The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Mendon, Nevada. All right, so we've been doing these men's leadership seminars. We did preaching, qualifications for eldership, and now we're going to do some issues in biblical interpretation. And then, I don't know how far we'll get today. It doesn't really matter. If we finish today, maybe next time we'll do biblical issues in the doctrine of God, or issues, controversial issues or something. So as we deal with this today, I just have just a ton of material. So what we're going to do is we'll have sort of a discussion-oriented thing, but I do want to make sure that we get to a few things that are really important, like the role of scripture and tradition, because, believe it or not, if you were a Protestant, scripture and tradition, that was a no-brainer. I want to say it's not a no-brainer anymore, and so we'll deal with some of that. So, we have two terms that we're going to be using a lot. The first is hermeneutics. And you might say, well, who's hermeneutic? So what do we mean by hermeneutics? Simple definition. All we want is a simple definition right now. Interpretation, right? OK, interpretation. Yeah. There's sort of a standard definition of hermeneutics. the science and the art of biblical interpretation. Now, hermeneutics applies to anything. It applies to the Constitution, it applies to historical works, whatever. But our purpose is to look at it in relationship to the Bible. So why would we call it a science? Okay? Observable, measurable. There are rules, yeah, there are principles that you follow, right? Now one of the things that we're gonna try to dig into is where do we find those rules, okay? But then why do we call it an art? Because you draw pictures in the margins? What's that? Sometimes. Okay, yeah, so when you think of art, you could think of skill, okay? So I think that goes back to his thing with the idea of skill, right? So with experience in dealing with the scriptures, you develop a skill. Okay, okay. So if I say art equals creativity, do you like that when it comes to interpreting the Bible? Not normally, right, because like creativity is typically like an individual thing, right? So my individual creativity, I'm not bringing that to the Bible, but I do wanna say that there's an element of insight and creativity when it comes to seeing certain connections. In other words, there's more to biblical interpretation than just simply analyzing a word in its syntax, according to the grammar, etc. There's also, in a sense, a literary art where you start to see things. Are some people better readers than others? Yeah, of course. And what is it that makes them a better reader? Well, they have an inside understanding. They see maybe the bigger picture or they see maybe even nuances. They see connections, right? And so it's not just a matter of just following rules. There are rules. But it's also a matter of it being an art, a skill, all right? So we're going to use that term hermeneutics. And then also the term exegesis is going to be a big word that we use, or a word that we use a lot. It's not that big of a word. And for 29 years, my license plate has said exegete. And I was driving in Bandon, these four guys in a truck pull up to me and they go, what do you mean by exegete? I thought they wanted to fight, but anyway, no. So I gave them my definition of exegete, all right, and they're like, cool, three of the four of us here have MDivs, we're pastors, right? So when you hear the word exegesis, how would you define that? Okay, that's actually what the Greek word means, is to draw out or to lead out. And so the idea of exegesis is to, let's put it this way, employing the rules of hermeneutics leading out from a given text its meaning. By the way, that sounds pretty simple. I want to say that that's hardly simple. Exegesis includes everything from historical study, understanding the background, culture, et cetera. It requires grammar. It requires syntax. What's syntax? Well, it's what the casinos pay. Syntax is the way that the parts of grammar fit together, okay? But is that all there is to exegesis? And the answer is no. There's lexical concerns. When we talk about semantics, we're talking about the meaning of words, right? By the way is, so the meaning of words is a subject in and of itself, right? And you could do an exercise in English. By the way, no single word isolated by itself means anything. You're like, wait, hold on a second. I can look that up in the dictionary, and I can see what that word means. No, you can't. All you can see is a possibility of ranges of meaning, because that word outside of a context does not have a definite meaning. If I just say to you, board, you're like, chunk of wood. So when I go, okay, well the elder board, is that the instrument we use for church discipline? OK, so there's a range of meaning, right? So we call this oftentimes the study of words. We call it lexicography, lexical studies. So all these things go into exegesis. And then, of course, there are other exegetical concerns that we have, right, that help lead out the meaning. So that's what we're going to basically be talking about is this bigger picture of hermeneutics, how do we interpret the Bible, and then exegesis, the actual practical application. Daniel. Yes, you could. Isogesis is to read into the text, meaning exegesis is to read out of the text. So what do you think we ought to do? exegesis, right? There's way too much eisegesis that takes place, right? So when you're reading your own, you know, when you see the rapture everywhere, you're doing eisegesis, okay? Yeah, when you apply it to your basketball skills, that's probably misapplication. All right, so Those are our two big words we're going to be dealing with. Now, I debated how much detail to go into here. We're going to do basically an overview of the history of exegesis. All right? Which, by the way, ends up being incredibly important for us today. Okay? So we begin with what we're just going to call apostolic exegesis. And what do you think we might mean by that? The way the apostles interpreted the Bible, right? So, when we deal with apostolic exegesis, this obviously is the earliest stage of Christian exegesis. Alright? When we talk about apostolic exegesis, what we're saying, in a sense, is as you read the New Testament, Jesus and the apostles interpreted the Old Testament. All the New Testament writers. So when I say Jesus and the Apostles, think of all the New Testament writers. They all practiced hermeneutics. They all interpreted the Old Testament and had a science and art to what they did. All right? Now, as you look at a number of New Testament uses of the old. All right, so that's basically, in big picture terms, that's what we're talking about, is New Testament use of the old. As you look at some of the New Testament uses of the old, are you ever baffled by how that text meant that to this writer? Okay, so Paul, anybody have any specific examples? There are some very famous ones. You mean Sarah and Hagar? Chapter 4. 21 to 31. Yeah, so it's very allegorical, right? In fact, Paul says this represents this and so forth, right? So that's an interesting one. There are others that are, in a sense, even more difficult. So you're reading the gospel of Matthew, and Jesus, as an infant, flees Egypt, and then when Herod dies, he comes back, and Matthew says, this is to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet out of Egypt I called my son. This is Hosea 11.1, and you go back to Hosea, and you read Hosea, and you're like, I don't see Jesus here. It's the history of Israel. By the way, this happens, I would say, at least a dozen times, if not more. You have Paul's use of Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4, and there are times where the New Testament writers might even tweak the text. They could tweak the text for a number of different reasons. What might be some reasons? So you read, let's say you read Paul quoting an Old Testament text, and then you go to that Old Testament text, and it doesn't say exactly what Paul said. What might be some reasons why that's true? Okay. Okay. Okay, so if Paul's quoting the Septuagint, and the Septuagint differs from the Masoretic Hebrew text, then you're gonna have a difference, all right? But what if it differs from the Septuagint? Okay, so what if I did that on a Sunday morning? Would you be comfortable with that? Let's say I tweak the text. It would depend, wouldn't it? Are you an apostle? No. He could be quoting from memory. Okay? Plain and simple. He could be quoting from memory and it is not exactly precise to what is originally. He could be intentionally paraphrasing. And this is where I would kind of follow up with Tim's comment is that there are going to be times where the New Testament writer is doing more with that Old Testament text than you realize, and in the way that they cite it, it is actually a reflection of what they're intentionally doing with it. I would argue that's true in Ephesians 4 with Psalm 68. Now, You do understand that there are people that think that the Apostles misinterpreted Old Testament texts. Okay, what's that? So they're like, yep. Actually, they didn't pay enough attention to the context. So what are you gonna say when What are you going to say when somebody says, well, when Matthew quotes Hosea, that's not what Hosea meant. Here's the way we'll phrase the question. Did Jesus and the apostles quote or state the right doctrine from the wrong text? Okay, well let's ask the question a different way then, right? So, So if we're going to just have the presupposition that Scripture is inerrant and infallible, we still need to reckon with what looks like misinterpretation in the New Testament of Old Testament texts, all right? So there's basically been two ways that, well, three ways, but one is, we'll dismiss it, and this is what Winter, I think, is getting at. You have, let's say, liberal scholars who just say they just twisted the scriptures and used it for their own ends, and they completely misinterpreted it. There's a more sophisticated form, and this is what I was taught in seminary, I know it's probably what Daniel was taught, and that is the idea of apostolic exegesis is a matter of revelation and inspiration, not interpretation. So in other words, well let me read to you if I have it here. This is from Richard Longenecker in a book that we were made to read, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period. He said, the New Testament writers use Jewish methods of interpretation which go beyond grammatical historical exegesis. These interpretations are revelation, thus authoritative, but they are not hermeneutically sound and thus not reproducible. So in other words, one way that people have dealt with this hermeneutical issue of apostolic exegesis is to say, all right, look, it's the Bible, it's inspired, it's not a matter of hermeneutics, and because they use methods that we don't acknowledge today, what they wrote is revelation, but what they wrote or how they interpret it is not reproducible. You understand the argument? You can't do with Hosea what Matthew did with Hosea. That's the bottom line on this view. Now, I want to say that there's another view, and it's the view that I hold. I used to hold that view because that's what I was taught. Does there seem something deficient about that view? So if you, think about it this way, if you can't reproduce the exegesis of the apostles, okay, in other words, that's a no-no, what does that say about the exegesis of the apostles? They weren't following any rules. Well that's not, yeah, but that's not what this view is saying, okay? This view is saying is that they go, Matthew, in a sense, uses Hosea in a way that would be completely void of its original meaning, its context, anything, alright? So, to me, that grew to be a problem. because if you can't reproduce it, doesn't that in a sense cast shade on its validity? Well, yeah, I mean, I think I'm following you there, but you said not. So go ahead, Phil, because I'm going to. OK, so when he says, you know, about the slave woman, the free woman, this could be interpreted out of work. Uh-huh. This example, I look at that as, you know, as impossible. You're more connected to the police director than I'll ever hope to be. They seem to be defining me. What? Defining me. He has the right to do that. I don't. He doesn't have the right to do that. Okay. Yeah, and that's not the argument. Okay, that's not the argument. The argument is, can you interpret the Bible like Paul did? It's not whether or not you're Paul and have the right to write authoritative scripture or give revelation. Paul's using a hermeneutical method Do you have the right to interpret the Old Testament like Paul did? Or Jesus? Or Matthew? Oh, he's most definitely interpreting the Old Testament. Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, and here's the problem, is that if you, again, if you cannot reproduce what they did with the Old Testament, they're interpreting it. That's a given. Now, the end result of what they write is revelation. It's authoritative, it's inspired, that's not an issue. The question is, how they get there, is that reproducible for us? And the position that I'm arguing against says it's not reproducible for us because it's revelation, not interpretation. And I want to say that if you say, The method that they use is not reproducible, then you have to ask, why is it not reproducible? If it's not reproducible, you have to ask, is it then a valid method to interpret? Now, this position says no. I want to argue. that the hermeneutics of Jesus and the Apostles is not only reproducible, but should be reproducible and should be reproduced. All right? In other words, how many of you believe in Sola Scriptura? Okay. How many of you believe scripture, that a subset of Sola Scriptura is the sufficiency of scripture? Okay. So is the Bible sufficient to show us how it is to be interpreted? Absolutely. And if we have inspired interpreters in the New Testament, because that's what Jesus and the apostles are, is inspired interpreters. We're not inspired interpreters, so we never claim, and this is, we never claim infallibility for our interpretation, all right? I mean, some people do, but in a state of humility, you go, okay, I might be wrong. Paul never said, I might be wrong, okay? But we go to the Scriptures and we see a pattern We see, so the question then becomes, let's stick with Matthew because Matthew seems to be one of the most blatant examples. It could be that what we're missing is asking better questions rather than assuming that the text was misquoted, right? So why does Matthew use a passage that deals with the historical Israel and applies it to Jesus, right? So if it's reproducible, then I'm able to actually see why Matthew does what he does. If it's not reproducible, then, by the way, if it's not reproducible, Why would any Jewish person in the first century have ever believed the gospel? Because they could have simply looked at the apostles and said, you guys are just arbitrarily explaining scripture, and I'm completely unconvinced. But if what they're doing has method, then that method is reproducible. So Scott Swanson, has an article, Can We Reproduce the Exegesis of the New Testament? Why are we still asking? That's his essay in Jets from 96. So what I would argue is that when we get to apostolic exegesis, what we're looking at is that the New Testament writers have a hermeneutical perspective on the Old Testament. That hermeneutical perspective seems different than ours, right? But what if they're not violating the original meaning of the text? What if they are looking at that text in a broader context? Then it is incumbent on us to figure out how. So if that's the case, then then we should be able to reproduce. Now, let me just read a quote from Swanson here real quick. Why then do evangelicals continue to reproduce so many excellent textbooks and studies on hermeneutics with yet hardly a word on how students should learn biblical interpretation from the practice of the apostles? Why do we still often speak of the New Testament use of the Old Testament Those New Testament writers do not see themselves as only using or applying the separate meaning of the Old Testament for their new circumstances. They proclaimed what it means. That meaning was what the Lord Himself had explained in Luke 24-27, which we'll look at in a minute. and opened their minds to understand concerning Himself. It was the meaning which was in all of Scripture, and which must find its fulfillment in Him. Dare we say that we have not been foolish and slow of heart to believe?" So, building a case for apostolic exegesis as a pattern for us, all right? So, the first is kind of simple, and that is... Yeah? at least in my experience in there, was we were told we were fortunately not to do what he was talking about. Or like in Acts 2 or Acts 15, they would say, well, we know that they said that. But what they meant was that it's not that this is the rebellion of David 7. It's like it, but it's still in the future. I didn't really think it's unintentional, but it pushes their views of hermeneutics as superior to the apocalypse. Yes. They know better. They probably shouldn't have done it. They have the trump card. Or they should have said it differently. Yeah. Right? But it pushes our view of hermeneutics above theirs and says, well, we know better. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a great observation. What this, what the second view is that I presented, which by the way is very common among dispensationalists, that is, and we'll talk about that in a second, but they would say, so what Peter means in Acts 2 is not this is that, what he means is this is like that, okay? What James and the Apostles in Acts 15 mean is not, this is the rebuilding of David's tabernacle, this is like the rebuilding of David's tabernacle. Now, what ends up happening, what drives that is a literalistic hermeneutic that says you have to take it, and I'm not gonna use the word literal because people freak out when you use the word literal, okay? Woodenly. Okay? Woodenly. So either the apostles misspoke and should have said, this is like that, because this is not really that. Are you tracking with me? Or they should have done something a little more creative and said, this is kind of like that, but just wait till it's literally fulfilled in the millennium or something. I want to say there's a better way. And that better way is quite honestly this simple. We'll make it more complicated in just a second, don't worry. I was taught, Walt Kaiser, a number of guys, Daniel would have been exposed to these guys too. You read the Bible rigidly from left to right, okay? You read Genesis as if the New Testament's never been written, left to right. You read Deuteronomy as if Paul never quoted it. You read, right, so you read left to right. So their view of progressive revelation is you never read later revelation back into earlier revelation because you've destroyed the meaning. By the way, that is, in a sense, sort of the motivation of this is a matter of revelation, not interpretation. Okay. No, you don't look at Scripture through the lens of... Correct, correct, right. Yeah, I'm not saying that. So they would say you read left to right rigidly, and I want to say you read right to left. You read right to left. Like in Hebrew, you read right to left. You read the beginning in light of the end. Now I want to say that there's not only good hermeneutical reasons to do this, there's common sense reasons to do this. And I've used, and I think I get this from Peter Lightheart's book, Biblical Exegesis, or whatever the book was called. So it's like reading a mystery novel. You're reading it through the first time. And you see Mr. Green in the library with the gun on the table. And you just are observing. Maybe you're observant, maybe you're not. And then you get to the end of the story. And what happens at the end of the story? You get everything tied together. You see why the gun was on the table in the library with Mr. Green or Colonel Mustard or whatever. And all of a sudden, everything gets tied together. When you go back through and reread that mystery novel, in light of the end, do you reread it differently? You see things you never saw before, right? Now, am I violating the meaning of earlier chapters? No. I'm actually just bringing the insight of later, the conclusion back in. I'm not violating anything. I'm actually reading with insight, okay? And if you were, let's just say, a Neanderthal, and you're reading a mystery, and you go, I'm gonna read that again, that was really good, and you get to chapter two, and you're like, okay, I have to convince myself that I don't know why the gun is in the library with Colonel Mustard or whoever, right? Well, you can't do that. You already know the end, okay? So, as we get to this, in a sense, we're talking about reading from right to left. But we're gonna begin with the idea that the Old Testament interprets itself. Should you pay attention how the Old Testament interprets itself? Does the Old Testament actually interpret itself? Yeah. So, in the Old Testament, There are physical realities that never were intended to be an end in themselves. And we know that because the Old Testament writers tell us that. So let me just give you a few quick examples. So the tabernacle as the dwelling place of God, was that ever intended to be an end in itself? No. Actually points to something bigger, right? Does Solomon actually get to that something bigger when they dedicate the temple? Does he acknowledge you don't dwell in temples made with human hands? The heavens can't contain you, right? So there's a physical reality, but Solomon lets everybody know that, hey, look, that physical reality does not restrict what's going on here. There's a bigger spiritual reality. What about the sacrifices, right? Is there a, let's say, a literalistic way to understand the sacrifices? And the answer is sure. You take a lamb, you take it to the priest, the priest slits its throat, sprinkles the blood on the altar, and by virtue of that literal act, your sins are forgiven. Does that exhaust the meaning of the sacrifices? No. Did the Old Testament know that? Yes. So, when David says, by the way, in Psalm 51, offering a sacrifice you have not desired, right? What you've desired is a broken and contrite heart, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Or, when Samuel says to Saul, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams, they're saying, okay, listen, we have this physical thing here but there's something bigger, there's a spiritual reality that's bigger than just the physical stuff, right? We can go on and on. Circumcision. Was circumcision like a real literal thing? Yeah. And everybody that was circumcised just wished that it had just been a figurative thing. But it pointed to something different. Did the Old Testament writers say that it pointed to something different? Yes, right? That's why you talk about circumcision of the ears, circumcision of the heart, right? So the Old Testament is continually interpreting itself in ways that go beyond, in a sense, the rigid, literalistic reading, okay? By the way, one more just for fun. Healings in the Old Testament. So when you read healings in the Gospels, you know that that was historical, but you also know that it points to something, right? Well, the Old Testament knew that, too. For instance, in Isaiah 35, the idea is actually restoration. The idea is a recreation. It's not just that lame people will really leap for joy. It's that the effects of the fall are reversed, which is bigger than a restricted, literalistic perspective just on those things, all right? the physical visible was never ultimate in the Old Testament's understanding itself. Old Testament salvation is both eschatological and typological, okay? In the Old Testament itself. I'm not even thinking about the New Testament yet, right? So salvation, you get to the prophets, think of Isaiah and Hosea in particular, Salvation in Isaiah is often pictured as a new exodus. Exodus language is continually applied or used of Old Testament salvation. The Exodus has already happened, but there is a salvation that's coming that's going to be like a new Exodus. You have a new Exodus, a new Eden, you have a new David, all these things. So the Old Testament itself is looking at, in a sense, eschatological and typological fulfillment in terms of salvation. Salvation is likened to a new creation, Isaiah 65, right? So even embedded in the Old Testament, you have a old creation or first creation and new creation juxtaposition, okay? And what I'm saying is these things are in the Old Testament itself. look, pay attention, just like we wanted to have the apostles read the Old Testament, pay attention to how the prophets read the Pentateuch. Okay? Salvation is the revived reign of David. Ezekiel 34, salvation is a new covenant, salvation is a new Eden, and so the Old Testament events form the basis of future redemptive events in the Old Testament itself. So why is this important? because I'm going to say this is how the Apostles learned how to interpret the Bible. They learned to interpret the Bible from the Bible and from the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. So the Old Testament interprets itself typologically. So one of my old professors, Dennis Johnson from Westminster, says the Old Testament itself therefore leads us to expect that between every redemptive type embedded in Israel's earlier history, on the one hand, is its New Testament antitype fulfillment, on the other, there will be both continuity and discontinuity, correspondence and heightening. All right? Now, so you got the Old Testament itself, but then Jesus comes on the scene. How does Jesus interpret the Old Testament? Christocentrically, yeah. It says it right there. All right, so take your Bibles, and we'll try to do this quick, because I want to make some progress. By the way, guys, this is important stuff, actually. I mean, it really is. So, Luke 9, and I want to just use this as a plug for learning Greek. So, Luke 9, verse 28. So some eight days after these sayings, he took along Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. While he was praying, the appearance of his face became different, his clothing became white and gleaming. And behold, two men were talking with him, they were Moses and Elijah." So is there, are there any Old Testament connections to this text? Literally, yes. appearing in glory," notice this, we're speaking of his departure, so what does the ESV say there? Does it say departure? It has a footnote on it? Okay, so yeah, don't steal my thunder there, Corey. Oh yeah. So he was speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now, what I want to show you is that that word departure is the word exodus in the Greek text. So let me just ask you this. What is the likelihood that on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus is speaking with Moses and Elijah, okay? You could argue, so why Moses and Elijah? Well, representation of the law and the prophets. Absolutely, for sure, but what did Moses and Elijah have to do with the Exodus? Moses was fairly involved in the event, but Elijah is representative of the prophets, foretold of a coming salvation that would be like another exodus. And so what is he talking to them about? So if you just take the NAS or the ESV, his departure, which was about to be accomplished in Jerusalem, It's just maybe his death, right, just kind of blandly put. You understand that the word is exodus, all of a sudden what is Jesus saying to Moses and Elijah? What are they talking about? They're talking about the ultimate exodus that he's about to accomplish in Jerusalem. The exodus to which the other exodus pointed. Absolutely. The antitype, absolutely. So I have a cool diagram, maybe I'll draw it for you in a minute. Luke 24, you should know this one, right? This is sort of the, what they call the locus classicus, right? This is the classic text. So Jesus, in Luke 24, He meets up with these two guys. The story fascinates me on a bunch of different levels, right? You know, we were hanging around because Jesus said he was gonna rise from the dead, and it's the third day, and the third day's not exactly completely over with yet, but, and some women said that they saw him alive. What do women know? And so we decided to leave. Right? Jesus says to him in verse 25, O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter His glory?" So, suffering and glory. Then, beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all of Scripture. So, Jesus seems to think that the Old Testament is about Him. Look down at verse 44. Now He said to them, These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which were written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And He said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day." Now, let me just stop there for a second. Notice he says that the Scriptures say the third day. So might that give you a hint to pay attention to things that happen in the Old Testament on the third day? Yeah. Might want to pay attention to that. Highlight it, maybe. Margin. Write in your Bible. Third day. Right? You see some interesting things that happen on the third day. All right? Now, Jesus says this in a different way in John 5. You search the Scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these that testify to me. For if you listen to Moses, you'd listen to me because Moses spoke concerning me, right? So from Jesus' perspective, guess what? He's the center of the Old Testament. All right. What about the apostles? Do you think in those 40 days that Jesus was with the apostles from the resurrection to the ascension, that he might have opened the word to them? Do you think that these guys, maybe they didn't catch on at first, but the Holy Spirit is going to be given to them, brings things to remembrance? Do you think that they started to pay attention to the way that he talked about Messiah, John the Baptist as Elijah? Do you think that they paid attention to these things that he said? And the answer is, is of course, and so Jesus, I would say Jesus taught the Apostles to interpret the Old Testament and in a sense that way was consistent with the way the Old Testament interpreted itself. You of course have the Matthew formula of fulfillment. By the way, this ends up radically transforming the way that the Apostles will see the promises of God in the Old Testament. So as Paul's going through Galatians 3, who does he now understand to be the seed of Abraham? What's that? Yeah, in order to be the seed of Abraham, though, you have to be in the seed of Abraham. Galatians 3.16, Paul says, the seed of Abraham is Christ. In fact, Paul makes a weird point, it's singular, and it doesn't say seeds, the seed referring to one, meaning the Christ, right? So this is the way, so Paul could say, for instance, also 2 Corinthians 1 20, that in Christ all the promises of God are yes and amen, okay? So the Apostles interpret the Bible in the same way that Jesus interpreted the Bible, which was the same way that the Old Testament, in a sense, laid the foundation to interpret itself. Just a few other texts. Let's see, so apostolic, the Apostles interpret the Old Testament Christocentrically. Let me just give you one example that is just a blatant one. 1 Corinthians chapter 10. So, for I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, verse one, that our fathers, by the way, the Corinthians, are they Jews? No, not very many, right? Predominantly Gentiles. Our fathers were all under the cloud and passed through the sea. So who's he talking about? The Exodus people, Israel. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. You understand what Paul's doing, right? Well, he's putting them all under. Smack him. They all ate the same spiritual food," which is reference to what? The manna, right? They all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ. That, by the way, is stunning. The rock that Moses struck and poured forth water in the wilderness, Exodus 17. By the way, there's an entire typological perspective on Exodus 17 that has to do with the judgment of God, God standing in the place of the people, so forth. I mean, it's really stunning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's very judicial, and God stands in the place of the people, right? And so when they strike the rock, it's a symbol of them striking God himself, and then Paul says the rock was Christ, right? Now, is that understanding the Old Testament Christocentrically? In fact, Paul is now looking at the Red Sea and the manna as, in a sense, anticipatory of baptism in the Lord's Supper. All right? Pretty amazing. Now, I have to point this out. Nevertheless, verse 5, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were laid low in the wilderness. Notice verse six. Now these things happened as examples for us so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. Now what does verse six do for us? Verse six actually lets us know that even when you interpret the Old Testament Christocentrically, there is still moral application to be drawn from the Old Testament. They were examples to us. So today, frankly, people that want to argue Christocentric interpretation will say that when you use the Old Testament as example, exemplary way, or in a moral way, that you're moralizing the Old Testament, you shouldn't do that. And I want to say, why not? The Apostles did that, too. All right? What does Hebrews 11 do for us? It gives us models, examples, of what faith looks like from the Old Testament. So, these are not Yeah, these are not ideas that are opposed to each other. You don't have contrary perspectives. They're actually brought together by the apostles. And of course, you end up having, you know, don't be idolaters, as some of them were. Don't let us act immorally. Don't grumble, etc. And then these things happen to them, verse 11, as an example, a tupos. and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the age have come." Very interesting. Apostolic perspective is that this present age, this age of fulfillment because of Christ and Spirit, that everything that was written beforehand is ultimately written for us, which he says, by the way, also in Romans 15, and so these things are written for us. in a sense because we live in the age of fulfillment, all right? So does that change the way that we read the Bible? And the answer is yes. So Christ is the fulfillment of Old Testament offices. What three offices did you have in the Old Testament? Yeah, prophet, priest, king, right? And guess what? All of them required anointing, and Jesus fulfills all of them. Is Jesus the creator in the New Testament? And the answer is yeah. Does that change the way that you read Genesis 1? The answer is of course it does. Jesus is the last Adam. So remember the words of Johnson, you have continuity, discontinuity, correspondence, and heightening. So is there continuity between Adam and Christ? The answer is yes. Is there discontinuity? The answer is yes. Is there correspondence? The answer is yes. Is there heightening? On discontinuity issues, that heightening is always a better than. All right? So is, I'll throw a curve at you, is Samson a type of Christ? Yes. Is Samson a moron? Is Samson exemplary? Do you want to give flannel graph lesson to your sixth graders on following Samson's example? Yeah, let's face it, there's very few that are exemplary, right? So is there discontinuity between Samson the judge, which is a kingly office, and Christ the king? And the answer is of course there is discontinuity, but in a sense that discontinuity heightens the anticipation that one better than Samson is coming, right? You have the same thing in Jonah, by the way. the parallels between Jonah and Christ are stunning. Is it an accident that Jonah is asleep in a storm in the hull of the ship? Jesus does exactly the same thing, but guess what? Here's Jesus' own words, something better than Jonah's here. So anyway, you have focal points of history, institutions, persons, events, all of those things point to Christ, all right? And so then lastly, apostolic hermeneutics are covenantal. What I mean by that is that there is a covenantal framework, right? Do you actually think it's possible that the New Testament writers thought outside of a covenantal framework? No, because the covenant is actually how God is related to his people, right? What is the great promise of the prophets after foretelling of the exile because they had broke the covenant? there's gonna be a new covenant, right? So the covenantal framework of the Old Testament provides the framework for the New Testament, and so one of the key understandings for us, hermeneutically, is if the Scriptures are covenantal, you have an Old Covenant and a New Covenant, where exactly do we draw the lines of continuity, where exactly do we draw the lines of discontinuity? Now the New Testament's gonna help us but those lines are not gonna be exhaustively explained in the New Testament, okay? Yeah, we're not left blind in terms of the relationship, but there are things that, and by the way, the issue of continuity versus discontinuity between the covenants is why you have Baptists and Presbyterians. So, they would see more covenantal continuity, in fact, not just continuity, they would see covenantal equivocation, right? Or, no, they would see it as univocal, they would see it as the same, right? We would not. Okay, yeah? And Daniel ruined it for you, didn't he? Sure, sure, sure. So let me make one example that should be abundantly clear to us. So is David a type of Christ? Is David a type of Christ in every way? Not at all. Can you make a fundamental distinction even in the Old Testament between David the king and David the sinner? Yeah, for sure. David the King is fulfilling an office, but there's another sense in which David is just an ordinary sinner. So I wrote a thing for my preaching class for RBS called, You're Not David, Or Are You? So there's this famous clip by Matt Chandler, right? You're not David, right? And what I want to say is, yes and no. Yes and no. So the tendency today is to say absolutely not, and I want to say, hey, let's be more consistent with the way that the New Testament uses the Old Testament. So am I David the king? No, that's Jesus. Okay? Am I David of Psalm 51? Absolutely. Is Jesus David of Psalm 51? No, he's the savior of the David of Psalm 51, all right? So the lines of continuity basically relate to, wake him up. Anyway, and that's when Jesus is gonna return, all right? That day, that hour, if you were asleep, you'd missed it, all right? I'll let you sleep, brother, but when you start snoring, we gotta do something. So stop and think about it. Does the New Testament maintain that pattern of difference between office and innocent sinner or ordinary person? The answer is, of course. James does that very same thing with Elijah in James chapter 5. Okay? So in James 5, so first of all, is Elijah a type of Christ? Oh, absolutely. Just take his miracles, right? There's a typological trajectory to Elijah that points us to Jesus. Elijah is also a type of John the Baptist, right? So you can see different levels of function on types. But James does not appeal to Elijah in chapter 5 as a type of Christ, he appeals to him as a type of all believers. How do I know that? Because he uses him as an example of prayer, and he says this key phrase, Elijah, with a like nature as ours, prayed. All right? So understand that there are different layers, there's different lines, all right? This is men only. This is men only. Yes. This is only women temporarily. Yeah. All right. So does that make sense the way these things fit? Yeah, Daniel. It seems like there's I'm the one that says, like, we only see it when we absolutely can't deny. OK, this has got to be it. Right. The other is, like, every text is Jesus is me, huh? Yeah. I mean, he is. Yeah. I also think all the idolatry stuff should be warning stuff. So it's like, yeah, there is an overreaction. Yeah. And another one. And we're saying, like, Yeah, so for instance, take Walt Kaiser's book on Messiah in the Old Testament. He has a limited number of messianic texts, right, that are explicitly messianic. Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, so forth, things that are like, you can't get around, this is an explicit prophecy of Messiah, right? But then you go to the other side, and this is actually a good book, but I'm gonna use the title in a bad way, Jesus on Every Page, right? So that you end up then trying to make connections that may not be there, Right? So those are the two extremes that we try to avoid. By the way, that extreme form of preaching ends up sounding pretty much the same every week. Twenty-five, thirty years ago I started listening to a guy who was sort of the chief practitioner of this. and I listened to 50-something sermons through Genesis 1 and 2, okay? Every sermon sounded the same because his perspective on every verse was, in a sense, the same, all right? So good warning. All right, so what I want to argue is that what we see of the Old Testament interpreting itself and what we see of Jesus and the Apostles interpreting the Old Testament provide us with an interpretive pattern that we ourselves should follow, and we have to be careful. We don't want to over interpret, but we also don't want to under interpret. And there are some guys that conscientiously are, they will say, I'm a maximalist. I want to push the envelope on every passage. I'm actually more conservative. than that. I think you probably would be too. And so is it reproducible? I would say yes. And the reason we thought it is not is because we haven't dug more deeply into how they interpret it. We just assume that they used him for their own purpose, twisted it, or whatever, and there are observable patterns. So, we'll wrap up this section with this. In Matthew 2, why does he use Hosea out of Egypt I called my son? See, right now, you actually may have a better idea as to why. OK. OK. So is Jesus the true and better Adam? Is Adam the son of God? Yes. A son of God. The first son of God, in a sense, right? In terms of human history. Who's the next son of God? Israel. OK. Israel is God's son. Does Adam fail as God's son? Does Israel fail as God's son? In fact, in Exodus 4.22, God says of Israel, you're my firstborn. So Israel is the son. Israel failed. So is it plausible that the New Testament writers, understanding in a sense a bigger typological picture, could use an Old Testament text about Israel and see it being fulfilled in the Christ. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, we'll wrap up with this next one. Post-apostolic or patristic exegesis. So when I mean post-apostolic and patristic, what era am I talking about? So basically, the immediate post-apostolic period would be Clement of Alexandria, Barnabas, what? polycarp, you have basically your first one to two-ish generations after the apostles, and then you move into the patristic era, the church fathers, and that includes everybody from Origen to Tartullian. Augustine ends up being sort of the end of that period, and so you have basically, think of it this way, the first four to five hundred years after the Apostles. So that's the period that I'm talking about here. Now when we get to this period in the history of exegesis, it does get a little interesting, all right? So Richard Mueller, whom everybody should know. So this is volume two of four volumes on post-reformation reform dogmatics. This is on Holy Scripture. So Mueller says, and I have it up there for you, he calls this the problem of a history of the doctrine of Scripture, as he applies it to the patristics. And this, by the way, is, I think, an incredibly relevant issue for us today. He says, the Fathers do not provide us with a formal doctrine of Scripture. only a consistent appeal to the inspiration and authority of Scripture throughout their writings in an occasional discussion of their principles of interpretation." In other words, what you have with post-apostolic and patristic writers is just a fundamental assumption that the Bible is the Word of God. They don't have a developed doctrine of Scripture. All right? Mohler goes on, he says, whereas a high view of Scripture is implied in all their efforts, the development of an explicit doctrine of Scripture was, like the problem of theological prolegomena, left to later ages, specifically to the high scholastic era of the Middle Ages and to the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. Now, I want to make a suggestion to you, and that is that in these early centuries what you end up having. is you end up having a tremendous amount of Platonic influence on the way that Scripture is interpreted. So for instance, Origen would say something like this, man is tripartite, man is body, soul, spirit. And so you interpret the Bible in a tripartite way. The body corresponds to the literal or the historical, the soul corresponds to the moral, and then the spirit corresponds to what he would call, in a sense, the analogical, which is the heavenly, right? So in that, what's the least important in that scheme? Yeah, the historical. What's the most important, do you think, for origin? The analogical, all right? So let me just show you how this plays out in the patristic era. So Origen interprets the parable of the Good Samaritan, all right? And as he reads it, the Samaritan is on his way, or Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, right? And he passes through Samaritan. Jerusalem represents heaven. Jericho represents the world. The robbers represent the devil and his minions. The priest, passes by, represents the law. The Levite, who passes by, represents the prophets. The Good Samaritan represents Christ. The donkey, Christ's body, carrying fallen man to the inn, which then becomes the church, And even the Samaritans' promise to return translates into Christ's triumphant kingdom return. Now that way of approaching the Bible in the early patristic era was fairly common. Not everybody did that, you know. I think Tertullian, for instance, was much more reserved, but you also have some incredible, let's say, unrestrained, in the epistle of Barnabas, for instance, you end up having a lot of this sort of unrestrained, and let's just call it allegorical. So allegorical is the idea of two things that are laid side by side. So this represents that. It's not typology. Typology is different than allegory. Allegory is, in a sense, typology is governed by scripture. Allegory is governed ultimately by the mind of the interpreter, all right? Now, what ends up happening during this period is, as Mueller says, because of that lack of a developed doctrine of Scripture, the patristics used Scripture, and they use it all the time, but there really was very, very little standard consistency in the way that they used Scripture, okay? Now let me just make one little point that I might make as we wrap up. You hear today about the great tradition. So Craig Carter has a book, Interpreting Scripture in the Great Tradition. What I want to say is, historically, if we're to be honest, we cannot say that there's just this monolithic uniform great tradition We have to say that there were traditions, plural. Some conflicted with each other. Some won out. Some had more advocates than others. But the idea that the Patristics, for instance, created this great tradition is fundamentally flawed. Now, do the Patristics develop, for instance, the Nicene Creed? The answer is yes. Do they develop the Nicene Creed on the basis of Scripture? And the answer is yes. So there is a sense in which that represents an ecumenical fruit of lots of different traditions, okay? So the patristic period is kind of interesting, and is it interesting to read Origen or Chrysostom? I completely enjoy reading Chrysostom's sermons. They're still published by a Greek Orthodox publisher. and St. Vladimir's Press, and you can read his sermons on the rich man and Lazarus. You can read his sermons on the priesthood. I mean, and they're fascinating. Do you turn around and agree with all the exegesis that you read? The answer is no. Sometimes you're like, where did that come from? But here's the thing. I do that very same thing when I read Spurgeon morning and evening. Have you ever read Spurgeon morning and evening, read the key, the verse at the top, read his exposition and go, that was awesome! But how did he come up with it from that text, right? Okay, so it's not just an early church problem, okay? All right, so this is where this leads to. So medieval exegesis, which by the way is making a comeback. Okay, just in time for the medieval. Yeah. See you later. So medieval developments on the doctrine of scripture end up being multifaceted. So on the one hand, there was this in the medieval period. So what do I mean by medieval? I mean, give me roughly a time frame. Augustine? Yeah, Aquinas is medieval. Aquinas is high medieval. Roughly 500 to 15 is your medieval period. And you have different, you have early medieval, mid medieval, okay? And then you have high medieval. High medieval is basically 1100-ish to about the time of Luther, all right? So on the one hand, In the medieval period, so we sometimes call this, what, the medieval period, we sometimes call it the dark ages, boom boom, right? And I want to say that there never was an age in the history of Christ's church that was completely dark. Okay? So you do have medieval exegetes that have a high view of scripture and they actually see the study of scripture as central to the theological enterprise. Now that doesn't mean that you agree with their theology necessarily, right? But then what ends up happening is based on some of that patristic tendencies, what became very common in the medieval period was such areas as canon, so what constitutes scripture, interpretation, and tradition, all began to kind of take on some significant freight. So that in the medieval period, you end up with what's called the quadriga. The quadriga is basically this four-fold interpretation. So origin had three-fold, quad, four, quadriga, and there were four. So you had the literal or historical, that's what occurred. You had the tropological or the moral, how you live. You had the allegorical, one thing stands for another. And then you had the analogical, which was the highest heavenly truth. Now, ideally, This should lead to that if you believed in the quadriga, but it didn't always. So the method leads to not just allegorization of scripture, but the method also leads to a mystical approach to scripture. So mysticism starts to become more infused in the method itself. Now, I'm not a fan of Thomas Aquinas, but both Albert the Great and Aquinas actually moved away from Gregorian allegorism to a more historical grammatical approach to scripture. Now they're dealing with the Vulgate, Latin. So Albert and Thomas were not committed to that method. So when I say that it was the predominant method, don't think it was the exclusive method. So during the medieval period, Duns Scotus, you ever heard the word dunce? See, he argued for a very, very high view of scripture. And so, by the way, you had some of these guys that were massively influential and end up representing pivotal philosophical and theological movements, all right? Duns Scotus is one, for sure. William of Ockham is another. Thomas Aquinas is a third, all right? So, Scotus, for instance, argued that natural reason could never attain saving truth. Revelation, therefore, was absolutely necessary. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. So, guess what? He writes that against Aquinas. By the way, Duns Scotus thought Thomas Aquinas should be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. So for Scotus, though, how'd you like to be named Scotus? Maybe that'll be your new nickname, Jesse. Jesse Scotus. Now, here's the thing. You liked Scotus' statement there, right? But guess what Scotus also argued for? That tradition should be a co-equal norm with Scripture. Not so good. By the way, Aquinas argued the same thing, William of Ockham argued the same thing. In the medieval period, what's that? Yeah, they're all Catholic. So the idea of Scripture and tradition as co-equal norms ends up being, in a sense, That's the majority opinion. In fact, that's almost the exclusive majority opinion in the medieval period, all right? And so Mueller, tradition was seen as the authoritative vehicle of divine truth embedded in scripture, but overflowing to extra-scriptural apostolic tradition handed down through Episcopal succession, all right? Yeah. So does the New Testament talk about tradition? Yeah. Two words. You have paradidomy, which means to hand over, and paradosis, that which is handed over, sometimes tradition. And so you have this language of tradition in the New Testament. So what you end up having, and this goes back to some of the patristics, is that they looked at apostolic tradition as not just coming from scripture, but coming through the apostolic succession of the bishops. Okay, is this making sense? So where does tradition come from? Well, as we'll talk about next time, we would argue that apostolic tradition is contained in the New Testament. They argued that those traditions were handed down through the succession of bishops. So they believed in an apostolic succession. So you have to understand that apostolic succession, especially as people are all excited about going back to tradition, you have to remember that it's undergirded by the belief in apostolic succession. And so that's where the idea would come from. Now, all is not lost. So during this medieval period, you had the quadriga. So you had some pretty wild Bible interpretations. You also had a predominance of two philosophical schools, Realists and idealists, Aquinas was a realist, Ockham was an idealist, or I should say a nominalist. So realism, or I should say idealism, I'm sorry, idealism and nominalism. So Aquinas represents one school, which is Neoplatonic and Aristotelian. And Occam represents another school that is heavily Platonic, and so you had these two schools that really represented two main philosophical perspectives in church history. Now does that end up affecting the way that you view the Scriptures? The answer is yes. Now let me just say quickly as a footnote, by the time you get to the Reformation, the Reformers are not monolithic or uniform in their their influences. So Theodora Beza, or not Beza, Martin Bucer was a thoroughgoing Thomist following Thomas Aquinas. Luther actually was an alchemist. He was a realist. or a nominalist, and so now he tries to distance himself, but he never quite can, right? That's kind of the thing that we all have to recognize, is that the influences that pour into you, even if you're trying to conscientiously distance yourselves, you're never actually completely free from them, right? And so you end up having these two, the quadriga, these two philosophical trains of philosophy and thus theology, and by the time you get to the 1400s in seminaries, schools of theology, the universities, what are guys studying that are preparing for the priesthood? They're studying Aquinas and Peter Lombard's sentences. That's what they're studying. Not so much scripture. Some are, but that's almost all Vulgate anyway. So in some sense, the medieval period does not represent a high watermark in the history of exegesis. There are a few happy exceptions. There's a French guy, believe it or not. Sorry for any who are French or tried to learn French. Okay, you don't even worry about it. In fact, he was so committed to exegetical method that a number of the reformers quote Lafay in terms of his work on Hebrews, so forth, and then Desiderius Erasmus So Erasmus was not an alchemist. He was not an atomist. He was a humanist. By the way, not in a bad sense. The term humanist referred to a movement that was a, you know, you hear a lot about retrieval today. The humanist movement was a retrieval of original sources. So guess what you had in the humanist movement? People learning Hebrew and Greek. Looking at the Vulgate as a translation. Erasmus produces a Greek New Testament. That's why we say Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched. was actually his work in the Greek New Testament, that Luther actually becomes quite good at Greek, not as good as Melanchthon, but quite good. And so you had these guys, and here was sort of the, if they had bumper stickers in those days, ad fontes, to the fountain, that is to the source. And so what ends up happening is this sort of starts to fade, the speculative philosophical emphasis starts to get challenged. And it gets challenged by guys like Le Fay and by Erasmus. Now, does it mean you're automatically a good interpreter of scripture? No, because Erasmus is not a good interpreter of scripture. But he's committed to principles that end up informing the Reformation. Same thing with Le Fay. And so the medieval period is sort of a, it's a mixed bag. There is no monolithic uniform medieval theology, for instance. You had guys that were Pelagian, semi-Pelagian. You had guys that were completely Augustinian, like Gottschalk, who would have been a flaming Calvinist if he had lived after Calvin. You have all of these different streams, all of these different perspectives, and they all manifest themselves in the different ways that the scripture was treated. But what is one thing that ends up being, in a sense, the most negative fruit of the medieval approach to scripture, and it's, in a sense, it's recession to philosophical speculation, and that is the words not being preached. Guess what takes ascendancy in the medieval period? Tradition, but in terms of what happens in the church? Mass. Taking the Eucharist. if there is any word, it's a homily, and that homily could be anything from a devotional thought from one of Lombard's sentences, okay, to any number of reflections on church fathers, or in other words, the word of God actually really does get marginalized. And so what I wanna just kinda conclude with is you have to understand that your view of scripture your view of hermeneutics and exegesis will have a very direct impact on the way you see the word of God in the life of the church, okay? So for us, the ordinances are not central, they're subordinate to the word, right? So what we'll do next time is we'll take a look at Reformation exegesis. and see what happened at the Reformation. Any questions as we kind of wrap this up? Yeah. Well, obviously, all of those guys would deny that. All right. So just as sure as I would deny being labeled with certain labels and categories as well, right? And so we want to be careful that we're charitable, right? And that's one of the things that's lacking in the current debate is actual charity towards other people. So next time when we do Reformation exegesis, I'm going to outline what Heiko Obermann called Tradition 1, Tradition 2, Tradition 3, Tradition 0. And what I want to argue is that the Reformers were always Tradition 1 people, which meant high respect and value for tradition, but always subordinate to the word of God, which meant tradition could be challenged. Tradition two, scripture and tradition are on co-equal norms. That's the Roman Catholic position. One of the things that concerns me on a practical level, okay, is if you get to the point where things are not allowed to be challenged biblically, then you have to ask yourself functionally, how is scripture supreme? So I'll just give a quick example. And I'll just use the terminology that's being used today. So Craig Carter writes this book on interpreting scripture with the great tradition. So the great tradition, so I pointed out, I think that that's a flaw, that there's not a monolithic idea, but there are things that could fit into the so-called great tradition, right? Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, so forth, okay? But also the descent of Jesus into hell, okay? The descendent ad inferna, right? The descent into hell. Well, here's the way that the reformers took that part of tradition. Luther believed it wholeheartedly, okay? Calvin denied it completely. The Heidelbergers denied it completely, probably because of Calvin and Bollinger's influence. So all of that to say, they looked at scripture as being the authority to determine what that line in the creed means, right? So the line in the creed doesn't stand independently because it's a part of tradition, right? It is subject to and scrutinized. Now, there are things, and we'll probably talk about this quite a bit next time, but there are things that we should say We believe after, let's say 1700 years, should be completely settled, right? And that means things like very God of very God begotten, not created, okay? That's Johannine language in a sense anyway, right? There are things that are not up for grabs anymore. One of the problems with contemporary generations is that they throw up too much for grabs. So that respect for the tradition is vitally important. It helps me. But my fear is, is that sometimes if we get to the place where you can't challenge anything that is a part of the so-called great tradition, then practically, how is scripture still supreme? So to me, there's, and of course, my friends would reject this, but to me, there's almost a subtle move to a tradition two perspective, right? Now again, they would not say that, but I do think, you know, so anyway, that's how I would answer that. And I do want to underscore just the idea of being charitable, right? Am I going to divide with somebody over the descent into hell clause of the Creed? And the answer is no. And am I going to try to be informed on the various views of how that was interpreted? The answer is yes, right? And do I want to be respectful to those who... Now, when Kenneth Copeland says that he descended into hell and took on the nature of Satan, I want to say, you know, heretic. Okay? But in other words, I'm not saying there's no boundaries. There obviously are boundaries of orthodoxy. But those boundaries might be a little broader than a lot of our current discussion leads us to believe. Okay? So, it's a good question though. So let me say one thing about Craig Carter's book. So he says, so you have pre-critical exegesis, and then you have modern exegesis. So pre-critical exegesis is what? Frankly, it's patristic and medieval exegesis. It is Reformation exegesis. What makes critical exegesis critical exegesis? The Enlightenment. So these guys have a very, very strong view of Before enlightenment, good. After enlightenment, bad. Modern exegesis, bad. What makes modern exegesis bad? One meaning. Authorial intent. We'll talk more about that. But guess what? It's not an either or. There's actually an incredible section that fits right in the middle that is pre-critical in many ways, being Christocentric, redemptive, historical, and yet benefiting from developments that came along after the Enlightenment. So we'll talk more about that later. All right. Sorry to bore you with the last five minutes here, but OK. All right. Questions, comments, protests, riots, demonstrations, outbursts, letters to the editor. All right, very good then, let's pray. Lord, thank you for the time that we've had and I pray that it would be profitable for us and not just filling our brains with facts, but just deepening our appreciation and love for your word. And we thank you for your kindness to us and in revealing yourself to us through your holy word. And we pray that we would always handle it with reverence and with care and precision. We pray that we would be that workman that does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. And we pray that you would use our great history and our great forefathers who have gone before us to be good teachers for us. In Jesus' name, amen. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.