But DV in there is, as all good Calvinists know, that's short for Deo Valente, which means God willing, the Lord has the right to interrupt our lives and change our schedule at any point. You'll notice the weeks that we will be in class and the weeks we won't. October 31st or October 10th, we won't meet here because the missions conference starts the next night. 31st, we won't meet here because we have something far better to do, and that's to celebrate being reformed. Reformation Day is October 31st, and so we'll have a huge party here that night. And then our last week will be December 12th. A couple of things just in terms of heads up, and so you'll know what we're doing in here. the at the bottom of that front page when it says what you'll need for this class if We I will be using a New King James. That's what our session is adopted as sort of the Woodruff Road Church Translation if you don't have one of those on the back table. Mr. Sloan. Is there a copy of the paperback New King James there? Do you hold one of those up? If you don't have a Bible or if you don't have a New King James and you need one, there are some of those. There are about 300 of those in the sanctuary. You're welcome to use one. If you need to buy one, go down the street, see Don Strickland at Crossway, and he'll probably give you a good deal on one. We will be doing a lot of study. And so one of the things that we'll be doing as we progress is there'll be time each week when we, I'll say, grab the two or three people next to you, study this passage and try to find these things out in the next 10 minutes or so. Some nights we will, some nights we won't. I hope you'll jump in and use that as an opportunity to get to know the people around you when we do. The thing I say at the bottom, hermeneutics is like algebra. We will be looking at basics, starting off with basic principles and building. And let me go ahead and tell you this in terms of where we will get. Because this is Greenville and people have had access to high-powered, high-level training, whether at Bob Jones or Greenville Seminary or some of the other places. What we'll be doing is not what I would call a seminary-level class. What we're going to be dealing with are issues that Children should do when I was homeschooling John a couple years ago, and he's probably 13 or 14 I taught him as a homeschool class the course that we're going to be doing and this has been guinea pig tested on children. So What we're going to be doing you know, this doesn't presume any knowledge of Greek Hebrew or Latin This just says you in an English Bible and we're going to try to understand how to interpret the scriptures. Well, I The third page on the handout you have are some basic tools. I'll be referring to these things as if everybody in here owns all of these things. And so if you don't, don't feel like I'm somehow sliding you. I'm just kind of going on something that I know is a faulty assumption, and that is that every Christian home should contain at least several of these things. If you don't, then you ought to start chipping away at it. Sandy just learned a long time ago what she always gives me for presents. She doesn't give me ties. She doesn't give me anything else. She gives me books. And for our first anniversary, she gave me a set of the works of Jonathan Edwards, and it just gets better every year. So that's a wife who really loves you. But these are the basics. The things on here are the things that you will need to do serious level Bible study on the back page. What will happen is this will just whet your appetite, I hope, for studying and understanding biblical interpretation. On here are about eight or nine books that all are excellent in terms of hermeneutics. The book that's listed at the top by R.C. Sproul called Knowing Scripture is the textbook that I used for John as a homeschool textbook when he was 13 or 14. It's understandable. It's basic. I think you can get it for eight or nine bucks. It's a great place to start. And he will deal with some of the same issues I do deal with, except far better. Some of the other books that are listed back here will answer some of the basic questions that get raised. For example, one of the things that we'll see as we study and learn to interpret, one of the particular things that you will see that becomes huge in biblical interpretation is the issue of how the biblical writers quote the Bible. especially when you come to the New Testament and you see how New Testament writers use the scripture. I'm going to be showing us a couple passages like that tonight. And one of the things that's worth studying some is to see how the New Testament writers view and use the Old Testament. Well, there are a couple of books on here that can give you a whole lot more in-depth treatment. That's the basics. The second page is where we're going to start tonight. I don't think we'll finish. But let's go ahead and dive in, and we will try to stop right on time, because we're trying to be good stewards of everyone's time tonight. If you have a Bible, look at Luke 24, and that's where we'll begin, answering the question, what is hermeneutics? Luke 24. Matt, how's our sound quality? We okay? OK, Luke 24, beginning with verse 13. Because the word, I hope that one of the things that has been a hallmark of Woodruff Road over the years is Woodruff Road has never settled for a dumbed down approach to things. And that's kind of the bane and the curse of the evangelical church today is minimalism or simplicity, getting more and getting dumber and dumber as the culture gets dumber and dumber. And I don't have any passion for that. And even when you will use certain terms, I've heard people before will come out and say, That preacher, he's way over my head, because he kept talking about justification. And my thought was, well then, learn what it means. Stop and explain it for one minute, and then you've educated folks, and then let's move on instead of saying, that's over my head. What we're gonna do is begin at the most basic place. The term hermeneutics is a biblical term. Now, actually, that's only half true. It's a Greek term, and it's a transliteration of a term, but I'm gonna show you what it is. Luke 24. contains where the term is used. And the reason why I want to show you Luke 24 is there is also a basic interpretive biblical principle here in Luke 24 about how to approach the scriptures. So starting the narrative in Luke 24 verse 13. Text says, Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was while they conversed and reasoned that Jesus himself drew near and went with them. You know what's happening. These are the men on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection and the appearances of Christ. Verse 16, But their eyes were restrained, so they did not know him. And he said to them, what kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem and have not known the things which have happened there in these days? Now think about the question that's asked in verse 18 that Cleopas asks. He's saying, How could somebody have been in Jerusalem these last few days and have not known something was going on? Think about what some of the events were in Jerusalem in the last few days. total darkness for several hours for one day. Remember what the Gospels tell us is that at the shaking of the tombs, there were people who came out of their graves and walked around for a little while. All kinds of odd phenomena had been happening in Jerusalem. And so Jesus comes up to them in verse 17 and says, What are you men talking about? Why are you sad? And Cleopas says, How could you have been in Jerusalem the last few days and not known what's going on here? So Jesus said to them, verse 19, What things? And they said to him, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who is a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him. but we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Yes, and certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us. When they didn't find his body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they didn't see. Then Jesus said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. " Now, before I show you the Word, let me show you one of the basic hermeneutical principles. According to verse 27, what is one of the things that we can say when we read the Old Testament? Just based on what the Lord Jesus Himself says about the Old Testament, what can we reasonably say whenever we open the text of the Old Testament We know we're on the right track if we're doing it. Any guesses? We see Christ there. Now, that's going to be one of our hermeneutical principles that we see, is we ought to be looking to say, how does this text speak of Christ? Now, what simplistically people have done is they said, so in every text, we ought to see Christ as Savior. One of the things that you've heard me enough to say is to know that when we talk about preaching Christ, it means more than just saying Jesus is Savior. It means saying Jesus is prophet and priest and king and creator and lawgiver and judge. and ruler and all of those things. And so instead of just simplistically saying, how's Christ pictured here as Savior? Well, that might be a text that speaks of the kingship of Christ or of the lawgiver status of Christ. But verse 27, What we have here is a hermeneutical principle, beginning at Moses and all the prophets. And that means, that's a standard way of speaking of the two divisions of the Old Testament, the law and the prophets, the Pentateuch and the rest of the Old Testament. What we have here is Jesus gives them an Old Testament survey and shows how all these texts point to Christ. Now, when I've had before, when I've been interviewed in settings and people say, what was the most fascinating person you ever met? Or what event would you like to see? I've always said, I would have liked to have been there in those few miles walk on Luke 24, 27. Because if you could put me in a place where I could see an event or hear something, I would want to hear Christ preach Himself from the Old Testament. I would want to hear Him explain from Moses to Malachi how He fits in everywhere. Because one of my struggles as an interpreter is oftentimes I'll come to a lengthy narrative and I'll say, I don't see how Christ is here. I would have loved to have been walking on the road on that day. and heard from the Lord Jesus' lips, the proper explanation of Scripture. Well, the key word for us is in verse 27, when the text says, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them, or some translations have, he explained to them. That word that's translated in English either explained or expounded is the Greek word Did that look familiar? If you kind of say it real fast, you can see where we get our word hermeneutics from. Hermeneutics means to explain or expound or interpret. And so all that the term hermeneutics is, is the science and art of explaining, interpreting the scriptures. Our strategy is to do that. Now, let me show you another quick principle that shows the same thing in action, by the way, because I'm going to hold us to this Luke 24 principle. Look at Acts chapter 8 also before we dive into some history. Acts chapter 8. Acts 8 verse 26. You know the context that the gospel is spreading out from Jerusalem and the Lord is moving the apostles to take the gospel out from Jerusalem. Acts 8 verse 26. Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying arise and go towards the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is desert. So he arose and went. Now that's important to know. Because, in fact, when I teach my intro class and I teach on baptism, I make people stop and look because one of the greatest proofs for sprinkling as a mode of baptism is found in what Philip says to this Ethiopian eunuch. This is an astounding proof text for sprinkling, and I'll give you that two-hour sermon later if you want it. And I won't even stop there. But the Ethiopian eunuch is riding along in his chariot and he's reading the Isaiah scroll. And we actually even know what he's reading. We even know what verse he's reading. So keep reading in the narrative. And this is the key question that we're going to ask as we talk about the need for hermeneutics. Do you understand what you're reading? I take some issue with the whole issue when people say, you ought to read through the Bible, and I've preached that, that we ought to read the Scriptures, we ought to be devouring the Word. In fact, I think it's a worthy goal to try to read through the Bible at least once a year. A.W. Peek, who you'll hear me quote a lot, said that no man should ever stand in the pulpit or teach a class until he's read the Bible through from cover to cover at least 40 times. And A.W. Pink was a good working model of that. Well, in terms, though, of just the reading of the Bible, oftentimes in our circles, people will read it. They won't stop to understand. They won't stop to interpret or stop to dig in. They view reading the Bible almost like a magic charm, sort of like, I'm going to read my three chapters a day. Did you understand what you read? No. But I read my three chapters a day. It's sort of my blessing. And, you know, I've got my chapters in, and so now I'm fine. Well, notice what the question is on Philip's part to this man. He asked him the right hermeneutical question. Do you understand what you're reading? And that's the right question that we ought to be focusing on. Well, go on in the narrative. And he said, How can I unless someone guides me? And, by the way, we will see that this man already has most of what you need to be a good interpreter. He's already humble and teachable. Because notice his attitude in verse 31. He says, I understand it all. Why are you asking? I don't need any help. Look at what this man's spiritual equipment is. He's teachable. He says, how can I unless someone helps me? He asked Philip to come up and sit with him. The place in the scripture which he read was this. Now, if you don't know what that is, for some of you, you're looking at this and you're saying, why does my print in my Bible go into italics? That means that's a quote of the Old Testament. One of the things I would encourage you to do is most of you have a good either center column or side column cross-reference. I would encourage you, anytime you're just reading a few verses, to just draw lines and see what the cross-reference is. A lot of times you can find out a whole lot about the context just from looking up the cross-references. Well, if you look up the cross-references, by the way, anytime a text is in italics in your New Testament, that means it's a citation of the Old Testament. Well, what the Ethiopian eunuch was reading was Isaiah 53, verses 7 and 8. And when he's reading, he's reading these words. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation, his justice was taken away, and who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.' So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does this prophet say this? Of himself or of some other man?" Now think about how biblically illiterate this Ethiopian eunuch is. He's asking the question, is Isaiah writing about himself or someone else? Now, why would he think that Isaiah was writing about himself? This is a man who, he's just been in Jerusalem celebrating Jewish festivals, but he doesn't know the first thing about the Bible. And isn't that so true oftentimes in our congregations? We have people who they're there and, holy, holy, holy, and they'll worship the king and sit down and stand up. But if you ask them, okay, do you know what the text means? Can you interpret it? we find incredible ignorance of the most basic things. And this man is asking, when you read the face of it, he's asking a biblical illiterate's question. He says to Philip, does Isaiah the prophet write this about himself or some other man? And so Philip does the right thing. Philip says, this man needs a serious overview of the Old Testament and to see how Christ is there. And so look what he does. Verse 35, Philip opened his mouth and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him. Now notice what Philip does too. We've seen two people doing this. Leaping into the Old Testament, and what do they do? They have the ability to show how Christ is the running thread throughout the whole Old Testament. And so this is a basic premise for us, even before we begin. That if we're interpreting the Old Testament and we're not seeing Christ there in some way, then we're not getting the proper understanding of the text. We're missing the whole point of the text. Because we see Jesus doing it in Luke 24, we see Philip doing it in Acts 8. Well, let me go real quickly to a quick history lesson. Even though the culture doesn't like much history, this is going to be important to do. When we ask the question, how has the church interpreted the Bible over the last 2,000 years, this makes for a fascinating study. I wrote a paper in seminary on the history of the interpretation of Song of Solomon. Because Song of Solomon for the last 2,000 years, it's interesting the different patterns it's gone in. If you were here when Dr. Rob Rayburn was here, Rob referred to some of those things. But the way that the church has viewed the text has varied widely and the church has grown up. So how would you expect, we see this great start it looks like in Luke 24 and Acts 8. How would you expect the church to have interpreted the Bible Say, beginning 100 A.D., you would think, church had a great start, the apostles showed folks how to interpret, and so they got off to a running start. Well, you'd be reading history wrong. Because if you look at the history of interpretation, let me give you a few folks who you will want to know about. A man by the name of Philo, who was a contemporary of the Lord Jesus. who lived from about 20 B.C. to 40 A.D. His name will come up over and over again in our discussions. Philo had several theories that he brought to interpreting the Old Testament. And Philo, at the time, never came to saving faith in Christ. He was aware of the Lord Jesus, but he never came to saving faith in Christ. He was a Jew, died a Jew, an unregenerate Jew. But Philo was also one of the leading literary scholars and thinkers of his day. And Philo introduced a new way of reading any text. And his philosophy of interpretation is something that we will talk about endlessly in here. It's called allegory. And Philo's basic underlying presupposition was that you should assume that underneath the surface of Scripture is not just one hidden meaning, but several hidden meanings. For example, Philo's premise was that underneath the surface of all Scripture, there were at least five levels of meaning. And so Philo would, here were some of his rules for the different senses of a passage. He would say, you've got the historic sense of the passage. Now that's going to be the one we stick to. That's going to be it. We're going to say, we are tied to this, or actually we will call it the grammatical, historical understanding of the text. But then Philo said, no, this is just the surface. When you know the grammatic, historical meaning of the text, that's no fun, that's no good. Let's get on to the real issues." And so he would talk about the prophetic meaning of the text. And he would say, okay, we know what the text means in its historic sense, but what is this somehow pointing towards? And then he would talk about it in its mystical sense. And he would also talk about a text in its typological sense. And he would say, OK, in the text it says that Abraham drove his camel by two trees. What do trees symbolize? And he would go into these great allegorical machinations about seeing all these hidden meanings in a text. Well, the reason why I'm bringing you up to speed on this is because Philo's way, even though he's not a Christian interpreter, his philosophy of interpretation won the day in the first century. And what you see is at the end of the first century, most major Christian thinkers were interpreting the text like this. So you look at men like Clement of Rome, who lived from about 150 AD to 210, Origen, who live from about 200 to 260, and other, the early church thinkers who interpreted scripture and wrote on these issues, they were buying into these schools of thought. And so what you'll see when you read a lot of the early church interpreters is this allegorical form of interpretation. For example, let me give you one example of how this would be done. With Abraham, Clement of Rome uses this example. When he's interpreting Abraham's leaving his homeland and going to Palestine, here's how Clement of Rome interprets it. He said, well, y'all, if the historical meaning is with Abraham going to Palestine, that's just a man leaving his homeland and going to a land of promise. But underneath, the prophetic meaning It's prophesying about a stoic philosopher who will leave his homeland and search for knowledge and truth all over the world. And when the text says that Abraham stops at Haran, Haran means, it's often used, its literal meaning means holes. And so when Abraham stops at Haran, That means that he's stopping and he's fallen into a hole and doesn't know where to go and he's lost. And so these interpreters would interpret in these fanciful ways. And you can see how the church would get off on all sorts of rabbit trails. This one long, basically, this allegorical school of interpretation goes along until the Reformation in 1520 A.D. You have a few rare exceptions. For example, if you read anything by Chrysostom, or sometimes Augustine, you will see rarely decent interpretation. But what you have for almost 1,500 years is this allegorical, confused approach to the Scriptures. It's not until the Reformation begins that you have a few basic principles for interpretation laid down. Now, when you look at that and think, How could the church go from 30 A.D. to 1520 A.D., almost 15 centuries, and not get serious about a right interpretation of the scriptures? That's kind of an astounding thought, isn't it? 1500 years. Well, here are some of the basic Reformation principles of hermeneutics, a few basics, and see if these sound familiar. The first principle of Reformation hermeneutics was the authority principle. And this was something that you'd hear over and over again from all the Reformers, namely that the Bible stands above all other voices. The Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith, and life, that the Bible is above ecclesiastical persons or councils or documents. The Bible is the authoritative word in the church. The second basic Reformation hermeneutical principle is the natural understanding principle, meaning scripture is to be understood on its own merits. I'm not going to say literal interpretation because there are all kinds of problems with being an over-literalist at times. And we'll get into that when we start studying eschatology. But the natural understanding, you should read scripture as an open book. For example, when you read Revelation, you should read it as a symbolic book, not as a literalist book. But when you read natural, basic literature as narrative literature, you should read it in the natural sense of the word. A third basic principle of Reformation hermeneutics was the sufficiency of scripture principle, meaning by that, that the devout and competent believer can understand the true meaning of the Bible and doesn't need the official guides to interpretation offered by the church. The Bible alone is sufficient to live the normal Christian life. And a fourth basic principle, and you'll notice that we stick with all of these all the time, is Scripture interprets Scripture. If you lack understanding, if you come to a passage that doesn't make sense, the Reformers would all chant one slogan, keep reading. And one of the things that I will tell interpreters or new believers as I get them started on studying the Word is oftentimes We're far too quick if somebody comes to us and says, you know, I'm in Romans 5 and 6 and 7. Paul's raising some questions here for me, and I want you to tell me what this is supposed to mean. And I used to immediately, as soon as people would raise questions, I wanted to impress them with my interpretive knowledge, and I would start trying to give them the answer. And now my standard response is, keep reading. Because Scripture interprets Scripture. Keep reading and God will show you that the Scripture is its own best interpreter. God will make His way clear in the Scripture itself. Well, those are some basic principles that came out of the Reformation. Now, I want to give a warning here at this point about the importance of hermeneutics. If you don't, as we come to some basic guidelines tonight before we start building on this, if you don't have a basic hermeneutical knowledge of how to interpret a text, it increases exponentially the possibility that you'll arrive at heretical interpretations. Let me say that again. If you don't have a good hermeneutic, it increases exponentially the possibility that you'll arrive at some sort of heretical understanding. Just about everybody I've ever known who's fallen into heresy and apostasy based on a text is based on a false interpretation of a text, usually denying one of these basic Reformation principles. And so when people say, well, how important is this? Well, let me just show you, according to the scripture, how important it is to be a good hermeneutician. Look at 2 Peter chapter 3. 2 Peter 3. 2 Peter 3, verse 14. By the way, this text right here is one of the great proofs of the New Testament, one of the internal proofs of the authority and the inspiration of the New Testament writings. 2 Peter 3, verse 14, Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace without spot and blameless. And consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you. Now, did you just see what happened at the end of verse 15? It's easy to make a case for the inspiration and the authority of the Old Testament because you see how the New Testament writers point to the Old Testament. And the New Testament writers always say the Old Testament is inspired, the Old Testament is authoritative. But you're saying, what is it that points to the inspiration and authority of the New Testament? Well, you just got a glimpse. Look at verse 15. Peter says, He says, basic principle, the long-suffering of the Lord is our salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles. What is he telling his readers? That you should read Paul's writings and they should be authoritative to you, as authoritative to you as the Old Testament scriptures. And so here you have the New Testament's witness of the authority of its own self. Now, look what Peter goes on to say in verse 16. speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand." So you're in good company. If you've ever read Pauline epistles, if you've ever read Romans or Ephesians, and you think, man, that's tough to understand. You're in good company because Peter says the same thing in 2 Peter 3.16. He says, Paul, there are some things which are hard to understand, so don't despair when you read and struggle with Paul. But notice what he goes on to say. which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do also the rest of the scriptures. Now, that is a sobering thought at the end of verse 16, because according to Peter, there are people who when they read the scriptures, they never read them. And so look at them so that out at the bottom of the interpretation comes healthy meaning and truth. What always comes out is twisting to their own destruction. They're unstable and untaught. Now, one of the things I'm going to say over and over and over again, notice the word that Peter uses for the type of people who twist the scriptures to their own destruction. Unstable is one term, but the other term is untaught. My greatest fear in terms of people who really struggle and who fall into heretical understandings are people who are unteachable, people who will not be taught by someone else. The technical term in education is an autodidact, meaning a person who's self-taught. I don't trust autodidacts because somebody who won't receive instruction from somebody else, that's what 2 Peter 3.16, it's an untaught person, meaning they won't listen to anybody else. In fact, what we're going to see in just a minute when we get into the basic laws of hermeneutics, One of the things that the Lord promises to do is to reveal the truth of His Word, the proper meaning of the Word, to those who have a teachable spirit, who come to the text humbly and are teachable. Well, again, 2 Peter 3.16 should be a warning to us about handling the Scriptures are right and not twisting them to our own destruction. Now, let me move on real quickly on our outline. What's the goal of hermeneutics? What's the goal of hermeneutics? We call hermeneutics the science and art of explaining or expounding or interpreting the Scripture. What's the goal of hermeneutics? Right understanding of the scripture. In fact, let me, what Jeff is saying is right on, but let me even state it in a more blunt and basic way. The right understanding, anytime you open the Bible, whether it's just to read 10 verses when you get up in the morning, or if it's when you're doing serious study, your goal is always one thing. And let me just boil this down to one term. Your goal is always this. that you want to arrive at meaning. Now let me start putting some definers on this and show you a good example of folks who have meaning and folks who don't. Look at John chapter 2 and we'll do a good exercise here. John 2 beginning with verse 13. By the way, if you're not familiar with the structuring devices of John, one of the neat things that John does in terms of marking time is time is marked in John's gospel by Passover celebrations. And that's how everything is timed. You can tell where you are in the life and ministry of Christ because John gives you these signposts of Jesus celebrating Passover. In John 2.13, we're told, Now, why would people be doing that in the temple? Any historical context needed here? Why would people be selling oxen, sheep, and doves and money changers doing business? Okay, people traveling. And you'll notice the animals listed here, animals necessary to make sacrifice. But there's something else there, too. One of the great interpretive angles in verse 14 is the money changers are also there doing business. One of the interesting quirks of this is the money changers who were set up in the temple courts, when you came as a pilgrim, you had to pay a temple tax. Well, you couldn't pay it if you came from Egypt or Syria or you came from Asia Minor. You couldn't pay temple tax in your home currency. In fact, the only thing you could pay your temple tax in was temple currency. And so you had to get your money changed there. And one of the things that the temple money changers were known for was exorbitant fees. and so you have you have going on here people are getting ripped off in the temple courts and so Verse 15, we read, when he had made a whip of cords, I referred to this several months ago in a sermon. It's interesting to look at the predisposition on Jesus' part, because people who sometimes will paint this or speak of this, they'll paint this as though the Lord Jesus walks into the temple and says, what's going on here? And starts kicking over tables. Well, that's not true at all. Because when you look at verse 15, what do you see happening here? You see a very calm, meditative Jesus sits down and says, Do you know how long it takes to make a whip of cords? That takes a while to get several pieces of leather and weave them together. And so Jesus is sitting there, just sitting over on the sideline, watching this, weaving together several straps of leather. And when he had made, and the term there means after he'd finished, he'd completed the job, When he had made a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the ox, and he poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. And he said to those who sold doves, Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of merchandise. Then his disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for your house has eaten me up." Now, let me just point out to you something. What did we say whenever you see a text in italics in the New Testament that always is doing? It's quoting the Old Testament. Now, we could run down this rabbit trail, but it will repay you. Just kind of make this note to yourself. This is a good study. What the disciples are quoting of Jesus is Psalm 69, verse 9. And it is a fascinating study to see how that psalm is applied to Christ. And so it's a fascinating study to see how the New Testament writers read Psalm 69 or any of the Old Testament texts they do and say, that was pointing to Christ. That was the Holy Spirit's intent when he gave it, was for it to point to Jesus. But we'll read past that. I won't stop at that temptation. Now comes the big interchange, verse 18. So the Jews answered and said to him, what sign do you show us since you do these things? Now, you need to get the right tone of voice when you read verse 18. Because when you read verse 18, don't think that this is somehow men standing around very coolly having an academic conversation saying, what sign do you show us since you do these things? How would you feel? What tone of voice and what posture body would you have if someone would have just come in and kicked over your table that had your livelihood on it? or shooed your oxen or your sheep out, and you're running around trying to catch them, and here's this guy who's just come in, and he's turned them over, and all he's said is, you've seen this guy sitting over against the wall for a few hours, and all he's said is, stop making my father's house a house of merchandise. What would you say to him? Well, the Greek text is, and this is one of the places where the Greek text is much more helpful because it's much more intense, But you need to have, when you read verse 18, this sort of figure in your mind, that these are people saying, what sign do you show to us since you do these things? These are people who have their fist up under Jesus' nose, and you can tell that by reading the next verse. Look at verse 19. Jesus answered and said to them, destroy this temple, and in three days I'll raise it up. Why does he say that? Because he knows what they're threatening to do at that moment. What are they threatening to do? They're threatening to kill him. And how do we know that? We keep reading in the text. The Jews said, it's taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking of the temple of his body. Therefore, when he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus said. Now, let me point something out. Here's Jesus. And here is the Jews. Out of his mouth comes this word. Into their ear goes this word. Jesus said, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up. And they say, it's taken 46 years to build this temple and it's still not done. How will you raise it up in three days? Has meaning occurred? No. Why not? They don't have in their mind what the author originally intended, do they? Pay no attention to that alien-looking man right there. Gene, who is that man with you? We're going to put the pictures, by the way, of your scalping on the church website. If you open it up and you see the picture of Pepper, it looks like Stone Cold Steve Austin, the championship wrestler, when you open his up. But what you have here is a fall down in meaning. Because Jesus, when he says something, he knows what he means, but they don't have in their mind meaning. They don't have what he intends. And so actually what we're going to use, what we're going to say the goal of hermeneutics is, is to get this. the author's original intended meaning. The goal of hermeneutics is always, whenever you study a text, to get what the author meant. Because we could fall into the same mistake as these Jews, and we could read a text and say, he's talking about a temple. Oh, that must be Herod's temple. The forerunner, or the the after-runner to Solomon's temple, and we would be missing the whole intent of the passage. And what spiritual good does that do us to have in our minds something different than God intended? Because again, people say, oh, what's the big deal about being right, about being correct? Well, we will get no spiritual benefit if we are holding on to a false meaning. God promises blessing to those who search the scriptures, to those who pursue meaning, true biblical meaning. We'll see that in just a moment. Well, that's when I say the goal of hermeneutics is to get this. That is the definition we'll be using over and over again. The goal of what we're about is to get the author's original intended meaning in our mind. What does Jesus mean when he uses the word temple? What's his meaning? His body. When these people are talking about the temple, what do they mean? A building. And so we can see how it's very simple for two people, even when they speak the same language, the same dialect, they can still misinterpret. And so this should give us great pause to be very careful about how we interpret the scripture. That even, here are people who were probably the exact same age, had gone through the same type of schools as the Lord Jesus, and they can miss it. And so if they can miss truth from Jesus' mouth, we shouldn't pump ourselves up and say, oh, we could never misinterpret the text. Because they certainly did. That's our goal, those to arrive at meaning. Now, let me ask another question about this whole business. Who does meaning rest with The author or the interpreter? The author or the recipient? Who does meaning reside with? The author. The author. And so, over and over again, and what we're going to get to for just a moment is the whole issue of subjective meaning. Because, let me just go ahead and segue into that. The contemporary dilemma that you will see is the whole issue of objective meaning versus subjective significance. since the 1920s, and the worst thing for this has been the rise of all kinds of Bible study methods. Since the 1920s, the Bible's been subjected to a new approach that it really hadn't been for the previous 400 years, and that is the rise of relativism, where the key text that's being asked over and over again, and you're taught in all kinds of Bible studies, to ask this question, what does the text mean to me? Well, who cares what it means to you? Who cares what it means to me? The real issue is what does it mean to the giver? What does it mean to God? Because if I ask you and I and I say to Bill Johnson, say, well, Bill, what do you think? What does this text mean to you? And Bill gives me some wacky answer. Who cares? The issue is, for my spiritual benefit, I want to know what God intended. And so when we ask the question, and so many Bible study methods, you'll see it, you'll get little devotional booklets and they'll say, read this verse, what does this mean to you? That's the wrong question to ask. The question that where we should begin is to say, what does this text mean to God? What was in God's mind when he gave it? What are the surrounding contextual understandings? What was God's original intended meaning? Well, one of the problems with this is George Barna, who I quote a lot and who I'm not a big fan of, but his surveys are always fascinating. Every year, he surveys between 10 and 20,000 professing evangelicals, and he asks them the same questions every year, a different group of people. He's been doing this now for 15 years. And so you can chase trends and see what evangelicals believe. The last year that I checked, but he's been asking evangelicals this for 15 years. He asked the question, is there such a thing as absolute truth? And then the people who take the survey have a variety of responses. And one of the responses to that question, is there such a thing as absolute truth? One of the responses is different people can define truth in conflicting ways and all still be correct. That's known as relativism. 1998, 66% of evangelicals said, yes, that's my understanding of absolute truth. People can define truth in conflicting ways and still be correct. And so the contemporary evangelical would say, well, yeah, Jesus is right, and you're right too. Because most Bible study methods, one of the things they teach you right up front is to say to a teacher or facilitator, never tell anybody that's wrong. Have you guys ever seen this in Bible study, leading manuals, facilitating manuals? Never say to somebody, Well, if somebody's just heretical and wrong, I mean, we should say, yeah, that's a wrong answer. People have been burned at the stake for that. Let me help you out and disabuse you of that notion. But in our culture, tolerance is such a happy virtue that we say, no, we'd rather people hold on to a heretical idea but feel good about themselves than say to them, that's wrong. That's just dead wrong. That's out of accord with scripture. Well, a lot of Bible study literature today feeds that by its approach. Instead of teaching people how to ascertain original intent and meaning. People are asked the question, what does this text mean to me? Well, objective meaning never changes. And here's one of the principles that we can talk about. Objective meaning is constant. Subjective significance changes every day. For example, let me give you a good example of this. What I mean by objective meaning is constant, is if you take a believer in 1700 who speaks a different language and they use basic biblical, historical, grammatical principles, they should arrive at the same meaning as you today. But the significance would be very different. A great example happened in Sandy and in my life a few years ago when we had a situation with a close friend who we thought was a close friend who had began to kind of undermine our ministry. And it was one of those things where I looked at and scratched my head and I was reading one day in the Psalms. Now, let me show you a good example. What's this text mean to me and how not to do this? Look at Psalm 55 and we'll show you an example. Psalm 55, verse 12, we don't have a whole lot of insight into whether this was either when David was dealing with Saul or David was dealing with Absalom in 2 Samuel 15, his own son, but you can pick up from the narrative real quick what's going on. Psalm 55 verse 12, where it's not an enemy who reproaches me, then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me. Then I could hide from him. But it was you, a man, my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together and walked to the house of God in the throne. And then what does David do? He prays imprecatorily. He says, let death seize them. Let them go down alive into hell for wickedness is in their dwellings and among them. Now, let me just ask you a basic meaning question here to kind of focus us. Could Uriah have said this about David? Remember Uriah, Bathsheba's husband? Who was he betrayed by? His friend, David, who he thought was his friend. And so this could be, but we know that it wasn't Uriah who wrote it. We're told here this is a psalm of David. But we don't know who David's writing about if he's writing about the best two guesses are either Absalom or Saul from other contextual clues in the psalm. But what we know is David's writing about somebody who's very close to him who's betrayed him. Well, Psalm 55, verse 12 through 15 had always been in the Bible. It always has reference to David and his interpersonal relationship. But during this time, it took on a whole different subjective significance to me, because at that point I thought, God has put in scripture, and I see that David was feeling the same emotions I was feeling, being betrayed by someone very close to me, and that I felt like, okay, what do I do when someone betrays me and they are so harmful to the cause of Christ, and I learned, look at verse 15, what does David pray? He prays imprecatorily against them. And so we learn from the Psalm. But in terms of say, if somebody would have said to me the first question, Carl, Psalm 55, what does it mean to you? That's the wrong question. Start here. Start with objective meaning and say, what did it mean when God gave it? What was in God's mind? Then we can ask, how does it apply today? How's it subjectively significant to you today? Well, real quickly, Let me let me get us on some basic tracks in terms of hermeneutical laws on your sheet on your outline sheet. It says. basic laws, getting to the essentials of good biblical interpretation. There are two tracks that we're gonna run on for several weeks. And one is, being a good interpreter is not either or, it's both and. Because you'll have some people who will approach the scripture, for example, many of you may have done this, you took a Bible as literature class in college. And the way that the Bible is approached there, at least it used to be before deconstructionism came into literature circles, is it would just be approached as, just read the Bible like you read any other book, and just apply the same laws of language to it, and you'll get the proper meaning out of it. Well, that's half right. The other issues, you have those people who say, we don't want to have to worry about things like being good grammarians, being good contextual historians, knowing context and language. We just need the Holy Spirit. We don't need to know those kinds of things. We don't have to study. We don't have to use our minds. We're just going to kick it in neutral and just be led by the Spirit. We're going to see there is an element of truth to that. But it's not either or. What we're going to see is it's both and. That we need to be rigorous about studying language and figures of speech and context and history and meaning. And we also need to be rigorous about the laws of the spirit. What do I mean by that? Well, let me start us down. erode in terms of the laws of the spirit. And this is where we'll probably finish up this week. Look at Matthew 11 and begin to show you some of the laws of who God will reveal truth to. This may come as a surprise to you. You may think that just anybody can pick up a Bible and read and arrive at meaning just like that. And my premise to you tonight is that's not the case. That God is going to show truth to some people and hide it from others. Look at Matthew 11. Matthew 11, verse 25, a verse that I've referred to several times in the preaching of the Word. In Matthew 11, verse 25, at that time, and you have to ask the question, at what time? And you have to go backwards a tiny bit in the context. And you'll begin to notice, if you look at verse 20 of Matthew 11, that Jesus has just given a rebuke to several cities in his home district. And notice why, verse 20. He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. And so He pronounces several woes upon them. Now, why is it that these people, upon hearing the Word of Christ, don't respond properly? Verse 25, At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes." Now, this is an astounding idea in verse 25, because, again, in pop evangelicalism, people say, God just wants everybody to love Him and everybody to know Him. That's not what we see in verse 25, is it? What do we see? We see Jesus, we see the second person of the Trinity thanking the first person of the Trinity for hiding truth from people. Doesn't that just cause your breath to go out of your lungs? Christ is thanking the Father because he's hiding truth. But then look at the same thing. The same verse, he's thanking him not only because he's hidden these things from the wise and prudent, but have also revealed them to babes. Now, let's ask these questions in the text. First of all, he thanks the Father because he's done something with these things. He's hidden them, and He's revealed them. Who's He hidden them from, according to the text? Lies and the prudent. And who's He revealed them to? Fabes. Now, anybody get an idea of what's going on here? What sort of people are these who God is hiding truth from, who are never going to arrive at truth when they come to the text? Proud, unteachable, goats. Well, keep one finger here and look real quick at Proverbs 3 and let's see if we can get an insight into what sort of people God is hiding truth from. Proverbs 3. Proverbs 3 verse 5. There are texts that are so basic and they're almost motto-like. And they're basic because they're foundation stones in the Christian life. Proverbs 3, 5 through 7, or Proverbs 3, 5 through 8, is one of those basic core texts that every new believer ought to have ground into the soles of their shoes. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. Now, how could that principle be important as you come to the text? When will you be tempted to lean on your own understanding when you read the Bible? Yeah, if it comes against something you hold to. Or, for example, if you lean on your own understanding when you come to texts about miracles, things hard to understand. I can't understand this. This must not be true. This must just be an exaggeration. Keep reading in the text. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. And then the crunch of Proverbs 3, don't be wise in your own eyes. Isn't that the stumbling block of most people who miss the text is they're wiser than God. Sandy and I've had this conversation with a family member who was telling me about their practice of discipline. And they were telling us about their child who was turned out to be a little hellion. And we said, they asked for our advice. And we quoted Proverbs 22, 15 and 29, 15 to him. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child of rod and reproof drive it far from them. And they said, Well, we could never do that. And I said, well, why not? It's the word of God. You've got better wisdom. And this person said, well, psychology today said, and we just kind of laughed. And we said, so you think that's wiser than Proverbs? Well, Proverbs just doesn't apply for today. At that point, we thought, Proverbs 3, 7, wise in your own eyes, smarter than God. Well, that's going to be the sort of person who God hides truth from, the person who has a predisposition to say, like Tony said, oh, if this comes against my lifestyle, I'm just going to sound a little smarter than God. And so that's going to be the person who God hides his truth from. Now, look back at Matthew 11. Verse 25, when it says, when Jesus prays and says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things." What are these things that he's talking about? Well, if you read the previous context, which I'm going to drive us to over and over and over again, oftentimes when people say, I can't understand this verse, a lot of times I'll say, just read the 10 verses before and the 10 verses after. Because a lot of times the question will be answered right there in the context. But if you read the five verses before it, when Jesus says, I thank you for it, you've hidden these things. What are these things? These things are His power and His salvation. That He's hidden, that the Father has hidden the power and the salvation of Christ from all these people in His home district. Well, notice again who God reveals things to. People who see themselves as weak, and people who don't put a whole lot of trust in their own native intelligence. These are people who aren't wise in their own eyes, using Proverbs 3. And so let's just start with the basic law of the spirit here. We're going to run on two tracks hermeneutically. Laws of the spirit, laws of language. If we're going to erect a law of the spirit from this, what would it look like? If we're going to talk about the spiritual preparation necessary to bring to the text. Let me give you the start of one. God shows the truths of Scripture to those who are humble in heart. We're going to add some things to that next week because we're going to come up with four basic laws of the Spirit. Four basic things that a person, before they open the Word to study it, ought to just go through mentally and just say, am I bringing to the text the proper spiritual equipment? And we're going to add to this because our time is just about up. But the basic starting point that we can see from Matthew 11 is God shows the truths of Scripture to those who are humble in heart. You think that's a fair representation of what we see in Matthew 11, according to Jesus? God shows the truths of Scripture to those who are humble in heart, and the inverse, He hides the truths of Scripture from those who are proud. Now, this begs a whole theological question. When God is going to save someone, what disposition of heart do you think He always gives them? He always humbles them. God always humbles whom He would save. I think that's always part of the conversion process, that God is going to humble people He's going to save and whom He's going to reveal truth to. We'll pick up there next week. I hate to stop in mid-breath, but we're going to be good stewards of our time. Doug, make your announcement one more time because there are people who came in after you did this. Let's pray. Father, we're reminded again that when we open the scripture that there's a whole lot more going on than we usually think. that you are active by your spirit. And so, Lord, we recognize from your word that you will actively hide truth from the proud and the arrogant, that you'll reveal it to those who are childlike. And so, Lord, we ask for humbling. We ask that you would take away those proud spots which still cover our heart. We ask that you would take away that tendency to be wise in our own eyes. And especially when we come to your word, which is truth, that we would come as children to hear what our father has to say to us. Lord, we pray that we would not be those who twist the scriptures to our own destruction as Peter writes about, but instead you would be so gracious to each one of us here that the scriptures would be spirit and life and indeed the words of eternal life to us and they would be our pathway to heaven. Lord, we pray in weeks to come that you would gird up our minds and you would cause us to pant and hunger and thirst after the word and that we would be delighted in it and we would be satisfied with it. Lord, give us a greater and a deeper desire to know your word and thereby to know you. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.