yes. Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem, right? And remember the wise men come to Jerusalem and Herod calls together the Jewish scholars and, you know, where's the Messiah to be born? A look at Micah 5.2, he's going to be born in Bethlehem. Literally, yes. You keep mentioning Bethlehem, it's something that some of us might not have been familiar with, but there are other cities in Palestine from that time that were also called Bethlehem. Oh yeah, including one right next to Nazareth. But the prophecy did zero in on that. The prophecy spells out which one. Literally.

Okay, now stepping into the times right after the New Testament, most of the church believed in a literal 1,000 year reign of the Messiah at his second coming. These were called Kiliasts. And even Justin Martyr, who was born in year 100, said anyone who didn't believe in a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ was a heretic. Also said that the church had replaced Israel.

So allegorical interpretation had begun, right? Slipping in already. Now, here, this is kind of a picture of trends, and you have this on your handout. The Jewish use of Philo's allegorical method declined. It didn't catch on. But during that time, Christian use of Philo's allegorical method climbed, increased. Isn't that interesting? So the Jews rejected the allegorical method. The Christians embraced it, unfortunately.

And the center of that embracing was Alexandria. Okay, here's some different kind of schools of thought. The school of Alexandria was the one with Clement and Origen were kind of the founding names that embraced the allegorical interpretation. In North Africa, under Tertullian, there was more of a Latin and logical viewpoint on things. And in Asia Minor, around Ephesus, there continued to be more of a literal approach to scripture. So interesting, the church varied in its approach to scripture depending on what region you were in. Over time, the allegorical approach overwhelmed the other approaches.

Clement of Alexandria made this error. He said that the law from the Hebrews was the schoolmaster to Christianity, which is problematic, but nonetheless at least somewhat biblical, but he also said the Greek philosophy was inspired. And he put them together. The combination of scripture and Greek philosophy was what ended up polluting the approach to scripture and interpretation.

And because the Greek philosophers approach Scripture allegorically, or at least approach their myths allegorically, that's how he was inclined to approach Scripture. So here is Origen. Origen was the disciple of Clement. and he taught him this allegorical interpretation. Origen extended that allegorical interpretation, propounded it well. He was apparently a good speaker and a good student, establishing it increasingly in church as the valid approach to scripture. Origen questioned the authenticity of the Book of Revelation and interpreted it allegorically. Surprise, surprise. Here's an example.

Origen would interpret Matthew 24-30 where Christ describes himself as coming through the clouds at his second coming to establish his kingdom. So there's the literal understanding of it as we would see it. Instead, Origen said this passage referred to the coming of Christ into the souls of those of the open-hearted when they accepted the truths of scripture. So Christ isn't coming again except into the hearts of people.

No, I think that tends probably to come more from the Revelation passage, you know, behold I stand at the door and knock. Likely that that's the front end to that. In other words, there is some truth to Christ coming into your heart, right? But that's not what this passage means.

He said that the verses on the second coming of Christ referred to the mature believer seeing Christ in the hidden allegorical meanings in scripture. So the tribulation period judgments described in Revelation 6-19 were not literal events yet to take place, but a description of the struggles a person must come through on the way to union with Christ. Okay? Oh boy. Matthew 2440, where there are two men laboring in the field, one taken and one left, represents the good and bad influences on a person's will. Yeah, stories.

Any passage not allegorized was still immature and not yet spiritual. Our approach to scripture is literal here at Holly Hills. He would say that is spiritually immature. In order to make it mature you have to allegorize it. So we're stuck in spiritual immaturity so far as he's concerned.

All right, now, 312 to 590, the next period of time, John Cassian, who taught the fourfold sense of scripture, said that the fourfold sense has meanings as follows. So scripture has four meanings, and only the first one of those four meanings is literal, and you've got to allegorize three different ways in order to get the full, rich meaning of scripture. So historical, literal meaning, allegorical, figurative meaning, tropological, the moral meaning, and then the anagogical, heavenly, or secret meaning.

Wow. Okay, we'll give examples so that these won't be quite so puzzling. So the letter teaches the events, history, what you believe is by allegory, and the moral is what you do, tropological, and where you are headed is by analogy. Okay, we're not done yet.

Here's Augustine, and you'll also hear that pronounced Augustin, but Augustine. A very influential church leader in his day adopted a generally literal approach to most of scripture except those portions that were prophetic. Prophetic portions of scripture were typically taken as allegorical by Augustine. He authored the City of God in which he took Jerusalem to represent the church.

Given the church's growing status in the Roman Empire and the allegorical interpretation of prophecy, there was no basis for expecting Christ's literal imminent return. He's not coming back because we've allegorized his coming. Back. The kingdom of the church was already established on earth. What do we need Christ to come back for because we've already got the kingdom? The Roman Empire has already embraced Christianity. We've got the kingdom here now. And Christ's kingdom has come. So we don't need Jesus to come back. That was the approach.

Here is a fourfold sense of Jerusalem, and this will give you a little more idea what that fourfold sense is. The historical meaning, the literal city of the Jews, Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem. The next one, allegorical, is the Church of Christ. That's the allegorical interpretation of Jerusalem. That's the Church. The next one is the topological, the human soul.

And then the next one, the anagogical, the heavenly city. So you've got all four interpretations, and to get the full, rich, mature meaning it was taught, you have to have all four. And if you stay in the literal, then you have an immature understanding. You're just not spiritual. Okay? Wow. The problem with allegorical interpretation is there's no way to control or check the interpretation. Whatever you say it is, I guess that's what it is. And at best what would happen is you would have a tradition. We, as a tradition, allegorize it this way.

The last bastions of early interpretation from the apostolic and early church, the churches in Syria and Asia Minor, around Ephesus, were the last ones to hold a literal interpretation of Scripture, but eventually even those were overwhelmed by the pagan method of allegorical interpretation.

These were absorbed into the Orthodox churches, which ultimately were uniformly allegorical in their interpretation of Scripture. And ultimately, too, the Orthodox churches have moved from scripture, in great part, to icons. They meditate on their icons. So they've gone beyond their interpretive approach to, you know, yeah, essentially, here are my icons and I meditate on the icons.

And that's, you know, here's this saint and that apostle and meditate on them. I see quite a bit of that in the Methodist Church. In the Methodist Church? Yeah. Well, and it's possible to drift because once you've left the literal understanding of Scripture, what's to control where you drift? Right? Yeah.

By the time of Gregory the Great, and that's why we have this 590 as the end of that time period and the start of the next, the Latin Vulgate was declared the inspired Bible around the year 600. by Gregory the Great, who in my opinion wasn't all that great, but anyway.

The fourfold sense was established as the standard interpretive approach in the church. If you really want some spiritual maturity, you've got to allegorize three different ways. The organized church was increasingly made the channel of God's grace being God's kingdom and authority on the earth. The Pope goes and sets the various kings and rulers in place. The Pope's got to ordain them as political and military leaders. Scripture was supplemented by church tradition and authority. We have our traditions, and those are essentially new bases of authority. There were still islands of literal interpretation, which is why on that colored chart in the back there you start seeing some dashes.

Nicholas of Lyra, this is 1279-1330, studied the Hebrew Old Testament over the Vulgate, but he didn't know Greek. So he studied the Hebrew, but not the Greek. And then there was St. Victor Abbey, we have several different ones there, studied the scripture literally, holding the interpretation over tradition. They were, however, mystics. That is, their approach to God bypassed the scripture.

And we have that being taught today. Contemplative spirituality or contemplative Christianity, spiritual formation, those terms are some of the terms being used. Yes? One of those would be like Thomas Burke's seven-story mountain business. Yeah, there are a number of modern names, but actually Dallas Theological Seminary has embraced that. Denver Seminary has embraced that contemplative spirituality.

It bypasses scripture. So how you interpret scripture literally or allegorically almost doesn't matter, because your approach to God bypasses scripture anyway. The Orthodox Jews, notably Rashi, also maintain literal interpretation, insisting on studying Hebrew grammar and holding literal interpretation over tradition.

Let's ask this question. Why is it important that we approach God through scripture and not take a mystical approach where we just approach God directly and push the scripture aside? Facts and truth. Yes, facts and truth. Let's ask this question. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them in your word, right? So how's the sanctification going to go on? By God's Word.

We teach on 2 Corinthians 3.18. We behold the Lord through His Word and are thereby transformed. God has a spiritual process in place using His Word. And that's what He intended. Yes? I think when Jesus said, I am the truth, the way, and the life, He pretty well summed it up and said that He was the last prophet the way and the truth and eternal life. And it's recorded for us, correct? Yeah.

Okay, let's look at the next period, 1517 to 1648. This is, 1517 is Martin Luther's declaration by posting his theses on the door to Wittenberg in 1648 is the Treaty of Westphalia, the end of the Thirty Years War in Europe. So factors leading to the Reformation approach to scripture was the printing press about 1455. What's interesting is we don't have a specific date on that.

But about 1455, printed Greek and Hebrew scripture texts, lexicons, grammars, and ancient documents. We could now have easier ways to study Hebrew and Greek and for everybody to be able to study it. Growing interest in ancient languages and learning them. The ability of people to study the original words of the Old and New Testaments. in reaction to moral and intellectual decline in the Roman Catholic Church and its counter-reaction to those calls for reformation.

The Protestant reformers still did allegorical interpretation when it came to prophetic passages, but their inclination otherwise was to interpret literally. So, for example, in the Gospels what's recorded there would be taken as if this literally happened. There wasn't a call among those of the groups of Luther and Calvin. There wasn't a call for people to force an allegory onto the passage.

I just had a question. Yeah. All of a sudden popped in my head and I don't know why. We have friends who are Scientologists. Yes. So how do they interpret Scripture? How does science? Well, Scientology would not look upon Scripture as being particularly important or relevant. See, whereas you'll have various Christian groups who will take a literal or allegorical approach to Scripture, and there are variations in that, with Scientology, Scripture is not an authority. So it's the science that's the authority. Well, actually it's not science either. That's their name. They've invented their own system and they don't take scripture as an authority.

Yes? It's interesting because Scientology, like all the calls, they give you what you want and then they tell you how to get there. Yes. exactly like they say, like Jehovah Witnesses and garments and everybody else, you can get there. You achieve that end. See, one of the things that happens with any of the cults, if they take the Bible as some basis of authority, any of the cults, a key aspect of how they operate is control. You are going to understand this the way we tell you that this means. So we interpret this this way and that's what you're going to do. So a key element is control.

And so their interpretive approach, especially with allegory, they can control the interpretation and how it's allegorized, right? Since there is no innate control over the interpretation. So yeah, control is a key aspect. and allegorical interpretation is a key tool of the cults. Do Scientologists even use the Bible? Scientology is not a Christian cult. It doesn't fall under Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Seventh-day Adventist, etc. fact that they added to the law.

In a sense, they were kind of doing the same thing with people because they were going into their minds and forcing them if they didn't follow these specific procedures. You know, here's the amazing thing. Jesus goes in and criticizes openly the Pharisees and the Sadducees for what they did by adding to the law and coming up with extra traditions and all that. So what do people in the church do? They come up and add their own traditions and try to enforce that on people. Amazing.

Okay, here's the issues of the Reformation. What was new here was the basis of authority. Scripture, sola scriptura, would be one of the battle cries, if you will, of the Reformation. The basis of salvation is faith, not the church. And personal Bible study and interpretation. I'm going to learn, I'm going to read the Bible, I'm going to interpret it myself, I'm not going to rely on somebody else to interpret it for me.

So these were key things that were breakthrough, and in truth those things we follow and agree with. However, what was unchanged is they politically and militarily aligned themselves with various political and military leaders. And so both Luther and Calvin did that. They did it in different ways, but they both did that. There was an alignment for each of them with political and military leaders. And then there was allegorical interpretation of much of scripture and with the idea that Israel has now been replaced by the church. Those kinds of things remain from Catholicism.

So one way to summarize it is whatever they didn't declare differently, they retained from the Roman Catholic Church. Now the Reformation took place against the Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox churches never had a Reformation. They never had a Reformation. So they stayed along their own path.

There are some quotes from Martin Luther here. I think they're good. Martin Luther also said some things that were horrible. We won't go into the detail, but the bottom line is he talks about his approach to scripture and his connection to the original languages.

Next, Europe roiled, America a haven. So here's Europe and boy, it's boiling and roiling and lots of political turmoil and battling between different groups. In America, that was where people escaped to. So far as I've traced, I've got two different parts of my family lineage from that. Got one ancestor that came from Huguenot background in France. The Huguenots were the French Calvinists and they were persecuted by the French government, which was Catholic. And then on another part, Let's see, Robert Jennison. Jennison is my mother's maiden name. Robert Jennison was a vicar at Colchester, England. And he said, you know what? I don't believe this stuff anymore.

And so he went to Holland, as a number of them did, and then left there to come to settle in Waterton, Massachusetts, where there was some freedom. But anyway, that pattern just made America because you had people coming here largely for religious freedom and away from the turmoil that was Europe. There was a shift here. There was an increasing tendency in some circles to interpret scripture literally, carrying the initial move of the reformers in this direction to its logical conclusion. The practical ability and growing freedom to publish studies and commentaries led to a profusion of both of those in Europe and America. The freedom to be able to do personal Bible study and then publish those commentaries and notes and conclusions. Now you have 1648 from the Treaty of Westphalia, the end of the Thirty Years War to the present.

I have here highlighted five different groups. You have the skeptic group, which I have symbolized here as Voltaire, Marx, who by the way was raised in a Christian home, and Madeleine Murray O'Hare would be examples of the skeptical. Who are some modern skeptics still alive and around? Richard Dawkins might be one, you know.

No need to use allegory as the God of Scripture either does not exist, cannot be known, or is not the real God. So you've got that viewpoint. The liberal Schleiermacher and Barth, it's pronounced Barth by the way, Spirituality lies in emotions and validating experiences, so literal interpretation is not essential, since scripture may not be historically true, but only spiritually true. So this is the liberal viewpoint.

And by the way, you mentioned the Methodists. They've largely gone to this. The cultic. You've got the Shakers back in the 1700s dying out because they were celibate. And then Mormonism went the other direction, right? Not celibate, but you have lots of wives, lots of kids.

And then the Jehovah's Witnesses, we could add other groups, Christadelphians and Seventh-day Adventists and all the other different cult groups. Allegorical interpretations allow the Bible to be made to apply specifically to the cult group to mean what the cult says it means, an instrument of control.

Since I went through the latter part of school alongside Jim Jones and followers of Jim Jones, I know it's control all the way to the Kool-Aid. Then they reformed. We got different ones, of course, over time. R.C. Sproul is one who's around now, kind of a larger name. in the reform camp.

Prophetic passages and those referring to Israel are interpreted allegorically so that aspect of Roman Catholic allegorical interpretation is retained. And this was one of the patterns of the Reformation that whatever was not rejected was retained. So we keep embracing the allegorical approach of the Roman Catholic Church. and the reform camp has done that. Dispensational. Interprets scripture literally so that Israel is Israel and the church is the church. Allegories are allegories when they are clearly allegories.

For example, Paul makes an allegory and he calls it an allegory in Galatians 4.21-31. That's specifically an allegory. We know it's an allegory. He says it's an allegory. So we'll interpret it. Guess how? Allegorically, right? And that's what he does. He explains the allegorical meaning.

So we have those five approaches that we quickly outlined here. In the big picture, this color printout that you have is a good way to get the larger picture of how this went. And we continue to, here at Holly Hills, look at things literally. We understand that there are figures of speech. We don't set aside that there are figures of speech. As a matter of fact, a great many of them. A great many of them.

We also understand that occasionally there are allegories, as we pointed out in Galatians chapter 4, verse 21 through 31. There are allegories as well. But we only do allegorical interpretation when it's clearly an allegory, and we understand it that way. But there are a great many groups, and they vary as to how they carry it out, a great many groups both within, I'll call it mainline Christianity as well as the cults, who use allegorical interpretation in varying degrees and in varying ways.

And so that pattern is there. You also have non-Christian cult groups like Scientology where they don't really care what the Bible says because they're not using that as their basis of authority. They don't even try to claim an approach to scripture as being essential.

Questions? Comments? What about C.S. Lewis? I'm reading The Great Divorce. Yes. What do you think about C.S. Lewis? Well, C.S. Lewis, he wrote things that were allegories, right? The Narnia stories are allegories. And I think the thing is, can an allegory be useful? Sure. I mean, I've read through the Narnia stories, you know, several times. Very enjoyable. However, is it a basis of authority? Yeah, and I think what you have to do is point by point, you have to look at it and say, does this represent Scripture? I think with C.S. Lewis there are a couple points that have me scratching my head.

In the very first one, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, remember there's a deal made where Aslan gets killed in order to satisfy this demand of the White Witch. Well, the reality is was Christ killed to make a deal with Satan? No. How did Satan come out when Christ died on the cross? Did he come out, you know, hey, I won? No. As a matter of fact, Hebrews tells us that Satan was put offline in terms of his power by the cross. So there was no deal made. And Christ was not crucified to satisfy Satan. So his allegory does not well represent what scripture says.

Another thing that's a little puzzling is, you know, he would write, you know, once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia, and then he had, you know, one of them not make it in the end. So there are things like that that you've got to look at and kind of point by point and say, wait a minute, something doesn't quite square up here. Enjoy them. You read them. That's fine. But in the end, everything has to be measured by scripture and compared to scripture as the standard. You're talking about the Matthew 13 parables.

A good deal of even dispensational teachers will teach that there is a mystery form of the kingdom right now. I don't believe that's the case, and as a matter of fact when we taught through it, you know, taught that, no, these were relating to the kingdom, but not some mystery form. Several reasons for that. One is it doesn't say mystery form. It uses the word mystery, which is a truth revealed that previously was not revealed. It doesn't say mystery form. So I would say there is no mystery form of the kingdom present now. But, of course, others who would disagree. Yeah.

I was wondering if that could be like, you know, truth and error, the fact that people live out truth and error. And so, you know, in that parable, it says, no, don't pull it out because you have to wait till the harvest, because if you pull it out, you're going to pull out the truth along with the error. And so as we see this, what we're studying, all these different Lots of error. Yeah, lots of error. I think one of the things that you'll see is of things like the wheat and the tares, the soils, remember the four different kinds of soils, while those are not intended to apply directly to us in the church, there are aspects of them that in fact do compare. And we have lots of truth right alongside error. We do have people with different kinds of receptivity to the gospel.

So while Jesus gave it to literally talk about the kingdom, and that's what the context indicates, there are points of comparison, and that's where I think people get confused easily, is the points of comparison are there, and you can see that. It doesn't mean it's talking about the church. So it can be truth and allegory. even if you, you know, you're supposed to read it literally as relating to the kingdom, etc. But, allegorically, it does show that, you know, like you said, truth and error, kind of like C.S. Lewis, there's truth there also. But the problem is, when you read outside material, instead of reading scripture, And it's really hard to separate the two because you don't have the authority. Like when they talked about Jesus' teaching, they said, He taught with authority.

Whereas the Pharisees like to teach and leave you with this quandary. They like to have things in this, well is it this or this? And they just leave you there. And it even came to the point where even the marriage and divorce court, they had two different courts because they couldn't resolve the difference. The Pharisees would make those kinds of ending statements where they left you with this tension. Is it this or this? Might be this, might be that. So you end up with this tension with the Pharisees teaching and Jesus says, no, it's this. And he would just nail it right on.

He would even say, if you're going to get into the kingdom, you have to have righteousness greater than the Pharisees. Which of course shocked people, because it's like, man, how am I ever going to get there? By the way, why would Jesus say you have to have righteousness greater than the Pharisees? Why was their righteousness not righteousness? Righteousness through work, not faith.

That's part one, and you're correct. What else? Well, I think the thing is, it's certainly not gracious, nothing even close to being gracious, but it was their own traditions that were added to, and adding to God's Word is not something Jesus was going to allow. Not one jot or tittle is to be changed, right? Yes.

And one last vital thing, Christ in a person's life. Being able to let the Scriptures speak for themselves as you study them. The Pharisees saw themselves as the standard of righteousness. Jesus is the standard of righteousness. And so rejecting Christ, there was no way that they could be the standard of righteousness. they needed to embrace Christ, which they in great part did not.

Yes. And I think the point that Jesus hammered over and over and over and over again was the fact that they boasted about the fact that they achieved all these great works, and so that they were going to be saved because of that. Yes. That's like saying, I am Abraham, so I'm going to be saved regardless of what I do. Yeah.

And when it came to the law, they said, I've done I've done it all, yes. So Jesus turned around and said, well then give all your money to the poor. It's like, okay, I'm not going to do that. But I did all these other things. What a captivation. I did it my way. Wouldn't that have been scary to walk up to Jesus and actually try to... Well, it never worked, did it? They gave up. And they finally said, well, we're going to have to crucify Him. Nothing else works.

Right? Hallelujah. Let's pray. Lord, we do give You thanks. You have indeed laid out the truth. And just as we look at the plain interpretation, the plain sense of Scripture, You've laid out the truth and the Gospel plainly. And Lord, we pray As we continue to look at your word, we pray for clarity, we pray for understanding, and we're thankful that since you are the infinite God of Scripture, that you have inspired your word, which is also infinitely deep. And we just thank you for that. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.