Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for your blessings. Thank you for the unique blessings of fall. Father, help us to remember always that you are very gracious to us. Father, I thank you that we can look back at our lives and see that you've met our needs. Father, I pray that you'd help us as we talk about Bible study, talk about the privilege of studying your word. Help us to do so with seriousness, but also with zeal and with excitement and delight in the opportunity. Help us to edify one another, Father. Help us to encourage each other as family. We'll praise you for what you do in our lives. We pray this in your son's name. Amen. All right, so as I said last week, we're taking a real slow ramp up here to a series we're going to kind of begin. I guess you could call it a series, but in something of a quantifiable block of time, be it several years, we're going to attempt to touch every portion of the scripture in sort of a survey format. And so I think it would be helpful for us just to take that slow here and talk about some things that are very important for that endeavor, right? So just to hammer this home and to keep it at the forefront of our minds, we believe the scriptures are inspired, which means they're infallible. Inspiration presumes infallibility, 100% right. Inerrancy, 100% error-free. and authority. It's 100% binding on our lives. So we don't want to touch any of those concepts. We want to leave those all at 100%. Because the argument could be made that if you touch any one of the percentages, it's going to impact the other percentages. That would be our argument. All right, so understanding what the scripture is, and I could underline in bold and italicize the word is, understanding what the scripture is is important for understanding what it says, right? And let us never assume that we understand what it is until we've really thought hard together about it, right? What is the scripture? What are the scriptures? What is the scripture? We talked about the fact that it may be useful to use the non-metaphoric term. You all know what a metaphor is, right? A metaphor is saying that one thing is something else to help us understand what that thing is, right? So, to use a way far out there example, just because it came to my mind, if Jerome Bettis is called the fridge, he's not actually a fridge, but what is that? Who knows who Jerome Bettis is? Nobody? He's a Pittsburgh Steeler running back, right? OK. All right, so he's a big running back, right? So if we call a running back the fridge. Oh, was it? All right, all right. I wasn't born yet. All right, the bus. All right, so if Jerome Bettis is called the bus, what are we doing? We're calling him something that he obviously is not to help describe some attribute about him, right? So, but when we're talking about the scriptures, it may be useful and actually quite helpful and maybe quite, maybe necessary that we stay away from overly metaphoric terms and we refer to the scriptures as revelation. Because they describe, to describe the purpose of the scriptures, the scriptures reveal God. Specifically, if we want to drill down to what they reveal about God, they reveal God's glory, his plan, his desires, his thoughts, his expectations, his involvement, his attributes, his goodness, his greatness. They reveal things about God. And the scriptures also comprise a variety of literature types. So last week we talked about the idea of, well, we kind of rehearsed again the different metaphoric terms that we could use, you know, be it the scriptures, a story, or love letters from God, or a guidebook, or a manual, or a road map, things like that. And then I threw in one of my own, the idea of a buffet of words from God, right? The idea is that sometimes when we look at the various types of literature within the scriptures, we say, boy, Narrative, poetry, proverb, prophecy, gospels, it's kind of like barbecue ribs and, you know, cheap fillets of fish and slabs of roast beef all on the same plate. You know, they just don't go together. It's just kind of a hodgepodge, right? So that's why metaphoric terms might not be good for describing the scriptures, and instead we say, you know, God has used a variety of literature types to reveal himself. So God's glory, His plan, His desires, His thoughts, His expectations, His involvement, all of these things are revealed to us quite effectively, as effectively as it is possible, are revealed to us through a variety of literature types that make up the Scriptures. And then we went into last week talking about how we approach these different literature types We approach interpretation of them differently. We kind of left off here with the Gospels. We asked the question, why are there four Gospels? Anybody had a chance to think on that any further? Why are there four Gospels? Or anybody try to describe what our conclusion was about that? Each one presents Christ in a different way. OK. Right? Yep. So maybe implicit in that reality is that we need a multi-dimensional understanding of Jesus, right? Could be. It's also a blend of your genealogies. Blend of genealogies? Yep. Any other thoughts on that? Why there are four Gospels? We get sort of a multifaceted picture of who Jesus was, is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yep. Good, good. Other thoughts? And I think maybe the Gospels are more loaded with theology than we sometimes ever give them credit, right? They have big theological concepts that they are intending to convey to us that we maybe don't realize if we read them simply for their story value, right? So, any other thoughts on that? Okay, and then letters or epistles. What are some interpretive things we bring to, some interpretive principles that we bring to the epistles? When we read the epistles, how do you read an epistle? What are some assumptions that you bring to a letter, an epistle when you read it? Yeah, yeah? individuals in one area, but there's still principles that can apply broadly. Yeah. Good. Excellent. So oftentimes there's quite a focused purpose for that letter, and then we've got to kind of extract the theology from that situation that's being addressed. Yeah. Grant. And again, it's written through the church, as Wayne said, which I think we have to be careful sometimes. I don't think that's any more important than the rest of scripture to the church. But there's a point to the issue of the problems within the church. And even when we studied last night in the book, when the author is writing, We're not above the problems experienced by the early churches. No matter how egregious they might be. Other thoughts? What do you bring to an epistle? By which In your mind, if you read it that way, you know that you're reading it correctly. What assumptions do you bring to an epistle when you read it? Anything else? Yeah. It might be a little more personal than some of the other. Poetry is pretty well cast out. Sure, sure. There's a heart-to-heart impulse in the letter. Yeah, yeah. A relationship that we might want to understand in order to interpret it correctly. Yeah, Doug, yeah. I was going to say relationship, but with that relationship, that tends to be a struggle. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Good. Good. Any other types of literature, maybe? Or can we break any of these down a little bit further? Any other types of literature that we aren't, maybe, we're failing to include here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People have commented on, for one, we don't know who wrote it. We have speculation. But yeah, people commented on how much of a sermon it seems to be. It just proceeds like we might envision a sermon proceeding. Yeah, yeah. Anything else? Yeah, Karen. Yeah. Yeah, right. So not maybe quite like a gospel. Definitely historical, but maybe kind of its own thing. But then you've got the Luke-Axe pair. So we're aware, there's just different kinds of literature, right? And then when you look at, you know, if we start sliding books of the Bible into these different categories, well, all those books of the Bible are different, right? They have their unique things. So God's glory, His plan, His desires, His thoughts, His expectations, His involvement, His goodness, His greatness, His character, His attributes, all these things are revealed to us. I would add, by design, through a variety of literature types that make up the scripture. So, how do we interpret the various types of biblical literature correctly? And that question is the question of hermeneutics. Now, how many have heard this term, hermeneutics, right? It comes from the Greek word hermeneuo, which means to interpret. So hermeneutics equals, There's another word for guiding principles of interpretation. So we could say that our hermeneutic refers collectively to the group of interpretive principles, be they three or five or ten or whatever. you know, however number of interpretive principles that we have, if we actually sat down to count them. It refers collectively to this group of interpretive principles that we use as we study the Bible in an effort to understand it correctly. So if I ask you, what is your hermeneutic? What I'm asking is, what are principles that you follow to make sure that you understand the scriptures correctly? your child or your grandchild walks up to you and says, what apps did Paul have on his iPad? That is kind of a silly, we would call it an anachronism. It's a failure to recognize that today is much different than it was in Paul's day. All of us get that, right? So that is one of our hermeneutical principles. There's a time difference and that is going to influence the way we understand the scriptures, is noting appropriately that time difference. Now that's kind of a far out there example, but our hermeneutic involves, among other things, three interpretive principles. So we're going to talk about our hermeneutic. I trust it's yours as well. It's certainly free to challenge us on any of these, but I think that these are broad enough and these are good things for us to talk about their place and their role in our interpretation. So, historical and grammatical context. An understanding of historical and grammatical context. Number two would be authorial intent. And number three would be something called the analogy of faith. So we're going to talk about these three, historical and grammatical context. Now, I think when we were talking about narrative, I recall last week that somebody mentioned, maybe a couple of you mentioned, how important when we're understanding a narrative, when we're reading a narrative and we want to understand the theology and the point of that narrative, it is so very important to understand the context, right? I had a teacher once who said, context is king. And that's probably been borrowed from other other realms as well, but context is so important. But if we get a little bit more specific here and we say that there's kind of two big pieces of that, we say historical and grammatical, let's kind of talk about what that means. What is historical grammatical context? Understanding the scriptures in their historical and grammatical context. What comes to your mind when you start talking about that? Grant? Time and place, language. Yeah? Absolutely. What else? Yeah? Well, one example here is that when you study Paul and his instructions to how we are supposed to respond to government, It's so easy to say, yeah, he didn't know how bad our government was. Yes, he did. And he was living in the mirror. Sure. And so we have to understand that, yes, he was writing in particular historical times. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Student is asking a question. Yeah, yeah, so understanding the scriptures in their historical grammatical context is understanding that cultural and social and economic and governmental and things of the day are important, I'm fishing for words here, important contextual features of that particular, go ahead, yeah. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. And part of understanding the historical grammatical context is knowing how to pull the timelessness out of those narratives or parables or stories or epistles and then knowing how to contextualize them appropriately in our current context, right? Yep. So understanding the historical grammatical context is important so we know how to separate, not separate, but extract, if you will, the truth intact, and then apply it to our circumstances. Yep. Excellent. Pastor? Can I give my favorite illustration of this? Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah. God says, I know you're worse, you're neither cold nor hot. Wouldn't you worry if you're cold or hot? So because you are a lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth. I grew up with all kinds of preaching that would say, God would rather you were a crazy sinner. He would spit you out of his mouth, all of this, and he would ready your cold hearted, swollen fire. It's between his mouth and throat. Then you study, even today, you can go to Turkey and you can see where the Odyssey was, downhill down the mountain from Hierapolis, which to this day has left springs. And they're beautiful. It looks like there's no gap, but it's all this hotness. The hot springs would come down and go from that. Colossae was at the Gulf of Armenia as well, and they were known for cold springs. And it's a cool, refreshing place. Plus, we did it on Paul's day and John's day. You go to Hierapolis for therapy, for medicinal treatment of all kinds of ailments. And Colossi was famous for its cold springs. And to this day, there's ruins of the aqueducts where the water's blended together, the springs, and the aqueducts are still in Hierapolis. And you can have really warm water. So it wasn't cold for refreshment. It wasn't hot for therapy. Sure. So that really changes all of a sudden, where it's like God is saying, he's not saying you're in the middle, he's saying you are absolutely wicked and worthless. Because if he keeps on reading, he says, for you say I am rich, I have prospered, I have nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. And so he is saying these are wicked people. He's not saying they're in the middle struggling to live a godly life and failing. But that to me was one of the neatest historical, I was like, oh, that kind of changes how I think. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think of when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, too, for example, and we have to look at the concept of a love feast and say, what was going wrong there? What was really the issue? And because we don't celebrate the Lord's Supper, if you will, in the same way that they did maybe in Corinth, but the truths there are still so very important and so very applicable. Other thoughts? Tony, yeah. wisdom of the day, which was probably Aristotle's, that the world was flat. And to come out against that, in that context, made it that much more remarkable. I think that idea that a message is elevated by its historical circumstances is true in a number of situations. Yeah. I mean, we could go on and on about the importance of historical grammatical context. Yeah, no thought. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And being aware of the historical and grammatical context, and being aware of our own, I think will guard us against writing off things as antiquated and non-applicable. So, a phrase Pastor uses very often is, in antiquities, dot, dot, dot, and what's that all about? It's sort of a shorthand way of saying, Listen up. There's a difference between now and then, and that difference is helpful for us to understand this particular passage. We're well aware that there are differences, but sometimes it takes a bit of effort to understand those and tease all of those out and understand their impact on the particular passage. Authorial intent. What do we mean by authorial intent? Some of you have seen this. A hermeneutical principle, when you're reading the scriptures, it's important that you understand what was intended by the author. Now, not everybody would agree with this entirely. We'll talk about that a little bit. Tony Smiling has got an idea. What you meant by what you said? I think God knows what he meant. And we need to try our head-level best to get to the bottom of what he intended or the author, the human author. OK. So is it what? Here's where there is some disagreement, perhaps. Out there is, who's the author of the scriptures? God. God, right? But yet he used human authors to write. The hermeneutical principle, say that five times fast, the hermeneutical principle of authorial intent that I'm familiar with and I believe is very important is this idea that what the biblical authors wrote was their intent, the meaning that ended up here was here. There are some who would say that, yes, this is true, but what ended up here has an additional, maybe complimentary meaning that God saw all the way down through here, but was never up here. So the writers were writing things, and they had an intent for which they were writing. And this is especially true with, say, prophecy. They were writing of real events and real things. But God also had an ancillary purpose as well. And so there's, in a sense, either two meanings or a meaning and a complementary meaning. Any problems maybe with that idea? I mean, I think there's a problem with that idea, but what do you think is maybe the problem with that notion? Why is authorial intent so important? I think that's true. Tony, what do you think? It frames the conversation. If you don't have authorial intent, which you were just describing a second ago, it opens the scriptures up to a much broader array of interpretations, because we're not just reading what we see on the page. We are reading between the lines. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, potentially. Yeah. Yeah, Grant. I don't even understand all that. There's enough of that type of thing that we've heard over the ages, at least in my lifetime as a Christian, that it can seem awfully harmless sometimes to the person that hears that type of thing or hears his preacher or hears his thoughts. So if what is here in the Word was entirely contained up in here, Is this still inspired? Absolutely. God superintends the product, right? Yep, yep. So this is perfectly legit in our understanding of the scriptures as being 100% inspired, 100% infallible, 100% inerrant, 100% authoritative. So that's not in question here. What's in question is when we read the written word, is it okay to say, and hold very tightly to this interpretive question. What did Paul mean by this? I think that's got to be a question that we continually drive at. What did Paul mean when he wrote this? What was Paul's burden when he wrote this? When Isaiah spoke, what was he talking about? What was he intending to convey? So authorial intent, and that'll also just plain protect us from fanciful interpretations of scripture where you rip things out of context. Really, authorial intent is just almost a subset of the concept of historical grammatical context. We respect what Paul, We respect Paul, we respect the scriptures by asking what was the intent of the author in writing the passage at hand. Thoughts about this, questions about this. Really this is just a way of saying that one of our interpretive principles should be what did the biblical authors mean by what they wrote. with a lot of the different religious sects that have occurred, because this is just what they've done. They've taken the element of truth, of God's Word, and they've taken a piece of it, or they've taken something between the lines, and it's basically built their religion upon it. I've seen the pastor, a week or so ago, with the Springfield Any other thoughts? So the big question, what did the author mean by what he wrote? Good, good question. That'll protect us from a lot of darting off down side paths as we read the scriptures. Yeah. Read a response. Yeah. Yeah, and in the English world, when you look at old literature, there's a whole approach, if I'm right, correct me if I'm wrong, there's a whole approach to studying literature that's called reader response. That means it doesn't matter what the author meant by what he said, how does this affect me? And how many have heard biblical truth kind of sort of almost relayed in that sort of a way? I mean, it's there, it's out there. All right, and then the analogy of faith. The analogy of faith is kind of a longstanding doctrine that kind of came to prominence in the Reformation time, which basically is a way of saying that scripture explains scripture. So any one passage of scripture we open to, we read, we study, does not contradict the rest. And so when there are different possible interpretations for one particular passage of the scripture, We go to the rest of the scripture to maybe set up some fences and understand better how to arrive at a correct conclusion. So, we've got the whole scripture here, the whole Bible. We're gonna come up with Pacman, with, no, I have a pie graph here. We're gonna come up with Sort of a whole Bible understanding of truth. Okay, some big things, right? Kind of sort of dipping back into systematic theology a little bit here. Okay, so we read the whole Bible and we see, yeah, God has redeemed mankind by grace, through faith, and the finished cross work of Christ. And God is a God of love, and he's also a God of holiness and judgment. He's a God of justice and mercy, and He loves his children. He sanctifies his children. He's interested in his glory. We develop some big overarching themes like that, right? And then we study one verse and we try to slide it into our overall picture, our overall body of theology, our overall understanding of the big things of Scripture. And does it fit? Oh, I'm trying to illustrate that. That's maybe kind of a, be like jamming it in there, right? Okay, so we have two options. One, we can sort of pare this one down a little bit. Right, and narrow the possibility of interpreting this one verse here so that it fits within this, right? So the shape of our theology limits and constrains our interpretation of that one piece. Does that make sense? Another thing we can do is adjust the hole, right? Broaden this pie, if you will, so we can jam quite a large and obtuse piece there, right? Jam it in there, okay? Now, are we free to choose which one we wanna do? Can we broaden our overall, can we adjust the rest of our theology to fit this one verse in there? Sometimes I think it's sort of a combination of both. Generally, this should be our approach. this should be our default approach. We read a particular passage of scripture and it doesn't quite jive. We should study and meditate on that and search the rest of the scriptures until we can figure out maybe a specific limited meaning in which that supports overall rest of our theology. But sometimes our theology, our overall theology needs adjusted. Right? Because in reality, this is just made up of all the little pieces put together, right? Does that make sense? The analogy of faith is saying, you know, we can't just uphold a whole body of contradictory truths, right? They do go together. And when we read in our daily reading or weekly reading, reading together as a church family, we study a particular passage, we do relate it, we do interpret it with an awareness of the rest of scripture. And I would say that widening this body of belief to fit this, that leads probably more often than not, and in almost every case, that leads to some of the ancient heresies. Where you find one thing, one thing that you really, really like, and you do everything you need to up here to jam it in. Make sense? Questions on that or thoughts, comments? What do you think? Anybody get the analogy there? There's things that we do. We juggle, we sort, we rearrange so that we understand all of the biblical data in such a way that we understand it as a cohesive body material. Yeah? Well, dispensationalism, be it Darby or Schofield or any of the modern permutations of dispensationalism, hasn't settled it for everybody or people that we would say are within the fellowship of people who believe in the gospel of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. So I wouldn't put it on a par with Luther's, the just shall live by faith. And sola scriptura, authority, the locus of authority for the church is in the scriptures. And things like tradition only perhaps support that in a much subservient role, but the scriptures are the locus of authority. Yeah, so he'd be the first theistic evolutionist in the office of... I even hate that term, office. Office of Pope, right? Mr. Pope. Other thoughts on this, though? Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. So how developed is this is what you're saying, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how mature is this for you personally, right? Now, hopefully for any church, this should be a constant, mature formulation of doctrine, right? And so, you know, that speaks to the safety of being in a good, doctrinally sound church where a young believer is constantly conforming to this. Right? Always, again, going here to get there. Right? But realizing that this is constantly adjusting. Yeah. Great point. Great point. Doug. Yeah. really digging in so that we are, to the best of our knowledge, always trying to get really what is the message, whatever it's about. Because for the immature believer, or someone who can so easily be led, I think of the examples that you just talked about this morning, of all things, Jews, and I hope there's good weather for the weekend. And in fact, I think there might be a little bit more. So I turn on the TV and watch a little bit. What a shame. I think of the health and wealth messages that are so prevalent out there. A people can be tainted so easily by someone preaching just this little piece. If you really thought about a hundred million of those principles, you'd find out a way to do it. This is the global view. But a hundred million people don't have that ability to engage or someone who's involved in public service. Yeah. Yeah. Some people would say, you don't need this. You just need this. That's all you need. You just need that piece. I mean, forget fitting them together. Just take the piece. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very intrigued by Chris's question, and I wish I knew more of the answer, but I would reframe my first question. With dispensationalism, it's not a scripture that is changing the grid, it's using a new grid with its own vocabulary, slide by slide. and I dare to speak well beyond my ability to address my theology, but like the truth of Israel and the text of Proverbs, and then you ask yourself that this time that he's opening this 50th verse is better than this other time that he's opening it. And so to me, the thing with Richard Garvey was he was, for example, a whole new tide. Yep. Yeah. It's, it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And thankfully, I'm sure by the providence of God, that generally people in either dispensationalism or covenant theology have generally, thank goodness, embraced the gospel of grace by faith. But yeah, the difference between dispensationalism and covenant theology is the shape and the structure of the pie. Taking the same truths and understanding that they've got to fit together. It is important that we see continuity and congruity within the scriptures, scriptures between scriptures. That's good. That's good. So you've heard the term square peg in a round hole, right? Well, do you make the whole square or do you make the peg round? And that's oftentimes the battle, right? So, pastor will admit sometimes when we're working on a particular verse, you'll give a range of possible interpretations and we realize that those different interpretations may involve some carving of the carving out of the round hole and some whittling of the square peg and some sort of a you know, so that they fit, right? But hermeneutical principle, the fact that scripture explains scripture and no one's scripture contradicts any of the others. That's a struggle for us, but that's more our weakness than it is at all the weakness of the scriptures. Tony and then Grant. In fact, the reading study that I did showed me that traditional dispensationalists put the attitudes and discernment on the mound in the New Testament, but it was like the tail end of the law sections of the Old Testament. Whatever the last dispensation before grace was. but it was not considered in the discontinuation of race by most strict discontinuationists. And I just said, who would not accept that? And then found that there were many who did not. And this was an example where I still think they consider themselves discontinuationists. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excellent. Grant, real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would argue, though, that the pie changes, the more this becomes solidified and word-based, the pie changes are smaller and smaller with each change. They're tweaks. They're tiny, tiny modifications. Right? They're not big gaping, you know. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. And this should become very refined and very workable. All right.